February 2012

Classic Photos of People Watching TV

December 18, 2019February 27, 2012 by

Monumental events, mindless comedy, sports victories, talk shows, filibusters and on and on: television has shown it all. Almost any TV show will find an audience and some will find millions. Long before the recent dawn of cord-cutting and personal screens, when TV was in its infancy and then rising as a black-and-white cultural mainstay, it sometimes served as a venue for group gatherings. A shared activity, even if that activity was (usually) pretty passive.

Here LIFE looked back at some Americans, famous and not, who liked to watch.

Liz Ronk edited this gallery for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter @lizabethronk.

Radio Corporation of America (RCA) executives watched a brand new invention called television at their New York offices before introducing the product to the public, 1939.

Carl Mydans The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Russell Finch, a writer, enjoyed the latest invention of the day, a portable television, while taking a bath, 1948.

George Skadding The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Men gathered to watch TV through a store window in Pennsylvania in 1948.

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A boy watched TV in an appliance store window in 1948.

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sisters at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Erie, Penn., watched a program on a new local TV station, 1949.

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Watching a Western, 1950

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A group of swimmers at an indoor pool watched the Russian ambassador to the United Nations, Jacob Malik, filibustering in the UN Security Council in 1950.

George Skadding The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Grade school kids in Minneapolis watched a video “classroom lesson” on TV while the city’s public schools were on strike in 1951.

Francis Miller The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A rapt audience in a Chicago bar watched the 1952 World Series between the Dodgers and Yankees. (The Yankees won.)

Francis Miller The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Six-year-old girls used a “Winky Dink” drawing kit on their home TV screen as they watch the kids’ program, Winky Dink and You, 1953. The show, which aired for four years in the 1950s, has been cited as “the first interactive TV show,” especially in light of its “magic drawing screen” a piece of plastic that stuck to the TV screen, and on which viewers could trace the action on the screen.

Walter Sanders The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A performing chimpanzee named Zippy watched TV in 1955.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

An adopted Korean war orphan, Kang Koo Ri, watched television in his new home in Los Angeles in 1956.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Milwaukee fans watched the 1957 World Series, when their Braves beat the Yankees in seven games.

Francis Miller The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A railroad worker’s family watched TV in a trailer at a camp for Southern Pacific employees in Utah in 1957.

Frank Scherschel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

An awe-struck baseball watched the Braves win the World Series in Milwaukee in 1957.

Francis Miller The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A traveling businessman watched TV in a hotel room in 1958.

Nat Farbman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Tenant farmer Thomas B. Knox and his family watched Ed Sullivan and ventriloquist Rickie Layne on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1958.

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Picketing workers watched TV in a tent outside the gates of a U.S. Steel plant in Gary, Indiana, during a strike in 1959.

Francis Miller The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Vice President Richard Nixon and his wife, Pat, watched the 1960 GOP convention in Chicago from their hotel suite.

Hank Walker The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Kim Sisters—a Korean-born singing trio who had some success in the U.S. in the 1960s —watched television in Chicago in 1960.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Eventual VP candidate Lyndon Johnson watched TV during the 1960 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles.

Thomas D. McAvoy The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A “Three-Eyed TV Monster” created by Ulises Sanabria permitted simultaneous two- and three-screen viewing, 1961.

Francis Miller The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Astronaut Scott Carpenter’s wife, Rene, and son, Marc, watched his 1962 orbital flight on TV. Carpenter’s was NASA’s second manned orbital flight, after John Glenn’s, and lasted nearly five hours.

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Die-hard New York Giants fans watched the 1962 NFL championship game against the Packers outside a Connecticut motel, beyond the range of the NYC-area TV blackout, December 1962. Green Bay won, 16-7.

John Loengard The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A crowd watched John F. Kennedy address the nation during the Cuban Missile Crisis, October 1962.

Ralph Crane The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Frank Sinatra watched his son, Frank Jr., 21, emcee a TV show, 1964.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Different CATV (Community Antenna Television) stations available to subscribers in Elmira, New York, in 1966.

Arthur Schatz The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Actress Diahann Carroll and journalist David Frost watched themselves on separate talk shows. Carroll and Frost were engaged for a while, but never married.

