August 2013

Surf, Sand and Sun: LIFE’s Ode to Beach Bums, 1950

August 11, 2021August 30, 2013 by

In February 1950, LIFE published a feature on what the magazine called “the gold-bricking existence” of ski bums at Sun Valley, Idaho. Eight months later, in its August 28 issue, LIFE published a follow-up piece with the wonderful title, “LIFE Revisits the Ski Bums (and Finds That They Are Now Beach Bums).”

“Photographer Loomis Dean,” LIFE told its readers, “looked up his cold-weather friends and found them still leading a bum’s life.”

Now, however, they are beach bums, spending the summer at San Onofre, Calif., 70 miles south of Los Angeles, where they take as much delight in surfboarding on rolling waves as they did in winter schussing down snowy slopes.

In May, as soon as the snow gets soft at Sun Valley, the bums begin to migrate. They head first for their parents’ homes where they drop off their skis and pick up their brightly colored, 15-foot-long surfboards. Then they make for the beach. . . . On the beach the bums spend every minute they can surfboarding, sunning, guzzling beer, making friends with people who come down to be weekend beach bums. By taking jobs nearby as packers, lifeguards, bartenders, they earn just enough to fill their cups and stomachs and gas tanks of the trucks in which they live and sleep. If war does not catch up with them one way or another, the bums expect to be back at Sun Valley by November.

Here, in tribute to that rare individual self-assured enough to scoff at societal expectations and embrace his or her inner bum, LIFE.com remembers the few, the proud, the charmingly, unrepentantly feckless.

San Onofre, Calif., 1950.

Loomis Dean/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

After tossing his crutches up on the beach, a surfer hobbled over to his surfboard and waited for a receding wave to carry him away from the shore.

Loomis Dean/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Surfers, San Onofre, Calif., 1950.

Loomis Dean/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

San Onofre, Calif., 1950.

Loomis Dean/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

“Hammerhead” Gravage dozed inside of a blanket after surfing all day, San Onofre, Calif., 1950.

Loomis Dean/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

San Onofre, Calif., 1950.

Loomis Dean/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

“Hammerhead” Gravage poured a cold beer for “Burrhead” Grever.

Loomis Dean/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Haircutter to all the beach bums was Myra Roche, mother of three children. She helped friend Warren Miller make ends meet by shearing his hair for free.

Loomis Dean/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

San Onofre, Calif., 1950.

Loomis Dean/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

San Onofre, Calif., 1950.

Loomis Dean Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Udder Bliss: A Cow, Three Cats and Some (Very) Fresh Milk

January 17, 2020August 29, 2013 by

In 1954, LIFE photographer Nat Farbman made a series of pictures of some enterprising (and entertaining) felines on Art Badertscher’s dairy farm near Fresno, Calif. It seems that one of Badertscher’s cats, Squirrley, rose up on her hind legs one day for a squirt of milk right from a cow’s udder and ever since, the farmer had been training all of the farm’s cats to do the same.

In Farbman’s most famous picture of the critters—the shot above that has been reproduced countless times through the years—Brownie (Squirrley’s son) makes a perfect catch while Blackie, a stray that “just wandered in one day and joined the act,” waits his turn.

Brownie drank milk straight from the cow as Blackie waited his turn at a dairy farm in Fresno, Calif., in 1953.

Nat Farbman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Cats begged for squirts of milk during milking at Arch Badertscher’s dairy farm.

Nat Farbman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Cats enjoyed squirts of milk at Arch Badertscher’s dairy farm.

Nat Farbman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

March on Washington: Rare Photos of a Star-Studded Fundraiser, 1963

January 15, 2021August 27, 2013 by

Attracting star power to the civil rights movement was as much about raising money as it was about galvanizing public support. Fundraisers held across the country in 1963 often featured celebrities and artists on hand to help raise cash for the March on Washington. One of these events took place just a few weeks before the March, in Birmingham, Ala., where violent clashes between local police and young protesters in May 1963 spurred the momentum that culminated in the March on Washington in late August.

Dubbed a “Salute to Freedom,” the concert was held at Miles College and included appearances by Martin Luther King Jr., Ray Charles, Nina Simone, Johnny Mathis, James Baldwin and other political and pop-culture stars. Proceeds from the show helped cover transportation costs for Alabamans who went to Washington just weeks later.

None of the photos in this gallery were ever published in LIFE.

Martin Luther King Jr. (seated, at right) watched the Shirelles perform during the Salute to Freedom benefit concert in Birmingham, Ala., August 5, 1963.

Grey Villet/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Author James Baldwin looked out at the crowd.

Grey Villet/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Ray Charles performed.

Grey Villet/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The crowd reacted during the Salute to Freedom benefit concert in Birmingham, Ala.

Grey Villet/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The Salute to Freedom benefit concert in Birmingham, Ala.

