Columnist Cherishes Different Photograph Of Kiss
No matter how fast her car sped through the Paris night, the paparazzi on the motorbikes were sure to stay right behind her, for she was with the man said to be her lover and just three weeks ago a photographer who managed the first fuzzy snaps of the couple had made more than a million dollars.
Those pictures of Diana with Dodi Al-Fayed had been so poor that the only way to confirm they were of her was to match the swimsuit with that in pictures taken a short time earlier.
Photographer Mario Brenna nonetheless made a score that surpassed the previous record of $900,000 for the first pictures of Elvis Presley’s grandchild. That made Brenna a celebrity, and therefore a target of paparazzi. He was quoted griping about the media and insisting that nobody was going to get him on film.
Until this month, the 40-year-old Brenna had earned his keep primarily as a society and fashion photographer, his clients including Gianni Versace. He is said to have been on an unrelated assignment in Sardinia when he chanced to spy Diana and Fayed aboard the latter’s family yacht, the Jonikal.
Brenna had a telephoto lens, but he apparently got no closer than 500 yards to the couple. He took the fuzzy results to British paparazzo Jason Fraser, who had once surrendered a roll of film to Diana when she complained of being photographed departing a party with a stranger.
Fraser was not about to give up Brenna’s pictures. A good pair of eyes and a lot of squinting showed the couple actually embracing.
The bidding went on for 48 hours. The winner was the Sunday Mirror, which ran the picture on the front page under the headline “The Kiss.”
“Princess Diana has finally found a man who makes her feel like a REAL woman,” the paper said.
In France, the photos were brokered by Daniel Angeli, who once made a fortune snapping the Dutchess of York getting her toes sucked. That was nothing compared with the money brought in by Diana smooching Dodi.
When the pictures ran, Diana was in Bosnia-Herzegovina, embracing those maimed by land mines. She had made land mines her personal cause, but upon her return home the following Sunday, she was swarmed by those only interested in violating her private life.
The photographers swarmed in search of her when she flew off to Greece, supposedly to be with Dodi. They were still after the couple when she arrived in France.
“Well-informed sources said Dodi was seen jet-skiing late Saturday near the yacht,” one news service flashed.
Meanwhile, one of Dodi’s ex-girlfriends surfaced to besmirch Diana. The first officer of the yacht Jonikal also went public with a shameless account headlined, “I Watched Di do the Flirty on Dodi.”
Still in France, Diana told a French newspaper that the British press would have driven her to leave England for good were it not for her two sons.
The hounds kept baying, right up to early Sunday morning, when motorcycles sped after Diana’s car along the Seine. Her pursuers were right out of the 1961 movie “La Dolce Vita,” in which a photographer named Paparazzo chases his prey on a motorscooter.
That gave the paparazzi their name, and a quarter-century later, they chased the biggest score ever right to her death. The frenzy that began with “The Kiss” ended in two children being left without their mother. We can only hope that nobody will buy pictures of Diana in the wreckage.
A picture of Princess Diana that should stay with us is one for which she seemed happy to pose for in the Bronx in June. She went there to see Mother Teresa, who was visiting the Missionaries of Charity convent on E.145th Street.
For a half hour, the two women sat together and talked as the friends they had become during Diana’s struggle to forge her own life. They then walked into the chapel to hear 50 nuns sing. The time came for Diana to leave, and they emerged from the red brick building holding hands.
As the cameras clicked, Diana smiled and bent down. The diminutive Mother Teresa then gave Princess Diana a kiss that goes with her as she now travels beyond the reach of all those who hounded her.