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Brenda Mee by Thurston Hopkins – a glimpse into another world

Brenda Mee by Thurston Hopkins
1953. Brenda Mee. Photo by Thurston Hopkins. Read more.

Whoever’s heard of Brenda Mee? I hadn’t until I came across this image, which gave me waves of nostalgia. It’s such a time-capsule image – her demure look, the bowler-hatted, be-suited pedestrian, the vintage car. And she turns out to be Miss Great Britain 1953.

It’s a classic case of what, for me, makes collecting photos so compelling. You see an image and want to find out the story behind it. Before long, you’re pursuing all sorts of lines of inquiry and making all sorts of discoveries. In this case, the lady herself, the times in which she lived, the news media in which the photo appeared, the guy who snapped the photo, and the world of beauty contests and the holiday camps, which hosted many of them.

The subject – Brenda Mee

The image is published in Picture Post to illustrate an article about The Beauty Contest Business. But for the scoop on Brenda Mee, look no further than the Sunday 30 August 1953 edition of London’s Weekly Dispatch:

A LOVELY girl stepped off the train at Euston Station one day last week. In her handbag was a cheque for £1,000. In her luggage was a magnificent silver bowl. In her eyes was the sparkle and delight of a girl who had just won the Sunday Dispatch-Morecambe National Bathing Beauty Contest. Brenda Mee, a 20-year-old blonde who was born at Derby but lives at South Kensington, is a photographers’ model and mannequin. She was chosen as the 1953 winner from among 40 finalists from all over Britain at Morecambe last week.

“What am I going to do with the money?” said Brenda. “First I shall go on a mild shopping spree and buy some clothes. Then I shall bank the rest of the money and think about it.”

Television newsreel as well as Movietone, Gaumont-British, Universal, Pathé, and Paramount news reels recorded her success at Morecambe. “I hope my newsreel and television showing is good,” says Brenda. “I would like to have a film test. It is one of my ambitions to get into films.” … In October Brenda will be “Miss Great Britain” in the “Miss World” contest in London.

1948. Fashion shot at the Victoria & Albert Museum, close to Brenda Mee’s flat. Photo by John Deakin. Read more.

The Miss World title and film-star ambition will prove a step too far. Still, Brenda Mee is currently sharing a cosy little basement flat in Drayton Gardens, South Kensington with Marlene Dee, 1951’s Miss Great Britain. How many hopeful Romeos must be beating their way that front door?

Our Brenda has come a long way in a short time. She’s first mentioned in the Saturday 15 April 1950 edition of the Derby Daily Telegraph, which announces that she’s just won the Derby finals of the nationwide contest to find Britain’s “Neptune’s Daughter.” The pageant is named after the Esther Williams film of the same name that’s just been released in the UK:

Sponsored by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Ltd., and the Associated British Cinemas, Ltd., in conjunction with a firm of American soft-drink manufacturers, the prizes for the winner of the national contest include a two-week trip to Hollywood, with air transport, perfume, wardrobe and even luggage cases provided free of charge.

The article also reveals (can you believe it?) that she’s living with her parents at 11 Swinburne Street, Derby, a modest Victorian semi. During 1951 she gains more experience but limited success as a beauty contestant before making her breakthrough in 1952.

1953 will prove to be her glory year though she will continue as a beauty contestant and model for a while longer. She will even appear as a lovely on a TV quiz show. Then she disappears from view, except for a brief mention in the Thursday, 5 June 1958 edition of the Birmingham Daily Post, where we learn that she “has brought with her on a visit to England, from her home in Melbourne, her three-month-old son Lloyd Anthony, who will be christened in August at Derby, where Miss Mee formerly lived.” Her husband is Mr. Ludwig Berger, an Australian company director. And that’s that.

The times

So, what’s going on around Brenda Mee? Inspired by 1951’s Festival of Britain, the country is gradually rebuilding after the bombing raids, privations and misery heaped on it by World War II. Still, London is a very different city from now. There are gaping holes where bombs fell, shop windows are dark at night, luxury goods are in short supply, and traffic is a thing of the future. It’s a world that’s buttoned up literally and metaphorically. Except, that is, for the likes of Francis Bacon, Augustus John and John Deakin who frequent bohemian Soho’s notorious Colony Club.

1951. Picture Post prepares the nation for the Festival of Britain.

This year, 1953, the big event in London and the UK is the coronation of Elizabeth II at Westminster Abbey. Also in the news are Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, who become the first men to reach the summit of Mount Everest. And Ian Fleming publishes his first James Bond novel, Casino Royale. For the proverbial man on the Clapham omnibus, some of the most welcome news may be that the rationing of sugar and sweets are coming to an end (food rationing won’t end completely until next year) and the emergence of the pneumatic Sabrina.

The news media and photojournalism

Although 1953 is the year that the House of Lords votes in favour of commercial television, only about one in three households have a TV and there’s only the one TV channel. Forget daytime TV – that’s decades away (27 October 1986 to be precise). Children’s programmes begin late afternoon followed by “Toddler’s Truce,” a TV blackout from 18:00 to 19:00 so that parents can put their children to bed before prime-time television kicks in. It’s a classic case of Auntie’s (as the BBC is affectionately known) paternalism!

So the main sources of news are newspapers, magazines, radio (wireless in the lingo of the day) and newsreels. Newsreels are short documentary films, containing both news stories and items of topical interest. They are shown in cinemas before the film the audience has come to see. And in the fifties, people do flock to the cinema.

The leading British news magazine is Picture Post (LIFE magazine is its US equivalent). As well as providing insights into the big social and political issues of the time, it covers many aspects of day-to-day life – from Life in the Gorbals to The Beauty Contest Business.

At the peak of its popularity in the 1940s, Picture Post is read by almost half the UK population, making it the window on the world for “the man on the street.” But a combination of the left-leaning views of its editors and the growth of TV ownership will bring about the magazine’s decline and, in 1957, its ultimate demise.

One of the things that’s remarkable about Picture Post is its pioneering approach to photojournalism. It pairs its writers and photographers and sends them out to work together as colleagues rather than as competitors. The result more often than not is a combination of words and pictures that creates compelling, immersive stories. The contributing photographers include Bill Brandt, Bert Hardy and Thurston Hopkins. They are in certain respects the British equivalents of the French humanist photographers who roamed Paris after World War II.

The Cats of London. Photos by Thurston Hopkins published in the 24 February 1951 edition of Picture Post.

According to David Mitchell, writing in The Guardian:

Stefan Lorant, first editor of Picture Post and pioneer of photo-journalism, had an unusual interviewing technique: “A photographer would come to me and I would say, ‘Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’. If he did not know of him, I would realise he had no intellectual background. If he was ignorant of Shakespeare or Mahler – out! Never mind what his pictures were like.” Thurston Hopkins would have passed such a cultural inquisition with flying colours.

The photographer

Thurston Hopkins is born in 1913 and grows up in Sussex, the son of middle-class parents (his father is a prolific author and enthusiastic ghost hunter). On leaving school he heads for Brighton College of Art to study graphic art. During his time there, he teaches himself photography.

This turns out to be a smart move because the career he envisaged – as a commercial illustrator – fails to take off. During the 1930s newspapers and magazines are switching from illustration to photography, and Thurston follows suit, joining the PhotoPress Agency.

After a stint in the RAF Photographic Unit during World War II, he takes a break, hitchhiking around Europe with his camera. On his return to England, he joins Camera Press (a new agency) but soon decides the place he’d really like to work is Picture Post.

So he creates a dummy issue of the magazine, composed entirely of his own features, and persuades the proprietors to take him on as a freelancer and then, in 1950, as a full-time employee. His most celebrated features include cats of London, children playing on city streets (making the case for dedicated playgrounds) and the Liverpool slums.

When Picture Post shuts its doors for the last time, Thurston will become a successful advertising photographer, working in his studio in Chiswick, west London, and will take up teaching at the Guildford School of Art. In retirement, he will return to painting and live to age 100, survived by his wife Grace, also a photographer, and their two children.

Dorothy Lamour promotional shot for Paramount Pictures
1937. Dorothy Lamour – from beauty queen to movie star. Read more.

Beauty contests

Beauty contests have a long history – it’s possible to trace them back to the Middle Ages. But the birth of the version we recognize today dates from 1921, according to the Pageant Center’s The History of Pageants. That’s the year when Atlantic City hotel proprietors come up with a ruse to tempt tourists to stick around after Labor Day. They organize a “pageant” that includes a “National Beauty Tournament” to choose “the most beautiful bathing beauty in America.”

