August 2014

How to Take a Group Portrait of 14 NFL Quarterbacks on Their Day Off

January 13, 2023August 26, 2014 by

In 1961, LIFE magazine managed to get every starting NFL quarterback, including six future Hall of Famers, in a studio for a group portrait. The photographer, Ralph Morse one of the most versatile photojournalists of the 20th century was never one to have his subjects just stand there and smile, so he asked Johnny Unitas, Bart Starr, Fran Tarkenton and the rest to, in effect, act like quarterbacks. The result is somehow ridiculous, charming and kind of cool, all at the same time.

The group portrait came about because Morse knew there was no way that he could follow 14 professional quarterbacks around the country individually the way LIFE’s sports editors wanted him to.

“Those editors were crazy,” Morse (now 96 years old) recently told LIFE.com. “One week I might fly to Dallas or St. Louis or Detroit to photograph one of the players, and maybe he’d be great. Or maybe he’d be awful. Either way, the assignment would take weeks months! and there was no guarantee we’d end up with what we wanted. The only way I could make a decent picture is if I made it in one place, at one time, with all of the players. I called the NFL commissioner, Pete Rozelle, and told him what I wanted to do. He said I was crazy. He told me they’d have to do it on their day off, and they’d never agree.

“So I said, ‘Look. You’re the commissioner, aren’t you? They’ll do what you tell them, won’t they?’ I suggested we do it in Chicago, somewhere in the center of the country. All they had to do was bring clean uniforms, and show up. We set a date, and I flew out to Chicago a week early to rent a studio. I had a local high school football team come to the studio every day for that week, and we practiced all sorts of scenarios until we had one that worked the guys in front tossing the ball underhand, the guys in back throwing overhand. We also set up a sheet of plexiglass with a hole cut in it for the camera lens to poke through, so I wouldn’t get creamed by 14 footballs coming at me.

“All the quarterbacks arrived on the scheduled day, and we had the whole thing figured out ahead of time. These guys were famous. They were busy. They didn’t want to mess around. They wanted to get into their uniforms, take the picture, get out of their uniforms and go. And that’s what happened.”

One thing worth noting here is that the great Y.A. Tittle (front row, far right), who was playing for the New York Giants at that point in his career, was 35 years old when the photo was made. Old for an NFL quarterback, sure but he looks like he’s 65.

One hell of a player, though; he’s one of just 11 Giants to have his number retired. He’s also one of six future Hall of Famers in Morse’s photo; the others are Layne, Starr, Unitas, Tarkenton and Jurgenson.

Ben Cosgrove is the Editor of LIFE.com

Quarterbacks of the NFL in 1961: (back, L-R) Milt Plum, Bobby Layne, Sam Etcheverry, Bill Wade, Bart Starr, Johnny Unitas, Norm Snead, Zeke Bratkowski; (front, L-R) Jim Ninowski, Fran Tarkenton, Don Meredith, John Brodie, Sonny Jurgensen, Y.A. Tittle.

Ralph Morse/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Marilyn Monroe: The LIFE Cover Stories, 1952-1962

January 16, 2020August 25, 2014 by

While the legend of Marilyn Monroe will always be closely associated with LIFE—her first cover shoot for the magazine, in April 1952, made by the great Philippe Halsman, remains one of the most famous and collectible covers in the history of the magazine—it might surprise some people to learn how seldom she actually appeared in the magazine itself.

There’s little question that LIFE recognized Marilyn’s singular, profound appeal from early on in her career, but she only graced LIFE’s cover six times while she was alive. (She appeared on several more covers after her death in August 1962, including later editions after the magazine ceased publishing as a weekly.) Six times is fewer than Dwight Eisenhower, for example, while Liz Taylor holds the record with fourteen appearances on the cover of the premier photographic magazine of the age.

[Buy the LIFE book, Remembering Marilyn]

And yet . . . when one considers that Marilyn’s run of six covers occurred during a span of a mere 10 years, and that had she lived she might well have challenged Taylor’s supremacy, her close connection to the magazine and, by extension, her centrality to the American conversation around fame, celebrity, sex and media in the 20th century is cast in a much clearer, brighter light.

