December 2012

LIFE With Jane Fonda: Behind the Scenes on the Camp Classic, ‘Barbarella’

December 22, 2020December 20, 2012 by

The list of movies that were dismissed by critics or that simply bombed at the box office when first released, only to enjoy a renaissance and renewed appreciation after years of neglect, is as long as it is distinguished. The Wizard of Oz, Blade Runner and It’s a Wonderful Life are just a few of the now-celebrated films that looked, on their first go ’round, like they were doomed to eternal obscurity.

And then there are movies like Barbarella. While the 1968 psychedelic-sci-fi-meets-soft-porn marvel doesn’t quite warrant the accolades accorded to genuine classics, it still has aged rather well for such a bizarre creation. No one in his or her right mind would ever call it great; but decades after it was unleashed on a head-scratching public, Barbarella feels like a movie that, if released today, might well garner raves for its garish retro stylings, or its warm evocation of late Sixties camp. Or something.

Love it or like it—very few people would admit actively hating it—Barbarella will probably last forever as a pop-culture curiosity not because it’s a misunderstood auteur gem, or because it was ahead of its time, but for one reason and one reason only: Jane Fonda. Playing a 41st-century “astronautical aviatrix” and “Queen of the Galaxy,” the 30-year-old Fonda gives a playful, sexy and self-possessed performance in the movie — in short, she appears to be having fun in the singularly absurd role, with its even more absurd outfits and preposterous plot twists. (In the future, it seems, clothing will be revealing, uncomfortable and, more often than not, made of hard plastic, while mad villains will occasionally attempt to vanquish their enemies via mechanically induced and literally heart-stopping orgasms.)

Here, LIFE.com presents a series of pictures—many of which were not published in LIFE—made on the set of Barbarella by Carlo Bavagnoli. Here is Henry Fonda’s precocious daughter, all grown up, married to Barbarella‘s director, Roger Vadim, and photographed at a pivotal point in her already remarkable career.

By 1968, after all, she had starred in well-received comedies like Cat Ballou (in the title role) and Barefoot in the Park, with Robert Redford. Within a few short years she would be winning major screen honors for example, the New York Film Critics Circle Award for They Shoot Horses Don’t They (1969) and for Klute (1971). For the latter, of course, she would also earn the first of her two Best Actress Oscars.

After Barbarella, Fonda would become a political lightning rod for her anti-Vietnam activism; she would earn the enduring enmity of countless veterans with a hugely controversial trip to Vietnam in 1972 that earned her the nickname (or badge of dishonor, depending on one’s perspective), “Hanoi Jane”; she would marry the prominent Sixties political activist Tom Hayden and, years later, “Captain Outrageous” himself, Ted Turner; she would remain, always, a vocal advocate for progressive causes.

She would, in short, lead (and she continues to lead) an absolutely amazing American life.

Barbarella, meanwhile, continues to lead its own only slightly less amazing life, as a cult classic and a prime example of a genre that, alas, has seen far too few entries of late: namely, futuristic goofball erotica. It might not have won its young star any awards, but all these years later, people still watch it, and many of those fans genuinely, without a trace of irony, enjoy it. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Cover image from the March 29, 1968, issue of LIFE: Jane Fonda in the title role of the movie, Barbarella.

Carlo Bavagnoli / The LIFE Picture Collection

The set of Barbarella, 1968.

Carlo Bavagnoli / The LIFE Picture Collection

Jane Fonda as Barbarella, 1968

Carlo Bavagnoli / The LIFE Picture Collection

Jane Fonda at the mercy of the evil Durand-Durand (Milo O’Shea) in the “excessive machine” on the set of Barbarella, 1968.

Carlo Bavagnoli / The LIFE Picture Collection

Jane Fonda ensconced in the “excessive machine” on the set of Barbarella, 1968. At right is her husband, the director Roger Vadim.

Carlo Bavagnoli / The LIFE Picture Collection

Jane Fonda and her husband, the director Roger Vadim, on the set of Barbarella, 1968.

Carlo Bavagnoli / The LIFE Picture Collection

Jane Fonda (in white) and other cast members on the set of Barbarella, 1968.

Carlo Bavagnoli / The LIFE Picture Collection

Jane Fonda and Milo O’Shea (as Durand-Durand), 1968.

Carlo Bavagnoli / The LIFE Picture Collection

Guardian Angel (John Phillip) carried off Barbarella.

