March 2014 - Page 3 of 3

The Right Stuff: When America Met the Mercury Astronauts

September 14, 2020March 15, 2014 by

America’s first venture into space was a feat of scientific ingenuity and also one of human daring. It is no wonder that, in the early days of the Space Race, the men who piloted those mighty rocketships were accorded a dose of stardom, even before they ascended toward the stars.

No other publication covered the early days of the Space Race with as much unfettered access to the astronauts and their families as LIFE, and in its Sept. 14, 1959, issue the editors featured the “fly boys” selected for Project Mercury in a major cover story. Thus did American begin its fascination with the men knows as the Mercury 7: Alan Shepard, John Glenn, Donald Slayton, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Gordon Cooper and Scott Carpenter.

LIFE’s coverage of the Mercury 7 plays a central role in The Right Stuff, a new television series based on the Tom Wolfe novel. (The book was also the basis for a 1983 movie of the same name), This eight-episode series about America’s first astronauts debuts on Disney+ on October 9.

In the original magazine story, LIFE’s editors announced, “We begin this week to report the personal side of a story which we know will live on in history as long as there are men to record it. It is the story of the Astronauts the supremely dramatic story of man’s first efforts to leave his native Earth.”

In the introduction to the multi-part feature itself, meanwhile, the momentous nature of the task ahead was discussed in tones that ranged from the near-poetic to the downright blunt:

Some fine early morning before another summer has come, one man chosen from the calmly intent seven … will embark on the greatest adventure man has ever dared to take. Dressed in an all-covering suit to protect him from explosive changes in pressure, strapped into a form-fitting couch to cushion him against the crushing forces of acceleration, surrounded in his tiny chamber by all manner of instruments designed to bring him safely home, he will catapult upward at the head of a rocket for more than 100 miles and then plunge down into the Atlantic Ocean. If he survives, he will be come the heroic symbol of a historic triumph; he will be the first American, perhaps the first man, to be rocketed into the dark stillness of space. If he does not survive, one of his six remaining comrades will go next.

The astronauts are all in their 30s. All are military pilots with experience in engineering and in testing new airplanes. One member of the NASA board which chose them called the Astronauts “premium individuals picked for an unconventional task.” In less clinical terms they are the best of a very good lot, a bright, balanced, splendidly conditioned first team, willing eager, in fact to undertake an assignment most men would find unthinkable.

The seven were introduced to America on April 9, 1959. Here, LIFE.com offers a gallery of photos taken in the early days of Project Mercury. The pictures were made by long-time LIFE photographer Ralph Morse—a man who spent so much time with the Mercury Seven (and, ultimately, with the Gemini and Apollo crews, as well) that John Glenn himself fondly dubbed Morse “the eighth astronaut.”

Project Mercury astronauts at Langley Air Force Base, Virginia: (top, left to right) Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom, Gordon Cooper; (bottom left to right) Wally Schirra, Deke Slayton, John Glenn and Scott Carpenter.

Ralph Morse/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Project Mercury astronaut John Glenn trained in a mock-up of the planned NASA space capsule, 1959.

Ralph Morse/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper, 1959.

Ralph Morse/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Astronaut Donald “Deke” Slayton in an “orbital attitude simulator” training device, 1959. In 1975, at 51 years old, Maj. Slayton became the oldest person to fly into space (until his Mercury colleague John Glenn flew aboard the Discovery space shuttle at age 77 in 1998) when he served as the docking module pilot of the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz Test Project.

Ralph Morse/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Astronaut Virgil “Gus” Grissom strapped into a centrifuge during a simulated space flight, 1959. Lieutenant Col. Grissom was killed, along with fellow astronauts Roger Chaffee and Ed White, in a launch pad fire while training for the Apollo 1 mission in January 1967.

Ralph Morse/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Air Force medical officer Dr. William Douglas gave a physiology lesson to Project Mercury astronaut Walter Schirra, 1959. Schirra was the only person to fly in all three of the earliest space programs—Mercury, Gemini and Apollo—and eventually logged more than 295 hours in space.

Ralph Morse/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mercury astronaut Scott Carpenter flew in an F-100F supersonic jet fighter while training in weightlessness (note the floating golf ball).