The branding is a masterstroke. Take a bow, Herb Test, a local newsman, who comes up with a killer name: “Let’s call her Miss America!” Eastern newspaper editors are invited to run photo contests to pick winners to represent their communities, and eight finalists compete for the honour to be the first Miss America.

After a promising start, the pageant goes offline for four years following the Wall Street crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression. But by the mid-1930s it has come roaring back and, surprise, surprise, attracted the attention of Hollywood studio bosses such as Howard Hughes. Winners of the new, optional talent competition can now expect invitations for screen tests – but they’d better beware of the starlet’s dilemma. A few beauty pageant contestants, Dorothy Lamour a notable case in point, go on to become movie stars.

The Miss America pageant continues through World War II and in 1948, to the outrage of the photographers, Bebe Shopp becomes the first competition winner to be crowned in a gown rather than a swimsuit.

In 1951, we come full circle back to Great Britain. The first Miss World Pageant is held to promote none other than the Festival of Britain. It’s the brainchild of Eric Morley, who happens to be involved with the Mecca Dance Halls that host many of the country’s beauty contests. Sadly, Marlene Dee, Miss  Great Britain that year, loses out to Miss Sweden, Kiki Haakonson.

Picture Post’s take on The Beauty Contest Business appears in the 7 November 1953 edition. It is written in a nicely trenchant style by Robert Muller with photos by Thurston Hopkins. Here’s an extract:

The Ballyhoo Business. Bare legs, fanfares and revolving stages, flags of all nations and gala press receptions … the sponsors pay out, the public gazes. Photo by Thurston Hopkins published in the 7 November 1953 edition of Picture Post.

Who, you may well ask, pays for these beauty feasts, what do they get out of it, and who wants them anyway? Catch-phrases from pseudo-psychological treatises on the subject (“sublimated virgin worship,” etc.) don’t tell the whole story, for the big beauty contests are run by hard-headed businessmen. It cost Mecca Dancing, Ltd., more than £3,000 to find ‘Miss World,’ and thereby harvest a bushel of publicity. Even if the newspapers ignore Mecca when printing news and pictures of the girls, Morley of Mecca assures us that he possesses “ways and means of telling the country that these wonderful girls everybody is reading about are here because Mecca put them there.”

But Mecca is only an incidental link in a world-wide network of beauty contest sponsors. In most countries the big national beauty competitions are organised by newspapers and magazines as a circulation stunt. The newspapers link up with commercial firms, who offer facilities and pay costs, in the hope of publicising their goods. Beauty winners have thus become a new travelling publicity medium. Travel agents, fashion houses, bathing-suit manufacturers, motion-picture firms adorn beauty queens with their goods, decorate them with their messages. …

The girls themselves, probably unaware that they are exploited as mobile billboards for commercial concerns, are flattered and lulled by the fuss and adoration in which the competitions bathe them, and the models among them – and most beauty queens are models – appreciate the value of a better-class title. An important beauty title is to a model what a university degree is to a young professional man. Even a Miss Liechtenstein would find her services in increased demand, her fees rising. And the girls with film aspirations know that the uphill road to stardom without talent is usually paved with beauty crowns. Finally, a contest as big as the election of ‘Miss World’ carries with it prizes up to £500, for the duration of the contest all expenses are paid, fashion houses occasionally supply dresses, and firms like Mecca pay each girl £1 a day pocket money during the week in which the contest takes place.

But few of the girls give a thought to the back-stage commercial activity that buzzes around their exploits. Some of them are shrewd business-women, but the majority ride a vanity-driven coach, which, they hope, will one day pull up at a film studio, where a Prince Charming producer will offer them stardom and happiness.

The Beauty Contest Business. A page from the feature in the 7 November 1953 edition of Picture Post. Photos by Thurston Hopkins.

Want to know more about Brenda Mee, her life and times?

Pretty much the only place to find out more about Brenda Mee is at The British Newspaper Archive, for which you’ll need a subscription.

If you’re wondering about Britain in the 1950s, there’s a brief and entertaining overview at Retrowow. For something a bit more substantial, check out the series of articles at Historic UK’s Britain in the 1950s and 1960s. And for a year-by-year listing of key events, go to Wikipedia, starting at 1950.

The John Deakin archive is held by bridgeman images, who also have a piece on 60s Soho and the London Art Scene.

Learning On Screen has a history of the British newsreels, while you can watch a selection of examples at British Pathé’s 1950s Britain page. Photoworks provides an introduction to The Picture Post Photographers, which also touches on the history of the publication itself. For more about Thurston Hopkins and Picture Post – see The Guardian obituary and Getty Images’ Picture Post Collection.

The place to find out more about beauty contests is Pageant Center. For the specialist and researcher, there’s also Records of Miss Great Britain at Archives Hub, where there may just be further photos or material about Brenda Mee herself.

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Sabrina – Britain’s answer to Marilyn Monroe

Filed Under: Behind the scenes, Collecting, Events, Photographers, Press, Stars Tagged With: beauty pageants, Brenda Mee, Dorothy Lamour, John Deakin, Miss Great Britain, Picture Post, Thurston Hopkins

Andrea Johnson – forgotten supermodel of the 1940s

In June 1950, four of the US’s top models flew to Australia to showcase American fashions in Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney. They included Carmen Dell’Orefice, just 18 years old but already something of a veteran, and Andrea Johnson, ten years her senior, for whom this would be a kind of swan song.

Carmen has become a fashion legend, Andrea has sunk without trace. Other than a few photos, there’s almost nothing about her on the Internet. So, this is my best effort to provide a back story for the clutch of photos of Andrea I have in my collection and ensure that she isn’t forgotten just yet. They come, via two different sources, direct from Andrea’s estate.

Andrea Johnson, John Robert Powers model.
Mid-1940s. Andrea Johnson, John Robert Powers model. Read more.

Andrea Johnson, supermodel

Back in the 1940s when Andrea Johnson does most of her modelling (she was born in 1922), the business is in its infancy and dominated by a handful of agencies. Andrea works for two of them. She is represented by John Robert Powers before moving to Ford Models, set up by Eileen and Gerard William “Jerry” Ford in 1946. At some point in the 1940s she leaves to set up her own agency, Figure Heads, with offices in NYC at 141 East 40th Street. Her husband, Claude Travers, five years her senior, is a partner and director of the firm.

During the forties, Andrea is one of the 12 most photographed models in the US immortalized by Irving Penn in his famous 1947 group portrait. The following year she’s part of another famous group portrait, this time modelling an extravagant ballgown by Charles James for Cecil Beaton. Beaton also photographs her for the covers of two issues of Vogue magazine – January 1, 1945 and May 15, 1946 (you can find both at Getty Images). It goes almost without saying that, like Lisa Fonssagrives and unlike Jinx Falkenburg, Andrea is a high-fashion rather than a sports model.

Her modelling date books reveal that she works with pretty much all the leading fashion photographers of the era: Richard Avedon, Erwin Blumenfeld, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Fernand Fonssagrives, Paul Hesse, Horst P Horst, George Hoyningen-Huene, Constantin Joffé, Karen Radkai, John Rawlings and, intriguingly, Salvador Dali. Magazines commissioning the shoots include Harper’s Bazaar, House & Garden, LIFE, Town & Country and Vogue.

The Australian fashion tour

In the mid-20th century, models aren’t celebrities like they are now. But there is still interest in them, as this article in LIFE magazine, in which Andrea Johnson gets a mention, demonstrates. While Andrea goes pretty much under the radar in the US, she and her companions get plenty of coverage in the Australian press when they visit the country in July 1950.

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Andrea Johnson and friends contemplate a map

Andrea Johnson and friends contemplate a map

Mid-1940s. The photo comes from Andrea's estate and is annotated on the back "Photo by Louise Dahl-Wolfe."

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Andrea Johnson at the Hotel Nacional, Cuba

Andrea Johnson at the Hotel Nacional, Cuba

1945. The photo comes from Andrea's estate and is annotated on the back "Photo by Louise Dahl-Wolfe." I believe it may have been published in one of the 1945 issues of Harper's Bazaar.

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Andrea Johnson photographed in Paris by Louise Dahl-Wolfe

Andrea Johnson in Paris

Late-1940s. The setting is probably Le Jardin des Tuileries. During the 1940s, Carmel Snow, the editor of Harper’s Bazaar, used to send Dahl-Wolfe and, latterly, Richard Avedon to Paris to shoot the collections. It's likely that this photo was taken during one of those visits. The print is stamped on the back "LOUISE DAHL-WOLFE 58 WEST 57th ST." and comes from Andrea's estate.

