The Press: Zerbesques

Indubitably the best-known news photographer in New York City is Izzy Kaplan, at present employed by the Daily Mirror. Photographer Kaplan has snapped practically every celebrity to enter Manhattan in the past ten years, has hidden in choir stalls to “get” socialite weddings, fed a hot dog to the late great Albert of Belgium, insulted Cardinals and bossed prize fighters. He seldom shaves and has difficulty in keeping his shirt tails inside his trousers.

Jerome B. Zerbe Jr., 30, Yale ’28. is a news photographer, too, with a rapidly mounting reputation in Manhattan advertising agencies and smartcharts, but he is very different from Izzy Kaplan. Always immaculately groomed, with an impressive acquaintance among New York’s bright young people, he flash lights all the swankier bars, nightclubs, balls, routs & receptions. With determination and no little skill Photographer Zerbe has dedicated his life to recording the lives of the champagne set in its moments of abandon. A harvest of his finer fruits was assembled by Publisher David Kemp last week and issued in book form with an introduction by a still more spectacular young man named Lucius Morris Beebe. A hulking, hollow-voiced columnist on the Herald Tribune, Lucius Morris Beebe hires Rolls-Royces to attend cock fights, occasionally wears a silk hat to work, and is known to a whole decade of awed Yale undergraduates as the last of the boulevardiers.

Born in Cleveland, Jerome Zerbe was expensively educated. When he arrived in Manhattan year ago he asked for a picture-taking job with the Conde Nast publications (Vanity Fair, Vogue, House &Garden, was told his work was good but he did not know “the right people.” Thereupon he went out to enlarge the circle of his acquaintances. As a professional photographer he is kind. In manner his pictures approach the clandestine snapshots of candid cameramen with their high speed lenses, but Jerome Zerbe uses only a standard news photographer’s camera with synchronized flash bulb. None of the celebrities he has caught was photographed eating, yawning, scratching ears or picking noses. Some of them were drunk, but all knew their pictures were being taken and seemed pleased.

Celebrities thus recorded include: Photographer Cecil Beaton in a cocked hat at the feet of a plaster Venus; Walter P. Chrysler Jr. bending over a friend’s shoulder; Crooner Lanny Ross about to eat a cheese snap; Dancer Clifton Webb holding the arm of Serge Lifar; Polo Player Laddie Sanford on a raft with his wife. Actress Mary Duncan; Mrs. Willie K. Vanderbilt honoring LaFayette; Douglas Fairbanks on a nightclub couch; Lawrence Tibbett in a theatre lobby; Doris Duke drinking champagne; Prince Chlodwig Hohenlohe-Schillingsfurst drinking champagne; Cartoonist Tony Sarg drinking whiskey; Max Baer putting cold cream on his face; Cinemactress Dolores Del Rio going upstairs; Mrs. William T. Wetmore going downstairs.