For Some, Dry January Was Never Enough

The Women’s Christian Temperance Union was founded in 1873 with an aim of promoting abstinence from alcohol, and its membership peaked in 1931, late in the Prohibition Era, with a total of 372,355 members.

But in 1947, when the women of a California chapter of the WCTU tried to make a statement by invading bars in Pasadena, the organization was already on its way to becoming a historical novelty. LIFE magazine opened its story on the bar invasion with the comment “These marching grandmothers will seem strange to many younger Americans. But to older people, who can recall the violent days of hatchet-wielding, saloon-smashing Carry Nation, they will seem like nothing more than a wisp out of the past.”

Here’s how LIFE, in its issue of May 19, 1947, described what happened when this era of WCTU women decided to infiltrate the Pasadena bar scene:

They urged barkeepers to seek “more honorable” jobs. They pointed out possible law violations to proprietors. They pleaded with customers to sign no-drink pledges. At one bar they found a mother with her daughter, embraced the mother and prayed for her. Later the mother joined them in singing Onward Christian Soldiers.

While the women of the WCTU found some success that day, the photographs by LIFE staff photographer Peter Stackpole capture reactions from the bar denizens that range from annoyance to indifference. The LIFE story concluded by recounting a scene from a story by American humorist Finley Peter Dunne, in which one character praises a man who drinks moderately, and another responds “What’s his name? What novel is he in?”

Today the WCTU still carries on, though it’s national membership has dwindled to around 5,000. Alcoholics Anonymous, meanwhile, counts a membership of around 2 million.

Women’s Christian Temperance Union members singing “Dry, Clean California,” 1947.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A scene from a meeting of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union in southern California, 1947.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Members of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union in California, 1947.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Women’s Christian Temperance Union members brought their message of alcohol abstinence to bars in Pasadena, Calif., 1947.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Women’s Christian Temperance Union displayed a wrecked car to advocate against the dangers of drinking, 1947.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Women’s Christian Temperance Union members brought their message of alcohol abstinence to bars in Pasadena, Calif., 1947.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Women’s Christian Temperance Union members brought their message of alcohol abstinence to bars in Pasadena, Calif., 1947.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Women’s Christian Temperance Union members invaded a bar in Pasadena, Calif., while customers remain indifferent, 1947.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A Women’s Christian Temperance Union member tried to get a bar partron to sign non-drinking pledge, Pasadena, Calif., 1947.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A bar patron downed his drink while Women’s Christian Temperance Union members looked for converts at a bar in Pasadena, Calif., 1947.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Members of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union brought their message of alcohol abstinence to bars in Pasadena, Calif., 1947.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Primary Focus: Eisenstaedt’s Images of New Hampshire

Political campaigns are invariably about the candidates on the ballot that year, but the images that resulted when legendary LIFE photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt ventured to the Granite State in early 1952 capture something broader. Viewed 80-plus years down the road, they feel like a portrait of a different kind of public life.

Eisenstaedt captured political advocacy carried out face-to-face, and neighbor-to-neighbor, as people chatted up their favorite candidates, and did so in a manner that seems earnest but not angry. The only sign of extremism in these photos was of a man at a diner who refused to shave his beard until the country had a Republican president—and even he had a goofy grin on his face.

The notable absence in these photos is the crowds of media that are a staple of modern campaign coverage. Eisenstaedt took two portraits of men at typewriters—one was the founder of Yankee magazine and the other the publisher of a Concord newspaper—and that is the only press you see. There are no television cameras, no candidates mobbed by crowds of microphones, and obviously no one letting it rip on social media.

Of course politicians and their promises could still be exhausting. The image that leads this gallery features a man sitting in the front row, listening as a supporter makes a case for his candidate, Dwight. D. Eisenhower. The listener appears to be profoundly tired. It’s possible that he had simply come from a long day at work, but his expression seems to be that of a person who, as a resident of this small state that hosts a critical early primary every four years, had been hearing it from politicians all of his life.

Eisenhower was one of the two leading candidates on the Republican side in 1952. The other was Robert Taft, a powerful Senator from Ohio—perhaps the Taft-Hartley Act rings a bell from history class—and the son of former president William Taft. Going into the race Taft had been the favorite of the party’s conservatives.

Eisenhower beat Taft in New Hampshire, by a larger margin than expected. On the Democratic side, incumbent president Harry Truman took a surprising loss to Estes Kefauver, a Senator from Tennessee. LIFE, in its report in the magazine, noted that, “If the vote reflected the sentiment of the country, the American people are looking for new political faces.”

