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Virginia Hill – a seriously bad good-time girl

Virginia Hill, queen of the mob, mixed it with the most powerful and ruthless gangsters of her day. Streetwise, sassy and shameless, she serviced her bosses every which way.

They in return let her in on their secrets and showered her with cash to fund the lifestyle of ostentatious luxury to which she aspired. She was an impostor who gatecrashed Hollywood and seduced (literally as well as metaphorically) its denizens. It was too good to last.

1941. Virginia Hill and friends celebrate Hallowe’en. Read more…

Virginia Hill’s Hollywood heyday

January 1942, and Virginia Hill is having the time of her life. She’s been in Hollywood for a couple of years and she’s the talk of the town. Now, according to Modern Screen, she’s about to marry actor John Carroll:

It’ll be a great day for Hollywood when John Carroll takes plumpish, black-eyed Virginia Hill to be his blushing bride. If the pair do bounce to the altar, John will bring into the great Movietown family the most fantastic personality it has known since Bogus Prince Romanoff was in his prime.

At 23, Virginia Hill is a woman of mystery. Her wealth is inestimable and untraceable, though it is surmised her three marriages (the first occurred when she was 14) might have had something to do with it. Her extravagances are notorious. A $1,000 evening gown, the gem of Designer Irene’s fall collection, draped her body only three or four times before she gave it to a friend. Other gowns for which she pays from $100 to $400 are often discarded without being worn at all.

Her parties are reminiscent of something that went out with the Romans. Starting with two or three couples, Virginia frequently finds herself winding up the night hosting a mob of fifty. One evening she rented the Mocambo and its entire staff for a private shindig. Conservative estimators say that little social cost her well over $3,000 [roughly equivalent to $50,000 in today’s money]!

It’s always cash on the line for Virginia Hill. She travels with gobs of it tied in a rubber band. She’s never used a checkbook even to pay bills for her Chicago apartment, her New York and Hollywood hotel suites, automobile upkeep, maid and secretary.

There’s no denying, Husband Number Four will have to step fast to keep pace with the mad, exciting Miss Hill. But if anyone can do it, John Carroll is the boy. He’s not exactly a rest cure, himself!

In the event, the marriage never materialises. It’s a lucky escape for John. Virginia’s days of blushing at anything are way behind her. With Miss Hill, John would have got more than he’d bargained for. A lot more. Her past is murky, her future fraught with danger. The truth is she’s entangled with the mob and she’s the girlfriend of notorious gangster, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel.

November 1941. Virginia Hill, cash dispenser. Read more…

Virginia Hill’s back story

Virginia Hill grows up in Bessemer, Alabama, an industrial city dominated by steelmaking. One of ten brothers and sisters, she is something of a wild child, perhaps because she’s lonely and insecure. Her father remembers how she tried to buy friendship:

One time Tabby [his nickname for her] charged several alarm clocks to my account, and then gave them away to the playmates who looked up to her, just as her frequent guests of ‘The Nightclub World’ were to do later for Tabby’s generosity.

It’s a pattern that will persist throughout her life. Her parents divorce when she is 14, and she moves with her mother to Marietta, Georgia. She can’t get away soon enough. Age 17, she marries George Rodgers, four years her senior, and heads for Chicago, where she promptly dumps him.

She soon falls in with the city’s mafia, sleeping her way straight to the top. Key to her progress is Joe Epstein, Jake “Greasy Thumb” Guzik’s chief accountant (Guzik is the Chicago Outfit’s treasurer and financial wizard). Epstein takes Virginia under his wing and introduces her to various prominent members of the gang. She’s well able to take things on from there herself.

At a 1936 Christmas party thrown by Charlie Fischetti (Al Capone’s cousin), she gives blow jobs to her host and several other top mobsters right in front of the guests as well as Fischetti’s wife – classy. It’s around this time that she starts keeping a diary of all the financial shenanigans she’s in on.

The following year, she is dispatched to infiltrate the New York mafia and find out whether they’re paying their dues to their Chicago counterparts. She loses no time in embarking on an affair with Joe “Adonis” Doto, one of the New York mob’s two most powerful bosses (the other is Charles “Lucky” Luciano).

