EASTSIDER FRANCESCO SCAVULLO
Photographer of the world's most beautiful women
6-16-79
As Richard Stolley, the managing editor of People magazine, is fond of saying, every publication on the newsstand is actually two publications. One is the inner contents, and the other — far more important in terms of sales — is the front cover. A stunning cover can make the difference of tens of thousands of dollars in revenue for a national magazine, and that's why Cosmopolitan has engaged the talents of photographer Francesco Scavullo for virtually every one of its covers for the last 11 years.
He has done album covers and posters for Paul McCartney, Barbra Streisand, Donna Summer, Judy Collins and many others. Among the publications that rely on his most often for covers are Vogue, Playboy, Glamour, Harper's Bazaar, Redbook, Ladies Home Journal, People and the magazine that started it all — Seventeen — which ran its first Scavullo cover in 1948, when he was still a teenager himself.
He never had any formal training in photography, but got plenty of practice during his Manhattan boyhood when he began taking pictures of his sisters and their girlfriends. Francesco delighted in applying makeup to their faces, running his hands through their hair, and dressing them in sexy gowns. He quickly made two discoveries — first, that there's no such thing as an ugly woman, and second, that the photographer and his subject must be personally compatible. Although he charges approximately $3,000 for unsolicited private portraits, Scavullo won't photograph anyone with whom he has bad rapport — and that includes all people who don't take care of themselves physically or abuse themselves with drugs.
A small, lithe man of 50 who walks with the gracefulness of a dancer and looks considerably younger than his years, Scavullo recently agreed to an interview at the town house on East 63rd Street that serves as both his studio and his home. Dressed in blue jeans, an open-neck white shirt, and Western boots, the chatty, unpretentious photographer sat back on the couch with his arms behind his head and a mischievous smile planted on his face. Asked about the large pills he popped into his mouth from time to time, Scavullo explained that they were vitamins and organic supplements.
"I'm very health-conscious," he said in a gravelly voice with a broad New York accent. "I don't eat meat, and I very seldom have even chicken or fish. I don't drink tea, or coffee, or alcohol — except for a little wine. … A lot of people stop smoking when they start working for me, because I hate it — all this pollution in the air of New York already. I think smoking is great if you live out in the West, and you sit on top of a mountain like in the Marlboro commercials."
As we were talking in his spacious living room, decorated with Scavullo's own paintings, a member of his staff came from the studio below and said, in reference to a woman who was being made up for a shooting session, "She's still not ready, Francesco." Scavullo sighed.
"A seating with a man takes 20 minutes," he remarked, "and with a woman it takes the whole afternoon. Makeup," he added, "is used more intensely in photography than it is in the street. I think women look best without any type of makeup in the daytime. Sunlight has a very bad effect on it. Some of the ladies going by on the street look like they're holding a mask a fraction of an inch away from their face."
He has never developed the habit of stopping beautiful women on the sidewalk, but, said a grinning Scavullo, "if I see someone wildly attractive walking by, I get excited. I might turn around and whistle or something."
Number one on his list of the world's most beautiful women is 14-year old Brooke Shields, who also lives on the Upper East Side. She is one of the 59 models, actresses, and other celebrities featured in his first book, Scavullo On Beauty (1976), which came out in paperback last month from Vintage Press. The volume is filled with life-size shots of women's faces, many of them showing the difference before and after the Scavullo treatment. It is accompanied by frank interviews dealing with clothing, diet, exercise, makeup, and related subjects. Scavullo On Men, his second book, was published in 1977. And he has two more in the works — a picture book on baseball, with text by Christopher Lehmann-Haupt of the New York Times, and a retrospective volume covering his photographs from 1949 to 1980. Both will be out next year.
A resident of the Upper East Side since 1950, he likes to dance until dawn at Studio 54 "whenever I don't have to get up too early the next day." Asked about his favorite local restaurants, he said he rarely goes to any, but that his entire staff orders lunch almost every day from Greener Pastures, a natural foods restaurant on East 60th Street.
Beauty, he believes, "is an advantage to everything — man, woman, child, flower, state. I mean, everything. Beauty is the most fabulous thing in the world. I hate ugliness." His advice to amateur photographers: "Get a Polaroid. It is a very flattering camera to use, because it washes everything out." He couldn't resist adding: "If you can't be photographed by Scavullo, have your picture taken with a Polaroid."