Page 125 – LIFE

The Men Who Would Be 007: LIFE Behind the Scenes at James Bond Auditions

January 17, 2020April 1, 2013 by

In the early 1960s, movie producers adapting Ian Fleming’s novels about a suave British spy named James Bond plucked a relative unknown, Sean Connery, from obscurity and offered him the role of a lifetime. When Connery left the franchise after five movies (although he would briefly be back, in 1971, in Diamonds Are Forever, and again in 1983 for Never Say Never Again) the hunt for another Bond was on.

In 1967 LIFE sent photographer Loomis Dean to casting sessions for the James Bond movie, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. The magazine published a handful of those photos in an article on the film and on the Bond phenomenon. But some of Dean’s choicest frames Bond wannabes suiting up, brandishing guns, sipping faux martinis, and wooing women never ran in the magazine.

Here, LIFE.com presents photos from those 1967 auditions, featuring the five top candidates including George Lazenby, who would eventually win the coveted role.

[Buy the LIFE book, 50 Years of James Bond.]

Critical reception of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service has hardly been uniform. There was much initial grumbling, for example, about Lazenby’s performance—especially in light of Connery effectively defining the role for a generation of moviegoers. Lazenby was a 28-year-old Australian model living in London, with virtually no acting experience outside TV commercials. But there was something about George Lazenby that placed him a notch above his competitors. Particularly impressive was his physical prowess. (In a subsequent audition to test his fighting skills, Lazenby reportedly broke a stuntman’s nose. That clinched it.)

“I’m really looking forward to being Bond, for the bread and the birds,” he told LIFE after his casting.

Meanwhile, the years have been kind to the 1969 flick. Entertainment Weekly, for example, ranked On Her Majesty’s Secret Service the sixth best of the Bond series, which now includes more than 20 feature films and is one of the highest-grossing movie franchises of all time.

A composite image of the five top candidates (including ultimate choice George Lazenby, bottom right). Published in the October 11, 1968, issue of LIFE.

Loomis Dean/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

John Richardson during James Bond auditions, 1967.

Loomis Dean/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service director Peter R. Hunt oversaw a test love scene between John Richardson and an actress, moving her leg just so.

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John Richardson during James Bond auditions.

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James Bond audition candidate John Richardson (left), in profile, 1967.

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John Richardson reacted as his screen-test costar pulled out a gun.

Loomis Dean/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Director Peter Hunt studied John Richardson during his audition, 1967.

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After he lost out on the Bond role, Richardson appeared in On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (1970) and a string of Italian movies.

Loomis Dean/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

James Bond audition finalist Anthony Rogers, 1967.

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Anthony Rogers and an actress during a screen test.

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Anthony Rogers smoked a cigarette during his James Bond audition, 1967.

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Anthony Rogers during his James Bond audition, 1967.

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Robert Campbell during James Bond auditions, 1967.

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Director Peter R. Hunt helped Robert Campbell get into a shoulder holster, 1967.

Loomis Dean/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Robert Campbell checked a page of lines during a James Bond audition, 1967.

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James Bond hopeful Robert Campbell adjusted his shirt and jacket, 1967.

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Robert Campbell looked in the mirror between scenes for his James Bond audition, 1967.

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Robert Campbell during a kissing test, opposite actress France Anglade, 1967.

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Hans de Vries during his James Bond audition, 1967.

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Hans De Vries and France Anglade, James Bond audition, 1967.

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Hans de Vries during his James Bond audition, 1967.

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George Lazenby during James Bond audition, 1967.

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George Lazenby fiddled with a knife while chatting with Bond director Peter R. Hunt, 1967.

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George Lazenby goofed off behind the scenes of his screen test.

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George Lazenby twirled a gun beside potential Bond Girl Marie-France Boyer, 1967.

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George Lazenby during auditions for the role of James Bond, 1967.

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George Lazenby and Bond Girl hopeful Agneta Eckemyr, 1967.

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George Lazenby leaned against a bar during a moment away from James Bond auditions, 1967.

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George Lazenby, 1967.

