Byliner Recommends

• The First of Elvis

  by Bob Colacello + Follow

  Vanity Fair | January 2010

  Al Wertheimer needed the money, so he took the job: photograph a rising young singer from Memphis. As L.A.’s Grammy Museum kicks off a nine-city traveling exhibition of the historic results, Wertheimer recalls his days of shadowing Elvis Presley in 1956, the year Elvis-mania hit.

• Ronnie & Nancy Part II

  by Bob Colacello + Follow

  Vanity Fair | August 1998

  From the “social strategy” by which Nancy Reagan conquered the Georgetown elite to her role in Ronald Reagan’s daring “fireside chat” with Mikhail Gorbachev, part two of this intimate chronicle of the Reagans reveals her as perhaps the most influential First Lady in recent history.

• Ronnie & Nancy Part I

  by Bob Colacello + Follow

  Vanity Fair | July 1998

  As Ronald and Nancy Reagan struggle with his Alzheimer’s disease, surviving members of the powerful, wealthy inner circle that propelled them to the White House—which included Alfred and Betsy Bloomingdale, Earle and Marion Jorgensen, William and Betty Wilson, Walter and Lee Annenberg, Holmes Tuttle, and Justin Dart—open diaries and memories for this two-part intimate history. Part one takes the Reagans from a 50s world of ranch outings and potluck picnics to the triumphal $16 million inauguration of 1981.