October 2012

LIFE on the Campaign Trail: Classic Photos

August 11, 2021October 27, 2012 by

“A national political campaign,” H.L. Mencken once observed, “is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in.”

Baptisms and hangings aside, Mencken’s characterization of a campaign as a circus-like affair alternately thrilling, entertaining, silly and (occasionally) a matter of life and death still strikes a chord. Just like at the circus, during any hard-fought, high-profile campaign we watch, shake our heads and hold our breath, stunned by the spectacle and wondering how on earth the performers can keep going day after day, night after night.

But it’s also worth pointing out that, in some very elemental ways, pretty much all American political campaigns are very much alike, and (like circuses) they have looked and felt the same for as long as Democrats and Republicans have been vying for the House, the Senate, governors’ mansions and, of course, the Oval Office.

Here, LIFE.com presents photos of American politicians on the campaign trail: famous leaders and largely forgotten pols shaking hands, kissing babies, eating everything put in front of them, traveling in planes, trains and automobiles in search of one more vote. It’s not pretty but then, while it might be highly entertaining, no one ever said that politics was an especially attractive endeavor.

Republican presidential candidate Robert Taft, a U.S. Senator from Ohio, appears dismayed as he holds a rooster during his 1952 primary campaign.

Alfred Eisenstaedt Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

President Franklin D. Roosevelt talks to a young mother while sitting in his car during a trip to the West in 1936.

Thomas D. McAvoy Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Vice Presidential candidate Henry A. Wallace throws a boomerang in a field in January 1940. Wallace, who was vice president during FDR’ second term and served as the secretary of both Commerce and Agriculture, was relatively famous for his prowess with the boomerang, and could occasionally be seen in the early morning near the Lincoln Memorial in the 1940s, hurling the curved, lethal-looking pieces of wood and catching them as they returned.

Thomas D. Mcavoy Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Republican candidate for Congress Raymond Leslie Buell gives a campaign speech on a platform surrounded by townspeople in a small Massachusetts park in August 1942.

Herbert Gehr Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Hamilton Fish, a Republican Congressman from New York who served 25 years in the House, stands before his likeness in the midst of a campaign.

Marie Hansen Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Gubernatorial candidate Gomer Smith talks to small gathering from the bed of a feed truck, Wagoner, Oklahoma, in June 1942.

Alfred Eisenstaedt Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A car caravan takes GOP presidential candidate Thomas Dewey into the countryside in September 1948.

Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Thomas E. Dewey accepts the Republican nomination for President at the Republican Natlonal Convention in June 1948.

Gjon Mili Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Claude Pepper naps with his wife in the back seat of a chartered plane as they fly home after his last campaign speech in May 1950. Pepper, a Democrat, represented Florida in the Senate for 15 years (1936-1951), and the Miami area in the House for another 26 (from 1963 until his death in 1989).

Thomas D. Mcavoy Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Republican presidential candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower stands at a lectern delivering a speech during a “whistle stop tour” of the Midwest in September 1952. He would go on to defeat Democrat Adlai Stevenson in November of that year and serve two terms in the White House.

Joseph Scherschel Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Republican presidential candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower accepts a pumpkin from an admirer during his whistle stop tour in September 1952.

Joseph Scherschel Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

LIFE photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt adjusts Richard Nixon’s tie prior to photo shoot during the 1960 presidential campaign.

Alfred Eisenstaedt Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

John F. Kennedy gives a speech while standing on a kitchen chair in Logan County, West Virginia

Hank Walker Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock images

Senator Lyndon B. Johnson (D-Texas) talks with staff and reporters while on a plane in April 1960, before accepting John Kennedy’s offer to be his running mate.

Thomas D. Mcavoy Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Hubert Humphrey shakes hands with a voter while campaigning prior to the West Virginia primary in April 1960.

Paul Schutzer Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater’ supporters in January 1964.

Alfred Eisenstaedt Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Sen. Robert F. Kennedy

Bill Eppridge Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

George McGovern campaigns, 1972.

Bill Eppridge Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

LIFE: Revisiting ‘American Elegance’ in 1950s Fashion

January 30, 2022October 22, 2012 by

America lacks the couture history of European nations, and, as a result, its fashion output has often been seen as more casual and less decadent, compared to collections from French and Italian design houses. That distinction was challenged in the fall of 1950, though, when designers unveiled clothing that had “taken on a quality of unmistakable elegance” which was also “unmistakably American,” according to the Sept. 11, 1950 issue of LIFE. In a photo essay that featured mink-trimmed satin coats, tweed suits and rhinestone buttons, Nina Leen‘s photographs captured American fashion at its finest and most fabulous.

