Under the Volcanoes
I live on a volcano. In a ring of fiery others. Surrounded by their sleeping.
The volcanoes surrounding Naples are less dormant. Vesuvius, Etna… I learned of another this morning via Woody Guthrie and Ingrid Bergman.
Stromboli. Continuously active for millennia, it erupts every 15 to 20 minutes, daily. Bergman shot a picture set on the island.
Ingrid Bergman stayed in my hotel. So did Lucky Luciano when Scarface was in exile (so did Oscar Wilde, and a hundred other people of note, 1950s actresses in particular.)
There’s a Times interview with both Ingrid and Lucky Luciano, one after the other, conducted the same afternoon in the Hotel Vesuvio in 1953, which I don’t have time to go into.
It’s a fascinating read, however, if you’re interested in gangland anti-heroes or feminist Joans of Arc.
But this is a travel journal for the next three weeks; things are moving fast. I have to speak on the heel, so listen up.
What’s important is, I met a beautiful woman in the lobby next to the elevator this afternoon. Wouldn’t speak to me, just kept her head turned to one side.
She’s been dead since 1982, if she’s who I think she is, so one can’t hold a grudge. Regardless, she’s definitely of the class of women Bob Dylan suggested to JFK with regard to population growth (his erectile joke from The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan in “American Humor.”)
“Brigitte Bardot
Anita Ekberg
Sophia LorenCountry’ll grow”
And their contemporary definitely stayed in my hotel. The lobby glamour shot reminded me of this woman I met in the Woody Guthrie archives.
From the hilariously named Army Weekly for lovesick troops overseas, Yank magazine.
Think there’s a double entendre equal to Dylan’s “grow” in that title.
As a Merchant Marine, Woody likely read this issue in 1944, around the time he scrimshawed that brass artillery shell I wrote about in “House of the Muses: II”, and he wrote a song for the woman on the cover in 1950. While he was living on Mermaid Avenue. The year a movie called Stromboli was released.
I hadn’t read Guthrie’s lyrics closely until I was reminded of this covergirl by her likeness next to the Vesuvio elevator—it may be another actress. But a beautiful woman who would speak to me—the concierge—suggested it was most likely the woman Woody wrote a song for, six years after he read Yank, Ingrid Bergman.
I’m not gonna transcribe the lyrics for you because I don’t have time. Tomorrow I’m headed to a volcano myself. Read it yourself in the online version.
Suffice it to say it’s about a fiery woman who stayed in my hotel named after the volcano that buried Pompeii, who shot a 1950 movie with Roberto Rossellini named after the world’s most active volcano, Stromboli, had an affair and child with the director and left her husband—which Lucky Luciano didn’t approve of (the man responsible for most of the prostitution racket in New York at one time).
Stromboli’s about a woman trapped on a barren volcanic island with a man she doesn’t love, after WWII. But apparently it made Woody Guthrie love her, along with Lucky Luciano.
Quite a fortuitous transition from the redwood forests to the New York island, Tulsa to Napoli.
Ciao for now. Arrivederci.