Grey Villet/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Joey Adams (left), president of the American Guild of Variety Artists, on stage with the Shirelles.

Grey Villet/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Nina Simone performed.

Grey Villet/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Fans enjoyed the concert.

Grey Villet/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Martin Luther King Jr. (left) and an unidentified man addressed the crowd.

Grey Villet/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The Salute to Freedom benefit concert in Birmingham, Ala., August 5, 1963.

Grey Villet/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A man held an American Guild of Variety Artists banner during the Salute to Freedom benefit concert in Birmingham, Ala., August 5, 1963.

Grey Villet/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Photographer Spotlight: Bill Ray’s Classic Celebrity Portraits

December 23, 2021August 25, 2013 by

Whether he was shooting as a staff photographer for LIFE or freelancing for other major publications—Smithsonian, Fortune, Newsweek—Bill Ray never shied from an assignment, however large or (seemingly) small, during the course of his long career. Global events and quiet moments; armed conflicts and avant-garde artists; the grit and menace of the early Hells Angels and the bracing glamor of the Camelot years, he covered it all.

“I threw myself, one hundred percent, into every shoot,” Ray said. “And I loved it.”

For this Photographer Spotlight, however, LIFE.com focussed on one aspect of Ray’s varied portfolio: celebrity portraits.

Even a partial roll call of the stars Bill Ray photographed for LIFE reads like a Who’s Who of Sixties pop culture: Marilyn Monroe, Sinatra, the Beatles, Natalie Wood, Elizabeth Taylor, Elvis, Steve McQueen, Jackie Kennedy and on and on and on. What’s truly remarkable is that he managed to capture something utterly distinctive about each one.

It’s difficult to imagine one photographer capable of showing us something elemental about personalities as wildly disparate as, say, Brigitte Bardot, Sonny Liston and Woody Allen, but Bill Ray did just that, again and again.

Some photo captions in this gallery include Ray’s memories of what it was like to photograph these people. But we’ve also included, below, a few of the longer and often hilarious stories Bill Ray told about documenting the lives and careers of the 20th century’s most famous public figures.

[Buy Bill Ray’s My LIFE in Photography, from which some of these memories, slightly edited, are taken.]

Marilyn Monroe Sings “Happy Birthday” to JFK, May 19, 1962:

I was on assignment for LIFE at the old Madison Square Garden that night one of many photographers down in front of the stage. The police, with directions from the Secret Service, were forcing the press into a tight group behind a rope. I knew that all the “rope-a-dopes” would get the same shot, and that would not work for LIFE. I squeezed between the cops and took off looking for a better place.

It seemed that I climbed forever. When I found a pipe railing to rest the lens on (exposure was strictly by guess), I could see JFK through the telephoto. When the moment came, the Garden went black. Total silence.

One spotlight snapped on, and there was Marilyn, in that dress, crystals sparkling and flashing. She was smiling, with everyone on the edge of their seats. Then, in her breathy, sexy, unique voice, looking the entire time right at JFK, she sang.

In two-and-a-half months, Marilyn would be dead. In eighteen months, Kennedy would be assassinated; Vietnam would turn into our worst nightmare; Camelot would be gone. But that night, Marilyn’s brief song stopped the world.

Brigitte Bardot Throws a Tantrum on the Set of Shalako, Spain, 1968:

I rode with Bardot to the set many times in her white Rolls-Royce. On one of those mornings, B.B. saw a stray, starving dog and ordered her driver to stop. It was love at first sight. The starving mutt loved B.B. and the Rolls, and B.B. loved the mutt. B.B. put all her retainers on the case. She would make a perfect life for this “adorable” dog.

Her hairdresser bathed the dog. Her chauffeur tore off in the Rolls for filet mignon. The dog never left her side until the fourth day when he keeled over dead from too much of the good life.

B.B. started to cry and worked herself up to uncontrollable wailing. She locked her dressing room door. Cast and crew [including co-star Sean Connery] were standing by. Lunch time came and went. The wailing went on and on. The whole day was lost; mucho dinero.

Woody Allen in Vegas, 1966:

It was a pivotal year for Woody. He published stories in the New Yorker, wrote and directed his first film, What’s Up Tiger Lily? and had a Broadway hit, Don’t Drink the Water. He was on fire, and LIFE wanted to celebrate him with a cover story. I was given the job of shooting Woody in Las Vegas, along with any other photos I could get of his other activities.

The Woody I met at Caesars Palace was one of the quietest, most cooperative people I’ve ever worked with. The only problem was that he didn’t do anything except stay in his room, write, and practice his clarinet until it was time for his standup routine. Then I remembered the kitschy nude Roman statues in front of Caesars. With trepidation, I asked Woody if he would pose with one of the nudes. He thought it was a funny idea and said “sure.” That was a relief and I pressed my luck, asking him if he would wear a red sweater that I happened to have with me.

