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 common: celebrity paparazzi.

Zerbe was born in Euclid, Ohio, on July 24, 1904.

His father, Jerome B. Zerbe, was the president of a coal company and a prominent citizen in nearby Cleveland, where the family later resided.

Young Jerry Zerbe was driven to public school in the family limousine, which got him beaten up by bullies.

He managed to survive well enough to be sent East, to the Salisbury School in Salisbury, Connecticut.

There he took an interest in art, drawing, and photography.

Zerbe graduated from Yale in 1928, where he was an editor of the campus humor magazine The Yale Record with writer Geoffrey T. Hellman, writer and film critic Dwight Macdonald, and Hollywood art director Jack Otterson.

While an undergrad, Zerbe had a knack for getting around the Prohibition laws, and was known as the guy who knew where the booze and parties were.

(It helped that there was a speakeasy in the basement of The Yale Record building.) This paid off, and he became a supreme social networker.

He gained important social prominence in New Haven, which would serve him well in New York City, Paris, and London.

After graduation he went out to Hollywood to try his hand at drawing portraits of the famous residents.

He was befriended by a young Gary Cooper, which led to Zerbe's quickly becoming friends with Hedda Hopper, Cary Grant, Errol Flynn, Randolph Scott, Marion Davies, and Paulette Goddard.

It did not take long for Zerbe to put down his paintbrush and pick up a camera.

He photographed numerous stars in Hollywood's Golden Age and some of the hopefuls, before they became known, posed for him wearing few if any clothes.

During the Depression, Zerbe landed his first major job, as art director of Parade, which was headquartered in his hometown, Cleveland.

This was where he began his career of setting up portraits of the upper crust.

He persuaded the wealthy local residents that it would help them to be photographed at their parties, which was simply not done at the time.

He convinced them that it would assist the charity balls and fundraisers the leading society matrons were hosting.

This paid off.

He shot hundreds of debutantes, brides, newlyweds, and formal dinners in North America and Europe.

Soon afterward, Harry Bull, the editor of Town & Country in New York, saw some of Zerbe's society photos from Cleveland and made him an offer to photograph ritzy parties in the Midwest.

This gave Zerbe's photos' a wide audience and garnered offers of work from the capital of glitz -- Manhattan.

When Zerbe arrived in New York, he was in the right place at the right time.

Prohibition had just ended, and nightlife was booming.

The city had seven daily newspapers and three press associations.

They all needed society photographs.

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.