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Brigitte Bardot: Classic Photos of the Original ‘Sex Kitten’

January 17, 2020April 1, 2013 by

Decades after her acting and singing careers came to an end, Brigitte Bardot is more recently known for her animal-rights activism and for her frequent scrapes with the French authorities over her passionate, public denunciations of what she considers the “Islamification” of her native France. (She has been fined multiple times for “inciting racial hatred” in books and speeches, arguing in 2003, for example, that France has “given in to a subterranean, dangerous and uncontrolled infiltration which not only resists adjusting to our laws and customs but which will, as the years pass, attempt to impose its own.”)

All these years later, however, it’s still difficult for anyone who was not alive at the time to grasp the galvanizing effect that Bardot had as an actress and as a sex symbol on moviegoers around the world in the 1950s and early 1960s. Here, LIFE.com celebrates the young Bardot with a series of pictures—most of which never ran in LIFE—made by Loomis Dean in 1958.

In a June 1958 article titled “The Charged Charms of Brigitte,” LIFE waxed lyrical (and, to contemporary ears, a touch patronizing, if not downright sexist) about the 24-year-old actress’ effect on American moviegoers and critics:

Not since the Statue of Liberty has a French girl lit such fires in America, and Brigitte Bardot does not just stand there like a statue. She moves, she wriggles, and her clothes are as often off as on. One of her films, “And God Created Woman,” has played for eight solid months in one New York theater and raked in some $2 million in the U.S. and, with her four other current films, has jammed art theaters until people complain they are clogging up culture. What Bardot has, which is more than sex, still mystifies many who stop to think about it . . . Meanwhile, the Bardot boom balloons. With four new films to open before years’ end, she’s finishing a fifth, “The Lady and the Puppet” [“La Femme et le Pantin,” but often billed simply as “The Female” for the English-speaking world], made in Spain where these pictures were taken.
In gaining her present eminence, Brigitte Bardot has had certain advantages beyond those she was born with. Like the European sports car, she has arrived on the American scene at a time when the American public is ready, even hungry, for something racier and more realistic than the familiar domestic product. Americana actresses, like American four-door sedans, seem to have grown more and more standardized in styling.
No Hollywood girl can play a mechanic’s wife or even an early western rancher’s daughter without being made up as precisely as the Marquise de Pompadour and garbed like a Main Line heiress. By contrast, an actress who lets her hair get in her eyes, who looks as though she could perspire at least lightly and who wriggles greedily as she kisses a man comes as a revelation.
But none of this really explains why Brigitte Bardot has been so successful. Other foreign actresses have had the same opportunity to profit from public receptiveness and the lack of censorship but none of them has been able to match her accomplishments. Brigitte, also known as B.B. and the Sex Kitten, has not lifted a finger to achieve publicity. In fact, she treats all reporters like net men from the city pound. . . . The male viewer, having been frankly invited to admire the lush Bardot charms, is soon forced to an uneasy suspicion that he is a wicked old man.

And on it goes—an endless stream of metaphors that remind us of why, in part, Bardot left acting behind when she was not yet 40 years old. She had helped to create and to define the sex-goddess archetype in the movies, but found herself almost entirely unable to break out of that mold no matter how “serious” her roles became or how nuanced her performances actually were.

In the end, then, if nothing else, the pictures in this gallery help explain why most critics and most audiences were, perhaps, unable to see beyond the sheer sensuality that Brigitte Bardot exuded, both onscreen and off. After all, for a while there in the middle part of the last century, she might just have been the sexiest woman on earth.

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

Brigitte Bardot on set with actor Michel Roux, 1958.

Loomis Dean The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Brigitte Bardot on location in Spain in 1958.

Loomis Dean The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Brigitte Bardot photographed at the time she was making the film “La Femme et le Pantin” in Spain, 1958.

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Brigitte Bardot photographed at the time she was making the film, “La Femme et le Pantin” Spain, 1958.

Loomis Dean The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Brigitte Bardot photographed at the time she was making the film “La Femme et le Pantin” in Spain, 1958.

