A Western rancher brings a woman from far away to be his wife but she struggles to fit in. Wait, guys, I thought we already watched Giant.
Gino (Anthony Quinn) needs a new woman to replace his dead wife, Rosanna, at his sheep ranch in Reno. Solution: he goes back to the old country and marries Rosanna’s sister, Gioia (Anna Magnani). Gino has become wealthy and wants to give his new wife the gifts he couldn’t give the old one, but what Gioia wants is something Gino doesn’t seem interested in giving: love.
Then, uh-oh, Gioia falls for Gino’s adopted son Bene (Anthony Franciosa) and tells Gino she’s running away with him. The plan backfires: Bene gets cold feet and Gino disowns Gioia, ordering her back to Italy. But in a classic third-act change of heart, Gino catches Gioia at the airport to tell her that he does love her and that they should start again.
Rating: 5/10. By the end, you’ll be tired of the wind.
Cast and Crew
I warned you we’d see Anthony Franciosa again. His role as Bene is almost exactly the same as what we saw in A Hatful of Rain: a guy romantically interested in his family member’s wife. Gotta say, that’s not my favorite archetype. The Mexican Anthony Quinn, meanwhile, stars as Gino, a big honkin’ Italian stereotype. Quinn handles the explosive parts well (like he did in Viva Zapata! and Lust for Life) but falters in the quieter scenes. We won’t bother making unflattering comparisons between them and their Giant counterparts.
We should talk about Anna Magnani, though.1 Magnani was famous for her portrayals of earthy, lower-class Italian women for big-shot art-house directors. One of her first major roles was in the Roberto Rossellini2 film Rome, Open City (1945). That film, which brought international recognition to Italian Neorealism, showed the horrors of the Nazi occupation of Rome; you can watch Magnani get gunned down here.
If you watched the clip, you might notice that she’s not a traditionally-beautiful leading lady. In fact, she topped legendary bitch Mr. Blackwell’s first-ever “worst-dressed” list. But because Italian Neorealism often was about “ordinary” characters, Magnani’s homely apperance contributed to the perceived authenticity of her performances. It was this characteristic that got Tennessee Williams to write “The Rose Tattoo” for her. Though she didn’t star in its Broadway run, she helmed the film adaptation, for which she won a Best Actress Oscar.
George Cukor, director of A Star Is Born, is back for his second turn in the column. We’ve already listed Cukor’s murderer’s row of movies3, and though he’s a legend, “Jeopardy!” just isn’t that interested in you knowing much about him. I guess you could know that he’s associated with Katharine Hepburn4 and that he was the director of Something's Got to Give, the film Marilyn Monroe was filming when she died.5 We’ll see Cukor again directing a different Hepburn in 1964.
The Trivia
Wild Is the Wind is about a sheep farm, so today we’re talking wool. Wool originates as the protective outer coating, or fleece, of various mammals (not just sheep). Their follicles produce keratin6 fibers that make up the fleece and provide the animal (and later, us) with insulation.
To get from sheep to sweater, you first have to shear the fleece from the animal.
Then, once you’ve got the wool, you sort it and clean it.7 The wool is then carded to align fibers and spun into yarn. A diagram of a spinning wheel is below; you should know the terms bobbin (the spool the thread is wound on), treadle (the foot pedal that operates the wheel), and distaff (not pictured, but it’s used to hold the fibers as they are being fed in).8
Now that you know what happens to the wool (answer: lots), let’s talk about the animals you can get the wool from. The sheep wool you’ll hear most frequently is Merino wool, which is obtained from Merino sheep.9 A special type of sheep wool is Lambswool, which comes from the first shearing of a lamb (typically within the first seven months of its life). We also get wool from camels and camelids, including Bactrian (two-humped) camels and alpacas.
And now, some easy-to-mix-up wools:
Cashmere wool is from Cashmere goats.
Angora wool comes from Angora rabbits.
Mohair wool is from Angora goats.
“Angora” comes from the old name of Ankara, capital of Turkey, while the name “Cashmere” comes from the province of Kashmir.
Odds and Ends
Dolores Hart, who played Gino’s daughter, left acting in 1960 to join a Connecticut monastery; a documentary about her life, God Is the Bigger Elvis, came out in 2011…Magnani and Quinn reunited in 1969 to play another couple that don’t like each other in The Secret of Santa Vittoria…the Wild Is the Wind title song is by Johnny Mathis, more famous for “Wonderful! Wonderful!” and “Chances Are”…Gino’s brother’s wife calls Gioia “strega,” which is Italian for “witch” (and is also the name of a digestif).
…oh, and you wanted to know the world’s cutest sheep? That’d be the Babydoll Southdown sheep. My apologies for burying the lede.
“Jeopardy!” hasn’t asked for Magnani’s name since 1997, though The Rose Tattoo (1955) comes up with some frequency.
Magnani was also involved romantically with Rossellini until his affair with and marriage to Ingrid Bergman.
Gone with the Wind (1939), The Philadelphia Story (1940), Gaslight (1944), Adam’s Rib (1949), Born Yesterday (1950). Consider his 1939—besides directing (and being replaced on) Gone with the Wind, he also contributed to The Wizard of Oz and directed The Women. Good year.
He directed her in ten films, starting with her first, 1932’s A Bill of Divorcement.
That film is a comedic version of “Enoch Arden,” a poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. In the poem, a shipwrecked sailor returns home to find his wife remarried. Something’s Got to Give was eventually recast and renamed as Move Over, Darling (1963), though Cukor stayed on as director.
Yeah, that’s the same keratin that makes up our hair and nails. Other animals use it for scales, feathers, and horns.
Part of the cleaning is to remove lanolin, or wool fat. Lanolin is wax secreted by sheep to protect their wool. Humans can use it as an emollient for dry skin and hair.
Distaff is now used to refer to the female side of one’s family. The corresponding word for the male side of the family is “spear.”
Merino sheep are most often associated with Australia. There are lots of other kinds of sheep—Lincoln, Leicester, Romney, Shropshire, Shetland, Wensleydale, whatever—but it’s typically Merino that you’ve gotta be able to blurt out.