• John Verzi spent six decades amassing 25,000 autographs and over 12,000 photos of celebrities. 
• After his death in 2018, his collection of photographs sold at auction for over $140,000.
• The Verzi collection has hundreds of never-before-seen photographs of celebrities.

John Verzi spent decades photographing everyone from A-list Hollywood celebrities to lesser-known niche stars.

His private collection is now being prepared for the public to view at the Los Angeles Public Library. 

After his death in 2018, Verzi's exclusive photos bounced among collectors and auction houses before it found its permanent home at the central branch of the LAPL in Downtown Los Angeles. The library bid over $140,000 for the collection. 

Verzi was born in Santa Clara County, California, and spent much of his adult years in San Francisco and Los Angeles. He was not a paparazzi and was not, by any official accounts, a professional photographer, but he was taken with the world of Hollywood. 

While the collection is still being scanned and studied, the LAPL has granted Insider access to some never-before-seen photos from the collection.

John Verzi took photos of celebrities across Los Angeles and even obtained press credentials to attend carpet events.

Christina Rice, the senior librarian at the Los Angeles Public Library associated with the photo collection, said that Verzi had a friend at a film publication in the 1960s who helped him gain the necessary credentials.

Los Angeles librarians have used their collective knowledge and archival resources to determine locations and possible events some of the celebrities might be attending in Verzi's photos. 

But not all of Verzi's photos were taken at events.

Some were taken on a whim, like this photo of Elvis in the backseat of his car as he leaves a movie studio.

Some of Verzi's photos feature celebrities at the Hollywood unemployment office — a frequent stop for stars who were in between jobs.

Verzi would frequent the Hollywood unemployment office in his search for celebrities.

Verzi also had a penchant for finding stars attending dinner parties throughout Hollywood and Beverly Hills.

All of the photographs in the Verzi collection are in color, which is one of the unique factors that sets his collection apart from others taken around the same time. 

Of the 4 million photos in the Los Angeles Public Library's collection, a majority of them are black and white, Rice said.

The fact that Verzi's photos are in color and dated aids the librarians in understanding the context around them. 

Some photos in the Verzi collection offer one-of-a-kind glimpses of celebrities, like Marilyn Monroe going to a dinner party in Los Angeles.

This photo of Marilyn Monroe getting in her car after attending a dinner party at Romanoff's is the only one that exists. 

"There's no other known photos of her at this event. It's known she went to this event, but nobody else photographed her," Rice said. "So it is not only is it one-of-a-kind Marilyn image, but it's truly one-of-a-kind that nobody else photographed her at this event as far as we know."

Verzi didn't only focus on movie stars. He collected photographs of musicians, models, Broadway stars, and amateur adult film stars as well.

One of the photos in the Verzi collection is of Jim Morrison outside of a theater. Thanks to Verzi's handwritten dating, Los Angeles librarians have been able to determine that Morrison was attending the play, "The Beard."

The play centers around a fictional encounter between the famous outlaw, Billy the Kid, and the 1930s actress, Jean Harlow. The two communicate with each other with four-letter expletives, and the play culminates in a scene of simulated intercourse between the two. 

The play was considered so controversial that it only ran for a couple of weeks and the actors in it were arrested frequently. 

Verzi once photographed 300 celebrities in an 11-month span between 1960 and 1961, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Verzi was known to be reclusive at moments and not easy to get along with.

In one instance, actress Sylvia Sidney reportedly said, "Get that man out of here," upon seeing Verzi.

Verzi continued taking photos of a new generation of up-and-coming stars through the 1970s and 1980s.

The LA Times reported Verzi moved to Las Vegas in 1989, where he lived in a trailer until he died in 2018.

Verzi's collection of a lifetime of photographs sold for $144,000 to the LAPL.

To the librarians who found and bid on the collection, it's worth every penny. The collection gathers photos that might not exist anywhere else, and many of the photos themselves add new visual context to history. 

"To have such incredible snapshots of time that might not exist elsewhere," Rice said, "I don't know that you can really put a price on it."

Now that the collection is being digitized, librarians at the LAPL hope that the images can be useful to the public.

The Verzi collection displays a different view of celebrities and stars in Hollywood in the 60s.

His photos are those of an avid fan and collector and contextualize an otherwise inaccessible lifestyle.

"It definitely tells a story of what's going on in the city and that our entertainment industry isn't just the Academy Awards — sometimes it's just people hanging out at restaurants or collecting unemployment," Rice said. "So it kind of tells a fuller story of what it is to be in the entertainment industry in our city."

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