Interesting snippet I just found in ‘The Spoken Image’, by Clive Scott:
Growing out of the graphic novelettes of increasingly realistic style, the first photo-story appeared in Italy in 1947, in the pages of Il mio sogno (‘My Dream’), produced by Stefano Reda and Giampaolo Callegari. One of the principal actors in this first example was Giana Loris (later Gina Lollobrigida). Shortly afterwards, two further stories by the Damiano Damiani, the future film maker, appeared in Bolero Film. The most popular of the romantic-story weeklies, Grand Hotel, was launched in June 1946 by Domenico and Alceo De Luca…