Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ? An engaging female voice in dialogue with listeners
1974.
Divorce, austerity, historical compromise, World Cup in Germany, “Rischiatutto”, Red Brigades, Nixon’s official visit to the Soviet Union.
All these were popular topics.
But among all these, one stood out : the private (or “free”, as it was called in those days) radio stations, and among the hundreds that were born every day, the most talked about was Radio Luna in Rome, among whose programs there was one that was broadcast exclusively at night, from midnight to two o’clock.
“Voulez-vous coucher avec moi”, in which an engaging female voice conversed with the listeners, apostrophizing them with the nickname “Cicciolini”.
Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ?
She is Elena (Ilona) Anna Staller, a 23-year-old Hungarian, born in Budapest on November 26, 1951, the daughter of an Interior Ministry official and a midwife, who landed in our country after a rapid modeling career that ended with her election as Miss Hungary.
In Italy, she met Riccardo Schicchi, one of the top managers of the red light industry, who helped to create her character and with whom she hosted the Radio Luna show, which led to her resounding success and absolute popularity.
Ilona also began a fruitful cycle of “passages” on television : during one of them, the host Maurizio Costanzo gave her the nickname she gave to her fans, making her forever “Cicciolina”.
In another program, “C’era due volte”, in 1978, she appeared on television bare-breasted, to the indignation of the well-meaning and the delight of her admirers.
At the same time she began to make films, all of them erotic, of which Alberto Lattuada’s Cuore di cane (in which she uses “Elena Mercury”, one of her many alter egos, as her stage name) and Miklós Jancsó’s Vizi privati, pubbliche virtù, both from 1975, are worthy of mention.
Before and after these films, an uncountable number of hard movies, some of which she shot with the other famous star of the Schicchi stable, Moana Pozzi.
In 1979 she recorded her first album, “Ilona Staller”, which includes a song signed by Ennio Morricone, “Cavallina Cavallo“.
In the same year, Cicciolina even decided to enter politics, running for office with the “List of the Sun”, albeit with little success.
A few years later, after joining the Radical Party in 1985, she was elected to the Chamber of Deputies for the 10th Legislature, becoming the party’s second most popular candidate with about 20,000 votes, behind Marco Pannella.
This was an apotheosis of scandal and notoriety for Cicciolina.
Unfortunately, the long period of affirmations was followed by numerous failures, both political (the “Love Party”, founded together with Moana Pozzi, would not even reach a quorum, leading to its virtual disappearance from the Italian political scene) and personal.
At the end of the eighties, in fact, after separating from her Pygmalion Riccardo Schicchi, she married the American Jeff Koons in 1991, a marriage that would last only until the birth of her son Ludwig.
The separation from her husband, marked by insults and violence, was followed by years of interminable legal battles to obtain custody of her son, which was finally granted to her in 1998.
In the 2000s, Staller resumed her professional (mainly managerial) and political activities, running for various offices in Hungary and Italy, but with little luck, both in life and work.
