Cosmo’s eyes
He was the man who made the Cosmo girl.
Francesco Scavullo, the legendary photographer of models and celebrities who died Tuesday in Manhattan at the age of 82, shot covers for Rolling Stone, Life, Time, Town & Country, Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, Mademoiselle and Glamour. But he is perhaps best known for his work at Cosmopolitan.
For 30 years, Scavullo and Editor in Chief Helen Gurley Brown created the lusty, busty covers that sent millions of women to their bedroom mirrors to size themselves up. The iconic images, combined with the sex quizzes and how-to-bag-a-man articles inside, have had a far-reaching cultural influence, resulting in everything from Miracle bras to HBO’s “Sex and the City.”
“We worked out a format together,” Brown said Wednesday from her office in New York. “He didn’t just show me a photo, we discussed what we wanted, which was the most gorgeous girl in the world, ravishing, sensual and sexy, but in good taste and friendly, because at the time girls were looking very snippy and haute.”
Scavullo began working for Cosmopolitan soon after Brown became the editor in 1965, and he photographed the covers until she retired and took on a consulting role in 1997. The models’ clothes, by designers such as Yves Saint Laurent and Roberto Cavalli, were selected and styled by his partner, Sean Byrnes, who survives him.
The success of Cosmopolitan relied on the philosophy that nothing is better for a woman than to be sexually desirable, and that was reflected in the cover shots. “I wanted to show bosom,” Brown said. “I knew women wanted to look at bosom as much as men did, to see how they compared. This was before the times of breast augmentation, and Francesco and Sean always showed bosom. They used bobby socks, breast tape, baseballs, whatever they had to.”
Though hardly the only one in the fashion industry to do so, Scavullo walked a fine line when sexualizing young models, some of whom weren’t yet in high school when they were appearing on the covers of Cosmo. He worked with Cindy Crawford, Carol Alt, Christie Brinkley, Gia, Rene Russo and Farrah Fawcett, who credited Scavullo with discovering her when he plucked her from a TV ad and put her on a Cosmo cover.
He also discovered Brooke Shields -- when she was 7 months old. He was shooting an Ivory Soap ad, but the babies he had hired were crying and throwing the soap, according to his biography, “Scavullo Photographs 50 Years” (Harry Abrams, 1997). An assistant said she had a friend with a baby who could fill in. It was Shields, who smiled the whole time. Scavullo, whom Shields came to call “Uncle Frank,” photographed her through many phases of her career -- topless at 10, as a garcon at 17, and for her last Cosmopolitan cover at 31 in 1996. But when asked about his death this week, she had no comment.
Model Janice Dickinson, who posed for seven Cosmo covers with Scavullo, recalled his paternal instincts. “I was wild back then, and he took me and sat me down and stroked my hair in a gentle way. He was like the pied piper of fashion, taking me on this inner journey,” said Dickinson, who recently published her autobiography, “No Lifeguard on Duty: The Accidental Life of the World’s First Supermodel,” which details her struggles with addiction while modeling during the 1970s. She also recalled his famous techniques. “He would show me the planes of my face for the most exquisite lighting. He led me through the photograph. He seduced me through it.... He taught me how to change expressions 200 times over the course of an hour. He taught me to be the supermodel that stood the test of time for three decades.”
Of course, Scavullo’s reach extended far beyond Cosmo. There’s a knack to dealing with celebrities, and he had it. He photographed album covers for Barbra Streisand, Diana Ross and Sting and made portraits of Janis Joplin, Mick Jagger and others.
He also shot print advertisements and TV ads. Scavullo first noticed a 6-year-old Yasmine Bleeth when he was shooting her in a Max Factor campaign in New York City. Bleeth said Wednesday that Scavullo knew her mother, Carina Bleeth, because he rented mobile homes for his photo shoots from the company she owned. When Yasmine was 13, Scavullo asked her and Carina to sit for a portrait in his studio, which he included in his 1982 book “Scavullo Women.”
The photograph now has sentimental value, Bleeth said, because her mother died in 1989 of breast cancer. “We were so flattered to have it included. He thought my mother was one of the most beautiful women in the world,” Bleeth said. “It’s a really nice memory to have.”
