Page 100 – LIFE

Ghosts of World War I: The Tragic Legacy of Verdun

August 11, 2021June 7, 2014 by

In the spring of 1964, LIFE photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt—who served as a German artilleryman during World War I and saw action in the terrible fighting at Passchendaele—and correspondent Ken Gouldthorpe traveled to Verdun, in northeastern France, where one of the costliest battles of WWI took place five decades earlier. Here, LIFE.com presents Eisenstaedt’s quietly powerful color pictures from Verdun: images of an idyllic landscape that still bears the scars, and seemingly harbors the ghosts, of “the war to end all wars.”

Of all the battle sites along the 350-mile sweep of the Western Front [Gouldthorpe wrote in the June 5, 1964, issue of LIFE], none has come to symbolize the carnage and futility of World War I’s fighting more than the fields and hills of Verdun. Here the Germans tried to bleed the French army to death. . . . Today in an ossuary near Douaumont, even now smelling of death, rest the bones of 130,000 unidentified casualties from both sides: skulls, thighs, and — almost indistinguishable — the hobnailed sole of a soldier’s boot. Th erupting shells of a thousand bombardments killed and dug up and mixed and then reinterred the bodies until they intermingled inseparably beneath the mud. [But] not all the memorials honor unknown soldiers. In the wall of Fort Vaux . . . a couple of poppies from nearby fields decorate a plaque [picture #17 in the gallery] to one French victim of Verdun. It says, simply, “To my son. Since your eyes were closed mine have never ceased to cry.”

The sullen turrets of Verdun’s forts continued to guard one the world’s most deadly battlefields.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Verdun, France, 1964.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

In an ossuary near Douaumont rested the bones of 130,000 unidentified casualties from both sides.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Verdun, France, 1964.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Verdun, France, photographed from the air, 1964.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Verdun, France, 1964.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

14,000 marble crosses honored Americans” at Verdun.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

At Vaux rested a plaque to one soldier.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

This monument was erected in remembrance of refugees.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Near the crest at Montfaucon, where in 1918 U.S. infantry routed the Germans with bayonets but suffered enormous losses, a village cross held up a shell-shattered Christ.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

At Douaumont a statue of a French soldier lay with 15,000 actual dead.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Verdun, France, 1964.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Brazil in the Fifties: Portrait of a Beautiful, Troubled Country

January 16, 2020June 2, 2014 by

The title of a 1957 feature on Brazil published in LIFE magazine was: “Growing Pains of a Big Country: Ambitious Brazil Has Great Riches, Fine Prospects — and Big Problems.” The operative word here, of course, is “big,” as Brazil is huge in many ways, not least in geographic size (the 5th largest country on earth) and in population (200 million people).

But enormous troubles—many of which stem, at least in part, from the country’s endemic corruption —have held Brazil back from realizing its phenomenal economic potential. A story with a similar headline could easily be written today. This gallery features color photos made when beautiful, troubled Brazil was enduring “growing pains” not dissimilar to what it has gone through in more recent times.

Rio’s peaks, while beautiful, also strangled traffic. Still, they made a lovely sight at dusk.

Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1957.

Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Decrepit engines, such as this 1904 wood burner on the Belem-Braganca run, plagued railroads. The eucalyptus logs they burned gave off the fragrance of cough medicine.

Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The basin of the Amazon river was home to 3.5 million people, a number of them recently arrived from Japan and Puerto Rico.

Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Brazil, 1957.

Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

This U.S.-built Dam, Peixoto, was constructed by a subsidiary of the U.S.-owned American and Foreign Power Company to serve industrial centers outside Sao Paulo.

Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Brazil, 1957.

Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Rio, 1957.

Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Brazil, 1957.

Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Brazin’s old capital was Salvador, north of Rio in the sugar-growing country. It lost its position to Rio in 1763, after gold was discovered farther South. Salvador is a double city, the lower part (foreground) built along the harbor, and the upper part, with churches, monasteries that date to 17th Century, on a high bluff.

Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Picking cotton, Brazil, 1957.

Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

This coffee plantation stood in the terra rosa (purple earth) territory of the state of Parana. The plantation, or fazenda, had its own little village of warehouses, workers’ houses and stores (center), surrounded by symmetrical rows of thousands of coffee trees 5 to 12 feet high. Each of these trees produced about one pound of coffee each year. The country produced almost half the world’s supply.

Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A new capital was being built in Brasilia by workers who lived in a cluster of 2,000 temporary wooden buildings. Traders from the nearby cities came to sell dry goods and razor blades from suitcases on the streets. There was no finished road to the site and practically all traffic in and out was by plane.

Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1957.

Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

LIFE magazine, Oct. 21, 1957.

