THE LITTLE GATE-CRASHER

Mace Bugen might have been an achondroplastic dwarf&mdash,forty-three inches tall with an average-sized head and a torso set on small, twisted legs&mdash,but that didn&rsquo,t mean he was an idiot or a pushover. In truth, he was smarter than most, over the years, he learned to effectively turn what society in those days called a handicap into a powerful tool he could use to his advantage. This book features the best of his photos and a biography of his life. At a time before cell phones or Andy Warhol, you could say that Bugen was the world&rsquo,s first practitioner of the celebrity selfie. Or maybe you could say more accurately that he was the world&rsquo,s first selfie photobomber. Over a period of three decades, using his unique combination of guile, cunning, handicap, and sense of entitlement, Mace engineered photos of himself with some of the biggest celebrities of his day, among them Muhammad Ali, Jonas Salk, Jane Russell, Sammy Davis Jr, Joe DiMaggio, and Richard Nixon. In a column dated September 28, 1955, Walter Winchell, the iconic and fedora wearing syndicated gossip columnist, included this item in his roundup