Ralph Morse/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mercury Project astronaut Alan Shepard checked the fit of his individually molded couch, used for training as well as during flight.

Ralph Morse/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Project Mercury astronauts posed in new pressure suits at Virginia’s Langley Air Force Base, 1960.

Ralph Morse/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The Day Albert Einstein Died: A Photographer’s Story

January 17, 2020March 14, 2014 by

When Albert Einstein died on April 18, 1955, of heart failure at age 76, his funeral and cremation were intensely private affairs, and only one photographer managed to capture the events of that extraordinary day: LIFE magazine’s Ralph Morse.

Armed with his camera and a case of scotch to open doors and loosen tongues, Morse compiled a quietly intense record of a the passing of a 20th-century icon and a man whose genius expanded our understanding of the workings of the universe. But aside from one now-famous image of Einstein’s office, exactly as he left it, taken hours after his death the pictures Morse took that day were never published. At the request of Einstein’s son, who asked that the family’s privacy be respected while they mourned, LIFE’s editors chose not to run the full story, and for more than five decades Morse’s photographs lay in the magazine’s archives, forgotten.

The story of how Morse got the pictures, meanwhile, provides a lesson in tenacity, and thinking on one’s feet.

After getting a call that April morning from a LIFE editor telling him Einstein had died, Morse grabbed his cameras and drove the 90 miles from his house in northern New Jersey to Princeton.

“Einstein died at the Princeton Hospital,” said Morse in an interview with LIFE.com not long before his death in 2014. “So I headed there first. But it was chaos journalists, photographers, onlookers. So I headed over to Einstein’s office at the Institute for Advanced Studies. On the way, I stopped and bought a case of scotch. I knew people might be reluctant to talk, but most people are happy to accept a bottle of booze, instead of money, in exchange for their help. So I get to the building, find the superintendent, give him a fifth of scotch and like that, he opens up the office.”

Early in the afternoon, Einstein’s body was moved for a short time from the hospital to a funeral home in Princeton. The simple casket containing the corpse, post-autopsy, only stayed at the funeral home for an hour or so. Morse made his way there, and soon saw two men loading a casket into a hearse. For all Morse knew, Einstein’s burial was imminent. Hoping to scope out a spot near the grave, he quickly drove to the Princeton Cemetery.

“I drive out to the cemetery to try and find where Einstein is going to be buried,” Morse remembered. “But there must have been two dozen graves being dug that day! I see a group of guys digging a grave, offer them a bottle, ask them if they know anything. One of them says, ‘He’s being cremated in about twenty minutes. In Trenton!’ So I give them the rest of the scotch, hop in my car, and get to Trenton and the crematorium just before Einstein’s friends and family show up.”

“I didn’t have to tell anyone where I was from,” Morse said of his time spent photographing the events of the day. “I was the only photographer there, and it was sort of a given that if there was one photographer on the scene, chances were good he was from LIFE.”

At one point early in the day, Einstein’s son Hans asked Morse for his name a seemingly insignificant, friendly inquiry that would prove, within a few hours, to have significant ramifications.

“As the day was winding down, I was pretty excited,” Morse recalled, “because I knew I was the only fellow with these pictures. This was big news! Einstein was a huge public figure, world famous, and we had this story cold.” He headed to Manhattan, and the LIFE offices, certain he’d be feted for his colossal scoop.

“I get to New York with the film, and there are signs all over the place in the office: ‘Ralph, see Ed!’ Ed Thompson was LIFE’s managing editor. A great journalist. Ed says, ‘Ralph, I hear you have one hell of an exclusive.’ I say, ‘Yeah, I think I do.’ And he says, ‘Well, we’re not going to run it.’ I was stunned. Turns out Einstein’s son, Hans, called while I was on the road to New York, and asked that we not run the story, that we respect the family’s privacy. So Ed decided to kill the story. You can’t run a magazine without an editor to make those decisions, and Ed had made his. So I thought, ‘Well, that’s that,’ and went on to my next assignment. I figured the pictures would never see the light of day, and forgot all about them.”

Here, LIFE presents a selection of photographs from that day pictures that capture the scene on a spring morning in New Jersey, when Ralph Morse found himself racing around an Ivy League town trying to find out what became of the late, great Albert Einstein. . . .

