My Life in Focus

by Gianni Bozzacchi,Joey Tayler

  It had been ages since I’d found myself so interested in a job. I felt I was contributing personally, collaborating seriously on the movie. I made the sequences of the operation and post-op as realistic as possible. Larry even tried to entice me to play the part of a playboy in the movie, but I turned him down and the role went to Helmut Berger. I took some magnificent shots of Elizabeth, both natural and when she was made up as an older woman. I got some great ones of Henry Fonda too, who turned out to be the perfect gentleman everyone expected. I spoke a lot with Henry about our mutual friend, Sergio Leone. We agreed that Sergio had given an extraordinary demonstration of his creativity when, in Once upon a Time in the West, he took an actor accustomed to playing a hero and deprived him of his heroism. Henry and I even found time to spend a couple of weekends being tourists around Rome and Venice. It was an exhilarating time for me. I was involved in my work, I’d bonded with a legend like Henry Fonda, and I had a child on the way. I was happy for the first time since my father had died. Paramount Pictures even sent me a thank-you letter, something that had never happened before.

  Then things changed. Richard and Elizabeth began to argue more than usual. When they were both working, they had less time to do so. But if only one of them was at work, as now, then things got worse. Shooting kept getting postponed. The movie was set in a ski resort. We spent weeks in Cortina d’Ampezzo waiting for snow. It was one of the world’s most exclusive resorts. Consequently, besides Elizabeth and the other stars working on the movie, the place was packed with wealthy vacationers. The crew hated being stuck in the middle of all those snobs, working their butts off while rich kids strolled around at their pleasure. Plus there was a lot of dead time, delays and waiting. Shooting never seemed to end. Claudye had stayed behind in Rome because doctors said the altitude wouldn’t be good for the baby. So I’d go home every weekend to be with her.

  Richard hated all this standing around. He was already on edge because he had no other offers in sight. Elizabeth was working. I was working. He was alone in the hotel all day doing nothing. I don’t believe I saw him sober once in those six months. He and Elizabeth argued often. And the enforced days off due to lack of snow didn’t help things in the least. There was little else to do but sit around in the hotel all day and drink. There’s always some truth in a cliche. The popular image of Elizabeth and Richard drunk and arguing all the time is an exaggeration. But Ash Wednesday contributed to creating that stereotype.

  Elizabeth gives Larry Peerce the finger on the Ash Wednesday set. It was the only time I ever saw her lose control at work. They soon made up. Meanwhile, I got this splendid shot.

  During the filming of that movie was the one and only time I saw either of them let drinking affect their work. Elizabeth had a scene to shoot in a Cortina hotel with a lot of extras. She had downed significantly more than one too many the previous night and was late. Larry was furious. When she did finally arrive on set, he’d already sent the crew and extras home. He started shouting, to which she simply replied, “Dear Larry, I think I’m going to take today off and just relax.” Then she gave him the finger, spun around, and returned to her apartment.

  Richard came down shortly afterward—Larry hurriedly invented some excuse to leave the set before he arrived. A couple of hours later Larry apologized to everyone and we shot the scene. Meanwhile, I got that still much-revered photo.

  When I got a call from our doctor to say that Claudye was about to give birth, I flew straight to Rome to be there for the event. But our daughter was born dead. By the time I got to Claudye’s bedside, everything was already over. My mother had seen the baby and told me she was beautiful, bigger than usual, with thick red curls and long fingernails. We named her Bruna, in honor of my father. My mother-in-law didn’t want us to do an autopsy.

  Elizabeth loved playing around, in this case with pearls given to her by jeweler Gianni Bulgari. That present, and her playfulness, gifted me with this gorgeous shot.

