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1 | Half-great-aunt of Alexander Moitzi. |
2 | Her favorite drama teacher was Susi Nicoletti. |
3 | Lived in Graz (until 1957), Vienna (1957 to 1959 & 1989 to 1992), West Germany (1960 to 1963), Paris (1964 to 1965), and Rome (1965 to 1988). Between 1970 and 1977, she also had an apartment in Madrid because she worked there frequently. |
4 | Jesús Franco was a great admirer of her. In February 1972, he announced that Mell would appear alongside Barbara Bouchet and Mark Damon in his new film, Camino solitario (1984). Unfortunately, Franco couldn't get the financial backing for this film and it was put on hold. Finally, it was made in 1984 with Lina Romay taking over Mell's role. |
5 | She turned down the leading roles in Boeing, Boeing (1965) and Stiletto (1969) that were eventually played by Christiane Schmidtmer and Britt Ekland. She never made a movie in Hollywood. As a matter of fact, her only American feature film was Mahogany (1975) which was shot in Rome and only offered her a small supporting role. |
6 | Of her own films, Ordered to Love (1961) was the one she disliked the most. |
7 | She was good friends with Brigitte Bardot in the 1970s. |
8 | From 1972 to 1984, she had a dog named Rocco. She bought him in Madrid while she was filming Violent Blood Bath (1973) with Fernando Rey. |
9 | Decided to become an actress after seeing Greta Garbo in Camille (1936) as a child. Coincidentally, Mell later starred in an ill-fated Broadway production based on another Garbo film, Mata Hari (1931). |
10 | On November 26, 1977, she gave birth to a baby daughter, Louisa Erika, in Rome. It was a premature delivery, and the girl died the same day. The child was interred at the Camposanto Teutonico cemetery in Rome. Mell never revealed the father's identity. |
11 | Her favorite actresses were Greta Garbo and Dorothy Dandridge, whom she admired for her beauty. |
12 | Had a lifelong crush on Curd Jürgens. |
13 | Of her own films, Masquerade (1965), French Dressing (1964), Casanova 70 (1965), and Marta (1971) were her favorites. |
14 | Had a miscarriage in 1969. Father of the child was her longtime companion Pier Luigi Torri, with whom she lived for about three years. According to her autobiography, the relationship was an ordeal. During that time Torri produced one of Marisa's better (yet unsuccessful) films, Devil's Ransom (1970), co-starring Philippe Leroy. He had to leave Italy in 1971 after a notorious cocaine scandal to avoid prison. |
15 | She loved to paint. |
16 | In 1964 she refused to sign a contract in Hollywood running for seven years. She said that the payment would have been great, but that "the contract was a whole book. I think that even to go to the toilet I would have needed a permission." |
17 | Changed her name because she thought that "Marlies Moitzi" sounded too "steirisch" (from the Styrian province of Austria) for an international audience. |
18 | She wrote her autobiography, "Coverlove", which was published in Vienna in 1990. Another book, "Marisa, Rückblenden einer Freundschaft" by her best friend Erika Pluhar, was published in 1996 in Hamburg, Germany. In 2013, André Schneider published the first big biography on her and her movies, "Die Feuerblume: Über Marisa Mell und ihre Filme". The book contains more than 130 never-seen-before photos of Marisa. |
19 | She died of cancer, in poverty, with only a few friends attending her funeral. |
20 | She graduated together with Senta Berger, Heidelinde Weis and Erika Pluhar from Vienna's Max-Reinhard-Seminar. |
21 | Married Henri Tucci shortly after finishing her actor's school, but got divorced a few years later. |
22 | Posed nude for the Italian version of Playboy in November of 1976. |
23 | Most famous for the sexy film role of criminal mastermind Eva Kant in Danger: Diabolik (1968). |
24 | David Merrick produced and Vincente Minnelli directed a stage play about Mata Hari with Marisa in the title role opposite Pernell Roberts in 1968. It was a flop and never made it to Broadway. |
25 | One of her hobbies was archeology. |
26 | In 1963 she was involved in a serious automobile accident in France. For six hours she lay unconscious, not knowing that she was close to losing her right eye. The disfigurement extended to her lip as well. After that, she spent two years undergoing plastic surgery, and no damage remained in her face except a little curl at her upper lip. |