In 1938 she becomes a courier and dealmaker. It’s the start of years of zigzagging across the US between New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Mexico, often with her brother Chick, running cash and drugs and sleeping around. In Mexico, among others she sleeps with the son of a Mexican finance minister in order to milk him for information and get him on side. In Hollywood, Errol Flynn is just one of the visitors to her bedroom.

Mid-1940s. Portrait of Virginia Hill. Read more…

Bugsy Siegel

Passing through Alabama in January 1939, Virginia takes the opportunity to seduce, marry and divorce in short order Osgood Griffin, a naive 19-year-old football player and, crucially, a son of one of the state’s richest families. The divorce enables her not just to get her hands on some useful alimony but also to marry (but only briefly) Carlos “Miguelito” Valdez. The big deal here is that it gives Valdez, a Mexican national, the right to enter the US in order to consolidate the drug alliances he and Virginia have established. 

While all this is going on, she hitches up with John “Handsome Johnny” Roselli, whom the Chicago outfit have sent out West to work under Jack Dragna, the boss of the of the Los Angeles crime family. Roselli becomes the conduit through which Virginia will report the goings-on she finds out about back to the bosses in Chicago, who in turn will relay the information to their New York counterparts.

Virginia also has a brief affair with Pasquale “Pat” DiCicco, an agent, movie producer, occasional actor and playboy, as well as an alleged mobster working for Luciano. His ex-wife, actress Thelma Todd, died in 1935 under suspicious circumstances.

DiCicco introduces Virginia to actor George Raft, known (like Frank Sinatra) for his mafia connections, who in turn puts her back in touch with Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel – his nickname a reference to his reputation as a thug with a short fuse who gets off on violence and killing. He has graduated from petty extortion to being an associate in the New York syndicate run by Adonis, Luciano and Meyer Lansky.

Virginia first met Bugsy in a Brooklyn bar in NYC in February 1937. They spent the next night fucking each other’s brains out. Even as an experienced practitioner, she will remember it as the best sex she ever had. Later that year, the lovers had to part when Siegel was dispatched by his New York partners to Los Angeles to look after their gambling, racetrack and bookmaking rackets on the West Coast.

Bugsy is regarded as a dangerously loose canon by the mobs in Chicago and New York and not to be trusted. So Dragna instructs Virginia to get into bed (literally as well as metaphorically) with him and report back about what he’s up to. She’s more than happy to oblige and it’s not long before she and her brother Chick move into a house with Bugsy.

It’s the start of probably the best five or so years of Virginia’s life. Not only is she hitched with her favourite (albeit violent and abusive but perhaps that’s part of the attraction) lover, but thanks to her underworld connections she has the spondoolies to fund the lavish parties and publicity on which she thrives. What’s more, Bugsy is a good looking guy who can turn on the charm and whose underworld associations give the Hollywood community a pleasurable frisson. It’s all fine and dandy.

1947. Virginia Hill in Paris with her mother. Read more…

The end of the affair

But all good things must come to an end, and so it proves for Virginia Hill and Bugsy Siegel.

He is a slick operator with delusions of grandeur and an eye to the main chance that will be his downfall. In 1944 he spots the potential to turn an unpromising plot on a dusty road on the edge of Las Vegas into a glamorous casino hotel financed by the mob. Back then the city was nothing like the gambling Mecca it would go on to become.

The plot is being developed by Billy Wilkerson, founder/owner of The Hollywood Reporter, Tinseltown’s first daily entertainment trade newspaper, and various nightclubs. But he’s run into financial problems, which gives Bugsy and his associates the chance to step in. In May 1946, Bugsy, increasingly obsessed with the project and arrogant to boot, engineers Wilkerson’s departure and his own appointment as president with total control.

But whereas Wilkerson has experience of construction projects, Bugsy doesn’t. He’s out of his depth. This combined with constant meddling and insistence on upping the specification at every turn means that costs start to spiral out of control. Meanwhile, in spite of multiple ongoing infidelities on both their parts, he’s still besotted with Virginia. His name for the hotel, Flamingo, is apparently inspired by his nickname for her.

