The Press: An Eagle for Cleverness

In Fascism’s heyday, Italy’s press minded its political p’s & q’s, covered celebrities from a respectful distance and avoided sensations like the plague. But at war’s end, editors gave violent vent to long-suppressed enterprise and emotions. They soaked their pages in sentimental crime stories, enthusiastically badgered headliners from Winston Churchill to Ingrid Bergman, encouraged reporters and photographers to operate like workers in the gaudiest days of Chicago journalism.

One of the most enterprising of the new generation was squat, baby-faced Photographer Ivo Meldolesi, 34, who was acquitted of collaboration charges in 1945 for “insufficient proof of guilt.” Last spring, Meldolesi made front pages in Europe and the U.S. with two notable beats. Masquerading as a Capri fisherman, he snapped the only picture of Britain’s Princess Margaret in a bathing suit; later, he surprised camera-shy Greta Garbo without her hat, got a shot of her covering her face with her long, tawny hair. Last week, Meldo-lesi’s energy and enterprise landed him his biggest scoop yet. He had found and photographed Italy’s famed Bandit Salvatore Giuliano (TIME, Sept. 12).

Nighttime Nibble. Two months ago while 2,000 hand-picked carabinieri scoured Sicily’s wind-whipped hills in a vain search for Giuliano, Meldolesi hinted to Italian editors that the celebrated “Robin Hood of Sicily” had invited him to his hideout. Only Editor Edilio Rusconi of Milan’s weekly Oggi (Today) fell for Meldolesi’s story. Rusconi assigned a top reporter to work with him, paid 800,000 lire (about $1,300) for the promised beat.

Knowing Giuliano’s affection for his mother (“the dearest thing in our lives”), Meldolesi wangled permission to photograph the old lady in jail (where she is being held for helping her son). Roaming the countryside, he showed the pictures to every peasant, carter and fisherman he met, hoping one would pass the word along. A month passed, with nary a nibble. Late one night, as Meldolesi and Reporter Jacopo Rizza wandered into the hills near Palermo, three masked gunmen seized the photographs, led the pair to an abandoned stable. Next morning, the door flew open and in strode Giuliano.

The bandit was wearing boots, riding breeches, a yellow sweater and an ornate belt buckle which, he explained, had “a star for luck, a lion for strength, an eagle for cleverness.” Posing for Meldolesi’s pictures, Giuliano cleared up any misconceptions about the size of his “army.” Said the bandit: “We have seldom been more than 20 men all told. In these mountains, it is easier for three men to see a marching column than for a column to see three men.”

Glorified Crime. The Giuliano issue of Oggi was a swift sellout (1,200,000 copies). It had barely hit the streets when the conservative // Tempo accused its rival of “basically indecent” conduct in consorting with a bandit. Embarrassed Minister of Interior Mario Scelba fired Palermo’s chief of police, ordered the Mi-Jan police to arrest Meldolesi, Rizza and Editor Rusconi. The charge: “aiding and abetting banditry and glorifying crime.”

Cried Rusconi: “If this action succeeds, it is the end of freedom of the press in Italy.” Even newspapers that disapproved of Meldolesi’s methods thought Scelba had gone too far; in Parliament, Socialist, Communist and Republican deputies united in protest. This week, as carabinieri redoubled their search for Giuliano, Photographer Meldolesi got ready to stand trial, nonchalantly proclaimed: “They can’t pin anything on me.”