Finally: The stranger-than-fiction tale of Einstein’s brain which Dr. Thomas Harvey controversially removed during the autopsy, carefully sliced into sections, and then kept for years for research purposes and the intrigues long-associated with the famous organ are too convoluted to go into here. However, on the day that Einstein died, Ralph Morse was able to take a few quick photographs of Dr. Harvey at the hospital. Morse said he’s certain that is not Einstein’s brain under Dr. Harvey’s knife in the picture that ends this gallery.

Then, after a pause, Morse said: “You know, it was a long, long time ago. I don’t remember every detail. So, whatever he’s cutting there. . . .” His words hang in the air.

Then, mischievously, Morse laughed.

A photo of Albert Einstein’s office – just as the Nobel Prize-winning physicist left it – taken mere hours after Einstein died, Princeton, New Jersey, April 1955.

Ralph Morse/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Albert Einstein’s papers, pipe, ashtray and other personal belongings in his Princeton office, April 18, 1955.

Ralph Morse/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Albert Einstein’s casket was moved for a short time from the Princeton Hospital to a funeral home, Princeton, New Jersey, April 1955.

Ralph Morse/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

From left: Unidentified woman; Albert Einstein’s son, Hans Albert (in light suit); unidentified woman; Einstein’s longtime secretary, Helen Dukas (in light coat); and friend Dr. Gustav Bucky (partially hidden behind Dukas) arriving at the Ewing Crematorium, Trenton, New Jersey, April 18, 1955.

Ralph Morse/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mourners walked into the service for Albert Einstein, passing the hearse that carried his casket from Princeton, April 1955.

Ralph Morse/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Friends and family made their way to their cars after the funeral service for Albert Einstein, Trenton, April 1955. The ceremony was brief: Einstein’s friend Otton Nathan, an economist at Princeton and co-executor of the Einstein estate, read some lines by the great German poet, Goethe. Immediately after the service, Einstein’s remains were cremated.

Ralph Morse/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

An unidentified man held a car door open for Albert Einstein’s secretary, Helen Dukas, following Einstein’s cremation, April 1955.

Ralph Morse/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Family and friends returned to Einstein’s home at 112 Mercer Street in Princeton, where he lived for 20 years, after his funeral, April 18, 1955.

Ralph Morse/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Dr. Thomas Harvey (1912 – 2007) was the pathologist who conducted the autopsy on Einstein at Princeton Hospital in 1955.

Ralph Morse/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The Mustangs That ‘Saved’ a Shaken LIFE Photographer

November 3, 2020March 14, 2014 by

LIFE photographer Bill Eppridge (1938 – 2013) was best-known for his coverage of the signature events of the 1960s, and especially the assassination of Robert Kennedy. Eppridge was right there snapping pictures when Sirhan Sirhan gunned down RFK in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel.

Months after RFK’s murder, in late 1968, Eppridge took an assignment that was far removed from the madness of the age. He and writer Donald Jackson spent two months chronicling the wild mustangs that still roamed the mountains, canyons and plains of Nevada, eastern Wyoming, and Montana.

“Spending months out there in those vast spaces, photographing mustangs and the people who live and work there, among the horses—that saved me,” Eppridge told LIFE.com, a few months before his death in October 2013. “Bobby Kennedy’s death shook me to the core. Getting out there with [writer] Jackson, traveling that old landscape in a four-wheel-drive pickup truck, helped to heal me, in a way, and got me back into the world.”

One irony worth noting: Eppridge’s photos appeared in a January 1969 issue of LIFE that also featured, as its cover story, an exclusive jailhouse interview with Sirhan Sirhan.

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

Mustangs in the wild, 1968.

Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mustangs raced across the Nevada sage, 1968.

Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A wild mustang was thrown to the ground for branding, 1968.

Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Ellen Williams, Nevada, 1968.

Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mustang, American West, 1968.

Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Wild mustang, 1968.

Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mustang and ranch hand, 1968.

Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mustang, 1968.

Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mustang breeder Bob Brislawn, eastern Wyoming, 1968.

Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mustangs of the American West

Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Roping a mustang, 1968.

Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mustangs in the snow, 1968.

Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mustangs on a ranch being lassoed for branding, 1968.

Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Rounding up mustangs, 1968.

Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Alfred Hitchcock ‘Directs’ a LIFE Magazine Story, 1942

August 13, 2021March 10, 2014 by

By the summer of 1942, the conflagration sparked by Germany’s swift and brutal aggression against its neighbors and by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor had spread far and wide enough that the conflict could legitimately be seen as a second “world war.”

As in all wars, propaganda played a central role in the mission and the strategies of the combatants. However, where the Axis had legendarily shrill and, at times, unhinged characters like Joseph Goebbels in charge of their “messaging,” the far-more-fortunate Allies could and did call on the greatest propagandists of all time: Hollywood filmmakers. Acknowledged movie masters like Frank Capra, John Ford, Howard Hawks, John Huston and others made documentaries and films that exhorted “the free people of the world.”

But perhaps no filmmaker provided richer fare for the Allies during the war itself than Alfred (later Sir Alfred) Hitchcock. Between 1940 and 1945, Hitch made films for England’s Ministry of Information as well as several excellent movies featuring plots that centered on the war (Saboteur, Foreign Correspondent, the remarkable Lifeboat and others). Hitchcock’s most unusual director’s credit from the 1940s, however, wasn’t attached to a movie at all, but instead appeared in the July 13, 1942, issue of LIFE magazine. Titled Have You Heard? (The Story of Wartime Rumors), the feature carrying Hitchcock’s name is a war thriller in photos, shot by LIFE’s Eliot Elisofon from a plot “suggested by” FDR’s press secretary, Stephen Early, and “directed by” Hitchcock himself.

As LIFE told its readers in the introduction to the piece:

From Stephen Early, [White House press] secretary to President Roosevelt, recently came the suggestions that LIFE tell a picture story of wartime rumors and the damage they are liable to do. In accordance with this request, the editors asked Alfred Hitchcock, famed Hollywood movie director, to produce such a story, with LIFE photographer Eliot Elisofon as his cameraman. When Mr. Hitchcock graciously agreed, a script was prepared, the director picked his characters from the ranks of movie professionals and LIFE’s Los Angeles staff, and shooting commenced in Hollywood.

‘Have You Heard?’ is the result of their cooperation in photo-dramatization. A simply sexless story, it shows how patriotic but talkative Americans pass along information, true or false, until finally deadly damage is done to their country’s war effort. One false rumor is silenced by a man who later is unwittingly responsible for starting a true rumor which ends in a great catastrophe. Moral: Keep your mouth shut.

What’s especially wonderful about Have You Heard?, meanwhile, is that parts of it really do feel like Hitchcock. Several of Elisofon’s photos might be mistaken for stills from a film by the Master of Suspense, and Hitchcock himself even makes one of his trademark and refreshingly comical appearances as a tertiary character in the narrative. (See slide #14 in the gallery above.)

It might not rise to the heights the director scaled in masterpieces like The Lady Vanishes, Rebecca, North by Northwest and Vertigo, but as a record of Hitchcock’s willingness to lend his craft in the service of the war effort, Have You Heard? remains a fascinating, and still-entertaining, little gem.

Alfred Hitchcock picture story in LIFE

Caption from LIFE: “A church congregation in the city of Zenith hears its minister offer a special prayer for ‘our boys in the armed services who even now may be sailing for such far places as Alaska.'” (Eliot Elisofon / The LIFE Picture Collection)

Alfred Hitchcock picture story in LIFE

Caption from LIFE: “Busing home from Sunday services, the blonde girl in the funny hat tells her friend: ‘I’m sure now, those Zenith soldiers are sailing from Alaska. He didn’t ask us to pray last Sunday, so they must be leaving this week.’ In bus seat behind them, a musician leans forward to overhear their conversation.” (Eliot Elisofon / The LIFE Picture Collection)

Alfred Hitchcock picture story in LIFE

Caption from LIFE: “At Zenith’s Steam Palace, the bus-riding violinist confides to a local hardware salesman: ‘Have you heard? Troopships are sailing to Alaska this week. They say thousands of boys are going up there. Preachers are already praying for them around the city.'” (Eliot Elisofon / The LIFE Picture Collection)

