Gina Lollobrigida was a popular international movie star in the 1950s, starring in Italian movies like Bread, Love and Dreams (1953), directed by Luigi Comencini, and The Wayward Wife (1953), from Mario Soldati; French films like Beauties of the Night (1952) and Fanfan la Tulipe (1952), both co-starring Gérard Philipe; and American movies like John Huston’s Beat the Devil (1953), opposite Humphrey Bogart, and Trapeze (1956), alongside Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster.

The Italian actress was recognized at the 18th annual Golden Globes, held March 16, 1961, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, where she was co-honored as World Film Favorite Female. The special trophy was handed to Lollobrigida by CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite. She was seated next to Robert Mulligan, who had just directed her in Come September with Rock Hudson, who shared in the same award as World Film Favorite Male.
The World Film Favorite was a special award bestowed at the Golden Globes from 1956 through 1980, though it was not voted on by the journalists of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Instead, it honored the most popular movie stars internationally as “determined according to the result of a worldwide survey by the Reuters News Bureau.” Grace Kelly and Marlon Brando won it in its first year and Jane Fonda and Roger Moore in 1980.

Fonda had earned it twice before, in 1979 as the female recipient with John Travolta as the male, and in 1973 with Brando. Sophia Loren won it four times, in 1964 with Paul Newman (who would win it two more times), in 1965 with Marcello Mastroianni, in 1969 with Sidney Poitier, and in 1977 with Robert Redford.
Doris Day won it three times, in 1958 with Tony Curtis, and in 1960 and 1963 with the aforementioned Hudson. Barbra Streisand won it four times, in 1970 with Steve McQueen, in 1971 with Clint Eastwood, in 1975, and in 1978 with Robert Redford.
In addition to her World Film Favorite honor, Lollobrigida, nicknamed “La Lollo” in Italian, attended the Golden Globes in 1984, when she served as a presenter with Telly Savalas, with whom she had starred in 1968’s Buona Sera Mrs. Campbell. She attended again in 1985 when she presented with Cicely Tyson.
In 2018, when she traveled to Los Angeles to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Lollobrigida granted an exclusive interview to the journalists of the HFPA, where she stated she was moved by this recognition that she didn’t expect and had to wait until the age of 90 to receive. “It’s unbelievable,” she said. “I was, like, drunk, because a love so long for one person doesn’t happen in life.”
She added that ever since the 1950s, she has had a special love for America, “because I had a very good experience on the set, and when I came back, they treated me like the Queen of Sheba, and I was surprised because it was at the beginning of my career.”