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Brigitte Bardot plays the guitar while on the set of the film “La Femme et le Pantin” in Spain, 1958.

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Brigitte Bardot on the set of the film “La Femme et le Pantin” in Spain, 1958.

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Brigitte Bardot checks her hair and makeup on the set of the film “La Femme et le Pantin” in Spain, 1958.

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Brigitte Bardot (holding a copy of LIFE magazine) looks at a photographic slide on the set of the film “La Femme et le Pantin” in Spain, 1958.

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Brigitte Bardot on the set of the film “La Femme et le Pantin” in Spain, 1958.

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Brigitte Bardot photographed between takes, Spain, 1958.

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Brigitte Bardot with co-star Antonio Vilar on the set of the film “La Femme et le Pantin.”

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In Bardot’s films she often ended up lounging on a bed.

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Brigitte Bardot during break on location in Spain, 1958.

Loomis Dean The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

LIFE’s Best Baseball Pictures

April 13, 2023March 31, 2013 by

LIFE magazine’s coverage of the American pastime while always steeped in a genuine appreciation for the nuances, intricacies and thrills of the game was often as much personality-driven as performance-driven.

George Silk, Ralph Morse, Mark Kauffman, Francis Miller and the other photographers who so frequently covered baseball for LIFE beautifully captured the action unfolding on the field. But they were also photojournalists: pretty much every photographer on the LIFE staff who was shooting baseball in the 1940s and ’50s (and even into the ’60s) also had occasion, throughout their careers, to photograph . . . well, you name it. War, science, technology, the arts, pop culture, politics, other sports from yachting to boxing to golf: the breadth of the subjects covered by LIFE, and the necessity for LIFE’s photographers to ably capture the heart of the matter whatever the matter happened to be meant that baseball was a bit more than just a game. For LIFE’s editors, writers and photographers, it was one more window into the human spirit.

Here, LIFE.com offers the best baseball pictures made for LIFE, from the late Forties to the early Seventies. The great players one would expect are, of course, here: Jackie Robinson, Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Willie Mays, Ted Williams and other Hall of Famers make their obligatory appearances. But above and beyond the sheer, phenomenal athletic talent on display (talent gauged by records set, titles won, World Series rings worn) there is also another, less-quantifiable element of the game portrayed in most of these pictures an element of individual and collective striving on the part of players, managers, owners and, of course, fans. For lack of a better word, that element is drama, and it’s here in abundance.

Finally, viewers will note and many will no doubt grumble about the preponderance of New York players and teams represented in these photos. More than half of the photographs either include players in Yankee, Dodger or Giant uniforms, or depict a scene in which New York players, even if unseen, either have or had a central role. In our defense we’ll just note that, during the years in which these photos were made, New York teams were hard to ignore. Between 1941 and 1956, the Yankees and Dodgers played each other in the World Series seven times.

So, yeah. There might be a little too much New York here for some. But if it’s any consolation, there’s nary a Met in sight.

After umpire William Grieve issues a walk to a Washington pinch-hitter, Red Sox manager Joe McCarthy and catcher Birdie Tebbetts express their doubts about Grieve’s judgment, 1949.

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1960 World Series, Pittsburgh

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Yankee pitcher Don Larsen talks to the press after throwing a perfect game—still the only perfect game in postseason history—against the Dodgers in the 1956 World Series.

George Silk/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Brooklyn Dodger rookie hopefuls work out at spring training, 1948.

George Silk/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Jackie Robinson, the great disruptor, dances off of third in the 8th inning of Game 3 of the 1955 World Series.

Ralph Morse/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Roy Campanella (left) talks with an awed fan during spring training in 1959.

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Red Sox star Ted Williams, all of 22 years old, demonstrates his batting technique in 1941.

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In one of the most poignant pictures ever made of a great athlete in decline, 33-year-old Mickey Mantle—his electrifying talents blunted by injuries, age and years of alcohol abuse—tosses his helmet away in disgust after a weak at-bat at Yankee Stadium, June 1965.

