[These daily posts will cover little known actors or people that have appeared in more recent films and TV series. Various degrees of information that I was able to find will be given and anything that you can add would be appreciated.]
Mara Rita Antonia Bernasconi was born in Brunate, Como, Lombardy, Kingdom of Italy on June 12, 1932. Following her parents' wishes, she made her debut as a child in Wanda Petrini's "Compagnia dei piccoli", at the same time following the lessons of the elderly actress Teresa Franchini [1877-1972]. After completing her studies, she studied dance and piano, and made her debut as a television presenter and announcer.
Blonde, curvy, endowed with a fresh and sensual beauty, Mara Berni participated in about forty films in the 1950s and 1960s. She was nicknamed the Italian Marilyn Monroe and appeared alongside stars such as Alberto Sordi in “Buonanotte... lawyer!” (1955) “Il moralista” (1959), both by Giorgio Bianchi, and “Il vigile” (1960) by Luigi Zampa, and Totò in “Totò, Peppino e... la dolce vita” (1961) by Sergio Corbucci. In the early 1960s, Mara Berni acted in various Peplum films like “I baccanali di Tiberio” (The Bacchanalia of Tiberius) (Giorgio Simonelli, 1960) starring Walter Chiari and Ugo Tognazzi, and “Maciste contro lo sceicco” (Maciste Against the Sheik) (Domenico Paolella, 1962) opposite Ed Fury and Erno Crisa.
Gifted with grace and ease, she was often relegated to the role of "femme fatale", even in a comic key, and it can be said that she was not exploited to the best of her abilities. In the mid-1960s she left the film industry, but sometimes worked for television, both acting in scripted novels, where she’s remembered for the brief but intense role of Cecilia's mother in Sandro Bolchi's ‘The Betrothed’ (1967), and participating in variety shows (a fitting tribute was paid to her beauty when she was chosen to play the part of the goddess Venus in the brilliant musical show ‘Biblioteca di Studio Uno’ by Antonello Falqui, with the Cetra Quartet, in the episode dedicated to the Odyssey) until the end of the eighties.
Married for the second time in October 1989 to the wealthy Pakistani industrialist Tarik Mamoud Rana (with whom she had a daughter in 1990 at the age of 58) and retired from showbusiness. Today she lives in Nice, France
BERNI, Mara (Mara Rita Antonia Bernasconi)
[6/16/1932, Brunate, Como, Lombardy, Kingdom of Italy - ] – theater, film, TV actress, married to
? (19??-19??) married to industrialist Tarik Mamoud Rana (1989- ), mother of a daughter [1990- ].
Johnny West – 1965 (Sheriff McIntire’s wife)
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