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- 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 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 cocktail recipe book Bottoms Up (1951), 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 he was photographing. Rather, Zerbe often traveled and vacationed with the film stars themselves. As one biographer stated, Zerbe never rode in a rented limousine, and his coat pocket always had in it 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 50 years, Zerbe's library held well over 50,000 photos. Examples of his well-known images included 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. Zerbe claimed to be the first – and only – society photographer. He was for years the official photographer of Manhattan's famed nightspot El Morocco, the place to be and be seen, whether you were Humphrey Bogart, John O'Hara, or Ed Sullivan. Zerbe pioneered the business arrangement of getting paid by the nightclub to photograph its visitors, then turning around and giving the photos away to the gossip pages. Today, the practice is a common public relations stunt. (en)
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