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‘Spartacus’: LIFE Behind the Scenes of a Kubrick Classic

January 30, 2022November 6, 2012 by

Decades after its 1960 debut, Spartacus is no longer a mere movie. Instead, the strange, flawed, enthralling sword-and-sandal epic long ago entered that thorny realm where unclassifiable cinematic touchstones (Vertigo, Night of the Hunter, Brazil, et al.) reside. Directed by a 32-year-old Kubrick with only two feature films under his belt, produced by and starring mid-century superstar Kirk Douglas and featuring a galaxy of acting luminaries, the 1960 blockbuster has been exalted, imitated and parodied; honored, derided and dissected; and after all these years, it still achieves what most three-hour, big-budget historical dramas can only dream of: it’s entertaining as hell.

Here, LIFE.com presents rare and unpublished photos from the Spartacus set by LIFE’s J.R. Eyerman, who, along with writer David Zeitlin, spent time chronicling behind-the-scenes action on the massive, $12 million production.

Critics were sharply divided over Spartacus when it was first released. TIME magazine called it “a new kind of Hollywood movie: a super-spectacle with spiritual vitality and moral force.” The New York Times‘ long-time film critic, meanwhile, dismissed the movie as “heroic humbug.” Over the years, most reviewers and movie fans, alike, have come around to the view that, while the film has its problems its pacing alone drives some viewers to distraction Spartacus remains one the most successful admixtures of action-flick and high-minded drama ever attempted .

The film’s eponymous star, Kirk Douglas, had teamed with Kubrick a few years earlier, in 1957, on one of the most powerful anti-war movies ever made the lean masterpiece, Paths of Glory. Everything about Spartacus was different, more complex, bigger than that first Douglas-Kubrick pairing. (Spartacus was produced by Douglas’ own production company, Bryna Productions, in association with Universal Studios.)

Still, Kubrick’s famously fertile filmmaker’s mind adapted itself to the vast production’s scope. For example, during the filming of one enormous battle scene, Kubrick placed “numbered signs among the ‘corpses’,” LIFE reported, “so that he could holler, ‘You there, next to number 163, move over or look dead or something.’ Otherwise, he would have hollered ‘you there’ and nine guys would have hollered back ‘Who, me?’ When he was ready to shoot they took the numbers away and shot. As a technique it worked fine, but on-screen the scene proved disappointing so they shot it all over again, this time indoors at Universal’s Hollywood studio.”

Along with the photos that offer insights into Kubrick’s method, this gallery also features images that, for film buffs, resonate with far more import than the simple action depicted. For instance, one Eyerman photograph captures one of the most memorable scenes in the entire movie, involving the character of Crassus (Laurence Olivier) attempting to seduce his slave, Antonius (played by Tony Curtis), during a glacially paced bathing scene. In an often-quoted exchange, Crassus quizzes Antonius on the latter’s taste in food—specifically, how the extremely able-bodied slave feels about gastropods and mollusks.

“Do you consider the eating of oysters to be moral and the eating of snails to be immoral?” Crassus asks, and then points out that “taste is not the same as appetite, and therefore not a question of morals.” When Antonius replies that such an assertion “could be argued so, master,” Crassus shares what was surely the worst-kept secret of the ancient world: “My taste,” he says, “includes both snails . . . and oysters.”

Its sheer, occasionally kitschy entertainment value notwithstanding, Spartacus is a movie with a message that today comes across as somehow melodramatic Slavery Bad, Freedom Good and politically pointed; in fact, the anti-authoritarian rumblings that inform so much of the film are, in retrospect, utterly unsurprising. The screenplay was written by the great Dalton Trumbo, after all perhaps the most famous of the men and women blacklisted during the “Red Scare” McCarthy era that rocked Hollywood, splintered friendships and torpedoed promising careers.

Trumbo, a member of the Communist party for five years in the 1940s, was blacklisted after refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, and spent 11 months in a federal penitentiary. Many of his later screenplays were written under pseudonyms. But Kirk Douglas insisted that Trumbo’s credit for Spartacus be made public — an act of conscience that is often cited as the beginning of the end for the blacklist era.

