Name: Where The Paparazzi Came From
Uploaded: 2026-01-26T17:01:57.000Z
Duration: 7 min 35 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

It starts in Italy in the years before World War II, when the country was controlled by Benito Mussolini.

Exceptions

Aside from being a murderous fascist and dictator, Mussolini was an avid movie fan and fanboy of film stars, going so far as to write more than a hundred fawning letters to American actress Anita Page, including several marriage proposals.

Mussolini knew the emotional power of cinema as a tool for propaganda and building cultural prestige.

So when the Roman production facility Cine Studios burned down in 1935, Mussolini used it as an opportunity to build the largest film studio in Europe called Chineci Ta, a sprawling 4, 4.3 million square foot complex on the southeast edge of Rome.

For its first few years, Chinacita turned out a number of mediocre nationalist films until There lies the Eternal City.

Poorly defended, helpless to stop the attack.

Just six years after it opened, Chinichi Ta was partly destroyed in the Allied bombing of Rome in 43 and 44.

After the war, the Allies requisitioned the studio and turned it into a displaced persons, where thousands of refugees lived on the massive sound stages of a defunct dream and propaganda factory.

The studio space being used and Mussolini's thumb removed, a new wave of filmmakers took to the streets of Rome to make movies about real life in post war Italy.

These neorealist films, as they were dubbed, like Open City by Roberto Rossellini and Bicycle Thieves by Vittorio De Sica, were internationally successful, critically and commercially situating Rome as a capital of world cinema, something Mussolini wanted but could never achieve.

This in turn helped to reopen Chinichita and bring in big budget productions like quo Vadis from 1949, in which some of the last refugees are likely mixed in with the waves of extras.

Quo Vadis was the first of many movies Hollywood would produce in Rome, thanks to cheap labor costs, the sheer size of Chinichita and the romantic allure of the Eternal City.

Sword in sandal epics like Ben Hur and Cleopatra that were massively successful and provided great return on investment.

Italian law stated that earnings made from productions in Italy and had to stay in Italy.

So what did Hollywood studios do with all that cash stranded overseas?

So began a legendary period in movie history, called by one Time magazine reporter, Hollywood on the Tiber.

The set of circumstances I described above brought film star after film star to the cobbled streets of Rome, merging their glamour with the mystique of a city that was rapidly recovering from fascism war.

For a few years, the Via Veneto was the coolest place in the world.

Of course, this was only one side of rome.

In the 50s, while the glitterati cavorted in chic bars and clubs, thousands of others struggled to find their place in the post war economy.

A few of these, unable to land steady work, picked up a camera and began taking freelance pictures for tourists.

But soon found they could make even more money snapping photos of celebrities.

One of these photographers was Tazio Searoli, known as the Fox of Via Veneto.

One November night in 1958, Tazio found his way into Rugantino, a restaurant in Trastevere, where a high profile party was in full swing.

The actress Anita Ekberg was there, drinking, having a good time.

She kicked off her shoes and began to dance barefoot in front of a jazz band.

Then, out of nowhere, an uninvited guest took to the floor and proceeded to strip in front of a shocked but enthusiastic crowd of elites.

The next day, all the biggest tabloids ran with the story.

It became clear to Tazio and his compatriots that scandal pays.

So they sought it out, hiding in corners, sneaking into parties and backlots.

And if they couldn't find bad behavior, they created it, provoking celebrities to attack them.

The Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini reached out to Tazio and asked him for stories of his trade.

So Tazio obliged and a year later, Fellini made La Dolce Vita, the Suite Life, one of the best movies of all time, which immortalized the Hollywood on the Tiber era and the ravenous photographers who captured it.

Fellini based the main photographer on Tazio himself and called him.

This period in Rome was a hinge point in the history of celebrity.

Paparazzi disrupted the highly manicured image movie stars had enjoyed since the golden age of Hollywood.

They brought these gods of our culture down to the messy earth.

Interestingly, though, this didn't dampen our obsession with fame, as you might expect.

Something about seeing our celebrities brought low, catching a glimpse of their flaws and pains.

It didn't push the famous off these weird pedestals we put them on.

It only intensified our fixation with them.

Maybe because we saw ourselves in those flaws and it allowed us to form deeper bonds with them.

Whatever the reason, we're all fanboys now, living in a world created 60 years ago on the streets of an ancient city.

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