May 2012 - LIFE

Marilyn Monroe in ’49: A Movie Icon in Training

January 9, 2020May 31, 2012 by

“I’m sending only brief captions,” a LIFE magazine correspondent wrote to his editors in February 1949, in notes accompanying photographs of a little-known actress. “For one thing, time is of the essence in getting the pictures to a plane. For another, the processes shot are not terribly complicated, showing as they do how Marilyn trains herself for hoped-for movie stardom by consulting specialists in singing, dancing and drama and how she is worked on by them in the effort to produce a wrapped-up package of talent to back up her photogenic sex appeal.”

Marilyn Monroe at this point had appeared (largely uncredited) in half-a-dozen utterly forgettable movies, and there was absolutely no guarantee, or even likelihood, that the 22-year-old’s “hoped-for movie stardom” would pan out. And yet, LIFE’s J,R, Eyerman saw enough of something, a special glimmer, in the fresh-faced beauty to chronicle the training that she evidently knew she needed. The Eyerman pictures in this gallery are among the very first that any LIFE photographer ever took of Monroe—and they were never published them. Marilyn wouldn’t show up in LIFE’s pages until October 1949, when she appeared along with seven other young Hollywood actresses.

[Buy the LIFE Special Issue Remembering Marilyn]

While it’s hardly evident in these warm and carefree photos, the next few months in Marilyn’s career would be marked by struggle. Later in 1949, desperate for money, she posed naked for a pinup calendar, a gig that paid her just $50 and later came back to haunt her. (The pictures wound up in the debut issue of Playboy).

But the beautiful and, crucially, tenacious Marilyn pushed on. She watched, practiced and learned, and as she honed her talent her opportunities grew. A slew of small roles—a memorable walk-on in the Marx Brothers’ Love Happy; a dramatic turn in John Huston’s great noir heist flick, The Asphalt Jungle; a luminous breakthrough in All About Eve—inspired Fox, the studio that dropped her back in 1947, to sign her to a new seven-year contract. By 1953, Marilyn Monroe’s “hoped-for movie stardom” was no longer an ingenue’s dream. She was lighting up the screen in movies (including Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire) that allowed her to sing, dance and act all the tools of the trade that she so studiously honed under Eyerman’s sympathetic gaze just a few years before.

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

Marilyn Monroe, 22, took dance lessons, Hollywood, 1949.

J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Marilyn Monroe, 22, took dance lessons, Hollywood, 1949. Her instructor is Nico Charisse, ex-husband of the actress and dancer, Cyd Charisse.

J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Marilyn Monroe, 22, took dance lessons, Hollywood, 1949.

J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Marilyn Monroe, age 22, Hollywood, 1949.

J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Marilyn Monroe, 22, took lessons with the acting coach Natasha Lytess.

J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Marilyn Monroe at age 22, Hollywood, 1949.

J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Four photographs of Marilyn Monroe at age 22, Hollywood, 1949.

J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Marilyn Monroe at age 22, Hollywood, 1949.

J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Marilyn Monroe, 22, took singing lessons with the bandleader Phil Moore at the famous West Hollywood nightclub, the Mocambo.

J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Marilyn Monroe, 22, took singing lessons with the bandleader Phil Moore at the West Hollywood nightclub, the Mocambo, in 1949.

J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Marilyn Monroe, 22, took lessons with the acting coach Natasha Lytess, Hollywood, 1949.

J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Marilyn Monroe at age 22, Hollywood, 1949.

J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mannequin Mayhem: Aftermath of an A-Bomb Test in Nevada

January 9, 2020May 30, 2012 by

In the spring of 1955, as the Cold War intensified and the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union escalated at a shocking pace, America—as it had many times before—detonated an atomic weapon in the Nevada desert. The test was not especially noteworthy. The weapon’s “yield” was not dramatically larger or smaller than that of previous A-bombs: the brighter-than-the-sun flash of light, the mushroom cloud and the staggering power unleashed by the weapon were all byproducts familiar to anyone who had either witnessed or paid attention to coverage of earlier tests.

