NOVEMBER 1997

GIANNI AGNELLI

The leonine overlord of Fiat (the giant Italian conglomerate) was a young playboy, a bon vivant, and an officer during World War II—first for the Axis, then for the Allies—before taking over the family firm in 1966.

ARCHIVE

POWER & INFLUENCE

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of its reincarnation, Vanity Fair presents some of its finest portraits from two decades of covering power and influence, whether the cultural impact of Madonna, the political leadership of Ronald Reagan, or the economic clout of V.F.'s New Establishment moguls. These are the faces that have shaped our era, as seen by some of the worlds most talented photographers

MARCH 1993

PAMELA HARRIMAN

Few were in a better position to gloat the night this photo was taken—at an exclusive offstage session amid the whirl of the new president's 1993 inaugural balls. The political doyenne of Georgetown, wrote Vanity Fair, had "signed [Bill] Clinton to the board of her Democrats for the 80s committee. Now ... she's presiding over le tout Washington for the 90s. Harriman kept the faith and money flowing for more than a decade of Republican rule." For her troubles, the wife of Randolph Churchill, agent-producer Leland Hayward, and businessman-diplomat Averell Harriman would soon be named U.S. ambassador to France.

JUNE 1991

MARGARET THATCHER

Never before had a woman been elected head of a European nation. The child of a greengrocer and a dressmaker, Britain's Iron Lady stayed the course from 1979 to 1990, through upheavals in Northern Ireland and war in the Falklands— longer than any prime minister since Robert Banks Jenkinson left 10 Downing Street in 1827.

FEBRUARY 2002

BUSH'S WAR COUNCIL

As the fighting raged in distant Afghanistan, the 43rd commander in chief's inner circle set aside 10 precious minutes for a historic Vanity Fair photo session. Assembled in the ornate Cabinet Room: Secretary of State Colin Powell, Vice President Dick Cheney, President George W. Bush, National-Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, White House chief of staff Andrew Card, C.I.A. director George Tenet (seated), and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

OCTOBER 1997

THE NEW ESTABLISHMENT

The 80s and 90s brought great shifts of wealth and power, largely into the hands of a new breed of entrepreneur and visionary. Vanity Fair dubbed this emerging network the New Establishment and in 1995 inaugurated its annual rankings of the top 50 leaders of the computer, entertainment, and communications industries. In 1997, members of the digitocracy convened at Allen & Company's yearly summit in Sun Valley, Idaho. Back row (titles held that year): Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren Buffett, Universal chairman Frank Biondi, Time Warner president Richard Parsons, TCI chairman John Malone, NBC president Bob Wright, Sony Corporation of America president Howard Stringer, Seagram president Edgar Bronfman Jr., Universal president Ron Meyer, Intel chairman Andrew Grove, Warner Bros, chairman Terry Semel, Comcast chairman Ralph Roberts (father of Brian), News Corp. chairman and chief executive Rupert Murdoch. Center row: Microsoft chief technology officer Nathan Myhrvold, Time Warner chairman Gerald Levin,

Orca Bay Capital Corp. chairman John McCaw Jr. (brother of Craig), ICM chairman and C.E.O. Jeff Berg, DreamWorks partner David Geffen, Washington Post Company chairwoman Katharine Graham, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates. Front row: Allen & Company C.E.O. Herbert A. Allen, Sony Corporation president and C.O.O. Nobuyuki Idei, H.S.N. chairman Barry Diller, DreamWorks partner Jeffrey Katzenberg.

"Dodging death threats and poison pasta, [Giuliani] s the latter-day Eliot Ness."

— VANITY FAIR, DECEMBER 1985.

AUGUST 1987

RUDOLPH GIULIANI

Who would have dreamt that this brash 43-year-old U.S. attorney would metamorphose into a two-term, tough-as-nails mayor of the city of New York, becoming the town's spiritual and civic beacon in the weeks after the 9/11 attacks?

