Lifestyle

At this point, they’re Paris’s most glamorous couple. However, a year after their flash wedding in Vegas, the whirlwind romance is beginning to show signs of strain. Together with Serge Gainsbourg, she famously records ‘Je t'aime moi non-plus’ – and begins a secret affair. Bardot pleads with Gainsbourg not to release the song; he agrees, and will later record the song with Jane Birkin, making musical history. Bardot’s marriage to Sachs, however, doesn’t last so long: it comes to an end in 1968, before the divorce is finalised in October 1969. 

Photo: REX/Roger Viollet

The Bugattis

Although she spoke very little English at the time, in 1955 Anita Ekberg appeared alongside John Wayne and Lauren Bacall, with a small part in ‘Blood Alley’. Soon after, when she appeared with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, the press began to call her ‘the Marilyn Monroe of Paramount Studios’. The role of her life, however, was in 1960: Federico Fellini’s ‘La Dolce Vita’ on the glittering life of the Roman gentry, including an unforgettable scene with Ekberg in Rome’s Fontana di Trevi. Anita Ekberg died last weekend, at the age of 83. 

Photo: Rex Features

The filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini, who was born in 1922 and died a violent death in 1975, is associated with such film classics as ‘Accattone’, his version of The Gospel According to St. Matthew and ‘Teorema’, which developed a unique visual language for the Sixties. Desolate landscapes in black and white, bizarre characters and events – often unfortunate and unfathomable – typify these films. Pasolini was a controversial figure who had an uncomfortable relationship with the Italian Communist Party and the Catholic Church.

A Porsche 356 in an industrial atmosphere, photographed by Jan Baedeker. This image is proudly mounted on the wall in our UK office.

It’s often only in retrospect that the importance of a photograph becomes apparent. So it is with this snapshot of the President and his wife in December 1962, during a Christmas party for employees of the White House.  JFK seems almost carefree as he enjoys the sight of the beautifully decorated Christmas tree, despite the nerve-wracking time he’d recently had as President: the Cuban missile crisis, less than two months before, had seen the threat of nuclear war become terrifyingly real. It wasn’t until the end of October that the crisis was averted.

We don’t know exactly when this image was taken, but during cold-weather testing of the new Porsche 928 in the late 1970s seems most likely. Ultimately, the front-engined GT was never able to usurp the stubborn rear-drive 911; and we feel sure the engineers pictured here were wishing for a bit more weight over their driven wheels.  

Photo: Porsche Classic Archive