She, though, prefers the razzmatazz of Hollywood to the rudimentariness of Las Vegas and knows which side her bread is buttered. Bottom line: she’s not prepared to move permanently to Las Vegas but she does make regular visits that combine passion (bonking and bust-ups) and business. The business in this case is espionage. The mob are worried about the overruns and suspect Bugsy of taking a cut without telling them. Virginia’s job is to record the costs in her diary and report back on how things are going and how the money is being spent.

Caving in to pressure from his backers, Bugsy opens the Flamingo in December 1946 before it’s finished. It’s a disaster. The hotel has to be closed again post haste and another round of funding agreed. The Flamingo reopens in March 1947 and this time it’s a very different story. The punters and the money pour in. But this brings with it another problem for Bugsy. The mob reckon it’s payback time and they’re not prepared to hang around.

When Bugsy stalls, they lose their patience. Virginia is summoned to Chicago and on 16 June put on a flight to Paris. She tells Bugsy she’s there to buy wine for the Flamingo. In practice, she’s out of the way for the final act of the drama.

Four days later at around 22:30, Bugsy enters 810 N Linden Drive, Rudolf Valentino’s old house in Beverly Hills, now rented by Virginia. He makes his way to the sitting room, turns on the lights and makes himself comfortable on the sofa to catch up on the day’s paper. Perfect for the assassin lurking in the shadows outside. The first shot explodes through the window and hits Bugsy in the head, blowing his eye 15 feet from his body. The subsequent bullets crash into his body, breaking his ribs and tearing up his lungs. It’s like something out of The Godfather.

Show more
bugsy siegel

1. Bugsy Siegel – American Mombster

A brief and entertaining biography of Virginia Hill’s favourite lover.

Show more
kefauver committee

2. The Kefauver Committee

An overview of organized crime in the US and the Kefauver Committee’s attempts to tackle it.

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virginia hill

3. The Kefauver hearings

Extracts from the television coverage of the Kefauver hearings including a clip of Virginia Hill.

Virginia Hill gets her comeuppance

From here on, it’s going to be mostly downhill (pun intended) for Virginia. Bugsy’s demise may have come as no surprise to her, but it still leaves her shaken and insecure. She’s still up to her old tricks, including an affair with wealthy 21-year-old heir Nicholas Fouilette. But within months she’s taken an overdose, the first of at least four suicide attempts that year. Rumour has it that she’s terrified that she’ll be next on the mob’s hit list because, with her diary and everything else she knows, she’s just too much of a risk.

Still, she returns to the US and meets her sponsor, Joe Epstein a couple of times. He wants her to hand over her diary; she won’t. The following year, she settles for a time in Mexico City but soon she’s inexorably drawn back to the US. In early 1950, she travels to Sun Valley, Idaho, where she meets and marries ski instructor Hans Hauser, a former world champion downhill skier from Austria. That November she gives birth to a son, Peter, and the family moves to a luxurious home in Spokane, Washington. It’s around this time that the IRS seems finally to have noticed that Virginia’s and her husband’s lavish lifestyle has no apparent means of support.

1951 is the year it all comes crashing down. In March, Virginia is summoned before the Kefauver Committee, which is investigating organized crime. The hearing is televised, and Virginia puts in a performance to fit the occasion. Her cheeky, evasive, sometimes vulgar answers to the prosecution make an entertaining change from the bland, stodgy, often bureaucratic language used by the other courtroom participants. Try this:

6 July 1951. Virginia Hill chatting at El Paso Airport. Read more…

Senator Tobey: “But why would Joe Epstein give you all that money, Miss Hill?”
Virginia Hill: “You really want to know?”
Senator Tobey: “Yes, I really want to know.”
Virginia Hill:  “Then I’ll tell you why. Because I’m the best cocksucker in town.”
Senator Kefauver: “Order! I demand order!”

Writer and director Robert C Ruark reckoned that Virginia’s testimony “created a new art form” and observed that:

Virginia Hill seems to have been an Alice in a wonderland of illegality…. Any secrets she holds are safe, because this is a girl who don’t know nothin’ about nobody and is little loath to say so.

