Snapshot, 1950s: Cat on a hot tin roof

It’s the mid-1950s, and Anita Ekberg sits on a cream-coloured Jaguar Roadster, smiling disarmingly for the camera. Only a few years earlier, the Swedish actress had been a finalist in the 1951 ‘Miss Universe’ pageant – but her greatest successes are still to come…

Although she spoke very little English at the time, in 1955 Anita Ekberg appeared alongside John Wayne and Lauren Bacall, with a small part in ‘Blood Alley’. Soon after, when she appeared with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, the press began to call her ‘the Marilyn Monroe of Paramount Studios’. The role of her life, however, was in 1960: Federico Fellini’s ‘La Dolce Vita’ on the glittering life of the Roman gentry, including an unforgettable scene with Ekberg in Rome’s Fontana di Trevi. Anita Ekberg died last weekend, at the age of 83. 

Photo: Rex Features