Norma Bengell

Bengel was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She was the daughter of a German piano tuner and a rich Brazilian young woman from the South Zone of Rio de Janeiro. Her mother was disinherited by her father because her parents did not approve of living with a man without being married, and Bengel lived in humble conditions in Copacabana. At the age of 10, her parents separated, and because her mother could not support her financially, Bengel lived with her father and paternal grandparents in Germany. Being a rebellious young woman, she was interned in a college of nuns, and then expelled, and she abandoned her studies, returning to live in Brazil with her mother. After a difficult time, she began working in the early 1950s, first as a model and then as the star of the magazine theater, where she developed her singing career.

Bengell was active in the film industry from 1959. She appeared in numerous international productions, including an extended period during the mid-1960s co-starring in Italian productions, in which she was usually cast as the protagonist's romantic interest. She is possibly best known for starring with Alberto Sordi in Alberto Lattuada's Mafioso (1962) and in Sergio Corbucci's The Hellbenders (1967). She had a major role as a prostitute in Anselmo Duarte's Keeper of Promises (1962), a Brazilian drama that was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1963 and won the Golden Palm at Cannes Film Festival in 1962. Earlier that same year, she caused major controversy after appearing nude in a scene of the Ruy Guerra film Os Cafajestes.[2]

In 1987, she directed her first film, Eternamente Pagu, a biography of Patrícia Galvão. In 1996, she directed an adaptation of José de Alencar's novel The Guarani, also titled The Guarani.

She died from lung cancer aged 78 in Rio de Janeiro on 9 October 2013.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Norma Bengell.

• Norma Bengell on IMDb