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Andrea Johnson photographed by Louise Dahl-Wolfe modeling a hat

Andrea Johnson models a hat

Mid-1940s. The photo comes from Andrea's estate and is annotated on the back "Photo by Louise Dahl-Wolfe."

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Andrea Johnson in profile

Andrea Johnson in profile

Mid-1940s. Andrea Johnson certainly has a striking profile, which photographers are happy to take advantage of. The photo comes from Andrea's estate and is annotated on the back "LDW", the initials of Louise Dahl-Wolfe."

The American Fashion Parades, as they are dubbed, are organized by Neiman Marcus in collaboration with the Myer Emporium and David Jones (two Australian upmarket department stores). The rationale is to promote US fashion in the light of moves afoot to reduce the trade barriers that have inhibited commerce between the countries since before World War II. It calls to mind The Fashion Flight of 1947. Vice-president Stanley Marcus regards the American Fashion Parades as one of the most important his corporation has staged and points out that:

We’ve had two fashion shows in Mexico, but I can tell you this – we attach more importance to this show than any we have ever held. … French fashions still may be the world’s most chic, but American fashions generally are better suited to Australia.

The American Fashion Parades showcase the latest American creations in cocktail dresses, evening gowns, suits, sportswear and beachwear. Also on display are a range of accessories: hats, shoes, gloves, handbags and costume jewellery for evening, daytime, and sportswear. Brands include Elizabeth Arden, Hattie Carnegie, Adrian, Tina Leser, Irene, John Frederics and Delman.

1951. Carmen Dell’Orefice, who goes on the Australian tour with Andrea Johnson, modelling a barnyard-inspired hat. Read more.

This is how the models are introduced to the Australian public in the June 3, 1950 edition of The Daily Telegraph:

They are known as the “most-photographed girls in the world.” …

… Blonde, svelte Carmen [Dell’Orefice] is the favorite model of British photographer Cecil Beaton, who has described her as “the most beautiful woman in the world.” She holds several New York swimming and diving championships.

Pert brunette Margo [Price], besides being one of the highest-paid models in New York, is a skilled movie photographer. She plans to make a film “documentary” of her Australian tour for television showing on her return to the United States.

Striking, shapely Andrea Johnson disproves the saying that blondes are beautiful but dumb. She’s one of the most sought-after mannequins in America and in her spare time she runs her own model agency with 30 girls on her staff.

Glamor girl and fashion expert Ruth Hancock, of Texas, will be in charge of the American beauty contingent.

The Australian press report that they are taking a cut in their earnings during the trip. Back home they command fees of US $25 dollars an hour and average US $100 dollars a day.

The models are in Australia for a bit more than a month. During that time, they work alongside eight Australian mannequins, who have competed for the honour. Their schedule looks like this:

Mid-1940s. Andrea Johnson. Photo attributed to John Rawlings.
  • Monday, 17 July – Leave New York.
  • Wednesday, 19 July – Full-dress preview in Dallas, then on to San Francisco to catch a PanAm flight to Australia.
  • Saturday, 22 July –  Arrive Sydney and travel on to Melbourne.
  • Saturday 29 July – Fashion Parades begin in Melbourne.
  • Saturday 12 August – Fashion Parades begin in Adelaide.
  • Monday 21 August – Fashion Parades begin in Sydney.
  • Saturday 26 August – Fashion Parades finish.

When the models depart, Margo and Ruth head back to the US, while Andrea and Carmen go to France for sittings for Vogue Paris before returning home.

Andrea Johnson, artist and entrepreneur

On the way to Australia, the models have a brief stopover in Honolulu, and perhaps that’s when Andrea falls in love with the city. At any rate, that’s where she goes to live when she retires from modelling in the early 1950s. And there she embarks on a new career, working closely with another artist to design fabric prints on which to base a line of island casuals, and funding it with a bit of modelling.

It seems that Andrea is quite an entrepreneur. Having set up a modelling agency and a fashion business, she goes on holiday to Big Island and ends up buying an old coffee farm in the area of Honaunau. She turns the ground floor of the house into a ceramics studio, which she christens Holualoa Coffee Mill Art Center. The remaining space she uses as storage for her extensive collection of antiques and collectibles. She also opens a retail studio in Captain Cook, selling plaster castings for walls and gardens.

She dies in her late 70s after a battle with cancer.

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Andrea Johnson

Andrea Johnson

1946. This print comes from the collection of post-World War II supermodel, Andrea Johnson. The reverse is inscribed in pen "other shot Larry Avedon S449-2 Saks" and in pencil "AVEDON for Town & Country / #1 / 73/16x73/14", hence the attribution to Avedon. If the attribution is correct, and the boldness of the image and the perfection of the profile would tend to support that, this is a rare and possibly unique early example of his work.

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Andrea Johnson models an evening dress

Andrea Johnson models an evening gown

Around 1950. A romantic image that seems to hark back to the mid-19th century in terms of the chaise longue and soft border as well as the dress. The photo comes from Andrea's estate and is stamped on the back "LOUISE DAHL-WOLFE 58 WEST 57th ST.".

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Andrea Johnson models an evening gown

Andrea Johnson models an evening gown

Late-1940s. A moody and dramatic image by German emigré photographer Peter Basch. Apparently, his wife, Jacqueline Bertrand, was once one of Andrea's Figure Heads girls. The photo comes from Andrea's estate and is stamped on the back "Please credit photograph to Peter Basch."

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Andrea Johnson models a basque

Andrea Johnson models a basque

Late-1940s. With its hints of striptease, it's no surprise that this shot is by German emigré photographer Peter Basch, perhaps best remembered for his glamour shots. The photo comes from Andrea's estate and is stamped on the back "Please credit photograph to Peter Basch."

Want to know more about Andrea Johnson?

I’m indebted to John-Michael O’Sullivan (who is working on a biography of Barbara Mullen) and Cynthia Nespor (who helped to dispose of Andrea’s estate) for their help in researching this piece. The best source online is the National Library of Australia’s Trove, where you will find multiple reports of the American Fashion Parades.

Other topics you may be interested in…

Mrs Alfred G Vanderbilt by Richard Avedon
Richard Avedon – art and commerce
The Fashion Flight – California comes to Paris
Wilhelmina modelling a chiffon evening dress
Wilhelmina – glamour and tragedy

Filed Under: Events, Fashion, Photographers, Stars Tagged With: Andrea Johnson, Claude Travers, Figure Heads, Ford Models, John Robert Powers, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Margo Price, Peter Basch, Ruth Hancock

The paparazzi – shock horror birth of a monster

Look of resignation
Around 1963. Princess Grace of Monaco endures the antics of the paparazzi.

Paparazzi. The lowest of the low. Leeches, predators, sleazebags. Intrusive, money-grubbing, shameless stalkers. No depths to which they won’t sink in pursuit of stunners, love rats and sex romps.

Yup, paparazzi get a pretty bad press. So where does this ravenous pack of hyenas come from? And why are they called paparazzi? It’s a story with plenty of tabloid appeal, set in 1950s Rome where a cluster of volatile elements fuse to create the gruesome phenomenon.

The paparazzi – humble beginnings

Like Paris after World War II, Rome and its inhabitants are in dire straits after the defeat of the fascists. There’s no better account of the poverty and desperation that are rife in the city than Vittorio de Sica’s seminal neorealist film, The Bicycle Thieves (1948). It recounts the travails of Antonio Ricci, an impoverished father who finally is lucky enough to be offered a job that could be the salvation of his young family. But to do the job he needs a bicycle, and he’s already pawned his to raise cash for food…

Ricci is typical of thousands of Romans who have to live on their wits.

In the aftermath of World War II, one option is to beg, steal or borrow a camera and offer to take pictures of visitors to the eternal city – mostly soldiers and a few tourists. Of course, there’s no such thing as instant prints, so the idea is that the customer meets the photographer later on to collect and pay for the shots. But, as often as not, the customers fail to show so the photographers (or “scattini” as they are known) find themselves shelling out money they can’t recoup on film and print, and living on the breadline. The last straw is that as cameras get cheaper and easier to afford, more and more visitors have their own equipment. Whatever market there was, begins to dry up.

The paparazzi – the movie industry to the rescue

By this time, another way of earning much-needed lire is gathering pace. In 1945, Cinecittà, the film studio set up on the outskirts of Rome by Benito Mussolini, is little more than a refugee camp. But it doesn’t take long for the Hollywood studios to begin to realise its potential.

Ava's arrival
Rome, December 1954. Ava Gardner arrives from Singapore.

