La signora di tutti (1934)

Isa Miranda (1905–1982) was the only international film star produced by the Italian fascist cinema. Her breakthrough film was the drama La signora di tutti/Everybody's Woman (1934), the sole Italian film of the great director Max Ophüls. Isa Miranda played her future self: a glamorous and famous film star who is everybody's woman... Her haunting beauty drives men mad.


Italian postcard by Rizzoli, Milano, 1934-XII. Photo: Novella-Film. Isa Miranda in La signora di tutti (Max Ophüls, 1934).


Italian postcard by Rizzoli, Milano, no. 1934-XII. Photo: Novella-Film. Publicity still for La signora di tutti/Everybody's Woman (Max Ophüls, 1934) with Isa Miranda.


Italian postcard by Rizzoli, Milano, 1934-XII. Photo: Novella-Film. Publicity still for La signora di tutti/Everybody's Woman (Max Ophüls, 1934) with Enrico Benfer and Isa Miranda. Gaby and Roberto at the ball.


Italian postcard by Rizzoli, Milano, 1934-XII. Photo: Novella-Film. Publicity still for ;La signora di tutti/Everybody's Woman (Max Ophüls, 1934) with Isa Miranda. Gaby cannot stand to be in Leonardo's house anymore.


Italian postcard by Rizzoli, Milano, 1934-XII. Photo: Novella-Film. Publicity still for La signora di tutti/Everybody's Woman (Max Ophüls, 1934) with Isa Miranda. Gaby breaks up with Leonardo.

Attracting Men Like Moths to a Flame

La signora di tutti/Everybody's Woman (Max Ophüls, 1934) was shot at the Cines Studios in Rome and on location in Como. The plot verges on the melodramatic but German born director Max Ophüls' spirited flashbacks within flashbacks, his lush tracking shots, his montages and dissolves, are stunning, and turn the film into a bravura masterpiece. La signora di tutti daringly begins with a wipe of the label on a 78 rpm record and ends on a static shot of the face of the heroine on a poster. The film deservedly won a 'technical' award at the Film Festival of Venice.

Isa Miranda plays beautiful Gabriella Murge, a.k.a. famous film star Gaby Doriot, a woman who attracts men like moths, destroying themselves or others. The film opens with a panorama of the film studio where after a frantic search her agent finds Gaby after an attempted suicide, slitting her wrists.

On the operation table in the hospital, the anesthetic gas she is given induces the flashbacks which make up the entire film. Gaby relives her life. At school, a married music teacher tells her he can't live without her. He flees abroad, leaving his family. Though she has done nothing, Gaby is expelled from her school, and is punished by her stern father (Lamberto Picasso).

Later, after being confined to her home, she is at a party of Roberto Nanni (Enrico/ Federico Benfer), son of wealthy businessman Leonardo Nanni. Roberto and Gaby dance and Roberto falls in love with her. Roberto's handicapped mother Alma (Tatiana Pavlova), fearful of Gaby's reputation, eventually loves her and adopts her as an aid.

Gaby goes to their house to take care of Alma, and while Roberto goes on a trip to Rome, his father Leonardo (Memo Benassi) falls in love with Gaby and takes her to the opera. Fate strikes one night, when Leonardo invites Gaby to a private talk in the garden, and meanwhile, Alma, having put on music to go to bed, calls out for Gaby. Not hearing a response, Alma becomes frantic. While Leonardo declares Gaby his love in front of his villa, a desperate Alma falls down the stairs in her wheelchair, killing herself.


Italian postcard by Rizzoli, Milano, 1934-XII. Photo: Novella-Film. Publicity still for La signora di tutti/Everybody's Woman (Max Ophüls, 1934) with Mario Ferrari and Franco Coop as the film producer and Gaby's agent Verari challenging each other when striking a deal over star Gaby Doriot (Isa Miranda). This is the very first scene of the film.


Italian postcard by Rizzoli, Milano, 1934-XII. Photo: Novella-Film. Franco Coop in La signora di tutti (Max Ophüls, 1934). Coop is Miranda's agent Verari who, at the beginning of the film, crosses the whole studio and discovers the film star has committed suicide. After that, the film is told in flashback.


