Popular High Culture in Italian Media 1950 1970 Mona Lisa Covergirl 1St Ed Edition Emma Barron All Chapter

Popular High Culture in Italian Media,
1950–1970: Mona Lisa Covergirl 1st ed.

Edition Emma Barron
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/popular-high-culture-in-italian-media-1950-1970-mon
a-lisa-covergirl-1st-ed-edition-emma-barron/
S T U D I E S
A M E R I C A N
POPULAR HIGH
CULTURE IN ITALIAN
I T A L I A N
MEDIA, 19501970
Mona Lisa Covergirl
A N D
I T A L I A N
Emma Barron
Italian and Italian American Studies
Series Editor
Stanislao G. Pugliese
Hofstra University
Hempstead, NY, USA
This series brings the latest scholarship in Italian and Italian American
history, literature, cinema, and cultural studies to a large audience of spe-
cialists, general readers, and students. Featuring works on modern Italy
(Renaissance to the present) and Italian American culture and society
by established scholars as well as new voices, it has been a longstand-
ing force in shaping the evolving fields of Italian and Italian American
Studies by re-emphasizing their connection to one another.
Editorial Board
Rebecca West, University of Chicago
Josephine Gattuso Hendin, New York University
Fred Gardaphé, Queens College, CUNY
Phillip V. Cannistraro†, Queens College and the Graduate School, CUNY
Alessandro Portelli, Università di Roma “La Sapienza”
William J. Connell, Seton Hall University
More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14835
Emma Barron
Popular High Culture

in Italian Media,
1950–1970
Mona Lisa Covergirl
Emma Barron
Department of History
University of Sydney
Sydney, NSW, Australia
Italian and Italian American Studies

ISBN 978-3-319-90962-2 ISBN 978-3-319-90963-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90963-9
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018942216
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction
on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and
information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication.
Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied,
with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have
been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published
maps and institutional affiliations.
Cover credit: Cover image courtesy of Arnoldo Mondadori Editore
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
For John and Ann Barron.
Acknowledgements
This book started out as a back of an envelope plan to study and live in
Bologna. It is based on my history Ph.D. thesis, completed in co-tutelle
at the University of Sydney, Australia and the University of Bologna,
Italy between 2012 and 2016. I offer heartfelt thanks to my Ph.D.
supervisors Professor Iain McCalman and Professor Paolo Capuzzo
for their guidance and expertise. It was a privilege to work with them
both, and also a great pleasure. The book benefitted significantly from
the suggestions and insights of my Ph.D. examiners Professor John Foot,
Dr. Gino Moliterno and Dr. Ilaria Vanni, and I am grateful for their
advice and other practical post-Ph.D. assistance.
I have been fortunate to receive advice and support from colleagues at
the Department of History at the University of Sydney, particularly from
Professor Chris Hilliard, a generous mentor who has provided guidance
on papers, articles and the gentle art of navigating early career academia.
Thanks also to Dr. Francesco Borghesi and Dr. Giorgia Alù of the Italian
Studies Department for their continued support and to my Italianist
cohort Georgia Kate Lawrence-Doyle and Adrienne Tuart. The book’s
research was completed with funding from the Australia Government’s
Australian Postgraduate Award Scheme and travel support from the
University of Sydney’s Postgraduate Research Support Scheme, Doctoral
Research Travel Grant Scheme and History Grants-in-Aid Scheme.
The broader academic community of Italian cultural historians has
been welcoming and generous with their time, and there are many lines
of inquiry and archival sources in the book that arose from conversations
vii
viii Acknowledgements
with Professor David Forgacs, Professor Stephen Gundle, Professor John

Foot and Dr. Penelope Morris. I am especially grateful for Professor
John Foot’s encouragement, insistence even, to find and challenge myths
about the reception of popular Italian television programs. Thanks to
Dr. Penelope Morris for her advice and suggestions on Chapters 2 and 3.
Parts of Chapter 4 were published in the article ‘Television audience
enjoyment and the Lascia o raddoppia? phenomenon’, Modern Italy
21 no. 3, 2016, and it is reprinted with the permission of Cambridge
University Press and the editors of the Modern Italy journal. I thank the
anonymous reviewers for their worthwhile suggestions and responses
to the article. The biennial conferences of the Australasian Centre for
Italian Studies (ACIS) in 2013, 2015 and 2017; the annual conferences
of the Association Study of Modern Italy (ASMI); the 2016 Italian
Cinema Audiences project conference, ‘Italy and its audiences: 1945
to the present’ at Oxford Brookes University; and the 2017 Journal
of Italian Cinema and Media Studies Conference provided important
opportunities to test, share and develop ideas and meet experts in the
field. I very gratefully acknowledge the support of the ACIS through
their Honorary Research Associate program, with particular thanks to
Gino Moliterno, David Moss and Sally Hill for their guidance.
Gathering materials for any book requires a lot of coordination, and
it becomes more difficult when the organising happens on the other side
of the world and in another language. Thanks to Altheia Casey for the
cover image and to Luca Ros, Ilaria Vanni, Mauro Bottegal and Federico
Caruso for advice on Italian sfumatura, translations and correspondence.
My thanks also go to Christine Pardue and Megan Laddusaw at Palgrave
Macmillan for their support through the publishing process.
This book is built on archival research. Archivists and librarians across
Italy provided generous assistance through suggestions, advice and
permission to use the images reproduced here. I very much appreciate
the assistance of the Director of the RAI Archive, Stefano Nespolesi,
the advice of Susanna Gianandrea and Manuela Zulian in the RAI
Bibliomediateca ‘Dino Villani’ and SIPRA archive in Turin, the support
of Giovanna Lipari in the Via Teluda RAI archive in Rome and Chiara
Antonelli in the RAI’s Milan fototeca. I am grateful for the guidance
and support of Tiziano Chiesa and Marco Magagnin at the Mondadori
Archive in Milan and the assistance and enthusiasm of Anna Scudelari
at the Historical Archive of Martini & Rossi. Thanks to the librarians at
the Istituto Storico Parri, Emilia-Romagna, the Advertising Archive at
Acknowledgements ix
Castello Rivolli and the Archiginnasio of Bologna. An enormous thank

you to Maurizio Avanzolini and Franca Caneve for your friendship and
help to a straniera navigating the logic of Italian libraries.
Many other people have supported me in this international endeav-
our in Sydney, Bologna, Turin, Milan, Rome and London; more peo-
ple than there is room to properly thank here. None of it would have
occurred without my Italian teachers. In Australia, Luca Ros taught me
the language and introduced me to Dylan Dog and Italian mass culture.
Most importantly, he suggested I might enjoy Bologna. My life would
have been very different and far less interesting without this fine advice.
In Italy, Mauro Bottegal and Giovanni Galavotti taught me, not only the
language, but also a deep love for Bologna and Italian culture.
To my Via Sant’Isaia flatmates Federico Caruso, Daniella Marquito,
Riccardo Morandini and Sam Osman, thanks for the friendship, music
and soup, for Fantozzi and the lesser known works of Pasolini. I am
especially grateful to Annemarie Lopez and Don Macpherson for advice,
writing space and accommodation in London. Thanks also to Diego
Carpentiero and Elena Astori, Catia and Tomaso, David and Josephine
Skellern, Paul Schutes and Nerida O’Loughlin for accommodation
and many other kindnesses. Thank you to Sasha Jessop, Carrol Evans,
Michael Brealey and John Barron for advice and proofreading. Edward
Wightman, Evana Wright, Costanza Bertolotti, Drew Crawford, Keith
Johnstone, Paul Nicolarakis, John Graham and Jenny McAllister thanks
for your valued friendships and frequent practical support.
Finally, the biggest thank you to my family, for your love, support and
humour.
Contents
1 Introduction: The Mona Lisa Covergirl 1
2 Italia domanda: A Question of Culture 21
3 Dear Intellectual: The Cultural Advice Columns 55
4 Lascia o raddoppia?: Contestants and the Classics 93
5 Lip-Syncing Rossini: The Highs and Lows of Italian

Television Opera 139
6 Puccini, Botticelli and Celebrity Endorsements:

The Art of Magazine Advertising 177
7 Reciting Shakespeare for Amaretto di Saronno:

The Art of Carosello 215
8 The Classics and the Everyday: From I Promessi

Sposi to I Promessi Paperi 245
9 Patrolling the Border: I Promessi Sposi on RAI

Television 277
xi
xii Contents
10 Conclusion: The Smile of Bergman, the Body of Rita

and the Face of Mona Lisa 309
Further Reading 317
Index 329
List of Figures
Fig. 1.1 The Mona Lisa covergirl, Epoca magazine, 28 July 1957
(Image used with permission of Arnoldo Mondadori Editore) 2
Fig. 2.1 Liliana an ordinary Italian covergirl, Epoca, 14 October 1950
Fig. 2.2 The first Italia domanda (Italy asks) column, editor Cesare
Zavattini pictured, Epoca, 14 October 1950 (Image used with
permission of Arnoldo Mondadori Editore) 30
Fig. 4.1 Photographers waiting to capture the drama of
Lascia o raddoppia? with host Mike Bongiorno and a
contestant, 11 October 1956 (Per gentile concessione di Rai
Teche/Courtesy of RAI Teche) 101
Fig. 4.2 Maria Callas performs Verdi for her television singing debut
on the educational spin–off Enciclopedia di Lascia o
raddoppia?, 13 August 1956 (Per gentile concessione
di Rai Teche/Courtesy of RAI Teche) 106
Fig. 4.3 Host Mike Bongiorno congratulates Paola Bolognani
for the cameras, Lascia o raddoppia?, 22 March 1956
(Per gentile concessione di Rai Teche/Courtesy of RAI Teche) 118
Fig. 4.4 Host Mike Bongiorno and Maria Luisa Garoppo’s lucky
charm on Lascia o raddoppia?, August 1956 (Per gentile
concessione di Rai Teche/Courtesy of RAI Teche) 120
Fig. 4.5 Giorgio De Chirico explains modern art to contestant
Maria Moritti and host Mike Bongiorno on Lascia oraddoppia?,
11 December 1958 (Per gentile concessione
xiii
xiv List of Figures
Fig. 4.6 American composer John Cage performs Water Walk

on Lascia o raddoppia?, 19 February 1959 (Per gentile
Fig. 5.1 Tenor Franco Corelli lip-syncing Puccini the year after
his La Scala debut, performing with Renata Heredia
Capnist as Tosca, Tosca (1955) in the RAI studio
(Per gentile concessione di Rai Teche/Courtesy of RAI Teche) 149
Fig. 5.2 Mario Del Monaco as Manrico in Il trovatore finds popularity
with television audiences (Per gentile concessione
Fig. 5.3 Con onore muore … (With honour I die) Anna Moffo
as Cio–Cio San in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly (Per gentile
Fig. 6.1 Giacomo Puccini endorses Odol mouthwash
in L’Illustrazione Italiana, 13 July 1902 177
Fig. 6.2 ‘You do not discuss it! You drink it’, Giorgio De Chirico
about to drink his Punt e Mes in Tempo, 12 February
1956, 8 (Image used with permission
of Arnoldo Mondadori Editore) 190
Fig. 6.3 Would you like a light? The ‘Irresistible’ Laurens filtered
cigarettes advertisement in Tempo, 26 August 1958, 4
Fig. 6.4 ‘Art and Good Taste’ Martini & Rossi Campaign, Martini
Vermouth. Designer: Ravinale, featuring Cupid and Psyche
(Amore e Psiche), Antonio Canova (Image courtesy
of the Martini & Rossi Archive) 196
Fig. 6.5 ‘Art and Good Taste’ Martini & Rossi Campaign, Martini
Vermouth. Designer: Ravinale, featuring Pierre-Auguste
Renior’s Luncheon of the Boating Party (Image courtesy
of the Martini & Rossi Archive) 197
Fig. 6.6 Refined personality at the opera. ‘Her toothpaste
is Squibb’ advertisement in Tempo, 13 May 1958, 41
Fig. 8.1 Don Rodrigo’s henchmen encourage the priest
Don Abbondio not to perform the marriage of Renzo
and Lucia. First episode of I Promessi Sposi in the fotoromanzo
magazine Le Grandi Firme, 23 September 1952 (Cover
image used with permission of Arnoldo Mondadori Editore) 257
Fig. 8.2 The Nun of Monza leads Lucia to kidnappers, I Promessi
Sposi: Grande fotoromanzo dal capolavoro di Alessandro
Manzoni. Albi di Bolero Film, n. 200, (1966), 95
List of Figures xv
Fig. 8.3 The modern woman reads I Promessi Sposi, an advertisement

for Tempo subscribers promoting a special binder
for their serialised Manzoni novel. Tempo, 11 April 1964, 3
Fig. 8.4 BASTA! (Enough!), Lucilla Paperella (Daisy Duck)
communicates her disappointment to Paperenzo Strafalcino
(Donald Duck). Walt Disney, I Promessi Paperi: e altri
capolavori della letteratura universale (Milano:
Mondadori, 1998), 42 (Image used with permission
of Arnoldo Mondadori Editore) 266
Fig. 9.1 ‘HEY!’, Alice and Ellen Kessler, Le Gemelle Kessler
(The Kessler Twins) as sirens in Odyssey, Biblioteca
di Studio Uno, 2 October 1964 (Per gentile concessione
Fig. 9.2 On the set of I Promessi Sposi (1964), Director Sandro
Bolchi with Nino Castelnuovo (Renzo) and Paola
Pitagora (Lucia) (Per gentile concessione
Fig. 9.3 Lea Massari as the Nun of Monza in the most popular
episode of I Promessi Sposi (1964) (Per gentile concessione
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: The Mona Lisa Covergirl
When Mona Lisa smiled her mysterious smile from the cover of the Italian
magazine Epoca, she gazed out at more than three million readers.1 In the
top corner, Epoca’s white-on-red block letter logo appeared, tucked in
behind the Mona Lisa’s head, partially obscuring Leonardo’s artful ren-
dering of sky and mountains. These two powerful icons exemplified mod-
ern Italy: one a mass culture symbol of Italy’s booming American-style
magazine market, and the other, a high culture symbol of Italy’s cultural
prestige and heritage. While one was mass-produced, disposable and all
but worthless a week later, the other was unique, centuries old and price-
less. Perhaps in acknowledgement of this, Mona Lisa’s cover respectfully
omitted the usual headlines promoting exciting articles inside the edition.
Advances in inexpensive full-colour print technology and Italy’s maga-
zine boom allowed millions of readers to experience Mona Lisa’s myste-
rious face, the exquisitely rendered folds in the fabric of her clothes and
the beauty of her soft hands (See Fig. 1.1).2 Epoca’s editor Enzo Biagi
described the cover and explained the significance of the masterpiece to
the magazine’s readers:
The Mona Lisa is the most popular and yet at the same time, the most
controversial work of the great genius Leonardo da Vinci. Created dur-
ing Leonardo’s prime, the work seems to reflect more than any other, the
character, the restlessness, the personality of its author. Perhaps it is for
this reason that the interpretation of the famous painting has always been
© The Author(s) 2018 1