“Senator McCarthy was an awful man,” Douglas once said. “He blacklisted the writers who wouldn’t obey his edict. The heads of the studios were hypocrites who went along with it. Too many people were using false names. I was embarrassed. I was young enough to be impulsive, so even though I was warned against it, I used [Trumbo’s] real name on the screen.”

Long before his noble gesture came to light, however, there was still a movie to be made from Trumbo’s script, and not everyone was certain that the hugely ambitious, expensive effort would bear fruit.

“Douglas,” wrote David Zeitlin in notes to his editors at LIFE, a year before the film’s release, “I am sure will once again be old blood and guts, gnashing teeth, and Big Hero. [But] I still have considerable respect for director Stanley Kubrick. We shall see.”

All these years later, the verdict is in: as cinematic landmark and popular entertainment, Spartacus still delivers.

Laurence Olivier (right) on the set of Spartacus, 1959.

J.R. Eyerman Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Extras on the set of Spartacus, 1959.

J.R. Eyerman Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus.

J.R. Eyerman Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A boom microphone slips into the frame of a photo capturing the famous “snails and oysters” scene between Laurence Olivier and Tony Curtis.

J.R. Eyerman Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A view of the gladiator ring on the set of Spartacus, 1959.

J.R. Eyerman Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Kirk Douglas on the set of Spartacus, 1959.

J.R. Eyerman Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Kirk Douglas and Woody Strode on the set of Spartacus in 1959.

J.R. Eyerman Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

World War II vet, decathlete and football star-turned-actor Woody Strode, as the gladiator Draba.

J.R. Eyerman Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Kirk Douglas and athlete-turned-actor Woody Strode battle in a scene from Spartacus.

J.R. Eyerman Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus.

J.R. Eyerman Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Of the scene above, LIFE wrote: “Shockers abound [in the film] … as Spartacus the slave leader deals a grisly death to cruel Marcellus, the gladiator trainer (Charles McGraw), by holding his head in a hot pot of stew until he perishes in the greasy stuff.”

J.R. Eyerman Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Spartacus’ Marcellus the gladiator trainer receives his just desserts.

J.R. Eyerman Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Having dispatched the luckless gladiator trainer, Marcellus, confident slaves prepare to launch their inspiring, albeit doomed rebellion.

J.R. Eyerman Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The Roman Senate.

J.R. Eyerman Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Characters played by Laurence Olivier and Peter Ustinov—as Batiatus, the owner of a gladiator school—confer during a scene. Ustinov won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his performance,

J.R. Eyerman Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

LIFE With Linda Christian: Rare Photos of the First ‘Bond Girl’

August 12, 2021November 6, 2012 by

Each and every time a new James Bond movie comes to the big screen, media everywhere take a loving look back at the franchise, including the stock figure of the Bond Girl.

The voluptuous Swiss actress Ursula Andress is invariably cited as the “first Bond Girl,” and her initial appearance in Dr. No (1962) walking out of the sea in a white bikini is rightly touted as one of the most eye-popping entrances in movie history.

It’s worth pointing out, however, that while Andress was the first big-screen Bond Girl, another actress largely forgotten today but well-known in the 1940s and ’50s can lay claim to truly originating the onscreen Bond Girl persona.

Discovered in her native Mexico by the film star Errol Flynn, who reportedly became her lover and convinced her to move to Hollywood when she was barely out of high school, Linda Christian starred as “Valerie Mathis” in a TV adaptation of Ian Fleming’s first Bond novel, Casino Royale, in 1954—almost a full decade before Andress starred as Honey Ryder in Dr. No.

In that 1954 Royale, none other than Peter Lorre played Le Chiffre, while Bond (called “Jimmy” Bond throughout!) was played by the likable and, it must be said, not-very-debonair American actor, Barry Nelson.

Linda Christian’s life and career before landing the Mathis role was fairly dramatic in its own right. She was married to the movie star Tyrone Power for seven years, from 1949 to 1956, which in and of itself made her something of a household name. Her first significant national exposure, meanwhile, came in the pages of none other than LIFE magazine in 1945.

