LIFE With Streisand: Early Photos of an Insecure Star

Barbra Streisand has been such a force on the entertainment scene for so long (her 1963 debut album, recorded when she was just 20, won an Album of the Year Grammy) that a glimpse back at her first years in show business offers fascinating insights into her evolution as a performer, and a person. Here, LIFE.com offers a window into the intense, emotionally fraught world Streisand inhabited—and, in a sense, created for herself with her own outsized insecurities and perfectionism early in her career.

In 1966, for example, LIFE published a cover story on the then-23 year old Brooklyn native that portrayed the young star as a “fear-ridden girl” terrified that her early success “could suddenly all fall apart.” Of course, creative people who have enjoyed (or endured) fame right out of the gate almost invariably, at one point or another, suffer lacerating self-doubts; Streisand, however, appears to have examined her own talents and achievements with the same tenacity that she brought to, say, mastering the nuances of a new tune or the timing of a comedic line.

“Why Barbara Streisand has to know what people think of her every time she performs is an astounding, and wrenching, phenomenon,” wrote LIFE’s Diana Lurie in the March 18, 1966, issue of LIFE. “At 23, she is an undisputed queen of musical comedy, television and records. Every one of the seven records she has made sold a million copies. She gets $50,000 per concert appearance. For nearly two years she pulled in standing room-only audiences for an otherwise undistinguished musical, Funny Girl. . . . Everybody knows Streisand is on top. So does she. And the more she is hailed, the more scared and unsure she feels. ‘I win awards and everything but one of these days something is going to bomb. It’s a scary thing.'”

Even more surprising in the LIFE cover story is the assertion that, while “her audiences adore Barbra,” she “looks on them as her adversaries.” During taping of a TV special, hyper-critically watching her own performance played back on monitors, she told her agent: “I know this is a better show than the first. But they are waiting for it to bomb. They always are. People say, ‘Go and see this terrific girl.’ But most of them come thinking, ‘Nah, she can’t be that great.’ It makes me feel they’re the monster and I’m their victim.”

Despite or perhaps because of this deeply ambivalent attitude toward her audience and her triumphs, Streisand also displayed a cool, collected and (for a 23-year-old) remarkably astute understanding of her own stardom.

“My success? The only way I can account for it is that whatever abilities other performers have, I must have it plus. Onstage I am a cross between a washwoman and a princess. I am a bit coarse, a bit low, a bit vulgar and a bit ignorant. But I am also part princess sophisticated, elegant and controlled. I can appeal to everybody.”

Then, she adds: “When I am not performing, however, I don’t think I have that definite a personality. I think maybe I have nothing.”

Maybe I have nothing. All these years later, after the Emmys (five), Oscars (two), Grammys (eight) and a special Tony Award; after selling millions upon millions of records, filling concert halls and arenas and enjoying the devotion of countless fans the world over after all that, one can only hope Streisand has come to embrace the notion that, just maybe, she does have something after all.

Barbra Streisand in 1966

Barbra Streisand in 1966.

Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Barbra Streisand in 1966

Original caption: “In [a] TV recording studio session, Barbra, listening to a song being played back, vacillates wildly between doubt, delight and despair.”

Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Barbra Streisand in a recording studio in 1966, listening to herself sing.

Barbra Streisand in a recording studio in 1966, listening to herself sing.

Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Barbra Streisand in a recording studio in 1966, listening to herself sing.

Barbra Streisand in a recording studio in 1966, listening to herself sing.

Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Barbra Streisand at a 1966 recording session

Barbra Streisand at a 1966 recording session.

Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Barbra Streisand in 1966

Original caption: ” In TV control booth Barbra watches tensely as a song in her new show [a special on CBS] is played back.”

Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Watching herself on a monitor during rehearsals for a 1966 TV special, Barbra Streisand "is so distressed by her singing and appearance that she hides her eyes."

Watching herself on a monitor during rehearsals for a 1966 TV special, Barbra Streisand “is so distressed by her singing and appearance that she hides her eyes.”

Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Barbra Streisand in 1966

Original caption: “In Paris to be photographed by Vogue, in a jaguar suit she designed herself, Barbra Streisand watches Chanel spring collection opening in stony silence. At far right are [actress and model] Elsa Martinelli and Marlene Dietrich.”

Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Barbra Streisand in France, 1966.

Barbra Streisand in France, 1966.

Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Barbra Streisand in 1966

Original caption: “Warding off 6 a.m. chill with her silver fox coat, Barbra listens to the umpteenth playback of her recordings for an album of French songs. She sang in French, polishing every word more than ever.”

Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

LIFE Magazine March 18, 1966 cover with Barbara Streisand.

LIFE Magazine March 18, 1966 cover with Barbara Streisand.

Bill Eppridge LIFE Magazine

Jack Nicholson: Rare, Early Photos of an Actor on the Rise

Time was that John Joseph Nicholson was merely another Hollywood up and comer. More promising and talented than many, perhaps. Certainly more riveting, as both an artist and as an individual, than most. But still, in the late 1960s, Jack Nicholson was just Jack Nicholson: a guy with some interesting, supporting roles under his belt. The superstar, five-decade career (replete with 12 career Oscar nominations)—had just barely begun.

In September 1969, not long after Nicholson charmed moviegoers and critics with his deceptively easygoing performance as a sweet-natured, booze-sodden, small-town lawyer in Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider, LIFE sent Arthur Schatz to photograph the 32-year-old actor at his new home on Mulholland Drive, overlooking Franklin Canyon in Los Angeles. Here, LIFE.com offers a series of Schatz’s photographs from that shoot that were never published in LIFE.

Typed notes by writer Judy Fayard that accompanied Schatz’s film to the LIFE offices New York, suggest small insights into the man. For example, Fayard recalls that at one point during the shoot, Nicholson—who in 1969 drove a yellow convertible VW bug—stated that “anyone out here who doesn’t drive a Volks is either ostentatious or stupid.”

Ultimately, perhaps the most fascinating aspect of these pictures, more than a half century later, is how recognizably Jack he is in them. The energy, the charisma, the intelligence, the well-known (and so-often lovingly parodied) grin: these are all  familiar traits of a singular figure, now in his 80s, who has given viewers so many unforgettable roles.

Jack Nicholson at home in Los Angeles, 1969.

Jack Nicholson at home in Los Angeles, 1969.

Arthur Schatz The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jack Nicholson at home in Los Angeles, 1969

Jack Nicholson at home in Los Angeles, 1969

Arthur Schatz The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jack Nicholson at home in 1969

Jack Nicholson at home in 1969

Arthur Schatz The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jack Nicholson plays with his daughter, Jennifer, on the deck of his home overlooking Franklin Canyon, Los Angeles, 1969.

Jack Nicholson played with his daughter, Jennifer, on the deck of his home overlooking Franklin Canyon, Los Angeles, 1969.

Arthur Schatz The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jack Nicholson and his daughter, Jennifer, on the deck of his home overlooking Franklin Canyon, Los Angeles, 1969.

Jack Nicholson and his daughter, Jennifer, on the deck of his home overlooking Franklin Canyon, Los Angeles, 1969.

Arthur Schatz The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jack Nicholson and director Bob Rafelson chat on the deck of Nicholson's home, Los Angeles, 1969.

Jack Nicholson and director Bob Rafelson chatted on the deck of Nicholson’s home, Los Angeles, 1969.

Arthur Schatz The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jack Nicholson looks at film negatives at his home, Los Angeles, 1969.

Jack Nicholson looked at film negatives at his home, Los Angeles, 1969.

Arthur Schatz The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jack Nicholson clowns around at his home with a picture of his friend, the film director Bob Rafelson, Los Angeles, 1969.

Jack Nicholson clowned around at his home with a picture of his friend, the film director Bob Rafelson, Los Angeles, 1969.

Arthur Schatz The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jack Nicholson and his daughter, Jennifer, on the deck of his home overlooking Franklin Canyon, Los Angeles, 1969.

Jack Nicholson and his daughter, Jennifer, on the deck of his home overlooking Franklin Canyon, Los Angeles, 1969.

Arthur Schatz The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jack Nicholson at home in 1969, taking his first piano lesson with teacher Josef Pacholczyk, prior to starring as a classical pianist-turned-roughneck in the 1970 classic, Five Easy Pieces.

Jack Nicholson at home in 1969, took his first piano lesson with teacher Josef Pacholczyk, before starring as a classical pianist-turned-roughneck in the 1970 classic, Five Easy Pieces.

