• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content

aenigma

  • Home
  • About
  • Instagram
  • Disclaimer
  • Privacy
  • Contact

Photographers

Tazio Secchiaroli – more than a paparazzo

A scene from Fellini's Satyricon
1969. A scene from Fellini’s Satyricon. Photo by Tazio Secchiaroli.

Tazio Secchiaroli is generally regarded as the most talented and daring of the paparazzi. During the 1950s, he played a key role in developing the genre of paparazzi photography.

This article touches on his early career and his exploits as a paparazzo, but it’s mainly a showcase for the stunning work he did after that, particularly with Federico Fellini and Sophia Loren.

Tazio Secchiaroli – his rise to stardom

Tazio Secchiaroli is born on 26 November 1925, in Centocelle, a working-class suburb about 10 kilometres from the centre of Rome.

As a teenager, his first job is working as a gofer at Cinecittà. But in the final years of World War II the Italian film industry is on its knees. So in 1944, age 19, Tazio Secchiaroli becomes one of the ‘scattini’ (street photographers), patrolling the train station and tourist spots for visitors to Rome and offering to do portrait shots of them.

It’s a hand-to-mouth existence, hardly more lucrative than his job at Cinecittà. Fortunately he gets to know Luciano Mellace, a photographer who works for International News Service, an American agency. In 1951, Mellace offers Secchiaroli a chance to join the agency, which the latter seizes with both hands. His new job involves assisting at shoots and helping out in the darkroom. It’s a start.

The following year, Tazio Secchiaroli moves on to VEDO, a photo agency. Its founder is an enterprising and unscrupulous photographer called Adolfo Porry-Pastorel. He’s known in the trade for the stunts he pulls to outwit his competitors – for example putting a stickers over the picture lenses of his rivals’ twin-lens cameras. Because the sticker is invisible through the viewfinder, the trick will be discovered only after the event, in the darkroom.

Gjon Mili in the studio with two models
1950. Gjon Mili in the studio with two models.

But Tazio Secchiaroli is both ambitious and restless. In 1955, he becomes his own boss, setting up Roma Press Photo agency with Sergio Spinelli, a colleague at VEDO. Spinelli does the marketing and PR, Secchiaroli takes the photos. And what photos they are! His ability to be in the right place at the right time and to grab the most telling shots is covered in the paparazzi – shock horror birth of a monster. Before long, he’s the de facto ringleader of the paparazzi and known as an urban fox – the Volpe di via Veneto.

His pursuit of Ava Gardner and Walter Chiari (actor, co-star in The Little Hut and escort) tells us all we need to know about his ruthless tactics:

One evening, we were following Ava Gardner and Chiari, who were nightclubbing around Rome. There were four of us: Elio Sorci, myself and our collaborators. We had taken pictures of the two of them going in and out of nightclubs, worthless photographs because there were so many just like them. So, later, as he was parking and she had gone to open the door to the apartment building, I told Sorci to get ready. Then I went up very close to Gardner and set off a flash in her face; she screamed and Chiari immediately rushed me. Sorci promptly started shooting and got some pictures in which it looks as if we were fighting.

Based on Tazio Secchiaroli’s reputation as leader of the pack, Federico Fellini recruits him as an advisor for La Dolce Vita. It proves to be a formative experience and a turning point in Secchiaroli’s career.

In the early sixties, perhaps recognizing that street photography is a young man’s line of work and that he is not getting any younger, Tazio Secchiaroli transitions from paparazzo to set and portrait photographer. To this end, he persuades Gjon Mili, working in Italy on an assignment for LIFE magazine, to take him on for three months as an unpaid assistant. This is his opportunity to learn about the formal photographic techniques that as a paparazzo have not really been on his agenda – things like composition, lighting and depth of field.

Tazio Secchiaroli – his work with the stars

His first assignment as a set photographer is for Federico Fellini’s follow-up to La Dolce Vita – 8½. After that Tazio Secchiaroli works on the sets of all of Fellini’s films except for Juliet of the Spirits and Orchestra Rehearsal.

Enlarge
Photo taken on the set of Spirits of the Dead

Spirits of the Dead

1968. Photo taken on the set of Toby Dammit, based on a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, Federico Fellini's contribution to Spirits of the Dead. Photo by Tazio Secchiaroli.

Enlarge
Photo taken on the set of Spirits of the Dead

Spirits of the Dead

1968. Photo taken on the set of Toby Dammit, based on a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, Federico Fellini's contribution to Spirits of the Dead. Photo by Tazio Secchiaroli.

Enlarge
Photo taken on the set of Spirits of the Dead

Spirits of the Dead

1968. Photo taken on the set of Toby Dammit, based on a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, Federico Fellini's contribution to Spirits of the Dead. Photo by Tazio Secchiaroli.

Enlarge
Photo taken on the set of Spirits of the Dead

Spirits of the Dead

1968. Annie Daniel on the set of Toby Dammit, based on a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, Federico Fellini's contribution to Spirits of the Dead. Photo by Tazio Secchiaroli.

Enlarge
Photo taken on the set of Spirits of the Dead

Spirits of the Dead

1968. Annie Daniel on the set of Toby Dammit, based on a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, Federico Fellini's contribution to Spirits of the Dead. Photo by Tazio Secchiaroli.

Enlarge
Photo taken on the set of Spirits of the Dead

Spirits of the Dead

1968. Monica Pardo on the set of Toby Dammit, based on a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, Federico Fellini's contribution to Spirits of the Dead. Photo by Tazio Secchiaroli.

Enlarge
Terence Stamp on the set of Spirits of the Dead

Spirits of the Dead

1968. Terence Stamp on the set of Toby Dammit, based on a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, Federico Fellini's contribution to Spirits of the Dead. Photo by Tazio Secchiaroli.

Enlarge
Terence Stamp on the set of Spirits of the Dead

Spirits of the Dead

1968. Terence Stamp on the set of Toby Dammit, based on a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, Federico Fellini's contribution to Spirits of the Dead. Photo by Tazio Secchiaroli.

Enlarge
Spirits of the Dead

Spirits of the Dead

1968. Photo taken on the set of Toby Dammit, based on a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, Federico Fellini's contribution to Spirits of the Dead. Photo by Tazio Secchiaroli.

Enlarge
Federico Fellini on the set of Spirits of the Dead

Spirits of the Dead

1968. Federico Fellini on the set of Toby Dammit, based on a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, the director's contribution to Spirits of the Dead. Photo by Tazio Secchiaroli.

Enlarge
Federico Fellini on the set of Spirits of the Dead

Spirits of the Dead

1968. Federico Fellini on the set of Toby Dammit, based on a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, the director's contribution to Spirits of the Dead. Photo by Tazio Secchiaroli.

Enlarge
Spirits of the Dead

Spirits of the Dead

1968. Federico Fellini and Anne Tonietti on the set of Toby Dammit, based on a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, the director's contribution to Spirits of the Dead. Photo by Tazio Secchiaroli.

Enlarge
Federico Fellini on the set of Spirits of the Dead

Spirits of the Dead

1968. Federico Fellini on the set of Toby Dammit, based on a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, the director's contribution to Spirits of the Dead. Photo by Tazio Secchiaroli.

