Author: I.C. Rapoport
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When I Met Marlon Brando
Brando and Me July 1971 It was to be my first feature film. Edgar Scherick of Palomar Pictures in New York had hired me to adapt an Algis Budrys short story (it had appeared in the Saturday Evening Post) into a screenplay. Chokeberry Bay was completed in the fall of 1969 and went through two…
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The Army Wants Me! (1961-1963) Part One
SIXTY STRANGE DAYS (October – December 1961) It didn’t take much to convince Don Moser, or his bosses, at Life to invest in the Basic Training project. It wouldn’t cost them any money so they agreed to supply the film and to process it. I brought with me two Nikon SP rangefinder cameras…
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Fateful Introduction to Sports Illustrated
MARBLE CHAMPIONSHIP (July 1961) My photographs of Fidel Castro and Marilyn Monroe for Paris Match gave me entrée into the prestigious Time-Life Publications. LIFE and TIME were particularly choosy as to who should represent them out in the world, and it was well known that working for LIFE magazine was the top of the line…
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Marilyn from the Window – March 1961
MARILYN MONROE (March 1961) From the moment I arrived back in New York, Mary and I were never apart (with the exception of my travels away on assignments). In early March, Paris Match had me visit Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in upper Manhattan. Marilyn Monroe was a patient there and no one knew why she had…
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Santa Maria, San Juan PR, and Mary Feder Part 2
THANKS TO CAPTAIN GALVÃO and THANKS TO RICHARD STEEDMAN Part Two (January, 1961) When I rang up Dick he was excited to hear that I was down on the island and we made a lunch date to meet at my hotel. He was curious as to what it looked like inside having watched it…
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Do You Believe In Baschert? (beloved destiny)
GATHERING AT THE U.N. (September 1960) I was among hundreds of photographers, TV crews and print journalists, covering the historic event at the United Nations in the fall of 1960. It seemed every head of state had converged on New York to attend the meeting of the General Assembly. Chairman Nikita Khrushchev from the…
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Santa Maria, San Juan PR, and Mary Feder Part 1
THANKS TO CAPTAIN GALVÃO and THANKS TO RICHARD STEEDMAN Part One (January, 1961) What I didn’t get in the way of usable photographs from my few days on the cold Atlantic were more than made up for in my next assignment for Paris Match. To make this clear, though I wasn’t left with even one…
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Pop Arts
CLAES OLDENBURG – ARTIST (June 1960) I had attended Ohio University with many accomplished talents. In the photo department: LOOK magazine and Magnum photographers Paul Fusco and James Karales, also, Newsweek photographer Robert McElroy and Judy Buswink (Ross) who went on to become a NY Times photographer in London. And…
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The Forgotten Man
THE ROCKEFELLERS – ANNE-MARIE RASMUSSEN AND HER FORGOTTEN UNCLE – THE COP (July 1959) The floodgates didn’t exactly open after Bob Soth’s collapse was spread across two pages of Paris Match. Though Roger Therond now knew who I was, he wasn’t calling Stephane or Slade to put me to work. Two weeks…
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John Collins – Man Who Lost Everything
HERE’S SOMETHING SO MOVING IT MOISTENS MY EYES JUST POSTING IT. Mary Rapoport posted this comment on Facebook: “This coming October will mark the 50th anniversary of the mining tragedy in Aberfan, Wales. So it was almost 50 years ago that Chuck spent six weeks there photographing the aftermath that touched everyone in that…
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Nightmares of a Disaster, Part 3
ABERFAN The Days After (Part Three) The nightmares began a few weeks into my assignment. I had spent the first ten or twelve days immersed in the “story” I was about to tell with my photographs. As a photojournalist, my task was not merely to wander the village looking for striking images, though I did…
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Nightmares of a Disaster, Part 2
ABERFAN The Days After (Part Two) The Mackintosh Pub became my friend. My only friend. As a journalist, I was an outcast and in some cases a despised one. Thanks to the hundreds of newspaper and TV reporters who came through Aberfan before me, a very bad taste was left in the mouths of the…