In twenty years (1969-88) as Brown's admissions director, Rogers said, “the greatest advantage to Brown I was able to achieve was the admission and matriculation of John. People began to talk about Brown. If somebody who had as many admissions options as he had would choose Brown, there had to be some reason.”

  At Brown, female students and faculty swooned over the handsome Kennedy; one history professor walked from the front of her class to John's seat in the next-to-last row of the lecture hall to compliment him on his haircut, according to a former classmate. At the same time, the administration shielded him from the media. Robert Reichley, who headed university relations at the time, recalled that he refused to answer any questions about John—even such innocuous inquiries as what classes he was taking or what his major was. Every interview request was forwarded to John himself, who turned virtually all of them down. Media photo opportuni-ties at his freshman registration and his graduation were restricted. By refusing to exploit John for publicity, Brown gained favor among other celebrities.

  “All the celebrity kids here wanted to be invisible,” said Reichley, who earned a mock “William Tecumseh Sherman prize” from the New York Times for repeatedly saying no to questions about John. “That's one reason many of them came to Brown. They said Brown protected them and didn't use them.”

  Even Reichley couldn't keep some celebrity students out of the public eye. Brown's next presidential offspring, Amy Carter, who enrolled in 1985, neglected her classes in favor of political protest. She was arrested during demonstrations against South Africa's apartheid regime and CIA recruitment. After being given grades of “incomplete” for failing to finish several courses, she left Brown during the 1987-88 academic year at the university's suggestion. “She spent a lot of time on issues that might better have been spent on academic life,” Reichley said. Her Brown classmate Vanessa Vadim, daughter of Jane Fonda and director Roger Vadim, also made headlines for an arrest; she was accused of obstructing government administration, loitering, and disorderly conduct when her boyfriend was arrested on a drug charge. Vanessa, who was sentenced to do three days of community service, graduated in 1989.

  A third celebrity in that entering class of 1985 stayed out of trouble herself—but owed her fame to her father's status as defendant in the most widely followed criminal case of the decade. Cosima von Bulow was the daughter of Claus von Bulow, a Danish-born aristocrat accused of attempting to murder his wife, Sunny—Cosima's mother—at the family's Newport, Rhode Island, mansion by injecting her with a dose of insulin that left her comatose. He was convicted in 1982, but the Rhode Island Supreme Court overturned the verdict and he was acquitted on retrial in June 1985.

  While Sunny's two children by her first marriage believed Claus was guilty, Cosima supported her father. Fortuitously for her, so did Anne Brown, a von Bulow family friend and widow of John Nicholas Brown, whose family founded Brown University. Anne Brown surprised high soci-ety by appearing as a character witness for Claus in the 1982 trial, testifying, “Claus no more tried to murder Sunny than the man in the moon. He didn't marry her for her money. He married her for her beauty.”

  Most of Cosima's friends expected her to seek shelter from the scandal by going far away to college, but Brown University's New Curriculum appealed to her. “No one could understand why I wanted to go to school in Providence,” Cosima told me by phone from her London home. “I liked the fact that I was going to be able to concentrate on subjects that were my strengths rather than waste time on core curriculum.”

  Cosima said she excelled academically at two prep schools; “I'd like to think I would have gotten into Brown anyway.” To bolster her chances, she turned to Anne Brown for a recommendation. Brown's letter to the admissions office began, Cosima recalled, “Having turned down fourteen of my sixteen grandchildren, I think you now owe me a favor.”

  Anne Brown died in November 1985 at the age of seventy-nine. Cosima majored in comparative literature at Brown and graduated in 1989 with honors for her thesis on novelists Marcel Proust, Henry James, and Virginia Woolf. She moved to England after graduation, married Neapolitan nobleman Ricardo Pavoncelli, and has two children. She's been “a big supporter of Brown,” she said. Cosima has kept Anne Brown's letter ever since in her father's house in Denmark.