Arthur Schatz The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jack Nicholson at home in 1969, taking his first piano lesson with teacher Josef Pacholczyk

Jack Nicholson at home in 1969, during his first piano lesson with teacher Josef Pacholczyk

Arthur Schatz The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jack Nicholson at home in 1969, taking his first piano lesson with teacher Josef Pacholczyk

Jack Nicholson at home in 1969, during his first piano lesson with teacher Josef Pacholczyk

Arthur Schatz The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jack Nicholson driving his Volkswagen convertible in 1969

Jack Nicholson driving his Volkswagen convertible in 1969

Arthur Schatz The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jack Nicholson driving his Volkswagen convertible in 1969

Jack Nicholson in his Volkswagen convertible, 1969

Arthur Schatz The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jack Nicholson drives his Volkswagen Convertible in 1969

Jack Nicholson in his Volkswagen Convertible, 969

Arthur Schatz The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Last Days of High School: Mansfield, Ohio, 1941

Ask ten people what their high school years were like, and you’ll probably get one of two answers: Best years of my life,  or, Worst years of my life. But even those who hated high school probably recall their graduation and the days around it as significant.

In 1941, LIFE magazine paid tribute to the rite of spring in a series of photographs that the great Alfred Eisenstaedt made that year at and around graduation in the town of Mansfield, in north-central Ohio. More than seven decades later, Eisenstaedt’s warm, empathetic pictures convey the strangely mixed emotions that will be familiar to anyone who’s ever donned a cap and gown and walked across a stage to shake hands and receive a diploma: anxiety, pride, relief, excitement and, for most of us, not a little melancholy. This is, after all, the real and true end of something, even as it’s the beginning of something wholly new.

As LIFE put it in the magazine’s June 30, 1941, issue—less than six months, it’s worth noting, before Pearl Harbor and America’s sudden entry into World War II:

In the momentary dignity of caps and gowns, the 17-and-18-year-olds are going through one of the most exciting periods of their lives. This June, Mansfield, Ohio, Senior High School graduated 283 of the year’s total of some 1,300,000 U.S. high-school graduates.

Mansfield graduates began their sad leave-taking on Class Day, listening to their class song, class poem, and class “will.” Their officers sat stiffly before a backdrop representing the graduation theme: the “Friendship,” an imaginary superliner in which graduates were supposed top take off into the future. Later in the week came a baccalaureate service, a class picnic, a formal dinner and dance, finally the climactic event of the commencement. In the outdoor stadium proud parents looked on nostalgically while the new graduates switched their tassels of their mortarboards from left to right, sign for over half the class that their formal education was finished.

To Mansfield this was only another commencement, in spite of the lengthening shadow of war. Though a girl’s class poem had sympathized with “our ill-starred cousins” in England and given thanks for “our native land,” a poll showed that only 9.2 percent of the class believed that the U.S. should fight in the war. If on its outcome depended the survival of their system of free public education in the pleasant security of central Ohio, Mansfield’s seniors were only aware that, in their own slang, graduation had been “superslubgupious,” or in other words, wonderful.

Mansfield, Ohio, Senior High School graduation, 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mansfield, Ohio, Senior High School, 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The last class in Economics was held outdoors on this long flight of stone steps in Middle Park.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mansfield, Ohio, Senior High School, 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mansfield, Ohio, Senior High School, 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Patricia Ann Bancroft practiced a Class Day poem in a three-room apartment where she lived with brother and widowed mother, a schoolteacher. The following year the Bancrofts planned to double up with relatives to save money so that Pat could go to college.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mansfield, Ohio, Senior High School, 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Pat’s graduation presents were a suitcase, slippers, stockings, pin and a $25 check from a relative. Pat planned to use the money to buy a typewriter.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Pat was tapped for the National Honor Society award for scholarship and leadership.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

At Class Day.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

At the baccalaureate service in a Lutheran church, seniors were exhorted to “render service to society.”

