Rita Zucca

Early life

Zucca's father, Louis, owned a very successful restaurant in New York's Midtown district in the 1930s and 1940s, called Zucca's Italian Garden. Located at 116-118-120 West 49th Street, the restaurant had its own promotional postcards which displayed a distinctly refined setting. Zucca spent her teenage years in a convent school in Florence and, as a young woman, had worked in the family business.

She returned to Italy in 1938, working as a typist and renouncing her American citizenship three years later to save her family's property from expropriation by Mussolini's government.

Axis Sally

As the Allied invasion of Italy progressed, the Fascist government of Benito Mussolini decided to try and emulate the German radio’s Axis Sally broadcasts of Mildred Gillars. In the summer of 1943, the Italian national radio network in Rome hired the 30-year-old Zucca with this aim in mind, in spite of her losing a typing job in 1942 for copying an anti-Fascist pamphlet.

Zucca was teamed with German broadcaster Charles Goedel in the program 'Jerry's Front Calling'. Much to Gillars' chagrin, Zucca was also referred to as Axis Sally. Zucca's trademark sign-off was "a sweet kiss from Sally", and she was often mistaken for Gillars.

According to one account, Zucca signed onto each show by uttering "Hello Suckers!" and her signature tune was "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea".

Her broadcasts sometimes used intelligence provided by the German embassy in Rome in an attempt to confuse Allied troops. On July 8, 1943, the night before the invasion of Sicily. Zucca's broadcast told "the wonderful boys of the 504th Parachute Regiment" that "Col. Willis Mitchell's playboys the 61st Troop Carrier Group are going to carry you to certain death. We know where and when you are jumping and you will be wiped out."

As the Allied armies advanced north into Rome, Zucca retreated north with the Germans in 1944 and resumed broadcasting from Milan. There, in September 1944, the broadcast crew of Jerry's Front was attached to a German military propaganda unit called the Liberty Station. By then Zucca was pregnant. Her son was born on December 15, 1944. She returned to the microphone 40 days later and continued until her final broadcast on April 25, 1945.

Arrest

As the Axis army finally collapsed, Zucca went by train to her uncle’s home in Turin, where she took refuge until her identification and arrest on June 5, 1945.

A correspondent from the American military magazine Stars and Stripes said that Zucca's well-known crossed-eye condition did nothing to detract from her attractiveness: "True, her left eye is inclined to wander — but that cooey, sexy voice really has something to back it up."

Newspapers in America were far more scathing. "Soft-Voiced 'Sally from Berlin' Found to Be Ugly Ex–N.Y. Girl" was a typical headline, with descriptions of the young mother as "[as] ugly and unattractive in person as her voice was appealing." Another journalist called her "cross-eyed, bow-legged and sallow-skinned."

Trial

All attempts by the American government to prosecute Zucca for treason broke down when it became clear that she had renounced her American citizenship before she started broadcasting. The FBI's J. Edgar Hoover wrote to the Justice Department: "In view of the fact that she has lost her American citizenship, no efforts are being made at the present time to develop a treason case against her."

Zucca was then tried by an Italian military tribunal on charges of collaboration. On March 29, 1946 she was sentenced to 4½ years in prison, but was released after 9 months. She was barred from returning to the United States after the Italian government declared a general amnesty for collaborators in 1946.

Later life

Zucca lived in relative obscurity in Italy until her death in 1998.