TV Italian Style
The ‘TV Italian Style’ podcast is an A-Z of the golden age of Italian television of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s from the perspective of the ever popular varietà and the famous faces who would host and guest star on these shows. It’s a bilingual podcast, in English and Italian, with conversations with experts on Italian TV and culture alongside clips from all the best shows and performances. Visit the accompanying website https://tvitalianstyle.wordpress.com/ to download translated transcriptions for each episode to support your listening.
TV Italian Style
X: Xavier Cugat, Abbe Lane, Romina Power and more: international hosts and guest stars of the varietà
Across the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, Italian television played host to a series of popular and well-loved stars that hailed from outside of Italy. On the podcast, we've already talked about how stars like the Kessler twins, Henri Salvador, and Lola Falana brought something new and different to Italian television screens, a difference that was, in the case of the Kesslers and Lola, sexy but accepted thanks to the fact that they were not Italian. But there were many stars who featured on Italian television screens in this period and brought something new to Italian audiences. Researcher Alessandro Pontremoli suggests that there is 'una tendenza tipica della TV dei primi anni, quella cioè di una presenza significativa sui nostri teleschermi di artisti stranieri, da leggersi certamente anche come una forte reazione all’autarchia culturale e al provincialismo proprio del ventennio fascista'. Whatever the reason, it's important to acknowledge these stars and the impact they had on the Italian small screen. In this episode of the podcast, I'm pleased to be joined again by research Nicolò Salmaso to talk about just a selection of the many international stars who in different ways were influential for varietà and television more broadly: Xavier Cugat and Abbe Lane, Romina Power, Sylvie Vartan, and Catherine Spaak.