Jerome Zerbe

Jerome Zerbe (July 24, 1904, Euclid, Ohio – August 19, 1988) was an American photographer. He was one of the originators of a genre of photography that is now utterly common: celebrity paparazzi. Zerbe was a pioneer in the 1930s of shooting photographs of the famous at play and on-the-town. According to the 1951 cocktail recipe book Bottoms Up, he is also credited with inventing the vodka martini.

Zerbe differed from the common paparazzo in a major way: he never hid in bushes or jumped out and surprised the rich and famous that he was photographing. Zerbe often traveled and vacationed with the film stars themselves. As one biographer stated, he never rode in a rented limousine and his coat pocket always had an engraved invitation to the high-society events.

“Once I asked Katharine Hepburn to come up from her place at Fenwick, a few miles away, and pose for some fashion photos for me,” Zerbe recalled in his book Happy Times. “She arrived with a picnic hamper full of food and wine for the two of us. I snapped her just as she came to the door.”

In a career that spanned more than fifty years, Zerbe’s library held well over 50,000 photos.

Some of his well-known images were of Greta Garbo at lunch, Cary Grant helping columnist Hedda Hopper move into her new home, Steve Reeves shaving, Moss Hart climbing a tree, Howard Hughes having lunch at “21” with Janet Gaynor, Ginger Rogers flying first-class, plus legendary stars Charlie Chaplin, Gary Cooper, Salvador Dalí, Jean Harlow, Dorothy Parker, Gene Tunney, Thomas Wolfe and the Vanderbilts.

...
Wikipedia