Girl of the Day - Gina Lollabrigida

Americans once were homebodies, living their lives within 50 or so miles of their birth places, rarely venturing abroad.   For millions of GIs, World War II changed that; now they were thousands of miles from home, across oceans, surrounded by strange peoples speaking strange languages.  For them (at least this is my theory), the French and Italian girls they met overseas in Europe became their ideal of beauty and exoticism, so it wasn't surprising when European actresses of the 1950s and 1960s became sex symbols in America.   Last week we had Sophia Loren as a Girl of the Day, this week we have another Italian sex symbol who, frankly, seems more memorable for her name, which seemed to embody a kind of earthy sensuality... Gina Lollabrigida.