  IN 1989, the same year that Vanessa Vadim and Cosima von Bulow graduated, Brown installed a new president who was well equipped to attract more celebrity students. Vartan Gregorian, an Iranian-born immigrant of Armenian descent, was a media darling himself. After climbing through the academic ranks to become provost of the University of Pennsylvania, he had in 1981 assumed the presidency of the New York Public Library, where his ebullient personality transformed a stodgy institution into a chic place for charitable donations. Celebrity-conscious and chronically under-endowed, Brown coveted Gregorian's fund-raising prowess and his legions of high-profile friends and library donors—many of whom now looked to him to facilitate their children's admission to the Ivy League.

  The new Brown president “came into New York City all the time and tapped every person who had made major donations to the public library,” said Sondra Feig, former college counselor at the Dalton School in Manhattan. “Some of their kids were totally over their heads to go near Brown. They didn't want to go to Brown, but they were entertained in Providence. They left after a very short time.”

  In one instance, Feig said, Gregorian intervened in admissions on behalf of the daughter of a New York entrepreneur and library donor with Hollywood ties. The applicant, who was dyslexic, had mediocre grades at Dalton and left Brown without graduating.

  The young woman told me that Gregorian was a close friend of her parents and that she had known him since she was seven years old. Soon after he became president of Brown, she said, he invited her to enroll. “I was thrilled with the opportunity Vartan was giving me,” she said. “He took a great risk with me. My understanding was he was allowed two students a year he could have in. That was it. He could override anybody.” Shortly after entering Brown, she said, she encountered an admissions official at an open house. “He told me, ‘You're the student we didn't want,”” she said. “It was a very not fun experience.”

  Gregorian acknowledged facilitating her admission but said such intercessions on his part were rare. “I tried as much as possible to keep out of the admissions process,” Gregorian, now president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, told me during a lengthy conversation in Carnegie's Madison Avenue offices. “If as president I wanted someone admitted, I could have phoned and said, ‘Admit him.” I seldom if ever did that.”

  He said that the children of the famous flocked to Brown not because of an administration strategy to give them an admissions edge but because of their anonymity on campus, the flexible curriculum, and the “esprit de corps” of the student body. He added that as Brown reached a critical mass of contented celebrity parents, they sang its praises to other notables with teenage children. “Once you had a cadre of five or ten celebrities, they became recruiters for Brown,” he said. In particular, he said, Anna Strasberg—widow of Brown acting teacher Lee Strasberg and mother of two Brown graduates—promoted the university to friends, including the late Marlon Brando, whose daughter Petra went to Brown.

  Nonetheless, Gregorian was keenly aware that Brown's endowment was only one-tenth of Harvard's. Hoping to narrow that deficit, he corralled the son of one of America's wealthiest men, billionaire Gordon P. Getty. William Paul Getty—son of Gordon and grandson of oil magnate J. Paul Getty—graduated in 1989 from the Groton School, where he was considered an average student, and enrolled at Brown. At the time, Gregorian was a trustee of the J. Paul Getty Trust—he served on its board from 1988 to 2000—and a close friend of William's mother, Ann Getty. Ann had joined the board of the New York Public Library in 1985 and given the library $1 million in Gregorian's honor. Gregorian said the Gettys had asked him where to send their children for college, and he had recommended several universities, including Brown. “I wanted Gordon Getty's children to come to Brown,” Gregorian said. “I told admissions, ‘The Gettys” son is applying, and I know them very well.” “He said the Gettys made no financial commitment in return: “I have no quid pro quos.”

  His intervention failed to produce the desired results, either for Brown or for the family. William Paul Getty, nicknamed Billy, “dropped out in six months,” Gregorian said, adding that he didn't know why. He wrote a recommendation for Billy, who was interested in transferring to the University of Southern California.

  Billy's parents did not make a significant gift to Brown, even though Gregorian again courted his father, a composer of classical music, by using university money to establish a Gordon Getty fund for visiting composers. Asked whether the Gettys would have contributed if their son had graduated, Gregorian sighed and said, “Maybe.” Reached at his California home, Billy Getty declined comment.

