Loretta Goggi (; born 29 September 1950) is an Italian singer, actress, and television presenter. Goggi's records have sometimes entered the Italian pop charts. She was the first runner-up at the 1981 Sanremo Festival with the song "Maledetta primavera", her most famous pop hit.
She co-founded the disco act Hermanas Goggi with her sister Daniela Goggi, who is also an artist. The duo found success in the Latin markets toward the end of the 1970s.
In 1973 she co-hosted a TV show in England with Sammy Davis Jr and performed with Alighiero Noschese on the Italian television program Formula Due.
In 2006 the American rapper T.I. sampled the Goggi's song "Molla tutto" for his song "Get It", contained in the album King, included in the soundtrack of the film Step Up.
Throughout her career Goggi achieved several accomplishments within the Italian television industry, including setting records. Among her notable contributions was her repertoire of impersonations of prominent figures, encompassing both men and women. While actresses like Isabella Biagini had already presented satirical impersonations on television, Goggi is regarded as the pioneer of female impersonation on Italian television. Her imitations were notable for their inclusion of satirical elements in the texts, thereby elevating the quality of her performances beyond mere parody.
In 1979 she became the first woman to host a television quiz in Italy for Fantastico, a well-known Italian Saturday night show. Goggi was also the host of the 1986 Sanremo Festival.
Goggi has won four Telegattos in four different categories: best theme song, best quiz, best music transmission and best female personality of the year.
She considers herself Catholic.
Life and career
Early life Born in Rome, Italy, to Giulio and Costanza Goggi, originally from Circello, she has two sisters: Liliana Goggi (1943) and Daniela Goggi (who eventually followed her into the show business). From a very young age Loretta Goggi studied singing and music. In 1959 she was discovered by Silvio Gigli, which led her to take part in the radio competition, Dino Verde Disco Magico, presented by Corrado with an orchestra conducted by Gianni Ferrio. Loretta won the competition together with Nilla Pizzi.
The sixties In 1962 she made her debut as a child actress in the RAI television prose Sotto processo with the direction of Anton Giulio Majano, broadcast on the Secondo programma. In 1963 at the age of 12 she recorded her first song Se la cercherai, written by Nico Fidenco, with her first name Loretta, for the soundtrack of the French film Le Sang à la tête directed by Gilles Grangier.
Subsequently, Loretta was in the cast of many other famous Rai television dramas, in which she interpreted characters of fragile and needy girls (many times paired with another child actor, Roberto Chevalier, who later became a well-known voice actor) including Robinson non-deve morire (1963) by Vittorio Brignole, Demetrio Pianelli (1963) by Sandro Bolchi, I miserabili (1964), also by Bolchi in which she plays the role of Cosette as a child, Una tragedia americana (1962), Delitto e castigo (1963 ) and La cittadella (1964), all three directed by Anton Giulio Majano, Vita di Dante (1965) by Vittorio Cottafavi, in which she plays Beatrice, Questa sera parla Mark Twain and Scaramouche, with Domenico Modugno, both broadcast in 1965 and directed by Daniele D'Anza and in an episode of Le indagini del Commissario Maigret, directed by Mario Landi (1966). In these dramas Loretta has the opportunity to support great Italian actors such as Lilla Brignone, Gino Cervi, Andreina Pagnani, Paolo Stoppa, Rina Morelli, Giorgio Albertazzi and many others. In 1964, under the direction of Beppe Recchia, she was also in the cast of the children's drama C'era una volta la fiaba with Arturo Testa and Santo Versace; of the same year is also Le avventure della squadra di stoppa directed by Alda Grimaldi, another television drama aimed at children
Starting in 1965, having already participated in many television productions, she also dedicated herself to dubbing: she is the Italian voice of Tweety in the Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies (flanked by Gigi Proietti, who dubbed Sylvester the Cat), and famous actresses such as Katharine Ross, Kim Darby, Mita Medici, Agostina Belli, Ornella Muti and Silvia Dionisio; in the same period she deepend her studies in diction, piano and singing.
During the same period she also began working in the cinema (with small roles) and in the theater, where she played various shows by Molière, William Shakespeare and Luigi Pirandello.
In 1966 she participated in the Castrocaro Music Festival with the songs Ballando guancia a guancia and So cosa vuoi da me, which are still unpublished.
In 1968 she ventured for the first time with an adult role, taking part as the female protagonist of the play La freccia nera also directed by Anton Giulio Majano and based on the novel of the same name by Robert Louis Stevenson, in which she is flanked by Aldo Reggiani, Arnoldo Foà and Adalberto Maria Merli; the drama was successful (with peaks of 20 million viewers), and Loretta reached great fame.
In the meantime, she graduated from the International Linguistic High School in Rome.
She also played many photo novels in which she is flanked by Massimo Ranieri, Christian, Aldo Reggiani (formerly her partner in The Black Arrow) and Ben Elkland.
In 1968 she made her debut as a TV host with the television special Incontro con Lucio Battisti, followed by Il divo Claudio, Notturno di primavera, as well as Radio for schools and she is also a disc jockey on Vatican Radio, she also lends her voice also for some religious audio stories of the Edizioni Paoline. She also returned to singing, publishing several singles with the Durium Records record label, including Cibù Cibà written by Paolo Limiti.
