– June 24, 1988 in Milan) was an Italian actress who had a relationship with the playwright Luigi Pirandello

Luigi Pirandello

Luigi Pirandello was an Italian dramatist, novelist, and short story writer awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1934, for his "bold and brilliant renovation of the drama and the stage." Pirandello's works include novels, hundreds of short stories, and about 40 plays, some of which are written...

, a Nobel Prize

Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...

 winner.

She was the sister of another actress, Cele Abba

Cele Abba

Cele Abba was an Italian actress, sister of actress Marta Abba. She was born in Milan, Italy.-References:...

. After their meeting in 1923 and until his death in 1936, Marta Abba was the stimulus to Pirandello's creativity. She was an aspiring young 25-year-old actress when she met the 58-year-old playwright, whose wife had been confined to a mental asylum in 1919. From their correspondence it comes out how she not only inspired him but she also gave the writer confidence in his work. Their relationship was complex but contributed much to the Italian theatre.

Pirandello was obsessive in pursuit of what could be presumed to have remained an unconsummated affair. Marta was the true great actress for whom he had been waiting after his earlier bitter disappointment with Eleonora Duse

Eleonora Duse

-Life and career:Duse was born in Vigevano, Lombardy, and began acting as a child. Both her father and her grandfather were actors, and she joined the troupe at age four. Due to poverty, she initially worked continually, traveling from city to city with whichever troupe her family was currently...

. Luigi Pirandello's and Marta Abba's letters to each other have been translated into English. Marta Abba and Pirandello teamed up in 1925, and she appeared in many of his productions at the Rome Arts Theater. In 1930, Abba founded her own theatrical company and specialized in staging the works of Pirandello and other European playwrights like George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...

, Gabriele d'Annunzio

Gabriele D'Annunzio

Gabriele D'Annunzio or d'Annunzio was an Italian poet, journalist, novelist, and dramatist...

 and Carlo Goldoni

Carlo Goldoni

Carlo Osvaldo Goldoni was an Italian playwright and librettist from the Republic of Venice. His works include some of Italy's most famous and best-loved plays. Audiences have admired the plays of Goldoni for their ingenious mix of wit and honesty...

 under the direction of prestigious directors like Max Reinhardt

Max Reinhardt

----Max Reinhardt was an Austrian theater and film director and actor.-Biography:...

 and Guido Salvini

Guido Salvini

Guido Salvini is an Italian judge, based in Milan. He issued European arrest warrants in 2005 against approximatively 20 CIA agents accused of having taken part in the abduction of Abu Omar, the Egyptian cleric in Milan in 2003. The case is known in Italy as the Imam Rapito affair...

.

Her Broadway theatre

Broadway theatre

Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

 debut was in the play Tovarich at the Plymouth Theatre, (10/15/1936 - circa. 8/1937) in the role of Grand Duchess Tatiana Petrovna. Marta Abba's screen début in Broadway was in Loyalty of Love, in 1937. In January 1938 she married a wealthy Cleveland polo player,[ Severance Allen Millikin] and settled down in Cleveland, Ohio

Ohio

Ohio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...

 until 1952, when she divorced and returned to Italy. The last years of her life she suffered from paresis

Paresis

Paresis is a condition typified by partial loss of voluntary movement or by impaired movement. When used without qualifiers, it usually refers to the limbs, but it also can be used to describe the muscles of the eyes , the stomach , and also the vocal cords...

 and had to use a wheelchair. She died, at 87, from a cerebral hemorrhage.

She published her autobiography in Italian, La mia vita di attrice.

Selected filmography

• Il caso Haller, directed by Alessandro Blasetti
  Alessandro Blasetti
  Alessandro Blasetti was an Italian film director who influenced Italian neorealism with the film Quattro passi fra le nuvole...
  
   (1933)
• Teresa Confalonieri, directed by Guido Brignone
  Guido Brignone
  Guido Brignone was an Italian film director. He was the father of actress Lilla Brignone.Brignone was born in Milan, Italy...
  
   (1934)

Selected plays

Some of the plays written by Luigi Pirandello in which Marta Abba acted:

• The New Colony (La Nuova Colonia)
• As You Desire Me (Come tu mi vuoi)
• Finding Oneself (Trovarsi)
• The Wives' Friend (L'Amica delle Moglie)
• Diana and Tuda (Diana e La Tuda)
• You Don't Know How (Non Si Sa Come)

External links

Review of Marta Abba's film debut http://movies2.nytimes.com/mem/movies/review.html?res=9400E0DE123AE23ABC4953DFB566838C629EDE