As the largest film-production facility in Europe, it can offer the capacity to shoot spectacular movies such as Quo Vadis, Ben Hur, and Cleopatra, with the populace of Rome only too happy to provide a rent-a-crowd service. Besides movie extras, there’s plenty of untapped talent across the disciplines, from sets to lighting, and from costumes to hair and make-up. All available at bargain prices compared with the escalating costs of production in Hollywood.

But the real deal-clincher is a piece of Italian legislation that prevents US companies from sending back their earnings. What better to do with the funds generated by tickets sales of US movies in Italy than plough the money back into making more films there? By the time an article about the film-making in Rome appears in the June 26 1950 issue of Time magazine, the author is able to coin the phrase “Hollywood on the Tiber” – and it sticks.

The Hollywood studios don’t just provide employment opportunities, they also bring along a host of stars who might otherwise never have materialized in Rome – the likes of Humphrey Bogart, Stewart Granger, Robert Taylor, Gregory Peck, Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr, Audrey Hepburn, Linda Christian, Anita Ekberg and Elizabeth Taylor.

According to an article in the August 16, 1954 issue of Time magazine:

Movie producers … were just as common as cats in the Forum, and just about as noisy. … As many as three pictures were being shot at once with the same cast. … Drinking orgies, studio spies and gorgeous villas with swimming pools were the rule of the day. The purple sports shirt had replaced the purple toga.

The paparazzi – photographic scandalmongers

All this talent congregates around via Veneto, until recently the haunt of Rome’s bohemian intellectuals and artists but rapidly transforming into the centre of nightlife for the elite of Roman society – the rich, the famous, the titled, the entitled, the notorious, the wannabes…

Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg pestered by paparazzi in Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita
1959. Marcello and Sylvia pestered by paparazzi in Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita. Photo by Pierluigi Praturlon.

In 1957, Melton Davis in his book All Rome Trembled, writes of via Veneto:

Only in modern Italy could a single half-mile-long street contain so much grace and vulgarity, power and decadence, charm and arrogance as did this gilded alley. It was made to order for the fixers, for the dope-addled princes and dream-haunted paupers, for the whole fantastic parade that gathered there.

And the goings-on of this group generate two scandals that rock Italian society to its foundations – partly because of what they reveal about a depraved upper-class demimonde but also because of the way they are reported – in photos as well as in copy.

During the fifties, Italy’s magazine sector is booming. Alongside the traditional publications, there are more recent titles, which take their inspiration from US picture magazines LIFE and Look. And then there are the new gossip magazines. The market leaders are Le Ore and Lo Specchio. each selling upward of half a million copies a week. Newsworthy images are their meat and drink, their appetite for them is insatiable, and very few of them have staff photographers.

Which brings us right back to the scattini who have realized that there is no more mileage in tourist shots. The name of the game now is to come up with juicy pictures of newsworthy events and celebrities – the more titillating the better. The scattini have morphed into downmarket street photographers.

The beach scene at dawn that concludes La Dolce Vita
1959. Body on the beach. The last scene of Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita recalls the discovery of Wilma Montesi’s body. Photo by Pierluigi Praturlon.

The paparazzi – the Wilma Montesi scandal

The first of the two scandals begins when the corpse of an unremarkable young woman is found on a beach near Rome. She’s wearing a coat, blouse and underwear but her skirt, garters, stockings, shoes and handbag are missing. The date is 11 April, 1953, and the girl’s name is Wilma Montesi. The coroner gives a verdict of accidental death, which the police are happy to accept. But is it mere coincidence that the strand where Wilma’s body was found is a just a kilometre away from Capocotta, a private wooded estate used by noblemen and their guests for hunting and parties? Rumour has it that Wilma was at an orgy of sex and drugs along with noblemen, politicians, gangsters and prostitutes. Perhaps she died of an overdose and was dumped on the shore. Or she may have been murdered because she knew too much.

It takes just a single newspaper to break cover and suggest there’s been a cover-up – that Wilma was murdered and, what’s more, some powerful politicians may be implicated. Within days, the press are all over the story. Named in conjunction with it are Ugo Montagna, a Sicilian nobleman and operator of Capocotta, and Piero Piccioni, well-known jazz musician and son of the Deputy Prime Minister.

Anna-Maria Caglio on her way to court
1953. Anna-Maria Caglio on her way to court as a key witness in the Montesi case.

In the ensuing libel case, Giuseppe Sotgiu, an ambitious Communist politician, leads the case for the defense. His plan is to make the most of this opportunity to get at the corrupt establishment and in the process to raise his own profile. The allegations and the trial itself are nothing short of sensational and draw the photographers like pigs to shit. In their determination to get the best shots, theyʼre not afraid to confront lawyers, witnesses, even the Montesi family, outside the courthouse, at their homes and offices, and when they are out shopping or relaxing at a bar or restaurant.

One of those witnesses is Anna-Maria Caglio, an attractive girl who has seen at first hand the goings-on at Capocotta and is prepared to talk about them under oath. She reveals that she has been so frightened that the alleged perpetrators would have her killed that as a precaution she left with her landlady a letter revealing her knowledge that Montagna runs a gang of drug traffickers and Piccioni is a murderer. The defining image – of Caglio, overcome with emotion – is snapped by Tazio Secchiaroli and goes everywhere.

For his next trick, Secchiaroli picks out a hiding place outside a brothel. Rumour has it that itʼs here that Sotgiu, who has assumed the moral high ground in the Montesi case, goes to watch his wife having sex with various lovers – women as well as men. Secchiaroli lies in wait and gets a shot of Sotgiu strolling into the building with an air of familiarity and later back out of it. Thanks partly to those shots, the police raid the brothel and arrest the couple for questioning together with a number of other participants. The screaming headlines that blaze across the newspapers end Sotgiu’s career.

And that’s not all. Back in court Montagna and Piccioni as part of their defense against charges in the Montesi case, claim to be strangers to each other. Tipped off by Velio Cioni, one of his gang, Secchiaroli manages to trap the pair by using his Fiat and himself to block the dead-end street down which they have driven. They make as if to run him over but he stands firm and gets half a dozen incriminating shots – another scoop.

In spite of all this, the trial comes to nothing – there’s simply not enough hard evidence to convict anyone for Wilma’s death.

The paparazzi – the strip show at Rugantino

Five years after the Montesi affair, the night of 5 November, 1958 to be precise, another scandal hits the headlines and once again Secchiaroli is in the right place at the right time. Along with four other photographers including Angelo Frontoni and Umberto Guidotti, heʼs been invited to a party thrown by Olga di Robilant, an aspiring actress looking to break into the scene in Rome with a view to furthering her career. She’s going to get a whole lot more than she bargained for.

The venue is Rugantino, a restaurant on a cobblestoned piazza in the city’s Trastevere district, and the guests include an assortment of young aristocrats together with various stars including Linda Christian, Elsa Martinelli and, most importantly, Anita Ekberg.

Anita Ekberg at Rugantino
Rome, 5 November 1958. Anita Ekberg sets a bad example at Rugantino.

In spite of the hip crowd, the drinks and the strains of the Roman New Orleans Jazz Band, the party starts off as a pretty staid affair. Then Anita Ekberg kicks off her shoes and improvises a mambo. With her platinum tresses and décolleté black-velvet gown, she’s quite a sight. She’s joined by a German actor. Then a few more couples take to the floor. Other members of the party start clapping to the music. Suddenly, the atmosphere is electric.

Anita slips and decides to take a seat while she recovers. And onto the dance floor steps a small, dark girl in a white dress. She’s gatecrashed the party and no one knows who she is. But shy she isn’t. She walks up to the drummer and whispers in his ear. He signals to the rest of the band that he is going to do a solo performance. And the girl begins to dance. Anita asks if she’s a belly dancer. Yes, but the dress she’s wearing doesn’t lend itself to belly dancing. Anita challenges her to remove her dress, promising to follow suit if she does. And so begins the girlʼs notorious striptease.

There to record it for posterity and for the next day’s press are the five photographers. The one who gets the most celebrated shots is Secchiaroli. While his comrades home in on the dancer, he draws back to take in the leering crowd of celebrities. And he has the foresight to have his rolls of film smuggled out before they’re seized by the police. Secchiaroli will recall:

What was happening before my very eyes was indescribable … the most sinful, transgressive thing that I had every photographed.

The girl, it turns out, is Aïché Nana. She’s a Lebanese actress and writer and now everybody’s heard of her.

