I really like how she just kept getting bigger and bustier-she was simply too big for little cameras to contain!!


Excerpt from a small bio:
While at Universal studios Anita bloomed physically and her bust became especially full, to the delight of photographers. Anita also delighted the gossip columnists with her social life. Her name was linked to many famous men, but Anita was given the nickname "The Iceberg" because of her plain speaking and her insistence on choosing for herself which people she would socialise with. Anita now says that she regarded the nickname as a compliment.

The combination of Anita's colourful private life and now awesome physique, frequently specified as 39.22.37, made her ideal material for both gossip magazines like 'Confidential' and for the new type of men's magazine that proliferated in the 1950's. Quickly she became a major '50s pin-up. In addition Anita participated in publicity stunts. Famously, she has admitted that her dress bursting open in the lobby of London's Berkeley Hotel was pre-arranged with a photographer.

Contrary to her 'Iceberg' image, after marrying the English actor Anthony Steel, Anita talked to journalists about how marriage had changed her. (She did not tell journalists, as she now does, that Anthony Steel had a severe drink problem or that the marriage was soon in trouble).

The impression gained during this period was that Anita would do anything for publicity, and in some quarters there was considerable hostility towards her. However, an examination today of the photographs taken then uncovers a curious contradiction. Although Anita posed endlessly in bikinis and revealing dresses, in many of the pictures her face suggests that she resented the experience. Frequently she looks embarrassed and sometimes antagonistic. Nevertheless, Anita's lack of ambition made her careless about her photographs. Most film stars carefully vet all publicity pictures before authorising their release, but Anita allowed the distribution of unflattering photographs, often showing her in ungraceful postures. Many of these pictures are still in circulation.

Anita the beauty queen and pin-upHowever the sustained publicity did achieve results because in the mid-50s other studios offered Anita work. Paramount cast her in two of the Dean Martin/Jerry Lewis comedies, and John Wayne borrowed her for a small role in "Blood Alley". Then RKO gave Anita the female lead in "Back From Eternity". The opening sequence in the film introduces her to the audience - no other character in the movie receives a similar build-up - and RKO's publicity for the movie concentrated on Anita, ("Ooh - That Ekberg!") not Robert Ryan or Rod Steiger, her two co-stars. Anita was perfectly adequate in her cardboard role, and suggested that with a good director and a worthwhile part, she might have something to offer.

Further substantial parts were provided by Warwick Films in London. In the 1950s, Albert R. ("Cubby") Broccoli and Irwin Allen were making films in England, with Hollywood middle-rankers like Victor Mature and Alan Ladd. Anita Ekberg was now firmly established, and three times she made films for the American ex-patriots. (When "Cubby" Broccoli co-produced "From Russia With Love", the film star in the movie poster through which the Bulgarian assassin Krilencu escapes, was changed from Marilyn Monroe, as in Ian Fleming's novel, to Anita Ekberg.)

In 1956 Anita went to Rome to make "War And Peace", directed by distinguished Hollywood veteran King Vidor. In Hollywood itself, Anita made few worthwhile movies, being confined to potboilers like "Screaming Mimi". She was in Italy again, her career treading water with "Nel Segno Di Roma" (a.k.a. "Sign Of The Gladiator"), when, in 1960, she was offered a part in "La Dolce Vita".

"La Dolce Vita" was a sensational success, and Anita Ekberg's uninhibited voluptuousness remains one of the most celebrated images in movie history. By now she had grown even more and was perhaps the most extravagantly feminine star in movies. Had Anita stayed as she was, permanent Goddess status would have been hers.

Unfortunately Anita continued to expand. Show business journalists began, cautiously and politely, to comment on her increasing size, often describing her euphemistically as a picture of health. Soon it became difficult for costume designers and cinematographers to hide the truth. In "Call Me Bwana" Anita dwarfed Bob Hope, and in "Four For Texas" her growing size was obvious despite carefully chosen camera angles.

As Anita's career had been based on her physical appeal, she was soon unsuitable for the kind of parts she normally played, and quickly she became a marginal figure in the movie world.

Anita has continued working in small parts and today she lives near Lazio in Italy, still impatient, still brutally honest, still good humoured. She admits that she has received offers for her memoirs but has refused, because she is aware that all that is wanted is intimate details of her love life.