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Dodger southpaw and 1955 World Series MVP Johnny Podres reads about his own and his teammates’ exploits while visiting a store in his hometown of Witherbee, New York, a small mining town in the Adirondacks, a few hundred miles north of Brooklyn.

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Hall of Famer, linchpin of the Big Red Machine and the man ESPN once pegged as the greatest catcher in history, Johnny Bench displays the intensity that made him such a force on the diamond, Cincinnati, 1970.

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Milwaukee Braves fans listen to a game against the Dodgers in 1956. The Dodgers ended the season one game ahead of Milwaukee in the National League, then lost in seven to the Yankees in the ’56 Series.

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Leroy “Satchel” Paige, ageless relief pitcher for the Cleveland Indians, watches his teammates practice in 1948.

George Silk/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A rapt audience in a Chicago bar watches the 1952 Subway Series between the Yankees and Dodgers.

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Willie Mays, arguably the greatest all-around ballplayer in major league history, poses for LIFE’s Alfred Eisenstaedt in 1954, the year the Giants won the World Series the Series against the Indians in which Mays made his legendary, running, back-to-home-plate catch of a long Vic Wertz drive in the far reaches of the Polo Grounds.

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Yogi Berra takes issue with the umpire’s “safe” call after Jackie Robinson’s electrifying steal of home in Game 1 of the 1955 World Series.

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Ailing baseball great Babe Ruth thanks the crowd at Yankee Stadium for their ovation on “Babe Ruth Day,” April 27, 1947.

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Jackie Robinson during filming of The Jackie Robinson Story (in which he starred), 1950.

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Little Leaguers in Manchester, N.H., dress in a schoolroom before their first game of the season, as their formidable leader, Dick Williams, demands to know where the rest of the uniforms are.

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LIFE With Horace the Housebroken Hare

January 16, 2020March 22, 2013 by

Carl Mydans belongs on anyone’s short list of the 20th century’s finest photojournalists. The Boston native chronicled downtrodden migrant farmers in New England and the American South during the Great Depression, covered the Soviet invasion of Finland in 1939, documented Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s legendary “return” to the Philippines in 1945 and was aboard the USS Missouri when a Japanese delegation signed surrender documents, ending the Second World War.

In 1956, Mydans also memorably captured the mercurial essence of an utterly compelling figure who, in his own time and in his own way, was as fascinating as any that ever graced the pages of LIFE: Horace the housebroken hare.

The notion of a wild hare (distinguished from a mere rabbit by its longer ears, longer legs and other physical traits) living in one’s house does not sit well with a lot of people. Men and women who are perfectly content to let a cat or dog roam around their homes will shiver in something like revulsion at the idea of a virile, bright-eyed hare hopping blithely through the kitchen, hanging out in the bathroom or sitting quietly on the living room sofa.

Judging by the mood of Mydans’ photographs, however, Horace and his people—the Webbs of Dublin, Ireland—appear to have come to an amicable agreement about how to get along under the same roof. In fact, in most of these pictures, it’s evident that the hare holds sway in the household, and the humans are there, for the most part, simply to do Horace’s bidding.

In its March 12, 1956, issue, LIFE shared the housebroken hare’s tale and Mydans’ pictures with the magazine’s readers:

It is the usual fate of the Irish hare, a wild strain betwixt the Scottish and European varieties, to sleep by day in the hedgerows and by night to scurry through plowed fields in search of leafy delicacies. To live long he must be a wary hare, on guard always against man, his guns and dogs.

This might have been the life of Horace, the loveable hare, had he not fallen three years ago into the hands of Cecil S. Webb, director of the Dublin Zoo. Webb and his wife took Horace into their home to study the ways of small wild animals. They kept him on … because they had acquired a wonderful pet, as intelligent, playful and domesticated as any dog.

Horace loves to eat from his master’s mouth, kick and drum against him in mock battle, bound about the house from chair to bed to bureau. And hare, a favorite food all over Europe, has no place on the Webbs’ dining table.

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

Cecil S. Webb, director of the Dublin Zoo, with Horace the hare.

Carl Mydans The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

When he wanted to get in, Horace drummed his paws against the door.