On her way out of the courtroom when her questioning was over, she slugs Marjorie Farnsworth, a reporter for the New York Journal-American and screams at the others “I hope the atom bomb falls on every one of you!”

She leaves as something of a celebrity but it’s a Pyrrhic victory. The IRS and the Immigration and Naturalization Service have Virginia Hill and Hans Hauser in their respective sights. He is not a US citizen and when he is ordered to leave the US voluntarily, the couple go into hiding. In July the IRS slaps a demand for $161,000 on Virginia for unpaid income taxes for the years 1942 through 1947. In August they seize and auction her personal belongings but the sale raises just $41,000.

By then, Virginia has fled to Europe, never to return to the US.

Curtains for Virginia Hill

Virginia spends the last 15 years of her life in Europe. She’d like to return to the US but she can’t do a deal to avoid prison. She also tries to go to Cuba and Mexico, but her attempts are barred. In the mid-1960s she separates from her husband and moves with Peter to a modest hotel in Salzburg. On 22 March 1966 she leaves her home and fails to return. Two days later, her body is found in the snow, alongside a tree-shaded brook just outside the city. Two days later, the Los Angeles Times reports:

Virginia Hill’s Death Ruled Poison Suicide SALZBURG, Austria (UPI)

Virginia Hill, onetime glamour girl of the American underworld, took her own life by poison, an Austrian court ruled Friday. A farewell note said the 49-year-old auburn-haired beauty was “fed up with life.” 

A medical examiner who performed an autopsy ruled she died of poisoning, and a coroner’s court ruled her death was suicide. Her body was found Thursday in a mountain meadow outside the city near a night club. She had been missing two days. Miss Hill, estranged from Austrian ski instructor Hans Hauser, the last of four husbands spent her last years living in a rooming house on a small side street with her 15-year-old son who worked as an apprentice waiter. Friends said she had left a will with a lawyer in Switzerland. Miss Hill was born in Lipscomb, Ala. She rocketed into the headlines when Benjamin (Bugsie) Siegel was shot to death in her Beverly Hills home in 1947. She was in Paris at the time.

Given her previous seven suicide attempts, the pathologist’s verdict is probably correct. But rumours continue to circulate that shortly before her death she tried to blackmail Joe Adonis, then exiled in Italy. And that he subsequently sent his henchmen to force-feed her the drugs.

7 July 1951. Virginia Hill at Denver Airport. Read more…

The photos

You’ve probably noticed that the quality of most of the photos of Virginia Hill here is not up to aenigma’s usual standard. Most of the photos on aenigma are studio shots or the product of planned outdoor sessions, taken by great photographers using great equipment. They are posed, lit and enhanced in post-production (typically in the darkroom and/or by retouching the negatives). Their purpose is to promote a movie, a star or a look by creating an aspirational, even iconic, image.

That may have been the case with the head-and-shoulders portrait of Virginia Hill but the print looks like it has been made from a second- or third-generation negative. The print itself has also been heavily retouched and coarsened to make it suitable for reproduction in low-quality newsprint. The cropping marks further detract from the image.

With all the distracting detail in the background, the Hallowe’en party photo, while clearly posed, is an informal snapshot, which could have been taken by a studio or a press photographer. It’s a bit of fun. The photo of Virginia perched on a sideboard console hasn’t been so messed about but again it’s little more than a snapshop, likely taken at her home.

The photos of Virginia at Denver Airport and in Paris are clearly press shots, snapped on location in less-than-ideal conditions and using relatively cheap cameras. The photographers in these cases are the forerunners of the paparazzi.

The shot of Virginia at El Paso airport is a wirephoto. Wirephoto technology was introduced in 1935 and continued to be used by the newspaper industry until the mid-1970s. It involved scanning an original print and transmitting it over telegraph or telephone wires, a bit like a fax. Wirephotos typically suffer from poor contrast and lack sharpness. A wirephoto usually has an extended caption along one of its borders that is integrated into the image itself.

Want to know more about Virginia Hill?

There are lots of accounts of the life and exploits of Virginia Hill and a good many discrepancies between them. I’ve done my best to take a balanced view but who knows where the truth lies.