It turned out that the voters of 1952 did indeed want new faces. Soon after New Hampshire Truman withdrew from the race, which cleared a path for the eventual Democratic nominee, Adlai Stevenson. Eisenhower, meanwhile, rolled over Taft to capture the nomination, and then the presidency.

It’s why, all these years later, candidates still flock to New Hampshire, looking to stake an early claim.

If you want more vintage New Hampshire coverage, here’s a colorful look at Richard Nixon vs. George Romney, 1968.

A rally for Dwight Eisenhower during New Hampshire primary season, 1952.

Alfred Eisenstadt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A gathering during presidential primary season in Ossipee, New Hampshire, 1952.

Alfred Eisenstadt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Taft supporter Grace Sterling chatted up paper mill worker Quiddihy during the New Hampshire primary, 1952.

Alfred Eisenstadt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

An Eisenhower supporter called on a neighbor during the presidential primary campaign in New Hampshire, 1952.

Alfred Eisenstadt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Grace Sterling fixed her brother-in-law’s tie that announced his support for Robert Taft during the 1952 New Hampshire primary.

Alfred Eisenstadt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

David and Elizabeth Bradley visited their neighbor during the New Hampshire presidential primary campaign, New Hampshire, 1952.

Alfred Eisenstadt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

New Hampshire primary season, 1952.

Alfred Eisenstadt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Harold Young, acting as campaign manager for Eisenhower in New Hampshire primary, 1952.

Alfred Eisenstadt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Locals left a town meeting on behalf of Republican candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower during the primary election campaign in Canterbury, New Hampshire, 1952.

Alfred Eisenstadt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Robb Hansell Sagendorph, founder of Yankee Magazine, during New Hampshire primary season, 1952.

Alfred Eisenstadt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

James McLellan Langley of the Concord Monitor in New Hampshire, 1952.

Alfred Eisenstadt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Francis Grover Cleveland (left), the son of President Grover Cleveland, in New Hampshire during primary season, 1952. Cleveland, an actor, ran a theater in New Hampshire and served on a town board in Tamworth.

Alfred Eisenstadt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Samuel Marden vowed not to shave until there was a Republican president, New Hampshire, 1952.

Alfred Eisenstadt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Workers during the 1952 New Hampshire primary.

Alfred Eisenstadt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Election officials tallied returns in the New Hampshire primary, Concord, New Hampshire, 1952.

Alfred Eisenstadt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Women sat in the fire hall outside the polls during voting in the New Hampshire primary, 1952.

Alfred Eisenstadt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Republican presidential candidate Robert Taft in New Hampshire, days before he lost the primary to Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1952.

Alfred Eisenstadt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bob Marley: A Legendary Life

The following is from LIFE‘s new special issue on Bob Marley, available at newsstands and online:

Resting on a stool, acoustic guitar in hand, Bob Marley introduced what he called “this little song” to the audience at Pittsburgh’s Stanley Theatre. It was September 23, 1980, and Marley was 1,500 miles from Jamaica when he sang “Redemption Song” in public for the last time. 

Two days earlier, he had collapsed while jogging in Central Park, in New York City, and was told the cancer eating at his body and brain would kill him before the year was out. Five months earlier, he had been tear-gassed by police as he performed at an independence celebration for the hours-old nation of Zimbabwe. Four years earlier, at a rehearsal for the Smile Jamaica festival, he was shot by gunmen who were never caught. 

But as of September 23, 1980, nothing had killed this prophet. For a decade, Bob Marley had climbed higher and higher. He had infused an obscure island genre—a genre repeatedly dismissed as silly novelty music—with irrepressible melodic grace, universal appeal, and indomitable political power. He had taken the humble religious movement of Rastafari and turned it into a global campaign for justice. Along the way, he had written a score of powerful, tender love songs. Marley is reggae’s biggest star, with hundreds of millions of albums sold. Yet that simple declaration is not nearly enough to convey the size of Marley’s triumph. His songs sail through borders other rock stars can’t cross. It’s hard to imagine a group of Japanese fans traveling to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, for a concert celebrating Elvis or the Eagles. But in 2006, at an event marking what would have been Marley’s 60th birthday, a group did just that. “I feel the songs as much as anyone else,” 25-year-old Chihiro Nakamori told the New York Times. This was a quarter century after Marley’s death. His battle against Babylon—Rastafari’s term for oppressive colonial and imperialist forces—made Marley a symbol of resistance that transcends time, language, geography, and culture. He has been heralded as the second coming of Bob Dylan. His face sits side by side with Che Guevera’s on tapestries at street markets and in murals around the world. Tunisians kicked off the Arab Spring uprisings of 2010 singing “Get Up, Stand Up.” 