Carl Mydans The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Horace the hare sprawled out on the kitchen floor in home of Cecil S. Webb, director of the Dublin Zoo, 1956.

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Horace the Irish hare took a drink, 1956.

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Horace the Irish hare, 1956.

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Horace the hare and Cecil S. Webb, director of the Dublin Zoo, 1956.

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Horace the Irish hare, 1956.

Carl Mydans The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

When the Webbs played table tennis, Horace took his place at midcourt and watched the ball flash by. Sometimes he caught it and ran off with it.

Carl Mydans The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Horace the Irish hare in midair, 1956.

Carl Mydans The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Horace liked to sit on a rug while Webb pulled him rapidly around the room. He was seldom thrown from the rug, balancing cleverly as it made sharp turns.

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Horace the Irish hare in mid-snack, 1956.

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Horace the Irish hare, 1956.

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When bedtime came, Horace usually acted as if he was asleep and forced Webb to pick him up and carry him to an outside run.

Carl Mydans The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Portrait of Horace the Irish hare, 1956.

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Horace the Irish hare navigated the stairs in home of Cecil S. Webb, director of the Dublin Zoo, 1956.

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Willie Mays: Photos of the Say Hey Kid, On and Off the Diamond

August 11, 2021March 22, 2013 by

With all due respect to Hank Aaron, Stan Musial, and even Babe Ruth, Willie Mays was the greatest all-around player baseball has ever seen. The epitome of the “five tool” threat he could run, throw, field and hit for average and with astonishing power Mays bedeviled opponents and thrilled fans for more than two decades.

Legends vary about who first bestowed the famous nickname, the “Say Hey Kid,” on Mays when he was still a young player in New York. By the time he was playing in San Francisco, after the Giants’ move west in the late Fifties, it was clear that, whatever he was called, Mays was on track to challenge the most hallowed records in the game. As it happened, he retired with some mind-boggling numbers, including: 660 home runs, 3,283 hits, and a record-tying 24 All-Star appearances.

Here, LIFE.com offers a gallery of photos of Willie Mays by LIFE photographers Loomis Dean, Alfred Eisenstaedt, and Ralph Morse from the ’50s and ’60s an era when the man’s preternatural talent and infectious joy on the diamond provided millions with one more giant reason to love the game.

Twenty-two-year-old Willie Mays at spring training in Arizona in 1954, the year the Giants won the World Series—the sole championship of Mays’ long career.

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Wlliie Mays, spring training, Arizona, 1954

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Willie Mays signed autographs for fans, 1954. “I’m not sure what the hell charisma is, but I get the feeling it’s Willie Mays,” Reds’ slugger Ted “Big Klu” Kluszewski once said.

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Wilie Mays, Leo Durocher and Whitey Lockman, spring training, 1954

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Willie Mays, San Francisco Giants, 1964.

Ralph Morse/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Willie Mays at home in Harlem with his landlady, Ann Goosby, in 1954. A profile of Mays published that year in LIFE pointed out that Mrs. Goosby “cooks his meals, keeps his clothes clean and generally takes care of” the young star.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Willie Mays clowned with teammate and fellow Hall of Famer, Monte Irvin. “I’ve got a couple of kids, 6 and 10, but when I take a road trip I’ve got another one on my hands. Willie is 23 years old and he’ll drink maybe seven big sodas and a dozen Cokes in 12 hours.” — Irvin, quoted in the Sept. 13, 1954 edition of LIFE

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Willie Mays at home, 1954.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Willie Mays trotted in from center field, 1954

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Willie Mays in the batting cage, 1954. “God gave Willie the instincts of a ballplayer. All I had to do was add a little practical advice about wearing his pants higher to give the pitchers a smaller strike zone.”—manager Leo Durocher

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Willie Mays, 1954.

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Willie Mays and teammates in the dugout, spring training, 1954.

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Willie Mays, spring training, 1954.

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Willie Mays in the outfield, 1964.

Ralph Morse/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Willie Mays was besieged by fans after a game.

