Sophia Loren and Greece

 

I get many requests for more photos of Sophia Loren, probably because of her Hydra connection with the film Boy on a Dolphin. This photo also has a Greek connection, see the Greek text.

Sophia Loren

 

A signed photo of Sophia, while filming Boy on a Dolphin on Hydra.
This photo is for all you film lovers out there....

He could have been The Boy on the Dolphin

My friend Michael Lawrence was 12 years old and his family lived in Rome and one day when Michael was riding the bus home from school the man with heavy glasses opposite him asked, “Do you want to be in the movies?” The next day Michael sat in a badly lit room and was given a script to read. He was a good looking blonde kid and that’s probably why the man picked him out on the bus; he was casting the film but didn’t know that Michael’s father was an actor from Hollywood and that Alan Ladd, who was the lead actor in the movie they were about to start filming, was a good friend of Michael’s father. Michael was not given a fair chance to work on the script and he was to read from a text he had never seen before. He didn’t get the part in The Boy on a Dolphin, the film that was shot on Hydra later that year, with Sophia Loren playing the female lead. Alan Ladd probably never knew that his friend’s son had read for the part and neither did Michael’s father.

Anyway, Michael Lawrence came to Hydra many years later and now lives down the road from me in Kamini; he’s a good friend and last night over dinner we talked about this episode from 50 years ago. Maybe if he’d gotten the part he would have ended up marrying the stunningly beautiful, but slightly older Sophia Loren and then living a life of love and luxury. Well, at least those were our speculations last night at Dimitris’ tavern. Who can tell?