During the 1960s Rita Pavone ranked among Europe’s leading teenage idols while also ranking among the scant handful of Italian pop performers who cracked the American market, notching a Top 30 placement with “Remember Me” and logging multiple guest spots on The Ed Sullivan Show. She further distinguished herself from other adolescent sensations by sustaining a durable adult career that encompassed both vocal performances and screen roles. Born in Turin, Italy, on August 23, 1945, she grew up with a father employed at a Fiat auto plant who passionately followed American entertainers such as Al Jolson, Judy Garland, and Gene Kelly; young Rita absorbed those same enthusiasms, harmonizing with his records and pursuing vocal instruction around her schoolwork and a part-time job pressing shirts. Her first public appearance came in 1959, when she impersonated Al Jolson at a children’s talent contest; by then rock & roll had reached the continent and she quickly embraced the emerging youth sounds. In 1960 she secured her initial professional booking, entertaining troops at Italian NATO installations, yet repeated efforts to obtain a recording contract or nightclub dates met with no success until the autumn of 1962. That season she entered La Festa Degli Sconosciuti (“Festival of the Unknown”), the national talent competition organized by singer and producer Teddy Reno, captured first prize, and thereby earned both a management agreement with Reno and a recording contract with RCA Italiana. Her debut single, “La Partita di Pallone” backed with “Amore Twist,” sold more than a million copies and established her as a regular on the long-running variety program Studio One. The self-titled album Rita Pavone appeared in November 1962 and yielded two further hits—“Come Te non c’è Nessuno” coupled with “Clementine Chèrie” and “Alla Mia Età” paired with “Pel di Carota”—while the lead track of the second release served as the theme for a French comedy of the same name in which she played a minor part. An EP drawn from her first LP reached Spain in 1963, became a major success there, and confirmed that country as one of her strongest territories. Her sophomore LP, Non e Facile Avere 18 Anni (also known as “It’s Not Easy to Be 18”), arrived in summer 1963, again proved highly popular, and featured the chart-topping “Cuore” (“Heart”); her eighteenth-birthday celebration that August drew extensive media coverage and was documented in a special broadcast on RAI-TV. After scoring a German-language success with “Wenn Ich Ein Junge War,” Reno and Pavone turned toward the United States, securing a domestic arrangement with RCA-Victor and cutting an English-language album in New York. The International Teenage Sensation reached American stores in May 1964, and “Remember Me” climbed to number 26 on the Billboard singles chart; the B-side “Just Once More” reached number 13 on Toronto’s CHUM-AM. Pavone made her initial appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on May 17, 1964—the first of four total visits—and also performed on the rock programs Shindig and Hullabaloo. October 1964 brought the follow-up American release Small Wonder, whose title alluded to her petite frame, though it achieved less commercial traction than its predecessor. She then returned to Italy to star in the television serial Il Giornalino di Gian Burrasca and supplied several songs for the production. Her European popularity remained undiminished: during an emergency appendectomy in September 1964 she received get-well messages from thirteen million admirers. Although her American profile waned after the 1965 album This Is Rita Pavone, she registered a British chart entry with “Curoe” in 1966 and simultaneously became a leading screen presence across Europe with Rita La Zanzara, a comedy directed by Lina Wertmuller in which she portrayed a music student enamored of her professor, who unbeknownst to her led a secret life as a rock & roll singer. Wertmuller would later gain renown for Swept Away and Seven Beauties. Over the ensuing two years “Little Rita” appeared in four additional films, yet her personal life generated controversy in 1968 when she married Teddy Reno, nineteen years her senior and already previously wed. Because Italy did not then recognize divorce, Reno was technically a bigamist under Italian law when the couple wed in Switzerland; following the legalization of divorce they renewed their vows in 1971 and have remained together ever since. Pavone reentered the Italian charts in 1970 with the Top Ten single “Zucchero,” continued to record sporadically through the 1970s and 1980s, made occasional television appearances, and split her time between Italy and Switzerland while cultivating a reputation as a seasoned and admired interpreter of song. She also resumed acting, taking roles in several motion pictures and portraying Maria in a notable stage production of Twelfth Night. In 2006 she declared her formal retirement from the entertainment industry, although her 1960s recordings continue to be reissued regularly in Europe and her first American album appeared on compact disc via Real Gone Records in 2012.