Here, LIFE.com presents pictures made in the Nevada desert by photographer Loomis Dean shortly after a 1955 atomic bomb test. These are not “political” pictures. They are eerily beautiful, unsettling photographs made at the height of the Cold War, when the destructive power of the detonation was jaw-droppingly huge—although miniscule compared to today’s truly terrifying thermonuclear weapons. As LIFE told its readers in its May 16, 1955, issue (in which some of these photos appeared):

A day after the 44th nuclear test explosion in the U.S. rent the still Nevada air, observers cautiously inspected department store mannequins which were poised disheveled but still haughty on the sand sand in the homes of Yucca Flat. The figures were residents of an entire million-dollar village built to test the effects of an atomic blast on everything from houses to clothes to canned soup.
The condition of the figures—one charred, another only scorched, another almost untouched—showed that the blast, which was equivalent to 35,000 tons of TNT, was discriminating in its effects. As one phase of the atomic test, the village and figures help guide civil defense planning and make clear that even amid atomic holocaust careful planning could save lives.

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

In the test, this scorched mannequin indicated that a human at that distance would be burned but alive.

Loomis Dean The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Burned up except for its face, this mannequin was 7,000 feet from the blast.

Loomis Dean The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

This lady mannequin’s wig was askew though her a light-colored dress was unburned.

Loomis Dean The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Remains of a house [built for the test more than a mile from ground zero] after an atomic bomb test, Nevada, 1955.

Loomis Dean The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

After a nuclear weapon test, Nevada, 1955.

Loomis Dean The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

This mannequin was in a house 5,500 feet from the bomb blast.

Loomis Dean The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

After a nuclear weapon test, Nevada, 1955.

Loomis Dean The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Vehicles lined up far from ground zero before a nuclear weapon test, Nevada, 1955.

Loomis Dean The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

After a nuclear weapon test, Nevada, 1955.

Loomis Dean The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

World War II’s Forgotten Front: LIFE in the Aleutians

January 9, 2020May 24, 2012 by

Maybe it’s because the casualties, in relative terms, were light compared to those suffered in other theaters of conflict during World War II. Or perhaps the isolated front was destined to a gradual, ever-deepening obscurity because no storied battles with stirring names (Iwo Jima, Bastogne, Normandy, Saipan) were fought there.

But in the early 1940s the Aleutian Campaign was news throughout the U.S..Some of the islands in the North Pacific, in what was then the American territory of Alaska, had been invaded and occupied by Japanese troops. Was it a diversion ahead of another, critical attack elsewhere? Was it the vanguard of a far larger assault on America’s enormous, and perhaps fatally vulnerable, west coast?

Here, decades after Japanese forces seized control of Attu and Kiska islands early in the war, LIFE.com presents a gallery of photos by Dmitri Kessel chronicling the day-to-day existence of Allied troops serving in the dramatic and forbidding landscape of the Aleutians.

Ultimately, long before the war was over, the Japanese were routed from the islands they did occupy. But Allied casualties (U.S. and Canadian) during the year-long campaign to push them off of American territory were in the thousands, with a grim percentage killed or severely wounded by the same hazards that troops have always faced when fighting in a wilderness thousands of miles from home: friendly fire; exposure; minor wounds that turn mortal when transportation proves impossible.

And then there was the fatigue; the lethargy-inducing sameness of the place. The old characterization of warfare as long stretches of boredom punctuated by moments of terror applied to the Aleutian campaign. Even the most adamant and dedicated nature lover could hardly remain enthralled, month after month after month, by the surroundings—endless snow-capped mountains, mud-filled tundra and water, water everywhere. As LIFE pointed out to its readers in the midst of the war, the weather and the landscape were relentless, monotonous enemies all their own:

The Aleutian Islands are a chain of high mountains rising our of the North Pacific between Alaska and Siberia. There, among fog and sudden storms, the world is still in the making. Volcanoes blow rings of steam. Islets pop out of the water and then mysteriously vanish again. Earthquakes make and unmake harbors, cliffs, beaches and caves.

The shortest route between the U.S. and Japan lies through Alaska and out the Aleutians. From Attu to Tokyo is only1,750 miles. . . . Whoever controls the Aleutians has a flanking position on the whole ocean. [In June 1942 Japan] seized Attu and Kiska and remained a constant threat to Alaska, Canada and the U.S. until August 1943 when they were finally driven off. To defend the Aleutians against another attack, thousands of Americans are still stationed there.

Of all the U.S. outposts the Aleutians are probably the wildest and most inhospitable. There are almost no trees on the islands. There are few animals. The temperature seldom drops below freezing in winter or goes above 60 degrees in summer. There are as many as 250 rainy days a year and as few as eight clear days.

Kessel’s pictures, meanwhile, suggest that despite the spartan lodgings, the often impassable terrain, the questionable food, the tricky climate, the grueling work and the ceaselessly challenging environment, thousands of troops, nurses and even some civilians stuck with it throughout the war years, and they made do.