On top of all that, when one recalls that several of her covers are regarded as classics—her debut and a later Halsman, from 1959, of her jumping, glancing back over shoulder; the Ed Clark shot from 1953 featuring Marilyn and Jane Russell in form-fitting red sequined dresses; a Lawrence Schiller shot of a smiling Marilyn by a pool in June 1962, just two months before her death—the notion that Marilyn helped define what LIFE looked and felt like in the 1950s takes on far greater force.

(Speaking of the 1950s, please note what might be the most incongruous clash of word-and-image ever to appear on the cover of LIFE or on the cover of any magazine, for that matter. In the very first image in the gallery, and quite easily overlooked by anyone whose eyes are, understandably, drawn solely to the gorgeous woman gazing out from the April 17, 1952, issue of LIFE, one can read these rather dramatic, if head-scratching, words: THERE IS A CASE FOR INTERPLANETARY SAUCERS.)

In the end, the LIFE covers on which Marilyn appeared—we’re featuring seven here in this gallery, as well as spreads from the articles that accompanied them—are really just reminders of what a true movie star looked like six long decades ago.

LIFE Magazine, April 7, 1952. Marilyn Monroe’s debut on the magazine’s cover, photographed by Philippe Halsman.

Page spreads from the April 7, 1952, issue of LIFE Magazine.

LIFE Magazine, May 25, 1953. Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell, photographed by Ed Clark.

Page spreads from the May 25, 1953, issue of LIFE Magazine.

LIFE Magazine, April 20, 1959. Marilyn Monroe photographed by Richard Avedon.

Page spreads from the April 20, 1959, issue of LIFE Magazine.

LIFE Magazine, November 9, 1959. Marilyn Monroe, photographed by Philippe Halsman.

Page spreads from the November 9, 1959, issue of LIFE Magazine.

Life Magazine

LIFE Magazine, August 15, 1960. Marilyn Monroe, photographed by John Bryson.

Page spreads from the August 15, 1960, issue of LIFE Magazine.

LIFE Magazine, August 15, 1960. Marilyn Monroe, photographed by Lawrence Schiller.

Page spreads from the June 22, 1962, issue of LIFE Magazine.

LIFE Magazine, August 17, 1962. Marilyn Monroe, photographed by Lawrence Schiller.

Page spreads from the August 17, 1962, issue of LIFE Magazine.

Ray Charles: Photos of a Musical Genius On Stage and Off

February 10, 2022August 25, 2014 by

In July 1966, LIFE magazine published a story in which Frank Sinatra called Ray Charles “the only genius in our business.” Whether or not he was the only genius in show business is debatable; but there’s no getting around the fact that the genius Ray Charles was one of the most influential American musicians in history. A prodigious pianist, soulful songwriter and vocalist of astonishing range and power, Charles transformed the pop-culture landscape with his melding of gospel, blues and R&B music during the 1950s.

In 1966, Charles’s career was on the rebound after a forced hiatus in rehab the previous year for his longtime heroin addiction. (He’d been arrested for possession for the third time in 1965, and agreed to rehab in order to avoid jail time.) After getting clean he reemerged with hits like “I Don’t Need No Doctor,” “Crying Time” and other songs in various genres, including blues-inflected country, that revealed his powers as an entertainer to be not merely undiminished, but perhaps stronger than ever.

LIFE photographer Bill Ray spent a solid month with Charles during this pivotal time in the singer’s career, chronicling performances at celebrated venues like Carnegie Hall as well as hanging out with the legend in the studio, backstage at concerts and on the road and in the air between shows. Here, LIFE.com presents a selection of Ray’s photos many of which never ran in LIFE magazine that reveal a Ray Charles most of us have never seen.

“I was amazed at how he was able to exercise so much control over so many aspects of his life,” Bill Ray said. “The music, the travel, his love life which was definitely complicated. He could sometimes seem cool, calculating, even ruthless in his dealings with people, but part of that was a way to make sure he wasn’t being cheated, or taken advantage of. To me, at least, he was always very warm, very welcoming. And when he got behind that piano and began to sing wow! It was just impossible not to be moved by music that powerful.”

Ray Charles in the driveway of his rambling Los Angeles home with his wife Della and sons Robert, 5, David, 7, and Ray Jr. 11. ‘I don’t need to see them to know what they look like,’ he says. ‘I know my wife is pretty, and I think my sons are pretty good boys.'” Ray and Della divorced in 1977.