  SOPHIA LOREN was looking for admissions help. Her son Edoardo Ponti, who had attended high school in Switzerland, was applying to Brown University, but the legendary Italian actress didn't know anyone there. Then a friend who ran a dance studio, and whose own children had gone to Brown, gave her a name: David Zucconi. Zucconi, a Brown administrator, squired Loren and her son around campus, introducing them to other Brown officials. Sure enough, Edoardo was accepted—but the future movie director chose the University of Southern California's film school instead.

  Edoardo was one of the few who got away from Zucconi. Although he held various titles in the admissions, development, and alumni offices during forty-four years as a Brown employee, one of his jobs was always the same: behind-the-scenes liaison to the rich and famous whose children were seeking admission. Zucconi ran interference for the families, lobbied for the students with the admissions staff, and looked after their happiness once enrolled—all in the hope of attracting money and attention to his beloved Brown. His advocacy ushered in many a well-connected student with second-rate qualifications, likely depriving stronger but unhooked candidates of slots.

  Just as most celebrities don't book their own airplane flights or tennis courts, they also don't generally negotiate their children's college admissions. But their own entourage often lacks expertise in this area. Thus they need a coach, an adviser, an inside guide—someone like Zucconi.

  “He got some kids into Brown, pushing, one way or another, who should never have been there,” recalled William Nicholson, a former Brown admissions officer. “Usually they were children of great wealth or alumni. I would try to accommodate him. Sometimes the kids whom he referred were godawful. I'd call him and say, ‘Dave, you've got to do some screening.’”

  “Alumni would pass his name along” to celebrities who “wanted to get their sons or daughters in,” said his older brother, Mario Zucconi, who lives on Long Island. “He was out with Walter Matthau. He had drinks with Walter Cronkite. He was out to dinner with Jane Fonda.” Through Dave's contacts with wealthy alumni and business executives as well as celebrities, Mario said, “you cannot believe the money that he solicited or Brown received. Half-a-million-and million-dollar gifts were commonplace.”

  Zucconi helped guide Fonda's daughter, Vanessa Vadim, through the admissions process. Stephen Rivers, a longtime friend and former spokesman for Fonda, said that Zucconi “dealt mostly with Debi, Jane's assistant at the time, and I met him and spoke with him several times as well.” Zucconi became friendly with Fonda herself and took her to lunch at Brown's faculty club. According to Nicholson, Vanessa “did not need a lot of push” and would have been a strong candidate anyway. (In 1991, Fonda would gain another Brown connection by marrying broadcasting mogul Ted Turner. Expelled from Brown in 1960 for having a female student in his room, Turner received honorary degrees from the university in 1989 and 1993 and became a major donor and trustee.)

  “I spoke to Zucconi several times about some of my development cases,” said Bruce Breimer, director of college guidance at the Collegiate School. “He would interview the kids, write a report, pave the way, let the admissions office know the prominence of the family. The buzz was, he's the guy to go to.”

  Most universities have a “guy to go to,” but Dave Zucconi showed unusual gusto in the role. A barrel-chested former football player with a bone-crushing handshake, a booming Bronx accent, and a facial resemblance to actor Jason Robards, the 1955 Brown graduate invariably dressed in a blazer and one of his collection of ties adorned with the university seal. According to the student newspaper, the Brown Daily Herald, he drove a large white Cadillac convertible that he often parked on campus in prohibited zones. Students knew him for the lobster dinners he threw for football players and other favorites, while alumni in the United States and abroad often heard him speak at Brown functions and sought his advice on their children's applications.

  Zucconi was blessed with total recall for the names and faces of Brown alumni, particularly athletes. As master of ceremonies at Brown, he would delight these alumni by recalling their long-faded exploits on the basketball court or gridiron. “He made everybody feel important,” said Providence Journal columnist Bill Reynolds. “People came back to campus after twenty years and didn't know anyone; he knew them.”