The seventies In 1970 she began to reveal her skills as an imitator in the TV show Jolly, presented by the Quartetto Cetra. In the summer of the same year Loretta led the show Estate insieme with Renzo Arbore, promoting emerging bands and solo singers, performing with her sister Daniela in the Boomerang Dance.
In 1971 she starred in three television dramas: E le stelle stanno a guardare, always directed by Anton Giulio Majano, in which is accompanied by Giancarlo Giannini, the episode Passi sulla neve of the series Racconti italiani del 900 for the direction of Giuseppe Fina and La sera della partita, directed by Gianni Baldi on the Secondo Programma.
She collaborated with Pippo Baudo in the radio program Caccia alla voce, replacing actor Franco Rosi, beginning to perform as an impersonator. After that, the conductor also included her with in the television variety show La freccia d'oro.
In the summer of 1971 she participated in the musical event Un disco per l'estate, with the song Io sto vivendo senza te and in November of the same year she participated in the World Popular Song Festival in Tokyo, reaching the semi-final. In the spring of 1972 she participated alongside Franco Franchi in the variety Teatro 11, a sort of parody of another Italian TV show Teatro 10, and starred in L'ombra del delitto, a television script for Swiss Italian-speaking television.
Positively impressed by the work experience with her on the radio and with La freccia d'oro, Pippo Baudo chose Goggi to support him in the 1972–73 edition of the Canzonissima variety show: on this occasion Loretta her talent revealed an entertainer, especially thanks to her ability to imitate women of show business like Mina, Sophia Loren, Nada, Gina Lollobrigida, Liza Minnelli and many others and for her it is the definitive consecration as a showgirl. Goggi also records the opening theme of the transmission, Vieni via con me (Taratapunzi-e) (written by Marcello Marchesi, Dino Verde, Enrico Simonetti and Pippo Baudo), winning her first gold record and always inside the program, launches other singles like Mani mani and Yeah!. All the songs are included on her first album Vieni via con me.
In the early months of 1973 she was hired in England for a TV show in which she joined Sammy Davis Jr.
In the autumn of the same year she returned to Italy and, together with the imitator Alighiero Noschese, was in the Saturday night variety Formula due, in which the couple performed a series of imitations and parodies and in which Loretta sang the theme song initial Molla tutto and promoted her second album, entitled Formula 2; this variety was the most popular Italian television program of 1973, with an average of 26 million viewers and it was also one of the first color TV shows experimentally recorded by Rai.
In 1974 Loretta realized her first live solo show at Bussola, Sergio Bernardini's Versilia club and in the same year published four singles produced by her manager Enrico Polito and Totò Savio, the latter then becoming Loretta's musical author until 1985.
In 1976 Goggi is still on Rai with Dal primo momento che ho ti visto, a curious mix of musical drama and television variety broadcast by Rete 1 (today's Rai 1), of which she is the protagonist together with Massimo Ranieri; in the program Loretta interprets the songs Notte matta, Dirtelo, non-dirtelo and Ma chi sei? (the latter Italian cover of the disco-music song Lady Bump by Penny McLean), which all enter hit-parade, enjoying great success.
Immediately after the end of the program, Goggi began a long summer tour.
In 1977 the new single, , was distributed in Italy, Greece, Germany, Spain and the United States. The B side contains the song Monsieur voulez-vous dançer?, a song from the disco-music vein, much in vogue at that time.
Once the contract with the producer and manager Polito expired, Loretta Goggi started her own business with her sister Daniela for an artistic duo. The couple therefore travels around Italy with the Go & Go show and a disco-music single, Domani, which was very successful.
In 1978, the Goggi sisters together with Pippo Franco, Oreste Lionello and the whole Bagaglino company, directed by Antonello Falqui, made the television variety Il ribaltone broadcast on Rai's Network 1, in which they sing the final theme Voglia. The program wins the Rosa d'Argento prize at the Montreux Festival in Switzerland as the best European television broadcast of the year.
Later the couple Goggi resumed the tour also in the rest of Europe. In Spain they publishes the album Estoy bailando cantado en español (never released in Italy) and the homonymous single, Spanish version of the song Sto ballando, previously recorded by Daniela alone (although sometimes the two sisters will perform together also in the version in the Italian version), which ends at the top of the Iberian hit parade and in those of many other Spanish-speaking countries.
In the autumn of the same year, Loretta returned to work as a soloist on television, conducting on Rai 1 the first edition of the Saturday night variety Fantastico, combined with the Italian Lottery, together with Beppe Grillo and the then newcomer Heather Parisi, directed by Enzo Trapani. The program was very successful, achieving an average of 26 million viewers; here she launched one of his most well-known but also vocally demanding songs: L'aria del sabato sera, which was used as the closing theme of the transmission, which brought Goggi back to the top of the Italian musical hit-parade, in which she was simultaneously present also with Cicciottella, a song destined for children, written for her by Bruno Lauzi and Pippo Caruso, used as the theme song for the Sunday variety Fantastico bis, a spin-off of the program she conducted, presented by Pippo Baudo.
In July 1979 she appeared on the cover of the Italian issue of Playboy, photographed by Roberto Rocchi.
In December of the same year she also appeared on the cover of Radiocorriere TV as godmother of the newborn Rai 3.