Enlarge
Federico Fellini on the set of Spirits of the Dead

Spirits of the Dead

1968. Federico Fellini on the set of Toby Dammit, based on a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, the director's contribution to Spirits of the Dead. Photo by Tazio Secchiaroli.

Enlarge
Anne Tonietti on the set of Spirits of the Dead

Spirits of the Dead

1968. Federico Fellini and Anne Tonietti on the set of Toby Dammit, based on a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, the director's contribution to Spirits of the Dead. Photo by Tazio Secchiaroli.

Fellini is not just an employer but also a profound influence:

If it weren’t for Fellini, I might have remained a paparazzo. He opened the doors of Cinecittà to me, but more than that, he showed me things I never would have understood on my own. Watching him, I learned to see the world in a disenchanted and slightly amused way. It was as if I had taken a load off my shoulders, or rather, off my brain.

Enlarge
Ursula Andress preparing for a scene from The 10th Victim

The 10th Victim

1965. Ursula Andress preparing for a scene in Elio Petri's sci-fi fashion thriller, The 10th Victim. Photo by Tazio Secchiaroli.

Enlarge
Ursula Andress in a scene from The 10th Victim

The 10th Victim

1965. Ursula Andress as Caroline Meredith in a scene from Elio Petri's sci-fi fashion thriller, The 10th Victim. Photo by Tazio Secchiaroli.

Enlarge
Ursula Andress in a scene from The 10th Victim

The 10th Victim

1965. Ursula Andress as Caroline Meredith in a scene from Elio Petri's sci-fi fashion thriller, The 10th Victim. Photo by Tazio Secchiaroli.

Enlarge
Elsa Martinelli as Olga in The 10th Victim

The 10th Victim

1965. Elsa Martinelli as Olga in Elio Petri's sci-fi fashion thriller, The 10th Victim. Photo by Tazio Secchiaroli.

Enlarge
Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress in a scene from The 10th Victim

The 10th Victim

1965. Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress in a scene from Elio Petri's sci-fi fashion thriller, The 10th Victim. Photo by Tazio Secchiaroli.

Enlarge
Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress filming a scene for The 10th Victim

The 10th Victim

1965. Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress filming a scene for Elio Petri's sci-fi fashion thriller, The 10th Victim. Photo by Tazio Secchiaroli.

Tazio Secchiaroli also works with other directors including Pier Paolo Pasolini, Michelangelo Antonioni and Elio Petri (only two of the photos here from The 10th Victim have the photographer’s stamp; the others are attributed to him).

As portrait photographer to the stars, his most notable collaboration is with Sophia Loren, which lasts 20 years. In her autobiography, Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow: My Life, she writes:

I trusted Tazio Secchiaroli – my invaluable photographer – with my life. He was completely free to do as he pleased because I was sure he’d do the right thing. Marcello [Mastroianni] was a friend of his and had recommended him to me, and I’d gotten along with him right from the start. Fellini adored him as well, and they often worked together. He’d been the first to immortalize the nightlife of via Veneto, inspired not just the character of the paparazzo in La Dolce Vita, but by the whole atmosphere of the movie. He became like family to me, accompanying me all over the world, from set to set, and from event to event.

Enlarge
Sophia Loren being photographed

Sophia Loren being photographed

1967. Sophia Loren being photographed. Photo by Tazio Secchiaroli.

Enlarge
Sophia Loren in Ghosts, Italian Style

Sophia Loren in Ghosts, Italian Style

1967. Sophia Loren as Maria Lojacono in Ghosts, Italian Style. Photo by Tazio Secchiaroli.

Enlarge
Sophia Loren in Ghosts, Italian Style

Sophia Loren in Ghosts, Italian Style

1967. Sophia Loren as Maria Lojacono in Ghosts, Italian Style. Photo by Tazio Secchiaroli.

Enlarge
Sophia Loren at a garden party

Sophia Loren at a garden party

Around 1970. Sophia Loren at a garden party. Photo by Tazio Secchiaroli.

Enlarge
Sophia Loren hugging a friend

Sophia Loren hugging a friend

1967. Sophia Loren hugging a friend. Photo by Tazio Secchiaroli.

Enlarge
Sophia Loren in Man of La Mancha

Sophia Loren in Man of La Mancha

1972. Sophia Loren as Dulcinea in Man of La Mancha. Photo by Tazio Secchiaroli.

Elsewhere she rhapsodizes about his talent and professionalism:

Beneath an apparently cold and inattentive expression, Tazio has the instinct and controlled aggressiveness of the true photographer, one who will take a hundred or even a thousand shots until he is sure that he has got exactly the one he was looking for. Above all, Tazio has one great talent: he never pesters you, he will not confuse you with suggestions, he never tries out sterile experiments. Like a good hunting dog (I hope Tazio will forgive the analogy, but I do love dogs), he does not run or jump without reason. With all his senses on the alert, he waits patiently for the precise instant, however fleeting it may be, to seize the picture and freeze it forever on his film.

Enlarge
Sophia Loren and Carlo Ponti outdoors

Sophia Loren and Carlo Ponti outdoors

1967. Sophia Loren and Carlo Ponti outdoors. Photo by Tazio Secchiaroli.

Enlarge
Sophia Loren and Carlo Ponti relaxing on a sofa

Sophia Loren and Carlo Ponti relaxing on a sofa

1967. Sophia Loren and Carlo Ponti relaxing on a sofa. Photo by Tazio Secchiaroli.

Enlarge
Sophia Loren in an exotic garden

Sophia Loren in an exotic garden

1967. Sophia Loren in an exotic garden. Photo by Tazio Secchiaroli.

Enlarge
Sophia Loren in Ghosts, Italian Style

Sophia Loren in Ghosts, Italian Style

1967. Sophia Loren as Maria Lojacono in Ghosts, Italian Style. Photo by Tazio Secchiaroli.

Enlarge
Sophia Loren in Ghosts, Italian Style

Sophia Loren in Ghosts, Italian Style

1967. Sophia Loren as Maria Lojacono in Ghosts, Italian Style. Photo by Tazio Secchiaroli.

Enlarge
Sophia Loren in Ghosts, Italian Style

Sophia Loren in Ghosts, Italian Style

1967. Sophia Loren as Maria Lojacono in Ghosts, Italian Style. Photo by Tazio Secchiaroli.

Enlarge
Charlie Chaplin, Sophia Loren and Marlon Brando on the set of A Countess from Hong Kong

On the set of A Countess from Hong Kong

1967. Charlie Chaplin with Sophia Loren and Marlon Brando on the set of A Countess from Hong Kong. Photo by Tazio Secchiaroli.

Enlarge
Sophia Loren filming More Than a Miracle

Sophia Loren filming More Than a Miracle

1967. Sophia Loren filming More Than a Miracle. Photo by Tazio Secchiaroli.

Enlarge
Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni in Marriage Italian-Style

Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni in Marriage Italian-Style

1964. Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni in Marriage Italian-Style. Photo by Tazio Secchiaroli.