  Going to another funeral was a devastating experience, especially under such circumstances. Instead of the joyful announcement of a birth, you find yourself communicating news of a death and burying someone you’ve never seen alive. I was worried about Claudye. She’d nourished that baby in her womb for nine months, and now the child was gone. I stayed home as long as possible, but eventually had to get back to the Ash Wednesday set. The tragedy actually seemed to help the cast and crew see things from a more balanced outlook, putting the problems on set in perspective. Everyone was terrifically kind to me, even though I’ve never been very good at accepting compassion. Shooting ended with no more melodramas. The set became a pleasant place to be again. The convalescent scenes that followed the plastic surgery operation were done in a stupendous villa, with a beautiful garden, which they transformed into a clinic. During lunch breaks, we all played soccer with the crew. Word about our matches spread in Treviso, and a local team challenged us to a game. We won, 3–1.

  Rod Steiger, muffled in a German greatcoat as Benito Mussolini, is moments from death in Carlo Lizzani’s 1974 history drama Last Days of Mussolini.

  Claudye joined me for the last scenes. She felt very bitter, and I wanted to do what I could to take her mind off our baby’s death. So we left for a second honeymoon in Venice, agreeing we should try to have another child as soon as possible. Somehow, I felt I bore sole responsibility for the heartbreak, although I didn’t know then and I still don’t today why it seemed that way to me.

  Gianni Il Roscio was still reluctant to recognize himself as “the new king of the camera,” as they kept calling me. I felt I’d definitely moved forward professionally. But I felt lightweight nonetheless. Becoming a father, however: now that was a role I knew I wanted to play. I’d thought that going back to work with Elizabeth and Richard would help shake off the malaise that I’d felt since my father’s death. But now there was little Bruna’s death. And there I’d been, convinced that becoming a father would give a precise direction to my life, would give me an identity that I still didn’t feel I had. And then I’d buried my first daughter without even having had a chance to hug her. Suddenly my life with Elizabeth and Richard appeared unstable. I felt as if I’d been in a coma again, and woken in the middle of a dream. But this time my father wasn’t sitting by my bedside, waiting for me, calling me back to life. Was that dream really mine? Something told me it wasn’t.

  Rod on set.

  I got a call from director Carlo Lizzani. He was shooting Last Days of Mussolini, starring Rod Steiger as Mussolini, and had a key part that he wanted me to photograph: the moment Mussolini and his mistress, Claretta Petacci, die, gunned down by partisan commander Colonel Valerio outside the gates of the secluded Villa Belmonte, near Lake Como. Lizzani was following the official—and generally agreed-upon—version of events and insisting on accuracy. Claretta goes down first, desperately trying to get between Valerio and her lover. Valerio’s gun then jams. He grabs another, and Mussolini goes down too, his head bowed between raised fists, a miserable death. The first take went fine. Mussolini crumbles to the ground. The second take went fine too, until the last moment. Steiger then suddenly raised his head, spread his arms, inflated his chest, and cried: “Go on, you bastard! I’m ready!” “Cut!” yelled Lizzani, demanding an explanation. Steiger, entirely unabashed, happily complied: “You saw how Mussolini died,” he said. “Now you’ve seen how Rod Steiger dies!” All actors have to get into their part. But some get in so far you wonder where they go.

  It was then that I realized I wasn’t acting. My life was for real. I was for real.

  Chapter 12

  Cinderella and Me

  A photographer never has exclusive dominion over his or her own work. It’s a collaboration between your vision and the subject. And my collaboration with Elizabeth and Richard was no simple matter. I was living their dream, traveling with them, following their commitments and whims from one side of the world to the other. If this dream wasn’t mine, could I lose it? And what if I took an awful photo?
What would happen if I woke up, this time for real?

  But instead of waking up, I slipped into an even more surreal dream. Moncada’s Studio Margutta had become Studio Bozzacchi, headquarters of my Forum Press Services. I adored the place. A room in front of the entrance became my office, complete with its own bathroom. To the left, a sliding door led to the twenty-seven-hundred-square-foot studio itself. A wooden staircase took you up to a mezzanine level, with the balcony that Fellini enjoyed so much. We used the space for doing finishing work, retouching, and mailing. Two rooms led off from there: the makeup room and the darkroom for black-and-white prints, which was only used for doing first-test prints. One might ask, “What would happen if that darkroom could talk?” Nothing. Whatever happened in that room stayed in that room. One day Elizabeth wandered in and, with her highly developed sense of perception—not to mention bawdy sarcasm—immediately dubbed it “la baise en ville”—fuck town. I must point out that—in her case—nothing ever happened, there or elsewhere.

