Favorite Scavullo Portraits

ALSO - we learn Scavullo's favorite model was Renee Russo. He gives her the cover, too.

Streisand and Summer from 1979...

I liked Polly Mellen, Andrea Portago, Brigid Berlin, Marisa Berenson and Maxime de la Falaise. Patti D'Arbanville's interview answers were funny. I wanted to like Geraldine Chaplin. I was intrigued by Diana Vreeland's choker. I thought Way Bandy was a wizard.

He even made Madonna look almost elegant.

Madonna's waist is tiny, there.

Another Streisand/Summer pic from the "No More Tears" photo shoot...

Looking at his portrait of Lois Chiles was the first time I started technically appreciating bone structure. I was like, "Okay, this is an ideal cheekbone, browbone, a nose, a chin ... When you start deviating from this ... "

Madonna from the mid-1980s and her rise to superstardom.

I think this was a magazine cover.

[quote]R5 Madonna's waist is tiny, there.

What Scavullo became an expert at was making people look their best. It's what put him in such demand by celebs.

For example, in that shot he probably directed Madonna to angle her hips slightly away from her soulders, so you're really seeing her waist in a 3/4 profile. She is twisting slightly. Aside from the fact she's in excellent shape, that's what makes her waist looks so small.

Francesco Scavullo was paid $75,000 to take the photograph that adorns the cover of the Classical Barbra album.

This album saw Streisand be awarded her 40th gold album.

Babs trusted him, and also hired him to do this:

R10. And here's the back of the Classical Barbra album cover:

Weird look for Bette.

He also did a book called SCAVULLO MEN, which is slightly different because it's not mostly performers or models, but instead various professionals. (Bankers, authors, etc.)

But you still get Christopher Reeve, Mick Jagger, a few others...

[quote]r13 Weird look for Bette.

Sadly, there was only so much you could do with her - -

I'm fucking her so I wanna be in the pic too.

R14. Christopher Reeve was such a beautiful boy.

A 7-year-old Yasmine Bleeth is in the first book. She had just started doing commercials, and her mom was a model who'd worked with Scavullo back in the day.

He made Glenn Close look decent (for once)

She flipped out in the jungles of Vietnam, covering stories, because she couldn't get any.

couldn't get any, what?

drugs? fik? pussy? stories?

was scavullo gay? any stories?

[quote]r23 was scavullo gay? any stories?

I think he was a bit bi. He sounded stereotypically, fabulously gay (if you know what I mean) but I think he was also genuinely attracted to women, and had sexual relationships with some.

His longest romantic partner was a younger man named Sean Byrnes, who was a fashion stylist who did all his shoots with him and contributed heavily to the Cosmopolitan covers that were a mainstay of the photographer's output. I imagine as Scavullo (who was manic depressive) got older, Sean picked up the slack and took on more responsibility in the shoots.

Faye.

and don't forget Diana.

Yes, R26 ! He shot Faye Dunaway at least four times, including for the EYES OF LAURA MARS poster.

I've never been able to figure out which photo session that is from, though. because almost all the details besides the face are blacked out. It could be from that one you linked above ... or, I don't know.

It bothers me that the double page shot of her in her first book isn't on the Internet anywhere. I remember when I was little I was upset there was a seam running through the image.

His Kim Cattrall isn't all that great.

The makeup's just so 80s. Most of his portraits have a softer, more timeless look.

I disagree about Cattrall’s photo. It looks like much of Scavullo’s work – across decades – and I would have immediately identified it as one of his.

Judy Collins, nude, on the cover of her weakest album, "Hard Times For Lovers."

[quote]I think he was a bit bi.

Don't think, Dear.

Another Bette.

[quote]R32 Don't think, Dear.

I meant, "I think" in that I think that's what I've picked up from his various interviews over the years.

For instance, here he talks about getting hard for Raquel Welch.

He was a gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay artist that appreciated beauty.

Mmmmmmm....well, if a "straight" photographer was getting hard talking about male models he'd shot, and saying how amazing it would be to fuck them, I imagine DL would consider him "a bit bi" at the least!