E. Barron, Popular High Culture in Italian Media,
1950–1970, Italian and Italian American Studies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90963-9_1
2 E. BARRON
Fig. 1.1 The Mona Lisa covergirl, Epoca magazine, 28 July 1957 (Image used
with permission of Arnoldo Mondadori Editore)
1 INTRODUCTION: THE MONA LISA COVERGIRL 3
exceedingly difficult and for a long time the critics have searched in vain
for a precise definition of her smile, behind which is hidden, elusive sym-
bols and allusions.3
Epoca’s logo and cover layout perfectly emulated the American

i llustrated news magazine Life. Like many of Italy’s popular
illustrated news magazines, Epoca presented a modern mix of news,

photojournalism, advertising and entertainment influenced by American
culture, and yet, executed in a distinctive Italian style. Because of this,
the Italian illustrated news magazines differed from Life in substantial
ways, particularly in the emphasis its editors placed on Italian high art
and cultural knowledge. In contrast, Life magazine rarely featured art on
the cover, except perhaps for an occasional Christmas special, such as the
1957 cover of Michelangelo’s white sculpture of Madonna and Child.4
Mona Lisa herself never made the cover of Life magazine, even when
she toured to America in 1963, although she did secure a breathless
five-page article, ‘The star had trouble getting here, but oh boy, what
a smile! LISA OPENS IN D.C.’ largely an account of security arrange-
ments and logistics.5 Over the page, film star Susan Strasberg winks as
she models celebrity hairdresser Michel Kazan’s Mona Lisa hairdo ‘the
biggest thing since Cleopatra’.6 Italian magazines, though, were proud
to display and celebrate Italy’s cultural heritage, believing that it pos-
sessed both an educative appeal and entertainment for their readers.
In Italy, high culture icon Mona Lisa took her glittering place along-
side popular Hollywood and Cinecittà stars. Unlike the other femme
fatale covergirls—Sophia Loren, Grace Kelly and Brigitte Bardot, Mona
Lisa’s private life and loves remained an enticing mystery, as she calmly
returned the viewer’s gaze. Instead, readers were urged to buy the mag-
azine and learn more about ‘LEONARDO’ in an article by art historian
Professor Lionello Venturi, part of a multipaged, full-colour educational
series on Italian masterpieces that could be pulled out and saved in a
hardcover, also available for purchase from newsstands.7
Mona Lisa’s value lay not in entertainment news or salacious rumour,
but in her capacity to advance the cultural knowledge and aspirations of
each reader. This star appearance of the Mona Lisa on the cover of Epoca
encapsulates and symbolises the core contention of this book: that high
culture was integrated in distinctive ways into the new modern Italian
identity and into Italy’s associated mass culture boom. I examine the
presence and purpose of high culture in Italian mass culture between
4 E. BARRON
1950 and 1970, arguing that high culture formed an important part of
everyday life and mass culture, creating in the process meaningful and
valued cultural content.
The words used to describe culture and cultural hierarchies are laden
with both historical and contextual meaning. They are almost always
linked to class divisions or taste, highlighting a need to distinguish
individual social positions.8 In this book, I will use a range of terms to
describe cultural hierarchies, terms that are in equal parts useful and lim-
ited. Useful because their meanings are familiar, limited because they
come from a hierarchical judgement of ‘high culture’, and ‘low culture’
or ‘elite culture’ and ‘mass culture’, where high culture and art are ven-
erated and worthy, and mass produced or popular content has no artis-
tic value. I will use the terms high and mass culture because they are
broadly understood and not in order to make judgements on aesthetic
or c ultural value. High culture in this book refers to the art, music, thea-
tre and literature that Italian, and indeed many international commercial
and state cultural institutions—the galleries, theatres and publishing
houses—deemed to be historically and artistically significant. There
are ambiguities using the terms popular culture and middlebrow in an
Italian context, neither of which are used in Italy in the same way as in
the Anglo-American cultural context. The term ‘popular culture’ is used
in Italy to describe folk culture rather than industrial culture, whereas in
the Anglo-American culture it is used instead of, or interchangeably with
‘mass culture’. The description of a cultural consumer or a category of
culture as highbrow, lowbrow and middlebrow is not often used in the
Italian context. Middlebrow first emerged in Britain during the 1920s
as a pejorative term for culture that is perceived to be a middle class,
bland and suburban appropriation or more commonly, abbreviation, of
elite culture. Although Umberto Eco adopted Dwight MacDonald’s
term midcult in a discussion of the ‘levels’ of culture, the main focus
in the Italian context remains on mass culture, which generally incorpo-
rates midcult.9 I will use the term mass culture to describe the material
produced by the cultural industry intended for mass audiences. When I
use the words ‘popular’ and ‘popularised’ it will be to indicate culture
that is well liked, in turn, ‘elite’ will indicate culture accessible to the
educated few.
The massive transformation of class cultural practices is central to the
book’s argument. Ways of describing socio-economic status and put-
ting people into class categories are even more fraught than categorising
types of culture into high and mass. The book examines shifts in cultural
practice in the 1950s and 1960s through magazine reader and television
audience surveys. These surveys use the terms Superiore, Media superiore,
Media, Media inferiore and Inferiore. In the book, I will refer to class
categories using these terms translated into English as upper, upper-mid-
dle, middle, lower-middle and lower class, with the knowledge that there
are limitations to this hierarchy. I will use these terms as they reflect the
language of the time and classifications of the surveys. Data including
education, region and occupation will serve to complement these cate-
gories in useful ways. Additionally, I use the term working class to refer
to those in industrial and unskilled services sectors (forming a subset of
people with of the lower-middle and lower class).
During the 1950s and 1960s, Italy experienced a range of economic,
political and social changes that transformed the lives and prospects of
the bulk of its citizens. Over a twenty-year period, the economy indus-
trialised frenetically. Formerly rural Italians engaged in wholly new and
modern types of work. For many millions, this meant work in large cit-
ies far from home. Here, an increasing percentage received regular and
higher levels of pay and began to adapt to the fact that employers sought
skilled employees with higher levels of training and education. True,
this prosperity was not evenly distributed: the early years of the 1950s
saw millions of people unemployed and low wages for the unskilled.
Indeed, low wages served as an important driver of the ‘economic mir-
acle’. However, with waged rather than seasonal employment, Italians in
both the working and middle classes found greater opportunities for lei-
sure and new ways to spend their free time and income. They adopted
and constructed a modern life that differed in substantial ways from the
pre-industrial or semi-industrial past in its values, aspirations and scope.
Mass culture both drove and reflected this social transition.
Magazine reading became a dominant cultural practice in Italy dur-
ing the 1950s, an intrinsic part of daily life for tens of millions of peo-
ple. Magazines provided much of the information through which readers
mediated and experienced the modernisation and industrialisation of
Italy. Magazine news articles, colour graphs showing economic growth
and increasing number of advertisements became a staple of Italian mass
culture. As Stephen Gundle’s study of Italian glamour in the 1950s
observes, the illustrated news weeklies and the film newsreels played an
important role in creating the image of modern Italy. Gundle suggests
illustrated news magazines eschewed politics in favour of glamour and:
6 E. BARRON
learned to purvey a dreamworld that keyed in with other images of the

West as Italy’s destiny, America as a model society, new consumer prod-
ucts, Christian Democratic government, and scientific and technical pro-
gress. The magazines showed centers of old Italian elitism being taken
over or invested once more with allure by a cosmopolitan elite that would
shortly become the jet–set.10
Following the introduction of television to Italy in 1954, the

state-controlled broadcaster mediated programs, adopting a wary and
paternalistic approach to viewer access to Americanised entertainment
and advertising. Regardless, American culture, as in so many parts of the
Western world, could not be stopped from infiltrating the new modern
Italian identity, with its film stars and musicians, its electric razors and
toothpaste. For many Italians, Victoria De Grazia suggests, American
culture offered something excitingly new, attractive and democratic.11
For others, however, such as the intellectuals of the left and the conserv-
ative adherents of the Catholic Church, mass-produced culture, in gen-
eral, and American culture, in particular, appeared to be a debased and
dangerous ideology.12
Highly educated people dismissed popular magazines and comics
as paraletturatura, a semi-literature that was not culture. Both the
Catholic Church and the left-wing parties were confounded and dismayed
by the popular appeal of Hollywood stars or the ‘escapist’ antics of pop-
ular home-grown entertainers like Italian actor Totò and his rapidly pro-
duced film comedies. They all searched for different ways to guide and
protect their flocks. The public taste and cultural preferences of the masses
were clearly pernicious. While this had always been a concern, it became
far more urgent now that the public’s market influence was growing with
their income. Novelist Alberto Moravia was not the only intellectual to
believe that ‘The Italians are an infantile people and easily infatuated’.13
High culture coexisted and mingled with the emerging symbols of
American consumerism in popular Italian magazines and television pro-
grams. Through words or pictures, readers could experience the great-
ness of French, English and Russian literature. Above all, they could
enjoy Italy’s national culture in the weekly magazines, such as Epoca and
Tempo, and also in the fotoromanzo magazines, such as Bolero Film and
Le Grandi Firme. Magazines of this kind gave readers advice on cultural
behaviour, such as what to read, and provided information on artists and
poets as well as a forum for dialogue with them. There was therefore a
significant operational connection between magazines and high culture,

a connection compounded by the fact that popular Italian magazines
were owned in large part by publishing houses Mondadori and Rizzoli,
which also dominated the Italian book market. This provided a strong
business motive for the promotion of high culture and serialisation of
literature.
The state-run broadcaster Radiotelevisione Italiana (RAI) developed
an educational strategy for disseminating high culture, not solely with
televised adaptations of literary works and opera music, but also through
popular quiz and variety shows based on high culture content that sur-
reptitiously introduced art, music, theatre and literature into the daily
lives of its citizens. Magazines and television adopted a mix of American
and Italian approaches, blending high and mass culture content. Even
television advertising brought together modern dental hygiene with the
timeless symbols of Italian humanist tradition, as finally, the comedian
Carlo Dapporto and Durban’s toothpaste ‘found’ Mona Lisa’s smile.14
This book focuses on three dominant forces in Italian mass culture:
the magazine industry, the state-run television broadcaster and the
advertising industry. I investigate the way each used high culture for cul-
tural, educational and commercial objectives and how readers and audi-
ences responded. The use of high culture in cinema, largely through
literary adaptations, has been extensively covered elsewhere so it will not
be covered here.15 Yet, cinema held an important role in Italy’s mass cul-
ture ecosystem, interacting with the development of the publishing and
television industries, so the book will highlight relevant intersections and
individuals. I argue that the role of Italy’s high culture tradition in pop-
ular magazines and on television formed an important aspect of the mass
culture boom and Italian modern identity.
My research builds in particular on the pioneering histories of mod-
ern Italy and industrialised Italian culture by David Forgacs, Stephen
Gundle, John Foot and Victoria De Grazia who have made key contribu-
tions to understanding the social, cultural and political impact of Italian
mass culture.16 David Forgacs’s historical analysis of the industrialisation
of Italian culture, including magazine and book publishing, as well as tel-
evision broadcasting, provides a strong foundation and starting point for
my first two chapters.
Studies by Milly Buonanno, Anna Bravo and David Forgacs on the
social and cultural impact of magazine reading have given serious and
thoughtful attention to photograph-based fotoromanzi magazines, which
8 E. BARRON
are generally overlooked in accounts of Italian culture, despite their

huge popularity and influence.17 No doubt the middle-class readers
of the illustrated news magazines such as Epoca and Tempo sought the
cultural and class distinction offered by familiarity with artistic master-
pieces, literature or opera. Yet, magazines exerted an educational appeal
to the increasing number of lower-middle-class readers. Typically, such
readers possessed a primary school level of education and desired further
knowledge of high culture. Significant within this context is the work of
Penelope Morris, which examines the ways advice columns in women’s
magazines and illustrated news magazines such as Epoca proved popu-
lar and an important guide to new aspects of modern life.18 To a lesser
extent, the magazines targeting working-class and lower-middle-class
women, such as the fotoromanzi magazines Le Grandi Firme, Sogno and
Bolero Film, also featured high culture content mixed in with Hollywood
gossip and daring modern romances. The work of Fausto Colombo
provides important comparative analysis, as one of the few historians of
Italian mass culture to systematically examine the crossover between mass
culture and high culture, such as in the quixotic example of the 1948
Disney comic book released in Italy—Topolino’s Inferno where Mickey
Mouse encounters Dante and muses on this surprising meeting of Italian
literature and American mass culture.19
David Forgacs and Stephen Gundle’s analysis of cultural production
and audience reception has strongly influenced my work and approach.20
The oral history project that underpins their research has greatly
expanded our understanding of both the consumption of culture and
its value for readers and viewers. Importantly, David Forgacs’s account
of the Epoca experiment for a democratic dialogue between readers and
experts in the column Italia domanda (Italy asks) has opened up a rich
source of reader views about the value of high culture. My interroga-
tion of published letters from this column on high culture topics gleans
rare insights of magazine reader perspectives and complements Penelope
Morris’s work on reader letters to magazine advice columns.
Principally, my book focuses on mass cultural content and its reception.
I explore the symbolic, entertainment and educational importance to
readers and viewers of popularised high culture through case studies
from popular magazines, television programs and advertising. Both
magazines and television employed high culture as an antidote to
Americanisation. Stephen Gundle’s seminal article on Americanisation
and everyday Italian life examines the impact of television, weekly
magazines and advertising, and his later work on culture as a political