And the admiration and affection is reciprocated by Tazio Secchiaroli:

With la Loren, I really understood what light is. Few people have as good a sense as she does of this basic, incorporeal thing. But that’s not all. La Loren is one of the greatest people I have ever known. Beneath the diva is a simple, generous woman who, out of her great sense of fairness, detests cynicism, slyness, and arrogance.

Tazio Secchiaroli will carry on working on film sets and portraits until 1983:

Because photography, like any art, requires a great deal of energy. In 1983, I felt that this energy was exhausted. So I decided to quit.

Want to know more about Tazio Secchiaroli?

Diego Mormorio’s monograph, Tazio Secchiaroli – the greatest of the paparazzi, authoritatively written and beautifully illustrated, is a must-read. Online, the first place to go is Flashgun warrior by Gaby Wood, published in the 17 July 1999 issue of The Guardian. Apart from Wikipedia and, for a selection of Tazio Secchiaroli’s photographs, The Red List, other sources include:

  • Tazio Secchiaroli’s website (written in Italian).
  • The New York Times obituary, written by Sarah Boxer – Tazio Secchiaroli, the Model for ‘Paparazzo,’ Dies at 73.
  • An article in The Herald – We got even, says the original paparazzo.

Other topics you may be interested in…

Paris after World War II – fact, fashion and fantasy
Picasso and Bardot – the artist and the sex kitten
The paparazzi – shock horror birth of a monster

Filed Under: Films, Photographers, Stars Tagged With: Carlo Ponti, Federico Fellini, Fellini's Satyricon, Gjon Mili, Sophia Loren, Spirits of the Dead, Tazio Secchiaroli, The 10th Victim

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

Enlarge
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.

Enlarge
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.

Enlarge
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.

You must set a portfolio id.

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.

You must set a portfolio id.

Other topics you may be interested in…

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

The sixties – sex, drugs, rock and roll and a whole lot more

Welcome to the sixties, a decade of controversy, creativity and consumerism; effervescence, experimentation and excess; babes, boutiques and blasphemy.

At the dawn of the sixties, the economies of the US and Western Europe are booming and post-World War II austerity measures are a thing of the past. There’s an air of optimism, tempered by the ongoing Cold War, which comes to a head in October 1962 with the Cuban Missile Crisis – a close brush with full-scale nuclear war. But to every cloud, a silver lining, and for the movie industry the Cold War serves as inspiration for a string of films including The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Dr Strangelove (1964) and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965) – ironically, From Russia With Love (1963) is not really about the Cold War

Show more
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

1. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

No movie better epitomises the paranoia, cynicism and squalor of the Cold War than The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. It is based on a novel by John le Carré, who was familiar with the grim reality, having worked for both MI5 and MI6 in the late 1950s and early ’60s.

Show more
2001: A Space Odyssey

2. 2001: A Space Odyssey

Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film is arguably the greatest sci-fi movie ever made. Among other things, it’s been called awesome, influential, mind-blowing, cool, obsessional and pretentious – and it lives up to all of these designations. It also has a quintessentially sixties style, not least the interiors of the spacecraft.

Show more
The first moon landing

3. The first moon landing

In 1969 Neil Armstrong becomes the first man to set foot on the moon with his now legendary words “One small step for man, a giant leap for mankind.” The computer on Apollo 11, his spaceship, is much less powerful than a smartphone.

During the sixties, the ideological battle extends way beyond the borders of the Western and Communist powers. In May 1961, in response to the Soviet Union’s rapidly advancing space programme, President John F Kennedy promises to land a man on the moon by the end of the decade. On 20 July 1969, Neil Armstrong makes good the promise. Together with “Buzz” Aldrin, he walks around for three hours, does some experiments, picks up bits of moon dirt and rocks, plants a US flag and leaves a sign. As if in anticipation, three sci-fi movies appear the previous year: 2001: A Space Odyssey, Planet of the Apes and Barbarella.

Both the pioneering spirit and the technological advances of the space race fuel developments during the decade. The sixties see the launch of colour television, the audiocassette and quick-drying acrylic paint. Injection-moulded plastic becomes a material of choice, not least for furniture. And the introduction of pantyhose paves the way for the miniskirt. Novelty, instant gratification, disposability, living for the day are all in.

Enlarge
NASA East

NASA East

NASA administrator George Mueller and astronaut Deke Slayton dub 2001: A Space Odyssey’s production facilities “NASA East” due to the level of accuracy in the designs and the amount of scientific hardware at the studio.

Enlarge
Scalable solutions

Scalable solutions

All the vehicles in 2001: A Space Odyssey are designed so that the small-scale models as well as full-scale interiors to appear realistic. The modeling team is led by two hirees from NASA, science advisor Fred Ordway and production designer Harry Lange, along with Anthony Masters who is responsible for turning Lange’s 2-D sketches into models.

Enlarge
The devil in the detail

The devil in the detail

To develop their designs for 2001: A Space Odyssey, Ordway and Lange insist on knowing “the purpose and functioning of each assembly and component, down to the labeling of individual buttons and the presentation on screens of plausible operating, diagnostic and other data.”

Enlarge
Science and savvy

Science and savvy

The design of spaceship Discovery One is based on solidly conceived, yet unrealized science. In practise it would have needed huge cooling fins to disperse the heat produced by its thermonuclear propulsion system. These are eliminated due to Stanley Kubrick’s concern that 2001: A Space Odyssey’s audience might interpret them as wings.

Enlarge
Modelled on Apollo

Modelled on Apollo

Drawings of Discovery One’s control panels for 2001: A Space Odyssey are based on NASA photos showing astronauts huddled around an in-development Apollo space capsule.

Enlarge
Space suits inspired by NASA

Space suits inspired by NASA

Hans-Kurt Lange models 2001: A Space Odyssey’s space suits on those of NASA, where he works as an illustrator in the Future Projects Division. The suits use horizontal stitching to maintain a constant volume of air.

Enlarge
Velcro-equipped boots

Velcro-equipped boots

In 2001: A Space Odyssey, scenes of the astronauts in the Discovery equipment storage corridor and elsewhere, depict walking in zero-gravity with the help of velcro-equipped boots labeled “Grip Shoes”.

Enlarge
Time capsule

Time capsule

Accuracy might be the lodestar for the designs in 2001: A Space Odyssey, but they are also very much a product of their time. The aesthetic relates to, among other things, the interiors and products emerging from Italy and the fashions of André Courrèges and Pierre Cardin.

Enlarge
Furniture of the future

Furniture of the future

The Hilton lobby of Space Station Five in 2001: A Space Odyssey is furnished with playful yet functional Djinn chairs designed by Olivier Mourgue in 1965. The desk in the background is a slightly modified variant of a George Nelson design for the Herman Miller 1964 Action Office series.

Enlarge
Back to the future

Back to the future

The costumes for 2001: A Space Odyssey are designed by none other than established (not to say establishment) British fashion designer, Hardy Amies, best known for dressing Queen Elizabeth II.

Enlarge
An object of mystery and desire

An object of mystery and desire

The sleek black monolith, which appears in each of the four parts of 2001: A Space Odyssey, is arguably one of the most striking icons in movie history – an object of mystery and desire.

