 Hi, I'm Sophia Loren, here to tell you that when I eat eels, I eat Comacchio eels. 
We live in a community of old fishermen. We've learned some things. Sophia Loren, we can declare without much doubt, is an old fisherman's dream. Hairy armpits, safety pin holding her shirt closed, mismatched buttons, rope for a belt. All of that indicates an uncomplicated attitude, which old fishermen appreciate. And, most importantly, Loren apparently loves eels. This photo shows her holding aloft a tin of Comacchio canned eels, and before you judge, let us just say that eels taste great. We've never eaten the Italian variety, but we suspect one canned eel tastes very much like another. Please don't send emails telling us how wrong we are and that eels vary greatly depending on which waters they slither through. They're eels. How different can they really be?
Let's focus on Loren. This is one of her most famous photos, and the reason she looks this way is because she's in costume as her character Nives Mongolini from the 1954 film La donna del fiume, aka The River Girl, which was shot in Comacchio, a town famous for its tinned eels. The photo was made by Federico Patallani, and while we've heard it was used for an advertisement, we've never seen the ad, so we're dubious on that. We think it's just a film promo designed to call attention to the fact that Loren filmed in Italy's most famous eel town. But even if it isn't an ad, we bet it caused a spike in eel sales, and possibly caused bald-pitted women to consider ditching the razor. If you can make it look as good as Loren (or Eleonora Giorgi or Kuroki Kaoru) why not? We have another Loren image below from the same session, with her pits covered, for you hair haters. 
 Only in Italian film can hard labor make you better looking. 
If you’re thinking this West German poster for Sophia Loren’s 1954 drama Die Frau vom Fluss, aka La donna del fiume, aka The River Girl looks a bit like this promo for Riso Amaro, you're right—and the actual films are quite similar too. During the 1950s Italian filmmakers produced at least a few movies with identical blueprints—i.e. improbably hot peasant girls performing hard labor somewhere in the Po Valley while wearing bodyhugging clothing. Generally, the girls dream of better circumstances but possess little means to achieve such an end—until into their lives tumble dudes with big plans.
Sounds like light fare, but sultry summer settings and sexy attire notwithstanding, these were serious films—usually tragedies. Where the staple food in Riso Amaro (and Elsa Martinelli’s 1956 drama La risaia) was rice, here it’s eels. Loren works in an eel cannery by day, dances a mean mambo during her spare hours and, like Silvana Mangano in Riso Amaro, finds herself torn between a decent bore and a thrilling criminal. The choice she makes opens up a whole different can of eels and she spends the rest of the film having to manage the consequences. That’s about all we’ll say, except that we watched the flick last night and more or less enjoyed it. As for Loren, she’s 100% more and 0% less, a big personality whose stardom was a matter of destiny. The movie is worth seeing just because of her.
   
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1933—Capone Sentenced to Prison
Chicago organized crime boss Al Capone is convicted of income tax evasion after all other attempts to tie him to an assortment of crimes, from the mass murder of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre to widespread violations of the Volstead Act, fail. He is sentenced to eleven years in federal prison and, cut off from the outside world while on Alcatraz Island, his power is finally broken. 1964—China Detonates Nuke
At the Lop Nur test site located between the Taklamakan and Kuruktag deserts, the People's Republic of China detonates its first nuclear weapon, codenamed 596 after the month of June 1959, which is when the program was initiated. 1996—Handgun Ban in the UK
In response to a mass shooting in Dunblane, Scotland that kills 16 children, the British Conservative government announces a law to ban all handguns, with the exception .22 caliber target pistols. When Labor takes power several months later, they extend the ban to all handguns. 1945—Laval Executed
Pierre Laval, who was the premier of Vichy, France, which had collaborated with the Nazis during World War II, is shot by a firing squad for treason. In subsequent years it emerges that Laval may have considered himself a patriot whose goal was to publicly submit to the Germans while doing everything possible behind the scenes to thwart them. In at least one respect he may have succeeded: fifty percent of French Jews survived the war, whereas in other territories about ninety percent perished. 1966—Black Panthers Form
In the U.S., in Oakland, California, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale form the Black Panther political party. The Panthers are active in American politics throughout the 1960s and 1970s, but eventually legal troubles combined with a schism over the direction of the party lead to its dissolution.
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