The Magic of the Off-Screen Trampoline: A Young Man Soars Above The Beach

August 11, 2021June 1, 2014 by

With most pictures—and certainly with most pictures made by professional photographers—we can grasp what’s happening inside the frame the moment we lay eyes on it. If the photograph is in focus, and if the action or subject of the picture is remotely discernible, it takes the eye a mere instant to tell the brain what’s going on.

That’s a couple kissing. There’s a sunset. That’s a baseball player sliding into home.

But some photos capture scenes so unfamiliar so outside the realm of what we usually see, or expect that it can take a while to wrap our minds around what’s depicted. Case in point: This Loomis Dean picture, made on the beach in Santa Monica in 1948. We know, when we first encounter it, that the photograph depicts a beach scene. We know that the central figure in the composition is a human being. But many of us, for a good while, are unable to understand, to really grasp, what’s happening.

The caption “A man flies off of a trampoline” explains how that fellow ended up there, soaring effortlessly (it would seem) through the air. But some of us will see this picture for the first time and, for a fleeting moment, before it all becomes clear, we might think we’re seeing . . . what? A misguided diver about to face-plant in the sand? Icarus falling from the sky?

What do you see? And why?

A man flew off a trampoline, Santa Monica, 1948.

Loomis Dean/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Road Trip! U.S. Route 30 in 1948

November 21, 2020May 29, 2014 by

In the summer of 1948, LIFE photographer Allan Grant set out on a trip from Omaha, Neb., toward Salt Lake City, Utah, traveling west through Nebraska and Wyoming along one of the most storied stretches in America: Route 30, part of the early transcontinental Lincoln Highway.

For reasons lost to time, none of Grant’s marvelous photos from that epic post-war road trip were published in LIFE. Now LIFE offers a series of Grant’s pictures from Nebraska and Wyoming made more than seven decades ago, in tribute to the human desire to get up and go.

Route 30 in Nebraska, 1948.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Route 30 in Wyoming, 1948

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Route 30, 1948

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Motel along Route 30, 1948.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Route 30 in Nebraska, 1948

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Family sleeping outside by a billboard alongside Route 30 in Wyoming, 1948.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Route 30, 1948

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Scene along Route 30, 1948.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Route 30, 1948

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Scene after driver fell asleep at the wheel on Route 30, Nebraska, 1948.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Motel along Route 30, 1948.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Route 30, 1948

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Cars pulling out of a trailer camp onto Route 30, Nebraska, 1948.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The 1733 Dance Hall—reportedly 1,733 miles from both Boston and San Francisco—in Kearney, Neb., 1948.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A driver filling a water bag at a gas station alongside Route 30, 1948.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Route 30, Nebraska, 1948

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A couple and their five-month-old daughter heading home to Cheyenne, Wyo., after a visit to Omaha, Neb., 1948.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Motor lodge along Route 30, 1948.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Route 30, 1948

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Motor lodge along Route 30, 1948.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Charles Corwin White, who bicycled from Los Angeles to New York in 1948, was photographed west of Rawlins, Wyo.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

After D-Day: The First Show for U.S. Troops in Normandy

December 30, 2019May 28, 2014 by

In late July 1944, LIFE photographer Ralph Morse was on hand for what he called, in his typed notes from the scene, the “first organized entertainment in Normandy” after D-Day. In his photos of scantily clad women (and men) performing for hundreds of battle-weary troops, Morse chronicled a small, memorable reprieve in the midst of the Allied push south, toward Paris.

(A scan of the note that Morse sent to his editors along with his film is included with this story’s photos.)

A handful of Morse’s photos were published in the Aug. 14, 1944, issue of LIFE but most of the pictures featured in this gallery never appeared. In that Aug. ’44 issue, LIFE described the scene Morse witnessed at a “rest camp” for the troops:

“While the great breakthrough boiled southward [from Normandy toward Paris] a few U.S. soldiers were taking it easy at rest camps behind the lines. At one of the camps the men were entertained by an eager troupe of French vaudevillians called Les Grandes Tournées d’André Fleury.”

Les Grandes Tournées, it seems, had been organized in Paris three years before, while the French capital was under German control. In late May of 1944 the troupe set out for Cherbourg; on June 5, the day before the invasion, they set up in the ancient town of Carteret. When the Germans pulled in the face of the Allied onslaught, the performers were stranded, with little food or money.

So when a U.S. Army Special Service officer asked them to put on a show for American troops, they were happy to comply. “They were charging the Germans and French 30 to 60 francs,” Morse wrote in his notes. “Now they get 25 francs a head from the Special Service funds for each soldier at the showings.”

The money, by all accounts, was well-spent.

“The show is old-type vaudeville and plenty of legs,” Morse went on. “A perfect show for the battle-tired troops resting a few days. The girls not understanding English and the troops not understanding French . . . the remarks and wisecracks are terrific. Its value as medicine for the boys is tops. They are completely relaxed . . . and yell and scream to their hearts’ content.”

