I always worshipped Greek actress Melina Mercouri, ever since I saw her in the brilliant 1960 movie Never On Sunday. I have no idea how I got to see it during that year, being only six years old, but my memory is watching it at the drive-in theater while my parents snored on the front seat of the car. The subject matter and storyline would have horrified my mother, had she been awake: the promiscuous prostitute who was being swayed from her debauched life by some goody-two shoes American, with loud and sometimes violent opposition.
I didn’t understand any of it, of course, being only six years old.
But I fell in love with Melina’s character: her blonde hair, her huge, flashing eyes, that wide, sensuous mouth and her fiery spirit. (I adore Italian actress Anna Magnani for precisely the same reasons.)
The thing is that Melina wasn’t really acting. When the “colonels” came to power in Greece, overthrowing the elected government of the time, she went crazy in attacking them. And when they revoked her Greek citizenship, her response was classic: “I was born a Greek and I will die a Greek. They were born fascists and they will die fascists.”
Then after sanity prevailed and democracy returned to Greece [irony alert], she was made Minister of Culture — the first woman in male-dominated Greek politics ever to reach Cabinet rank. She stayed in that position for eight years, most probably because by then she was an icon, and everybody was probably too afraid to oppose her.
And now on with the show:
Color? Of course:
And here she is, going Full Melina:
Magnificent. And scary. And, of course, sexy as all hell.