In often primitive conditions, in one of the most unforgiving environments on Earth, they did what was asked of them. They are not forgotten.

Aleutian Islands, World War II, 1943

Dmitri Kessel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The rocky peaks of Attu Island, Alaska, 1943.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Aleutian Islands, World War II, 1943

Dmitri Kessel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A P-38 Lightning above the Aleutian Islands, Alaska, 1943.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Dutch Harbor, Aleutian Islands, WWII, 1943.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

American troops, Aleutian Islands, World War II, 1943

Dmitri Kessel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Tents housed Seabees (members of the U.S. Navy’s Construction Battalion), Adak Island during World War II, 1943.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Dutch Harbor, Aleutian Islands, WWII, 1943.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Aleutian Islands campaign, Alaska, 1943.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

On the island of Kiska, men built fires near wrecked equipment and cooked their meals, Alaska, 1943.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The remains of a Japanese soldier, Aleutian Islands Campaign, Alaska, 1943.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Aleutian Islands campaign, Alaska, 1943.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Attu Island, Aleutian campaign, World War II, 1943.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Kiska Island, Aleutian campaign, World War II, 1943.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

An American soldier leaned against a wall in the captured Japanese headquarters on Kiska Island, beside graffiti caricatures of FDR and Churchill (left), 1943.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Barracks, Aleutian Islands campaign, Alaska, 1943.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Unidentified military personnel, Aleutian Islands campaign, Alaska, 1943.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mail transports, Aleutian Islands campaign, Alaska, 1943.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

In barracks, Aleutian Islands campaign, Alaska, 1943.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Laundry, Aleutian Islands campaign, Alaska, 1943.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Aleutian Islands campaign, Alaska, 1943.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Soldiers in their remote World War outpost of Amchitka Island, Alaska, bathed in halved oil drums, 1943.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

R&R, Aleutian Islands campaign, Alaska, 1943.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Dutch Harbor, Aleutian Islands campaign, Alaska, 1943.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Makeshift soda fountain, Adak Island, Aleutian campaign, Alaska, 1943.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Playing chess, Adak Island, Aleutian campaign, Alaska, 1943.

Dmitri Kessel Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Pin-up photos adorned the walls of a bomber-crew shack where soldiers played cards on Adak Island, Aleutian campaign, Alaska, 1943.

Dmitri Kessel / The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

An American nurse, Aleutian campaign, Alaska, 1943.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Nurses’ quarters, Aleutian campaign, Alaska, 1943.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Nurses fishing, Dutch Harbor, Aleutian campaign, Alaska, 1943.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A soldier tended his garden with a teaspoon, Aleutian campaign, Alaska, 1943.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Because the mess hall on Attu Island was too small, some men ate outside.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A Seabee (of the U.S. Navy’s Construction Battalion) strung wire for communications on the island of Adak, Aleutian campaign, Alaska, 1943.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Troops were carted by tractor to the movies from an isolated camp in Massacre Vally, Attu Island, Aleutian campaign, Alaska, 1943.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Seabee carpenters (of the U.S. Navy’s Construction Battalion), Aleutian campaign, Alaska, 1943.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A fake tree built by the Army Engineers, Camouflage Division, on Attu Island.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

American troops studied stone and bone implements and other objects recovered from an earlier settlement.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The “Press Club” on Adak Island.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Inside the “Press Club” on Adak Island.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A street sign in the town of Unalaska during World War II.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

LIFE With Famous Moms

August 11, 2021May 10, 2012 by

Madre. Maman. Mãe. Oma. Inay. Mutter. Mum. Mor. Mama. However you say it, the word mother conjures up the deepest of emotions.

Here, LIFE.com offers a selection of portraits of famous moms (Jackie Kennedy, Shirley MacLaine) with their kids, and also famous kids (Liz Taylor, Sophia Loren) with their moms and, in a few instances, famous kids with their famous moms (it’s amazing how recognizable baby Liza Minelli is in the hands of her mother, Judy Garland). Owing to the public nature of their lives, some of these relations are famously complicated (see Joan Crawford, the subject of the withering memoir and movie Mommie Dearest). Even those examples underline the uniquely powerful bond between children and their mothers.

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

Jackie Kennedy read to her daughter, Caroline, in Hyannis Port, Mass., in 1960.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Judy Garland holds her daughter, Liza Minelli, at home in Hollywood in 1946.