As part of my research, I read three books: 

  • Bugsy’s Baby: The Secret Life of Mob Queen Virginia Hill by Andy Edmonds
  • Virginia Hill – Mafia Molls – Beautiful Broads With Brass Balls: Volume 3 by Joe Bruno and Lawrence Venturato
  • We Only Kill Each Other: The Life and Bad Times of Bugsy Siegel by Dean Jennings.

The former is wonderfully scurrilous and sensational and casts its two protagonists in pretty much the worst possible light. The latter, on which the 1991 movie, Bugsy, starring Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, is based, takes the opposite view. It gives Bugsy and Virginia the benefit of the doubt whenever possible and indeed suggests on the back cover that Bugsy was “The man who invented Las Vegas.”

The TV movie, The Virginia Hill Story (1974) starring Dyan Cannon, takes a similarly romantic view, characterising her as a naive girl eventually betrayed by her movie magazine fantasies of glamour and romance – courageous and vulnerable, sexy and tender.

Other sources include Newspapers, Wikipedia, Glamour Girls of the Silver Screen, The Mob Museum and Nevada Public Radio.

Other topics you might be interested in…

Ava Gardner – the journey to Hollywood
Fashion and movie photos – why collect them?
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: Collecting, Press, Stars Tagged With: Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, Billy Wilkerson, Bugsy Siegel, Charles “Lucky” Luciano, Charlie Fischetti, Errol Flynn, Hans Hauser, Jack Dragna, Jake “Greasy Thumb” Guzik, Joe “Adonis” Doto, John “Handsome Johnny” Roselli, Kefauver Committee, Meyer Lansky, Pasquale “Pat” DiCicco, Virginia Hill

Brenda Mee by Thurston Hopkins – a glimpse into another world

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

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

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

The subject – Brenda Mee

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The times

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

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

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

The news media and photojournalism

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

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

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

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

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

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

According to David Mitchell, writing in The Guardian:

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

The photographer

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

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

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

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

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

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

Beauty contests

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Sabrina – Britain’s answer to Marilyn Monroe

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

The paparazzi – shock horror birth of a monster

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

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

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

The paparazzi – humble beginnings

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

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

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

The paparazzi – the movie industry to the rescue

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The paparazzi – photographic scandalmongers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The paparazzi – the Wilma Montesi scandal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The paparazzi – the strip show at Rugantino

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anita Ekberg’s account differs in the details:

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

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

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

The paparazzi – Fellini and La Dolce Vita

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The paparazzi – society’s pariahs

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

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

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

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

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

And so a monster is born.

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

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

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

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

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

Wolf pack

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

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

Princess Diana with her son Harry

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

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Princess Diana on board the luxury yacht, Jonikal

Princess Diana’s last holiday

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

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

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

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

The paparazzi – a uniquely Roman phenomenon?

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

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

…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Want to know more about the paparazzi?

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

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Other topics you may be interested in…

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

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

Short stories – for a quick break

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

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

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

AllBehind the scenesEventsFashionFilmsPhotographersPressStars
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Bull shoots Gardner

Bull shoots Gardner

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

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Marilyn Monroe nude

Naked and glistening

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

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Age after beauty

Age after beauty

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

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Photography as a sex act

Photography as a sex act

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

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Ava Gardner, Virginia Hill and friends celebrate Hallowe'en

Hallowe’en in Hollywood

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

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Picasso chats up Bardot

Picasso chats up Bardot

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

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Marriage on the rocks

Marriage on the rocks

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

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Romantically linked

Romantically linked

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

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Dressed to thrill

Dressed to thrill

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

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

Midnight fantasy

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

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Gene Tierney and Oleg Cassini at a fancy-dress party

Gene Tierney and Oleg Cassini at a fancy-dress party

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

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Ludmilla Tchérina with Salvador Dali

Truly, madly…

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

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Not what the studio ordered

Not what the studio ordered

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

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Fashion and film

Fashion and film

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

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Other topics you may be interested in…

Donyale Luna – the fashion world’s wayward moon-child
Movie stars of the 1940s – talent, savvy, looks and luck
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

Hoyningen-Huene makes a portrait

This article from the November 1947 issue of Popular Photography offers a great insight into the working methods and views of George Hoyningen-Huene, one of the 20th century’s great fashion photographers. It describes a lecture he gave at the Art Center School in Pasadena, where he had begun teaching.

