In the early years of the Golden Globes, in addition to the Best Foreign Film category that started in 1955, there was a special award called the Samuel Goldwyn International Film Award, which was presented from 1959 to 1964.
At the Golden Globes ceremony held on March 10, 1964, at the Cocoanut Grove, the winner of that prize was Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, directed by Vittorio De Sica and starring Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni. The movie would go on to win an Academy Award as Best Foreign Language Film the following year, on April 5, 1965.

Another Italian movie directed by De Sica and starring Loren and Mastroianni, Marriage Italian Style, also won Best Foreign Film in 1965, with its stars receiving Best Actress and Best Actor – Musical or Comedy nominations. A third movie starring these same Italian movie stars, director Ettore Scola’s A Special Day, also won Best Foreign Film in 1978; Mastroianni was additionally nominated for Best Actor – Drama.
Critically praised as a masterpiece of Commedia all’Italiana, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow features Loren and Mastroianni playing different characters in three episodes. Anna from Naples, written by playwright Eduardo De Filippo, tells the story of a woman who sells back-market cigarettes to support her unemployed husband, and conspires to exploit a legal loophole and avoid jail by constantly staying pregnant. Adelina from Milano, by screenwriter Cesare Zavattini, centers on a rich wife driving a Rolls Royce who discovers that she cares more about her car than her lover. Mara from Rome, by novelist Alberto Moravia, focuses on a high-class prostitute pleasing her client, the wealthy son of an industrialist.

When interviewed by Hollywood Foreign Press Association journalists in 1994 for director Robert Altman’s Ready to Wear (Prêt-à-Porter), Loren said that recreating the famous striptease scene with Mastroianni from Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow three decades later “brought back wonderful memories.”
During a 1993 HFPA interview for director Beeban Kidron’s movie Used People, in which Mastroianni costarred with Shirley MacLaine, the legendary Italian actor, when asked about Sophia Loren, commented, “We made 10 films together. When we started we were very young, and now we are no more young, but she still is very beautiful. Because Sophia is Neapolitan, she’s alive, she has irony, she is very amusing and full of humor. So it’s nice to work with her.”
He added: “I worked once with Anna Magnani, and that was really something exceptional. She was a big actress. Another Italian actress that I liked very much was Claudia Cardinale.” Among French actresses, Mastroianni mentioned Catherine Deneuve, “an intelligent woman,” and, among American actresses, Faye Dunaway.