Levy - Dolce vita confidential: Fellini, Loren, Pucci, paparazzi, and the swinging high life of 1950s Rome

ALSO BY SHAWN LEVY

King of Comedy: The Life and Art of Jerry Lewis

Rat Pack Confidential: Frank, Dean, Sammy, Peter, Joey, and the Last Great Showbiz Party

Ready, Steady, Go! The Smashing Rise and Giddy Fall of Swinging London

The Last Playboy: The High Life of Porfirio Rubirosa

Paul Newman: A Life

The Rat Pack

De Niro: A Life

Copyright 2016 by Shawn Levy

All rights reserved
First Edition

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Book design by Chris Welch
Production manager: Louise Mattarelliano

Jacket design by Gregg Kulick

Jacket photographs: (top) Mondadori Portfolio by Getty Images; (bottom) Courtesy Everett Collection

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Names: Levy, Shawn, author.

Title: Dolce vita confidential : Fellini, Loren, Pucci, paparazzi, and the swinging high life of 1950s Rome / Shawn Levy.

Description: First edition. | New York : W.W. Norton & Company, [2016] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016023023 | ISBN 9780393247589 (hardcover)

Subjects: LCSH: Rome (Italy)Social life and customs20th century. | Rome (Italy)Intellectual life20th century. | CelebritiesItalyRomeBiography. | Motion picture actors and actressesItalyRomeBiography. | ArtistsItalyRomeBiography. | Rome (Italy)Biography.

Classification: LCC DG807.6 .L47 2016 | DDC 945.6/320925dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016023023

ISBN 978-0-393-24759-6 (e-book)

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For Shannon

Contents

I ts a hot night, and the Eternal City is dead.

The Roman summer can feel like that. The concrete and marble and asphalt turn the streets into an oven, and any place you might think to go for relief is closed. The air is so thick it can stick in your throatand good luck finding a doctor if it does.

Its Ferragosto , the end-of-summer holiday, 1958, and anyone who can afford to escape town has, leaving only tourists, priests, politicians, and the unlucky ones who work for them.

Tazio Secchiaroli doesnt exactly work for big shots, but he depends on them for a living. Slight, spry, starting to bald in his early thirties, he grew up about five miles from central Rome, where he now works photographing the comings and goings and lingerings and dallyings of celebrities and then selling the shots to newspapers and magazinesthe more candid and sensational, the more lucrative. Its his business to know whos in town and, more important, whos out on the town. And so, as almost every night, he heads to a small stretch of road near the Villa Borghese, a hot spot that pulses, twitches, and seethes with enough energy to make it seem as if the whole city is crammed full and awake.

Few Romans visit Via Veneto. But for foreigners with money, especially those in the movie business, the north end of this wide boulevard, with its posh hotels and cafs and nightclubs, just up the hill from the Capuchin Catacombs, is the heart of modern Romewhich makes it important to some Romans as well.

Secchiaroli is among a throng of a dozen or so photographers who haunt the street seeking famous faces. Most nights, no matter if the rest of town is quiet, Via Veneto hums with movie stars, jet-setters, chancers, gigolos, noblemen, poets, dreamers. Just by being on the right corner and keeping alert, a guy with a sharp eye, a steady hand, and a Rolleiflex can make a months expenses in a single fortunate second.

This particular night, though, Secchiaroli and his chums scour sidewalk tables, barstools, taxi queues, and back alleys and come up empty. The movie people and their claques of hangers-on have fled the city. Theres not even a pretty girl newly come to Rome from the provinces to seek her fortune: morto.

At midnight, the hunt bootless, their cameras unused, a few decide to go for dinnerand not in some overpriced Via Veneto tourist trap. They drive off in Pierluigi Praturlons Fiat, and then, a few hours later, return to make one last sweep of the strip before calling it a night.

Theyre cruising slowly, looking for anybody worth spending a flashbulb on, when the pinch-faced Praturlon shouts, Theres Farouk! and hits the brakes.

And, in fact, there Farouk is, all three hundred pounds of him, the exiled Egyptian king who has made Rome his home and the tables of the Caf de Paris, where he is now stationed, his court. Inscrutable, gluttonous, distrustful of the press, Farouk passes time, between epic meals and trysts with prostitutes, staring out at the Via Veneto parade. Hes such a fixture on the street that nobody bothers to take his picture anymore. But on a night like this....

Without a word, like a seasoned wolf pack, the photographers spill into the night. Praturlon parks in the middle of the street and strides toward Farouk, camera and flash firing; Umberto Guidotti gets close to the sidewalk terrace, which is bordered by boxes of potted flowers, and shoots; and Secchiaroli, the one they call Il Mitragliatrice Umana (The Human Machine Gun) in honor of his rapid-fire technique, leaps over the flower beds and gets one off from close-in: a full-on assault.

From out of the dark and quiet, Farouk and company are beset by blinding bursts of light, mechanical pops and hisses, darting figures. The kings Albanian bodyguards react instinctively to what looks like an assassination attempt. They grab Secchiaroli but are immediately surprised by their boss, who has leapt from the table with impressive alacrity and is trying to get his hands on the camera. Giving Farouk room to move, the bodyguards loosen their grip on the photographer, who scoots free.

(Later, Secchiaroli will have a fine shot of the king seated against a stone wall, caught by surprise, staring right at the lens, just about to rouse to fury. But Guidotti will have the real prize: a blurry, shadowy photo of Farouk trying to wrestle Secchiarolis equipment away from him.)

A few cops show up, but by then the photographers have scattered. Not randomly, though: word has come that another Via Veneto stalwart, actress Ava Gardner, is arriving at Bricktops, a nearby nightclub, in the company of her current costar (and, it is whispered, inevitably, her lover), Tony Franciosa. As Franciosa is married, to another actress, Shelley Winters, this is potential gold.

Somehow, once again, Secchiaroli is first to arrive on the scene and gets closest to the center. He moves right in on Franciosa and bam ! Again, flashes and crackles blind and startle the target, who clutches the nearest photographer, not Secchiaroli but Giancarlo Bonora. But Franciosa has no bodyguards, no chance: Bonora wriggles away, and the lot of them skitter off.

Now, though, theres blood in the water, so presently theyre back, camped outside the nightclub, waiting to see wholl emerge with whom. At about 4:30 in the morning, theyre disappointed: Ava comes out of Bricktops on the arm of her press agent; Franciosa follows some minutes later, all little smiles and waves of his hand: Bastardo .

Still, its not yet dawn, which means that there may yet be something going on. And what should fate serve up as the dessert of this impromptu three-course meal but Anthony Steel, the big-jawed, barrel-chested English action movie star as famous for his wife, Swedish sexpot Anita Ekberg, as for enjoying his drink and blowing his stack.