Page 101 – LIFE

Behind the Picture: ‘Dewey Defeats Truman’

November 6, 2020May 4, 2014 by

Triumph. That’s the look on President Harry Truman’s face. Sheer, unadulterated triumph. In fact, of the countless politics-related photographs made over, say, the past century, one would be hard-pressed to point to a more famous image than W. Eugene Smith‘s shot of an ebullient Truman holding aloft a copy of the Chicago Tribune emblazoned with the now-legendary (erroneous) headline: DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN.

The reason for the picture’s immortality? It’s not the headline itself although that titanic error is, in its own way, rather marvelous—the screw-up was the result of an early press time and a poor prediction. Instead, the picture endures because of the look of unabashed, in-your-face delight in Truman’s eyes.

First, a brief discussion of the ’48 election itself. In what is generally regarded as the greatest upset in American political history, Truman beat the heavily-favored Republican governor of New York, Thomas Dewey, by a substantial Electoral College margin, 303 to 189, but by fewer than three million votes in the popular vote. (The right-wing, stridently segregationist “Dixiecrat” nominee, Strom Thurmond, won four states—Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and his home state of South Carolina—and 39 electoral votes in 1948.)

A full two days after the election, the president was on his way back to Washington from his home in Independence, Mo., when his train stopped in St. Louis. There, someone handed Truman a two-day-old copy of the Tribune. (One version has a staffer serendipitously finding the paper under a seat in the station.)

Maybe Truman had already heard about the Republican-leaning Trib‘s embarrassing snafu, but he had not yet held a copy in his hands. Perhaps this was the first time he had any inkling of how huge and how hugely mistaken the headline actually was. However it shook out, in Smith’s photograph of that priceless moment, Truman’s elation upon coming face to face with the dead-wrong assertion of his defeat is positively palpable.

Seeing the image today, in the world of the 24/7 news cycle, it’s hard to believe that the photograph was not made on election night. After all, in an age of 24/7 news, when more and more media consumers get their breaking news via tweets and friends’ Facebook posts, two days can seem like a lifetime.

But the thrill evident in the face of the man holding that paper remains as indelible today as when it was captured all those years ago. It’s a defining image of more than a politician. The picture captures the feeling of sweet, improbable victory for a person who had been counted out too soon.

Harry Truman

A jubilant Harry Truman held up a Chicago newspaper emblazoned with the (erroneous) headline, “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN,” St. Louis, November 4, 1948. (W. Eugene Smith / LIFE Picture Collection)

Amazin’: Remembering Tom Seaver and the Miracle Mets

July 29, 2021May 3, 2014 by

Tom Seaver, who died on Sept. 2, 2020 at age 75, won the first of his three Cy Young awards in 1969 as the ace of the Amazin’ Mets. For Seaver, that extraordinary season was the start of a Hall of Fame career that included 311 wins and 3,640 strikeouts. He is on a short list among the greatest pitchers of all time.

The ’69 Mets themselves maintain a special place in baseball culture. The team that had been so terrible since beginning play in 1962, routinely losing more than 100 games per season, improbably rallied to become World Series champion.

LIFE was along for the ride during that 1969 season, chronicling the exploits of Seaver—a young righty just discovering his ability to dominate batters—and also other characters of that miracle team. In its story LIFE called Seaver, then 24, “the team’s first superstar,” and the news of his death 51 years later had many proclaiming him the greatest player ever to wear the New York Mets uniform.

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

Ace pitcher Tom Seaver, 1969.

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Tom Seaver won 25 games, the most in the majors, as the leader of the Miracle Mets in 1969.

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Shortstop Bud Harrelson, 1969.

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Third baseman Ed Charles, 1969 Mets.

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First baseman Donn Clendenon, 1969.

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Outfielder Ron Swoboda, 1969.

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Tom Seaver won 25 games, the most in the majors, as the leader of the Miracle Mets in 1969.

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1969 New York Mets.

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Manager Gil Hodges, 1969 Mets.