Alfred Eisenstaedt/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mansfield, Ohio, Senior High School graduation, 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

At the top left is the school valedictorian, Julia Loraine Fishback, who earned a scholarship to Swarthmore, where she planned to study occupational therapy. Top right: Lillian Art, voted ‘Prettiest Girl in the Class’; her widowed mother worked for Mansfield’s largest industry, Westinghouse Electric, and she planned to become a secretary. The students in the lower left and right photos were unidentified.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Senior High School graduation, 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mansfield, Ohio, Senior High School graduation, 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Senior High School graduation, 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mansfield, Ohio, Senior High School graduation, 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mansfield, Ohio, Senior High School graduation, 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Jim Gorman’s graduation present was this second-hand Ford, piled high with friends in front of high school. Jim’s father was a well-to-do manufacturer, and Jim was planning to attend Lehigh University.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mansfield, Ohio, Senior High School, 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

This hayride and class picnic took place at novelist Louis Bromfield’s farm three days before commencement. The seniors contributed 25 cents each toward the cost of food. Later in the evening, Bromfield threw them a barn dance.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

High school seniors nearing graduation, Mansfield, Ohio, 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

At the class dinner and dance the next night, the kids dressed up in their formalwear. Reportedly, no one spiked the punch.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mansfield, Ohio, Senior High School graduation, 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Talk About Office Space: LIFE at the Pentagon’s Early Days

The Pentagon has become such a symbol of the U.S. military over the years that it’s easy to forget that the world’s largest office building and home of the Department of Defense is just that, a building, albeit one with some mighty impressive stats, and some sobering history, attached to it.

For example:

Despite having 3,705,793 square feet for offices, concessions, and storage and a gross floor area of 6,636,360 square feet, the Pentagon is designed so that, ideally, it takes at most seven minutes to walk between any two points in the building.

Five-and-a-half million cubic yards of earth and 41,492 concrete piles were necessary for the foundation of the building, as well as 680,000 tons of sand and gravel from Potomac that were processed into 435,000 cubic yards of concrete.

Roughly 200,000 telephone calls are made daily from the Pentagon. (In the pre-cell phone days of the early 1940s, 100,000 miles of telephone cable enough to circle the globe four times helped make all that communication possible.)

Ground was broken for construction on the Pentagon on September 11, 1941—60 years to the day, incidentally, before one of the airliners hijacked by terrorists on 9/11, American Airlines flight 77, slammed into the western side of the building, killing 184 people, 125 of them in the Pentagon itself.

The people who actually worked inside the Pentagon, meanwhile, were initially underwhelmed by the building, LIFE wrote in December 1942. Both employees and visitors “resent the eight and two-fifths miles of barren corridors, the jammed ramps, the pile-up at entrances and exits, the parking and transportation problems, the six overcrowded cafeterias, the staggered working hours.”

Here, LIFE.com presents a series photos most of which never ran in LIFE of the iconic, colossal edifice under construction more than seven decades ago.

Correction: The original version of this story misstated the number of years between the groundbreaking ceremony for the Pentagon and the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The attacks were exactly 60 years later, not 70 years later.

Building the Pentagon, 1940s

Building the Pentagon, 1941.

Thomas D. McAvoy TIME & LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Building the Pentagon, 1940s

Architects and draftsmen work on plans for the Pentagon’s construction in the partially completed building in 1942.

Myron Davis TIME & LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Building the Pentagon, 1940s

A massive map provides an overview of the Pentagon highway network. With a complex housing roughly 23,000 workers and 16 parking lots for over 8,000 cars, new roads to accommodate the traffic were a necessary part of the construction.

Myron Davis TIME & LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Building the Pentagon, 1940s

In a May 1943 issue, LIFE noted that the exterior of the Pentagon “has a gray limestone façade, although more than half of the building’s substance is sand and gravel dredged from the bottom of the Potomac River.”

Myron Davis TIME & LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Building the Pentagon, 1940s

An officer chats with a worker by one of the large exhaust fans at the Pentagon, 1940.

Myron Davis TIME & LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Building the Pentagon, 1940s

A woman occupies a desk in the colossal office space in the “War Building.”

Thomas D. McAvoy TIME & LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Building the Pentagon, 1940s

Workers would ultimately complete seven floors for the Pentagon: five of them above the ground and two beneath.

Myron Davis TIME & LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Building the Pentagon, 1940s

The Pentagon, 1941.

Myron Davis-TIME & LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Building the Pentagon, 1940s

When construction began on September 11, 1941, LIFE reported, the groundbreaking took place “only two weeks after the designing [of the structure] commenced.”Building the Pentagon, 1940s

Myron Davis TIME & LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Building the Pentagon, 1940s

The Pentagon was built in a mere 16 months for approximately $83 million.

Myron Davis TIME & LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Building the Pentagon, 1940s

Among the more random facts about the Pentagon: the building contains an estimated 4,200 clocks.