Secchiaroli’s photos appear in the reputable L’Europeo and L’Espresso as well as in more downmarket publications such as Epoca and Lo Specchio. The accompanying articles lead with headlines such as “Rome’s Turkish Night,” “The Sins of Trastevere” and “This Is How the Upper Crust Undress.” And the scandal even makes its way into The New York Times.

Gina Lollobrigida posing for a street photographer
Early 1950s. Gina Lollobrigida happy to pose for a street photographer.

The paparazzi – what do they get up to and who are they?

For a while, there’s an unspoken pact, sometimes even collusion, between the photographers and their subjects. The former crave shots of celebrities to sell to the media. The latter are happy to appear in newspapers and magazines to build or bolster their careers or pander to their own egos. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship. But as competition intensifies between both magazines and photographers, the pressure ramps up for more and more sensational images.

It’s not long before the photographers, led by Secchiaroli, become provocateurs, goading their subjects to lose their cool and provide a bit of drama for the lensmen. Why? Because there’s a market for such images. The magazines will pay 3,000 lire (roughly US $40.00 in today’s money) for a straight shot and 200,000 lire (roughly US $2,750) for one of a celeb losing their cool – so the tantrum premium amounts to over 6,000%. The turning point comes around 1958 when stories about clashes between photographers and celebrities become more and more common and more and more racy. One particular night, Umberto Guidotti snaps a shot of exiled King Farouk of Egypt trying to snatch Secchiaroli’s camera from him; and Secchiaroli himself gets an image of British actor Anthony Steel in a drunken rage.

Anthony Steel, currently married to Anita Ekberg, is, in fact, a favourite target of the photographers. Late night, he can be relied on to have had too much to drink and be ready to flare up. Anita Ekberg usually takes it in her stride but occasionally she’s riled. On one memorable occasion, she returns to give her pursuers as good (if not better) than she gets, shooting at them with a bow and arrow. And it is pretty much outright war between the paparazzi and their targets. Here’s how Tazio Secchiaroli viewed it:

Now, there’s our target, our face: who’s going to let it get away? Obviously, on these occasions, nothing will stop us, even if it means overturning tables and waiters, or raising shrieks from an old lady who doesn’t quite get what’s happening; even if it means shocking John Q Citizen – he’s always there – who protests in the name of the rights of man, or, conversely,  galvanizing the other citizen – also ubiquitous – who takes our side in the name of the freedom of the press and of the Constitution; even if the police intervene or we chase the subject all night long, we won’t let go, we’ll fight with flashes, we’ll help each other out… The increasingly ruthless competition means we can’t afford to be delicate; our duties, our responsibilities as picture-hunters, always on the lookout, and pursued ourselves on every side, make it impossible for us to behave otherwise. Of course we, too, would like to stroll through an evening, have a cup of coffee in blissful peace, and see via Veneto as a splendid international promenade, rather than one big workplace, or even a theater of war.

The paparazzi themselves are a lean, hungry, streetwise bunch who have muscled their way into the business from humble beginnings. They don’t need to watch The Bicycle Thieves to find out just how much of a struggle life is for ordinary Italians. Often they hunt in packs, and they dress respectably so they can gain access to wherever the best shots are to be had. But they come from the other side of the tracks compared with their subjects, for whose wealth, lifestyle and privilege they have little sympathy. As Tazio recalls:

We photographers were all poor starving devils and they had it all – money, fame, posh hotels. The doormen and porters in the grand hotels gave us information tips – you could call it the fellowship of the proletariat.

20 October 1960. Avenging amazon. Anita Ekberg, usually laid back about the paparazzi, loses her cool, decides enough is enough and takes matters into her own hands.

They pioneer a style of photography that’s utterly true to themselves and the situation they find themselves in, and quite unlike anything that’s gone before. It’s raw, brash and aggressive. It derives partly from their lack of training and partly from the equipment they use. To snap a saleable shot with their twin-lens Rolleiflexes, you have to get right up close to your subject and fire your flash in their face. Since the flash takes a long time to recharge, you have just one chance for a shot.

So who’s in the gang during the 1950s, the heyday of the paparazzi? Some snappers you’re likely to bump into on the via Veneto, their favourite haunt, include Adriano Bartoloni, Giancarlo Bonora, Alessandro Canetrelli, Velio Cioni, Guglielmo Coluzzi, Licio D’Aloisio, Mario Fabbi, Quinto Felice, Marcello Geppetti, Umberto Guidotti, Ivan Kroscenko, Ivo Meldolesi, Luciano Mellace, Lino Nanni, Giuseppe Palmas, Paolo Pavia, Mario Pelosi, Gilberto Petrucci, Franco Pinna, Elio Sorci, Sergio Spinelli, Bruno Tartaglia, Sandro Vespasiani and Ezio Vitale.

But the two who stand out are Tazio Secchiaroli and Pierluigi Praturlon. You’ve read already about some of the former’s exploits. Pierluigi’s nickname in the business is “Lux,” after the soap advertised as “the choice of nine stars out of ten.” While he’s certainly one of the gang, he has other claims to fame – for example, his friendship with Anita Ekberg.

Anita and I often went out together. We used to go dancing at a place near Casalpalocco. One night in August, in I958, Anita, who always danced barefoot, hurt her foot. Coming back to Rome at four in the morning, we passed the Trevi Fountain and Anita said, ‘Stop the car so I can rinse my foot.’ ‘No, come on,’ I said. ‘You’ll be home in five minutes.’ She insisted, so we stopped. She got out and, hiking up her skirt, began wading into the fountain, at which point I got my camera and started shooting her in the fountain’s dusky glow. I remember two carabinieri standing in a corner who weren’t more than twenty years old. They didn’t say a word. They were completely entranced watching this beautiful woman in the fountain, with her long, lovely legs.

Anita Ekberg’s account differs in the details:

One night I was having photos taken by Pierluigi Praturlon. I was barefoot and I cut my foot. I went in search of a fountain to bathe my bleeding foot and, all unawares, found myself in the piazza di Trevi. It was summer. I was wearing a white-and-pink cotton dress with the upper part like a man’s shirt. I lifted the skirt up and immersed myself in the basin, saying to Luigi, ‘You can’t imagine how cool this water is, you should come in, too.’ ‘Just stay like that,’ he said, and started taking photos. They sold like hot cakes! … It was me who made Fellini famous, not the other way around.

Either way, the shots appear in a magazine called Tempo Illustrato. For a while, Pierluigi is Sophia Loren’s photographer of choice, before being superseded by Tazio Secchiaroli. He’s given the role of stills photographer for La Dolce Vita by Federico Fellini. And he goes on to set up a photographic agency, headquartered in Rome with offices in London and Paris.

Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg again beset by paparazzi in Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita
1959. Not just on the via Veneto but wherever they go, Marcello and Sylvia can’t escape the paparazzi buzzing around them in Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita. Photo by Pierluigi Praturlon.

The paparazzi – Fellini and La Dolce Vita

Federico Fellini’s masterpiece, La Dolce Vita, is inspired by the world you’ve been reading about – the celebrities, the scandals, the street photographers and the popular press in which their shots appear. He wants to capture the atmosphere of contemporary Rome:

I think the inspiration, even in terms of the formulation of the images, came from life as seen by the scandal sheets, L’Europeo, Oggi; the careless jaunts of the corrupt aristocracy, their way of photographing parties. The scandal sheets were the worrying mirror of a society that was in a constant state of self-celebration, self-depiction, self- congratulation.

Five scenes from the film which draw on events that have featured in the press are:

  • The delivery of a statue of Jesus Christ by helicopter to the Vatican City, pictured in the papers in May 1950.
  • The suicide of the poet and novelist Cesare Pavese following his split with Constance Dowling.
  • The “miracle of the Madonna” photographed by Tazio Secchiaroli (he gets everywhere!).
  • Anita Ekberg’s night out with Pierluigi and her midnight dip in the Trevi Fountain.
  • The strip show at Rugantino.
  • The exploits of the street photographers around via Veneto, which, according to Fellini’s co-scriptwriter, Ennio Flaiano, has “become one big party … this isn’t a street any more, it’s a beach … the conversations are like those at the seaside, referring to an exclusively gastro-sexual reality.”

With those expoits in mind, Fellini invites five street photographers including Pierluigi, Secchiaroli and Frontoni to dinner so that he can listen to their stories and pick their brains:

Sylvia (Anita Ekberg) cools off in the Trevi Fountain in Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita
Sylvia (Anita Ekberg) cools off in the Trevi Fountain in Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita. Photo by Pierluigi Praturlon. Read more.

