Gia Scala (March 3, 1934 - April 30, 1972) was an English American actress of Italian-Irish descent .
She was born Giovanna Scoglio in Liverpool, England, to an aristocratic Sicilian father, Pietro Scoglio, and an Irish mother, Eileen Sullivan. She lived in Rome, Italy, and moved to the United States at age fourteen where she studied and worked in New York City. Gia graduated from Bayside High School (New York City) in Queens, New York. For a time she was undecided on what to do next. She worked in New York as a filing clerk for an insurance company and for a number of airlines.
She studied acting at night and made appearances on some radio shows and television quiz shows. At the end of 1954 an agent had her tested for the role of Mary Magdalene in a movie which was to be made called The Gallileans. She did not get the part but was signed to contracts by both Universal Studios and Columbia Pictures in Hollywood. Using the stage name "Gia Scala", she made her motion picture debut in 1955. This came in All That Heaven Allows with Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson. However personal problems plagued her. In 1958 she attempted suicide. She landed roles in Tip On A Dead Jockey and The Garment Jungle in 1957 and The Tunnel of Love in 1958. The latter featured Richard Widmark and Doris Day. Critics acclaimed Gia's performance as a labor organizer in The Garment Jungle.
The tall, green-eyed brunette received wide recognition for her performance of "Anna" in the 1961 film The Guns of Navarone, which starred Gregory Peck. Her character provided tactical help to the Allied saboteurs on the Nazi-held Greek island. Miss Scala's successful career began to deteriorate as a result of a growing alcohol dependency and she was eventually let go from her studio contract. Her marriage to stockbroker Donald Burnett ended in divorce.
Gia Scala made frequent appearances on American television shows during the 1960s. Shows in which she appeared include Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1960-1961), Convoy, The Rogues, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Twelve O'Clock High (1965), Tarzan (NBC series) (1967), and It Takes a Thief (1969).
Having British citizenship because of her birth, she moved to work in film in England but there her troubles only escalated. Suffering from severe emotional problems, aggravated by alcohol, she made another unsuccessful suicide attempt before returning to Hollywood.
On the night of April 30, 1972, some friends found her dead in her Hollywood Hills home from an overdose of drugs and alcohol at age 38. Police said she had been taking medication for a drinking problem.
Gia Scala is interred in the Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.
This tall, dazzling, yet shy and painfully sensitive foreign import was born Giovanna Scoglio in Liverpool, England but moved to Sicily with her aristocratic Sicilian father and Irish mother at three months of age. She migrated to New York at age 14 and attended Bayside (Queens) High School, graduating in 1952. She worked various jobs as a file clerk and airline reservations taker while studying with Stella Adler and the Actors Studio. While appearing as a contestant on a television game show, a Universal Studios agent spotted her and placed the young beauty under contract in 1954. After a few starlet bit parts, Gia earned good notices for her "second lead" role in Price of Fear, The (1956), which led to even better love interest parts in Garment Jungle, The (1957) with Kerwin Mathews, Don't Go Near the Water (1957) opposite Glenn Ford (I), Two-Headed Spy, The (1958) paired with Jack Hawkins, Angry Hills, The (1959) starring Robert Mitchum, and Wernher von Braun (1960) [aka I Aim at the Stars] with Curd Jürgens. Her best known film role came as Anna, the Greek resistance fighter, in the classic all-star epic film, Guns of Navarone, The (1961). From there things began spiral downhill for Gia personally and professionally. Riding on the coattails of her ever-rising glamour and success were those deep-rooted insecurities, and she began to drink heavily as compensation. She eventually lost her contract at Universal due to her unreliability, which forced her to seek work overseas. Her marriage to actor Don Burnett burnt itself out, and, at one point, she threw herself off the Waterloo Bridge in desperation. She would have drowned in the Thames River had a passing cab driver not plucked her out of the water in time. Her alcoholic addiction led to numerous arrests, and her bouts with depression grew so severe that she was forced to undergo frequent psychiatric observations. On April 30, 1972, it all ended for her. Gia was found dead in her Hollywood Hills bedroom of an overdose of alcohol and sleeping pills, another Tinseltown statistic. It was listed as a suicide.