strategy maps the challenge of mass culture for the Italian Communist
Party. These and others of his works have defined much of the current
understanding of the American influence on Italian mass culture. He
contests a straightforward cultural imperialist version of Americanisation
being imposed on Italy and suggests, rather, that ‘the desire for American
culture and consumer goods reflected broader social and economic
changes that generated new aspirations and expectations’.21 Similarly,
Victoria De Grazia’s idea of an ‘irresistible empire’ highlights the pow-
erful appeal of American culture to modern Italians. Importantly for my
argument, her work acknowledges the strategic classlessness of American
mass culture and the use in Italy of both high culture and mass culture
within commercial contexts. My examination of high culture symbols in
advertising also builds on the work of social scientist, Adam Arvidsson,
who demonstrates the symbolic significance of American modernity in
Italian advertising and mass consumption.22
Studies of Italian television have been dominated by the works of
former RAI directors and senior management, most notably Franco
Monteleone, Aldo Grasso and more recently, Carlo Freccero.23 These
histories provide valuable insights into the institutional objectives and
formative years of RAI television, particularly the Christian Democrat
strategy of pedagogical and educational television and controlled con-
sumerism. The RAI managers who stewarded early television included
the conservatives Filiberto Guala and Marcello Rodino overseeing the
rapid growth of television and the introduction of advertising in 1957,
as well as Ettore Bernabei, who adapted American approaches for
Italian programs and developed the second channel. All of these senior
managers had strong connections to the Christian Democrat govern-
ment, and as Franco Monteleone observes, ‘television was governed, in
the monopoly, by a group of managers that represented a political class
that had decided to bring the country, slowly and without shocks, to
transition into capitalism of consumer goods’.24 However, these insti-
tutional histories of the RAI tend to represent the television viewer of
the 1950s and 1960s as a passive, malleable receptacle. They provide a
top-down history of the introduction of television, not its reception by
viewers.
In contrast, the work of John Foot on Milan’s working-class commu-
nities and television, the recent work of Giovanni Gozzini on the impact
of television on Italians and Milly Buonanno’s analysis of television
10 E. BARRON
drama, consider audience responses through viewer interviews or sur-

veys.25 In particular, John Foot’s challenge to the received wisdom about
the apocalyptic and negative effects of television and its alleged erosion
of culture and community suggests the impact of television was in fact
nuanced, complex and full of contradictions. Giovanni Gozzini’s use of
high-level data from the RAI’s viewer opinion research also challenges
the common representation of television viewer passivity. Scholars in cul-
ture, media and communications studies, including Francesca Anania,
Luca Barra and Cecilia Penati, explore the social impact of television
through memory and the response of the audience in exciting ways.26
In cinema and Italian studies, groundbreaking work on audience oral
histories through the collaborative research project on cinema-going in
1950s Italy by Catherine O’Rawe, Daniela Treveri–Gennari and Danielle
Hipkins demonstrate the importance of gender and the role of the
Church and politics in cultural practice. Their work highlights the value
of individual experiences and memories to reflect broader social trans-
formations.27 My research builds on these evidence-based approaches
by examining previously uninterrogated RAI archival sources that
reveal detailed data of audience reactions to the high culture content of
television.
During the 1950s and 1960s, many intellectuals believed Italy’s
humanist tradition to be under threat from the rapid social and cultural
changes brought on by the boom in Italian cinema, the introduction of
television, the success of both home-grown and imported pop music, and
the pervasive influence of American film, music and consumer culture.
The rifts between mass-produced cultural products and the humanist elite
seemed extreme. Popular interest in the high cultural traditions was not
always welcome as the familiar faces of Giuseppe Verdi, Dante Alighieri,
William Shakespeare and Ulysses were rendered into unfamiliar forms
by television and magazines. Many were appalled to see the great
Renaissance and modern works reinvented as hybrids, or merged with
mass culture to entertain, to promote vermouth, or to sell chocolate.
The role of intellectuals as custodians of culture shifted during this
period, when mass culture challenged past cultural hierarchies. As
Umberto Eco famously observed at the time, many intellectuals regarded
mass culture as the apocalypse of all culture, while others tried to ‘con-
vert’ or recruit people to high culture through mass means.28 Eco’s
Apocalittici e integrati (literally, apocalyptics and integrateds) mapped
out the battleground between intellectuals and mass culture.29 Eco’s was
one of the first books in Italy to treat mass culture as a serious subject
of study, and significantly his famous explorations of the semiotic mean-
ings of culture included a chapter, ‘Does the audience have a bad effect
on television?’30 Indeed, his terms ‘apocalyptic’ and ‘integrated’ still
largely define the understanding of attitudes to mass culture in Italy. I do
not propose in this book, therefore, to re-traverse the question of what
intellectuals thought about mass culture in great detail. Rather, I con-
centrate on assessing how magazine readers and television viewers valued
high culture and appreciated intellectuals as its custodians. My research
explores occasions when intellectuals and artists formed part of mass cul-
ture, their advice columns, quiz show appearances and product endorse-
ments to educate or appeal to mass audiences.
My contribution to this field of Italian mass culture history is twofold.
First, I demonstrate the vigorous presence and appeal of high culture
content within Italian magazines and television programs—media forms
that reached millions of readers or viewers through columns, articles,
adaptations, serialisations, advertisements and programs that were appre-
ciated by a broad cross-section of society. My case studies build on the
historical knowledge of magazine content, both the weekly news mag-
azines and the much neglected fotoromanzi magazines, using articles,
letters and literary adaptations combined with extensive readership data
from the SIPRA advertising archives. I also investigate the RAI’s Servizio
Opinioni audience research on popular television programs such as Lascia
o raddoppia? and Carosello that, although frequently acknowledged in
Italian television histories, are rarely examined in any depth.
Secondly, I believe that my systematic interrogations of Italian televi-
sion, publishing and advertising archives add significantly to our knowl-
edge of reader and viewer cultural reception through audience data,
interviews on cultural practice and unpublished reader demographic
information. Such data emphatically challenge orthodox views of Italian
television audiences and magazine readers as passive and undiscerning.
The archival sources, such as the DOXA market research in the 1950s
and 1960s, are themselves a product of the expanding Italian economy
and increased consumerism. It demonstrates the impact of American
research methodology on both the local and foreign offices of the adver-
tising industry. As magazines priced advertising costs on the basis of
demonstrating a large readership, there is a reasonable question about
the veracity of the data in the light of this incentive to inflate the figures.
This issue was contentious at the time and resolved by introducing an
12 E. BARRON
independent audit process as an assurance to advertisers and competing

publishers. The Mondadori circulation data, in particular, had a reputa-
tion for its rigour.
The book is divided into four sections, each comprising two chap-
ters: high culture in magazine advice columns; high culture and opera
on early television; high culture images in both magazine and television
advertising; and adaptations of literary classics into magazine and tele-
vision formats. The first section examines the magazine boom and the
dialogue established between readers and intellectuals where readers
inquired about a range of subjects, including high culture, education
and cultural hierarchies. Chapter 2 examines the content and significance
of letters written by readers to high profile experts, artists and intellec-
tuals in Epoca’s popular weekly multipage segment Italia domanda
(Italy asks). Chapter 3 reviews letters to the cultural advice columns
of Salvatore Quasimodo and Pier Paolo Pasolini in weekly magazines
Le Ore, Vie Nuove and Tempo. Readers wrote to these intellectual celeb-
rities with questions about art and literature, modern life and the social
and political changes that were felt to be underway.
The second section of the book analyses the early years of television
and the high culture-based programs on television that achieved huge
popularity. Chapter 4 explores the national phenomenon that was the
1955–1959 quiz show Lascia o raddoppia? (literally, leave or redouble).
The chapter examines the prevalence of high culture subjects such as
opera music, or the life and works of Dante, and most significantly, the
audience reactions to the program. Chapter 5 describes the early opera
television studio broadcasts, their connection with the popular film—
opera genre and their close relationship with the opera in theatres. This
chapter argues that opera was simultaneously a popular and elite cultural
practice, enjoyed in different ways by two different audience segments.
The third section of the book explores the presence of high culture
icons in magazine and television advertising. Popular advertising symbols
included the opera composers Giacomo Puccini and Giuseppe Verdi, as
well as the theatre of Shakespeare and the poetry of Dante. These and
other high culture greats transferred symbolic meanings of excellence
and quality to a product and, importantly, also reflected on the quality of
a consumer. While much of the art is represented with reverence, there
is also a clear presence of irony and parody of social and cultural hierar-
chies and intellectual snobbery. Chapter 6 assesses the role and history
of high culture symbols, particularly Italian ones, in mass magazines in
advertising. Chapter 7 looks at the use of high culture symbols and con-
tent on Italian television through the short evening program of adver-
tisements, called Carosello.
The final section examines the mass culture representation of literary
culture for a population without a strong book-reading tradition. The
two chapters examine popular adaptations of Alessandro Manzoni’s lit-
erary classic I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed) in magazine and television
format. In Chapter 8, I explore the popular and inexpensive magazines,
including a comic book adaptation of the classic, I Promessi Paperi (The
Betrothed Ducks), a parody by Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge and others.
The visual adaptations of literary classics were significant in the context
of the changes to Italy’s education system, literacy rates and book read-
ing as a cultural practice, particularly for women and working-class men.
The chapter looks at the rendering of I Promessi Sposi in fotoromanzo
format for Le Grandi Firme and Bolero Film. Chapter 9 examines
the impact of adaptations of literary classics by the state broadcaster
RAI. The audience for the 1967 broadcast of the RAI’s adaptation of
Manzoni’s classic peaked at 19 million and viewer research showed that
the people who most enjoyed the program were those least likely to read
any book.
All in all, I tell of an unexpected and lively tradition of high culture
appeal and assimilation of which Da Vinci and Mona Lisa would not
have been ashamed.
Notes
1. Istituto per le Ricerche Statistiche e l’Analisi dell’Opinione Pubblica
(Institute for Statistical Research and Public Opinion Analysis) and
SIRM Società Italiana Ricerche di Mercato (Italian Society for Market
Research), ‘Tav 0.0: TOTALE, secondo sesso’, Indagine nazionale
sui lettori dei quotidiani e dei periodici sui telespettatori, radioascoltatori
e cinespettatori (National investigation on reader of daily newspapers
and periodicals and on television viewers, radio listeners and cinemago-
ers) market research undertaken for the advertising association Utenti
Pubblicità Associati (Unpublished, 1958), 267. Epoca 3.2 million readers.
2. Epoca, 28 luglio 1957, cover.
3. Enzo Biagi, ‘La copertina’, Epoca, 28 luglio 1957, 21.
4. Survey of Life magazine covers 1950–1970, see, for example, ‘Madonna
and Child in Great Sculpture: Mary and Jesus by Michelangelo’ Life, 16
December 1957, cover.
14 E. BARRON
5. Dorothy Sieberling, ‘Mona Smiles on D.C.’, Life, 4 January 1963, 15.

6. ‘Mona in D.C. Vault Inspires Grin, Wink and a New Hairdo’, Life, 4
January 1963, 18.
7. Lionello Venturi, ‘I maestri della pittura italiana: Leonardo’, Epoca, 28
luglio 1957, 39–51.
8. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste,
Richard Nice (trans.) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984).
9. Umberto Eco, ‘Cultura di massa e “Livelli” di cultura’, Apocalittici e inte-
grati: Comunicazioni di massa e teorie della cultura di massa (Milano:
Bompiani, 1997), 32–34; Dwight Macdonald, ‘Masscult and Midcult’,
Partisan Review 27 (Spring 1960): 203–233.
10. Stephen Gundle, ‘Hollywood Glamour and Mass Consumption in
Postwar Italy’, Journal of Cold War Studies 4, no. 2 (2002): 95–118, 103.
11. Victoria de Grazia, Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance Through Twentieth
Century Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005).
12. For examples of intellectual commentary in newspapers: Pier Paolo
Pasolini, Scritti corsari (Milano: Garzanti, 2011); Aldo Grasso and
Massimo Scaglioni, Schermi d’autore: intellettuali e televisione: 1954–1974
(Roma: Rai ERI, 2002). For comprehensive accounts of the intellectual
reaction to mass culture, see: David Forgacs and Stephen Gundle, Mass
Culture and Italian Society: From Fascism to the Cold War (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2007); David Ward, ‘Intellectuals, Culture and
Power in Modern Italy’ in The Cambridge Companion to Modern Italian
Culture, Zygmunt G. Barański and Rebecca West (eds.) (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2008), 81–96; Stephen Gundle, Between
Hollywood and Moscow: The Italian Communists and the Challenge of
Mass Culture (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000); Franco Ferrarotti,
La Televisione: I cinquant’anni che hanno cambiato gli usi e i costumi
degli italiani (Roma: Newtown and Compton Editori, 2005), 75–79;
Giacomo Manzoli, Da Ercole a Fantozzi: Cinema popolare e società ital-
iana dal boom economico alla neotelevisione (1958–1976) (Roma: Carocci
editore, 2012).
13. Libero Bigiaretti ‘L’editoria e la TV’, Televisione e vita italiana (a cura di),
Segretari Centrale della RAI (Torino: ERI—Edizioni Radiotelevisione
Italiana, 1968), 692.
14. ‘Dapporto televisivo’, Tempo, 29 aprile 1958, 29.
15. Cinema-going provided an important mass culture practice where liter-
ary adaptations had popular success, for example, War and Peace (1955)
earned more than two billion lire in Italy at the box office, Alessandro
Ferraù, ‘Il «borderò», questo sconosciuto’, SIPRAUNO 2 (1966):
92–109, 102. Cinema is included in context of films inspired by advice
columns opera on television, the cineopera films and their influence on
opera on television as well as film comedy versions of I Promessi Sposi.

