George Sodder saw a picture of a young girl in a magazine that he believed was Betty

[Shadow205]

http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/images/michaelwalford/2007/08/21/bellissima_7.jpg

Is this the pic? The girl on the far right looks like Betty I think.

Here is the picture enlarged

 

[catsy101]

On the website it said 1947 but I couldn't find any more info about it. IE - Who took it or where it was taken. I looked under GOOGLE for photo 1947 children

 

[NewMom2003]

That is an amazing find catsy. I hope this is the pic.

 

[catsy101]

Okay guys, what do you think? Can someone please contact granddaughter? We need her mom to look at this photo. She actually saw it and would probably know if this is the right one or not.

 

[missmuffit]

http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/images/michaelwalford/2007/08/21/bellissima_7.jpg

Is this the pic? The girl on the far right looks like Betty I think.

I went to the link and then searched through the blog for Michael Walford who is the one who posted the picture. I am pretty sure that the picture of the little girls at ballet class is from the 1951 Italian film titled Bellissima.

Here is the link of where the blogger talks about the movie, director, and the political nature of the film. Once you pull up the link you will need to scroll down to the blog that is dated 21 August 2007. http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/michaelwalford/?num=10&start=150

Hope this helps.

MM ~

 

[missmuffit]

Here is another link to a review of the movie: http://www.iicnewdelhi.esteri.it/IIC_NewDelhi/webform/SchedaEvento.aspx?id=30

The little girl who plays the wanna be dancer is Tina Apicella. The picture is more of a close up. I got to thinking after I made the first post that if little Betty was indeed taken and then shipped back to Italy this "could" be her however I think that that theory is way, way out in left field. Especially since the letter that Mr. Sodder sent to the school in NYC was in 1947 and the film was most likely filmed closer to its release date which was 1951 and the film was filmed in Italy.

I hate to sound pessimistic but I honestly feel that the little girl is this Italian actress named Tina Apicella and is not little Betty Sodder.

MM ~

 

[Kiki]

If she is not Betty Sodder the resemblance is uncanny. The little girl certainly has Betty's eyes. I checked the internet movie database. If someone has IMDB Pro they may be able to contect Tina Apicella and ask her. I looked at Bellissima's entry in Wikipedia and I didn't see a resemblance between the girl on the poster and Betty Sodder.

 

[catsy101]

That is really odd. Granddaughter is having her mother look at the photo anyway. But damn. When I found that photo it didn't say anything about being from a movie. It was just a photo posted on google saying 1947 underneath it. Weird. Well if this is from a movie and not from a magazine or someone's old set of photos I am going to have to go straight back to the drawing board. I still say it is worth having Granddaughter's mom look at it. Is it at all possible that George saw this photo and believed it was his daughter? Could the photo have been in a magazine about the movie, but have had the wrong caption underneath it? Or something of that nature?

 

[catsy101]

Okay photo after photo of Tina looks nothing like the girl

 

[catsy101]

Let me show you

 

[catsy101]

Can't be the same child the girl in the pigtails looks nothing Like the real Betty photo or the photo of the ballerina girl. Look at them closely.

 

[catsy101]

1. Tina looks much younger than the girl in the ballet getup
2. Tina has thinner eyebrows than the girl in the ballet getup
3. Tina's eyes don't look the same as ballet girl
4. Tina's nose is not the same either
5. Tina does not have a widow's peak which in both Betty and the ballet girl it appears they do
6. Tina is scrawnier smaller and does not have as much substance, (in other words she is much thinner) than both ballet girl and Betty
7. The hair, although the same color for ballet girl and Betty and Tina, looks to be straight as a pin for Tina, whereas both Betty and Ballet photo show a child that has some waviness to her hair

This does not by any means prove that this is betty

It just makes me believe that ballet girl and Tina are NOT the same person

 

[catsy101]

Hold on the photo is not of Tina it's of another little girl playing in the same movie I think We need to find out her name ESPECIALLY if granddaughter's mother looks at it and identifies this child as betty

 

[missmuffit]

That is really odd. Granddaughter is having her mother look at the photo anyway. But damn. When I found that photo it didn't say anything about being from a movie. It was just a photo posted on google saying 1947 underneath it. Weird. Well if this is from a movie and not from a magazine or someone's old set of photos I am going to have to go straight back to the drawing board. I still say it is worth having Granddaughter's mom look at it. Is it at all possible that George saw this photo and believed it was his daughter? Could the photo have been in a magazine about the movie, but have had the wrong caption underneath it? Or something of that nature?