At that time, he had recently grown disillusioned with the direction fashion photography was taking, and that comes through strongly in some of his comments. But read on and you’ll find out about his approach to lighting – an aspect of his work for which he is particularly renowned. I love his observation that:

With women, if the lighting proves to be the least bit unflattering, you’re liable to find yourself picking pieces of tripod out of your head where the irate female has placed them.

I came across the article as I was preparing a piece on Hazel Brooks. A scan of the original, complete with photographs, is available online. The photo on this page is in my collection and does not relate to the session described by Timothy Stratton though it was taken the same year.

Hoyningen-Huene makes a Portrait by Timothy Stratton

George Hoyningen-Huene is a name not new to photography. Russan born, Hoyningen-Huene had an American mother, an English education, art training in France, and has explored virtually every country in Europe, and many in Asia and Africa. Most well known for his photographic work in women’s fashion magazines, he is also the author of the picture books “Hellas,” “Egypt,” “Mexican Heritage,” and “Baalbek and Palmyra.”

1947. George Hoyningen-Huene masterclass. Read more.

Three hundred photography students at Los Angeles Art Center recently had George Hoyningen-Huene, internationally known photographer, as a guest lecturer. Huene brought with him Hazel Brooks, Enterprise Studios’ star who spent six months as a Conover model before Hollywood recognized her. She is copper-haired, green-eyed, tall and sveltely slim, and Huene claims she is the ideal photographic subject.

To back up his belief that she makes an ideal photographic subject, Huene used her to demonstrate the procedure followed in a typical commercial fashion or glamour assignment. After posing her in several ways, and under varying lighting conditions, he set out to make the portrait shown on the opposite page, explaining his procedure as he went along. Following his theory that the pose is all important, his model’s position was first determined, and then the lighting set up. His backlight, key or main lighting, and fill-in lights were arranged, and lights to accentuate special features of the photograph, such as veiling and straw hat, were then set. After this was done, his exposure readings were taken, and Hoyningen-Huene was ready to make a portrait.

In the course of his lecture, Huene, who has posed more beautiful women than the loneliest male ever dreamed of, informed the Art Center students that he is not pleased with the present crop of glamour pictures turned out by members of his profession.

His opinions on glamour and fashion photography – two fields whose techniques are in many ways similar – were definite, outspoken, and well phrased.

Somebody apparently got the idea, not too long ago, that models were supposed to give the appearance of having been under water for a couple of weeks before they were photographed. With their deadpan, limp fish looks, many of the models appearing in current ads leave me with a feeling of wanting to race for great gulps of fresh air.

Were these stupid expressions that burden the faces of various models entirely the fault of the girls themselves, I would offer a suggestion that the present crop of models be dumped and an entire new lot hired. There is, unfortunately, a similarity among most of the models, but not so complete that a good photographer can’t hide these similarities with an average employment of intelligence. The sooner photographers realize that the models are women and not alabaster personalities, the more arresting fashion and glamour ads will be.”

Huene strongly believes that too many fashion photographers are afraid to let their models look like beautiful women. They prefer to treat them as statues and in so doing lose whatever personality might be expressed in the girls’ faces.

Most of the time, this ‘statue treatment’ is nothing but laziness. Any photographer knows that floodlighting a face and letting the makeup take care of the model’s personality is the easiest way to a pseudo-glamour shot. This opinion is shared by the girls who have been modelling for a long time and who realize that such time-saving stunts as false eyelashes and a liberal application of lipstick cover up for their own laziness. Many of the models are under the impression that such phoney devices add to their beauty. I wonder who they think they are fooling. A good model should be herself and not try to look like the average concept of a model. But trying to get her to look natural is an entirely different matter. Many of the present high-priced photographic lovelies have been so mishandled and improperly photographed by the ‘alabaster look’ photographers that they naturally assume that every photographer they work for wants that same old ‘How bored can one be?’ expression. I’d much rather take an inexperienced model and, through a sensible lighting arrangement, bring out the freshness and charm of the girl, something that is nearly impossible with girls who have been modeling for three or four years. Too, with an inexperienced model, one who hasn’t been mauled photographically, freshness can be brought out with even a basic lighting arrangement.