Marley’s mighty reach remains unparalleled. It’s a reach that spans the philosophy of “Three Little Birds,” with its coo of “Don’t worry about a thing / ’Cause every little thing is gonna be alright” and his songs of freedom: “Exodus,” “War,” “Rat Race,” “Get Up, Stand Up,” “Redemption Song.” 

As Marley sat on that stool in Pittsburgh, he urged the audience to do what he had been urging them to do his entire career. He asked the people to help him sing all he ever had, these songs of freedom. 

In less than a year, Marley would be dead, but not gone, never gone. Bob Marley has achieved immortality, lifted anew by each generation singing his songs, from Pittsburgh to Addis Ababa, Japan to Jamaica.   

Here are a selection of photos from LIFE‘s new special issue on Bob Marley:

Cover photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty

Bob Marley and The Wailers, 1964. (Left to right: Bunny Wailer, Bob Marley, Peter Tosh.)

Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Bob Marley and the Wailers in 1973, on the British television show The Old Grey Whistle Test.

Photo by Alan Messer/Shutterstock

Bob Marley performed at the Odeon in Birmingham, England, 1975.

Ian Dickson/Redferns/Getty

Bob Marley and The Wailers walked down an alley to the stage door behind the Odeon in Birmingham, England, July 18, 1975.

Ian Dickson/Redferns/Getty

Bob Marley with The Wailers in Holland in 1980.

Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy

Bob Marley and his band performed during the ‘Viva Zimbabwe’ independence celebration at Ruffaro Stadium in Zimbabwe, April 18, 1980.

Photo by William F. Campbell/Getty Images

Bob Marley, circa 1979.

PictureLux/The Hollywood Archive/Alamy

The Coldest Front: LIFE’s Coverage of the Winter War

The war that began in 1939 when Russia invaded Finland is known as The Winter War, and for good reason. It was waged almost entirely in wintertime, beginning on November 30 and ending on March 13, 1940.

The Winter War lived up to its name when it came to the battle conditions, with temperatures dropping to as low as minus-45 degrees. The photos by LIFE’s Carl Mydans capture the unique aspects of this distinct theater of war. His pictures include Finnish soldiers making use of skis, sleds, and reindeer, and nestling into foxholes dug in snow.

Mydans wrote about his experiences covering the Winter War in the Jan. 29, 1940 issue of LIFE. He said the intense cold was FInland’s greatest ally in its war against the larger and more formidable Soviet forces:

The Finns are great soldiers and probably superior to any in the Arctic. They travel light, work on skis, outmaneuver the Russians, and are fighting for their own country. The daily prayer of Finland is for snow and more cold.

While Mydans recognized that the cold helped the Finnish soldiers, he also talked about how it made his photography more challenging. In the field he carried two cameras, always keeping one inside his sheepskin coat to keep them from freezing. He had to shoot with bare hands, resulting in what he called “nipped fingers.” He wrote, “Pictures lay at every glance, but I have never suffered more in getting them.”

The last of Mydans’ reports from Finland appeared in the March 11, 1940 issue of LIFE, and headline captured the tragic situation behind his compelling images: “The Last Agony of Fighting Finland is Wrapped in the Beauty of Snow.” The war ended when Finland, after earning admiration around the world for its valiant struggle, signed a peace treaty ceding border territory to Russia. One effect of this war is that Finland’s relative success diminished world opinion of Russia’s military capabilities to the point encouraged Adolph Hitler to invade Russia about three months after the Winter War had concluded. Finland estimates 25,904 of its soldiers went dead or missing. On the Russian side the numbers are even higher—estimates vary greatly by source, but some put it at 53,000 dead or missing. While not shown in this photo set for reasons of sensitivity, Mydans’s photos included many images of the corpses of Finnish soldiers laying frozen on the ground.

Reindeer were used to transport Finnish soldiers during the Russo-Finnish War, 1940.

Carl Mydans/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Finnish soldiers during the Winter War of 1939-40,.

Carl Mydans/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A Finnish soldier during the Winter War with Russia, December 1939.

Carl Mydans/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A Finnish soldier during the Winter War with Russia, December 1939.

Carl Mydans/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A Finnish soldier during the Winter War with Russia, 1939-40.

Carl Mydans/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A Finnish soldier used a sled for transport during the Russo-Finnish War, 1939-40.

Carl Mydans/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A Finnish cavalryman during the Russo-Finnish War in Finland, December 1939.

Carl Mydans/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A Finnish soldier on the frontier near Lake Ladoga during war with Russia, 1940.