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Stars Behind Bars: Meet the Prisonaires

January 17, 2020March 20, 2013 by

For much of the 20th century and well into the 21st, much of popular music rock and roll, R&B, hip hop has banked on the appeal of the rebel. Arguably no single label in the history of music had as many true hell-raisers and genuine pioneers as Sam Phillips’ Sun Records. Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and, of course, Elvis Presley were all early Sun stars, and their personae all contained that element of danger.

But another Sun act, signed to the label in the early 1950s, was comprised of five men who made Sun’s more famous bad boys look like proverbial choir boys. The doo-wop group the Prisonaires were actual prisoners, all of them doing hard time for serious offenses. Here, LIFE.com offers a series of unpublished pictures of the Prisonaires from 1953.

The group was led by Johnny Bragg—who, by the time LIFE’s Robert W. Kelley was photographing the quintet, had been an inmate at Tennessee State Penitentiary for a solid decade; he was convicted at the age of 17 on six charges of rape. The other Prisonaires included convicted murderers Ed Thurman and William Stewart, Marcell Sanders (involuntary manslaughter) and John Drue Jr. (locked up for for larceny). One of their very first singles, “Just Walkin’ in the Rain,” written by Bragg and fellow inmate Robert Riley, was a solid hit for Sun Records in 1953 and three years later was an absolute smash for Johnnie Ray, his version eventually reaching #2 on the Billboard chart and #1 in England.

The Prisonaires never became megastars, but even while incarcerated they definitely had fans, sold records and were often allowed out of Tennessee State (under guard, of course) to perform at VFW halls, in churches, on TV and, frequently, at the prison warden’s home, where they’d sing for the warden, James Edwards, his wife and their two kids, Joyce and Jim.

Members of the incarcerated musical group the Prisonaires, Tennessee, 1953.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The incarcerated musical group the Prisonaires performed for other inmates, Tennessee State Penitentiary, 1953.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Robert Riley, serving 10 to 16 years for housebreaking, sat in his cell composing music, Tennessee State Penitentiary, 1953. Riley co-wrote the hit song, “Just Walkin’ in the Rain.”

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Members of the incarcerated musical group the Prisonaires, Tennessee, 1953.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Prisoners talked through heavy screens to friends and relatives, Tennessee State Penitentiary, 1953.

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Prisonaire William Stewart and night warden, Tennessee State Penitentiary, 1953.

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Prisoners talked through heavy screens to friends and relatives, Tennessee State Penitentiary, 1953.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Members of the incarcerated musical group the Prisonaires rehearsed in the prison auditorium, Tennessee, 1953.

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Members of the incarcerated musical group the Prisonaires, Tennessee, 1953.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Prisonaires left Tennessee State Penitentiary for a performance, 1953.

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The Prisonaires at Kane Street Baptist Church, Nashville, Tenn., 1953.

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The Prisonaires

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Prisonaires at Kane Street Baptist Church, Nashville, Tenn., 1953.

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The Prisonaires’ guard rested at Kane Street Baptist Church, Nashville, Tenn., 1953.

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The Prisonaires performed at Tennessee State Penitentiary warden James Edwards’ home, Nashville, Tenn., 1953.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Prisonaires under the watchful eyes of guards, Nashville, Tenn., 1953.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Prisonaire Marcell Sanders, Tennessee State Penitentiary, 1953.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Prisonaire Johnny Bragg, Tennessee State Penitentiary, 1953.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Prisonaire and convicted murderer Ed Thurman inspected cloth in prison textile school, Tennessee State Penitentiary, 1953.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Members of the incarcerated musical group the Prisonaires, Tennessee, 1953.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Prisoners at the Tennessee State Penitentiary auditorium, 1953.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Members of the Prisonaires prepared to perform, Tennessee, 1953.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Prisonaires posed with sheet music of their first hit song, Tennessee, 1953.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Writing music, Tennessee State Penitentiary, 1953.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

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LIFE’s Best Baseball Pictures

LIFE With Horace the Housebroken Hare

Willie Mays: Photos of the Say Hey Kid, On and Off the Diamond

Stars Behind Bars: Meet the Prisonaires

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