I spent a number of evenings chatting with Tazio Secchiaroli and the other photojournalists of via Veneto, learning the tricks of their trade. How they spotted their prey, how they teased them, how they how they tailored their features for the various newspapers. They had hilarious stories of lying in wait for eternities, of imaginative escapes, and of dramatic chases.

He retains Secchiaroli to train the actors who will play the parts of the street photographers in the film heʼs planning.

That those photographers come to be known as paparazzi is down to Fellini, his co-scriptwriter Ennio Flaiano and the film crew. Paparazzo is the name of the photographer with whom the journalist Marcello (the movie’s hack protagonist) teams up. It’s inspired by a travelogue that Flaiano has been reading and that features a hotel run by a man called Paparazzo.

When Flaiano proposes the name, the sound of it reminds Fellini of the buzzing of an insect you can’t get rid of. So Paparazzo it is. And during production, the film crew use the name for the whole gang of street photographers who feature in the movie – in Italian, paparazzi is the plural of paparazzo. The term sticks and rapidly gains currency.

Richard Burton and Elizabeth on the deck of a yacht off the coast of Ischia
Ischia, 1963. Mischief in the Med. Love rats Richard Burton and Elizabeth on the deck of a yacht off the coast of Ischia. Photo by Pat Morin.

The paparazzi – society’s pariahs

The paparazzi are none too pleased with their growing notoriety. In its April 14, 1961 issue, Time magazine publishes a pretty scathing article, Paparazzi on the Prowl, calling them “a ravenous wolf pack … who stalk big names … with flash guns at point-blank range” and with “lips leaking cigarettes, cameras drawn like automatics.”

No one is safe, not even royalty. … Legitimate news photographers scorn the paparazzi as streetwalkers of Roman journalism. But like streetwalkers, they cling to their place in society.

The new generation of paparazzi are more numerous than their predecessors and have new technology at their disposal – specificially zoom-lens SLR cameras. They no longer have to get up close and personal with their victims (and, increasingly, victims is what they are), they can shoot from way off. Gradually, the bleached out, high-contrast images produced by flashguns give way to grainy distance shots.

Perhaps the most famous early example of zoom-lens scandal shots is the work of a pack of paparazzi who, in 1962, set off in hot pursuit of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor to Ischia, where filming of Cleopatra is scheduled for shooting after five months in Rome. The snappers catch the couple frolicking on the deck of a yacht. It’s the first proof of an affair that has been hotly rumoured. Both are married – in fact Elizabeth Taylor is already on her fourth husband. She has a reputation as a marriage breaker and for the press the series of photos confirm her insatiable appetite and shameless depravity. The scandal also helps ensure that Cleopatra will be an unprecedented box-office blockbuster.

Christine Keeler surrounded by police and press
London, 1963. Christine Keeler surrounded by police and press as she leaves court during the Profumo affair.

And so a monster is born.

By the time he comes to shoot The Bible in Rome, John Huston tells the US press that the paparazzi have become so objectionable and impossible to avoid and objectionable that, unless something is done about them, movie-makers will find other options for their productions.

Even before then, the action has switched from Rome to London, where the story of the Profumo scandal has all the necessary ingredients: sex, politics, deceit, espionage, criminality, suicide, high society and an extra-marital affair. It blows the lid off the UK establishment just as the Montesi scandal did just over ten years earlier in Italy. And, like the Montesi scandal, it grips the country and its readers.

In the late sixties, media mogul Rupert Murdoch will enter the UK’s newspaper industry, buy The Sun (a failing broadsheet), turn it into a tabloid and, aided and abetted by editor Larry Lamb, focus it on sport, celebrities and gossip. The transformation is the subject of James Graham’s super, soaraway smash play, Ink. With its outrageous headlines, topless models and devil-may-care attitude, it will quickly become the UK’s most popular newspaper.

The Sun is just one example of the popularity of paparazzi photography and tabloid journalism. But as the quest for scandal gets more and more aggressive, unscrupulous and vicious, the issues raised will become increasingly urgent – not least, the extent to which the practices involved are tantamount to stalking by another name

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A pack of paparazzi hound Princess Diana and Dodi Al-Fayed on holiday in the Gulf of Saint Tropez

Wolf pack

Gulf of Saint Tropez, July, 1997. A pack of paparazzi hound Diana, Princess of Wales and her partner, Dodi Al-Fayed as they holiday on board the Al-Fayed family yacht.

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Princess Diana hugs her younger son Harry on board Mohamed Al-Fayed's luxury yacht, Jonikal

Princess Diana with her son Harry

Gulf of Saint Tropez, 20 July, 1997. Diana, Princess of Wales, on holiday with Dodi Al-Fayed, hugs her younger son Harry on board the Al-Fayed family's luxury yacht, Jonikal.

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Princess Diana on board the luxury yacht, Jonikal

Princess Diana’s last holiday

Gulf of Saint Tropez, 20 July, 1997. Diana, Princess of Wales on board the luxury yacht, Jonikal. Less than six weeks later she will die when, chased by paparazzi, the car in which she's being driven crashes in a Paris underpass.

The whole thing will reach its grim, ignominious and inevitable conclusion in August 1997 with the tragic deaths of Diana, Princess of Wales and her fiancé, Dodi al-Fayed in a car crash in a Paris underpass. At her funeral, Charles Spencer will describe his sister as “the most hunted person of the modern age.” And at the inquest, jurors will rule that she was “unlawfully killed” not just by the reckless driving of the chauffeur but also by the paparazzi who were chasing her.

It’s difficult not to feel a certain admiration, affection even, for the first paparazzi. They were desperate, they were cunning, they were audacious. They did what they had to do to claw themselves out of poverty, they grafted and they had a ball. What those who followed in their steps had to offer is more up for debate. Hyenas and other scavengers, however repulsive, perform a useful task in nature. Can the same be said of today’s paparazzi?

Robert Kennedy snapped by a paparazzo as he crosses the street
February 1967. Robert Kennedy snapped by a paparazzo as he crosses the street. Photo: Reporters Associés.

The paparazzi – a uniquely Roman phenomenon?

The answer to the question depends on what we mean by paparazzi. In some respects at least they had a forerunner in the US. His name is Arthur Fellig but he’s better known as Weegee. He’s famous for his stark and gruesome photos of New York crime scenes, car crashes and other personal tragedies. His approach, as outlined in an interview on ASX, chimes with that of the paparazzi.

News photography teaches you to think fast, to be sure of yourself, self confidence. When you go out on a story, you don’t go back for another sitting. You gotta get it.

…

The idea was I sold the pictures to the newspapers. And naturally, I picked a story that meant something, in other words, names make news. If there’s a fight between a couple on 3rd avenue or 9th avenue in Hell’s Kitchen, nobody cares, it’s just a barroom brawl. But if society has a fight in a Cadillac on Park avenue and their names are in the Social Register, this makes news, and the papers are interested in that.

And Weegee’s account of photographing a murder scene totally echoes what set Secchiaroli apart from his mates that night at Rugantino:

I arrive, right in the heart of Little Italy, 10 Prince street, here’s a guy had been bumped off in the doorway of a little candy store. This was a nice balmy hot summer’s night, the detectives are all over, but all the five stories of the tenement, people are on the fire escape. They’re looking, they’re having a good time, some of the kids are even reading the funny papers and the comics.”

There was another photographer there, and he made what they call a ten foot shot. He made a shot of just a guy laying in the doorway, that was it. To me, this was drama, this was like a backdrop. I stepped back all the way about a hundred feet, I used flash powder, and I got this whole scene: the people on the fire escapes, the body, everything. Of course the title for it was “Balcony Seats at a Murder.” That picture won me a gold medal with a real genuine diamond…

Prince Rainier and Grace Kelly ambushed by paparazzi
Monaco, 13 April 1956. Royal ruckus. Paparazzi roadblock incenses Prince Rainier during his first public outing with his fiancée, movie star Grace Kelly.

Paparazzi photography is closely related to both photojournalism and street photography. The former tends to focus on more serious subject matter and to have a more serious slant. Street photography is generally gentler than paparazzi photography – think Henri Cartier-Bresson and the post-World War II humanist school, or take a look at some issues of Picture Post in the UK, LIFE and Look in the US.

The definitions of all these genres are always going to be fuzzy. Some defining characteristics of paparazzi photography are:

  • Subject – celebrity, sensational or scurrilous subject matter (ideally, all three).
  • Location – on the street or in other public places.
  • Approach – candid shots, preferably catching the subject off-guard.