Bill Ray The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dick Clark: The Unlikely Impressario

August 11, 2021February 27, 2012 by

Dick Clark, who died in April 2012 at the age of 82, was often heralded (and occasionally derided) as “America’s oldest teenager.” But that glib description barely began to encompass or describe what the man meant, and what he accomplished, as a shaper and arbiter of American pop culture in the latter half of the 20th century.

As the editors of the LIFE book, Dick Clark and the History of Rock ‘n’ Roll, put it in the introduction to their celebration of his life and career: “They could have crafted a movie about him: the fellow who came to town—in his case, Philadelphia—and won everyone over. They didn’t have to. Dick Clark wrote the script himself.”

“It’s so strange that he was so absolutely right for rock ‘n roll,” the editors point out. “He wasn’t musically gifted, he wasn’t downtrodden, he wasn’t particularly rebellious, he wasn’t bluesy or what might be called soulful he wasn’t any of that. He wasn’t even long haired, and it is assumed he showered every morning. But he was the right person at just the right time and place to shake American culture [the way] Elvis or Brando or the Beatles would shake American culture. Yes, Dick Clark.”

Here, in memory of a steady fixture on the American music scene across six tumultuous, wildly varied decades, LIFE.com offers a selection of photographs from the book pictures that show a man who loved what he did, and who shared that enduring enthusiasm with generations.

Buy LIFE Books’ Dick Clark and the History of Rock ‘n’ Roll.

Dick Clark on his TV show the “American Bandstand” in 1958.

Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Dick Clark poses for a portrait with his wife Barbara and their son, Richard Clark, Jr., on May 13, 1958, in Philadelphia.

Michael Ochs Archives

Dick Clark (at podium) during an airing of American Bandstand in 1969.

ABC Photo Archives

Dick Clark prior to his New Year’s Rockin’ Eve broadcast in 1983-84.

ABC Photo Archives

Little Richard with Dick Clark on American Bandstand in 1964.

American Broadcasting Companies, Inc.

ick Clark surrounded by his grandmother’s complete collection of LIFE magazines, which he inherited on her death. On his lap is the 1936 premier issue.

Brian Lanker

LIFE at the Oscars: Classic Photos From Hollywood’s Biggest Night

April 19, 2021February 23, 2012 by

Audrey Hepburn. Marlon Brando. Elizabeth Taylor. Kirk Douglas. Grace Kelly. Bogart and Bacall . . . you get the picture. And during the Golden Age of Hollywood, when it came to the Academy Awards, LIFE got the picture, too over and over again.

In fact, from the red carpet to the stage to the after-parties (where tuxedos and gowns were de rigueur) there were few noteworthy Oscar moments that LIFE missed. Here, in honor of Hollywood, actors, actresses and the magic of movies in general we’re fans, after all LIFE.com offers a selection of Oscar photos that capture not only the familiar glitz and glamor of the proceedings, but those far rarer moments when a superstar drops his or her guard and, for an instant, we see someone who seems remarkably like us albeit better-looking, richer, and with more charisma than most of us could summon in a lifetime of trying.

(Trivia note: There are various, competing stories around the origin of the name “Oscar” as a designation for the coveted statuette. Some historians believe that Bette Davis, of all people, coined the term because the statue resembled — so the story goes — her first husband, band leader Harmon Oscar Nelson. Another creation myth has it that a secretary to the great Golden Age studio head Louis B. Mayer saw the very first Academy Award statuette and pronounced it a dead ringer for Norway’s King Oscar II. No one, however, has ever definitively nailed down who first uttered the name Oscar in connection with the Academy Awards. And part of us hopes no one ever does.)

Liz Ronk edited this gallery for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LizabethRonk.

Elizabeth Taylor walked through a crowd of admirers at the Oscars in 1961 the year she won her first Academy Award, for her role in BUtterfield 8.

Grey Villet The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Grace Kelly and Clark Gable arrived at the 26th annual Academy Awards at the RKO Pantages Theatre in 1954.

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Kirk Douglas at the Academy Awards in 1954

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Television actress Sandra White laughed while arriving late at the 1953 Academy Awards.

Loomis Dean The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Humphrey Bogart and his wife Lauren Bacall arrived at the 27th annual Academy Awards at the RKO Pantages Theater in 1955.

George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Natalie Wood, Best Actress nominee for her role as Deanie Loomis in Splendor in the Grass, had her hair done prior to the 1962 Academy Awards.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly waited backstage at the RKO Pantages Theatre during the 1956 Academy Awards.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

John Wayne (whose image is being projected on the huge screen) accepted the Best Director Oscar from Olivia DeHavillan for an absent John Ford during the 25th annual Academy Awards in 1953 the first year the ceremony was televised.

