LA MORTADELLA. Kids, as I was writing about the Italian neighborhood I lived in, I was reminded of the time I came home from work late at night and found bright lights illuminating the little store on Bedford Street near Houston Street. People told me that it was being used for a set for a movie that Sophia Loren was making, which was called Mortadella. I was also told that the plot involved a young woman bringing a large sausage to the United states. I looked for it at the time, but didn’t encounter it, probably because although it was known as “La Mortadella” in Italy, it was distributed as “Lady Liberty” in the United States. This wikipedia article says that it was distributed in 1971 and that other cast members included William Devane, Danny Devito and Susan Sarandon. The New York Times review lumped it together with what it referred to as a number of “rotten movies” that Sophia Loren had recently made.
What strikes me about the review is its comment about my neighborhood. It questioned “the grindingly bleak New York settings in which so much of the film is set.”.