Italian postcard by Rizzoli, Milano, 1934-XII. Photo: Novella-Film. Isa Miranda singing in the school choir (shortly before her affair with a school teacher is exposed), in La signora di tutti (Max Ophüls, 1934). Miranda is the blonde, in the middle, wearing a checkers motived dress. After hearing what has happened to her teacher, she faints.


Italian postcard by Rizzoli, Milano, no. 1934-XII. Photo: Novella-Film. Publicity still for La signora di tutti/Everybody's Woman (Max Ophüls, 1934) with Nelly Corradi, Lamberto Picasso and Maria Puccini. Caption: Film prescelta per la II Biennale Cinematograficia di Venezia. (Film selected for the second Venice Film Festival). For the scandal in school, Gaby's father decides to punish her by isolating her.


Italian postcard by Rizzoli, Milano, 1934-XII. Photo: Novella-Film. Publicity still for La signora di tutti/Everybody's Woman (Max Ophüls, 1934) with Isa Miranda. After the ball, Gaby comes home ecstatically.

Haunted by the memory

After Alma's death, Leonardo and Gaby go on a seemingly endless trip across Europe, despite the calls of Leonardo's business associates to return, and when they finally return, Gaby is haunted by the memory of the house and flees hysterically. Gaby leaves Leonardo, telling him he should be with his wife, even if she is dead, and soon after, Leonardo is charged with embezzlement and sentenced to 4 years in prison.

Meanwhile, Gaby becomes a film star. When released from prison, Leonardo wanders around the foyer of a cinema, during the premiere of her new film. Leonardo is stunned by the multiplication of Gaby's images on the pictures in the foyer, but he is expelled for being improperly dressed for the occasion (not being in evening attire). Chased outside, he's run over by a car.

To avoid a scandal, Gaby's managers and entourage call in Roberto to exonerate her. Gaby realises she has loved Roberto all along, but it is too late, as Roberto married her more modest sister Anna (Nelly Corradi), after meeting her at the auction of his father's house. "We'll still be together in the film", Roberto says.

Gaby realises she will stay lonesome despite wealth and stardom and slits her wrists. Gaby leaves a note detailing her loneliness that persisted through her stardom. The flashback ends when the anesthetic mask is removed. The doctors confirm her death, and the printing presses stop to print the poster for her last film.

At AllMovie, Hal Erickson writes that La Signora di Tutti can be regarded as a dress rehearsal for Ophüls' masterpiece Lola Montes (1955): "though it comes nowhere near the brilliance of that later classic (...), but Ophuls' basic premise--that fame and celebrity are ultimately hollow entities--is not to be taken lightly. The director's fabled camera techniques help smooth over some of the rougher and more ludicrous passages."

D.B. DuMonteil at IMDb: "The flashback was not so innovative after all (the year before, Stahl did the same in Only Yesterday) but the directing which sometimes has thriller accents: the scene when the heroine hears a radio nobody can't hear would not be out of place in a psychological suspense; ditto for the wheelchair scene in the night which is really awesome."


Italian postcard by Rizzoli, Milano, no. 1934-XII. Photo: Novella-Film. Publicity still for La signora di tutti/Everybody's Woman (Max Ophüls, 1934) with Isa Miranda and Memo Benassi. Leonardo takes Gaby to the opera.


Italian postcard by Rizzoli, Milano, 1934-XII. Photo: Novella-Film. Publicity still for La signora di tutti/Everybody's Woman (Max Ophüls, 1934) with Isa Miranda and Memo Benassi. Leonardo is wildly in love with Gaby.


Italian postcard by Rizzoli, Milano, no. 1934-XII. Photo: Novella-Film. Publicity still for La signora di tutti/Everybody's Woman (Max Ophüls, 1934) with Isa Miranda. Gaby at the villa of the Nanni's in the countryside.


Italian postcard by Rizzoli, Milano, no. 1934-XII. Photo: Novella-Film. Publicity still for La signora di tutti/Everybody's Woman (Max Ophüls, 1934) with Isa Miranda, Tatiana Pavlova and Memo Benassi. Remarkable is that Pavlova stands, while in the film her character is crippled.