Carlo Bavagnoli / The LIFE Picture Collection

Jane Fonda as Barbarella, 1968

Carlo Bavagnoli / The LIFE Picture Collection

Design Genius: Charles and Ray Eames

August 8, 2021December 15, 2012 by

Some things designed and built by our fellow humans are so much a part of our visual landscape that, even if they haven’t been around forever, it takes an effort of will to imagine a world without them. Several Apple products come to mind. The Brooklyn Bridge. The 1956 Corvette convertible (preferably candy-apple red … but any color will do).

These and so many other marvels of imagination and execution offer us a glimpse of that ideal world where form and function merge into a seamless and occasionally breathtaking whole. They are tools that are works of art. And vice versa.

And then there are those quieter, simpler, but no less-beautiful items (or their knock-offs and imitators) that are also, seemingly, everywhere and that somehow we so seldom really see. We take them for granted not only because they’re ubiquitous, but because they do exactly what they’re meant to do without calling attention themselves.

Case in point: the Eames molded-plywood LCW (“Lounge Chair Wood,” below), with a silhouette so familiar that it might have been there, in our collective field of vision, forever. Considering its organic lines, so pure that they have about them an air of inevitability, the “Eames chair” as it has long been known might have been carved into existence around the same time as, say, the buttes of Monument Valley. In reality, the famed husband and wife design team of Charles and Ray Eames (rhymes with “dreams”) introduced the chair in the 1940s, and followed it up with a slew of other mid-century design and architecture icons, including their leather-and-molded-plywood lounge chair and ottoman; the IBM pavilion at the 1964 New York World’s Fair; and their own lovely, perfectly Modernist California home, Eames House (1949).

Few design studios of the past 100 years can lay claim to as many innovations and as many influential creations as the practice that Charles and Ray ran for decades: the celebrated Eames Office. Here, LIFE.com offers a series of pictures many of which were not published in LIFE made in 1950 by photographer Peter Stackpole at the newly built Eames House. Today, the house is on the National Register of Historic Places and is an official National Historic Landmark. Back then, it was just another intriguing design by a man and woman who, in many ways, were literally helping to shape the second half of the 20th century.

As LIFE told its readers in the September 11, 1950 issue, in which some of these pictures first ran:

Charles Eames, whose stark, comfortable chairs in the last five years have made him the best-known U.S. designer of modern furniture and a winner in the Museum of Modern Art furniture competition, recently designed a house and adjoining studio for himself near Santa Monica, Calif. As might be expected of a man whose chief concerns are simplicity, functionalism and economy, Eames’s own house is simply built of steel trusses, bright stucco panels and treat curtained expanses of glass. It is extraordinarily functional, built for a couple that likes to live without servants or cocktail parties and work surrounded by the varied objects that interest them. And when work or contemplation pall, the Eameses have the ocean just across the meadow from their home.

Of the now-legendary 20th-century design object, the Eames chair, which Eames first introduced in 1946, LIFE wrote that its “popularity started slowly, then snowballed until it is now selling at the remarkable rate of 3,000 a month… A vague businessman, Eames does not know how much the chair has made for him… Eames is so interested making the products of his drawing board available at the lowest coast that the modest retail price of his newest chair ($32.50) bothers him [and] he guilty feels that it should sell for less.”

Eames likes to say his job is “the simple one of getting the most of the best to the greatest number of people for the least.” Few men are so earnestly dedicated to their jobs. To feed an insatiable interest in the looks of things, he and his wife take frequent sleeping-bag trips into the surrounding seaside and desert areas collecting weeds, rocks and driftwood whose appearance they want to study. Eames has a distaste for the superfluous that sometimes even affects his speech: “Take chair by wall,” he may invite a visitor. Commented awed movie director Billy (Sunset Boulevard) Wilder, “He even has the guts to sit there and be quiet if he hasn’t anything to say.”

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

Ray Eames at home in California, 1950.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: “Charles Eames … earnest, reticent, eternally bow-tied man of 43. Decoration on heating duct at left is a piece of Eames whimsy.”

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: “Interior view shows living room’s 17-foot-high ceiling, unadorned steel-truss construction, to which Eames clamps lamps for varied lighting effects. He puts up the pilings from an old pier outside the door because he liked their looks. He similarly suspended a Chinese owl kite and toy French horn from the ceiling.”

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Charles and Ray Eames at home in California, 1950.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Eames House, 1950.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: ” Natural designs embodied in Mojave desert plants fascinate Eames, who likes to mount them on the wall of his studio. From them, he says he gets ideas for his own designs.”

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Eames designed chairs, 1950.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Ray Eames at home in California, 1950.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: ” New toy, a part of which he is spinning here, was designed by Eames of colored cardboard sections which are easily joined by a child to form odd shapes.”

