To make money, Abbe sold his photographs to magazines, including Vogue and Vanity Fair, which brought his subjects greater fame.

In the 1920s and '30s Abbe photographed politicians, stage and film stars—Hitler and Mussolini, Charlie Chaplin and Josephine Baker—and scored the biggest coup of his career when he finagled his way into the Kremlin and, according to Miss Tilly, "tricked" Joseph Stalin into posing for him.

This son, from his second marriage, James Abbe Jr was born in 1912; he also became a photographer and later an antiques dealer and worked in the 1940s Harper's Bazaar.

[6] The marriage ended when James Abbe travelled to Italy in 1922 with a former Ziegfeld dancer, Polly Platt (née Mary Ann Shorrock).

She was part of the company filming Ronald Colman and Lillian Gish in The White Sister (1923) on location in Rome and Naples.

[7] After the failure of this marriage, he married Irene Caby, the mother of ballet dancer and dance teacher Tilly (Matilda) and Malinda (Linda) Abbe.

Stars of the Twenties, Observed by James Abbe, Text by Mary Dawn Earley, Introduction by Lillian Gish.