Italian postcard by Rizzoli, Milano, no. 1934-XII. Photo: Novella-Film. Publicity still for La signora di tutti/Everybody's Woman (Max Ophüls, 1934) with Enrico Benfer and Nelly Corradi. After his father's death, Roberto and Anna meet at the auction of Leonardo's house.


Italian postcard by Rizzoli, Milano, no. 1934-XXII. Photo: Novella-Film. Enrico Benfer and Isa Miranda in La signora di tutti (Max Ophüls, 1934). After his father's death, Roberto pleas Gaby's innocence to save her star image. When Gaby tries to reunite, he confesses he has already chosen her sister instead.


Italian postcard by Rizzoli, Milano, 1934-XII. Photo: Novella-Film. Enrico Benfer in La signora di tutti (Max Ophüls, 1934). Roberto's last call with Gaby.


Italian postcard by Rizzoli, Milano, 1934-XII. Photo: Novella-Film. Isa Miranda on the operation table in La signora di tutti (Max Ophüls, 1934).

Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), D.B. DuMonteil (IMDb), Wikipedia (English), IMDb, and the postcards and the film itself.

Isa Miranda

Isa Miranda (1905–1982) was the only international film star produced by the Italian fascist cinema. In Hollywood, she was billed as the ‘Italian Marlene Dietrich’ and played femme fatale roles. Later, she became one of the most significant European film actresses during the 1940s and early 1950s.


Italian postcard by Rizzoli, Milano, 1937-XV.


Postcard from the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), no. L39/173. Photo: Paramount. Isa Miranda and Ray Milland in Hotel Imperial (Robert Florey, 1939). Collection: Marlene Pilaete.


Italian postcard by Ballerini & Fratini, Florence, no. 4341. Photo: Vaselli / Lux Film. Isa Miranda in Malombra (Mario Soldati, 1942), an adaptation from the classic novel by Antonio Fogazzaro.


Italian postcard by Rizzoli & C., Milano, 1941. Photo: Venturini.


Italian card by ASER (A Scarmiglia Ed.), Rome.

Everybody's woman

Isa Miranda was born Ines Isabella Sampietro in Milan, Italy, in 1905. She worked as a typist while training as an actress at the Milan Academy. She went on to play bit parts in Italian films in Rome. She played a bigger role in Come le foglie / Like the Leaves (Mario Camerini, 1934).

Success came with Max Ophüls' film La Signora di tutti / Everybody's Woman (1934) in which she played Gaby Doriot, a famous film star and adventuress with whom men cannot help falling in love. Having brought several of them to their ruin, she slits her wrists. This was perhaps Miranda's finest screen performance, and it brought in its wake several film offers.

She appeared next in Passaporto rosso / Red Passport (Guido Brignone, 1935) and Il diario di una donna amata / Affairs of Maupassant (Hermann Kosterlitz aka Henry Koster, 1935). In Germany she starred in Du bist Mein Gluck / You Are My Joy (Karl Heinz Martin, 1936) opposite the great Operatic tenor Beniamino Gigli, and in France in L'homme de nulle part / The Late Mathias Pascal (Pierre Chenal, 1937), a film adaptation of Luigi Pirandello's 'Il Fu Mattia Pascal', and in Le Mensonge de Nina Petrova / The Lie of Nina Petrova (Victor Tourjansky, 1937).

Her international popularity was such that she even survived her leading lady stint in Scipio Africanus / Scipio, the African (Carmine Gallone, 1937), a notorious Italian government-funded historical epic produced by Benito Mussolini's son, Vittorio.

In 1939, Paramount Pictures gave her a contract and billed her as the ‘Italian Marlene Dietrich’. She played femme fatale roles in such films as Hotel Imperial (Robert Florey, 1939) and Adventure in Diamonds (George Fitzmaurice, 1940). Hal Erickson at AllMovie described them as 'forgettable fripperies' in which she recited her lines phonetically.


Italian postcard by Rizzoli, Milano, 1934-XII. Photo: Novella-Film. Isa Miranda in La signora di tutti / Everybody's Woman (Max Ophüls, 1934).


Italian postcard by Rizzoli, Milano, 1934-XII. Photo: Novella-Film. Isa Miranda in La signora di tutti / Everybody's Woman (Max Ophüls, 1934).