By that definition, paparazzi photography was by no means confined to Rome even back in the mid-fifties, as illustrated by the shots here of Grace Kelly (in Monaco) and Maria Callas (in Milan). Indeed photographers were looking for these kinds of shots even before World War II – just take a look at this image of Barbara Stanwyck at a Hollywood premiere back in April 1937.

So while Rome was certainly a cradle of paparazzi photography back in the 1950s, its reputation as THE birthplace of the genre probably owes as much to the legend created by Federico Fellini in La Dolce Vita as it does to what was actually taking place in the city.

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Want to know more about the paparazzi?

Absolutely essential reading is Shawn Levy’s riveting book, Dolce Vita Confidential. You can find out more about two of the leading paparazzi in Diego Mormorio’s beautifully illustrated monograph, Tazio Secchiaroli, Greatest of the Paparazzi and Philippe Garner’s article for The Telegraph, Elio Sorci: the world’s first paparazzo. In TIME magazine Kate Samuelson has written about The Princess and the Paparazzi: How Diana’s Death Changed the British Media in TIME magazine.

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Other topics you may be interested in…

Claudia Cardinale – up for a challenge
Elsa Martinelli – Italy’s sassy Audrey Hepburn
Gina Lollobrigida – the temptress of the Tiber
Paris after World War II – fact, fashion and fantasy
The sixties – sex, drugs, rock and roll and a whole lot more
Barbara Stanwyck in The Two Mrs Carrolls
Unsafe sex – the starlet’s dilemma

Filed Under: Events, Films, Photographers, Press, Stars Tagged With: Aïché Nana, Angelo Frontoni, Anita Ekberg, Anna-Maria Caglio, Aristotle Onassis, Ava Gardner, Cinecittà, Diana Princess of Wales, Elizabeth Taylor, Grace Kelly, Maria Callas, paparazzi, Pat Morin, Pierluigi Praturlon, Richard Burton, scattini, Tazio Secchiaroli, Wilma Montesi

Short stories – for a quick break

Aenigma is all about images from the the worlds of fashion and the movies and the stories behind them.

Short stories is a good place to come if you don’t have time for one of the longer pieces. Below you’ll find a selection of shots that illustrate the range of subjects covered by aenigma. It’s a deliberately eclectic mix with, hopefully, something for everybody.

Use the filter buttons to home in on topics that might interest you, and then the Read more button to go to the whole story.

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Bull shoots Gardner

Bull shoots Gardner

1945. Clarence Sinclair Bull, head of MGM's stills department, with his thumb on the shutter-release button, looks intently at Ava Gardner. The year is 1945, Ava is 23 years old...

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Marilyn Monroe nude

Naked and glistening

May 1962. Marilyn Monroe sits on the edge of a swimming pool on the set of Something’s Got To Give. In the film she swims naked, and to generate advance...

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Age after beauty

Age after beauty

1956. Odile Rodin is well aware of her greatest assets and dresses to set them off to perfection. Born Odile Bérard, she has adopted the artistic name of Rodin to...

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Photography as a sex act

Photography as a sex act

1966. David Hemmings, as Thomas, straddles the writhing Veruschka in a scene from Michelangelo Antonioni's cult film, Blow-Up. It's about a hip fashion photographer who believes he has unwittingly caught...

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Ava Gardner, Virginia Hill and friends celebrate Hallowe'en

Hallowe’en in Hollywood

1941. Ava Gardner and friends at a Hallowe'en party. This is Ava's (front left) first year in Hollywood and it will be another six until she makes her breakthrough as...

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Picasso chats up Bardot

Picasso chats up Bardot

April 1956. Brigitte Bardot takes time out from the Cannes Film Festival to visit Pablo Picasso in Vallauris. In the sunny garden outside his studio, Picasso, one of the 20th...

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Marriage on the rocks

Marriage on the rocks

November 1945. Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth, at the zenith of their careers, are out on the town. But things aren't going well. He is giving her the most furious...

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Romantically linked

Romantically linked

1963. One of the 20th century's greatest, most glamorous and tempestuous romances, played out in the glare of the media spotlight. Lust, booze, ­diamonds, yachts, jealousy – it had them...

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Dressed to thrill

Dressed to thrill

1999. Sophie Marceau steals the show as Elektra King in The World Is Not Enough, the 19th James Bond film. Beautiful, elegant, sophisticated, complex – really just your average Bond...

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Sylvia (Anita Ekberg) cools off in the Trevi Fountain in Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita

Midnight fantasy

1959. Dawn has yet to break as Anita Ekberg (as Sylvia in Federico Fellini's iconic movie, La Dolce Vita) wanders into the Trevi fountain in Rome. This iconic scene in...

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Gene Tierney and Oleg Cassini at a fancy-dress party

Gene Tierney and Oleg Cassini at a fancy-dress party

26 January 1941. Gene Tierney, dancing with Oleg Cassini, exchanges smiles with actress Ruth Hussey (dressed as a rag doll) and producer Raphael Hakim (a sheik), reputed to be...

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Ludmilla Tchérina with Salvador Dali

Truly, madly…

11 December, 1969. Salvador Dali and Ludmilla Tchérina attend The Paris Lido's new show, The Grand Prix. Dali, the mad surrealist artist, attributed his "love of everything that is...

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Not what the studio ordered

Not what the studio ordered

8 April 1937. Two Tinseltown stars are caught off guard – no artful lighting, considered poses, careful composition. A true candid and not what the studio ordered. Here's the story,...

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Fashion and film

Fashion and film

May 1956. Richard Avedon looks over photographs with Arlene Dahl. Avedon, one of the 20th century's greatest photographers, is in Hollywood as technical advisor for Funny Face, starring Fred Astaire...

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Other topics you may be interested in…

Donyale Luna – the fashion world’s wayward moon-child
Movie stars of the 1940s – talent, savvy, looks and luck
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The Fashion Flight – California comes to Paris

The Fashion Flight was a venture that produced the first all-American fashion show to be held in Europe. It took place in 1947, the year that Christian Dior launched the New Look.

It brought together designers, manufacturers, models and a Hollywood actress. Their mission was to negotiate a deal between San Francisco and Paris, “two queens who will share the sceptre over the fashion world” – or at least that’s how San Francisco World Trade Center president Leland Cutler saw it as he toasted the flight in champagne and poetry.

This is the story of how The Fashion Flight came about, how it went and what it achieved.

1947. (Left to right) The Emery twins (Eva and Priscilla), actress Joan Leslie, a CBS Radio employee and Pandora Hollister. Photo by Karl Romaine. Read more.

The Fashion Flight – one man’s vision

The Fashion Flight is the brainchild of Adolph P Schuman, the son of a Hungarian Jewish immigrant who arrived in America in the 1880s. In 1933 Adolph gets a loan of $800, which enables him to start a wholesale women’s clothing company in two rented rooms. He names it the Lilli Ann Company, after his wife, Lillian. Adolph has a great deal of get-up-and-go, and becomes president of the Manufacturers’ and Wholesalers’ Association of San Francisco.

His idea for The Fashion Flight is to combine French design with US manufacturing techniques, thereby creating a win-win for both sides. From the get-go, he’s eager to set the minds of the Parisian couturiers at rest. He makes it clear that:

California manufacturers showing spring styles in Paris do not intend to copy the styles of Parisian couturiers or offer competition as a world style center. We manufacture sports and play clothes and day-long livable types and hope to buy from Paris accessories, ornaments and perhaps ideas for trends to add to our lines.

The plan is welcomed by Henri Beaujard, French commercial attaché. Totally underestimating the insecurity and suspicion of the Paris couture industry, he assures participants in the venture that France will welcome The Fashion Flight as:

…a breath of fresh air, which will be given the full support of the French Ministry of National Economy. The expedition will be a tremendous benefit in stimulating exports of French silks, brocades and accessories to be used by the apparel industry. It will also encourage a free flow of ideas.

The expedition will cost some $65,000. Adolph sweet-talks the city into contributing $5,000 and other members of the Manufacturers’ and Wholesalers’ Association to join him in financing the rest.

Pandora Hollister, Fashion Flight coordinator
1945. Pandora Hollister, Fashion Flight coordinator. Read more.

The Fashion Flight – Americans in Paris

On the evening of 10 October 1947, two Matson Skymasters take off from San Francisco bound for Paris. The 63 passengers include designers and manufacturers, movie star Joan Leslie to add a bit of Hollywood glitz (Esther Williams was down for the role but has to withdraw owing to an ear infection, doubtless picked up in a swimming pool), models and journalists. The clothes (spring 1948 collections) are sent over on special racks so there’s no need to press them when they arrive. After a brief stopover in New York, the flight touches down in Paris on 14 October.