Alfred Hitchcock picture story in LIFE

Caption from LIFE: “At a Zenith restaurant that Sunday evening the hardware salesman entertains some friends. ‘Have you heard?’ he asks. ‘No? Well, we are sending thousands of boys up to Alaska. Their troopship sails on Wednesday or Thursday, I understand, and they’ll be convoyed by six destroyers on their trip up there.'” (Eliot Elisofon / The LIFE Picture Collection)

Alfred Hitchcock picture story in LIFE

Caption from LIFE: “One of the dinner guests, a gas-station proprietor with a liking for bow ties, chats with his customers next morning: ‘Have you heard about the large convoy of troop ships going to Alaska? Friend of mine who really knows says they’re leaving Wednesday night.'” (Eliot Elisofon / The LIFE Picture Collection)

Alfred Hitchcock picture story in LIFE

Caption from LIFE: “At the dentist’s, pretty dinner companion of the hardware salesman passes on the secret news. ‘They’re sailing Thursday afternoon. It means a new front. The man who told me knows one of the officers.'” (Eliot Elisofon / The LIFE Picture Collection)

Alfred Hitchcock picture story in LIFE

Caption from LIFE: “‘There’s going to be a blackout so that no one will know when the troopships go out Friday midnight for Alaska,’ confides another young woman, who was at the salesman’s dinner, to her roommate.” (Eliot Elisofon / The LIFE Picture Collection)

Alfred Hitchcock picture story in LIFE

Caption from LIFE: “‘I never listen to rumors,’ replies a Zenith haberdasher to customer who repeats troopship story. ‘You shouldn’t spread such talk. Nothing but rumors!'” (Eliot Elisofon / The LIFE Picture Collection)

Alfred Hitchcock picture story in LIFE

Caption from LIFE: “A dozen tropical shirts are ordered by a young Army lieutenant in the store of the Zenith haberdasher the next evening just before closing time. But the sleeves are too long and will have to be altered. The lieutenant says: ‘If you can’t get them done and delivered to my hotel by 9 o’clock Friday night, never mind the order. I won’t be able to pay for them if I’ve gone when they’re delivered. Understand?’ The haberdasher says he understands. But he muses to himself: ‘Tropical shirts. This young fellow must be headed to Australia.'” (Eliot Elisofon / The LIFE Picture Collection)

Alfred Hitchcock picture story in LIFE

Caption from LIFE: “An hour late for dinner, the haberdasher arrives home to find his wife and children already finishing their meal. He explains his tardiness: ‘Last customer held me up at the store. A lieutenant. He took a dozen tropical shirts. He had to have the sleeves altered. I guess he’s been ordered to Australia. I’ve got to get his order done by 9 o’clock Friday night. I suppose he’s sailing on a troopship Friday midnight and that’s why he’s in such a rush.’ The haberdasher’s son Christopher, a little pitcher with big ears, takes in every word.” (Eliot Elisofon / The LIFE Picture Collection)

Alfred Hitchcock picture story in LIFE

Caption from LIFE: “Playing with ‘the gang’ down the block the next afternoon, Christopher seeks to impress his older friends: ‘Gee, my dad’s making shirts for almost the whole Army. He sold lots to soldiers going to Australia to fight. He’s working now so the troopships can sail Friday midnight.'” (Eliot Elisofon / The LIFE Picture Collection)

Alfred Hitchcock picture story in LIFE

Caption from LIFE: “Bursting with excitement, Christopher’s older pal arrives home to find his mother’s afternoon bridge club in session. ‘You know what, Mom? Christopher’s father’s making shirts for a whole boatload of soldiers. He says they’re all sailing for Australia at midnight next Friday.'” (Eliot Elisofon / The LIFE Picture Collection)

Alfred Hitchcock picture story in LIFE

Caption from LIFE: “Next morning, the plumpish member of the bridge club makes her regular weekly visit to one of Zenith’s beauty parlors. An ardent gossip, she can hardly wait to get out of the drier and tell her friend and the manicurist the ‘news’ she heard the day before. ‘My dear, have you heard about the troopships sailing for Australia? Yes, my dear, they’re going out at midnight Friday — lots of them. I’ll bet General MacArthur’ll be glad to hear about this. Don’t you think it would be thrilling to go down to the docks Friday night and watch them leave!'” (Eliot Elisofon / The LIFE Picture Collection)