Italian postcard by Rizzoli & C., Milano, 1938. Photo: Pesce.


Italian postcard by Rizzoli, 1940.


Italian postcard by Rizzoli & C., Milano, 1942. Photo: Vaselli.


Italian postcard. Photo: Scalera Film. Isa Miranda in È caduta una donna / A Woman Has Fallen (Alfredo Guarini, 1941), based on the novel of Milly Dandolo (1936).


Italian postcard by Ballerini & Fratini, Florence, no. 4388. Photo: Vaselli / Lux Film. Isa Miranda in Malombra (Mario Soldati, 1942), an adaptation from the classic novel by Antonio Fogazzaro.

Golden palm

Isa Miranda returned to Italy soon after the outbreak of World War II and continued to act on stage and to make films. Among her films were Senza cielo / Without the Sky (Alfredo Guarini, 1940) opposite Fosco Giachetti, Malombra (Mario Soldati, 1942) with Andrea Checchi, Zazà (Renato Castellani, 1944) and the comedy Lo sbaglio di essere vivo / My Widow and I (Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia, 1945) with Vittorio De Sica.

In 1949, she starred with Jean Gabin in Au-Dela Des Grilles / The Walls of Malapaga (René Clément, 1949), which won an Academy Award for the most outstanding foreign language film, and for Miranda, the Palme d'Or (Golden Palm) at the Cannes Film Festival. Another success of that period was La Ronde / Roundabout (Max Ophüls, 1950). Her career took her to France, Germany and England, where she frequently appeared in TV films, including an engaging performance as a campy villain on the tongue-in-cheek espionage series The Avengers (1967).

Notable film appearances include Siamo donne / We, the Women (Luigi Zampa, 1953), a portmanteau film where Miranda shared the screen with three other screen legends, Anna Magnani, Alida Valli and Ingrid Bergman, Summertime (David Lean, 1955) with Katharine Hepburn, and Gli Sbandati / Abandoned (Francesco Maselli, 1955).

In the 1960s, she could be seen in such films as La Noia / The Empty Canvas (Damiano Damiani, 1963) with Bette Davis, The Yellow Rolls-Royce (Anthony Asquith, 1964) with Ingrid Bergman, and The Shoes of the Fisherman (Michael Anderson, 1968) starring Anthony Quinn

Miranda also appeared in the controversial Il portiere di notte / The Night Porter (Liliana Cavani, 1974) with Dirk Bogarde and Charlotte Rampling, and the romantic comedy Le farò da padre / I'll Take Her Like a Father (Alberto Lattuada, 1974). Since then, she made a few film appearances in TV mini-series like L'assassinio di Federico Garcia Lorca / The Assassination of Federico Garcia Lorca (Alessandro Cane, 1976).

Isa Miranda died in Rome in 1982. She was married to the Italian director and producer Alfredo Guarini until he died in 1981. Her final film role was in Apocalisse di un terremoto (Sergio Pastore, 1982). Originally this was just another Italian drama, but the producers added some stock earthquake footage because of the Naples Earthquake. They changed the title to Terrible Earthquake.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. A 3178/1, 1941-1944.


German postcard by Ross-Verlag, no. A 3178/2, 1941-1944.


Italian postcard by ASER (A. Scaramaglia Edizoni), Roma (Rome), no. 47.


Italian postcard by ASER (Aldo Scarmiglia Edizioni, Roma), no. 47. Photo: Pesce / Scalera Film.


French postcard by Editions et Publications Cinématographiques (EPC).


Italian postcard by Ballerini & Fratini Firenze Ed., no. 2323. Photo: Paramount.


French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 122. Photo: Star.


Italian postcard by NMM, Milano, 1941.


Prob. Italian postcard. Photo: Foto Video.


Italian postcards by Edizioni Artistiche Alberani. Portrait by Nanni.


Trailer of the comedy Arrivano i dollari / The Dollars are Coming (Mario Costa, 1957) with Alberto Sordi, Mario Riva, Nino Taranto, Isa Miranda, and Riccardo Billi. Source: 666Rebell666 (YouTube).

Sources: Giuseppe Alessi (IMDb), Hal Erickson (AllMovie - Page now defunct), Wikipedia and IMDb.

This post was last updated on 21 September 2025.