The script for LA STRADA was actually written before I VITELLONI, but when Fellini showed it to his producer of contract, he was told "this won’t make a lira," and was advised to drop it. He finally found a sympathetic producer in Lorenzo Pegoraro, who had admired THE WHITE SHEIK. Fellini turned to exploring new ideas with Ennio Flaiano and Tullio Pinelli, his co-scenarists on THE WHITE SHEIK. They decided on the theme of the pleasures and frustrations of growing up in a small town. The three men regaled each other with tales about their youth until they decided they had a viable film subject. "In spite of our different backgrounds, the spirit of the script we wrote was Fellini’s," Pinelli emphasized. The story they developed concerned five young middle-class men who had grown up together in a town on the Adriatic coast, quite similar to Rimini, Fellini's home-town. When the film was casting, producer Pegoraro was dismayed by Fellini’s insistence on using Alberto Sordi for the role of the somewhat effeminate Alberto who lives with his sister. "There’s not a single big name in this film," the producer complained. "You’ll make a commercial disaster. Sordi makes people run away." (Years later when I VITELLONI was revived, Sordi had become Italy’s number one superstar comic actor, and the posters were redone to put his name above the title.) Pegoraro asked Fellini to meet him half way and bring in a name. He suggested that Fellini might talk to Vittorio De Sica about accepting the role of Natali, the aging gay ham actor who attempts to seduce Leopoldo. De Sica expressed some interest but on the condition that his part would be rewritten to conform to his image of the character. Fellini rightly felt that doing so would force the story out of balance, and the role was finally given to the veteran Achille Majeroni, who turned in an unforgettable performance. As Fellini had delineated the characters in the script, he had already had in mind not only Sordi but and Leopoldo Trieste, both of whom he had directed in THE WHITE SHEIK, but also his brother Riccardo, who, better than anyone he knew, could enter into the "vitelloni" mentality, since he had been one himself. They were joined by Franco Interlenghi, who with his fresh, serious, boyish face had first attracted attention in De Sica’s SHOESHINE and would play Moraldo, the director’s alter ego, the only member of the group to leave town for the big city–and Franco Fabrizi, at that time practically unknown, whom Fellini had first noticed when he was just one of
revue queen Wanda Osiri’s chorus boys in a successful variety show. A starting date was set for December 1952, with Pegoraro backed by a group of Florentine businessmen and a French-based production company. On the date filming was to begin, Pinelli recounts that the temperamental producer, still obsessed with the unpromising nature of the cast, locked himself in a bathroom and refused to come out and sign checks for equipment. The company and crew were waiting in Viterbo, a town near Rome with an atmosphere similar to Fellini’s hometown, Rimini. Finally, after a long wait, Pegoraro came out of the bathroom and the first scenes were shot. Shooting continued off and on until the following spring, the going somewhat stormy and interrupted on several occasions–consequently I VITELLONI had three different directors of photography, for each one of them, corresponding to the breaks in the film, found that he was no longer free, due to previous commitments. The interiors were nearly all shot in Florence. Pegoraro’s backers were Tuscan cloth manufacturers and they liked to be able to look in on the shooting from time to time, for they wanted to keep the film within controlling distance, although Florence was not particularly suited to winter filming. The Goldoni theatre was rented for two important sequences–the carnival and Natali’s performance. Exteriors were shot at Ostia near Rome (the beach and Kursaal) and Viterbo and Ostia, Fellini tried to reconstruct the Rimini of his youth from memory. He never considered shooting at Rimini––now that he had become a fairly well known figure in the Italian world, he didn’t want to appear a patronizing figure in the eyes of his former friends, who had for the most part become mediocre professional men in their provincial town. I VITELLONI was barely finished when the Venice selection committee accepted it for the festival. It was warmly received, with a standing ovation and awarded the Silver Lion. In spite of all the doubts about its commercial appeal, the film was a success in Italy, a triumph with critics and public in France and it established Fellini as a director of international stature. The success of I VITELLONI made it possible for Fellini to reactivate a project he felt deeply about, LA STRADA. He thought that Anthony Quinn, who was then making a film at Cinecitta, would be perfect for the role of Zampano. He approached Quinn who had never heard of Fellini and didn’t show much interest. Shortly afterward, Quinn received an invitation to dinner with Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman. After dinner, they screened I VITELLONI for him–it was Bergman, who adored the picture, who had set it up. "I was thunderstruck by it," Quinn said. "I told them the film was a masterpiece and that the same director was the man who had been chasing me for weeks." The next day Quinn phoned Fellini and let him know he would love to do LA STRADA. The rest is film history. LA STRADA, starring Quinn and Fellini’s wife, Giulietta Masina, was a worldwide smash hit –in country after country–and earned Fellini the first of his five Oscars. He was the recipient of Best Foreign Language Film Awards for LA STRADA in 1956, THE NIGHTS OF CABIRIA in 1957, 8 1/2 in 1953 and AMARCORD in 1974.