R13 I see a post modern Queen Liz the First.

More recently, he's been associated with the resurgance of the late model Gia Carangi, who was one of his favorite subjects.

When he died she lost one of the only support systems she had in her erratic, junkie life.

Caitlyn

Do you know where you're going to? Do you like the things that life are showin' you?

Where are you going to? Do you know?

This should answer your question

[quote]Mmmmmmm....well, if a "straight" photographer was getting hard talking about male models he'd shot, and saying how amazing it would be to fuck them, I imagine DL would consider him "a bit bi" at the least!

Honey it was the 80's , he wasn't "out" and anyone with a head knew he was gayer than a pitcher of Sangria on Elton John's South Beach lanai. He may have said a few things to humor the housewives who bought the Calvin Klein Jeans or Blackglama coats he shot, but there is a pretty good bet the last vagina that boy was in was his Mother's the day she pushed him into this cruel world.

[quote]R41 This should answer your question

Yes, that is his longtime partner I mentioned in R25 - Sean Byrnes.

I love this shot of Barbra.

The Main Event

Even Scavullo couldn't make Midler look beautiful.

38 - If I'm not mistaken, Mr Scavullo died a few years ago. He didn't die of AIDS, he way outlived his collaborator Way Bandy ( who unfortunately was one of the early "celeb" victims). He lived to see the rise and fall of The Supermodel, photographed Kate Moss for a Cosmo cover, took part on that MTV fashion programme hosted by Cindy Crawford and I don't want to look it up, but I am sure he died this decade, if not late last decade. That is at least a smooth twenty five odd years after Gia Carangi.

Barbra kept directing him during their first shoot, ´till he put the camera down ,said "Why don´t you take pictures of yourself?" and left the room. " Is he mad? Did i insult him?" she wondered to his assistant and went to talk to Francesco who told her to either trust him ore not hire him.

The beautifull results of the shoot and the fact that Scavullo did not sue when her doberman bit his arm when he visited her malibu ranch made future collaborations easier.

From 1978, Donna Summer's "Live and More" LP cover.

This was the first Summer album I ever bought because I absolutely HAD to have the long version of "Mac Arthur Park".

For some strange reason, I can still remember buying it at K-mart.

Bernadette.

^^ that is unfortunate. she looks manly.

Kim Basinger right after she left modeling (1977)

He had used her on the cover of Cosmo, and I think also shot her in a lipgloss ad.

This is the Basinger ad sometimes credited to him. Is it his?

So funny .... this layout is titled "Tyranny of Style" and I didn't even blink when I misread it as "TRANNY of Style" (!!)

I think it was the hair - -

Scavullo survived into his early 80s, dying in 2004. He way outlived Gia Carangi, who he continued to work with way after she became a liability.

He did all of the Cosmo covers for a long time, and they were works of art. They were never that glamourous again.

R38 Scavullo responded to GIa's death in Stephen Fried's book'Thing of Beauty."

R55 R56

Sorry, I was thinking of [italic]Way Bandy[/italic] -- who worked with Scavullo a lot -- when I posted R38

I was reading all the following posts and thinking, "Who ever said Scavullo died before Gia??" BUT IT WAS ME [bold]: o

SORRY!!

Matthew Broderick

I think he made a lot of people look the best they ever had in photos, which was amazing, but then they never looked like that again, which was frustrating.

He also took a great photo of Fran Lebowitz.

WHET Rene Russo?

lovely

Susan

Rene Russo within the past few years played the mother in the Thor movies but got killed off. She had a very decent movie career for a long time, but she is in her mid 60s and will naturally find roles hard to come by.

I used this as "inspiration" many a time in my Sting phase.

I think he is single-handedly the reason I adored old movies from childhood- I can see that his work is good, but the aesthetic is so harsh and angular to me.

I do love this photo of G-g-GIA:

I know his partner Sean Byrnes was fighting Scavullo's estate for his rightful inheritance, but I never knew if he was successful or what happened to him after 2013.

Brooke

Bette.

Gia went off the rails when Wilhelmina Cooper died of cancer.

And I played her [italic]marvelously.

Liza.