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Donn Clendenon, 1969

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Pitcher Jerry Koosman (No. 36) and teammates in the Mets dugout.

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Outfielder Art Shamsky, 1969.

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Manager Gil Hodges (right), 1969 Mets.

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Ed Kranepool sliding in with the Pirates’ Jose Martinez in air, 1969.

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Tom Seaver, 1969.

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Manager Gil Hodges (right), 1969 Mets.

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Ed Charles scored past Pirates catcher Manny Sanguillen, 1969.

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Tom Seaver dominated for the Miracle Mets in 1969, going 25-7 and winning the first of his three Cy Young awards.

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Pittsburgh’s Willie Stargell slid against the Mets, 1969.

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Mets vs. Pirates, 1969.

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Donn Clendenon, 1969

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Ed Charles, 1969 Mets.

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From left to right: outfielder Tommie Agee, first baseman Donn Clendennon, shortstop Bud Harrelson, and outfielder Ron Swoboda.

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Tom Seaver, 1969.

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Catcher Jerry Grote, 1969.

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Catcher J. C. Martin, 1969 Mets.

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From left to right: coach Yogi Berra, pitcher Tom Seaver, shortstop Al Weis, 1969.

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Silent No More: Early Days in the Fight for Gay Rights

December 6, 2022May 1, 2014 by

In late 1971, two years after the Stonewall riots in New York sparked the modern gay rights movement in America, and twelve months before LIFE ceased publishing as a weekly, the magazine featured an article on “gay liberation” that, encountered decades later, feels sensational, measured and somehow endearingly, deeply square all at the same time.

Titled “Homosexuals in Revolt” and touted as “a major essay on America’s newest militants,” the piece elicited strong reactions from readers many of whom, of course, were less than happy that their beloved LIFE would devote a dozen pages to people whom one letter writer characterized as “psychic cripples.” Largely predictable responses from peeved readers that appeared in the Jan. 28, 1972, issue of LIFE included:

From Telford, Penn. There was plenty to lament in your year-end issue, but the thing that struck me as most sad was the fact that LIFE felt compelled to devote 11 pages to “Homosexuals in Revolt.”

From Chicago Essentially, it is absurd to accept as a mere “variant lifestyle” a practice which, if universal, would mean the end of the human race.

And, from Glendale, Calif., the old standby “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.”

But there were also letters from readers praising LIFE’s “accuracy, fairness and dignified tone,” and one from a woman in New Jersey, Jule Lee, who was (in her words) “one of the oldest lesbian activists both in age and years of participation in the movement.” She was outraged, she wrote, not only because the “Homosexuals in Revolt” article focused on what she called “LIFE-made ‘leaders’ [who] do not represent me and my age group,” but also because “out of ten picture pages . . . lesbians are mentioned on two. If this isn’t a new high in male chauvinism, I don’t know what is!”

For its part, LIFE introduced its 1971 feature in language that certainly feels more “Us vs. Them” than what we might see in a similar article today, but it’s also language that, all these years later, has about it a sense of an older world trying really trying to get a handle on the new:

It was the most shocking and, to most Americans, the most surprising liberation movement yet. Under the slogan “Out of the closets and into the streets,” thousands of homosexuals, male and female, were proudly confessing what they had long hidden. They were, moreover, moving into direct confrontation with conventional society. Their battle was far from won. But in 1971 militant homosexuals showed they they were prepared to fight it. . . . They resent what they consider to be savage discrimination against them on the basis of a preference which they did not choose and which they cannot and do not want to change. And while most will admit that “straight” society’s attitudes have caused them unhappiness, they respond to the charge that all homosexuals are guilt-ridden and miserable with the defiant rallying cry, “Gay is Good!”

LIFE.com remembers the early days of a movement that, incredibly, in the second decade of the 21st century, still occasionally has cause to take to the streets.

