John Verzi was an LA post office worker who spent decades photographing celebrities in his spare time. In 2018, at age 83, he died in a Las Vegas trailer, leaving behind a one-page will that designated boxes of his photos to his best friend who worked at the same post office. Those photos were then auctioned off for $144,000 to the LA Public Library, and now, all of them will be on display for the first time.
“There must have been something about John Verzi that was incredibly personable because the images are of happy, open people smiling at him. So they're not paparazzi photos. People aren't blocking their faces. So I think he did have a pretty good rapport with a lot of these people,” says Christina Rice, head of the photo collection at the LAPL’s central branch.
A glimpse of Marilyn Monroe is captured by the photographer as she leaves a dinner party honoring Billy Wilder at the Beverly Hills restaurant Romanoff's. The handwritten date on the slide is September 10, 1961. Photo by John Verzi.
Rice explains that the library holds his collection of over 12,000 photos from 1961-1990. Verzi took the shots as a hobby and didn’t share them with others. Although Rice says some people were aware that Verzi was taking them.
He didn’t just focus on well-known celebrities. Rice explains, “We have Marilyn and we have Elvis and we have RFK. But … he also had a really good eye for up and coming. We have a photo of Harrison Ford when he was a carpenter in between American Graffiti and Star Wars. And so Verzi, I think, had an eye for beautiful people.”
Verzi shot all the photos in color and dated them, making it easier for the library to sort through. The goal is to have all of the pictures digitized and available to view through the library’s online portal. For now, they’ll continue to organize the photos, make identifications, and create the records of Verzi’s photos.
Jimi Hendrix is photographed in the back seat of a car. The date handwritten on the slide is March 28, 1969. Photo by John Verzi.
“From now on, everybody's gonna know who he was and hopefully appreciate what he did,” Rice says.