«I was living in Rome and one afternoon he called Sergio Leone, I knew him well, we often went on trips with him and his wife. I was very engaged to a man from Padua but Sergio begins like this: “You have no plans this evening, you are a guest with my friends”. I reply: “But I can’t!…”. He insists. I knew he was filming Once upon a time in America and I say to myself, come on, maybe there’s a little part missing. He gives me the address of a tavern in Trastevere, Checco the carter… I, who am from Friuli, arrive early, it was June 1982, very hot, I had sunbathed, I was wearing a nice dress, I was a little doll . I go for a walk… at a certain point someone passes by: Good luck, you’re heaven! Very shy, I hide in a bar until I glimpse Sergio with his wife. I ask him: but what is it tonight, a dinner? He takes my arm and says: “Yes, but you have to promise me that you won’t make him drink”. I then ask: “But who?”. Answer: “Eh, Robert De Niro”. Trasecolo: “And what have I got to do with it?…”».
Dalila Di Lazzaro, 71 years old, same charm and naive verve as always, tells a piece of his life and also a dinner that is part of the myth, the one organized by Gianni Minà and which saw, one after the other, the arrival of Muhammad Ali, Robert De Niro, Sergio Leone and Gabriel García Márquez. In her elegant home in Milan, in the Brera area, on a sofa and after returning from the hospital “for some checks that went well”, the actress and famous photomodel since the end of the Seventies, smiles: “Yes, I was there too I …”.
But did you know De Niro?
“Never seen before. But Leone said: “My daughter, but you don’t know what Robert did for you to be here tonight. He told me that if you hadn’t been there, he wouldn’t have made the film with me. You can’t understand, he called me from New York: “So is Dalila here?”.
How did you arrange yourself at the table?
«Sergio directed everything, you stand here, Minà over there, then Márquez, then the producer, then an American actress and two other people, two men and a woman, I don’t remember their names. When Muhammad Ali enters I say nooo… my father was also a boxer, he boxed with Primo Carnera who gave him a black eye. Ali was the myth of him.”
But De Niro?
«I didn’t recognize him straight away, he looked like a friar. Linen shirt and wrinkled jeans, flip flops. Sergio, zac, placed it next to me. Suddenly Leone says: no wine, no vodka for him, I want him slim on the set…”.
And then?
«I see that while he was eating, Ali fell asleep, his head falling onto the plate. Then his beautiful wife would give him a nudge and he would recover. Sergio told me: “Nobody knows it yet but he has a problem with his head…” ».
The cult photo of the dinner?
«I remember that when they posed I observed: but why don’t you do it with women too? Why only men? Sergio, or perhaps Gianni, explained that it was a particular shot, literature, sport, cinema, journalism… in theory they were right.”
In practice, a slightly chauvinist scene…
«I stayed there for a while, okay. If nothing else, the photo, tac tac e tac, was taken by a woman, I think Minà’s wife.”
Back to Bob…
«At midnight I had an appointment with my boyfriend, I told him I was out for work and to wait for me. When I say goodbye and leave, De Niro goes out with me, I didn’t know how to get rid of him. He stays behind me throughout Trastevere. “I’m coming with you”, me with heels on the cobblestones… “I’m not leaving you, I want to be with you”. Me: “But I can’t!”. And he: “I won’t do anything to you”. Ussignur”.
The sequel?
«We arrive at Piazza Navona. I go to the Raphael hotel, exasperated I go in and ask for a taxi. When the car arrives, Robert gives me a kiss, drops me, hugs me. I wriggle free. I tell the taxi driver… go away: I’m running away, liberation!
Dalila, let’s turn the page. She experienced the greatest pain a mother can suffer: the death of her son…
«Christian was born in 1969, today I would be a grandmother. Who knows. He was hit by a car on the evening of May 19, 1992 while he was returning home on his scooter on Cassia. He was 22, I was 37. I had him when I was fifteen. We were very close, never a problem with him. He was studying, he wanted to become a dentist, he should have gone to the United States to further his studies. He was a guitarist, he played in a small band that also performed at the PalaEur. Only after his death did I know that he composed songs, the guys in his band told me.”
What do you remember about that evening?
