A 5½ x 4 page from an autograph album signed in person by Anita Ekberg (1931 - 2015), the Swedish actress who started out as a fashion model. Ekberg entered the Miss Malmö competition in 1950 at her mother's urging. This led to the Miss Sweden contest, which she won. Despite speaking very little English, she went to the United States to compete for the 1951 Miss Universe title, and although she did not win the Miss Universe pageant, as one of six finalists she did earn a starlet's contract with Universal Studios. As a starlet at Universal, she received lessons in drama, elocution, dancing, horseback riding, and fencing, and appeared in The Mississippi Gambler (1953) with Tyrone Power, Abbott and Costello Go to Mars (1953), Take Me to Town (1953) with Ann Sheridan, and The Golden Blade (1953) with Rock Hudson and Piper Laurie. Universal dropped her after six months but the combination of Ekberg's voluptuous physique and colourful private life (such as her well-publicized romances with Hollywood's leading men like Frank Sinatra, Tyrone Power, Yul Brynner, Rod Taylor, and Errol Flynn) appealed to the gossip magazines, like Confidential and she soon became a major 1950s pin-up, appearing naked in men's magazines like Playboy. Additionally, Ekberg participated in publicity stunts. She once admitted that an incident in which her dress burst open in the lobby of London's Berkeley Hotel was prearranged with a photographer. By the mid 1950s she was gaining popularity as a movie star and her big break came in 1960 when she starred in La Dolce Vita (1960) for Federico Fellini, performing as Sylvia Rank, the unattainable "dream woman" of the character played by Marcello Mastroianni. The film features a scene of her cavorting in Rome's Trevi Fountain alongside Mastroianni, which has been called "one of cinema's most iconic scenes". Ekberg settled in Rome and continued to make movies for the next two decades.