The models are taken aback by the wolf-whistles, ogling and propositioning they immediately encounter.

First thing when I came out of the hotel this morning I heard this whistle – and there was the nicest young Frenchman with one eyebrow reaching for the Eiffel Tower. “You let me show you Paris, yes, no? he asked. “Yes, I mean no,” I said. “Oh, mademoiselle, how can one so beautiful be so cruel in Paris on such a day as this?” he said. I thought those California boys were pretty fast, but these Frenchmen are positively dripping.

The nice young Frenchman sounds like nothing so much as Warner Bros’ cartoon character, Pepé Le Pew!

The Californian girls in their long skirts inspired by the New Look turn heads as they explore the city. 19-year-old Pat Emery notices that “Parisians are looking at us queerly on the streets. It is not a question of the ‘old eye,’ either. They look at our clothes and spot us as Americans right away.” Hardly surprising, given the privations of 1947 Paris. The San Francisco Chronicle reports a conversation with a professor at the Sorbonne:

My wife has not had a new dress for seven years. It is a long time for a woman to go without a new dress – even a woman who is not vain and who spends most of her time in the kitchen. I could afford to buy her a dress for $14 if there were such a dress in the whole of France. But dresses today in France are only for the tourists and those who have made new money on the black market.

This is typical of the contrasting fortunes of the haves and have-nots in Paris after World War II.

The Fashion Flight – the show and its reception

The visitors are here to impress. The fashion show is staged in the Grand Ballroom of the prestigious Georges V Hotel. The runway is decked out with 1,600 lbs of Californian chrysanthemums, and illuminated by a blinding battery of klieg lights used for movie production.

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Cyrille Mills pillbox hat for Suprema Millinery Company

Cyrille Mills pillbox hat for Suprema Millinery Company

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Cyrille Mills picture hat for Suprema Millinery Company

Cyrille Mills picture hat for Suprema Millinery Company

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Meadowbrook pillbox turban hat

Meadowbrook pillbox turban hat

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Meadowbrook

Meadowbrook “crusher” hat

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Meadowbrook afternoon profile hat

Meadowbrook afternoon profile hat

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500 guests are expected, including fashion writers from the US and Europe, representatives of the US and French governments, Parisian couturiers and textile manufacturers.

The show starts with bathing suits followed by “rough-and-tumble play clothes” (goodness knows what the Parisians make of these), dressmaker suits and afternoon dresses and finally Joan Leslie in a long-trained white wedding gown. “Eyes pop when, with a blare of trumpets, two of the models prance through the crowd in cowboy fashions – Levis, gold shirts and 10-gallon hats by Levi Strauss.”

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Virginia Swain modelling a zebra print dress by Fanya for Caldwell-Gray

Virginia Swain modelling a zebra print dress by Fanya for Caldwell-Gray

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Virginia Swain modelling a double-breasted coat and fur stole

Virginia Swain modelling a double-breasted coat and fur stole

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Virginia Swain modelling a batwing ensemble

Virginia Swain modelling a batwing ensemble

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Virginia Swain modelling a great coat by Vernelle for Nob Hill

Virginia Swain modelling a great coat by Vernelle for Nob Hill

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Gabardine suit by Burkshire Coats

Gabardine suit by Burkshire Coats

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Pat Knudson modelling a Fuzzylam Originals leather evening gown

Pat Knudson modelling a Fuzzylam Originals leather evening gown

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Pat Knudsen modelling a restaurant suit designed by Vernelle for Nob Hill

Pat Knudsen modelling a restaurant suit designed by Vernelle for Nob Hill

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Lynn Birion modelling a double-breasted coat

Lynn Birion modelling a double-breasted coat

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Priscilla Emery modelling a long-torso dress by Fanya for Caldwell-Gray

Priscilla Emery modelling a long-torso dress by Fanya for Caldwell-Gray

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Pat Knudson modelling a George Sand suit designed by Vernelle for Nob Hill

Pat Knudson modelling a George Sand suit designed by Vernelle for Nob Hill

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Pat Knudsen modelling a dinner gown by Fanya for Caldwell-Gray

Pat Knudsen modelling a dinner gown by Fanya for Caldwell-Gray

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Pat Knudsen modelling a black faille redingote by Fanya

Pat Knudsen modelling a black faille redingote by Fanya

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White net evening gown by Emma Domb

White net evening gown by Emma Domb

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Emilie Scofield modelling a double-breasted coat and hat

Emilie Scofield modelling a double-breasted coat and hat

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Emilie Scofield modelling a suit by Margo of California

Emilie Scofield modelling a suit by Margo of California

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The San Francisco News, with typical American understatement, reports:

3000 GASP AT DAZZLING DISPLAY OF LOCAL STYLES

California, which can make a production out of the opening of a supermarket, put on a fashion show here last night with all the trappings of Hollywood, and the French couturieres [sic] – those who were able to get in – went away bedazzled. It was the most terrific fashion show that Paris has seen. The French mobbed the George V Hotel in such numbers that many of the invited notables, including some of the leading couturieres were unable to get through the crowd.

After it was over, French designers came up with some talk that might be called heresy in their league.

“We were amazed by the show, by the clothes and by the music,” said Philippe d’Asten of the Jacques Faith [sic] Dress House. “Well, you know – everything was so different. Perhaps this will influence French styles.”

Well, it sounds like Philippe might have been almost lost for words and doing his best to be diplomatic.

Joan Leslie
October 1947. Actress Joan Leslie poses by the Seine. There’s no mistaking her for a French girl. Read more.

But a culture of secrecy pervades the Paris salons and the couturiers are paranoid about the Americans ripping off their designs. They feel threatened by such a bold publicity stunt. They refuse to show up at the visitors’ fashion show because they are “afraid of being influenced by American fashions.”

The following day, when they learn about the California price tags (from $15.00 to $79.95 retail compared to an average of around $600.00 per garment for their own pieces), they do a volte-face. Schiaparelli and Jacques Fath throw cocktail parties. A round of dining and lunching follows. Jean Gaumont-Lanvin, president of the Paris Couturier Syndicate, admits:

It is true that we were doubtful about you at first, but we wish to welcome you now and in the future. You have been here a week and we have had no indication that you are here to copy our clothes or compete with us in our market. Perhaps you and the world will always need Paris to set world trends in women’s fashions. We are superb. Yes, we really are. Your styles are practical. And the prices! We couldn’t begin to match them. Yes, we are not competitors. Perhaps we can even help each other – in a small way. You produce clothes so differently. You make clothes for the masses at prices they can afford. We admire you for that – and you do not attempt to set world trends – for which we are happy with you.

The truth is that, judging by the photos here, there’s a world of difference between the Parisian originals and the American garments that follow in their wake. And the couturiers are, by and large, astute businessmen well able to spot an opportunity.

The deal

By the time the visitors embark on their return trip, the marriage of Paris and California fashions is sealed by the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne and the San Francisco Manufacturers’ & Wholesalers’ Association:

  • Any San Francisco designer may go to Paris and view any couturier’s upcoming collection for a fee of $250, giving them a six-month lead on the silhouettes and lines of fashion Paris will be introducing next season.
  • Any San Francisco manufacturer wishing to reproduce new Parisian designs for the mass market can buy a model garment for $1,800. The style will be sent to San Francisco under bond and without duty, to be returned to Paris after reproduction.
  • The Paris couturiers will make a reciprocal visit to San Francisco, financed by the city, the following October for three public showings of their autumn collections.

For his part, Adolph Schuman starts adding “Paris” to his firm’s label. He buys many textiles from French companies, thereby helping to save many from closing. He also shows European weavers how to modernize their systems.

Karl Romaine
Around 1950. Karl Romaine, who took most of the photos featured here. Read more.

Want to know more about The Fashion Flight?

This article is based almost entirely on a small archive of photos and news cuttings, which, I believe, once belonged to Pandora Hollister. There are no other relevant sources I’m aware of apart from a biography of Karl Romaine and a brief history of Lilli Ann.

Other topics you may be interested in…

Andrea Johnson, John Robert Powers model.
Andrea Johnson – forgotten supermodel of the 1940s
Paris after World War II – fact, fashion and fantasy
Wilhelmina modelling a chiffon evening dress
Wilhelmina – glamour and tragedy

Filed Under: Events, Fashion Tagged With: Adolph Schuman, Eva Emery, Fashion Flight, Joan Leslie, Karl Romaine, Pandora Hollister, Priscilla Emery

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