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Charles and Ray Eames at home in California, 1950.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Eames chair, 1950

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Eames-designed (and decorated) chair, 1950.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Charles Eames with a chair he designed and decorated, California, 1950.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Ray Eames at home in California, 1950.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Exterior view of Eames’ house shows how it nudges into a hillside, is fronted by eucalyptus trees. The studio-office is at right, joined to house by a patio.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Refined Retail in Texas: Inside the First Neiman Marcus

December 30, 2019December 11, 2012 by

The store that was born on the corner of Ervay and Main Streets in Dallas has become, like most other things from Texas, larger than life. When Neiman Marcus was founded as a purveyor of luxury womenswear and goods in 1907 by department store buyer Herbert Marcus and his sister and brother-in-law, Carrie and A.L. Neiman, it was a gamble on an untapped market. Though Dallas is now an urban center, it was more of a down-home midwestern town when doors opened to the public on Sept. 10 of that year.

The gamble paid off—wealthy oil wives and society matrons quickly raided the racks of Neiman Marcus’ collection of on-trend finery, thankful for a fashionable outpost. Shoppers bought out its entire first inventory, earning the store $3,000 in its first year. By 1944, one year before these photos were taken for LIFE, it made $398,000.

Neiman Marcus helped turn Dallas into a new, off-center fashion metropolis. Its exclusive, personalized style earned it widespread recognition. In LIFE’s September 3, 1945, edition, the in-store shopping experience was characterized as such: “The store’s executives regularly roam through the departments, giving advice on some of the graver problems of fashion and sometimes sternly censoring salesgirls’ suggestions. They have been known to stop a $1,000 sale because they though the article bought was unsuited to the customer who wanted to buy it.”

Today, Neiman Marcus is equally as refined, but the store has grown much bigger than its Lone Star State britches. Its 42 locations across the U.S. are augmented by the annual Christmas catalogue. Released every year since 1939, it stirs up a mini dust storm of awe and incredulousness each year with its list of outrageous (in price and concept) gifts. The 2019 “Christmas Book” offered, among other extravagances, a $700,007 Aston Martin designed by Daniel Craig (aka James Bond), a $35,000 Moét & Chandon vending machine and a $70,000 luxury doghouse.

These frivolities only add to Neiman Marcus’ old-school glamour and charm. These previously unpublished LIFE photographs capture a postwar society decked out in sable neckpieces, birdcage veiled hats, and designer umbrellas. The attentive salesfolk and customized attention proved that fashion had a chance outside New York and Los Angeles any time of year.

The entrance to the Neiman-Marcus store in Dallas, 1945.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Models displayed the newest designs, sometimes before Fifth Avenue or Wilshire Boulevard saw them, in the fashion salon on the second floor.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Store clerks tried out jewelry to match the suit.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mrs. Guiberson, in the right photo, began to put together an ensemble.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mrs. Guiberson tried on gloves, and was later shown umbrellas and handbags.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

In the right image, Mrs. Guiberson topped off her outfit with a $750 sable neckpiece.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Neiman Marcus, 1945.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Little Richard: Unpublished Photos of Rock ‘n’ Roll’s Original Wild Man

May 18, 2020December 4, 2012 by

These photographs of Little Richard, taken by LIFE’s Ralph Morse in 1971, are a little mysterious. None of these pictures ever ran in LIFE, and there’s no indication in the LIFE archives of why they were taken. Morse, for his part, doesn’t remember making them (“I have no idea who that guy is,” Morse told LIFE.com when shown a few of the photos before his passing in 2014.) The photos might have been part of an impromptu photo shoot perhaps at the Time & Life Building in New York, or maybe backstage at a concert. Perhaps the pictures of the flamboyant performer were never meant to appear at all.

What’s certain is that, four decades after they were made, these portraits of the Macon, Ga., native (he was born Richard Wayne Penniman on Dec. 5, 1932) capture at least a small part of the unnerving, unhinged charisma of the man many credit as the true originator of rock and roll. Little Richard, who died on May 9 at age 87, was the first true, living, breathing, screaming bridge between R&B and rock. Legions–Keith Richards, John Lennon and so many others—were inspired and influenced by him. An ordained minister whose immediate and extended family is strongly evangelical, Penniman also preached the Gospel to small rural congregations and to stadium-sized audiences of thousands.

By the time Morse made the pictures in this gallery, with Rock-n-Roll ascendent, Little Richard was more likely to thrill those who came to his concerts, then to shock them,. And right to the end of his performing life—he delivered Tutti Frutti to a Las Vegas crowd in 2013—his signature, wild-eyed polysexual look was still something to behold.