J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Charlie Chaplin —who had been living in self-imposed exile in Switzerland for two decades —blew a kiss to the crowd while accepting an honorary Oscar in 1972 for “the incalculable effect he has had in making motion pictures the art form of this century.” When he was introduced to the audience, Chaplin received a 12-minute standing ovation.

Ralph Crane The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty, co-stars in the Elia Kazan-directed romantic drama, Splendor in the Grass, attended the 1962 Academy Awards.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

At the 1942 Academy Awards, Joan Fontaine gazed at the Best Actress Oscar she won for her role in Suspicion —an achievement that made her, incredibly, the only actor or actress to ever win an Oscar for a performance in an Alfred Hitchcock film.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Audrey Hepburn cradled the Oscar she won for her role in Roman Holiday.

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

John Wayne held Oscars for Gary Cooper and John Ford (Best Actor for High Noon) and Best Director for The Quiet Man, respectively) backstage at the Academy Awards, 1953.

Loomis Dean The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Academy Award-winner Olivia de Havilland (The Heiress) and dapper presenter Jimmy Stewart at the Academy Awards, 1949.

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Photographers snapped their cameras Oscar winners Ingrid Bergman (Gaslight) and Bing Crosby (Going My Way) at the 1945 Academy Awards.

Walter Sanders The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Presenters Ginger Rogers and George Murphy danced together while holding an Oscar backstage at the RKO Pantages Theatre in 1950.

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Marlon Brando (right, with French singer and actress Line Renaud) casually held his Best Actor Oscar for On The Waterfront at the 1955 Academy Awards at the RKO Pantages Theatre.

George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Joanne Woodward danced with her husband, Paul Newman, at the Governor’s Ball following the Academy Awards where she won the Oscar for Best Actress for her role in Three Faces of Eve.

J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Frank Sinatra and Donna Reed held their Oscars as Best Supporting Actor and Actress in From Here to Eternity —a film that won eight statuettes in 1954, including Best Picture.

George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Producer Buddy Adler’s Academy Award for From Here to Eternity stood amid hats in the coat check room at Romanoff’s restaurant in Beverly Hills during an Oscars after-party in 1954.

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Elizabeth Taylor: Photos From a Legendary Life

August 9, 2021February 23, 2012 by

Simply put, Elizabeth Taylor was the biggest star of the LIFE era. She appeared on the magazine’s cover a record 14 times, starting when she was just 15 years old, and over the following decades many of LIFE’s finest photographers Paul Schutzer, Peter Stackpole, Allan Grant and George Silk among them captured the quintessential movie star in love, at work and basking (with consummate grace) in the kind of international fame, comprised of equal parts respect and adulation, that most entertainers today can only dream about.

But a magazine only has so many pages and countless pictures by LIFE’s peripatetic photographers never made it into print. Here, LIFE.com presents a selection of the very best photographs of the Hollywood icon some that appeared in the magazine, and many that were never published in its pages including shots from her very first wedding, when she was just 18 years old; from the sets of Giant and Cleopatra; from studio backlots (with her dear friend and soul mate, Montgomery Clift); and from her tumultuous romance with two-time husband and bigger-than-life star in is own right, Richard Burton.

[Buy the LIFE book, Remembering Liz: 1932-2011]

What’s especially enlightening and, for film buffs, thrilling about digging through LIFE’s archives is not only the astonishing photography that so often comes to light, but the supporting materials that accompany the photos, negatives, contact sheets and prints.

For example, a March 30, 1962, memo sent by LIFE reporter George Caturani in Rome to the LIFE offices in New York reads, in part:

Herewith seven rolls of undeveloped black and white shot by [Paul] Schutzer . . . on the set of “Cleopatra” and inside Burton’s dressing room. . . . Liz on set looks absolutely relaxed. Whatever relationship there is between Liz and Burton [their affair while filming “Cleopatra” is now the stuff of Hollywood legend], they’ve decided to make the fact they enjoy each other as obvious as the famous nose on famous Cleopatra’s face.

With those sorts of insights and with that sort of access, it’s no surprise that, through the years, LIFE managed to so closely chronicle the public and private world of Liz Taylor as a teen, a young woman and later, at the very height of her career, as quite simply the biggest movie star in the world.