However, the connection between high culture and literature in film
is not covered in the book as a specific theme as it has been exten-
sively researched by scholars including: Giocomo Manzoli in Cinema e
letteratura (Roma: Carocci editore, 2003), and also Da Ercole a Fantozzi:
cinema populare e società italiana dal boom economico alla neotelevi-
sione; Gian Piero Brunetta (a cura di), Letterature e cinema (Bologna:
Zanichelli, 1976); Amilcare A. Iannucci, Dante, Cinema and Television
(Toronto, University of Toronto, 2004); Marcia Landy, Italian Film
(Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Peter
Bondanella, Italian cinema: From Neorealism to the Present (New York:
F. Ungar Publishing Co, 1983); Carlo Testa, Italian Cinema and Modern
European Literatures, 1945–2000 (Westport: Praeger, 2002); and Millicent
Marcus, Filmmaking by the Book: Italian Cinema and Literary Adaptation
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1993). In terms of other media or mass cul-
ture formats, while radio was very popular during this period, news and
light music programs received large audiences and strong enjoyment rat-
ings; the high culture programs of classical music, opera music and the
literature readings were not very popular with audiences. Newspapers pro-
vide useful context, yet favoured an elite rather than mass audiences.
16. David Forgacs, Italian Culture in the Industrial Era, 1880–1980:
Cultural Industries, Politics, and the Public (Manchester and New York:
Manchester University Press, 1990); Forgacs and Gundle Mass Culture
and Italian Society; Gundle, Between Hollywood and Moscow; John Foot,
Milan Since the Miracle: City, Culture and Identity (Oxford and New
York: Berg, 2001); Victoria De Grazia, Irresistible Empire.
17. Anna Bravo, Il fotoromanzo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2003); Forgacs, Italian
Culture in the Industrial Era; Milly Buonanno, Naturale come sei:
Indagine sulla stampa femminile in Italia (Rimini; Firenze: Guaraldi,
1975); Milly Buonanno, La donna nella stampa: Giornaliste, lettrici e
modelli di femminilità (Roma: Editore Riuniti, 1978).
18. Penelope Morris, ‘The Harem Exposed: Gabriella Parca’s Le itali-
ane si confessano’ in Women in Italy, 1945–1960: An Interdisciplinary
Study, Penelope Morris (ed.) (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2006), 109–131; Penelope Morris, ‘From Private to Public:
Alba de Céspedes’ Agony Column in 1950s Italy’, Modern Italy 9, no.
1 (2004): 11–20; Penelope Morris, ‘A Window on the Private Sphere:
Advice Columns, Marriage, and the Evolving Family in 1950s Italy’, The
Italianist 27 (2007), 304–332.
19. Fausto Colombo, La cultura sottile: Media e industria culturale in Italia
dall’Ottocento agli anni novanta (Milano: Bompiani, 1999), 218.
20. Forgacs and Gundle, Mass Culture and Italian Society.
16 E. BARRON
21. Stephen Gundle, ‘L’americanizzazione del quotidiano’, Quaderni Storici

62, no. 2 (1986): 561–593, 591.
22. Adam Arvidsson, Marketing Modernity Italian Advertising from Fascism
to Postmodernity (London and New York: Routledge, 2003); Adam
Arvidsson, ‘Consumi, media e identità nel lungo dopoguerra. Spunti per
una prospettiva d’analisi’, Genere, generazione e consumi: L’Italia degli
anni sessanta, Paolo Capuzzo (a cura di) (Roma: Carroci editore, 2003),
29–51.
23. Franco Monteleone, Storia della radio e della televisione in Italia:
Costume, società e politica (Venezia: Marsilio Editori, 2009); Aldo Grasso,
Cristina Buondonno, and Patrizia Gobbi, Storia della televisione italiana
(Milano: Garzanti, 2012); Aldo Grasso, Enciclopedia della televisione
(Milano: Garzanti, 2002); and Carlo Freccero, Televisione (Torino: Bollati
Boringhieri, 2013).
24. Monteleone, Storia della radio e della televisione in Italia, 322.
25. Foot, Milan Since the Miracle; John Foot, ‘Television and the City: The
Impact of Television in Milan, 1954–1960’, Contemporary European
History 8 (1999): 379–394; John M. Foot, ‘Mass Cultures, Popular
Cultures and the Working Class in Milan, 1950–1970’, Social History 24,
no. 2 (1999): 134–157; Giovanni Gozzini, La mutazione individual-
ista: Gli italiani e la televisione, 1954–2011 (Roma: Laterza, 2011); Milly
Buonanno, Italian TV Drama and Beyond: Stories from the Soil, Stories from
the Sea, Jennifer Radice (trans.) (Bristol and Chicago: Intellect, 2012).
26. Francesca Anania, Davanti allo schermo: Storia del pubblico televisivo
(Roma: Carocci editore, 2002); Francesca Anania, Breve storia della radio
e della televisione italiana (Roma: Carocci editore, 2015); Luca Barra,
Palinsesto: La storia e tecnica della programmazione televisiva (Roma:
Editori Laterza, 2015); Cecilia Penati, Il focolare elettronico: Televisione
italiana delle origini e culture di visione (Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 2013);
see also Damiano Garofalo e Vanessa Roghi (a cura di), Televisione: Storia,
Immaginario, Memoria (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2015).
27. See, for example, Daniela Treveri–Gennari, ‘“If You Have Seen It, You
Cannot Forget!”: Film Consumption and Memories of Cinema-going in
1950s Rome’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 35, no.
1 (2015): 53–74; Daniela Treveri–Gennari and J. Sedgwick, ‘Memories
in Context: The Social and Economic Function of Cinema in 1950s
Rome’, Film History 27, no. 2 (2015): 76–104; Daniela Treveri–Gennari,
Catherine O’Rawe, and Danielle Hipkins, ‘In Search of Italian Cinema
Audiences in the 1940s and 1950s: Gender, Genre and National iden-
tity’, Participations, Journal of Audiences and Reception Studies 8, no. 2
(2011): 539–553; Mariagrazia Fanchi, Spettatore (Milano: Il Castoro,
2005); and, in the European context, Daniël Biltereyst, Richard
Maltby, and Philippe Meers (eds.), Cinema Audiences and Modernity:

New Perspectives on European Cinema History (London and New York:
Routledge, 2012).
28. Umberto Eco, Apocalypse Postponed, Robert Lumley (ed.) (London:
Flamingo, 1995).
29. Eco, Apocalittici e integrati was published in Italy in 1964 and translated
to English as Apocalypse Postponed in 1995.
30. Eco, Apocalypse Postponed, 119–140.
References
Primary Sources
Magazines
Bolero Film
Epoca
Grandi Firme, Le
Life
Tempo
Archival Sources
DOXA Istituto per le Ricerche Statistiche e l’Analisi dell’Opinione Pubblica
(Institute for Statistical Research and Public Opinion Analysis) and SIRM
Società Italiana Ricerche di Mercato (Italian Society for Market Research),
Indagine nazionale sui lettori dei quotidiani e dei periodici sui telespettatori,
radioascoltatori e cinespettatori Utenti Pubblicità Associati (Unpublished,
1958). SIPRA Archive.
Secondary Sources
Anania, Francesca. Davanti allo schermo: Storia del pubblico televisivo. Roma:
Carocci editore, 2002.
Anania, Francesca. Breve storia della radio e della televisione italiana. Roma:
Carocci editore, 2015.
Arvidsson, Adam. Marketing Modernity Italian Advertising from Fascism to
Postmodernity. London and New York: Routledge, 2003.
Barra, Luca. Palinsesto: La storia e tecnica della programmazione televisiva. Roma:
Editori Laterza, 2015.
Biltereyst, Daniël, Richard Maltby, and Philippe Meers (eds.). Cinema Audiences
and Modernity: New Perspectives on European Cinema History, London and
New York: Routledge, 2012.
Bondanella, Peter. Italian Cinema: From Neorealism to the Present. New York: F.
Ungar Publishing Co, 1983.
18 E. BARRON
Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste.

Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984.
Bravo, Anna. Il fotoromanzo. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2003.
Brunetta, Gian Piero (a cura di). Letteratura e cinema. Bologna: Zanichelli, 1976.
Buonanno, Milly. Naturale come sei: Indagine sulla stampa femminile in Italia.
Rimini and Firenze: Guaraldi, 1975.
Buonanno, Milly. La donna nella stampa: Giornaliste, lettrici e modelli di
femminilità. Roma: Editore Riuniti, 1978.
Buonanno, Milly. Italian TV Drama and Beyond: Stories from the Soil, Stories
from the Sea. Translated by Jennifer Radice. Bristol and Chicago: Intellect,
2012.
Capuzzo, Paolo (a cura di). Genere, generazione e consumi: L’Italia degli anni
sessanta. Roma: Carroci editore, 2003.
Colombo, Fausto. La cultura sottile: Media e industria culturale in Italia
dall’Ottocento agli anni novanta. Milano: Bompiani, 1999.
De Grazia, Victoria. Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance Through Twentieth
Century Europe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005.
Eco, Umberto. Apocalypse Postponed. Edited by Robert Lumley. London:
Flamingo, 1995.
Eco, Umberto. Apocalittici e integrati: Comunicazioni di massa e teorie della cul-
tura di massa. Milano: Bompiani, 1997.
Fanchi, Mariagrazia. Spettatore. Milano: Il Castoro, 2005.
Ferrarotti, Franco. La Televisione: I cinquant’anni che hanno cambiato gli usi e i
costumi degli italiani. Roma: Newtown and Compton Editori, 2005.
Ferraù, Alessandro. ‘Il «borderò», questo sconosciuto’, SIPRAUNO 2 (1966):
92–109.
Foot, John M. ‘Mass Cultures, Popular Cultures and the Working Class in Milan,
1950–1970’, Social History 24, no. 2 (1999): 134–157.
Foot, John. ‘Television and the City: The Impact of Television in Milan, 1954–
1960’, Contemporary European History 8, no. 3 (1999): 379–394.
Foot, John. Milan Since the Miracle: City, Culture and Identity. Oxford and New
York: Berg, 2001.
Forgacs, David, Italian Culture in the Industrial Era, 1880–1980: Cultural
Industries, Politics, and the Public. Manchester and New York: Manchester
University Press, 1990.
Forgacs, David and Stephen Gundle. Mass Culture and Italian Society: From
Fascism to the Cold War. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007.
Freccero, Carlo. Televisione. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2013.
Garofalo, Damiano e Vanessa Roghi (a cura di). Televisione: Storia, Immaginario,
Memoria. Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2015.
Gozzini, Giovanni. La mutazione individualista: Gli italiani e la televisione
1954–2011. Roma: Laterza, 2011.
Grasso, Aldo. Enciclopedia della televisione. Milano: Garzanti, 2002.

Grasso, Aldo and Massimo Scaglioni. Schermi d’autore: Intellettuali e televisione:
1954–1974. Roma: Rai ERI, 2002.
Grasso, Aldo, Cristina Buondonno, and Patrizia Gobbi. Storia della televisione
italiana. Milano: Garzanti, 2012.
Gundle, Stephen. ‘L’americanizzazione del quotidiano’, Quaderni Storici 62, no.
2 (1986): 561–593.
Gundle, Stephen. ‘The Legacy of the Prison Notebooks’. In Italy in the Cold
War: Politics, Culture and Society 1948–58. Edited by Christopher Duggan
and Christopher Wagstaff. Oxford and Washington: Berg, 1995.
Gundle, Stephen. Between Hollywood and Moscow: The Italian Communists and
the Challenge of Mass Culture. Durham: Duke University Press, 2000.
Gundle, Stephen. ‘Hollywood Glamour and Mass Consumption in Postwar
Italy’, Journal of Cold War Studies 4, no. 3 (2002): 95–118.
Iannucci, Amilcare A. Dante, Cinema and Television. Toronto: University of
Toronto, 2004.
Landy, Marcia. Italian Film. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2000.
Lumley, Robert. States of Emergency: Cultures of Revolt in Italy from 1968 to
1978. London: Verso, 1990.
Macdonald, Dwight. ‘Masscult and Midcult,’ Partisan Review 27, no. 4 (1960),
203–233.
Manzoli, Giocomo. Cinema e letteratura. Roma: Carocci editore, 2003.
Manzoli, Giocomo. Da Ercole a Fantozzi: Cinema popolare e società italiana dal
boom economico alla neotelevisione. Roma: Carocci editore, 2012.
Marcus, Milicent. Filmmaking by the Book: Italian Cinema and Literary
Adaptation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1993.
Monteleone, Franco. Storia della radio e della televisione in Italia: Costume, soci-
età e politica. Venezia: Marsilo Editori, 2009.
Morris, Penelope. ‘From Private to Public: Alba de Céspedes’ Agony Column in
1950s Italy’, Modern Italy 9, no. 1 (2004): 11–20.
Morris, Penelope (ed.). Women in Italy, 1945–1960: An Interdisciplinary Study.
Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
Morris, Penelope, ‘A Window on the Private Sphere: Advice Columns, Marriage,
and the Evolving Family in 1950s Italy’, The Italianist 27 (2007): 304–332.
Pasolini, Pier Paolo. Scritti corsari. Milano: Garzanti, 2011.
Penati, Cecilia. Il focolare elettronico: Televisione italiana delle origini e culture di
visione. Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 2013.
Segretari Centrale della RAI (a cura di). Televisione e vita italiana. Torino: ERI—
Edizioni Radiotelevisione Italiana, 1968.
Testa, Carlo. Italian Cinema and Modern European Literatures 1945–2000.
Westport: Praeger, 2002.
20 E. BARRON
Treveri–Gennari, Daniela. ‘“If You Have Seen It, You Cannot Forget!”: Film
Consumption and Memories of Cinema–Going in 1950s Rome’, Historical
Journal of Film, Radio and Television 35, no. 1 (2015): 53–74.
Treveri–Gennari, Daniela and John Sedgwick. ‘Memories in Context: The Social
and Economic Function of Cinema in 1950s Rome’, Film History 27, no. 2
(2015): 76–104.
Treveri–Gennari, Daniela, Catherine O’Rawe, and Danielle Hipkins. ‘In Search
of Italian Cinema Audiences in the 1940s and 1950s: Gender, Genre and
National Identity’, Participations, Journal of Audiences and Reception Studies
8, no. 2 (2011): 539–553.
Ward, David. ‘Intellectuals, Culture and Power in Modern Italy’. In The
Cambridge Companion to Modern Italian Culture, edited by Zygmunt G.
Barański and Rebecca West, 81–96. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2008.
CHAPTER 2
Italia domanda:
A Question of Culture
The Woman of Rome and the fiancées

