Trivia

Before 1945 her first name was written "Dori" because using names or words that could seem foreign was forbidden by law.

After the Second World War, Doris Duranti fled to South America. She had been involved with Alessandro Pavolini, a Minister in the fascist government of the Italian Social Republic, who was executed by the partisans in 1945.

In 1987, Duranti published a memoir, "Il romanzo della mia vita". This autobiography was later turned into a television drama, broadcast by Rai 1 in 1991 under the title "Doris una diva del regime", directed by Alfredo Giannetti and starring Elide Melli .

Duranti achieved her first great success as a protagonist, playing a black woman; from that moment she became a movie star and was noticed, among other things, for the elegance with which she moved on stage and for her aggressive features.

The actress died in 1995, at the age of 78, in Santo Domingo. She was buried in the cemetery of the Dominican Republic.

Her last appearance on the big screen dates back to 1976 in the film "Divina creatura", directed by Giuseppe Patroni Griffi and starring Laura Antonelli .

Doris Duranti was an Italian film actress and was one of the leading divas of Italian cinema during the twenty-year Fascist period .

Doris Duranti began her career at a very young age, already upon her first arrival in Rome with some minor appearances and working as an extra in" L'urlo" (1934) by Corrado D'Errico, in "Vivere!" (1937) by Guido Brignone and in "La gondola delle chimere" (1936) by Augusto Genina.

Very important for her career was the film agent Eugenio Fontana , who looked after her relationships with producers and directors for many years.

She was also famous for her rivalry with Clara Calamai .

She appeared in 43 films between 1935 and 1975.

Among her most successful interpretations, was in the movies "Cavalleria rusticana" (1939) and "Carmela" (1942). In this last film, Doris Duranti showed herself topless, a fact that started a famous controversy aimed at the other diva of Italian cinema of those years, Clara Calamai , who appeared in a similar scene in the film "La cena delle beffe" (1942). Duranti was keen to say that «mine was the first naked breast filmed standing up, it appeared erect as it was by nature, proud, without make-up, whereas Calamai had herself filmed lying down, which is not a small difference». However, contrary to what Calamai claimed, the first to show her naked breast in the history of Italian cinema was Vittoria Carpi in the film La corona di ferro , by Alessandro Blasetti (1941).

Having become the most admired and best-paid actress during the fascist regime, in 1940 Duranti met the Tuscan hierarch Alessandro Pavolini, Minister of Popular Culture, to whom she became romantically involved. The relationship was initially opposed, but then tolerated by Mussolini, who apparently had been positively impressed by Duranti in the film "The King Has Fun" (1941).

Following the collapse of the Italian Social Republic, Alessandro Pavolini, Minister of Popular Culture, who would soon be taken prisoner and killed, arranged for Duranti to travel to Switzerland. Aided by her cousin Lorenzo, the actress moved to Lugano , where however she was imprisoned by the Swiss. Film journalist Emilio de Rossignoli, dedicating a note to the love story between the powerful Minister of Popular Culture and Doris Duranti in Calafuria 's movie "Livorno", documents that thanks to Pavolini himself she had been provided with «a false passport with the name of Dora Pratesi». During her detention, having learned of Pavolini's death, she attempted suicide by cutting her veins.

In 1945 she married the owner of a cinema in Chiasso with a religious rite only. She then moved to South America, where she lived for several years. Returning to Italy in the early 1950s, she resumed making films and met Mario Ferretti, a famous journalist and radio commentator. The two fell in love and decided to move to Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic, where they opened a restaurant. Even after her separation from Ferretti, Duranti remained in the Dominican capital.