In 1945, at age 13 and already a veteran of five films, Elizabeth Taylor signs autographs during a charity cricket match at Los Angeles’ Gilmore Stadium.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Elizabeth Taylor in 1947, at age 15.

J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Liz Taylor gazes into the distance while wearing an “All America” sweatshirt, 1948; the pin she wears belonged to Glenn Davis, a 1946 Heisman Trophy-winner she was dating at the time.

Mark Kauffman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Taylor and her mother, Sara, a former stage actress, in 1948.

Mark Kauffman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Elizabeth Taylor at home in 1948

Mark Kauffman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Elizabeth Taylor with West Point in the background, 1948

Mark Kauffman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Elizabeth Taylor sits at a desk in a classroom at Hollywood’s University High School in 1950.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Elizabeth Taylor plays opposite Robert Taylor (no relation) in a scene from the 1949 movie, Conspirator.

Mark Kauffman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

During a break in filming A Place in the Sun, Liz Taylor chats with her costar Montgomery Clift on the Paramount lot in 1950.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift, 1950.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Just 18 years old, Elizabeth Taylor arrives to marry hotel heir Conrad “Nicky” Hilton at the Bel-Air Country Club in 1950.

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Liz Taylor on her (first) wedding day, May 6, 1950. The marriage to Nicky Hlton would last less than one year.

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

In Marfa, Texas, on the set of the film, Giant, Liz Taylor lassos director George Stevens as her costars Rock Hudson and James Dean look on.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in 1962 on the set of Cleopatra. At the time, Taylor was married to Eddie Fisher, but had begun a tempestuous (and highly public) affair with Burton.Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton 1962

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

During a break in the filming of Cleopatra, Elizabeth Taylor ruffles the hair of Liza Todd, her daughter with her third husband, Mike Todd.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

In costume, Richard Burton and Liz Taylor share a look on the set of Cleopatra.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Cleopatra director Joseph L. Mankiewicz chats with Liz Taylor on set.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

In February 1964, on the set of a Broadway production of Hamlet, a surprised Elizabeth Taylor cuts her birthday cake, as Richard Burton (starring in the show) leans in for a kiss.

George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Hume Cronyn, who won a Tony for his performance as Polonius in the 1964 production of Hamlet, gently holds Liz Taylor’s famous face in his hands.

George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Photographer Spotlight: Peter Stackpole

August 9, 2021February 21, 2012 by

A native Californian who maintained a lifelong connection with the Bay Area even as he traveled the globe for a quarter-century as a professional photographer Peter Stackpole was born in San Francisco in 1913 to artist parents, and developed an interest in photography in grammar school. Early in his career he was affiliated with the influential ensemble of like-minded, San Francisco-based photographers known as Group f/64 (which included greats such as Edward Weston and Ansel Adams) and also photographed for the Oakland Tribune newspaper.

Stackpole was one of the “original four” the celebrated quartet of staff photographers (along with Margaret Bourke-White, Alfred Eisenstaedt and Thomas McAvoy) on LIFE magazine’s masthead at its launch in November 1936.

During his 24-year career at LIFE, Stackpole covered stories as varied in scope and tone as the construction of great bridges, from the Delaware River to the Golden Gate; dance marathons; film directors and movie starlets; and the struggle in the Pacific during World War II. (He worked side by side with a younger but soon-to-be-legendary photographer, W. Eugene Smith, during the Battle of Saipan in the summer of 1944; Stackpole’s name appeared above Smith’s when their graphic, chilling pictures from Saipan were published together in LIFE during the war.)

Jokingly nicknamed “Life Goes to a Party Stackpole” by his colleagues, because he so frequently covered parties and the Hollywood set for the magazine, he spent more than 10 years in LIFE’s Los Angeles bureau reporting on the mystifying universe known as California.

In 1941, Stackpole was assigned to photograph the notoriously hard-partying Errol Flynn, which later came back to haunt him when he was called to the stand as a witness in a 1943 statutory rape case against the movie star. (A nightclub dancer named Peggy Satterlee claimed that, when she was 15 years old, Flynn attacked her on his boat around the time Stackpole was shooting his feature for LIFE; Flynn was acquitted of that charge, and of a similar charge involving another underage girl.)