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

An acrobatic dancer performed for U.S. troops lounging in the field at rest camp. The show featured girl dancers and two clowns, one of whom had once performed with Ringling Circus in New York. The girls heavily relied on dancing and pantomime because none of them spoke English.

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Stage-door Johnnies talked with French dancers at their dressing tent. Most of dancers were Parisians. For soldiers in the camp, the show’s price of admission was paid by the Army Special Services Fund.

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The first organized show for American troops after D-Day, Normandy, July 1944.

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

First organized show for American troops after D-Day, Normandy, July 1944.

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The first organized show for American troops after D-Day, Normandy, July 1944.

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A French performer in first organized show for American troops after D-Day, Normandy, July 1944.

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The first organized show for American troops after D-Day, Normandy, July 1944.

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

French performers in the first organized show for American troops after D-Day, Normandy, July 1944.

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The first organized show for American troops after D-Day, Normandy, July 1944.

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

French performers in the first organized show for American troops after D-Day, Normandy, July 1944.

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

French performers in first organized show for American troops after D-Day take a bow, Normandy, July 1944.

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

LIFE at The 1966 World Cup, Featuring Pelé and England’s Triumph

December 29, 2022May 27, 2014 by

The World Cup has come a long way in popularity since 1966—which happened to be a magnificent edition of the tourney, as England won it all, on English soil, defeating West Germany in the final. While LIFE sent the great Art Rickerby to photograph the event, his pictures never ran in LIFE magazine. Viewed today, they provide a unique look at the planet’s greatest sporting event during a fascinating period in its history. Prominent in the photos is the legendary Pelé, who died on November 22, 2022 at age 82. Even though his Brazil team did not make it out of the group stage that year, he was a natural player for Rickerby to focus on, given that his Brazil teams had won the World Cups in 1958 and 1962 (and would win again in 1970).

In 2014 LIFE.com chatted about the 1966 photos with Alexi Lalas, the former U.S. national team star and current TV commentator.

Of the third photo in the gallery, of Pelé in Liverpool, Lalas notes that the picture “really got me thinking about the aesthetics of the sport, and it’s a reminder of one attribute shared by most soccer players that helps explain why so many people adore the game. Namely—these guys are not huge. They’re not giants. They look, in a way, like you and me, and that guy sitting across the aisle on the train, or wherever. In Pelé’s case, you have probably the single most famous athlete on the planet at the time—but he’s not a seven-foot-tall basketball player, or a 300-pound defensive end. Still, seeing him here, there’s no question you’re looking at an athlete. The way he carries himself, his undeniable presence. Despite his unimposing stature, you can just sense his physical power.”

Not all of Rickerby’s photos from England in the summer of ’66, however, were of official World Cup matches. In fact, some of his best, most revealing work captured moments far from the sold-out stadiums in London, Sheffield, Manchester or Birmingham.

“Look at that shot,” Lalas said of English kids riveted by Brazil’s goalkeeper, Gilmar, leaping to block a shot during practice in Liverpool (the second photo ). “There’s no way those kids ever forgot watching those players, that close. Their body language shows how thrilled they are. And no wonder! There’s something about watching practice sessions that’s totally different—and better, in a way—than watching a big game. I remember training at Oakland University in Michigan before the World Cup in ’94. The fans who came out to watch us might remember that experience more fondly than watching the game we played in the Silverdome in Pontiac. There’s a reason baseball fans go to batting practice and spring training — the chance of a real, authentic interaction with the players, away from the hoopla around a game.”

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

Bobby Moore raised the World Cup trophy, July 30, 1966, after England defeated Germany, 4-2, in the final before 98,000 fans at Wembley Stadium, London.

Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Brazil’s goalkeeper, Gilmar, leapt to block a shot during a World Cup practice in Liverpool, 1966.

Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Brazil great Pelé entered the stadium in Liverpool, 1966.

Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

British soccer fans, 1966.

Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Fans welcomed the Brazil squad to the stadium, Liverpool, 1966.

Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Pelé was tackled during Brazil’s 2-0 win over Bulgaria, England, 1966.

Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

English fans happily swarmed around the Brazilian squad’s bus, 1966.

Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

World Cup, 1966, England.

Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Wembley Stadium, World Cup, 1966.

Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

England celebrated a score, World Cup, 1966.

Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Commenting on this photo of England celebrating a goal, Alexi Lalas said, “If I could bottle the feeling that comes with scoring a goal in a big match, future generations of my family would never have to work another day in their lives.”

Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Jack Charlton slid hard against West Germany, World Cup, 1966.

Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

England’s George Cohen vied with Argentina’s Silvio Marzolini during a World Cup quarterfinal match, 1966.

Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

World Cup final, England vs. West Germany, July 1966.

Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Fans, World Cup, England, July 1966.

Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

World Cup 1966

Art Rickerby Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

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