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...