The writer Jean-Pierre de Lucovich summarized the life of Willy Rizzo with the title of the 1977 Francois Truffant film The Man Who Loved Women. Rizzo's desire to be around beautiful women helped him to build a successful career photographing the most stunning starlets and the most famous men of his time.
Willy Rizzo was born in Naples, Italy and moved to France with his mother in the 1930's. In the beginning of his career Rizzo assisted portrait photographer Aldo before gaining employment on his own, beginning with his coverage of The Cannes Film Festival for France Sunday. In 1945, Rizzo met Arletty Raimu and Micheline Presle and photographed the inaugural cover of Paris Match Magazine in 1949. He would continue to photograph personalities such as Brigitte Bardot, Audrey Hepburn, Pablo Picasso, Marlene Dietrich, and Dizzy Gillespie extensively for the magazine for the next twenty years while also working alongside the famed Conde Nast editor Alexander Lieberman at Vogue.