I read Alberto Moravia’s novel The Woman of Rome. Result? My fiancé
broke up with me. Now I ask Mr Moravia if he would leave his fiancée
for this reason, reading a book that a ‘respectable young woman must
not – for heaven’s sake – even know about’. I am an only child without
a mother, I have a very strict father, when I was ten years old I went to
boarding school. When I finished school I asked my father what reading
he would permit me to do and I was astounded when he said, that I could
read any book since a person with a healthy mind could not be influenced
by something they read. Do you approve, Mr Moravia, that a twenty year
old girl read your novels? Can a book be immoral, or cause harm?
The woman of Rome,
Epoca, 31 January 1953.1
In early 1953, Epoca magazine published an anonymous letter in its pop-

ular advice column Italia domanda (Italy asks) asking about the suitabil-
ity of reading Moravia’s 1947 neorealist novel La Romana (published in
English as The Woman of Rome).2 Moravia wrote his novel from the point
of view of Adriana, a young prostitute in Rome who recounts her path
to prostitution, describing how she feels about her work and her sexual
experiences. The novel represents a bleakly pragmatic and morally flexi-
ble world. It created a scandal due to its sexually explicit content and the
accounts of premarital sex, including a female protagonist who enjoyed
sex and enjoyed being paid for sex. Adriana dreams of having a family
© The Author(s) 2018 21

E. Barron, Popular High Culture in Italian Media,
1950–1970, Italian and Italian American Studies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90963-9_2
22 E. BARRON
and home, while simultaneously accepting her fate and narrowing her
options through a string of bad and brutal relationship choices.3
At the time that Epoca published this question asking whether a book
could be immoral or cause harm, La Romana remained controversial;
the Catholic Church had recently added it, and all of Moravia’s works,
to its list of banned books the Index librorum prohibitorum.4 The let-
ter and Moravia’s response are part of a little explored aspect of Italy’s
mass culture boom—the use of magazines and their letters pages for cul-
tural advice. This chapter examines the popular column Italia domanda,
a multi-paged collection of reader’s questions, answered by one or more
experts. Italia domanda covered a wide range of subjects and readers
were invited to ask questions on any topic including science, politics and
culture. I will focus on the regular letters from readers asking questions
on high culture including art, music, theatre and literature.5 The ques-
tions show readers seeking to improve their cultural knowledge, often
as a result of changing social status. Letters reveal personal experiences
within the emerging new opportunities for schooling, employment and
leisure across the lower and middle classes.6 Significantly, La Romana’s
letter, and others like it, shows an eagerness by magazine editors to con-
nect readers and intellectuals through a popular format, in a way that
would prove both educational and entertaining. Italia domanda was
edited by a succession of intellectuals, who drew in poets, writers, philos-
ophers, artists and other luminaries willing to carve out a role in modern
mass culture.
The Italia domanda letters offer an important example of the ways
that mass culture and high culture interacted—ways that were complex
and even contradictory. Italia domanda provided a forum for readers to
seek advice on a range of topics and supplied intellectuals and writers to
respond to reader’s questions. It became the most popular section of a
magazine read by millions of people across Italy.7 One of the challenges
with using letters published in magazines is that they may have been
invented for their entertainment value; however, there is strong evidence
that writing letters to magazines was a popular practice and the archival
collections of columnists support this claim.8
Advice columns formed an important part of Italian magazine cul-
ture in the 1950s. Although many magazines included letters pages
and advice columns, the piccola posta relationship advice columns
are most commonly associated with women’s magazines. Journalist
Gabriella Parca estimated that in Italy during the 1950s, ‘Five million
2 ITALIA DOMANDA: A QUESTION OF CULTURE 23
women, from thirteen to sixty years of age, felt the need to confide
their anxieties to strangers in order to receive some advice or simply
a word of comfort’.9 Not only was the scale of letter writing in the
1950s substantial, the printed letters and the replies in advice columns
proved popular with readers. Milly Buonanno, a pioneer in research on
women’s periodicals in Italy, maintains that women’s magazines owed
a large part of their success to advice columns.10 Similarly, in their
investigation of reading habits in Rome in the early 1960s, Simonetta
Piccone Stella and Annabella Rossi recorded clear evidence of the
social and cultural significance of letters pages from magazine readers.
One interviewee, Z. A. a 45-year-old woman, said that she liked advice
on how to dress or act appropriately, and that she would definitely
write to a magazine for advice.11 The research of historian Penelope
Morris offers important observations about the ways in which wom-
en’s advice columns display shifting social expectations, including
attitudes to sexual behaviour and relationship norms in Italy.12 This
chapter will explore a similarly important and revealing aspect of the
letters in magazine advice columns—readers seeking cultural guid-
ance.13 These letters, written throughout the 1950s, offer valuable
insights into the purpose of culture in people’s lives and highlight the
vital role played by Italian magazines in self-education and gaining cul-
tural knowledge.
Magazine Reading in Italy in the 1950s

In the early 1950s, Italy’s magazine circulation was the highest in
Europe with locally produced magazines offering a visually appealing
and inexpensive way to be informed and entertained.14 Throughout the
decade, magazine reading formed an important part of daily life for mil-
lions of Italians. Individual readers subscribed to magazines or bought
them from the local newsstand. Magazine reading offered a strong social
element as readers shared copies within the family, swapped them with
friends and read copies found in public places including bars or the hair-
dresser. By the late 1950s, 21 million Italians (around 60% of the adult
population) read at least one magazine a week. More than 13 million
Italians (just over one-third of the adult population) read between two
and four magazines a week.15 Magazine reading was popular throughout
the Italian peninsula, and while more prevalent in the north, its low costs
meant that by the late 1950s, the distribution of the 21 million regular
24 E. BARRON
magazine readers across Italy generally reflected the distribution of the

Italian population across the larger cities and towns.16
Inexpensive weekly magazines offered news, entertainment, advice
and importantly, information on the increasing range of affordable mass
consumer products. As we shall see in Chapter 6, magazine income and
profits for the publishers came from the placement of advertisements,
rather than magazine sales. Some titles pursued broad audiences, while
most segmented into male and female readers, and further targeted their
readerships by age, class and education levels. Men were slightly more
likely to read magazines than women; however, there was not a large dif-
ference between the two groups. Sex did make a difference in the type of
magazine a reader read. A greater number of men read illustrated news
magazines, sports and motoring magazines. Women, while also reading
the illustrated news magazines, dominated the women’s weekly magazine
readership and monthly magazine market.17
One demographic group above all read voraciously. Magazine read-
ing provided an important pastime for young people. In 1958, almost
half of the total market comprised magazine readers aged between 16
and 34 years.18 Young people who did not read magazines were in the
minority, five million young people aged 16–24 years read magazines, or
three-quarters of people in the age group.19 Not only did young people
read magazines, they read quite a lot of them. Around half of all people
aged between 16 and 34 read at least two, and as many as four, magazines
a week.20 This rapid growth in magazine reading by young people forms
part of a broader generational change in mass cultural consumption,
reading magazines, listening to radios and records, going to the cinema
and watching television. In the 1950s and 1960s, as Paolo Capuzzo sug-
gests, young people across social classes appreciated mass culture and it
increasingly became an important part of leisure time and identity.21
For the first half of the twentieth century, magazine reading
formed part of upper and middle-class pastimes. As magazine markets
expanded in the 1950s and 1960s to include lower-middle class and
lower class readers, people in upper and middle-class groups remained
committed readers. Eighty-five percent of upper and upper-middle
class people regularly read magazines, which represented 12% of the
overall market (2.6 million readers).22 Magazine reading provided
a regular pastime for 75% of middle-class Italians, which represented
about 40% of the overall magazine market (8.6 million readers).23
Magazine reading was still gaining in popularity for lower-middle

class people; more than half of all lower-middle class Italians regularly
read magazines (56%).24 In 1951, the industrial working class made
up almost 23% of Italy’s workforce, by 1961; it had grown to 29%.25
While magazine reading was still viewed as a middle-class pastime, its
reach was far greater and expanding.
The number of lower-middle-class readers was substantial and trans-
lated into one-third of the magazine reading public, or seven million
regular readers.26 Changes in education and literacy levels in the lower
socio-economic groups helped grow magazine markets. Italy’s ‘economic
miracle’ transformed the occupations and wages available to men and
women. In 1954, agriculture represented 40% of employment, indus-
try 32% and services 28%.27 A decade later, industry represented 40% of
employment, services 35% and agriculture 25%. Yet, as Tullio di Mauro
argues, the early 1950s still represented a time when a minority of
Italians acquired a primary school qualification, gaining a middle school
qualification remained a privilege and receiving a high school qualifica-
tion, or a degree, was pure luxury.28 Affordable magazines with strong
visual formats and clearly written articles attracted millions of readers,
both those with and without formal education.
Settimanale di Attualità:
The Illustrated News Magazine Boom
Italy’s weekly magazine readers chose from a broad range of titles.
Local edicola stands displayed popular women’s magazines such as
Grazia and Annabella in rows on the counter, or pegged up on the
shutters. Alongside these titles lay the music weeklies, such as Sorrisi e
Canzoni (Smiles and Songs), and for the sports fans, Calcio e ciclismo
(Football and cycling) or Sport Illustrato (Sport Illustrated). The ris-
ing popularity of the settimanale di attualità (weekly illustrated news
magazines) and their millions of readers boosted the magazine circu-
lation rates of the 1950s. Their visual presentation and current affairs
format drew on the style of American magazines such as Life and Look,
while providing an Italian approach, photojournalism and content.
By 1958, 13.5 million Italians read at least one of the illustrated news
magazines.29
26 E. BARRON
Tempo, Oggi and Epoca became the most popular Italian illustrated
news magazines, attracting a broad readership of men and women,
although men formed the greater audience. People across different
regions, classes and age groups sought their news and information from
these engaging magazines. Within the general Italian population, 7.7
million men and almost 5.8 million women regularly read the illustrated
news magazines.30 The magazines offered more than news and informa-
tion; they incorporated an enthusiastic hyperbole on Italy’s future in the
modern world. A smooth integration of international and national news,
alongside entertaining articles and celebrity photographs, told the story
of the modern world in words and pictures.
Italy Asks: Epoca’s ‘Italia domanda’ Column

Mondadori launched Epoca in 1950. The magazine, as its name suggests,
sought to symbolise the culture of the times. Epoca reached more than
three million readers each week with its modern blend of Italian cur-
rent affairs, American entertainment and consumer products.31 From
its inception, Epoca opened the magazine with Italia domanda, a col-
umn for questions from readers or people interviewed in the street. As
David Forgacs observes in his analysis of magazine reading in Italy in the
1950s, the significant innovation of Epoca and the Italia domanda col-
umn in particular was its focus on working people and ‘ideology of ordi-
nary life’.32 This ideology included expanding the horizons of its readers.
Italia domanda set an egalitarian tone. The magazine’s editorial
approach emphasised people and democracy, and in the early years,
Italia domanda took the place of the traditional letters to the editor
page. The first edition of the magazine clearly communicated Epoca’s
democratic message with the face of Liliana, a young woman from Milan
as their first covergirl (Fig. 2.1). Liliana was the Everywoman of modern
Italy and the new republic, ‘She is Italian, an ordinary Italian girl. She is
not a star and could not be one. She lives a modest life, of work’.33 The
magazine included a fotoromanzo style photostory of a Liliana, at work
on Saturday selling gelato for nine hours a day at a Motta cart, and then
a typical Sunday, a day out with her boyfriend for a boatride on Lake
Como, followed by a picnic and a dance. After the photostory, a full-
page Motta advertisement showed that even democracy could present an
editor with commercial opportunities.34
Fig. 2.1 Liliana an ordinary Italian covergirl, Epoca, 14 October 1950 (Image
used with permission of Arnoldo Mondadori Editore)
28 E. BARRON
‘Any one can ask a question

