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Time With
Zeffirelli

The fumed Italian director talks about the

real-life inspiration for the Jewish character

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6/18
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96 Detroit Jewish News

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played by Cher in his latest movie.

NAOMI PFEFFERMAN
Special to the Jewish News

T

here is something special
about Jews," the famed
Italian director Franco
Zeffirelli says, not disingen-
uously. "They have an instinctive
compassion for their neighbor."
The 76-year-old auteur illustrates the
sentiment in his latest and most person-
al film, Tea With Mussolini, which may
also be his personal best. Based in large
part on his 1986 autobiography, the
movie revisits Zeffirelli's childhood
before and during World War II, when
he was a motherless, illegitimate child
adopted by a group of feisty expatriate
Englishwomen and by a wealthy Jewish-
American art collector in Florence.
The film stars theatrical grande
dames Judi Dench, Joan Plowright
and Maggie Smith as the eccentric
Englishwomen, and the inimitable
Cher as Elsa Morganthal, the flamboy-
ant American Jew.
Who else but Zeffirelli, best known
for his lush 1960s adaptations of The
Taming of the Shrew and Romeo and
Juliet, could have cast Cher as the
flashy Jewish adventuress who is obliv-
ious to danger until she is nearly
deported to a concentration camp?
For Zeffirelli, who directed The
Champ and Mel Gibson's Hamlet, the
casting wasn't such a stretch. Cher,
after all, arrived for the shoot in a style
befitting Elsa, with her own personal
hairdresser, makeup artist, costumer
and assistant. Elsa is a former Ziegfeld
star; Cher's a diva.
The actress, like her character, is

Naomi Pfefferman. is the
entertainment editor at the Jewish
Journal of Greater Los Angeles.

generous and frank. "And she looks
like an Israeli lady," the director says.
Zeffirelli, who reportedly keeps
seven or eight servants and as many
Jack Russell terriers at his palatial
home in Rome, can regale you with
scandalous accounts about Jackie 0.
and the late, great Maria Callas. He
has juicy stories about Taylor and
Burton cursing at each other on the
set of Taming of the Shrew; about Sir
Laurence Olivier, Plowright's late hus-
band, who could behave rather
unpleasantly; or about the late
"Lenny" Bernstein, whom he always
telephoned during a personal crisis.
But what the director most wants to
talk about during a recent telephone
interview is the real-life inspiration for
the character of Elsa: the Jewish-
American woman who changed his life.
He doesn't recall her name; he met
her when he was 5 or 6 years old, not
long before his mother, Alaide Garosi,
a talented fashion designer, died of
tuberculosis. The Jewish visitor was a
former Broadway star, tall, attractive,
fabulously wealthy, who visited Garosi
twice a year to "completely renew her
wardrobe," Zeffirelli says. "I was fasci-
nated with her incredible jewels and
fabulous fragrance.
One day, he recalls, his mother
took him to her sumptuous hillside
villa outside Florence, accompanied by
all the seamstresses and the woman's
chauffeur. Inside, his mother told him,
he was going to see some fantastic
paintings. But the budding little artist
was dismayed upon entering the
Renaissance villa, which "had been
turned into an incredibly advanced
space for modern art," he says.
"My mother's friend couldn't have
cared less about the Renaissance doors
and fireplaces. She just put up white

5 )