Independent Star-News from Pasadena, California • Page 112

CLAUDIA CARDINALE AND THE MAN BEHIND HER by LLOYD SHEARER Claudia Cardinale and Franco Cristaldi, who discovered her in 1958. Cristaldi, 41, is considered by many the best film producer in Italy. He has developed her into the rising star she' is today just as older producer Carlo Ponti did with Sophia Loren. the late Marilyn Monroe was trying to get a start in Hollywood she was frequently compelled to play the defensive role in a well-known studio executive pastime called "Chase- Around- the-Desk." Years later, when through the force of her undeniable box office power, she achieved some measure of status in the industry, she was surprisingly honest and seemingly trauma-free iii discussing the struggle-and- survival period of her unhappy career. "This is a very rough business," she remarked, "for a girl to get a break in unless she's got the right guy behind her.

I was lucky for a while. I had Johnny and Joe." "Johnny" was Johnny Hyde, a shrewd, mild-mannered gentleman, a top agent who very much wanted to marry Marilyn. She refused because she didn't love him. "Joe" was Joseph Schenck, one of the pioneers of the film industry, a former husband of screen star Norma Tahnadge, a founder of 20th Century-Fox. These two men helped Marilyn more than her public, her husbands, or her biographers ever knew.

Nowadays whenever I observe a young film actress receiving one choice' part after another, getting a consistent and well-planned build-up, I recall Marilyn's line about "the right guy," and I look for the patron behind the protegee. Invariably he is there, sometimes brazenly in the sunlight, sometimes quietly in the shadows, sometimes married to his actress, sometimes married to someo'ne else; sometimes. the relationship is purely professional, sometimes it is more. But always if he is "the right guy," he is the power pulling the strings, making the deals, setting the plans, spinning the plot, devising the success. In Sophia Loren's case it is producer Carlo Ponti.

In Capucine's case it is producer Charley Feldman. In Martha Hyer's case it is producer Hal Wallis. In Sylvana Mangano's case it is producer Dino di Laurentiis. In Kim Novak's case it was producer Harry Cohn. In Jennifer Jones's case it was producer David Selznick.

In Carroll Baker's case it was producer Joe Levine. In Juliette Greco's case it was producer.Darryl Zanuck. CARDINALE'S CASE Who is it in the case of Claudia Cardinale? At 26 this Tunis-born brown-eyed, buxom beauty (5-feet-6, 123 37V4-24-37VS) is surely the fastest-rising star in the international film galaxy. She has made 28 films in less than seven years. She has been directed by such outstanding men as Luigi Visconti, Federico Fellini, Henry Hathaway, Blake Edwards, and Mark Robson.

She has acted opposite Rod Steiger, Marcello Mastroianni, David Niven, Burt Lancaster, Jean Paul Belmondo, John Wayne, Rock Hudson, Tony Quinn. She has three top films as yet unreleased: Blindfold, The Centurions, and Running World. Her dark, dimpled, delightful face has adorned 486 magazine covers according to her erudite press agent Dr. Fabrio Rinaudo. She has been built up everywhere as the successor in sex symbolism to Marilyn Monroe and Brigitte Bardot.

But despite all this accomplishment and ballyhoo, she has defied, much to the consternation of the world press, a romantic linking with anyone. Ask her about the men in her life, and she quickly explains in beginner's English: "I have talked' never about men, my private life for publicity. Is not necessary. Some actresses say it necessary. You are famous and public wants to know everything about you.

But one must not give everything away. You can keep secret, hold together private life. I have done so for seven years." Ask her, however, about Franco Cristaldi, 41, the handsome lawyer from Turin who turned film producer and discovered her in 1958. Ask her if it is true that he taught her how to dress, how to behave, how to walk, how to act, where to live, what to say, what not to say. Ask her if theirs is not a Pygmalion relationship, if Cristaldi is not the one man in her life, the man she loves, the man she hopes to marry--even though Cristaldi is already married and a father-and her ears will redden, and she will quickly say as if for a long time she has been preparing the reply to the expected question, "Franco and I are good friends.

1 admire him very much. I am under his contract. He gave me a contract without even a test. He guides me. He is very intelligent, very clever.

But I cannot see Parade Nov. 14, W65.