to ‘Italia domanda’ on any subject’
All the Lilianas of Italy could learn about the world and gain information
from the new Epoca. The magazine created a dialogue between readers
and experts declaring, ‘Anyone can ask a question to Italia domanda on
any subject, ask any Italian and foreign personalities in the field of lit-
erature, science, technology, customs, politics, sports, etc. on a chosen
topic, or contribute to the open discussion within the column’.35 Epoca’s
editor Giuseppe Ravegnani gave Italia domanda prominence, positioned
at the beginning of the magazine before the articles and even before
the index page.36 At first, around seven pages long, it quickly grew to
ten, and later, fifteen pages, as its popularity with readers and advertis-
ers increased.37 Ravegnani proclaimed a new type of journalism, one that
focused on the reader and put intellectuals and experts at their service:
It is a seed that cannot fail to bear fruit, encompassing the concerns, the
uncertainties, the problems, and the thirst for knowledge and for truth in
our time. … Italia domanda, which does not want to be, and is not, the
usual approximate column of ‘question and response’ and of ‘letters to
the Director’, but instead, both through the questions sent from readers
spontaneously and our busy and passionate ‘collectors’ of questions, a true
and genuinely new type of journalism, that indeed represents an authen-
tic transfer of ‘living culture’, because all, Italians and foreigners, distin-
guished scientists or people gifted only with good sense and experience in
life and work, should consider themselves to be at the service of all our
readers.38
This democracy-themed column was the creation of Cesare Zavattini, a

neorealist screenwriter who worked in both the film and magazine indus-
tries. For Zavattini, modern media offered opportunities to engage the
public and foster popular social participation. An important member of
the neorealist film movement in Italy, Zavattini is best known for writ-
ing screenplays for the successful Italian director Vittorio De Sica. His
screenplays included the neorealist classics Ladri di biciclette (1948,
The Bicycle Thief) and Sciuscià (1946, Shoeshine) both of which received
international acclaim and Academy Award nominations. For Italian film
historian, Gino Moliterno, Zavattini’s role in Italy’s cultural ecosystem
was as ‘a genial and polymorphic figure who overflowed with creative
talent and took an active and enthusiastic role in all aspects of Italian
culture for over six decades’.39 While Zavattini’s film work is better
known than his work in publishing, he made a significant contribution to
Italian magazine culture. The idea behind Italia domanda and his work
in Italian magazines exhibited many of the egalitarian values expressed in
his work in neorealist cinema and cinéma vérité.
Cesare Zavattini had a democratic and social justice agenda, yet at the
same time, he was well aware of commercial realities and developed ways
to capture emerging magazine markets. His film and magazine experi-
ence gave him a foundation in visual storytelling and cultural accessi-
bility. In the 1930s, Zavattini wrote text for fumetti (comics) including
Zorro and was the Italy-based ‘Hollywood correspondent’ for film news
magazine Cinema Illustrazione. He also edited Le Grandi Firme mag-
azine of stories for women, which included a letters column for readers
to ‘Write to Pitigrilli’, a popular novelist whose works had been banned
by the Catholic Church.40 By the late 1940s, Zavattini helped to develop
the fotoromanzo format, a comic book style magazine that used photo-
graphs rather than drawings, a hybrid similar to a film storyboard. Like
all success stories, the fotoromanzo paternity is disputed, yet his influence
seems probable.41 The format was used by Mondadori to create the pop-
ular magazine Bolero Film edited by Luciano Pedrocchi including seri-
alised stories created by cinema screenwriter Damiano Damiani. The
Mondadori publishing house employed Zavattini as an ideas man to help
the company to innovate and later on to ensure that magazines remained
relevant and competitive in the age of television.42 Italia domanda was
one of these ideas.
David Forgacs suggests, Italia domanda reflected both a democratic
shift to giving ordinary people a voice in post-Fascist Italy and the grow-
ing significance of public opinion and commercial market research.43 In
1950s Italy, companies increasingly took an interest in what the popu-
lation was thinking and tracked consumer demographics and behaviour.
In 1958, the Italian advertising association, Utenti Pubblicità Associati
(UPI), commissioned Italy’s first ‘readership survey’ studying the sex,
age, class, occupation and family size of magazine readers. The survey
recorded information on the size of the town and the region of differ-
ent magazine readers compiling details on the ownership of cars, motor
scooters or white goods. Data offered insights to advertisers on readers’
socio-economic position and potential markets for other goods. For
example, readers of the popular magazines Oggi and Epoca had made the
greatest inroads into car ownership, while readers of left-wing women’s
30 E. BARRON
magazine, Noi Donne or monthly women’s fashion magazine Novità,

were the least likely to own a car.44 This information shaped advertising
placement decisions and advertisement price.
In the early months, Zavattini edited Italia domanda and selected the
letters. He took an active approach to find out what was on the minds
of the Italian people and Epoca had local correspondents out interview-
ing people on the street. The vox pop approach was not always patiently
received. A clearly annoyed, and somewhat self-important, ‘Signor S.
Igrino’ (aged fifty-eight of Naples, an official at the municipal archive)
asked if Cesare Zavattini could tell him ‘why he needs to rack his brains
for questions when he is so busy and there are so many people with
nothing to do who could do it instead’. Cesare Zavattini answered that
the reason was to encourage people to question their world. Pointedly,
Zavattini added that Signor Igrino and millions of others could have
interrupted Benito Mussolini’s speech of 10 June 1940 in Piazza Venezia
to yell, ‘It is not true’, but did not (Fig. 2.2).45
Fig. 2.2 The first Italia domanda (Italy asks) column, editor Cesare Zavattini
pictured, Epoca, 14 October 1950 (Image used with permission of Arnoldo
Mondadori Editore)
Intellectuals in the Service of Readers

Early Italia domanda columns staked out its high-minded cultural
objectives by securing intellectual luminaries for readers. The first col-
umn featured German novelist and Nobel Laureate Thomas Mann.46 ‘Dr
Aldo Parri, Genoa’, an aficionado of Mann’s work, asked about illness
in The Magic Mountain and Doctor Faustus. Three of the five questions
for Mann were about his work, and the other two questions reflect the
escalating Cold War; ‘F. S., Baveno’ asked what Mann thought about
the division of Germany. A reader, presumably a member of the Italian
Communist Party, as he identified himself as ‘Operaio (worker) Giovanni
Lavesi, Brisighella’, wanted to know Mann’s reasons for signing the
Stockholm Petition against nuclear armament. In the second edition,
Italia domanda offered readers the chance to question the Italian poet
Giuseppe Ungaretti; ‘Aldo Pinza of Bolzano’ asked Ungaretti if he con-
sidered his one line verse Ending to be a poem, and either way, could he
explain what it means? ‘Alfonso Monsurro of Torre Annunziata’, on the
other hand, sought Ungaretti’s ideas on ‘Why the Moon today is not
romantic for lovers, like it seems it was in the nineteenth century’.47
By the third column, ‘Marisa Arcelli, Via Costa 10, Milan’ wrote to
say that she had heard talk about Georg Lukács’s theories of realism and
wanted to know which of his books to read. Philosopher Remo Cantoni
recommended Lukács’s book of essays Goethe e il suo tempo (Goethe in
his time), published by Mondadori, and his recent Saggi sul realismo
(Essays on Realism) examining French and Russian realist novelists, pub-
lished by Einaudi for 1500 lire.48 The next month, ‘Benedetto Cencia
of Naples’ wrote to ask for the views of the ‘greats’ on the new maga-
zine Epoca, particularly requesting the opinions of legendary intellectual
Benedetto Croce; the first President of the Republic, Enrico De Nicola;
and Senator Giovanni Porzio, all of the Italian Liberal Party. The elderly
Benedetto Croce responded that while he did not read the magazine he
would be more than happy to answer readers’ questions. The President
of the Republic Enrico De Nicola said that ‘he admired the effort to give
Italy a great, illustrated magazine’. Senator Giovanni Porzio said that he
‘Definitely approved of Italia domanda: as a tool for effective collabora-
tion among its readers, whether humble or distinguished’.49
In following weeks, the column engaged robustly with cultural and
intellectual ideas such as: ‘what is existentialism?’, ‘why does the thea-
tre receive funding?’, ‘what is the best Italian book this year?’, ‘is it
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
asked to pass. In no other way, can we acquire our own knowledge
that the Supreme Court has yet to hear and consider the real
challenge to the supposed new Article in which governments attempt
to exercise ungranted power and to grant new power to interfere with
the individual freedom of the American citizen. As we well know, that
one real challenge is that the new Article was not made by those
who alone can make it, that it was not made as it can be
constitutionally made, by the makers of that kind of Article
named in the Fifth Article, the “conventions” of the Seventh and the
Fifth Articles, the “We, the people” of the Preamble and “the people”
of the Tenth Amendment.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE CHALLENGES THAT FAILED
The validity of the Eighteenth Amendment (seven litigations being