Carl Mydans/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A Finnish ski patrol on the move following the Second Battle of Suomussalmi during the Russo-Finnish War, 1939-40.

Carl Mydans/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Finnish soldiers exit a bus wearing snow gear for patrolling near the Salla front lines during the Russo-Finnish War, December 1939

Carl Mydans/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Soldiers coming out of a cabin after a sauna bath on a day the temperature was minus-30, Finland, 1940.

Carl Mydans/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A naked Finnish soldier smiled over his shoulder as he carried a pail of water through the snow to a sauna, Finland, 1940. The temperature that day was minus-30.

Carl Mydans/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A bleak landscape during the Winter War, Petsamo Province, Finland, 1940.

Carl Mydans/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Finnish soldiers watched a woman preparing a Christmas meal during the Russo-Finnish War, Dec. 23, 1939.

Carl Mydans/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A Finnish soldier guarded a line of Russian carts captured in the Second Battle of Suomussalmi during the Russo-Finnish War, 1939.

Carl Mydans/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Russian bread loaves lay scattered on the ground after a battle in Finland, December 1939.

Carl Mydans/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Members of the American Ambulance Corps carried a wounded Finnish soldier from a battle with Russia, 1939-40.

Carl Mydans/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A Finnish soldier with a whitewashed Finnish staff car (a Chevrolet) during the Winter War with Russia, December 1939.

Carl Mydans/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Finnish soldiers sheltered in a dugout near the front lines during the Winter War with Russia, 1939-40; one of the images of a woman, found on a dead Russian soldier, was inscribed “Remember, I am always with you.”

Carl Mydans/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Finnish soldiers relaxed in a dugout near the front lines during war with Russia in early 1940; two weeks later the war would turn against them and these men would be among Finland’s many war dead.

Carl Mydans/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

An Instagram Moment, Pre-Instagram: The Tri-Delt Pansy Breakfast

The scene looks like a set-up for the social media age—this despite it happening long before social media existed, and in the days when photography was still in its tripods-and-flashbulbs era.

The USC chapter of Delta Delta Delta sorority staged an annual Tri-Delt Pansy Breakfast, a tradition that began in 1923. The defining moment of the breakfast, as documented LIFE in its issue of July 23, 1945, was when seniors who had become engaged during the school year stepped through a giant ring of pansies. The significance of the pansy is that it was the official flower of the sorority.

In 1945 LIFE’s Peter Stackpole was there to capture this photogenic moment— which doesn’t seem to have actually been photographed all that often. All these years later, Stackpole’s pictures of women stepping through the pansy ring are among the few that crop up if you search for images of the breakfast online.

The ceremony is a throwback to a time when the average age of marriage for women was a shade under 22. The average actually dipped even lower in the immediate post-World War II years before climbing steadily to its current level, which is just above 28 years old. LIFE reported that at the 1945 Tri-Delt breakfast, a remarkable 48 girls passed through the ring. “Several had already been married but, romantically, did not want to miss the ceremony,” LIFE said.

The Tri-Delt tradition continued for some time—this photo from 1965 shows a ceremony that looks exactly what Stackpole captured. Today the pansy remains the official Tri-Delt flower and the celebration carries on in name, except it now honors graduating seniors, rather than just young women with rings on their fingers. But on the Instagram feed for the USC Tri-Delts, while there are plenty of pictures of sorority sisters enjoying their lives, it seems that the giant ring of pansies did not make it to the age of social media.

Sorority sisters picked pansies at the Los Angeles Country Club the day before USC’s Tri-Delt Pansy breakfast, 1945.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Tri-Delt Pansy Breakfast at USC, 1945.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Tri-Delt Pansy Breakfast at USC, 1945.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Virginia Erickson, engaged to Clair Fledderjohn, walked through a ring of pansies at the Tri-Delt Pansy Breakfast at USC, 1945.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Eileen Nilsson, engaged to Davis de Aryan, walked through a ring of flowers at the Tri-Delt Pansy Breakfast at USC, 1945.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Betty Hildreth, who married a naval ensign that March, walked through a ring of pansies at the Tri-Delt Pansy Breakfast at USC, 1945.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Marilyn Faris, engaged to Lt. Bill Osborn, walked through a ring of pansies at the Tri-Delt Pansy Breakfast at USC, 1945.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dora Meredith, engaged to Captain C.B. Hopkins, walked through a ring of pansies at the Tri-Delt Pansy Breakfast at USC, 1945.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Phyllis Dixon, engaged to Davis Lavelle, walked through a ring of pansies at the Tri-Delt Pansy Breakfast at USC, 1945.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Virginia Luff, engaged to Lt. Elwood Laine, walked through a ring of pansies at the Tri-Delt Pansy Breakfast at USC, 1945.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Helen Taylor, engaged to Lt. Bob Fogwell, walked through a ring of pansies at the Tri-Delt Pansy Breakfast at USC, 1945.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