Enlarge
Man and the universe

Man and the universe

For all its visual and technical wizardry, 2001: A Space Odyssey is also a wondrous meditation on the nature of man and his relationship to the universe. In a 1968 interview with Playboy magazine, Kubrick states:

You’re free to speculate as you wish about the philosophical and allegorical meaning of the film—and such speculation is one indication that it has succeeded in gripping the audience at a deep level—but I don’t want to spell out a verbal road map for 2001 that every viewer will feel obligated to pursue or else fear he’s missed the point.

The sixties – the younger generation

Young people are better off than ever and ready to challenge their elders and betters. They feel a new sense of identity and they’re determined to express it.

Nowhere is this more evident than in London where, in 1963, the bowler-hatted establishment is embarrassed, humiliated and thrown into disarray when Secretary of War, John Profumo, is forced to admit that he has lied to the House of Commons about an affair with Christine Keeler, an alleged call-girl. Unfortunately for him, Ms Keeler is also involved with Yevgeny Ivanov, a Soviet naval attaché. Although Profumo assures the House that he hasn’t compromised national security, he is forced to resign and the scandal threatens to topple the Conservative government.

In 1964, Peter Laurie in an article in Vogue observes that:

London is a city of and for the young. Probably no other in the world offers us the opportunities that are here. Wherever enthusiasm, energy, iconoclasm or any kind of creative ability are needed, you’ll find people in their mid-twenties or younger.

Enlarge
Christine Keeler

Christine Keeler

1963. Christine Keeler leaves the Old Bailey surrounded by police, press and paparazzi after giving evidence at the trial of Dr Stephen Ward. The 50-year-old...

Read more
Enlarge
Marianne Faithfull

Marianne Faithfull

1967. Marianne Faithfull has grown up as a well-bred, West London schoolgirl. At the outset of her career and still a teenager, she looks for...

Read more
Enlarge
Paul McCartney

Paul McCartney

1964. Paul McCartney, bass guitarist, singer and song-writer for rock band The Beatles, relaxes at a party. It could almost be a scene from Michelangelo...

Read more
Enlarge
Mandy Rice-Davies

Mandy Rice-Davies

1961. 17-years-old Mandy Rice-Davies poses in front of a window two years before going down in history with the quip “Well, he would, wouldn’t he?”...

Read more
Enlarge
David Bailey and Veruschka

David Bailey and Veruschka

1965. Sixties supermodel Veruschka dances over photographer David Bailey as he writhes on the ground looking to capture an unconventional angle. Bailey, the son of...

Read more
Enlarge
Diana Rigg and Patrick Macnee

Diana Rigg and Patrick Macnee

1967. Seated on the baroque throne is Patrick Macnee as suave, unflappable, debonair secret agent John Steed. His wardrobe is inspired by that of Patrick’s...

Read more
Enlarge
Sandie Shaw

Sandie Shaw

1964. 17-year-old Sandy Shaw hugs the cover of her first hit, Always Something There to Remind Me. She will go on to rack up more...

Read more
Enlarge
Sarah Miles and David Hemmings

Sarah Miles and David Hemmings

1966. Sarah Miles is an Essex girl whose career as an actress kicks off with two sexy roles. Her debut, age 21, is as Shirley...

Read more
Enlarge
Pattie Boyd

Pattie Boyd

1964. This is a whirlwind year for fashion model Pattie. Cast for The Beatles’ film A Hard Day’s Night, she meets George Harrison on set,...

Read more

The people making the headlines come from all sorts of backgrounds, not just from posh public schools. They include pop singers and pop artists, actors, models, hairdressers, photographers, interior decorators and designers. Think The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, David Hockney, Allen Jones, Michael Caine, Terence Stamp, Tom Stoppard, Vidal Sassoon, David Bailey, Terence Donovan, David Hicks, Alan Fletcher and Theo Crosby. All are concerned in one way or another with “image.” Private Eye refers to this group of talented, self-confident young people as “the new aristocracy”.

The sixties – new and not-so-new attitudes

If there’s a single theme that runs right through the sixties like letters through a stick of rock it’s challenge. Traditional notions of values and morality, style and taste are up for grabs.

Taboos around sex outside marriage, under threat since at least the 1940s, are further eroded by the introduction of the contraceptive pill, which opens the door for the permissive society. As the decade goes by, nudity features more and more regularly in magazines, on stage and on screen, to howls of outrage from the likes of Mary Whitehouse and the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association in the UK. They are fighting a losing battle – as demonstrated by, for example, the decriminalization of homosexuality in 1967 and a rash of movies about sex and power that are released in the early seventies.

Susan Bottomly, aka International Velvet, by Billy Name
Andy Warhol superstar Susan Bottomly, aka International Velvet, in a promotional shot for Chelsea Girls (1966). Photo by Billy Name.

In the US, the civil rights and anti-war movements are gathering pace. The latter, in particular, is associated with alternative lifestyles. This is the age of communes and collectives, of yoga and mysticism, of rock and roll and recreational drugs, particularly marijuana. In 1967, Marianne Faithfull, convent-educated chanteuse, single mother and girlfriend of Mick Jagger (impossible to be closer to the epicentre of swinging London), is found wearing nothing more than a fur rug by police searching for drugs at Keith Richards’ house in Sussex. Rolling Stones Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are subsequently sentenced to three and 12 months in prison respectively.

Reactions to the scandal reveal the extent to which underlying attitudes and prejudices have and haven’t changed. The liberals in the establishment are outraged and The Times publishes a leader titled Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?”. Under pressure, the Lord Chief Justice quashes the jail terms, a decision that liberalises drug-enforcement policy going forward. But Marianne will later recall:

It destroyed me. To be a male drug addict and to act like that is always enhancing and glamorising. A woman in that situation becomes a slut and a bad mother.

Mick Jagger, Anita Pallenberg and Michele Breton in Performance
1968. Sex and drugs and rock and roll. Mick Jagger, Anita Pallenberg and Michele Breton in Performance.

The theme is referenced in Darling (1965), a British film about an ambitious girl played by Julie Christie, who is happy to sleep around, moving from one relationship to another to further her career only to get her come-uppance. It turns out that the ideal woman of the sixties is perhaps closer to her counterpart of the previous decades than would appear at first glance. As Betty Friedan observes in The Feminine Mystique (1963), the stereotype of the “ideal woman”…

…held that women could find fulfilment only in sexual passivity, male domination, and nurturing maternal love. It denied women a career or any commitment outside the home and narrowed woman’s world down to the home, cut her role back to housewife.

Nevertheless, the counter-culture is in full swing, often taking its inspiration from advertising and fast-moving consumer goods. In London, Bridget Riley is at the forefront of the Op Art movement. In the US, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg shock and amaze audiences with their Pop Art creations. Psychedelic art emerges from the drug and music sub-cultures of London and San Francisco.

Show more
Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick

Andy Warhol

The first part of this five-minute video introduces Andy Warhol’s approach to movie-making and collaborator Edie Sedgwick’s method of non-acting. The second part is an audio recording of Andy and Edie talking about the next day’s filming, illustrated by a collage of movie clips and stills.