Alfred Hitchcock picture story in LIFE

Caption from LIFE: “At the Friendship Cafe the manicurist tells her boyfriend: ‘A customer told me today that lots of our troopships are sailing to Australia on Friday at midnight.’ The shady-looking man standing next to them listens attentively. (Note bartender played by Alfred Hitchcock, center).” (Eliot Elisofon / The LIFE Picture Collection)

Alfred Hitchcock picture story in LIFE

Caption from LIFE: “The mysterious man, whose ears were even more attentive than the manicurist’s boyfriend, leaves the cafe, remembering these important words: ‘Troopships … Australia … Friday at midnight.’ His business is to check all rumors, not pass them along for social conversation.” (Eliot Elisofon / The LIFE Picture Collection)

Alfred Hitchcock picture story in LIFE

Caption from LIFE: “A midnight rendezvous is held by a mysterious man, an Axis agent, with a U-boat officer and seaman who have paddled ashore in a small rubber boat. In the dark cove, the secret military information the haberdasher so innocently revealed to his family at last reaches the enemy.” (Eliot Elisofon / The LIFE Picture Collection)

Alfred Hitchcock picture story in LIFE

Caption from LIFE: ‘How does the enemy find out about these ships?’ exclaims the irate Zenith haberdasher, who habitually rejects all rumors, as the morning paper tells him what happened to the troopship aboard which was the young lieutenant who bought the dozen tropical shirts.” (Eliot Elisofon / The LIFE Picture Collection)

Alfred Hitchcock picture story in LIFE

Photomontage by Matt Greene for LIFE Magazine

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Alfred Hitchcock, ‘Have You Heard?’

Eliot Elisofon LIFE Magazine

Hitler at 50: Color Photos From a Despot’s Garish Birthday Bash

January 17, 2020March 3, 2014 by

We do not usually give so much space to the work of men we admire so little. So began a remarkable editor’s note to LIFE’s readers in an April 1970 issue of the magazine, introducing a photographer named Hugo Jaeger a man who, LIFE pointed out, “was a fascist before the Nazi party was formed.”

In that issue, LIFE published a series of startling color pictures that Jaeger made in the late 1930s and 1940s, when he enjoyed unprecedented access to the Third Reich’s upper echelon, traveling with and chronicling Adolf Hitler and his Nazi cohorts at massive rallies, military parades and, frequently, in quieter, private moments. Jaeger’s photos were, it turned out, so attuned to the Führer’s vision of what a so-called Thousand Year Reich might look and feel like that Hitler reportedly declared, upon first seeing the kind of work Jaeger was doing: “The future belongs to color photography.”

The story of how LIFE came to own Jaeger’s collection of roughly 2,000 color photographs—an archive comprising a vast, insider’s portrait of the Reich—is an extraordinary and little-known tale of intrigue from the post-war years.

According to Jaeger’s own account of the creation, preservation and, ultimately, the sale of his photos, the espionage-thriller aspect of the tale began in 1945, when he found himself face to face with half a dozen American soldiers in a small town west of Munich, as Allied troops were making their final push across Germany at war’s end. This very scenario had, for years, been Jaeger’s enduring nightmare: he knew, after all, that he would be arrested or worse if the conquering Americans discovered his trove of pictures and his close, personal connection to Hitler.

On that spring day in 1945, during a search of the house where Jaeger was staying, the Americans found the leather satchel in which the Führer’s personal photographer had hidden literally thousands of color slides. What happened next, however, left Jaeger staggering.

Inside the satchel that held the compromising pictures, Jaeger had also placed a bottle of brandy and a small, ivory gambling toy a spinning top for an old-fashioned game of chance known by, among other names, “put-and-take.” Happy with their find, the soldiers sat down to a session of put-and-take while sharing the bottle of brandy with Jaeger and the owner of the house where the photographer had been living. (Jaeger’s own apartment in Munich had been destroyed in Allied air raids.) The leather satchel, and whatever else was hidden away in it, was forgotten as the brandy dwindled and the game of put-and-take spun on.

After the Americans left, a shaken Jaeger packed the color slides into metal jars and, over time, buried them in various locations on the outskirts of town. In the years following the war, Jaeger occasionally returned to his caches, digging them up, drying them out, repacking and reburying them. He had hidden them systematically over an area of a square mile or so, with notes and a map to guide him back: “From the railroad switch, 263 ties west, then 15 meters north. . . .”