Bill Ray; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Ray Charles with his son, David, 1966.

Bill Ray; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Ray Charles at home in Los Angeles, 1966.

Bill Ray; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Ray Charles and his sons on his tour bus, 1966.

Bill Ray; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Ray Charles and his sons goof around on his tour bus, 1966.

Bill Ray; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Ray Charles 1966

Bill Ray; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

In the early morning at Los Angeles airport, Charles waits and his manager, Joe Adams, prepared to board his plane for a flight to New York.

Bill Ray; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

From his 50-seat private plane, Ray talked to someone at the control tower. He liked to sit up in the co-pilot’s seat and knew so much about the operation of the plane that, in an emergency, he could have taken over. As Charles said: ‘That would really be flying blind, baby.'”

Bill Ray; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

To light his cigarette, Charles feels the flame to guide it.”

Bill Ray; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Ray Charles 1966

Bill Ray; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Ray Charles’s tour bus, 1966.

Bill Ray; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Charles played chess on a board with special niches. The white pieces were smaller than the black.

Bill Ray; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Ray Charles’s tour bus, 1966.

Bill Ray; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Charles’s chauffeur, Vernon Troupe, led him to the piano in the Los Angeles studio where Charles recorded for his own company, named Tangerine after his favorite fruit.

Bill Ray; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Ray Charles and the Raelettes, 1966.

Bill Ray; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Ray Charles and orchestra, 1966.

Bill Ray; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Ray Charles in the studio, 1966.

Bill Ray; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Ray Charles resting before a show, 1966.

Bill Ray; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Ray Charles 1966

Bill Ray; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Ray Charles before a show, 1966.

Bill Ray; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Ray Charles before a show, 1966

Bill Ray; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Ray Charles backstage talking with Eric Burdon and the Animals, 1966.

Bill Ray/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Ray Charles at Carnegie Hall, New York City, 1966.

Bill Ray; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Ray Charles at Carnegie Hall, 1966.

Bill Ray; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Keedoozle, We Hardly Knew Ye: Remembering America’s First Automated Grocery

December 9, 2020August 25, 2014 by

In 1937, a Memphis, Tenn., grocer and innovator named Clarence Saunders introduced a bold new concept in shopping for food: History’s first fully automated grocery store. It was called Keedoozle. (See the explanation of the unusual moniker below.) In 1948, photographer Francis Miller traveled to Memphis in order to document the third incarnation of Saunders’s technological phenomenon.

TIME magazine, meanwhile, reported on the groundbreaking operation thusly:

Memphis had waited a long time for the Keedoozle, Clarence Saunders’ electrically operated grocery. He first announced it twelve years ago. Twice he had opened up, only to close when wires got crossed and customers got the wrong goods.

Last week, confident that he had ironed out his Keedoozle’s kinks, Saunders staged another grand opening. Customers thought it was worth waiting for. They liked the pinball-type lights that danced when they inserted the keys in the merchandise slots. Better still, they liked Saunders’ prices, 10% to 15% cheaper than competitors’.

Shopping at the Keedoozle is not as complicated as it sounds. Customers inspect the wares, each item in a separate glass-enclosed case, then insert a key in a slot under the items they wish to buy. Electric impulses cause perforations to be cut in ticker tape attached to the face of the keys. The customers take the tape to the cashier, who inserts it in a translator machine. That sets off more electric impulses which not only start the goods sliding down a conveyor belt, but at the same time add up the bill.

Keedoozle means “key does all.” It was coined by Saunders’ fertile brain the same brain that thought up Piggly Wiggly. . . . Now a white-haired 67, Clarence Saunders is sure that he has hit the jackpot again. Keedoozle‘s lavor-saving, he says, will enable him to make [more than 7 percent] on his turnover without adding more than a 3¢ markup to the cost of any goods. Says Saunders, who will sell Keedoozle franchises in other cities: “It can’t miss. It’s the biggest thing I’ve ever had.”

At least, that’s how it was all supposed to go down, in theory. Saunders tried the Keedoozle concept three times, but failed each time because the circuits couldn’t handle the traffic during peak hours. Customers regularly got mixed-up orders. In addition, the conveyer-belt system wasn’t fast enough or efficient enough when there was high demand. Keedoozle closed its doors for good in 1949.