In the matter of lighting a subject, Huene takes a healthy clout at those photographers who spend hours arranging their lights.

Any photographer should realize that for fashion shots the basic lighting arrangement never changes. One key light of no particular power or quality; a background light dictated by the way in which you wish to highlight your subject, and another light either above or below your subject, depending upon the features of the subject to be emphasized, are all you need.

The only tough part in the entire lighting setup is the decision as to what part of the model should be accented. Some feature of the model must be accented or a dull, flat, lifeless picture will be the result. I think the easiest way to accent is through use of a ‘dinky,’ using the small light as an artist would a shading pencil. I’ve found that with such a lamp it is almost possible to ‘draw’ with light. Too, to bring out the sparkle in the eyes with light and not depend on the easily detected eye-sparkle created by the brush of a retoucher, a ‘dinky’ can’t be beaten. It’s biggest advantage is that it can ‘draw’ a line of light without destroying the image created by the balance of key lights and fill-in.

I’ve found over the years of long, hard experience that the best lighting arrangement for glamour or fashion shots is the simplest possible lighting. The simpler the lighting, the more true the photograph. Once you’ve established the lighting setup, forget about it and concentrate on the subject. And whatever you do, try to arrange your lighting scheme in a hurry and not bore the model with lighting details. With men you’ve really got nothing to worry about. Men don’t care about looking handsome. Most of the males that I’ve photographed have been against ‘glamour boy’ shots. The male attitude being such, you don’t have to spend too much time on a lighting setup. Actually, the more rugged the subject appears the better he likes it. But with women, if the lighting proves to be the least bit unflattering, you’re liable to find yourself picking pieces of tripod out of your head where the irate female has placed them.

As simple as the lighting setup should be, it still takes care to find out the necessary angles for simplicity. Huene suggests that the student fashion photographer practice lighting arrangements on a plaster cast. “It’s the surest way I know for an embryonic fashion photographer to discover the ways light travels over a face and how it can completely alter the features of the model. After the plaster cast light experiment has been completed and the various gradations of light recorded on a piece of paper, the student should start experimenting on mood pictures of old men or women, enhancing facial characteristics through deft lighting.

On the matter of backgrounds for fashion shots, Huene claims that any background can be used as long as it doesn’t blend with the subject being photographed and make it lifeless, and doesn’t interfere with the facial qualities of the model. By this Huene means that in many glamour or fashion shots, a flower placed in the background often looks as if it is growing out of the subject’s ear. The best background, claims Huene, is one that is shaded in darkness but still an intrinsic part of the picture. This is not as difficult to obtain as it sounds.

All the photographer has to do is exercise some ingenuity and care in the selection and creation of his backgrounds. Whatever you do, don’t make the backgrounds so arresting that they attract more attention than the primary subject.

Following the work on the old men, Huene suggests (and it is probably one of the few suggestions that any student of any subject will readily accept) that the photographer make a series of “posture poses” of girls garbed in bathing suits.

Don’t kid yourself that making a series of pictures of girls in bathing suits is a very pleasant way to spend many hours. It’s tough work but very valuable. For the first time most young photographers realize the tremendous artisitic value of good feminine posture. With nothing to lean upon during the beach photo session, both the girl and the photographer soon find that some of the over-exaggerated postures assumed by a model for fashion shots are completely unnatural. When the model tries to assume these poses at the beach, with nothing upon which to support herself, she can’t stand up. Remember this when you pose the girl for a fashion shot, and you won’t wind up with one of the stupid stances that ruin otherwise decent pictures.

After the lighting experiments, the practice shots made of the plaster cast, the experiments with the old men, the selection of a new, sweet feminine face for a model and the series of bathing suit shots, I think that the student fashion photographer is ready to make his first shot.