Show more
Bridget Riley

Bridget Riley

After working for a few years in a semi-impressionist style, Bridget begins to develop her signature Op (short for Optical) Art style around 1960. It uses black and white geometric patterns to explore visual effects and produce a disorienting effect on the eye. In this brief video clip she talks about her work.

Show more
Italy, the new domestic landscape

Italy, the new domestic landscape

The commentary for this 10-minute video on Italy is authored by Emilio Ambasz, curator of design at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and responsible for the landmark exhibition, Italy, the new domestic landscape. In it, he identifies three main groups of designers. In their work, conformists continue to refine already established forms and functions. Reformists, questioning the designer’s role in a consumer society, redesign known objects with new, ironic and sometimes self-deprecatory social, cultural and aesthetic references. One faction of contestatory designers focus their attention on political and philosophical discussion, the other seeks to develop objects that are flexible in function.

In Italy, a new generation of architects and designers such as Paolo Soleri, Ettore Sotsass, Joe Colombo and Archizoom favour a more personal, expressive, even light-hearted approach. Their utopian visions will find their ultimate expression in the summer of 1972 at New York’s Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition, Italy, The New Domestic Landscape.

In music the headline acts include The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix, but there are many, many others. What they all have in common is youthfulness and iconoclasm.

The sixties – from futuristic to nostalgic fashion

A new decade needs a new ideal of female beauty. Step forward Jean Shrimpton and David Bailey. She’s been brought up on a farm about 30 miles from London, he’s the son of a tailor’s cutter in the East End of London.

Bailey, together with partners-in-crime Brian Duffy and Terry Donovan, pioneers a new, raw, in-your-face, style of fashion photography characterized by strong contrasts, bold cropping and unsentimental poses. “The Black Trinity”, as Norman Parkinson, a photographer of the older generation dubs them, roam the streets of London shooting celebrities from all walks of life, most notoriously (in Bailey’s case) lethal gangsters the Kray Twins.

In fact, the photographers become celebrities in their own right, going out with actors, musicians and all manner of beautiful people. Nor is it just their photographic style that’s new. In the words of Duffy, “Before 1960, a fashion photographer was tall, thin and camp. But we three are different: short, fat and heterosexual!”

Enlarge
Blow-Up – Thomas is visited by his fans

Blow-Up – Thomas is visited by his fans

Two teenage fans visit photographer Thomas (David Hemmings) at his studio as he talks to his receptionist (Tsai Chin). The blonde teenager is Jane Birkin; the brunette, Gillian Hills. Photo by Arthur Evans.

Enlarge
Blow-Up – the fashion shoot

Blow-Up – the fashion shoot

David Hemmings, as Thomas, the photographer, shoots a high-fashion session with five models. Left to right: Jill Kennington, Peggy Moffitt, Rosaleen Murray, Ann Norman and Melanie Hampshire. Photo by Arthur Evans.

Enlarge
Blow-Up – Thomas relaxes with his favourite model

Blow-Up – Thomas relaxes with his favourite model

Photographer Thomas (David Hemmings) relaxes with his favorite model, Verushka, who plays herself. Photo by Arthur Evans.

Enlarge
Blow-Up – Thomas vaults a fence

Blow-Up – Thomas vaults a fence

Photographer Thomas (David Hemmings) attracted by a couple in a London park, vaults a fence the better to stalk his interesting subject. Photo by Arthur Evans.

Enlarge
Blow-Up – Thomas hides behind a tree

Blow-Up – Thomas hides behind a tree

Photographer Thomas (David Hemmings), hiding behind a tree, photographs an embracing couple (Vanessa Regrave and Ronan O’Casey) in a London park. Photo by Arthur Evans.

Enlarge
Blow-Up – Jane kisses her lover

Blow-Up – Jane kisses her lover

Jane (Vanessa Redgrave) and her lover (Ronan O’Casey) kiss in a London park rendezvous in Michelangelo Antonioni’s first English-language film in color, “Blow-Up.” Photo by Arthur Evans.

Enlarge
Blow-Up – Jane comes after Thomas

Blow-Up – Jane comes after Thomas

Jane (Vanessa Redgrave) chases after Thomas (David Hemmings) who has taken pictures of herself and her lover in a London park. Photo by Arthur Evans.

Enlarge
Blow-Up – Jane confronts Thomas

Blow-Up – Jane confronts Thomas

Jane (Vanessa Redgrave) orders Thomas (David Hemmings) to stop taking photographs of her in a London park. Photo by Arthur Evans.

Enlarge
Blow-Up – Thomas refuses to give in to Jane

Blow-Up – Thomas refuses to give in to Jane

Jane (Vanessa Redgrave) is infuriated when Thomas (David Hemmings) refuses to give her the films he has just taken of her and her lover in a London park. Photo by Arthur Evans.

Enlarge
Blow-Up – Jane visits Thomas' studio

Blow-Up – Jane visits Thomas’ studio

Jane (Vanessa Redgrave) visits Thomas (David Hemmings) at his studio in a bid to get back the incriminating pictures he took of her in a London park. Photo by Arthur Evans.

Enlarge
Blow-Up – Jane tries to sneak off

Blow-Up – Jane tries to sneak off

Jane (Vanessa Redgrave) tries to leave the studio of photographer Thomas (David Hemmings) with the camera she thinks contains incriminating pictures of herself and her lover. Photo by Arthur Evans.

Enlarge
Blow-Up – Thomas pulls a fast one

Blow-Up – Thomas pulls a fast one

Photographer Thomas (David Hemmings) pretends to give Jane (Vanessa Regrave) the film he has taken of her in a park but it’s only a dummy. Photo by Arthur Evans.

Enlarge
Blow-Up – Thomas has an idea

Blow-Up – Thomas has an idea

Thomas (David Hemmings) realizes that the negative he is holding could be the answer to a mystery. Photo by Arthur Evans.

Enlarge
Blow-Up – Thomas develops the film

Blow-Up – Thomas develops the film

Thomas (David Hemmings) develops film in his dark room. Photo by Arthur Evans.

Enlarge
Blow-Up – Thomas examines the negatives

Blow-Up – Thomas examines the negatives

Thomas (David Hemmings) examines the negative of a photograph with a magnifying glass. Photo by Arthur Evans.

Enlarge
Blow-Up – Thomas scrutinises a print

Blow-Up – Thomas scrutinises a print

Having blown up a picture he took in a London park, Thomas (David Hemmings) looks for details with a magnifying glass. Photo by Arthur Evans.

Enlarge
Blow-Up – Thomas studies a blow-up

Blow-Up – Thomas studies a blow-up

Thomas (David Hemmings) studies the blow-up of a picture he took in a London park, with Jane (Vanessa Regrave) and her lover as the subject. Photo by Arthur Evans.

Enlarge
Blow-Up – Thomas at a party

Blow-Up – Thomas at a party

Thomas (David Hemmings) finds himself a bored onlooker at a London party. Photo by Arthur Evans.

There’s no better introduction to their style, attitude and MO than Michelangelo Antonioni’s film, Blow-Up (1966).