heard together) was argued on March 8, 1920, and for several days
thereafter.
As we are not concerned with the meaning of the second section
of the Amendment or with the validity of the Volstead Act (passed by
Congress under the grant of said section) except as the validity of
the Act depends upon the validity of the Amendment, we shall make
no mention of either.
The Court announced its decision, in all the litigations, on June 7,
1920. Somewhat to the amazement of the country, but (in our
humble opinion even at the time) very wisely, the Court refused to
write any opinion whatever. Nothing could more certainly settle that
the Court determined no question except the specific questions
presented by those who challenged validity. That we may be certain
that the Court neither heard nor considered nor passed upon the real
and the invincible challenge to the existence of the supposed new
national Article, we will let the Court, in its own words, state exactly
just what were the four propositions, advanced against validity, and
state the simple fact that it negatived each of those four propositions.
Thus, in an impressive manner, we shall acquire our own knowledge
that the fifth conclusion, which later we shall state, is but the
conclusion of fact that nothing, in the four propositions negatived,
impairs the validity of the supposed Article.
Mr. Justice Van Devanter announced the conclusions of the
Court.
Power to amend the Constitution was reserved by Article V,
which reads:...
(As we have been in the conventions which made it, we know it.)
The text of the Eighteenth Amendment, proposed by
Congress in 1917 and proclaimed as ratified in 1919, 40 Stat.
1050, 1941, is as follows:...
(The text of the first two sections is quoted on page 465 herein.)
We are here concerned with seven cases involving the
validity of that Amendment and of certain general features of
the National Prohibition Law, known as the Volstead Act, c.
83, 41 Stat. 305, which was adopted to enforce the
Amendment. The relief sought in each case is an injunction
against the execution of that act.... The cases have been
elaborately argued at the bar and in printed briefs; and the
arguments have been attentively considered, with the result
that we reach and announce the following conclusions on the
questions involved:
1. The adoption by both houses of Congress, each by a two
thirds vote, of a joint resolution proposing an amendment to
the Constitution sufficiently shows that the proposal was
deemed necessary by all who voted for it. An express
declaration that they regarded it as necessary is not essential.
None of the resolutions whereby prior amendments were
proposed contained such a declaration.
2. The two thirds vote in each house which is required in
proposing an amendment is a vote of two thirds of the
members present—assuming the presence of a quorum—and
not a vote of two thirds of the entire membership, present and
absent. Missouri Pacific Ry. Co. v. Kansas, 248 U. S. 276.
3. The referendum provisions of state constitutions and
statutes cannot be applied, consistently with the Constitution
of the United States, in the ratification or rejection of
amendments to it. Hawke v. Smith, ante, 221.
4. The prohibition of the manufacture, sale, transportation,
importation and exportation of intoxicating liquors for
beverage purposes, as embodied in the Eighteenth
Amendment, is within the power to amend reserved by Article
V of the Constitution. (National Prohibition Cases, 253, U. S.
350, 384.)
We are not interested in the first two propositions which the Court
negatived. They were that the Congress resolution should have said
that two thirds of Congress deemed it necessary to propose the
Amendment and that the proposals should have been made by two
thirds of the entire membership of the House instead of two thirds of
a quorum in each House. These are trifling and unimportant matters
when over one hundred million Americans seek to learn when they
ceased to be citizens of America and became absolute “subjects” of
governments in America.
The third proposition negatived has naught to do with ourselves,
the citizens of America. It deals only with the rights of some state
citizens as such, where their state constitution has a referendum
provision. For our protection against usurpation by any government
of our own reserved rights or powers, we look to our own American
Constitution. We have lived through its making with the Americans
who made it to secure individual liberty of themselves and their
posterity, ourselves, the citizens of America.
The clear statement of simple fact, expressed in the Court’s fourth
conclusion, tells us something, which, with Madison, we have known
since he wrote and suggested his Fifth Article, at Philadelphia, on
September 10, 1787. Our stay in the “conventions,” which made the
Fifth Article, has taught us that the Americans in them, even Henry
and the opponents of the Constitution, were fully aware of the fact
that the Fifth Article provided the constitutional mode in which the
“conventions” could thereafter exercise the existing omnipotence of
the citizens of America themselves to make any kind of an Article of
government. The same stay fixed firmly in our minds that every one
in them knew that the Fifth Article is not a grant of any ability from
themselves to themselves, from the “conventions” named in the
Seventh Article to the same “conventions” named in the Fifth Article,
all being the “conventions” of the American citizens assembled to
exercise their own omnipotence.
And so, coming from the only “conventions” of that kind yet held,
we grasp at once the absolute accuracy of the statement in the
fourth conclusion of the Court in 1920. The mention of the same
“conventions” in the Fifth Article, a mention made by the
“conventions” of the Seventh Article, is the sound basis for our
knowledge that, as the Tenth Amendment expressly declares, those
“conventions” of the Seventh expressly reserved to themselves (the
same “conventions” named in the Fifth, “the people” of America in
the Tenth Amendment) their own exclusive ability to make national
Articles, like the First Article and the Eighteenth Amendment. For
which reason, we know the truth of the Court statement in its fourth
conclusion, that the power to make the Eighteenth Amendment “is
within the power to amend reserved by Article V.” The exclusive
ability of the “conventions” of 1787 and 1788—to make the Article
which is that new Amendment—is something known to all who were
in those “conventions.” That the ability—to make Articles like the
First Article and the new Amendment—remained exclusively in such
“conventions” of the American citizens, because such Articles are
national and either directly interfere with or are the basis for direct
interference with individual freedom of the American citizen, was
also known to every one in those “conventions.” That is why the
Americans in those early “conventions” insisted that the Tenth
Amendment expressly declare that such exclusive ability was
reserved to them, “the people” of that Amendment, and why the
same “conventions” mentioned themselves, the “conventions,” in the
Fifth Article and provided therein the constitutional mode of
procedure in which that exclusive ability could thereafter be
exercised by those who had it, the “conventions” of the American
citizens.
Even though this knowledge, which we bring straight from the
“conventions” which made the Fifth Article, be not shared at all by
the lawyers of 1920, we are aware that it is also the knowledge of
the Supreme Court. That is why Marshall long ago pointed out that,
when individual welfare required that government should be granted
some national powers or powers to interfere with individual freedom,
“the necessity of deriving such powers from the people themselves
was felt and acknowledged by all.” That is why in 1907 the Supreme
Court again declared “the powers the people have given to the
General Government are named in the Constitution, and all not there
named, ... are reserved to the people and can be exercised only by
them, or upon further grant from them.” As the First Section of the
new Amendment is the exercise and the Second Section is the grant
of one of those reserved powers, and as the Fifth Article provides the
constitutional mode of procedure in which it can be exercised or
granted by those, who alone have it, “the people” of the Tenth
Amendment and the “conventions” of the Fifth Article, it is very
natural to read in the same Supreme Court, in the National
Prohibition Cases, that the ability to make the Eighteenth
Amendment “is within the power to amend reserved by Article V.”
When the Supreme Court of Marshall’s day knew that state
“legislatures” could not make Articles like the First Article and the
Eighteenth Amendment, when the Supreme Court of 1907 still knew
that only the “people” or “conventions” could make Articles of that
kind, when the Supreme Court of our own day knows that the Fifth
Article deals only with “reserved” power, we Americans feel that we
are to remain free men and citizens. We have come from the
“conventions” with our own accurate knowledge that the power to
make the new Amendment or any other Article like the First Article
“is within the power to amend reserved by Article V.” But, for the
very reason that our knowledge is accurate, we know that the power
to make such Articles was not reserved to the state legislatures, who
did not have it, but was reserved to the “conventions,” who did have
it and who were exercising it (in making the First Article) at the very
moment when they made the Fifth Article.
We have examined the four conclusions of the Supreme Court
which deal with any argument presented against the existence of the
Eighteenth Amendment. Those conclusions negative every such
argument that was presented. But, because every brief assumed
and asserted that the amending power “reserved” in the Fifth Article
had been “granted” therein, the four conclusions make clear that the
Court has yet to hear and pass upon the challenge which reads the
Eighteenth Amendment out of our Constitution. When that challenge
is presented by American lawyers, who know what American basic
law is and how American citizens are constitutionally protected
against usurpation of power by governments in America, there can
be no doubt of the decision of the Supreme Court. In that decision,
there will be no conclusion denying the most important legal fact in
America, namely, that governments cannot exercise ungranted
power or create new government power to interfere with the
individual freedom of the American citizen. In that decision, there will
be again the simple statement of the undoubted fact that the ability
to make the Eighteenth Amendment “is within the power to amend
reserved by Article V.” But, in that decision, there will be added the
plain statement of the Tenth Amendment that such ability was not
reserved to the state legislatures who never had it, but was reserved
to the “conventions,” who always had it and still have it. And,
comparing that future decision (which is certain to come from the
Supreme Court) with the decision, which merely negatived the four
unsound challenges which were made to the Eighteenth
Amendment, we know that the first five conclusions of the latter
decision—all the conclusions that have aught to do with the
existence and validity of the Eighteenth Amendment—merely hold
that the existence of the new Amendment is not affected by any of
these challenges which were made.
With exceeding wisdom in our humble opinion, the Court carefully
refrains from passing upon or determining any question except the
exact challenges which were presented. That is why no opinion was
written. When any general statement (seeming to bear upon
questions not presented or submitted) might come back to perplex
and annoy the Court in future litigation where protected liberty of the
American citizen was the challenge to the government-made new
Article, common sense and sound reason and the experience of
generations dictated that no general statement should be made.
And, as there was but one way to avoid a single general statement,
no opinion was written. This method of deciding those particular
litigations, with their four unsound challenges, would leave the
decision itself without even an apparent influence upon a litigation in
which some real challenge might be presented.
And so we find the Court merely stating “that we reach and
announce the following conclusions on the questions involved.”
Nothing could make more clear that no conclusion is reached or
announced on any question not presented by those who urged
invalidity.
The first four conclusions reached and announced are conclusions
of law against the opposite legal conclusions urged by those
opponents. The fifth conclusion is a conclusion of fact that validity of
the Amendment is not affected by any of the four propositions
advanced by the opponents of the Amendment. In other words, the
first five numbered conclusions, all that deal with validity of the
Amendment, can be expressed in our own words, viz: “Although the
proposing Resolution did not state that Congress deemed the
proposal necessary, although only two thirds of a quorum in each
House (and not two thirds of the membership of each House) made
the proposal, although the citizens of each referendum state have
not acted as part of their respective state legislatures, and although it
is urged that the Fifth Article reserved abilities do not include ability
to make an Amendment like the Eighteenth, we decide that none of
these things affect the validity of the new Article.”
And, when we make this accurate statement of what was decided
in those National Prohibition Cases, we average Americans, fresh
from our education with the Americans who found themselves
“subjects” and made themselves and their posterity free men, have
some startling facts brought home to us.
Undoubtedly thousands of lawyers had worked, for more than a
year, in the preparation of the arguments that were made and the
briefs that were filed. When these amazingly important litigations
were reached, the arguments lasted for several days. On the
exhaustive briefs filed against validity, there appear twenty-two
lawyers, many of them among the leaders of the American Bar. On
the briefs to support state government omnipotence over the citizens
of America, “in all matters whatsoever,” thirty-five lawyers, headed by
a former member of the Supreme Court, appear.
We know, with a knowledge that brooks no denial, because it is a
knowledge brought from our experience with those who made
themselves free men and established the Constitution to secure that
result to themselves and to us, that the new Article is not in the
Constitution unless at some time prior to 1917, the free men of
America, all the individual citizens of America, became the “subjects”
of some state governments.
It is clear, therefore, that the existence of the Eighteenth
Amendment has always depended upon the correct answer to the
question whether the American is “Citizen or Subject?”
If we are subjects, the new Article may be in the Constitution not
made by us but made by governments.
If we still are citizens, as once undoubtedly we were, the new
Article cannot be in our Constitution, because we have not made the
new Article, assembled in our “conventions.”
Where men are citizens, governments cannot exercise ungranted
power or create new power to interfere with individual liberty.
In a nation of free men, established by former “subjects” with a
dominant purpose that no American should ever be the “subject” of
any governments, it is amazing that one government should propose
that governments constitute, and it is amazing that forty-six
governments should attempt to constitute, new government of men
—new government power to interfere with individual human freedom.
But most amazing of all, in a nation with the history of America, is
the fact that, when audacious government had so proposed and
audacious governments had so attempted, the prolonged arguments
and voluminous briefs of fifty-seven leading members of the
American Bar never once knew or stated the simple fact which made
the proposal and the attempt a legal and constitutional absurdity.
The fact itself, the one most important legal fact in America, was
once known and “felt and acknowledged by all” Americans. Yet, not
once in any brief in the National Prohibition Cases, was it either
known or urged that the “conventions” of the Fifth Article are the
“conventions” of the Seventh Article and that both are the whole
American “people” of the Preamble and the Tenth Amendment and
that, therefore, the Constitution expressly reserves to the
“conventions” of the Fifth Article, the citizens of America, their
existing and exclusive ability to create new government power to
interfere with their own individual human liberty.
Why none of these briefs did make this challenge became known
to us when Rice of Rhode Island, with the silence of his colleagues
marking their approval, answered the Court that the new Article
could not be constitutionally made. Why they did not make the
challenge will be emphasized when we read the leading brief against
the new Amendment. Over fifty times it will admit and state that the
Fifth Article is a “grant” of power to state legislatures from American
citizens and claim the “granted” power is a limited power and does
not include ability to make an Amendment like the Eighteenth
because such Amendment takes away the reserved power of a state
or political entity. Then, to emphasize what it does not know about
the “conventions” of the Fifth Article and the reserved powers of the
citizens of America, this brief will go on to tell us that there is no
constitutional mode in which can be made an Article which takes
more power away from any state; that such an Article may only be
made, outside any constitutional mode, by having the people
themselves rescind “the social compact” which is their American
Constitution and having them make “such new compact as they
please”; but that such new compact, such new Article of that kind,
cannot “be validly and legally made to come to pass against the
objection and protest of any state.” All this clearly explains why none
of the briefers were able to answer correctly the question asked by
the Court. How could they tell the Court in what way the Eighteenth
Amendment could be constitutionally made, when all of them “knew”
that there was no constitutional mode in which the “conventions” of
the American citizens could make it, and when they “knew” that it
could not be made, even outside the Constitution, without the
consent of the citizens of every state? The most important words in
the Fifth Article, “in conventions in three fourths thereof,” did not
mean to these briefers what they meant to the Americans who made
the Fifth Article or to Madison and Hamilton who wrote the Fifth
Article and suggested it at Philadelphia. In the word “conventions,”
they did not recognize the Seventh Article “conventions” of the
American citizens describing themselves by exactly the same word,
“conventions,” in the Fifth Article. In the words “in three fourths
thereof” after the word “conventions,” they did not recognize the
great security to human freedom which we have learned with the
Americans who wrote and who made the Fifth Article. They did not
recognize how the American people, by these words, made it their
constitutional command that they themselves, again assembled in
their conventions, by a “Yes” from three fourths of their “conventions”
and without the consent of the Americans in the other “conventions,”
might withdraw any power granted in the First Article and might add
any new power to its enumerated grants, whenever they deemed
such withdrawal or such addition would better secure and protect
American individual liberty.
That not one of the briefers did make our challenge is our certain
knowledge when we read the four challenges they did make and
which are negatived in the first four conclusions of the Court.
The first two relate to the manner of the proposal that
governments create government of men in America. Who cares how
one government makes a silly proposal? The one important thing is
that no governments shall attempt to act upon a proposal which
denies the most important legal fact in America, that governments
cannot constitute new government ability to interfere with individual
liberty.
The fourth challenge that was made is the absurd challenge that
the Fifth Article does not mention a constitutional mode of
procedure in which the citizens of America may again directly grant
to their government new power to interfere with their own individual
liberty and in which—far more important to the “conventions” which
named themselves (the “conventions”) in their Fifth Article—the
American citizens can directly take back any part of the granted
power of the First Article which they find oppressive to their
individual liberty. This challenge neither knows nor makes any
distinction between the state “legislatures” and the “conventions” of
the American citizens or the mention of either in the Fifth Article. It is
a challenge which has not the knowledge we bring from the first
“conventions,” the knowledge that “legislatures” are mentioned on
account of their existing ability to make federal or declaratory Articles
and that “conventions” are mentioned on account of their exclusive
ability to make Articles of any kind. It is a challenge which assumes
and asserts and is based wholly upon the absurd assumption that
the Fifth Article is a “grant” of power to make Articles. On this absurd
assumption of this patently absurd “grant,” this fourth challenge,
frankly stated in our own words, is as follows: “In the Fifth Article, the
‘conventions’ grant to the two grantees—the grantors and the state
legislatures—an identical ability to make new Articles. We admit that,
if the ‘conventions’ of the Fifth Article could constitutionally make the
Eighteenth Amendment, the state legislatures can also
constitutionally make it. But our challenge is that the ‘grant,’ in the
Fifth Article, is limited in extent and that neither the ‘conventions’ nor
the state legislatures can constitutionally make the Eighteenth
Amendment.”
To the “constitutional” lawyers who make this challenge, to all who
support such challenge, we commend many hours’ study of the
statements of Madison, who wrote the Fifth Article; of Hamilton, who
supported its introduction at Philadelphia; of Wilson, Pendleton,
Henry, Iredell, MacLaine, Jarvis, Lee, Mason, and the many others,
with whom we have sat in the “conventions” which made the Fifth
Article. Particularly do we commend a careful reading of the
reasoning which led to the decision at Philadelphia, in 1787, that the
First Article, because it constituted government of men, must go to
the “conventions” named alike in the Seventh and the Fifth Articles
and could not be validly made by the state “legislatures” named in
the Fifth Article. That decision was based upon the unrepealed
Statute of 1776, a statute well understood in 1787, only eleven years
after the Statute itself had been enacted as the command of the
whole American people. Finally, to those who support this fourth
challenge, we commend a thorough reading of the law laid down by
Marshall in the Supreme Court. If they thus educate themselves as
we have educated ourselves, they will be able to say with Marshall:
“To the formation of a league, such as was the Confederation, the
state sovereignties were certainly competent. But when, ‘in order to
form a more perfect Union,’ it was deemed necessary to change this
alliance into an effective government possessing great and
sovereign power and acting directly on the people, the necessity of
referring it to the people and of deriving its power directly from them,
was felt and acknowledged by all.”
And, if all shall complete their education with such men as
Webster and Lincoln, they will never again make the mistake of
ignoring the vital and important distinction in identity between “state
legislatures” and “conventions” of the American citizens, the
distinction that the former are never anything but governments and
each the government agent of the citizens of one state, while the
“conventions” are the citizens of America itself assembled in
“conventions” to issue their commands to themselves, to their
government, to the states and to the state governments. The
completed education will enable these lawyers to win future litigation
against legislative governments who audaciously attempt to usurp
the exclusive and reserved powers of the “conventions” of the
American citizens.
In any of the three challenges negatived by the first, second and
fourth conclusions of the Supreme Court, we have failed to find any
suggestion of our challenge, namely, that state “legislatures” have
audaciously attempted to usurp the exclusive powers reserved to the
“conventions” which are named in the Fifth Article.
And now we examine the only other challenge that was made, a
challenge negatived by the third conclusion of the Supreme Court.
No challenge could more emphatically ignore the protected individual
liberty of the citizen of America. This challenge does not know that
American citizens have no government save the government of
enumerated powers. This challenge frankly admits that the Fifth
Article is a grant to legislatures, each elected by the citizens of some
particular state, and that three fourths of those legislatures have the
omnipotence, which was denied to the British Parliament, over every
individual liberty of the American citizen. Like the other challenges
that were made, like every brief for or against the Eighteenth
Amendment, this challenge knows not that the Constitution is both a
federal and a national Constitution and knows not that the state
“legislatures” never have and never can have aught to do with the
national aspect of that Constitution. Based on this remarkable
ignorance, this is the challenge, frankly stated in our own words:
“The state legislatures can make this Eighteenth Amendment. The
state governments can do what they will, so long as they call their
action a constitutional Amendment, with every reserved right and
power of the citizens of America. But thirty-six state legislatures are
necessary to make anything called a constitutional Amendment. And
our challenge is that thirty-six legislatures have not made this
particular Eighteenth Amendment. In any state, where the
referendum exists, the citizens of that state [we note that even now
the citizens of America are not mentioned] are part of the state
legislature. In some of these referendum states, whose legislatures
are included among your claimed thirty-six ratifiers for the Eighteenth
Amendment, the whole of the state legislature has not yet ratified,
because the citizens of the state, who are part of its legislature, have
not yet acted. For this reason, that you ignore the rights of the
citizens of some states, our challenge is that the Eighteenth
Amendment has not been ratified by the legislative governments of
thirty-six states.”
This particular challenge, like everything in these litigations and in
the whole history of the supposed new Amendment, brings into bold
relief the one monumental error at the bottom of every thought that
the new Amendment is in the Constitution, at the bottom of the
varied absurdities which constantly appear in every brief, either for or
against validity.
Without a single exception, the fifty-seven lawyers on these briefs
base their every argument, no matter how those arguments may
challenge one another, on the ridiculous sheer assumption that the
Fifth Article is a great power of attorney to the state governments
from the citizens of America. All these fifty-seven lawyers ignore the
undeniable fact—mentioned continually in the “conventions” of the
Seventh Article which wrote their own name, “conventions,” into the
Fifth Article—that the Constitution is both federal and national. This
first mistake, this ignoring of that fact, led all of them immediately into
the fatal error of wholly ignoring the vitally important fact that the
Fifth Article distinctly names those who already could make federal
Articles, the state governments, and those whose exclusive right it
always was and is to make national Articles, the people assembled
in their “conventions.” Only because of these two mistakes, the next
step comes in the guise of the absurd concept that the Fifth Article is
a grant of any power of attorney, from the citizens of America, either
to the “state legislatures” or the “conventions.” In this patent
absurdity, all fifty-seven lawyers concur. That each of them does not
see its patent absurdity is due entirely to the fact that not one of
them states the proposition, that the Fifth Article is a grant, in the
frankest mode of stating it. That frankest way is to state the
proposition in these words: “In the Fifth Article the citizens of
America, assembled in the ‘conventions’ of 1788, granted to the
state legislatures and to themselves, the citizens of America,
assembled in their ‘conventions,’ a quantum of power as attorneys in
fact of the citizens of America. We fifty-seven lawyers only differ as
to the extent of the power which the citizens of America grant to
themselves and to the state governments. We, who support the new
amendment, contend that the citizens of America grant to the state
governments and to the citizens of America all the power of the
citizens of America. On the other hand, we, who oppose validity,
contend that the citizens of America grant to the state governments
and to the citizens of America only some of the unlimited power of
the citizens of America, the very power they were exercising when
they made the grant which is the Fifth Article.”
When the common proposition of all those lawyers, that the Fifth
Article “grants” power to those two grantees, is stated in this frank
way, its patent absurdity is manifest. Every one of those lawyers
knows that a grantor never can or does grant to himself either all or
part of what he already has. Moreover, all those lawyers ought to
know that the Tenth Amendment expressly declares that the entire
Constitution, in which is the Fifth Article, grants no power of any kind
except to the American government at Washington. Alone and
unaided, this simple declaration makes it impossible that the Fifth
Article grants any power to the state governments. Thus, even
without the certain knowledge we bring from the conventions of
1788, the state governments disappear from the scene as attorneys
in fact for the citizens of America in any matter. Each of those state
governments is left with no power it did not have before the Fifth
Article was made. Not one of them even keeps all of the power
which it had before 1788. The citizens of America, the “conventions”
in which they assembled, commanded otherwise. “When the
American people created a national legislature, with certain
enumerated powers, it was neither necessary nor proper to define
the powers retained by the States. These powers proceed, not from
the people of America, [the “conventions” named in the Seventh and
the Fifth Articles] but from the people of the several states; and
remain, after the adoption of the Constitution, what they were before,
except so far as they may be abridged by that instrument.” So spoke
Marshall from the Supreme Court Bench, in 1819, after he had come
from one of those “conventions” in which he himself had stated: “It
could not be said that the states derived any powers from that
system, [the new Constitution then before the convention in Virginia]
but retained them, though not acknowledged in any part of it.” (3 Ell.
Deb. 421.)
Yet every brief of those fifty-seven lawyers bases its every
argument on the sheer assumption, asserted by all, that the Fifth
Article is a “grant” to the state legislatures which makes them
attorneys in fact for the citizens of America. No brief can offer and no
brief does offer the slightest proof in support of the assumption. But
no brief asks for proof of the assumption or challenges the
assumption. On the contrary, every brief makes the assumption and
asserts it and on it rests every argument.
Because of this monumental error, every brief for the Amendment
insists that the state legislatures, as attorneys in fact for the citizens
of America with every power of the citizens of America, validly made
the Eighteenth Amendment.
Because of this monumental error, every brief against the
Amendment asserts that the state legislatures are attorneys in fact
for the citizens of America but insists that the Fifth Article (the
assumed power of attorney in a Constitution which expressly
declares that no power is given to the state legislatures) grants to the
state legislatures (as well as to the “grantors” themselves) only
limited ability on behalf of the principal, the citizens of America. On
this altogether unique argument, it is contended that the limited
power of attorney does not confer ability to make an Amendment like
the Eighteenth.
Because all briefs make the same monumental error, there is no
challenge on the ground that the state legislatures, not a member of
which is elected by the citizens of America, hold no power of
attorney from the citizens of America to interfere in any way, in any
matter, with the individual freedom of the American citizens. Because
all briefs against the Amendment make the same monumental error,
the fourth challenge (which was made and considered by the Court)
is based upon the heretical doctrine—the heresy being clear from
what we have heard in the “conventions” where we sat—that the
Fifth Article does not mention a constitutional mode in which the
citizens of America, again assembled in their “conventions,” can take
back from their American government any enumerated power of the
First Article which they find oppressive to their individual rights and
freedom. And, perhaps most amazing and amusing fact of all,
because all briefs make the same monumental error, the briefs for
the Amendment make no effort to support and the briefs against the
Amendment make no attempt to challenge the clear paradox, on
which the Eighteenth Amendment depends for its existence, that
there never has been a citizen of America if it be true that the Fifth
Article makes the state governments the attorneys in fact for the
citizens of America with unlimited ability to interfere with the
individual freedom of the citizens of America. Where such unlimited
ability is in government, men are not “citizens” but “subjects.”
But we ourselves come from the “conventions” where the
Americans knew that they entered as free men and left as citizens of
America, not as “subjects” of any governments. Therefore, we need
no lawyer to tell us—and no lawyer can deny our knowledge—that, if
the state governments are the attorneys in fact for the American
citizens and have ability either to interfere with or to grant power to
interfere with the individual liberty of the American citizens, or, if any
governments can interfere with that liberty on a matter not
enumerated in the First Article, there never were American citizens
and the early Americans entered their “conventions” free men but left
those “conventions” as “subjects” of an omnipotent government.
CHAPTER XXIV
GOVERNMENTS CLAIM AMERICANS AS
SUBJECTS
“Is the government of Virginia a state government after this

