Toward the end of William Wyler's Roman Holiday, the runaway Princess Ann (Audrey Hepburn) offers to cook for her “holiday” companion, American reporter Joe Bradley (Gregory Peck). He informs her that he has no kitchen, and so, he always eats out. She is intrigued and asks if he likes that. He responds, “Life isn't always what one likes.” This conflict between necessity and enjoyment is a major theme of Wyler's film and raises the romantic comedy to a higher echelon of meaning than most instances of the genre.

The intimate relationship between international relations—or, if you prefer, high politics—and popular culture has been extensively researched and commented on. This was certainly the case for the era of the Cold War, when two world powers were opposing each other and made use of cultural signifiers, inter alia, to convince audiences of the superiority of “their” world view. Less researched is the period immediately after World War II, when Europe was licking its war wounds and the first seeds of the ensuing Cold War were planted.

In the early years of the Cold War—also called the “Age of Anxiety” after W. H. Auden's 1948 dramatic poem—US President Harry Truman and his successor Dwight Eisenhower worried a lot. They were convinced that if a democratic and pro-Western Italy was lost, the consequences for NATO, European integration, and the evolution of the Cold War in Europe could be immense. The presidential worries were not entirely unjustified. In the aftermath of World War II, American presence in Italy in the military, political, and economic field was massive, and not universally endorsed across the local political spectrum. Hence, the US government officially recognized psychological activities—alongside military, economics, and diplomacy—as one of the basic means of influencing foreign affairs. In the 1951–2 local elections in Italy, center parties suffered a general loss of popular vote and, following national elections in June 1953, the CIA judged the political situation still as “highly unstable.”