Original caption: “Ermine Collar, rhinestone buttons add formal note to tweed suit (Capri, $135). White plush hat (Sally Victor, $50) goes with street or theater suits.”

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: “Velveteen and fleece are combine in a bright red greatcoat with woolly lining that can worn inside out (Raelson, $110). Velvet in high shades is popular streetwear fabric.”

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: ” Expensive Elegance is acheived by combining a tailored tweed town suit (Omar Kiam, $235) with soft black fox circle ($125), pearl broach (Trifari, $20).”

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

American Elegance, 1950

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

American Elegance, 1950.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

American Elegance, 1950

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: “Inexpensive elegance is achieved by dressing up gray flannel sheath (Carolyn Schnurer, $20) with mink scarf (Annis, $30), velvet hat (Madcaps, $5).”

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: “Taffeta and wool costume has dress in plaid to match coat. (Herbert Sondheim, $235). Usually custom-made, evening ensembles like this are now made in all price ranges.”

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

American Elegance, 1950.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sept. 11, 1950 cover of LIFE magazine.

Photo by Nina Leen.

Hollywood Spectacular: From LIFE’s Great Chronicler, Allan Grant

May 27, 2022October 12, 2012 by

As a boy, Allan Grant dreamed of becoming an aeronautical engineer. When his career path took a different route, the flying industry’s loss became the photography world’s and, specifically, LIFE magazine’s gain.

If any photographer ever captured the lighter side of show business, it was the confident New York native who, as a teen, traded a model airplane that he’d built for a pocket Kodak camera, and never looked back.

A LIFE staffer from 1947 until the late 1960s, Grant covered the entertainment world from the inside. His unique blend of cool appraisal and obvious affection for (most) of his subjects went a long way toward making the stars seem just as quirky and approachable as the rest of us mortals.

But he was hardly a sycophantic “celebrity photographer,” and Grant (1919 – 2008) was perfectly aware of his own skills as a photographer, and a newsman. When asked in an early 1990s interview by another long-time LIFE staffer, John Loengard, what kind of photographer he thought he was, Grant replied with a refreshing directness: “I would say a good one, for starters. I stayed [at LIFE] for a long time. I was very versatile; I did everything.”

That he did. While particularly known for his winning portraits of showbiz royalty as the pictures in this gallery demonstrate when called upon Grant was a perfectly adept chronicler of harder news. His portraits of Marina Oswald made shortly after her husband shot President Kennedy, for example, captured a personal side of that epic, era-defining story that few other media outlets could touch. His pictures of atomic tests and, especially, their aftermath in the early 1950s managed to add a human dimension to an issue that frequently felt, by turns, too clinical and too terrifying for the average citizen to grasp.

But it was, in the end, Grant’s portraits of the stars of the Fifties’ and Sixties’ that showed his real ability to get close to people, and capture something genuine, if fleeting, about the rich and famous in their unguarded moments. Shortly after Grant died in 2008, Dick Stolley, who was LIFE’s Los Angeles bureau chief in the early ’60s and later served as the magazine’s managing editor, pointed out in a statement that Allan Grant was “very handsome and glamorous, two virtues that made him popular in Hollywood.”

Handsome, glamorous and supremely talented. Some guys have all the luck.

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

Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly waited backstage at the RKO Pantages Theatre during the 28th Annual Academy Awards, 1956.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Audrey Hepburn, 1956.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dean Martin read lines with Shirley MacLaine, 1958.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dean Martin relaxed with his sons at home, 1958.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Angie Dickinson on set of Rio Bravo, 1958.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Kirk Douglas, 1949.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Groucho Marx in rehearsal, 1960.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Chico and Harpo Marx, 1959.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Harpo Marx, 1948.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

George Burns and his wife, Gracie Allen, 1958.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Paul Newman had make-up removed on the set of The Battler (TV play), 1955.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Buster Keaton and Donald O’Connor rehearsed for a movie based on Keaton’s life, 1956.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Cecil B. DeMille, Billy Wilder and Gloria Swanson during the filming of Sunset Boulevard, 1949.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