An engaged or married senior sorority sister walked through a ring of pansies at the Tri-Delt Pansy Breakfast at USC, 1945.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Clair Eder, engaged to Clifford Barnes, walked through a ring of flowers at the Tri-Delt Pansy Breakfast at USC, 1945.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

USC student Ethel Stevens took a pansy bath during the Tri-Delt Pansy Breakfast weekend, 1945.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bangkok: “The Most Impressive Buddhist City in All the World.”

Bangkok is the largest city in Thailand and one of the most popular tourist destinations in Asia, attracting more than 22 million visitors a year. Among those who were drawn to the Thai capital over the years, on multiple occasions, were the photographers of LIFE magazine.

LIFE’s biggest Bangkok photo shoot, and the one which supplied most of the images in this story, was done by Dmitri Kessel in 1950, for a story that ran in a 1951 issue of the magazine devoted entirely to the wonders of Asia.

In that issue LIFE declared Bangkok “the most impressive Buddhist city in all the world.” Here’s that declaration in its fuller context, as part of a larger ode of praise:

The city is laced by placid canals on which housewives ride in sampans to market, scented in perfume, which the Siamese love, and lulled by the endless soft tinkling of tiny silver bells that swing from the ornate eaves of the temples. The streets swarm with yellow-robed priests.

All things in Bangkok—the temples, bells, priests and people—combine in honoring the Lord Buddha, and they make Bangkok the most impressive Buddhist city in all the world. Its serenity, almost unique in Asia’s cities now, is rooted in that religion, and because of it, Bangkok is the one city that still fulfills the most romantic fairytale dreams of the Orient. It is Buddhism’s remarkable monuments that seem to lift Bangkok up from its plain into a never-never-sky that even the most unimpressionable Westerner might think was heaven’s own curtain.

Kessel’s photographs do show Buddhist shrines, and that is what the magazine emphasized in its coverage, but he also captured everyday street scenes as his eye wandered. One of the most striking images was taken on the rural outskirts of the city, and shows local farm girls gathered underneath a billboard for Coca-Cola.

LIFE’s other ventures to Bangkok include a shoot by Howard Sochurek for a 1955 story headlined “The Path of Buddhism.”

And in 1948 Jack Birns went to Bangkok to document the combat sport known as Muay Thai. Birns’ photos did have a Buddhist element, as he captured fighters praying in the ring before going at each other. Today the sport is more familiar to Westerners, owing to the popularity of mixed martial arts and also the use of Muay Thai training in workout routines. But back in 1948 LIFE presented the sport as an exotic oddity. The magazine’s story concluded “If at the end of three five-minute rounds both principals have managed to avoid hospitalization they often embrace, possibly because they are relieved that the ordeal is over.”

A billboard on the outskirts of Bangkok, 1950.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Temple of Emerald Buddha in the center of Bangkok, 1950.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The inner courtyard near Buddhitst shrine in Bangkok, 1950.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Buddha in the caves of Phetchaburi, south of Bangkok, was the destination of many pilgrimages, 1950.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Ruins of the 37-foot Buddha in Bangkok, 1950.

Dmirtri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

In Bangkok a man sold melons in a floating market, 1950.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Fishing in canal near Don Mueang airport, which serves Bangkok, 1950.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Farm girls going fishing in a canal near Bangkok, 1950.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Chinese dyers with their cotton material hanging in the yards, Bangkok, 1950.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A mother gave her baby a bath in Bangkok, 1950.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Chinese graveyard in center of Bangkok, 1950.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bangkok, 1950.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bangkok, 1950.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Arann Reongchai (left) and Prasong Chaimeeboon during a Muay Thai boxing match, 1948.

Jack Birns/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The ref counts out a competitor in a Muay Thai match, Bangkok, 1948.

Jack Birns/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Monks begging for food at dawn on main thoroughfare of Bangkok, 1954.

Howard Sochurek/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Monks walking outside a Buddhist temple in Bangkok, 1954.

Howard Sochurek/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A billboard in Bangkok, 1950.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Billboard advertising in Bangkok, 1950.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Cockfighting in Bangkok, 1950.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A canal vendor sold bean sprouts in Bangkok, 1950.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A water buffalo, Bangkok, 1950.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

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