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

Gay rights march, 1971

Grey Villet The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Gay liberation, LIFE magazine, December 1971

Grey Villet The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

‘The World of Tomorrow’: Scenes From the 1939 New York World’s Fair

November 22, 2019April 29, 2014 by

On April 30, 1939, the colossal New York World’s Fair opened in what is now Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, in the borough of Queens. The 1939 world exposition — or “expo,” for short — was unique in many respects, not least in that it differed in both theme and purpose from the expositions that had come before, in places like Paris, London, Chicago, and St. Louis. Those world’s fairs had, by and large, celebrated technological innovation and advances in science and medicine. The New York World’s Fair, on the other hand, took as its focus nothing less than, in the words of the fair’s official bulletin, presenting visions of “the World of Tomorrow.”

This, the fair told its visitors — more than 40 million of them, by the time the expo ended — this is what we believe the future will look like.

That the future, in many of the exhibits and pavilions at the fair, looked almost wholly urban, rather sterile and vaguely Le Corbusierian might be a little disappointing to some viewers today. But when one considers that the 1939 expo — the second-largest American world’s fair of all time — was conceived, planned and executed in the latter years of the Great Depression and on the cusp of the global cataclysm of World War II, there’s something refreshingly and almost audaciously positive about the overall vibe. The exhibits might not have accurately anticipated or imagined what “Tomorrow” actually ended up looking like. But the fact that thousands brought the fair into being, and tens of millions came to witness the results of their efforts, suggests an optimism about the distant, if not the immediate, future that feels downright enviable today.

— story by Ben Cosgrove

Exterior view of the Administration Building for the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Models of the sculpture ‘Night’ by artist Paul Manship, created for the 1939-1940 World’s Fair.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Scene in Queens, New York, before the April 30, 1939, grand opening of the World’s Fair.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Administrative buildings designed for the 1939 World’s Fair.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Craftsmen work on a huge diorama prior to the opening of the 1939 Worlds Fair.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Craftsmen work on a huge architectural model of “the city of the future” at the 1939 World’s Fair.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Preparing for the 1939 World’s Fair, New York.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Working on General Motors’ “Futurama” exhibit— the city of the near future— at the 1939 World’s Fair.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Display in the Ford Motor Company pavilion at the 1939 World’s fair.

Hansel Mieth The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Exhibit featuring raw materials that go into making Ford automobiles, 1939 New York World’s Fair.

Hansel Mieth The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Waxworks on display at the 1939 World’s Fair, including Supreme Court Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes (bottom middle) and Adolf Hitler.

Hansel Mieth The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Exhibit featuring raw materials that go into making Ford automobiles, 1939 New York World’s Fair.

Hansel Mieth The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Architectural model created for the 1939 New York World’s Fair.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Architectural model created for the 1939 New York World’s Fair.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Architectural model for a textile building created for the 1939 New York World’s Fair.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Architectural model created for the 1939 New York World’s Fair.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Architectural model created for the 1939 New York World’s Fair.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Modernist symbols of the 1939 World’s Fair, the Trylon and the Perisphere— collectively called the “Theme Centre” of the expo.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

1939 New York World’s Fair.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

LIFE magazine feature on the 1939 New York World’s Fair.

Pope John XXIII and Vatican II: The Catholic Church’s Modern Moment

August 11, 2021April 24, 2014 by

As monumental as the election of a new pope has always been and always will be for Catholics around the world, other (very) occasional events in the life of the church often have far more wide-reaching and long-lasting effects. The pontiff is, of course, the supreme figure in the church’s hierarchy —but more than 260 men have held the title over the past two millennium, and only a relative handful of those figures have presided over historic changes in the ways Catholics worship and relate to both their local parishes and congregations and to the Holy See in Rome.

By contrast, for example, the Second Vatican Council (known colloquially as Vatican II) held at St. Peter’s between 1962 and 1965 was more significant in both its message and its spiritual and cultural ramifications than any single act or pronouncement by any pope of the past few centuries. The twenty-first Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church, and only the second ever held at Saint Peter’s Basilica, Vatican II offered nothing less than an utterly new dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the modern world.