The Sept. 3, 1945, issue of LIFE introduced Linda Christian to its millions of readers this way:

Almost before the ink was dry on headlines announcing the crash of the first atomic bomb, Hollywood had turned the event to good publicity. At the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio Miss Linda Christians, a hitherto obscure starlet, was solemnly proclaimed the Anatomic Bomb. Half-Mexican, half-Dutch, Linda was born in Tampico, Mexico, thinks it was 22 years ago. Her real name is Blanca Rose Welter. Her father, an oil executive, traveled widely, taking his family with him. They were in Palestine in 1941 during a bomb scare. Linda was evacuated to Mexico with a bad case of malaria, recovered, went to Hollywood to join her brother, got a job modeling hats, was seen and singed by M-G-M. So far she has been in no pictures, the publicity role of the Anatomic Bomb being her first important assignment. With long residence in Holland, Italy, France and Switzerland, Linda thinks Hollywood is wonderful.

A few things to note about that little write-up: first, LIFE called her Linda “Christians,” instead of “Christian.” Second, her given name was Blanca Rosa, not Rose, Welter. Third, Christian actually had appeared in a few “pictures” by the time she graced the pages of LIFE albeit she went uncredited in her first four movies.

Christian’s marriage to Power was a match made in gossip-page heaven. She was 26 when they wed; he was 35. Before then she was best-known for her supporting role in the 1948 , Tarzan and the Mermaids. He was a bone fide movie star and leading man, a huge box office draw, a decorated WWII veteran and one of the few matinee idols of the ’30s and ’40s who constantly sought meatier, grittier film roles than the standard “pretty boy” are he was used to, while also spending significant time away from Hollywood to appear on the stage in London and on Broadway. He and Christian had two children together before their divorce in 1956. Tyrone Power died of a heart attack in 1958 when he was just 44 years old.

Linda Christian continued to act, although somewhat irregularly and more often than not in (terribly received) foreign films, well into the 1980s. She was married once more, to another actor, for a year in the early 1960s, and died in 2011 in Palm Desert, Calif., at the age of 87.

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

Linda Christian, 1945

Bob Landry The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Linda Christian, 1945.

Bob Landry The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Darkness Descends: The 1959 Blackout in New York

January 30, 2022November 3, 2012 by

In August of 1959, a blackout hit New York City. Power was out for 13 hours—not that long when viewed in retrospect. Though if you were in the middle of that blackout, and especially if you were operating a store that sold whipped cream and custard, (see photo gallery) you might have looked at it differently.

For its part, LIFE described the blackout in its Aug. 31, 1959, issue this way:

In the heart of glittering Manhattan island, a 500-block area lay swathed in darkness. Street lamps were out and no light shone from the many-windowed apartment houses. In their blacked-out homes, a half million new Yorkers made do without radio or TV. Those who ventured out found cafeterias taking on the candlelit airs of tea shoppes and taverns offering unrefrigerated beer without the usual juke-box blare. In the streets, people enjoyed watching police trying to unsnarl the minor traffic jams that resulted from the lack of traffic lights. Or they simply gathered in little groups to savor the strange aura of a seemingly lifeless city.

A massive failure had cut off almost all electricity in the section that bounded Central Park and for almost 13 hours the area was without power. The huge use of air conditioners and refrigerators brought on by a heat wave might have been the basic cause of the failure. When the lights went on, the city congratulated itself that there had been no panic and little misbehavior. In an area where crime incidence is fairly high, police reported only a few misdemeanors and a couple of picked pockets.

As a rule, photographers need good lighting to make their pictures, but in this case, a blackout created a notable exception.

New York City Blackout, 1959.

Joe Scherschel Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Original caption: “Candlelit automat provides dinner with a touch of old world atmosphere. Local storekeepers ran out of candles and flashlights in a couple of hours.”

Joe Scherschel Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

New York City Blackout, 1959.

Joe Scherschel Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

New York City Blackout 1959

Joe Scherschel Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

New York City Blackout, 1959.