Experiment with the texture of the gown your model is wearing before you decide on a picture. Arrange the girl under the basic lighting setup, making certain that you bring out the ‘life’ in the cloth. Add accessories as necessary and you’re nearly ready to click the shutter. There’s just one more step that remains, and this final step separates, as it were, the amateurs from the master.

It’s the composition of the picture. The camera originally was designed to capture and retain some particularly striking scene. Why forget about this use of the camera in the making of a photograph designed to sell a product?” Your fashion photo, or any picture taken for use as an ad, is only going to hold reader attention if it is strikingly beautiful through natural simplicity. We’ve come right back to the business of the dismal expressions that blacken the otherwise beautiful faces of our leading models. And again, it is not their fault but the fault of the photographers.

I can’t understand why a photographer shouldn’t take a few minutes more during the course of a sitting, and get from his models the grace that only comes with being natural. One of the tricks that I’ve used is to have the model walk slowly around the area outlined by the lights. Watch her through the groundglass. After a couple of minutes of parading she’s bound to forget all that she might have learned in modeling school about ‘walking like a lady.’ Then she’ll start walking and acting like any normal person. That’s the time to take your picture. Stop her when you see a natural looking pose. If necessary have her hold the stance or the action a couple of seconds while you alter your fill-in light. Then shoot.

When the picture you’re shooting has to show two or more people your trouble is doubled. Even when you tell a group of models to start talking or acting in an entirely natural manner, they are conscious of the camera. I’ve been making fashion, glamour, and news shots for nearly twenty-five years, and I have yet to find a posed subject void of camera consciousness.

Did you ever think of the fact that the camera does practically all the wok in the making of a picture? Focusing and stops are up to the cameraman, of course, but even the crudest camera can make a good picture. Its value, however, depends entirely on the photographer, and the picture is not going to have any value at all unless the photographer works for naturalness. And how should the photographer work for this naturalness? By balancing all the factors that make the picture. The background should be balanced with the subject. The subject should not overbalance the object that the photographer is trying to present. Everything in the picture should work for something. Obtaining this balance is difficult, of course, but not impossible. A short course in architecture and free hand drawing, particularly of nudes, is very valuable.

I can’t tell anybody how to blend these factors. It’s a matter that the photographer must work out for himself. Nobody told the masters the tricks of balance when they started painting the pictures that have endured and increased in beauty with each passing year. The charm of the picture that the painter obtained through balance is never changing. It should be the same with a fashion or glamour photo. Don’t start making fashion shots with the idea that they are only for 1947 or 1948. Set up your pictures with the idea that some day they’ll be included in a collection of the world’s great photographic art.

These are the technical aspects of making a good picture. From the commercial standpoint Huene feels that it would be a good idea for every fashion or glamour photographer to know something about the dressmaking industry or the product he is trying to sell through a masterful picture. When possible, an assistant should be hired to take care of the basic lighting arrangements and the like.

Most important, however, is an understanding between the photographer and the editor of the magazine for which he is shooting. A conference between the two before the model arrives will iron out most of the difficulties that can normally be expected and save time and effort.

After all these preparations, what is going to be the final result?

A picture of a girl that looks human,” claims Huene. “A picture that not only sells a product, but attracts reader attention by being fresh and entirely lifelike. It seems almost a crime that with all the wonderful photographic equipment and supplies at their disposal, so many photographers should continue, through the lack of understanding of what makes a good picture and the failure to exercise artistic judgment, to pour out thousands of stupid, make-believe glamour prints. Don’t let anybody tell you that the reason for the models appearing so similar in ads is the models themselves. They are only doing what they are told. It’s the fault of the photographers, who, through carelessness or laziness are interested only in getting a check and not an artistic creation.

Hoyningen-Huene, who has made pictures of women in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the United States, and won numerous prizes in photographic salons, should know whereof he speaks.

Other topics you may be interested in…

Janet Blair by A L “Whitey” Schafer
A L “Whitey” Schafer – the art of the portrait
George Hoyningen-Huene – from film to fashion and back again
Richard Avedon – ways to be lovely

Filed Under: Fashion, Press Tagged With: George Hoyningen-Huene

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