How to Be a Movie Star Read Online Free Page A

the noisemakers, Petrucci managed to get off a round of pictures, then dropped to his knees to change film.
    "And I looked over," he said, "and I could see that under the table, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor were holding hands."
    Then he felt a hand on his shoulder—Bricktop's majordomo was putting an end to the impromptu photo session. As Petrucci left, he noticed Burton glance his way.
    It was only then, apparently, that the Cleopatra company understood the commotion they were causing streetside. "We were told that we couldn't leave through the front door," Tom Mankiewicz said. "The Via Veneto was packed solid. Thousands of people were waiting out there for Elizabeth to come outside."
    So they exited out the back under heavy escort, detouring through the warm kitchen smelling of garlic and oregano. On a side street they piled into two waiting cars. Someone caught sight of Elizabeth's black hair and sparkling dress, and shrieked, "There she is!" As the mob roared down the street, the cars sped off into the night. Elizabeth, undoubtedly, loved it; she liked a good chase scene. And one wonders if Burton might have acquired a taste for the thrill of it all himself that night.
    Petrucci didn't pursue them. He had his photos and was developing them even as he wove his motorbike in and out of the snarl of traffic. "I invented a photo-processing lab right inside my Vespa, the only one in the world," Petrucci said. "This way I could process the pictures and get them in ahead of my rivals."
    Magazines like Oggi Illustrato, L'Europeo, Lo Specchio and Settimo Giorno paid hefty sums for photos of celebrities. Petrucci was part of a roving band of freelance imagemakers who catered to this clientele. The term paparazzi, lifted from the Fellini film La Dolce Vita, had not yet become widespread, although it was along the glittery Via Veneto that photographers, stalking their subjects like prey, created what would become one of the celebrity circus's most controversial sideshows. It was here that Tony Franciosa, husband of Shelley Winters, went berserk after being snapped entering Bricktop's with Ava Gardner. It was also here that former King Farouk of Egypt hurled his considerable girth at a photographer after being caught with his mistress at the Café de Paris.
    Though a tough breed, these "assault photographers" were far less aggressive than the paparazzi of today. Young men mostly, they dressed fashionably in coats and ties or cardigan sweaters that were sometimes complemented by colorful sashes. They traveled in packs, the heavy batteries of their Rolleiflexes slung over their shoulders. The best shots came when they worked together. One night while pursuing Ava Gardner, the photographers Tazio Secchiaroli and Elio Sorci came up with a plan. Secchiaroli would insinuate himself as close to Gardner as possible, then set off his flash directly in her face. When the time came, the actress's escort, actor Walter Chiari, took off after Secchiaroli just as they had hoped. Sorci, meanwhile, was snapping away. The resulting photos, published in Settimo Giorno, turned both young men into hotshots along the Via Veneto. "We discovered that by creating little incidents we could produce great features that earned us a lot of money," Secchiaroli said. Creating "little incidents" to produce dramatic reactions would become one of the signature arts of these photographers.
    By 1961 the self-proclaimed king of the camera troops was a Russian expatriate, Ivan Kroscenko, who had declared that Elizabeth Taylor was the biggest "get" of all. Before Elizabeth's arrival in Rome, Kroscenko predicted that she would become a veritable cottage industry in Italy: "You'll see photographs of her—intimate ones—with some handsome actor, fascinating director, or patrician playboy." He spoke with such confidence because he'd heard murmurs that Fisher was fading out of the picture. And Kroscenko knew that stars in troubled marriages loved to let loose in Rome.