Myron Davis-TIME & LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Building the Pentagon, 1940s

The Pentagon boasts 17.5 miles of hallways.

Myron Davis-TIME & LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Building the Pentagon, 1940s

The Pentagon has 284 rest rooms.

Myron Davis TIME & LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Building the Pentagon, 1940s

Today the Pentagon is surrounded by 200 acres of lawn.

Thomas D. McAvoy TIME & LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Men at work inside the Pentagon, 1941.

Myron Davis TIME & LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

The Pentagon’s mail room.

Myron Davis TIME & LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

A serviceman talks to a receptionist in the newly constructed Pentagon in 1941. Building the Pentagon, 1940s

Thomas D. McAvoy TIME & LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Sending files via the Pentagon’s pneumatic tube system—an old-school delivery mechanism that, as late as the mid-1980s, was still handling more top-secret information than the Defense Department’s computers.

Myron Davis TIME & LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

The official War Office seal on the china used in a private dining room at the Pentagon.

Myron Davis TIME & LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Part of the suite for the highest ranking officer at the Pentagon, circa 1942. As LIFE wrote in a December issue that year, the Secretary of War “has a roomy, carpeted office with comfy overstuffed leather chairs. He sits at the handsome desk which has been inherited by every Secretary of War since Robert Todd Lincoln in 1883. At his right is a direct wire to the White House.”

Myron Davis-TIME & LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

A private kitchen built to serve the highest ranking Pentagon officials and their guests, should they wish to avoid one of the building’s six cafeterias.

Myron Davis TIME & LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Building the Pentagon, 1940s

Part of the suite for the Secretary of War. LIFE wrote in December 1942: “The only really happy person in the War Department’s whopping new reinforced-concrete ‘home’ is the Army’s civilian chief, Henry L. Stimson.” (Stimson was Secretary of War at the time. This post would later be eliminated when the Army and Navy were split into separate departments; the job of Secretary of Defense was added to ensure cooperation between them.)

Myron Davis TIME & LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Building the Pentagon, 1940s

A man presses a button in the elevator reserved for the highest ranking officer at the Pentagon and his guests. The Pentagon boasts 13 elevators, 19 escalators, and 131 stairwells.

Myron Davis TIME & LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Building the Pentagon, 1940s

From the private washroom that was part of the suite for the Pentagon’s top man. LIFE noted in May 1943: “There is a medicine chest, toilet, and a stall shower but no bathtub.”

Myron Davis TIME & LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Jackie Robinson: Classic Photos of an American Icon

When Jack Roosevelt Robinson stepped onto Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field on April 15, 1947, he not only changed the face of professional baseball in America. In ways subtle and profound ways, he changed the nation itself.

Breaking baseball’s color barrier, Robinson embarked on an odyssey that brought him renown, respect and, by all accounts, an early death, at 53, from the unimaginable stress he suffered, on and off the field, as the first black player in the major leagues.

For most of Jackie Robinson’s long journey, LIFE magazine was there, chronicling his baseball triumphs including Brooklyn’s only World Series title, in 1955, and his life and achievements away from the diamond.

Here, LIFE.com offers a selection of pictures that paint a portrait of a man possessed of rare dignity, competitive fire and grace under pressure .

In 1950, when LIFE covered the filming of the movie version of his life, The Jackie Robinson Story (in which Robinson starred, quite winningly, as himself), the magazine explained the man’s appeal, at the time and for coming generations, like this: “Previous baseball heroes Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth, Monty Stratton [played by Jimmy Stewart] have had to wait till they were past their prime or dead before movies were made about them, and actors had to be taught laboriously to copy their stances and swings.”

But Jackie Robinson is having his story told by Hollywood while he is still one of the best players in baseball. And Jackie does not need any actor to copy him; he has gone out and played himself. . . . He fitted into his new role as film star with the same easygoing grace and cold determination that have carried him through his whole career. [He plays the part] with the natural charm of a born screen personality.

With the movie completed, “Jackie went back to his spring training and started off the new season in his usual style,” LIFE noted, “batting .455 the first week.”

Robinson’s skills on the diamond and his prodigious athletic gifts in general were never in question. He was UCLA’s first-ever varsity athlete in four sports (baseball, basketball, football and track) and even though he started his major league career relatively late in life, at 28 years old, he brought an electrifying combination of hard-won discipline and explosive talent to the game that thrilled fans, awed his teammates and consistently rattled opponents.