Jaeger finally retrieved the collection for good in the late 1950s all 2,000 of the slides, amazingly, were still in good shape and in 1965, after storing them in a Swiss bank for years, he sold the entire archive to Time Inc.

Here, in grudging acknowledgment of the scope of Jaeger’s achievements as a photographer—acknowledgment, in other words, of the work of a man we admire so little—LIFE.com presents a series of color pictures from the over-the-top celebrations in Berlin marking Hitler’s 50th birthday (April 20, 1939), as well as some of the ludicrously gaudy gifts bestowed on the German leader by his Nazi peers and sycophants.

Seen today, Jaeger’s photographs elicit an unsettling sense of both dismay and dread: dismay at the sheer scale of the tribal, nationalist madness that, not so long ago, convulsed a “civilized” nation of millions; and dread at the horrors that, we know, such madness would soon unleash.

The automobile engineer Ferdinand Porsche (in suit), Adolf Hitler and, immediately to Hitler’s left, the head of the German Labour Front, Robert Ley, admired Hitler’s birthday gift on his 50th birthday: a convertible Volkswagen.

Hugo Jaeger/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A rally in celebration of Adolf Hitler’s 50th birthday, Berlin, April 20, 1939.

Hugo Jaeger/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The Ost-West-Achse (East-West Axis) in Berlin, site of a massive rally and parade in celebration of Adolf Hitler’s 50th birthday, April 20, 1939.

Hugo Jaeger/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

German troops goose-stepped past the reviewing stand during a massive rally and military parade in celebration of Adolf Hitler’s 50th birthdayBerlin, April 20, 1939.

Hugo Jaeger/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Guests of honor at a rally and military parade in celebration of Adolf Hitler’s 50th birthday, Berlin, April 20, 1939.

Hugo Jaeger/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Heavy artillery passed the reviewing stand during a military parade in celebration of Adolf Hitler’s 50th birthday, Berlin, April 20, 1939.

Hugo Jaeger/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A rally and military parade in celebration of Adolf Hitler’s 50th birthday, Berlin, April 20, 1939.

Hugo Jaeger/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Banners hung from buildings in honor of Adolf Hitler’s 50th birthday, Berlin, April 20, 1939.

Hugo Jaeger/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Adolf Hitler shook hands with one of his personal photographers, Heinrich Hoffmann, while his doctor, Theodor Morrell (right) waited to greet the Fuhrer on Hitler’s 50th birthday, April 20, 1939, in Berlin.

Hugo Jaeger/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Some of Adolf Hitler’s 50th birthday gifts stored in a room at the Reich Chancellery, Berlin, April 1939.

Hugo Jaeger/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The automobile engineer and designer Ferdinand Porsche (in suit) presented Hitler with a convertible Volkswagen for Hitler’s 50th birthday, Berlin, Germany, April 20, 1939.

Hugo Jaeger/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Some of Adolf Hitler’s 50th birthday gifts, including flower vases emblazoned with swastikas, were stored in a room at the Reich Chancellery, Berlin, April 1939.

Hugo Jaeger/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Adolf Hitler received a model of a Condor airplane as a gift on his 50th birthday, Berlin, April 20, 1939. Beside Hitler (left) stood Capt. Hans Bauer, his personal pilot.

Hugo Jaeger/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A solid gold model of the Haus der Deutschen Kunst (a celebrated German museum), a gift from Luftwaffe commander—and future suicide at the Nuremberg war crimes trials—Hermann Goering to Adolf Hitler on Hitler’s 50th birthday, April 20, 1939.

Hugo Jaeger/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The automobile engineer and designer Ferdinand Porsche (in suit) presented Adolf Hitler with a model car during celebrations for Hitler’s 50th birthday, Berlin, April 1939.

Hugo Jaeger/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A hand-worked castle inlaid with precious stones given to Adolf Hitler on his 50th birthday, Berlin, April 20, 1939.

Hugo Jaeger/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Berlin’s Brandenburg gate and colonnades were lit up at night in honor of Adolf Hitler’s 50th birthday, April 20, 1939.

Hugo Jaeger/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

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