“Is it cashmere?” he asked. It wasn’t; it was wool.

Woody said he was allergic to wool, but after some pleading, he agreed to wear it.

I needed the contrast with the white statue, and a bit of red never hurt for a cover shoot. The statue seemed to inspire Woody, and he really came to life. He hugged and vamped and swung around. It was tremendous fun.

Phone calls and telexes from New York assured me the shots were great and would run with the story.

But LIFE was a weekly and would use a news cover whenever they could. Unfortunately for me, some damn thing happened that week and LIFE scrapped the Woody Allen cover. It was heartbreaking but I still had the great thrill of working with one on the comic geniuses of my time.

Pvt. Elvis Presley in Brooklyn, 1958, before leaving the States to serve in Germany.

Bill RayThe LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Gina Lollobrigida signed autographs in front of New York’s old Metropolitan Opera House, 1958.

Bill Ray

Frank Sinatra on the set of the movie, “Can-Can,” 1959.

Bill Ray

Elizabeth Taylor 1959

Bill Ray

John Wayne, Toots Shor, 1959

Bill Ray

Jackie Kennedy 1960

Bill Ray

Ella Fitzgerald 1962

Bill Ray

Marilyn Monroe 1962

Bill Ray

Sonny Liston, Floyd Patterson, 1963

Bill Ray

Natalie Wood 1963

Bill Ray

Jill St. John 1963

Bill Ray

Marlon Brando and Paul Newman 1963

Bill Ray

Senta Berger 1964

Bill Ray Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The Beatles 1964

Bill Ray Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Woody Allen 1966

Bill Ray

Michael Caine 1966

Bill Ray Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Ray Charles performed at Carnegie Hall, 1966.

Bill Ray/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Nancy Sinatra 1966

Bill Ray Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Faye Dunaway and Steve McQueen 1967

Bill Ray Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Lew Alcindor 1967

Bill Ray Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Brigitte Bardot 1968

Bill Ray

Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski 1968

Bill Ray Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Jane Fonda and daughter 1971

Bill Ray Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

George Harrison and Bob Dylan at the Concert for Bangladesh in New York, 1971.

Bill Ray/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Ann Margaret 1972

Bill Ray

Diahann Carroll and David Frost

Bill Ray Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Feelin’ Groovy: High School Fashion, 1969

February 25, 2020August 18, 2013 by

“The latest rule in girls’ high school fashion,” LIFE magazine proclaimed in 1969, “is that there isn’t any.”

In contrast to the popular fashions and styles of certain decades the Gibson Girl of the 1890s and early 1900s, the flapper of the Roaring Twenties, the “New Look” of the Fifties there was no single reigning style in the 1960s. Even as the slim-cut trousers and shift dresses of the late Fifties crept in, Mod miniskirts and go-go boots found their way over from London to mingle with the bell-bottomed jeans and fringed vests of the latter part of the decade. By 1969, the fashion choices of tens of millions of young American men and women were as variegated and ever-evolving as the world around them.

A “freaky new freedom,” LIFE called it. Was it ever!

Cultural transformation was an irresistible force during the Sixties, and across America and around the globe civil rights, women’s and gay liberation, the sexual revolution and, of course, the explosive soundtrack of R&B, soul and rock and roll informed everything from politics to fashion.

Unceasing change, meanwhile, is the one constant in human affairs and by the 1960s, technology had advanced to the point where events and movements in one corner of the world were instantaneously accessible on campuses and in communities everywhere. As global telecommunication networks grew at-once larger, faster and more sophisticated, America grew, in a sense, much smaller. The vast and near-visionary national highway system had spread across the country in the post-World War II years; more households than ever owned a car (or two); and for the first time, plane travel was becoming a viable option for many American families. Over the course of the 1960s, air passenger numbers more than quadrupled from the previous decade.

This mobility opened both literal and figurative vistas to countless Americans and even if most weren’t able to drive to Haight-Ashbury, or explore the Far East in person, they certainly saw these places on television and in the great photography being published in myriad weekly and monthly magazines and, increasingly, in newspapers. Fewer than a million households owned a TV in the late 1940s; two decades later, that number had increased more than forty fold. The August 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech; the immediate aftermath of JFK’s assassination (and MLK’s, and RFK’s); the Vietnam War; the 1969 moon landing — all of these era-defining people and moments, and so many more, were broadcast into living rooms from Maine to California, Alaska to Florida.

Was the medium the message? Was the message the medium? For most people, it didn’t really matter, either way, as long as the pictures, the music, the fashions, the movements that came and went with dizzying speed as long as it all kept coming.

By 1969, America’s youth had not only soaked in more visual and auditory stimuli in a few years than most previous generations combined, but had re-imagined virtually all of that input in the form of sartorial self-expression. In light of that new, global sensibility, Beverly Hills high schooler Rosemary Shoong’s homemade “stunning leather Indian dress” (slide #1 in the gallery above) wasn’t just a dress. It was a time and a place, man. And it was out of sight.

