Victims of the Camera Men

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 484, 13 October 1928, Page 26

Victims of the Camera Men

Who are the Most Photographed Celebrities in the World To-day ? Ever-Changing List of those who are Singled Out for Publicity’s Glare.

ICKING out the famous, best aud foremost has long: been a favourite pastime. The time is ripe, therefore, for a census of the *ue aud the beautiful.

didates for the two remaining places, for no sooner is a likely dozen chosen than there is a new election, another beauty contest. Lady Diana goes away, Henry Ford hires another fiddler, people marry and part and murder! another diminutive tenor hurls a towering prima donna across the footlights, somebody sends an apple pie to the White House. Mr. Baldwin breaks a new pipe, another dog team reaches Nome —and some names must be erased. Some selections must be as temporary as a mareello wave in a Turkish bath.

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Whose faces or figures reappear with the greatest frequency in current illustrations? Who are the most photographed people? Solomon must have pondered a problem like that nearly thirty centuries before Niepce and Daguerre found that a sensitised silver plate would record an ftnage. At any rate, there is a reference to “apples of gold in pictures of silver” iu Proverbs, xxv. 11. And there must have been some kind of portrait contest long before Solomon, for, in the same book that used to lie on top of the family album. Genesis, xxiv, 45, announces, “Behold, Rebekah came forth with her pitcher.” Any list of the most photographed must, of course, be local and extremely temporary. It is difficult to conceive of an American picture section appearing without some camera study of Babe Ruth. His features are familiar the year round. No matter whether blizzards rage outside, or Spring rains patter, or Summer heat sizzles, or Autumn leaves fall, Mr. G. H. Ruth’s phlegmatic, slightly puzzled expression peers out of Sunday supplements. Yet it would be just as unreasonable to include Babe Ruth in a London or Paris list of popular portraits as it would be to keep him to a New York selection.

There is no closed season for royalty so far as photography goes. The King, the Queen, the Prince of Wales are ever at the mercy of the Press photographer and the cinematographer. Literally millions of their photographs have been broadcast. In America, it is the same with the President. Mr. Coolidge is photographed one day with a baby film star from Hollywood clutching a handful of his hair, and the next with a deputation from Oklahoma which has called at White House to present him with a giant cheese. Lindbergh, too. is only too familiar with the photographic "daily dozen” and on his recent flight over the Central American Republics dark-eyed senoritas fought for the privilege of standing beside the Lone Eagle and being thus immortalised.

Leaviug professional actresses and motion-picture heroines out of the census, who is the most photographed woman in the world? Queen Mary? The Duchess of York? Queen Marie of Rumania? Possibly Queen Marie, for she is to be found in a hundred American illustrated papers everv time she walks, clad in the familiar flowing robes, in the garden of her castle at Sinaia.

Mussolini, on the other hand, could not be left off any list. II Duce’s Fascist reunions and his romps with lion cubs are universal pictorial property. Mussolini’s frown belongs to tlie world as much as Mona Lisa’s smile.

It would be difficult to determine the relative quantity production of Mussolini photographs, Mussolini autographs and Mussolini interviews. All these are enormous, but for versatility the edge is in favour of the photograph. Because conditions are changeable, some candidates for the list of the most photographed should be set down without delay. The faces of the following persons appear repeatedly in New York news photographs: The King of England,. The Prince of Wales, President Coolidge, Queen Marie of Rumania, The Duchess of York, Charles A. Lindbergh. Benito Mussolini, Stanley Baldwin, Charles Chaplin Gene Tunney

Charity' movements, drives for funds, animal rescue leagues, horse shows, golf and tennis matches and publicdedications are partial failures if there is no photographic by-product. Rather than obscure the spectators' vision with tripods, many an important public occasion is rehearsed in front of the cameras. And the result is more pictures and more candidates for the list of the twelve most photographed. There is a long gallery of famous faces to choose from. There are Helen Wills, unrecognisable without eyeshade and racquet: the soldierly Pershing, equally trim in Sam Browne belt or civilian clothes: the granitefaced Hindenburg of Germany; lithe Alfonso of Spain; grim Mustapha Kemal; emaciated Gandhi; vivacious Lady Astor; the cool, be-monicled Sir Austen Chamberlain; Poincare the precise and Foch the phlegmatic. Here are names enough to complete the twelve—and when you have filled out a list, it will be as old to-morrow- as yesterday’s newspaper.

But here are only ten! What about a dozen? Let the above ten start the list. There are scores of can-