Case in point: One of the most famous of all the pictures ever made of Robinson—in fact, one of the most iconic baseball photographs ever made—illustrates not only the man’s intensity and his will to win, but his wonderfully disruptive energy on the base paths. (See the sixth photo in this gallery.) Captured by LIFE’s Ralph Morse in Game 3 of the 1955 World Series against the Yankees, the image shows Robinson mischievously working to distract catcher Yogi Berra and rattle pitcher Bob Turley. This picture is almost always described as “Jackie Robinson rounding third base,” but the fact that he is provocatively dancing off the bag actually makes the photograph all the more rousing, and so much more representative of his style of play.

Decades later, Morse’s photograph remains one of the signature portraits of a great athlete at his most intensely, passionately competitive. 

A footnote to that story is that, incredibly, Jackie Robinson, after years of battling for a World Series title, did not play in the deciding 7th game in 1955. He wasn’t a young man anymore, he was coming off his least-productive season as a Dodger (he hit only .256 with 12 stolen bases and eight home runs in 105 games) and manager Walter Alston benched him. Game 7 was the only World Series game the Dodgers played during his entire career in which Jackie Robinson did not take the field. But Dem Bums won it all that year, the one and only championship they won in all the years they played in Brooklyn.

Finally, though, it was Robinson as both flesh-and-blood man and as a combination of lightning rod, rallying cry and highly publicized symbol that caught the attention, and the admiration, of so many people of every race.

“I was in school in Alabama,” Hank Aaron once told LIFE.com, explaining why Jackie Robinson mattered then, and still matters today, “when I heard that he signed with the Dodgers. I was so happy. I wanted to be a ballplayer, and while I knew that what he was doing was a long way from where I was, I also knew someone had to do it before I could get there.”

All these years later, everyone who knows anything about baseball and about America in 1947 remains humbled by what Jackie Robinson endured, what he risked and what he achieved.

Jackie Robinson, 1950.

Jackie Robinson, 1950.

J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jackie Robinson holds his son, Jackie Jr., as he sits with his wife Rachel on the front steps of their home in 1949. Jackie Jr. struggled with drug addiction as a young man and was killed, at just 24 years old, in a car accident in 1971.

Jackie Robinson held his son, Jackie Jr., as he sat with his wife Rachel on the front steps of their home in 1949.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jackie Robinson relaxes between takes on the set of the 1950 biopic, The Jackie Robinson Story, in which he starred as himself.

Jackie Robinson relaxed between takes on the set of the 1950 biopic, The Jackie Robinson Story, in which he starred as himself.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Advertisements for The Jackie Robinson Story from the May 15, 1950, issue of LIFE magazine.

Advertisements for The Jackie Robinson Story from the May 15, 1950, issue of LIFE magazine.

Jackie Robinson poses for LIFE's Allan Grant during filming of The Jackie Robinson Story, 1950.

Jackie Robinson poses for LIFE’s Allan Grant during filming of The Jackie Robinson Story, 1950.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Hoping to distract Yankee catcher Yogi Berra and disrupt the pitcher, Bob Turley, Jackie Robinson dances off of third base during the third game of the 1955 World Series at Ebbets Field.

Hoping to distract Yankee catcher Yogi Berra and disrupt the pitcher, Bob Turley, Jackie Robinson dances off of third base during the third game of the 1955 World Series at Ebbets Field.

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jackie Robinson slides into home in 1956

Jackie Robinson slid into home in 1956.

George Sillk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jackie Robinson, Brooklyn manager Charlie Dressen and Iraq's King Faisal II chat in the dugout in 1952.

Jackie Robinson, Brooklyn manager Charlie Dressen and Iraq’s King Faisal II chatted in the dugout in 1952.

Yale Joel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jackie Robinson chats with fans in 1955.

Jackie Robinson signed autographs and chatted with fans in 1955.

Francis Miller The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jackie Robinson in action during game with the Giants, 1956

Jackie Robinson in action during game with the Giants, 1956

George Sillk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jackie Robinson slashes a base hit during Game 6 of the 1955 World Series.

Jackie Robinson slashed a base hit during Game 6 of the 1955 World Series.

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jackie Robinson rounds first during a game against the Giants in 1956.

Jackie Robinson rounded first during a game against the Giants in 1956.