Liv Combe writes frequently on food, travel, fashion and culture; is a regular contributor to the literary review, Full Stop; and will soon begin work for Afar magazine in San Francisco. While she knows it’s a cliché, she would very much like to have seen the Paris of the 1920s.

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

Student Rosemary Shoong at Beverly Hills High School, wearing a dress she made herself, 1969.

Arthur Schatz/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Beverly Hills High classmates showed off their fashions, 1969.

Arthur Schatz/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

High school teacher Sandy Brockman wore a bold print dress, 1969.

Arthur Schatz/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Corona del Mar High School students Kim Robertson, Pat Auvenshine and Pam Pepin wore “hippie” fashions, 1969.

Arthur Schatz/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

High schooler Nina Nalhaus wore wool pants and a homemade jacket in Denver, Colo., 1969.

Arthur Schatz/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A Southern California high school student walked toward classmates while wearing the “Mini Jupe” skirt, 1969.

Arthur Schatz/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A Southern California high schooler wore a buckskin vest and other hippie fashions, 1969.

Arthur Schatz/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Beverly Hills High School student Erica Farber, wearing a checkered and tiered outfit, walked with a boy, 1969.

Arthur Schatz/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Students at Woodside High in California, 1969.

Arthur Schatz/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

High school students wore “hippie” fashion, 1969.

Arthur Schatz/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

High schooler Lenore Reday stopped traffic while wearing a bell-bottomed jump suit in Newport Beach, Calif., 1969.

Arthur Schatz/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

High school fashions, 1969.

Arthur Schatz/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A Southern California high school student wore an old-fashioned tapestry skirt and wool shawl, 1969.

Arthur Schatz/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Southern California high school students, 1969.

Arthur Schatz/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A high school student wore bell bottoms and boots, 1969.

Arthur Schat/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A Kansas high school student wore a mini skirt, 1969.

Arthur Schatz/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Old Gold: When Hollywood’s Leading Men Were Real-Life Grown-Ups

August 11, 2021August 14, 2013 by

A question for the film buffs out there: Is there a genuine, bona fide leading man in the movies today who on camera and off looks, sounds and acts like a grown-up? Think before you answer, and consider the potential contenders.

Tom Cruise? Brad Pitt? Leonard DiCaprio? These guys are all at points in their careers when they can pick and choose their roles and command obscene sums of money for their work. But they all possess a kind of post-adolescent quality that, while marginally engaging, never quite feels fully adult. Pitt, for example, is by all accounts a solid guy, with his heart in the right place on all sorts of important global issues. But there’s still something about Mr. Jolie that feels, somehow, slightly juvenile. Maybe it’s the hair.

Russell Crowe? Tom Hanks? Despite the critical acclaim, the Oscars, the varied and at times risky career moves, it’s still tough to think of them as fully-formed, comfortable-in-their-own-skin grown-ups. The irony, of course, is that both have played fully-formed, comfortable-in-their-own-skin grown-ups on the big screen to absolute perfection; it’s when they simply have to be themselves that they can both seem a tad sophomoric. Charming, of course, and disarmingly self-aware. Self-deprecating, even. But a little bit silly.

George Clooney? Will Smith? Matt Damon? They clean up nice, and Clooney, especially, looks phenomenal and at ease in a tux which, after all, is a very grown-up outfit. And yet, somehow, all three of those guys often resemble nothing so much as precocious lads.

This is not to say that all of today’s leading men are overgrown high schoolers. Liam Neeson is, emphatically, a grown man. So is Denzel Washington. So are several other actors (older guys, in their 50s and 60s) who might conceivably be thought of as leading men. But generally speaking, the number of leading men who look, sound and act like grown-ups, on camera and off, seems to have plummeted in the past few decades. Maybe that’s because, as a culture, we’ve grown so obsessed with the idea of Youth not in a Wordsworthian, Romantic sense of eternal innocence, but a blinged-out, selfie-snapping, consumerist Youth culture: the slippery, golden demographic so avidly pursued by marketers.

All of which makes the photograph above so damn appealing. Here we have four of the most enduring stars in Hollywood history Clark “The King” Gable, Cary Grant, Bob Hope and David Niven during a break in rehearsals for the 1958 Academy Awards, and despite the fact that they’re convulsed with laughter over a shared joke, they’re all very clearly, unapologetically grown up. They’re accomplished, famous movie stars reveling in one another’s company and not one of them looks as if he has the slightest interest in being younger, or hipper, than he is.

And that, of course, makes them all very cool, indeed. No matter how old they might be.

Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Bob Hope and David Niven

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

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Feelin’ Groovy: High School Fashion, 1969

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