Bailey meets Jean Shrimpton in 1960 while he is shooting for Vogue and she is working with Duffy in a nearby studio. She says: “‘Bailey’ was how he introduced himself and that was all I ever called him. We were instantly attracted to each other.” He says: “What attracted me to her was that she genuinely didn’t care how she looked. She honestly never understood what all the fuss was about. That was very attractive to me.” How very sixties!

He books her for a string of shoots (as well as a four-year relationship) and over the next few years they produce a deluge of iconic images that appear in Vogue, the Sunday supplements and other magazines. Suddenly the aristocratic hauteur of fifties fashion shoots is so passé. In its place is something younger, more energetic, more accessible, more fun, above all more overtly sexy.

Enlarge
Sue Lyon

Sue Lyon

1962. Sue’s work as a child model in a commercial for JC Penney leads to small parts on TV in The Loretta Young Show (1959)...

Read more
Enlarge
Raquel Welch

Raquel Welch

1966. When Raquel Welch appears on screen in a purposely depleted, furry, prehistoric bikini in Hammer Studios’ One Million Years B.C., she instantly becomes a...

Read more
Enlarge
Jane Fonda

Jane Fonda

1968. Jane is the daughter of Henry Fonda (The Grapes of Wrath, 12 Angry Men, On Golden Pond). Having become interested in acting in the...

Read more
Enlarge
Twiggy

Twiggy

1967. A skinny, freckled and crop-haired 18-year-old model, Twiggy weighs just six and a half stone. The previous year, she was told she’s too short...

Read more
Enlarge
Vanessa Redgrave

Vanessa Redgrave

1966. This is the first year that Vanessa appears on the big screen – not in just one film, not in two but in three....

Read more
Enlarge
Penelope Tree with David Bailey

Penelope Tree with David Bailey

Around 1967. This is the year that American-born model Penelope moves in with David Bailey – "he had this dangerous, lion-king-on-the-savannah vibe." She’s 18 years...

Read more

Unlike the voluptuous beauties of the fifties such as Monroe, Mansfield, Dors and Sabrina, “The Shrimp” is a fresh-faced, slender girl-next-door. In her wake come a procession of waifs such as Twiggy, Jill Kennington, Penelope Tree, Patti Boyd and, at the more exotic edge of the spectrum, Veruschka, Peggy Moffitt and Donyale Luna. While the skinny, androgynous, doll-faced model dominates the decade, she coexists with her more curvaceous sister, embodied in the likes of Sophia Loren and Raquel Welch.

London designers in particular are quick to respond, creating designs for the new generation rather than expecting them to ape their parents. Mary Quant, Barbara Hulanicki, Zandra Rhodes, Marion Foale, Sally Tuffin, Bill Gibb and Ossie Clark are the new kids on the block and they are not afraid to experiment with new materials – perspex, PVC, polyester, acrylic, nylon, rayon, Spandex, even paper. Their fun, eye-catching, easy-care outfits are sold through boutiques. The most famous is Biba but many others cluster around Carnaby Street and the King’s Road.

Show more
Blow-Up

Blow-Up

Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 movie, set in swinging London, stars David Hemmings as a fashion photographer who unwittingly captures a death on film after following two lovers in a park. It’s both a stylish and intriguing mystery and a brilliant period piece. And at a deeper level it’s an exploration of the relationship between perceptions and reality.

Show more
Carnaby Street

Carnaby Street

1968. In the 1960s Carnaby Street’s independent fashion boutiques are where it’s at whether you’re one of the mods (a clan of youthful dudes) or, a few years later, a hippie. With bands such as the Rolling Stones, The Who and the Small Faces working, shopping and socialising in the area, it becomes one of London’s coolest destinations. By the mid-sixties its fame has reached the US courtesy of Time magazine. According to the leading article in the 15 April 1966 issue, London: The Swinging City:

Perhaps nothing illustrates the new swinging London better than narrow, three-block-long Carnaby Street, which is crammed with a cluster of the 'gear' boutiques where the girls and boys buy each other clothing...

Show more
Qui êtes-vous, Polly Maggoo?

Qui êtes-vous, Polly Maggoo?

The fashion show at the beginning of William Klein’s zany, irreverent, subversive 1966 movie is a scathing satire on the Paris couture houses of the time. It’s familiar territory for him – he’s been working for Vogue US for almost a decade.

 

Meanwhile, space-age fashion dominates the catwalks of Paris. André Courrèges, Paco Rabanne and Pierre Cardin in particular put a bomb under traditional notions of couture with their emphasis on short skirts, white boots, chain mail – clothes that can be carried off only by the jeunesse dorée.

During the first half of the decade, the direction in which fashion is moving is pretty clear: skirts are getting shorter and silhouettes boxier, with an emphasis on new materials and bold colours. Then the pendulum begins to swing from futuristic towards nostalgic. In the search for something more romantic, styles proliferate. Towards the end of the decade three different looks coexist:

  • Flower-power blossoms at San Francisco’s Summer of Love in 1967 and at Woodstock two years later.
  • Its close cousin, the ethnic / peasant look, is built around items such as Afghan coats, Mexican blouses and ponchos, Indian pantaloons, floor-length gipsy skirts and head scarves.
  • Finally there’s the ruffles-and-ringlets look  – all velvet, lace, frills and beads, taking its cues from Louis Malle’s Viva Maria! (1965), a romp set somewhere in early-20th century Latin America, where Brigitte Bardot and Jeanne Moreau get involved in various high jinks with a bunch of revolutionaries.

Want to know more about the sixties?

I embarked on this piece as a showcase for some of the sixties photos in my collection. In order to provide some context for them, I’ve highlighted various themes, events and movies. Inevitably my choices have been subjective and partial. There’s no way that this collage of words, images and video clips can do justice to the sixties. But hopefully it will give you a flavour of the era and pique your interest to find out more.

Three books from my library inspired and informed this piece:

  • Sixties Design by Philippe Garner
  • Antonioni’s Blow-Up by Philippe Garner and David Mellor
  • In Vogue: Sixty years of celebrities and fashion from British Vogue by Georgina Howell.

The Internet is full of information about the sixties including specialist websites about specific models and movie stars, directors and films, events and designers. Just google your interest.

Other topics you may be interested in…

Donyale Luna – the fashion world’s wayward moon-child
Paris after World War II – fact, fashion and fantasy
Veruschka and Rubartelli – a fashion legend

Filed Under: Fashion, Films, Photographers, Stars Tagged With: 2001: A Space Odyssey, Andy Warhol, Anita Pallenberg, Blow-Up, Bridget Riley, Carnaby Street, Christine Keeler, Darling, David Bailey, David Hemmings, Diana Rigg, Edie Sedgwick, Italy: the new domestic landscape, Jane Fonda, Jean Shrimpton, John Profumo, Julie Christie, Mandy Rice-Davies, Marianne Faithfull, Michelangelo Antonioni, Mick Jagger, Patrick Macnee, Pattie Boyd, Paul McCartney, Penelope Tree, Polly Maggoo?, Qui êtes-vous, Raquel Welch, Sandie Shaw, Sarah Miles, Sue Lyon, Susan Bottomly, The Avengers, The New Domestic Landscape, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Twiggy, Vanessa Redgrave, Veruschka

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.

