Marisa Mell Photograph Collection
Marisa Mell, born on February 24, 1939 in Graz, Austria as Marlies Theres Moitzi. To fans of German and Italian cult films of the 1960's and 70's Marisa Mell is well known, and among the top "cult" actresses of this time period. She passed up a Hollywood film contact for the freedom and ability to choose her own career path. One wonders if passing up a higher level of exposure and fame may have become a regret in her last years when she literally had nothing. But it's doubtful, as Marisa Mell seemed to walk through life to the beat of her own drum, which likely attributed to her more trouble life and early death.
With a career spanning over three decades (1959 - 1991) Marisa Mell had 69 credited roles, most of which were films and were produced in Europe. Among the most popular was the Mario Bava Italian cult classic Danger Diabolik, where she plays the role of leading lady and partner in crime to Diabolik, Eva Kant, and was featured in a slew of other Italian thrillers, euro-crime, giallo and comedies.
A few years ago we acquired an amazing collection of over 500 items (mostly photographs) from an individual in Italy who had discovered these in a local antique shop. What made this collection so amazing are some of the items included seem to suggest they might at one time have belonged to Marisa herself, some original negatives, polaroids, personal messages addressed to Marisa, vacation photos with her mother, and even what appears to be one of her grade school report cards! These all appear to be pretty reasonable evidence that this collection of items may have once been in Marisa's possession and likely were passed down to someone upon her death, possibly her notorious Italian mobster boyfriend Pier Luigi Torri who is featured in many of the photographs as well, and continued to live in Rome until his death in 2011.
At this time we're offering a selected few items from this collection, some of the photographs that she would have likely used for promotional purposes. These are all original and most contain a photographers stamp on the back. Some even contain a stamp from the famous Italian photographer Angelo Frontoni who photographed a lot of the leading ladies in cult cinema during this period.
We will slowly be adding new items to this collection as time permits, with extremely rare photos eventually being offered.