  The studio’s courtyard was used in Roman Holiday, a movie I’d even tried to get work on as an extra. The star was Audrey Hepburn, whose portrait led to that rupture with my old employer, Pierluigi. Gianni Il Roscio had moved from a humble basement apartment to a luxury Parioli penthouse in Rome’s most exclusive neighborhood. He could now walk out onto his own terrace and, for the first time in his life, look down on the world from above. I celebrated my success with a spin around town in my new Ferrari. I stopped at a restaurant where the headwaiter shook me by the hand and led me to a table to enjoy gourmet pasta on the house. Claudye and I got endless invitations: to movie premieres, fashion shows, dinners, and parties with the Roma Bene crowd, awash with real—though often impoverished—aristocrats. However, the more famous I became, the less enamored I was by all the glamour that came with it. I was still searching for myself and feared that those privileges, however enjoyable, would pin me down or—worse still—trap me in a life that wasn’t mine. My skepticism opened the way to feelings of guilt. Shouldn’t I feel grateful for the life I was leading? What photographer—what man—didn’t desire a penthouse apartment, a beautiful woman, sports cars, fame, money? What more can you want when you already have everything?

  Maybe this life really was my dream. I thought back to 1956, when my father had bought our first television. My father let me decide where to put it. Since we didn’t have a real living room, I of course chose a spot opposite the front door where I could watch it from my foldout bed. A few months later we all gathered together in front of the screen to watch live as Grace Kelly, the Oscar-winning actress, joined hands in marriage with Prince Rainier of Monaco, becoming Her Serene Royal Highness, Princess Grace of Monaco.

  Stepping from a Hollywood red carpet to a royal throne might not sound so sensational today. But back then Grace and Rainier enchanted the entire world in a way that no famous couple had ever done before. Nor would again, at least not until Elizabeth and Richard met. One of cinema’s greatest stars had retired at the peak of her career to marry the man she loved and become, literally, a princess. It was the Cinderella story come true, even more magical because it took place in a land that very few people even knew existed. Until Rainier had come to the throne a decade earlier, his principality had been the exclusive resort of gambling aristocrats, with no one else welcome. Only 3 percent of its revenue came from anything other than gambling. Over the course of his reign, Rainier turned that around, and gambling now accounts for less than 5 percent of revenues. Grace would play an active role in helping him solve the tax crisis that created. But on that day we gathered around the TV, when cameras followed Princess Grace to her palace, we knew nothing of all that. The world simply fell in love with Monaco. Even on our tiny black-and-white television, the scene—sumptuous marble buildings, the broad bay dotted with yachts—looked more like a movie set than a real city. We saw carefree men and women in casual designer clothes stroll through immaculate gardens untouched by time. Or war. It all went way beyond my every infantile dream of what “glamour” might mean.

  I immediately recognized Grace from one of the first movies I’d ever seen, High Noon, the great Gary Cooper western. My sisters analyzed every detail of Grace’s look: her hair, jewels, clothes, charm, and elegance. Giampiero, with his usual sarcasm, said Grace and Rainier were not really all that different from us. Renato was struck by the fact that Rainier wore a uniform. “He must be a soldier.” I kept one eye on the television and the other on my parents, who watched in silence, immobile. I don’t know if they were as amazed as we were, or whether they were unhappy to see their children watching such opulence from a tiny three-room basement apartment, where stale bread soaked in water with sugar on top was the height of luxury. Like millions of other people, my family watched Grace and Rainier the way you gaze through shop windows at clothes you know you’ll never be able to afford. However, for some strange reason I didn’t feel that impotence. Maybe I was too young to understand, but I turned to my parents and declared, “One day I’ll live like Grace and Rainier. They’ll become my friends.” My sisters burst out laughing. Six-year-old Renato said, “Mine too.” My mother covered her face with her hand to hide a giggle. My father stroked my head, smiled, and said, “There’s nothing you can’t do, my boy. Remember that.” Of course, that did nothing to stop Giampiero from mocking me throughout the rest of the ceremony: “Prince Gianni Bozzacchi!” As Grace and Rainier exchanged rings, my father’s and brother’s words rang in my ears and lodged in my memory. Now, years later, late into the night in my penthouse at the top of the world where I was living my dream of a fairy-tale life, those words came echoing back through my mind. When I finally went to bed, my head swam with images of that Cinderella and her Prince Charming.