AllBehind the scenesEventsFashionFilmsPhotographersPressStars
Enlarge
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...

Read more
Enlarge
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...

Read more
Enlarge
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...

Read more
Enlarge
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...

Read more
Enlarge
Halloween in Hollywood

Halloween in Hollywood

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

Read more
Enlarge
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...

Read more
Enlarge
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...

Read more
Enlarge
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...

Read more
Enlarge
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...

Read more
Enlarge
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...

Read more
Enlarge
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...

Read more
Enlarge
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...

Read more
Enlarge
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,...

Read more
Enlarge
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...

Read more

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
Barbara Stanwyck in The Two Mrs Carrolls
Unsafe sex – the starlet’s dilemma

Filed Under: Behind the scenes, Events, Fashion, Films, Photographers, Press, Stars Tagged With: Anita Ekberg, Ann Rutherford, Ava Gardner, Barbara Stanwyck, Bill Josephy, Blow-Up, Brigitte Bardot, Clarence Sinclair Bull, David Hemmings, Elizabeth Taylor, Gene Tierney, La Dolce Vita, Ludmilla Tcherina, Marilyn Monroe, Mickey Rooney, Odile Rodin, Oleg Cassini, Orson Welles, Pablo Picasso, Raphael Hakim, Richard Avedon, Richard Burton, Rita Hayworth, Robert Taylor, Ruth Hussey, Salvador Dali, Sophie Marceau, The World Is Not Enough, Veruschka, Virginia Field, Virginia Hill

A L “Whitey” Schafer – the art of the portrait

Janet Blair by A L “Whitey” Schafer
1941. Janet Blair wrapped in cellophane. Photo by A L “Whitey” Schafer. Read more.

A L “Whitey” Schafer was a leading stills photographer in Hollywood during the 1930s and ’40s. In 1941 he published Portraiture Simplified, a book in which he argues that “…portraiture’s purpose is the realization of character realistically.” It provides an insight into his approach and techniques.

To help promote the book, he wrote wrote an article for amateur photographers in the February 1943 issue of Popular Science. It makes a nice counterpoint to some of his studio shots. A transcript follows, but it’s worth taking a look at the original (there’s a link to it at the end of this article), both for the photos that illustrate it and for his advice on equipment, which do not appear here.

After the transcript, you will find a few reflections on A L “Whitey” Schafer’s Hollywood portraits followed by his career timeline.

Explore your home for pictures in pattern

By A. L. (WHITEY) SCHAFER Portrait Photographer, Paramount Studios “Whitey” Schafer is a pioneer among Hollywood’s still photographers. Starting 22 years ago as a laboratory worker at Paramount, he was for ten years in charge of portrait, publicity, advertising and production still photography for Columbia Pictures. Now he is back at Paramount, in charge of all still photography and directing the work of the same laboratory where he started as a boy. He specializes in “pattern pictures” such as the accompanying ones of Ann Rooney and Lynda Gray.

The man behind the lens, whether he be a professional or an amateur, sees life in terms of pictures. Since many of us are going to spend more time at home from now on, more of our pictures will have home settings. Why not make the best of the situation by getting interesting home patterns into your photographs? If you follow the suggestions I’ve found valuable in my studio work, you can build a collection of pictures that will not only portray your family and friends more interestingly, but will, in their settings, afford intimate glimpses of your home as well.

Vera Zorina by A L “Whitey” Schafer
1942. Vera Zorina, star of ballets, stage and film musicals. Photo by A L “Whitey” Schafer. Read more.

Any background other than a blank wall resolves itself into a pattern of lines or masses. Where in the home will you find interesting patterns? In the woodwork of a door, and its framework; in the brick sidewalk and the flagstones of your patio; in floor coverings, particularly rugs with strong markings; in chairs and lamp standards and iron grill work; in the grape arbor, a shade tree, the picket fence. Two simple rules will serve as your guide:

1. Look for interesting line.

2. Do not shoot into “open” background, such as a plain wall.

Both rhythm and contradiction will provide interest. For example, lower the camera and you elongate a full-length figure. Have your subject lean away from the perpendicular when the design is rectangular to break up parallel lines, and so get a contradictory line between the center of attraction and the background. These points are well illustrated in the accompanying pictures.

There is one important exception to the second rule. You may safely photograph a girl in a pretty costume against a plain wall, for here interest centers in the girl and her garb. In general, though, it is the background that makes your pictures.

Any feminine wardrobe will include more than one costume with interesting pattern – a peasant dress, for example. Have your subject stand against the wall, hold or pin the dress up by the hem so as to frame her head and shoulders like a fan, turn one shoulder toward the camera, and you’ll get a picture to be cherished. Unless you have a portrait attachment, you must be content with a waist figure. In enlarging, though, bleed the dress off the edges of the print, thus creating a feeling of endless design.

How should you shoot for close-ups, medium figures or long shots? Does a door call for a medium figure and the mantel a full figure? Which odd corner holds promise of a beautiful composition?

Suppose we examine some concrete cases. The ideas they suggest undoubtedly will point the way to parallel possibilities in your own home.

Barbara Stanwyck by A L “Whitey” Schafer
1943. Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity. Photo by A L “Whitey” Schafer. Read more.

Consider the front door, or perhaps the dining-room door. It may be paneled, or perfectly plain with handsomely grained wood. You’ll agree, I am sure, that the form and pattern of the door are interesting; they’re doubly so when sister or mother consents to pose. Again let us ask your subject to stand with one shoulder turned toward the camera. (If she stands straight on, her head will appear disproportionately small.) Place the camera at shoulder level – certainly no lower than the bust line.

“Four walls do not a prison make,” but four sides of the door casing certainly will imprison your subject. So, either on the negative or when enlarging, crop so that the casing does not frame the picture. Let the panel bleed off the edges.

That’s not an inflexible rule, of course. Some doors have interesting moldings or casings. When including this framework, to avoid the feeling of imprisonment, tip the camera opposite to the line of your subject’s figure. If she leans to the right, tilt the camera to the left. By this means, the normally horizontal and perpendicular lines of the doorway will both frame the center of interest at an interesting angle and enhance the line of the figure.

Have you ever thought of a wall, a simple, unadorned expanse of plaster, as part of your home worth photographing? It can be, if you add interesting shadows. Some of the most effective portraits I have taken are medium shots photographed against such a background. Place your subject directly against the wall, turn one shoulder toward the camera and arrange a single key light high enough to cast a butterfly shadow under the nose so long as almost to reach the lip. No matter which way he or she faces, to avoid the illusion of a crooked nose the light must be cast to run the shadow directly down, and not even a trifle side-ways. The single-source light will cast shadows along the wall, bringing out the relief that makes the picture. No back light is needed here.

Rugs, particularly those bearing a single predominant figure against an open or lightly figured field, offer interesting opportunities. They may be hung against a wall or left on the floor. In the first case, be sure to place the figure high enough so it doesn’t conflict with the head of your subject. It’s a good plan to make this a medium shot, placing the subject in one lower corner, with the figure running out of the opposite upper corner. If you wish to avoid an unsightly shadow and focus attention upon the subject, place her about three feet in front of the rug. Thus, the background will be slightly out of focus.