government is adopted? I grant that it is a republican government,
but for what purposes? For such trivial domestic considerations as
render it unworthy the name of a legislature.” (3 Ell. Deb. 171.) So
thundered Patrick Henry to the Americans assembled in convention
in Virginia, while these Americans still heard the echo of his charge
that the new Constitution made the state legislatures “weak,
enervated and defenseless governments.”
But these are the governments which all lawyers of 1920 “knew”
had been made the attorneys in fact for the citizens of America,
possessors of the supreme will in America. These are the
governments to which all advocates of the Eighteenth Amendment
contend that the Americans, in the “conventions” with Henry, gave
the entire omnipotence of the American people to be exercised by
these governments, without any constitutional restraint.
The real fact is, although all lawyers of 1920 failed to know the
fact, that these state governments were only named in the Fifth
Article, because they already had an existing limited ability to make
federal Articles, an ability not granted by the citizens of America but
possessed by each of those governments as attorney in fact for the
citizens of its own state. That it was an ability not granted by the
citizens of America, must be apparent when we recall that it was
exercised by those governments in 1781—seven years before there
was such a thing as a citizen of America. That the lawyers of 1920
neither knew nor realized the importance of this fact, is apparent
when we recall that every brief of those lawyers asserted that these
governments get their ability to make Articles by a “grant” in the Fifth
Article.
Our knowledge of the nature of every challenge to the new
Amendment, and our knowledge that each challenge involved the
assumption that the Fifth Article was a “grant” to these state
governments, is a knowledge which is certain from our study of the
conclusions of the Supreme Court which negatived each challenge.
The certainty is emphasized by our memory of the reply of Rice in
that Supreme Court, when, without one dissent from the challengers,
he stated his and their conviction that the “conventions” of 1788—the
challengers all forgetting that those “conventions” named themselves
in the Fifth Article—provided no constitutional mode of procedure
in which their own exclusive power could be again exercised to make
Articles like the First Article and the Eighteenth Amendment.
Let us again emphasize our certainty by a few moments with the
briefs of the challengers.
Root was their leader. A distinguished public leader and
considered by many to be the leader of the American Bar, there was
special reason why he should have known the ability of government
to make national Articles in a Constitution, only when men are
“subjects,” and the inability of governments to make such Articles,
when men are “citizens.”
If his brief, or the brief of any challenger, had urged this real and
invincible challenge, we would have found the mention of that
challenge in the decision and it would not have been a refutation of
that challenge. That we may confirm our knowledge that the brief of
Root, like the brief of every challenger, did not make this challenge,
the challenge that the Fifth Article is no “grant” but a mention of two
existing abilities and a mode of constitutional procedure for the
respective exercise of each, let us read the brief’s own statements of
the three challenges it does make. “The plaintiff contends that this
attempted amendment to the Constitution of the United States is
invalid (1) because it constitutes mere legislation, and is, therefore,
not authorized by Article V of the Constitution, (2) because it impairs
the reserved police or governmental powers of the several States

Popular High Culture in Italian Media 1950 1970 Mona Lisa Covergirl 1St Ed Edition Emma Barron All Chapter

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Popular High Culture in Italian Media 1950 1970 Mona Lisa Covergirl 1St Ed Edition Emma Barron All Chapter

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Popular High Culture in Italian Media,

1950–1970: Mona Lisa Covergirl 1st ed.

More information about this series at

Popular High Culture

Italian and Italian American Studies

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018942216

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

Cover credit: Cover image courtesy of Arnoldo Mondadori Editore

with Professor David Forgacs, Professor Stephen Gundle, Professor John

Castello Rivolli and the Archiginnasio of Bologna. An enormous thank

1 Introduction: The Mona Lisa Covergirl 1

2 Italia domanda: A Question of Culture 21

3 Dear Intellectual: The Cultural Advice Columns 55

4 Lascia o raddoppia?: Contestants and the Classics 93

5 Lip-Syncing Rossini: The Highs and Lows of Italian

6 Puccini, Botticelli and Celebrity Endorsements:

7 Reciting Shakespeare for Amaretto di Saronno:

8 The Classics and the Everyday: From I Promessi

9 Patrolling the Border: I Promessi Sposi on RAI

10 Conclusion: The Smile of Bergman, the Body of Rita

Further Reading 317

Fig. 4.6 American composer John Cage performs Water Walk

Fig. 8.3 The modern woman reads I Promessi Sposi, an advertisement

Introduction: The Mona Lisa Covergirl

© The Author(s) 2018 1

Epoca’s logo and cover layout perfectly emulated the American

learned to purvey a dreamworld that keyed in with other images of the

Following the introduction of television to Italy in 1954, the

significant operational connection between magazines and high culture,

are generally overlooked in accounts of Italian culture, despite their

magazines and advertising, and his later work on culture as a political

drama, consider audience responses through viewer interviews or sur-

independent audit process as an assurance to advertisers and competing

5. Dorothy Sieberling, ‘Mona Smiles on D.C.’, Life, 4 January 1963, 15.

opera on television as well as film comedy versions of I Promessi Sposi.

21. Stephen Gundle, ‘L’americanizzazione del quotidiano’, Quaderni Storici

Maltby, and Philippe Meers (eds.), Cinema Audiences and Modernity:

Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste.

Grasso, Aldo. Enciclopedia della televisione. Milano: Garzanti, 2002.

The Woman of Rome and the fiancées

In early 1953, Epoca magazine published an anonymous letter in its pop-

© The Author(s) 2018 21

Magazine Reading in Italy in the 1950s

magazine readers across Italy generally reflected the distribution of the

Magazine reading was still gaining in popularity for lower-middle

Italy Asks: Epoca’s ‘Italia domanda’ Column

‘Any one can ask a question

This democracy-themed column was the creation of Cesare Zavattini, a

magazine, Noi Donne or monthly women’s fashion magazine Novità,

Intellectuals in the Service of Readers

The validity of the Eighteenth Amendment (seven litigations being

“Is the government of Virginia a state government after this

You might also like

5. Dorothy Sieberling, ‘Mona Smiles on D.C.’, Life, 4 January 1963, 15.

21. Stephen Gundle, ‘L’americanizzazione del quotidiano’, Quaderni Storici

Magazine Reading in Italy in the 1950s

Intellectuals in the Service of Readers