LIFE Looks Back: Keedoozle, the Automatic Grocery Store

Francis Miller The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Clarence Saunders

Francis Miller The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Keedoozle, Automatic Grocery Store, 1948

Francis Miller The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Stonehenge: Mystery and Majesty in an Old Color Photo

January 16, 2020August 20, 2014 by

Calling Stonehenge a “monument,” as most books and tourist guides do, is a bit like calling the Grand Canyon a hole in the ground. Both descriptions are, from a literal standpoint, accurate, but neither manages to encompass the fascination they instill.

Was Stonehenge a place of worship? Probably. A kind of massive, three-dimensional calendar? Maybe. A pilgrimage site for the sick? Perhaps. A beacon for extraterrestrials?

A beacon for extraterrestrials? Anyone?

What one can say with certainty about Stonehenge, the Grand Canyon, Egypt’s pyramids, Machu Picchu, the Brooklyn Bridge and other natural and human-made wonders is that, in their presence, the imagination is likely to stir. We’re in awe before them, even when we know—as with Stonehenge, Machu Picchu, Chichen Itza—that we’re gazing on a mere shadow of what was once a far more extensive, elaborate and vibrant complex.

But that, too, is part of the profound allure of these places: having fallen into ruin, they still possess a genuine grandeur.

[Buy the LIFE book, Wonders of the World]

Here, thousands of years after its first stones were erected on England’s Salisbury Plain, LIFE pays tribute with a single photograph to the structure itself, and to the long-vanished people who envisioned and built Stonehenge. One of many pictures LIFE’s Dmitri Kessel made on assignment in England in 1955, this photo manages to capture what feels like an utterly contemporary scene the picture might have been made moments ago while also somehow evincing the mystery and majesty of a departed world.

Stonehenge, photographed in 1955.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Vacation’s End: Classic Photos of Late-Summer Cape Cod

June 12, 2023August 15, 2014 by

In early September 1946, LIFE magazine published a cover story that, in words and especially in pictures, perfectly captured the unique, sweet, melancholy feel of summer vacation’s end. That the article focused, as LIFE put it, on “the first postwar summer vacation” of the 1940s somehow added if only in retrospect a quiet intensity to the story. All these years later, the pictures and the story itself remind us of just how fleeting the peaceful, hot days and long, cool nights of late summer really are.

As LIFE put it in that long-ago article:

William and Carol Foster [of Nashua, N.H.], with their sons Karl, 9, and Michael, 4, have spent the summer at Cotuit on Cape Cod, enjoying the lazy and wonderful pastimes of sailing, swimming, digging clams and loafing. Now they and their summer neighbors are going home. Boats will be hauled out of the water to lie forlornly in the tall beach grass. Cottages will be boarded up. The clam bar and dance pavilion will be deserted. The golf course, the tidal pool and the lonely sea beach will again revert to the rabbits, the fiddler crabs and the sandpipers.

Labor Day is here. A month ago it seemed hazy and remote, separated from the present by an endless succession of golden summer days. Now, suddenly, these days are changed and gone. The mornings are still the same. It is still hot and fragrant in the cranberry bogs, hot on the white shell roads, hot on the beaches and in the village streets, with everywhere the strong smell of pine, bay leaves and salt water. It is the afternoons and nights that are different. It gets dark early, and cold. Heavy fogs often roll in from Martha’s Vineyard and the late swim is a shivery business, made enjoyable only by the quick warmth of the picnic fire. In the evenings, going to the movies, the fog is wet in the streets. All night long the in the harbor rings a steady accompaniment to the remote blasts from the lightship out in the Sound.

These are sad and disturbing days. Everything is being seen for the last time, everything done for the last time. The last clam is eaten. The last bag is packed, the cottage door locked. . . . Down on the steamboat wharf at Woods Hole the last passenger gets off the Nantucket boat and joins the crowd of departing vacationists from the Cape, pushing to board the train. . . . Walking across the station platform, they catch a last glimpse of the white gulls turning in the sun and nets drying in the fishing boats, take a last deep breath of salt air before they are swallowed up in the incalculable stuffiness of the Pullman. Another summer on the Cape is gone.

Finally, note that most of the Cornell Capa photos in the gallery above never ran in LIFE. A dozen or so photos at the end of the gallery are those that appeared in the magazine in 1946.