Joe Scherschel Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

LIFE on the Campaign Trail: Classic Photos

August 11, 2021October 27, 2012 by

“A national political campaign,” H.L. Mencken once observed, “is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and a couple of hangings thrown in.”

Baptisms and hangings aside, Mencken’s characterization of a campaign as a circus-like affair alternately thrilling, entertaining, silly and (occasionally) a matter of life and death still strikes a chord. Just like at the circus, during any hard-fought, high-profile campaign we watch, shake our heads and hold our breath, stunned by the spectacle and wondering how on earth the performers can keep going day after day, night after night.

But it’s also worth pointing out that, in some very elemental ways, pretty much all American political campaigns are very much alike, and (like circuses) they have looked and felt the same for as long as Democrats and Republicans have been vying for the House, the Senate, governors’ mansions and, of course, the Oval Office.

Here, LIFE.com presents photos of American politicians on the campaign trail: famous leaders and largely forgotten pols shaking hands, kissing babies, eating everything put in front of them, traveling in planes, trains and automobiles in search of one more vote. It’s not pretty but then, while it might be highly entertaining, no one ever said that politics was an especially attractive endeavor.

Republican presidential candidate Robert Taft, a U.S. Senator from Ohio, appears dismayed as he holds a rooster during his 1952 primary campaign.

Alfred Eisenstaedt Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

President Franklin D. Roosevelt talks to a young mother while sitting in his car during a trip to the West in 1936.

Thomas D. McAvoy Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Vice Presidential candidate Henry A. Wallace throws a boomerang in a field in January 1940. Wallace, who was vice president during FDR’ second term and served as the secretary of both Commerce and Agriculture, was relatively famous for his prowess with the boomerang, and could occasionally be seen in the early morning near the Lincoln Memorial in the 1940s, hurling the curved, lethal-looking pieces of wood and catching them as they returned.

Thomas D. Mcavoy Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Republican candidate for Congress Raymond Leslie Buell gives a campaign speech on a platform surrounded by townspeople in a small Massachusetts park in August 1942.

Herbert Gehr Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Hamilton Fish, a Republican Congressman from New York who served 25 years in the House, stands before his likeness in the midst of a campaign.

Marie Hansen Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Gubernatorial candidate Gomer Smith talks to small gathering from the bed of a feed truck, Wagoner, Oklahoma, in June 1942.

Alfred Eisenstaedt Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A car caravan takes GOP presidential candidate Thomas Dewey into the countryside in September 1948.

Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Thomas E. Dewey accepts the Republican nomination for President at the Republican Natlonal Convention in June 1948.

Gjon Mili Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Claude Pepper naps with his wife in the back seat of a chartered plane as they fly home after his last campaign speech in May 1950. Pepper, a Democrat, represented Florida in the Senate for 15 years (1936-1951), and the Miami area in the House for another 26 (from 1963 until his death in 1989).

Thomas D. Mcavoy Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Republican presidential candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower stands at a lectern delivering a speech during a “whistle stop tour” of the Midwest in September 1952. He would go on to defeat Democrat Adlai Stevenson in November of that year and serve two terms in the White House.

Joseph Scherschel Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Republican presidential candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower accepts a pumpkin from an admirer during his whistle stop tour in September 1952.

Joseph Scherschel Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

LIFE photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt adjusts Richard Nixon’s tie prior to photo shoot during the 1960 presidential campaign.

Alfred Eisenstaedt Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

John F. Kennedy gives a speech while standing on a kitchen chair in Logan County, West Virginia

Hank Walker Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock images

Senator Lyndon B. Johnson (D-Texas) talks with staff and reporters while on a plane in April 1960, before accepting John Kennedy’s offer to be his running mate.

Thomas D. Mcavoy Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Hubert Humphrey shakes hands with a voter while campaigning prior to the West Virginia primary in April 1960.

Paul Schutzer Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater’ supporters in January 1964.

Alfred Eisenstaedt Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Sen. Robert F. Kennedy

Bill Eppridge Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

George McGovern campaigns, 1972.