Catsy, do you still have the link for the website? The reason why I ask is that the link that pulled the picture is to a blog. The actual blog is from some town in England and that is where I got the name Michael Walford from. He is the one who posted the picture from the movie because he was doing a review of the actual movie. The only reason why I know this is I looked up the blogger thinking he was the actual photographer who took the picture and was wondering if there was anyway in which to contact him about the specifics of the photo. It is always possible that the picture used was not from the movie but when I googled the movie that still shot came up. I even found some Italian site (not sure where it is I was just clicking on links) that I think was a review with the same picture. I am assuming it was a review but it was in Italian and I do not speak or read Italian.

I guess that my second post was kind of vague. I just meant that there could still be a chance (a very long one) that the girl in the photo is little Betty IF this is indeed a still shot from the movie. I just can not see someone kidnapping Betty, then sending her to Italy, and then having her play a part in a movie. But like I said I am looking at the picture as if it is the movie picture and not the one that Mr. Sodder saw in Look magazine.

I really hope all of that made sense.

MM ~

 

[catsy101]

Well all I can think is that if she was sent to Italy to be with family, they probably just would have treated her like any other kid. If she was sent for ballet lessons, perhaps the entire ballet class was asked to do the movie. I dunno. It IS a very long shot, but geeze, she looks a LOT like the children, she looks a LOT like Betty, and the two photos side by side look really close. I just dunno it's such a weird case and I know the photo of the supposed Betty has to be out there somewhere it couldn't have just been destroyed and every copy gone. And it is soooooooooooo weird that it wasn't in the magazine that George said it was in. I am beginning to wonder something else too... Hold on let me check on my soup than I will post a scenario.

 

[catsy101]

So we know that there were five children who went missing. Their ages ranged from 14 all the way down to 5. Would everyone on here agree that if someone tried to take them from the home there would have been some sort of commotion? I think there would have been. I talked to my grandma and she said that a boy was 14 was almost considered a man at the time, and she said the oldest would have fought even if there was a gun and smaller siblings involved. Back than a boy of that age would not have just gone quietly. She also said the smaller siblings would have been harder to control. The 5 year old would not go quietly even if she saw a gun because she wouldn't completely understand, and the kids would have been screaming and crying and making all kinds of noise. Grandma said that the oldest daughter on the couch would have probably heard the commotion and awakened. But there was no commotion. I also asked her about the woman who was going around stealing children to sell on the black market. And grandma told me that it would be very difficult for a woman to take on 5 children of those ages. Plus, she said, the older children, Maurice and Martha Lee would have run away from their new homes the first chance they got to get back home. Which makes sense.

 

[catsy101]

So what does this leave us? With two possibilities, the children left on their own, potentially starting the fire to make it look as though they died in the fire or for some other unknown reason, or it was just bad luck, that the same night the children run off the house catches fire, or that the children did die in the fire and by some freak of nature nothing is left to be found. My grandma told me, and she was born in 1931, that she had seen fires in her youth. If someone died in a burning building she told me there WAS the smell of burning bodies, even in situations where it was only one person who burned up and they lived in a big house. She has also stated that the fire department never would have tried to spare the families and hide the body, that they were actually MORE blunt than today when it came to identifying bodies. She also told me that she has never in all her years of living heard of a fire where something wasn't left. Bone fragments, teeth, SOMETHING. So she told me she didn't buy that not for one bit.

 

[Granddaughter]

Mom looked at the photo, and it is not the one that Mom recalls. She remembers the photo being of a few students at a barre, and the little girl had the same posture as Betty and appeared very timid. My first thought when I saw the photo that Catsy found is that the little girl could not be part of our family if she had that much poise! None of us are Type A personalities. Mom tells me that Betty was the most shy of the children.

 

[Angels_Not_Forgotten]

Ok, maybe im confused i have read all these threads in the last 2 days, but wasnt it said that in the detective magazine it was said the pic was of 2 new students in a ballett class? Is there anyway to narrow th search for the picture in Look magazine that way, by saying looking for 2 girls in a dance class?

 

[Teresa Larson]

Look magazine was already searched if you read further back in the posts. The picture wasn't ever found We even wondered if it was a mistake and it was another magazine. The magazine for that supposed date was searched and it didn't contain the picture of the Sodder girl.