Martha Holmes The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Elizabeth Taylor on the set of Cleopatra with her daughter, Elizabeth Frances, in Rome in 1962.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Elizabeth Taylor and her mother, Sara, in 1948.

Mark Kauffman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Shirley MacLaine and her daughter, Sachi Parker, in 1959.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The great American contralto Marian Anderson kisses her mother after a concert in Philadelphia in 1937.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee holds her 4-year-old son, Erik Lee Kirkland, during a stopover in her traveling carnival show, Memphis, Tenn., 1949.

George Skadding The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Shirley Temple with her daughter, Lori, in Atherton, California, in 1957.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Ingrid Bergman and her daughter, Pia Lindstrom, in 1959.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sophia Loren with her son, Carlo Ponti, Jr., in 1969.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sophia Loren (right) poses with her mother (center) and her sister, Maria, in 1957.

Loomis Dean The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Zsa Zsa Gabor and her daughter, Francesca, at home in Bel Air, 1951.

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Joan Crawford and two of her children, Christina and Christopher, on the beach, Monterey, California, 1945.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Ethel Kennedy with her children, 1961.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jane Fonda and her daughter, Vanessa, in California, 1971.

Bill Ray The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Nancy Reagan with Ron Reagan in Pacific Palisades, Calif., in 1965.

Bill Ray The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Natalie Wood and her mother at home, 1945.

Martha Holmes The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Peggy Lee gets a goodnight kiss from her 4-year-old daughter Nicki, 1948.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mia Farrow reads to her children on Martha’s Vineyard in 1974.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Winston Churchill at Leisure: Portraits of the Private Man

January 10, 2020May 9, 2012 by

On May 10, 1940, as Hitler’s Germany was invading Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg, the British Conservative leader Winston Churchill took the reins of a coalition government after his predecessor, Neville Chamberlain, stepped aside.

Churchill would, of course, ultimately help lead England and the Allies to a brutally fought, costly victory over the Axis Powers in World War II. But in the early years of the conflict, England stood alone against the Reich after Nazi forces swarmed across border after border in Europe. Churchill’s defiance in the face of what seemed, at the time, an invincible Wehrmacht juggernaut earned the aristocratic, independent-minded PM his enduring reputation as one of the greatest war-time leaders in history.

Here, LIFE.com presents a selection of photos that portray Churchill the private man: painter, animal lover, country gentleman. The Churchill of these pictures is no less impressive, no less formidable than the man who so tenaciously defied Hitler during England’s darkest days. But there’s also a tenderness that adds to the great man’s singular, somewhat ornery charm.

As a reminder of Churchill at his greatest—at his most Churchillian—here are some deathless words from one of his most celebrated addresses, delivered early in the war, on June 4, 1940, and known ever since as the “We Shall Fight on the Beaches” speech. If more stirring words were uttered by any leader, Allied or Axis, during the Second World War, they’ve been lost to history. In phrases that range, brilliantly, from soaring to bracingly blunt and back again, Churchill lionized, galvanized and challenged the citizens of his “Island home” like no Briton before him or since.

“I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our Island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone. At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do. That is the resolve of His Majesty’s Government-every man of them. That is the will of Parliament and the nation.
“The British Empire and the French Republic, linked together in their cause and in their need, will defend to the death their native soil, aiding each other like good comrades to the utmost of their strength. Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.”

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

Winston Churchill stood in his studio at home, dressed in his RAF-blue siren suit while retouching one of his old landscapes.

Hans Wild The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Winston Churchill and cigar at his Chartwell home in 1947

Hans Wild The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Winston Churchill at his desk working on his memoirs, March 1947.

Nat Farbman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Winston Churchill here obeyed his own injunction to amateur painters: ‘Audacity is the only ticket.’ His painting costume included a smock to protect his clothes and a 10 gallon Stetson, which he’d gotten years ago in California, to shield his head from the sun.

Frank Scherschel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Winston Churchill painted and smoked a cigar near Aix-en-Provence, France.

Frank Scherschel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Winston Churchill and his dog, Rufus, at Chartwell in 1947.

Hans Wild The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Winston Churchill and a four-month-old thoroughbred filly (unnamed, but called “Darling” by Churchill), Chartwell, Kent, 1950.

Mark Kauffman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Winston Churchill and his dog, Rufus, at Chartwell in 1950.

Mark Kauffman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Winston Churchill and black swans—a gift from the people of West Australia—at Chartwell in 1950.

Mark Kauffman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Winston Churchill in his study at Chartwell, Kent, in 1950.

William Sumits The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

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