SEPTEMBER 1995

NEWT GINGRICH

In the mid-90s, V.F. called him "America's most dominant and least understood political figure." Writer Gail Sheehy compared him to General Patton and John Wayne. As Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Georgia Republican—a voracious history buff, author, and godfather of the conservative Contract with America—was a notorious burr under the saddle of President Bill Clinton.

APRIL 1991

MADONNA

No rebel turned icon—save Mao or Ali—has been more adept at recasting her image over time's long march. Actress, pop star, sexual maverick, doting mom: she's bloomed in each incarnation, all the while pursuing a parallel career as marketplace clairvoyant.

JUNE 1985

NANCY AND RONALD REAGAN

As the president and First Lady two-stepped to Sinatra's "Nancy (With the Laughing Face)," the camera rendered one of the couple's defining frames and reinforced the notion that D.C.'s power pair, at their very marrow, were consummate actors—and unabashed lovebirds. The cover shot earned Vanity Fair rivers of ink, and helped establish it as an arbiter of image and stature within that white-hot cauldron where power and celebrity bubble.

APRIL 1996

HOLLYWOOD WHIZ KIDS

The Joint Chiefs of American cinema (Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, and George Lucas) have launched some of the predominant myths of our age. Of the top 25 all-time box-office hits (adjusted for inflation), these four old friends lay claim to 9.

"The ability to blow up the world still grants you a huge amount of sway"

— VANITY FAIR, NOVEMBER 1997.

NOVEMBER 1997

BILL CLINTON AND AL GORE

They governed through eight heady years of prosperity, exporting democracy as they went. They were rent asunder by scandal and impeachment; their rift widened after candidate Gore's loss in the 2000 White House marathon.

"She is the only woman known to have gone up a tree a Princess and come down a Queen."

—WILLIAM SHAWCROSS, VANITY FAIR, JUNE 2002.

JUNE 2002

QUEEN ELIZABETH

In our pages, frequent rears the head that wears the crown. Yet Elizabeth II, 75 in this portrait, taken to mark her Golden Jubilee as British sovereign, has reigned supreme among V.F.'s long roster of royals.

DECEMBER 1995

THE ANCHORS

A poor kid with a speech impediment from Webster, South Dakota; an impish oil-field worker from Wharton, Texas; a journalist's son from Toronto. Vanity Fair persuaded these three, years later, to pose together. The result: the Mount Rushmore of network news—Tom Brokaw (NBC anchor since September 2, 1983), Dan Rather (CBS anchor since March 9, 1981), and Peter Jennings (ABC anchor since September 5, 1983).

NOVEMBER 1998

TVs GRAND DAMES

They empathize, they pry, but, above all, they listen. And Americans bare their souls. For nearly 100 years now, in aggregate, Diane Sawyer, Barbara Walters, and Oprah Winfrey have been lending ears and airwaves to the famous, the newsworthy, and the neglected.

JULY 1997

PRINCESS DIANA

Majesty is the coin of the Windsor realm. But Diana's was minted with a special luster. The Princess of Wales, shown here just weeks before she would perish in a car crash, embodied the grace of her station, but possessed fathomless compassion—as well as frailty—that made her as one with her subjects.

JULY 2000

TITANS OF TECH

In an unprecedented virtual group portrait, Vanity Fair gathered 15 pioneers of the Digital Age. From left (each photographed separately): Jack Kilby, co-inventor of the computer chip; Arthur Rock, first venture-capital tycoon; Eugene Kleiner and Tom Perkins, founders of the venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins; Gordon Moore, co-founder and tech guru of Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel; Andrew Grove, Intel microprocessor innovator, considered by many the eminence grise of Silicon Valley; Douglas Engelbart, inventor of the computer mouse and other desktop benchmarks; Bill Gates and Paul Allen, software barons who co-founded Microsoft; Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, co-founders of Apple, who helped popularize the personal computer; Bob Metcalfe, networking visionary who invented Ethernet; Vint Cerf, co-creator of the Internet; Tim Berners-Lee, software-systems expert who conceived the World Wide Web; Linus Torvalds, software revolutionary who created Linux.