“I felt like I knew everything,” he said – Vaccaro travelled around the country in a 1943 Chevrolet. One day he saw a copy of Business Week magazine with Fleur Cowles on the cover. He approached her for work and she hired him straight away. He started with Flair, and was quickly booked for photographic assignments by Life, Look and the other great publications of that period. During this time Vaccaro moved from Long Island to Greenwich Village and regularly hung out at the Cedar Tavern with Pollock, Rothko, De Kooning and others. At the same time, and for the next three decades, he began to photograph an extraordinary array of celebrities, and of course, some of the most beautiful women too; Marilyn Monroe, Lauren Bacall, Liz Taylor, Maria Callas, Ali McGraw and the Europeans, Sophia Loren (“one of the greatest women I ever met”), Gina Lollabrigida (“she cooked for me”) Anna Magnani, and Anita Ekberg, the beautiful star of “La Dolce Vita.” “Marlene Dietrich tried to seduce me,” Vaccaro recalled. “It was in a hotel in Monte Carlo, and when I came into the room she was nearly naked, and threw herself into my arms. I had a young female assistant with me and this upset her. She told us both to get out because she was not going to get a simple one-onone seduction. I was 37 and she was 73. She had a habit of giving a watch to every man she had an affair with. I did not want that watch.” One of his most remembered assignments was to photograph Senator John Kennedy at home for Look magazine, just before his presidential run. “First impressions mean a lot to me and my impression of him when we met was a man of great personal warmth and humanity,” said Vaccaro. “I also found, surprisingly, a strong expression of humility. We stayed friends until that terrible day in 1963.” Vaccaro has been honored around the world, but especially in France and Germany. Germany put on an exhibition in major cities of photographs from his book Entering Germany. France presented him with the Legion D’Honneur for his war photography, particularly one of a GI kissing a little French girl. “For me it summed up liberation, and I want to have three memorials made from this image, two in Europe and one in New York,” he said. Vaccaro sold his Manhattan penthouse and moved to Long Island City in 1972, because, to him, it represented something of the feel of the Left Bank in Paris. He still loves living in LIC. More recognition is on its way for Vaccaro, with two more books of his work being published, and a major exhibition being planned. NOVEMBER 2013 | BOROMAG.COM | 33 Photo courtesy Tony Vaccaro & John Vachon
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