  Was it a premonition? Had the fairy tale not finished? The next morning as I opened my studio door, the phone rang and I hurried to pick it up. It was the fairy godmother herself, Louisette Levy-Soussain, personal assistant to Princess Grace, asking me if I’d be interested in doing a photo shoot for the Monaco Jubilee—the twenty-fifth anniversary of Prince Rainier’s reign.

  I thought it was a joke. Someone had managed to get inside my dream, or I’d spoken in my sleep. I knew that Princess Grace already had her own personal photographer, an American very close to the royal family. What’s more, I could only hope the royal couple had forgotten having met me some years earlier on Elizabeth and Richard’s yacht, the Kalizma, a meeting I’d happily forget. I’d been so embarrassed by my English and with my awkwardness among such high-society folk that I’d spent the entire party hiding in a corner, where I was obliged to speak with no one and where I knew no one would speak to me. I hadn’t exchanged a single word with either Grace or Rainier, and now, speaking with their secretary, all that embarrassment came flooding back. I struggled to keep calm, and managed a brief, “Yes, I can. Why not?”

  I was simultaneously excited and terrified. Claudye was pregnant again—as we’d planned—and I’d refused dozens of jobs in order to stay close to her. She was terrified that the same fate would befall this baby too. But I could hardly snub the royal family of Monaco, the only other couple as important as Elizabeth and Richard. I saw it as an opportunity to recenter my objectives. So I organized things with our relatives and our doctor, making sure Claudye wouldn’t be left alone, and planned my trip with Louisette.

  A few weeks later I caught a plane to Nice, arriving in the evening. During the flight I mulled over my memories of Grace and Rainier on the Kalizma. Louisette came to meet me, a very friendly and beautiful woman with great class. What’s more, she spoke perfect Italian. My appointment was set for the following morning.

  We got to Monte Carlo, where they’d booked me a suite in the Hotel de Paris, right alongside all the people who counted. If my penthouse in Rome felt like a dream, this was unadulterated magic, a fairy tale come true. Every woman dreams of meeting a knight in shining armor who’ll take her to a castle in the clouds astride a white horse. And every man dreams of bei
ng that knight and of finding his princess. Maybe Grace really was living her fairy tale, just as imagined by her adoring subjects and all the tourists who flocked to Monte Carlo, hoping to catch sight of Cinderella Grace at one of the windows in her sumptuous palace, just for a moment, a fleeting glimpse, and thus feel part of the same fairy tale.

  The night before my meeting with the royal family, I wandered through town looking at all the images depicting Grace and Rainier. Every shop displayed a photo: of the royal couple, their family, their children—Caroline, Albert, and Stephanie—official shots of Rainier in uniform and photos of their wedding, all of them authorized by the family. Throughout my stroll, it was as if Grace and Rainier were watching my every step through their realm. Images of the royal family were everywhere, in the windows of every bistro, shop, and bar—even in a place of honor in pharmacies. Grace and Rainier loomed over every flower garden and picturesque cafe, peeping out of boutiques and offices. I stopped at a newspaper stall to buy postcards for my mother, and there they were again, smiling in glossy photos. The enchanted spell of Monaco had excited and intimidated me throughout my flight from Rome. Now I was there, and suddenly I was going to have to work for real. I thumbed through the postcards I’d bought until I nearly wore them away. From my window I could see the lights of the palace glittering in the distance. I examined those photos closely, as if trying to frame them against that background: their faces, their clothes, their style of life, the photos themselves. What for? Inspiration. Professional diligence? Whatever it was I was looking for, I didn’t find it. I slept badly that night.