A slightly different procedure applies when the rug is left on the floor. Now you’ll shoot down from an elevation of about 5’, tilting the camera so that the figure comes diagonally across the plate. Make sure your subject’s head is closer to the camera than her feet.

Mary Lou Dix by A L “Whitey” Schafer
1935. Mary Lou Dix, the epitome of the svelte Art Deco look. Photo by A L “Whitey” Schafer. Read more.

Remember my warning not to shoot into open background. That means, simply, that with such exceptions as costumes against bare walls, the background pattern and foreground objects should balance the picture both as to width and depth. Virtually any piece of furniture may be used in the foreground, such as a sofa or an upended chair. These natural props not only solve the problem of the straying hand by giving it a resting place; they also keep the resulting picture out of the stereo-typed class.

Lean an occasional table on its side, for example, and frame a head in the center of the top. Use a low setup, shooting up to get a feeling of distance. The possibilities with furniture are limitless. A few trials will show you the way.

What may you find of interest outdoors? Lattice work, vines, tree branches … pictures are everywhere. Let’s make them different. The latticed arbor, for instance. Don’t simply take a straight shot, but angle the lattice to the boundaries of the negative. If the sun is shining directly through the lattice, try for a silhouette, making sure none of the rays strike the lens.

A human figure will improve the picture, and yet preserve the pattern. In this case, while the lattice will give you a bolder pattern as a result of contrast, you should expose for the subject rather than for the background.

I have left until last the most prized and usually the most poorly conceived picture of all. That’s the family portrait. Don’t stand all your subjects in a single row, some in shadow and some in the sun, say “look at the camera,” and shoot. Do take time to arrange them against an interesting background, perhaps the climbing rose against the living room. Break the straight line by having some sit and others stand, one turned right and another left, some slightly farther from the camera than others. Get them to talk until they relax, and when they seem to be interested in each other rather than in that box at your finger, press the trigger.

A L “Whitey” Schafer – Hollywood portraits

These days, the likes of George Hurrell and Clarence Sinclair Bull garner most of the attention. A L “Whitey” Schafer, by contrast, is a name unfamiliar to all but the cognoscenti. He barely gets a mention in John Kobal’s book The Art of the Great Hollywood Photographers. One reason for the neglect could be the relative brevity of his career, curtailed by his early death

Enlarge
Dolly Haas

Dolly Haas

1936. Dolly Haas made her movie debut age 10 in Germany, the country of her birth. With the rise of...

Read more
Enlarge
Dolores del Rio

Dolores del Rio

1937. Dolores del Rio was one of Hollywood's most important silent-movie actresses and one of its first Latin stars. Her...

Read more
Enlarge
Doris Nolan

Doris Nolan

1938. Doris Nolan’s career as an actress oscillated between the stage and screen. Her most notable movie appearance was as...

Read more
Enlarge
Joan Perry

Joan Perry

1938. Joan Perry was a model when, dancing with an escort in New York's Central Park Casino, she caught the...

Read more
Enlarge
Fay Wray

Fay Wray

1940. Fay Wray screamed her way into movie history as the apple of King Kong's eye. Although she made about...

Read more
Enlarge
Ann Miller

Ann Miller

1941. Ann Miller was the leading female tap dancer in Hollywood musicals of the 1940s and ’50s, with a reputed...

Read more
Enlarge
Veronica Lake

Veronica Lake

1944. Veronica Lake’s trademark peek-a-boo hair-do (a cascade of golden tresses that fell forward to obscure one heavy-lidded eye) motivated...

Read more
Enlarge
Ann Savage

Ann Savage

1944. Ann Savage was best known for her role as Vera, one of the most hellish femmes fatales in the...

Read more
Enlarge
Ann Richards

Ann Richards

1946. Shirley Ann Richards kicked off her career in a series of 1930s Australian films before moving to Hollywood to...

Read more
Enlarge
Dorothy Lamour

Dorothy Lamour

1947. Dorothy Lamour was one of the four most popular pin-ups of World War II (along with Betty Grable, Lana...

Read more

Looking at the images on this page, his most distinctive trait seems to be the tilt at which he regularly puts his camera. Even when he’s not employing that technique, there’s often a strong diagonal element to the composition achieved via the lighting or the pose of his sitter. And as his article suggests, he’s not afraid to use backgrounds to add drama and interest, whether via props or projection.

Does he succeed in realistically capturing his sitters’ characters? Well, that was probably a tall order, given the studios’ requirement for glamour rather than personality. The closest he comes here is probably the portrait of Doris Nolan – the hint of a smile that plays around her eyes and lips suggests a mischievous sense of humour.

At his best, as in the photos of Rita Hayworth, Mary Lou Dix, Janet Blair, Dolly Haas, Joan Perry, Fay Wray and Ann Miller, A L “Whitey” Schafer proved a master of his profession, well up to the task of helping his employers turn aspiring actresses into movie icons.

Rita Hayworth by A L “Whitey” Schafer
1942. Rita Hayworth vamps it up. Photo by A L “Whitey” Schafer. Read more.

A L “Whitey” Schafer – career timeline

1902. Born in Salt Lake City.

Around 1917. Moves with his family to Hollywood.

1921. Joins Famous Players-Lasky to work in the stills laboratory, processing prints.

1923. Joins the Thomas Ince Studio, where he shoots stills and occasionally appears in movies. In a 1948 Popular Photography article he recalls, “That was in the days when everybody on the lot was called on to act at times. When we weren’t shooting pictures, we were doing “walk-ons.”

1932. Moves to Columbia.

1935. Succeeds William Fraker (father of “Bud” Fraker) as head of Columbia’s stills photography department.

1941. Replaces Eugene Robert Richee as head of Paramount’s stills photography department.

1951. Dies, age 49, when a stove aboard a yacht explodes as he tries to help the owner light it.

Want to know more about A L “Whitey” Schafer?

The best source of information I’ve found is Mary Mallory / Hollywood Heights — A. L. “Whitey” Schafer Simplifies Portraits. For more photos by A L “Whitey” Schafer, take a look at The Red List. The full article in Popular Science is available via Google Books (you’ll find it on pages 144f).

Other topics you may be interested in…

Hoyningen-Huene makes a portrait
Unknown model by Kenneth Heilbron
Kenneth Heilbron – mid-century fashion from Chicago
Richard Avedon – ways to be lovely

Filed Under: Photographers, Stars Tagged With: A L Whitey Schafer, Ann Miller, Ann Richards, Ann Savage, Barbara Stanwyck, Dolly Haas, Dolores del Rio, Doris Nolan, Dorothy Lamour, Fay Wray, Janet Blair, Joan Perry, Lilli Marlowe, Mary Lou Dix, Rita Hayworth, Veronica Lake

  • « Go to Previous Page
  • Go to page 1
  • Go to page 2
  • Go to page 3
  • Go to page 4
  • Go to Next Page »

© 2021 - aenigma some rights reserved under a creative commons attribution-noderivs 3.0 unported license

  • Home
  • About
  • Instagram
  • Disclaimer
  • Privacy
  • Contact