Opened in October 1962, when Pope John XXIII was pontiff, and lasting until December 1965, during the papacy of Pope Paul VI, Vatican II advanced both major and minor reforms to church doctrine and matters of faith, e.g., encouraging Catholics to pray with non-Catholic Christians; a new prominence (and power) for bishops within the church; the sanctioning of languages other than Latin during Mass, and more.

Here, LIFE.com recalls the historic, landmark Vatican II council with photographs by Hank Walker and Paul Schutzer.

Pope John XXIII rode in the procession to St. Peter’s Basilica at the start of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, 1962.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Scene in Rome during the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, 1962.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Vatican Ecumenical Council and Ecumenical Procession, Rome, 1962.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A table of cardinals during the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, 1962.

Hank Walker The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Prelates attended a party at the Chinese Embassy in Vatican City on the eve of Vatican II, 1962.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Cardinals at a party held by the Chinese ambassador, Rome, 1962.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Vatican Ecumenical Council and Ecumenical Procession, Rome, 1962.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Scene during the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, 1962.

Hank Walker The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Pope John XXIII during the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, 1962.

Hank Walker The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Scene inside St. Peter’s Basilica during the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, 1962.

Hank Walker The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Devout observers of the procession of Catholic prelates entered St. Peter’s during the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, 1962.

Hank Walker The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Pope John XXIII rode in a procession to St. Peter’s Basilica at the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, 1962.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Meet the Actress Who Set Out to Kiss 10,000 Soldiers to Boost Morale

March 18, 2024April 21, 2014 by

The line between blatant self-promotion and selfless magnanimity is often hazy, and it takes a delicate sense of balance — or a great gimmick — to neatly straddle the two. Case in point: a young actress, in a rush of wartime patriotic fervor, decides to raise troop morale by a surefire, if unorthodox, method. And if her well-meaning stunt earns her some welcome publicity — well, where’s the harm?

Here’s how LIFE magazine described just such a scenario in an article titled “LIFE Goes to an Army Party,” published in the uncertain days of March 1942:

At an Army encampment near a southern California aircraft factory last month, perky movie starlet Marilyn Hare embarked on one of the most formidable morale-building projects yet contrived for the U.S. Army. A good fighting machine, she knew, thrives on joie de vivre. From her father, the late Ernie Hare of the famed pioneering radio team call the Happiness Boys, 18-year-old Marilyn had learned the art of evoking merriment in others. But in this hour of national crisis, Miss Hare had evolved a unique inspiration program of her won. It was her aspiration to kiss 10,000 soldiers.

Bright and early Feb. 5 squads of soldiers assembled in the balmy California sunshine. Bright and early merry Marilyn arrived for her great undertaking. She mounted a soapbox and as a kind of musical hors d’oeuvre sang “Kiss the Boys Goodbye” to an accordion accompaniment. Then, stepping down, she went to work.

First she passed down the aisle giving each grinning trooper a taste of her pretty lips. Since other soldiers had duties elsewhere in camp, she wandered from barracks to soup kitchens to sentry posts. There was no shortage of Marilyn’s war commodity, nor were there priorities or second rations. She left each soldier well-bussed and bemused. At day’s end her kissometer recorded 733 smacks. The effect on morale was terrific. As they staggered back to their chores, Marilyn’s be-lipsticked beneficiaries mumbled dreamily: “We won’t wash our faces for a month.”

Alas, there’s no record of whether or not Marilyn, who died in 1981, went on to kiss another 9,267 soldiers to reach her lofty, publicly stated goal. For her own part, she did enjoy a brief, modest success in the movies and, many years later, had small parts on hit TV shows like The Wild Wild West and My Three Sons.

Not the enduring fame that, as a young actress, she energetically pursued — but for several hundred grateful American soldiers, she was a star of the first magnitude.

Liz Ronk, who edited this gallery, is the Photo Editor for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter @lizabethronk.