A technical master known for his underwater photography, Stackpole also worked on numerous “behind the scenes” features for LIFE, as when he creatively documented the making of the 1954 Jules Verne epic, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. In 1953 he won one of the very earliest George Polk Awards in photojournalism for his eerie, final pictures of competitive free-diver Hope Root descending into the ocean depths off the coast of Florida while trying to set a world record in deep-water diving. Root vanished during the dive, and was never seen again.

After he left LIFE in 1960, Stackpole returned to the Bay Area and taught for years at the Academy of Arts College in San Francisco; he also wrote a column, “35mm Techniques,” for the popular magazine, U.S. Camera. In 1991, Stackpole’s Oakland, Calif., home burned down along with the negatives from much of his astonishing career. But because he was for so long a staff photographer with LIFE, most of his archives were housed with Time Inc., and survived a trove of pictures, like those selected for this gallery, that serve as testament to one photojournalist’s magnificent body of work.

Alfred Hitchcock looked out over the grounds of the Beverly-Wilshire Hotel in 1939.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

American troops in the Pacific bathed during a lull in the fighting on the island of Saipan, 1944.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Glendale Junior College students danced on Balboa Beach, 1947 California

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Workers raised a truss 160 feet above the water during the construction of the Delaware Memorial Bridge in 1951.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Communications chief Frank Higgins napped in the water during production of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in 1952.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

American soldiers drilled under camouflage netting, which screened a coastal defense position in California, in 1942, shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

An American held a wounded Japanese boy in an airplane on Saipan as they awaited a flight to the nearest field hospital in 1944.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A pilot of the U.S. Women’s Air Force Service at Avenger Field, Texas, in 1943.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Former burlesque star June St. Clair (right) showed a novice how to disrobe during a demonstration on “how wives should undress for their husbands” at the Allen Gilbert School of Undressing in 1937.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A model combed her hair as she showed off the latest WWII-era fashion in 1943: black cotton stockings with an extra pair of garters to help prevent bagging at the knees—a design created by hose manufacturers in response to the challenge of wartime rayon restrictions.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Bridgeport, Connecticut, 1943

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Film legend Gary Cooper in Aspen, Colo., in 1949.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Elizabeth Taylor at a desk in a classroom at Hollywood’s University High School in 1950.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Errol Flynn on his yacht in 1941.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Alec Guinness applied his make-up during a run at at the Stratford Shakespeare festival in 1958.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Sophia Loren sampled the thrills at Coney Island in 1958.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Actress Jeanne Crain balanced a soap bubble on her index finger as she luxuriated in a bath in a scene from the 1946 movie, Margie.

Peter Stackpole/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mardi Gras: Rare Vintage Photos From America’s Most Famous Party

August 17, 2021February 20, 2012 by

Early on in its decades-long run as a weekly magazine, LIFE turned its eye toward always-enticing, ever-vivid New Orleans and that great city’s signature annual event: Mardia Gras. In February, 1938, editors sent photographer William Vandivert to the Big Easy to chronicle the carnival, and to show LIFE’s readers how one American city in so many ways a Caribbean, as opposed to a purely Southern, town maintained a centuries-old tradition of refined debauchery and unalloyed fun in the midst of the Great Depression.

The story that ran in the March 14, 1938, issue of LIFE, alongside some of Vandivert’s photographs, was interesting enough, in its own way. Titled “LIFE goes to America’s Most Famous Party,” the five-page feature focused almost exclusively on the aristocratic Comus Ball, and the pomp and ceremony that attends the crowning of the ball’s king and queen.

In fact, in 1938, LIFE was invited to the Comus Ball “to photograph it,” the magazine gently boasted to its readers, “for the press for the first and only time in its 81 years.”

But Bill Vandivert was in New Orleans for more than a few days and nights in the late winter of 1938, and he made hundreds of photographs far more interesting photographs, it turns out, than those that ran in the magazine on the crowded, chaotic streets and boulevards of that singular town.

Here, in tribute to the undying spirit of the Crescent City, and to celebrate the ancient festival of carnival (from Latin, carne vale, or “farewell to meat”) that traditionally marks the beginning of the Christian observance of Lent, LIFE.com offers a gallery of those previously unpublished Vandivert photos: pictures of men, women and children happily caught up in the whirlwind of Mardi Gras, in a vanished New Orleans that feels at once ghostly and somehow inimitably, intensely alive.

Liz Ronk edited this gallery for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LizabethRonk.