James Dean on location for the movie Giant, 1956.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bob Hope, 1962.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Elizabeth Taylor at a party after winning the Oscar for her performance in BUtterfield 8, 1961.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty at the Academy Awards, 1962.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly backstage at the RKO Pantages Theatre during the 28th Annual Academy Awards, 1956.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dorothy Dandridge at home, 1954

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dizzy Gillespie during a jam session, 1948

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bob Hope (right) and Frank Sinatra rehearsing for The Bob Hope Show, 1962.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sammy Davis Sr., Sammy Davis Jr. and Will Mastin on stage at Ciro’s in West Hollywood, 1955.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bobby Darin in his dressing room, 1959.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Ella Fitzgerald, 1958.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Actress-model Suzy Parker, 1957.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Edith Piaf was caught in a montage of expressions and gestures while singing during her performance at New York’s Versailles nightclub, 1952.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Shelley Winters in a booth with mirrors, 1949.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Marcel Duchamp with Dada artwork, 1953.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Joe Kittinger: The Man Who Fell to Earth

August 11, 2021October 1, 2012 by

On August 16, 1960, 32-year-old U.S. Air Force Capt. Joe Kittinger ascended in a helium-balloon-tethered gondola to 102,800 feet (roughly 19 miles) above the Earth … and jumped. His free-fall lasted 4 minutes and 36 seconds. He experienced temperatures approaching minus-100 degrees Fahrenheit. As he fell, Kittinger neared the speed of sound, his pressure-suit-encased body traveling at more than 600 mph before he opened his parachute at around 14,000 feet. To this day, incredibly, he still holds records for highest parachute jump and longest-ever free-fall.

Captain Kittinger’s adventure was chronicled, at the time, in the pages of LIFE. But it was the image that graced the cover of the August 29, 1960, issue of the magazine of a green-clad Kittinger tumbling through the ether above a clean, white blanket of clouds that immediately and forever brought home the sheer audacity of his leapfrom the edge of space.

Today, it’s striking to look back and realize just how powerful a single, still photograph can be, and how many emotions it can stir, so many years after the event.

For Kittinger himself, the memory of his jump, and of his appearance on the cover of LIFE, remains startlingly fresh.

“I was eight years old when LIFE magazine was first published,” Col. Kittinger (Ret. USAF), now 84 years old, told LIFE.com. “I remember, so clearly, that my folks received a copy of LIFE every week. I religiously thumbed through every issue, keeping up with happenings all around the world. The photos were always so remarkable. But I could never have dreamed that one day, I would be on the cover. What an honor that was! To this day, I still get requests from people around the globe, asking for my autograph on that very cover.”

But beyond Kittinger’s recollections, there is the sense of wonder that anyone with even a modicum of imagination can embrace, looking at that picture of a human form hurtling toward the planet’s cloud cover miles below. The one image, snapped by an automatic camera perched in the gondola out of which Kittinger had just stepped, captures so many aspects of human endeavor that it bears repeat viewings. One might even say, repeat encounters.

The jump, after all, undertaken in the name of science, is an emblem of our pursuit of knowledge not as something dry and purely academic, but as adrenalized thrill-ride.

It’s also a snapshot of a life at the moment of supreme fulfillment. Joseph Kittinger dreamed of flying ever since he was a young boy in Florida. That he was the one human in a position to make that leap and that he wanted to make the leap speaks to a confidence and a faith in one’s team (scientists, engineers, fellow pilots) that verges on the awesome. Most of us have trouble falling back into the arms of friends and colleagues during “trust exercises” here on the ground; Kittinger’s trust was absolute and unwavering. His life, literally, depended on that trust being warranted. And it was.

Finally, and simply, the image on the cover of LIFE is just a breathtaking picture. One thinks, inevitably, of Icarus’ fall through an ancient sky while celebrating Kittinger’s far happier fate. That a man had the will to step from that gondola, so many miles above the Earth, with a hope, but absolutely no promise, of having it all end well suggests that as a species we’re perhaps braver than we sometimes give ourselves credit for. Or some of us are, anyway. And as long as some of us are, then the sky is no limit.

Joe Kittinger, LIFE magazine, August 29 1960

LIFE magazine 1960

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