«I was supposed to go to dinner with Ethan Wayne, John’s son, and Francesca Dellera. I was shooting a film with them and I asked Christian if he wanted to come with me. He said no: “I’m going to play with my friends; it’s the first Saturday after the CAR, I’m with them'”.
Why are you talking about Car? Was his son conscripted?
«Yes, he was a Najone… But he chose to join the Army, his dream; it wasn’t easy, we talked to someone. The carabinieri carried out some investigations, “we have to look at the whole family…”. When he left for training in Benevento I cried, but I was very proud.”
Who warned you of the tragedy?
«I came back at three, then I heard the phone… ding ding and they hung up. I wasn’t worried but when I woke up in the morning I found a message on my answering machine. It was terrible. She was from the hospital: “Unfortunately, his son is here. He’s in the mortuary, he should come and get his things.” But how do you leave a message like that? In the morgue, before caressing him for the last time I blindfolded myself. I wanted to remember him, but while I was alive.”
Is it true that she was then called by the Holy See?
«Yes, they told me that Pope Wojtyła would like to meet me to give me communion. I went, he held my head, I was in tears. He asked me if I believed, I said yes. He stared at me with blue eyes and comforted me: “There are no words, but know that he will always be with you, remember that.” Last month I thought about those words when something beautiful, surprising happened to me.”
Please continue.
«When I went to renew my passport, here in Milan, a marshal approached me: “I thought a lot about telling him. Does he know that I was in the same bracket as Christian? And that he was my friend? Ommammamia…”».
What else did he tell you?
«He had red eyes. I looked at him, I saw my son not as he was, but as he could have been. Then we remembered the oath. Christian joked about it: “Mom, my friends saw you in the stands, now they know that I’m your son, I’m so ashamed.” He laughed, though. After the ceremony we took photos with the officers and troops.”
Single adoptions. Battle started by her…
«I went to an orphanage on Camilluccia for masses in memory of Christian. The little ones looked at me with certain big eyes… I thought: but a second chance for them? Why can’t a woman, even a single one, adopt them?”.
When did cinema enter your life?
«I left Udine to work as a sales assistant in Rome. I stayed in a small pension in Piazza Barberini. Here was a boy who was trying to make cinema, too. He sent my photos around. I did some advertising services. One shot, I don’t know how, found its way into Andy Warhol’s hands.”
How did it end?
«One morning the phone rings. “Ready? Here she is Carlo Ponti’s Champion, we are waiting for her for an audition with Andy Warhol”. I thought it was a joke, I’ll tell them to go to hell, I’ll hang up. They call back: it’s the same male voice, but angry: “Don’t put the phone down on me!”.
Was it Carlo Ponti?
“Yes. Then I auditioned in front of him and above all in front of Warhol. There I understood that my life would never be the same again.”
It was then said that she became the lover of Ponti, a great producer and husband of Sophia Loren…
«Nothing could be further from the truth, he was like a father to me, he gave me without expecting anything, a pygmalion. He saw in me, and I laughed at him, the new Greta Garbo. “You don’t believe in yourself! You have to go and study in the USA! Go learn English! Go to the Actors Studio!”».
And she?
«I went, but New York overwhelmed me, the parties, the center of the world. I gave up. I became a model, I earned a lot… Well, he was right…”.
Have you ever met Sophia Loren?
«I touched her twice at fashion shows, we never spoke a word to each other. For Carlo she was an example: “You should be like her, she speaks languages, she does gymnastics every morning”. But I wasn’t like that.”
Among her flirtations is the tennis player Yannick Noah.
«I met him at the Foro Italico. From the stands they shout: “Dalila you are beautiful!”. Yannick was serving but stopped to look at me. He started like this…”.
Alain Delon.
«Always pissed off, a tiger, beautiful. On the set, in Paris, a problem happens: they don’t do my makeup and he disappears in a rage. From the crew they say: “Only you can calm him down…”. I phone him: “You left me here like a cogl…”. Laughs, comes back. Meanwhile I drew a caricature of him, smiling, I’m good with pencils… I gave it to him: “I only want you like this”. So he took me to Tiffany’s and had a medal made with the writing: “Dalila, ne m’oublie jamais. Alain””.