George Sillk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The caption that accompanied this picture in the September 17, 1956, issue of LIFE: "Aging but still aggressive, Jackie Robinson bluffs for third after stealing second."

In 1956, his final season, Jackie Robinson bluffed for third after stealing second.

George Sillk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jackie Robinson stealing home in 1955

Jackie Robinson stole home plate in Game 1 of the 1955 World Series after Yogi Berra had just told the pitcher, “Don’t worry about Robinson.”

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Yogi Berra takes issue with the umpire's "safe" call after Jackie Robinson's electrifying steal of home in Game 1 of the 1955 World Series.

Yogi Berra took issue with the umpire’s “safe” call after Jackie Robinson’s electrifying steal of home in Game 1 of the 1955 World Series. Though the Yankees won the game and the Series, for years after, Berra continued to insist that Robinson was out on the play.

Grey Villet The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jackie Robinson, 1955

Jackie Robinson, 1955

Francis Miller The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Josephine Baker: An Expat’s Triumphant Return to Broadway

No American public figures—not Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, not Louise Brooks, not even the inimitable Louis Armstrong—embodied the “Jazz Age” of the 1920s more perfectly than Josephine Baker, the Missouri native who became a legendary performer in Paris in the ’20s and ’30s.

In fact, for millions of people (Europeans, for the most part, but also others all over the globe) who read about, heard about or saw the “Bronze Venus” on stage or in movies at the height of her career, Baker was the Jazz Age a gorgeous, pyrotechnic talent who, in the words of none other than Ernest Hemingway, “was the most sensational woman anyone ever saw.”

Years after her greatest popularity, but when she was still a beloved singer and dancer in her adopted France and elsewhere in Europe, Baker returned to America specifically, to Broadway in 1951, and was a smash hit decades after she left home for less Puritanical and (largely) less race-conscious realms overseas.

In its April 2, 1951, issue the editors of LIFE reported on Baker’s homecoming thus:

One of the most famous American expatriates of this century came back home a few weeks ago. Josephine Baker, daughter of a Negro washerwoman in St. Louis, had begun a sensational career in Paris nightclubs in 1925 by singing an Ave Maria while clad only in a girdle of bananas. She went on a little less scandalously to become “La Baker,” darling of Paris, a citizen of France and a legend to Americans. Now, at 45, she was back on Broadway, singing love songs in five languages and making the Strand movie theater seem intimate as a boudoir. Swishing her pantalooned gown, she crossed her eyes exuberantly, brought cheers from the packed theater as she shouted, “You make me so hop-py!” She made her managers so happy that they quickly booked her for a U.S. tour at $7,500 a week.

Here, LIFE.com brings back a series of photographs from 1951 by Alfred Eisenstaedt that capture something of the woman’s energy, charisma and near-palpable joie de vivre. There will never be another. . . .

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

Josephine Baker performs at New York's Strand Theater in 1951.

Josephine Baker performs at New York’s Strand Theater in 1951.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Josephine Baker during a run on Broadway, New York, 1951

Original caption: “In a $21,000 gown of Jacques Griffe, she flutters like a moth and sings a Cuban love song, ‘This is Happiness.’ She brought 43 gowns to the U.S. for her tour.”

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Josephine Baker performs at New York's Strand Theater in 1951.

Josephine Baker performs at New York’s Strand Theater in 1951.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Josephine Baker during a run on Broadway, New York, 1951

Original caption: “In a Dior dress, and furs which cost $2,600, she sings into mike concealed in her hand-held corsage: ‘Two loves have I … my country and Paree …”

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Josephine Baker performs at New York's Strand Theater in 1951.

Josephine Baker performs at New York’s Strand Theater in 1951.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Josephine Baker performs at New York's Strand Theater in 1951.

Josephine Baker performs at New York’s Strand Theater in 1951.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Josephine Baker during a run on Broadway, New York, 1951

Josephine Baker’s four-foot chignon is wound up into three tiers of buns in her dressing room, 1951.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Josephine Baker during a run on Broadway, New York, 1951

Original caption: ” A peck on the nose is given by husband Jo Bouillon after performance. Bouillon, called ‘Mr. Soup’ around theater, leads the orchestra for his wife.”

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Josephine Baker performs at New York's Strand Theater in 1951.

Josephine Baker performs at New York’s Strand Theater in 1951.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

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