  Raised in a third-floor walk-up, the son of Italian immigrants, Zucconi did not come from wealth himself. But his lack of social polish, combined with his gregariousness and eagerness to please, endeared him to the late Beatle George Harrison and his wife, Olivia, who contacted him when their son, Dhani, applied to Brown. (In his application essay, Dhani described playing music onstage with his father and Eric Clapton—a reminder to Brown admissions officers, if one were needed, of his family's celebrity.) Later, Zucconi traveled to England with the Brown crew team, including Dhani, for the Henley regatta, and the Harrisons invited him to visit them.

  Zucconi loved regaling his friends with the tale of that visit. When he and his wife arrived at the Harrisons” home, a man working in the garden ushered them in and Mrs. Harrison greeted them. As she began serving tea, the gardener, still in his work clothes, joined them. After much pleasant conversation, the Zucconis said good-bye. Leaving the house, a bewildered Zucconi asked his wife, “Where was George? Why was the gardener with us?”

  “That was George,” his wife said.

  Chris Matthews turned to Zucconi when the Hardball host's older son, Michael, was applying to Brown. Michael was not ranked in the top 20 percent of his class at St. Albans School in Washington, D.C., according to the school. His father said that Michael had strong grades, test scores, and extracurricular activities, including starting a film club at St. Albans and working for an AIDS orphanage in Kenya.

  Matthews said that Lisa Caputo—a 1986 Brown graduate, former press secretary to First Lady Hillary Clinton, and frequent Hardball guest—steered him to Zucconi. The two men talked periodically during the admissions process, but Matthews said he didn't know whether Zucconi played a role in Brown's acceptance of Michael, who enrolled in 2001. “It's all a mystery to me what happened behind those doors,” Matthews said. “I was thrilled when he got in.” Brown gained some cachet from Michael's arrival, as his father subsequently gave three speeches on campus.

  Caputo, now a Citigroup executive, said she wasn't aware that Zucconi had any influence on admissions but suggested contacting him be-cause he “was the only guy I knew in the Brown administrative structure. Dave was this big personality. Everybody knew him.”

  Although he embodied Brown to alumni and celebrities, Zucconi had many detractors within the university administration, who felt that the onetime Brown halfback specialized in end runs around their authority. Admissions officers, in particular, complained that his meddling added another level of caprice to an already arbitrary process. Zucconi, they noted, ran his own seminars for alumni children on how to get into Brown, and liberally dispensed advice and even his own admissions video to applicants he favored. Besides the usual list of candidates backed by the development office, Brown admissions officers often had to swallow a separate “Zucconi list.” Much as they might have wanted to, they couldn't dismiss Zucconi's recommendations out of hand because of his wide contacts among alumni and his impressive track record as a fund-raiser.

  Zucconi was a “giant gadfly,” said Robert Reichley, the retired head of university relations. After starting his Brown career as an admissions officer, Zucconi worked for Reichley, overseeing alumni who interviewed Brown applicants. “I realized he had not stopped being an admissions officer. He was on his own submitting a list…. I didn't know I could get that angry.” Reichley added, however, that Zucconi's influence was “not unchecked.”

  James Rogers, the former admissions director, said, “Every university needs a person like Zucconi to listen and work on behalf of its friends and alumni.” Still, he said, Zucconi tried to “subvert the admissions process” by assuring alumni and celebrities that he could get their children in, and “seldom used as a criterion whether the student was qualified for Brown. He always used some inside information that he had as to what could advance this student. He wasn't necessarily working in Brown's best interest. He was trying to make the father and mother of the candidate feel good.”

  Former Brown president Vartan Gregorian said he discovered that trustees, alumni, and other notables used Zucconi as a back-channel advocate for their favored applicants. “I established a process that no case can go directly from Zucconi to admissions,” Gregorian said. “They had to inform me. I have to know who's doing what. Zucconi didn't think anybody that applied to Brown should be turned down. I protected the admissions director. I never once called to overrule him. I never said, ‘Zucconi has a great candidate.”” Gregorian added, “Zucconi was such a loveable man you couldn't get angry at him. He had one life—Brown.”