Bill Eppridge Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

LIFE: Revisiting ‘American Elegance’ in 1950s Fashion

January 30, 2022October 22, 2012 by

America lacks the couture history of European nations, and, as a result, its fashion output has often been seen as more casual and less decadent, compared to collections from French and Italian design houses. That distinction was challenged in the fall of 1950, though, when designers unveiled clothing that had “taken on a quality of unmistakable elegance” which was also “unmistakably American,” according to the Sept. 11, 1950 issue of LIFE. In a photo essay that featured mink-trimmed satin coats, tweed suits and rhinestone buttons, Nina Leen‘s photographs captured American fashion at its finest and most fabulous.

Original caption: “Ermine Collar, rhinestone buttons add formal note to tweed suit (Capri, $135). White plush hat (Sally Victor, $50) goes with street or theater suits.”

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: “Velveteen and fleece are combine in a bright red greatcoat with woolly lining that can worn inside out (Raelson, $110). Velvet in high shades is popular streetwear fabric.”

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: ” Expensive Elegance is acheived by combining a tailored tweed town suit (Omar Kiam, $235) with soft black fox circle ($125), pearl broach (Trifari, $20).”

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

American Elegance, 1950

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

American Elegance, 1950.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

American Elegance, 1950

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: “Inexpensive elegance is achieved by dressing up gray flannel sheath (Carolyn Schnurer, $20) with mink scarf (Annis, $30), velvet hat (Madcaps, $5).”

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: “Taffeta and wool costume has dress in plaid to match coat. (Herbert Sondheim, $235). Usually custom-made, evening ensembles like this are now made in all price ranges.”

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

American Elegance, 1950.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sept. 11, 1950 cover of LIFE magazine.

Photo by Nina Leen.

Hollywood Spectacular: From LIFE’s Great Chronicler, Allan Grant

May 27, 2022October 12, 2012 by

As a boy, Allan Grant dreamed of becoming an aeronautical engineer. When his career path took a different route, the flying industry’s loss became the photography world’s and, specifically, LIFE magazine’s gain.

If any photographer ever captured the lighter side of show business, it was the confident New York native who, as a teen, traded a model airplane that he’d built for a pocket Kodak camera, and never looked back.

A LIFE staffer from 1947 until the late 1960s, Grant covered the entertainment world from the inside. His unique blend of cool appraisal and obvious affection for (most) of his subjects went a long way toward making the stars seem just as quirky and approachable as the rest of us mortals.

But he was hardly a sycophantic “celebrity photographer,” and Grant (1919 – 2008) was perfectly aware of his own skills as a photographer, and a newsman. When asked in an early 1990s interview by another long-time LIFE staffer, John Loengard, what kind of photographer he thought he was, Grant replied with a refreshing directness: “I would say a good one, for starters. I stayed [at LIFE] for a long time. I was very versatile; I did everything.”

That he did. While particularly known for his winning portraits of showbiz royalty as the pictures in this gallery demonstrate when called upon Grant was a perfectly adept chronicler of harder news. His portraits of Marina Oswald made shortly after her husband shot President Kennedy, for example, captured a personal side of that epic, era-defining story that few other media outlets could touch. His pictures of atomic tests and, especially, their aftermath in the early 1950s managed to add a human dimension to an issue that frequently felt, by turns, too clinical and too terrifying for the average citizen to grasp.

But it was, in the end, Grant’s portraits of the stars of the Fifties’ and Sixties’ that showed his real ability to get close to people, and capture something genuine, if fleeting, about the rich and famous in their unguarded moments. Shortly after Grant died in 2008, Dick Stolley, who was LIFE’s Los Angeles bureau chief in the early ’60s and later served as the magazine’s managing editor, pointed out in a statement that Allan Grant was “very handsome and glamorous, two virtues that made him popular in Hollywood.”

Handsome, glamorous and supremely talented. Some guys have all the luck.

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

Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly waited backstage at the RKO Pantages Theatre during the 28th Annual Academy Awards, 1956.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Audrey Hepburn, 1956.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dean Martin read lines with Shirley MacLaine, 1958.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dean Martin relaxed with his sons at home, 1958.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Angie Dickinson on set of Rio Bravo, 1958.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Kirk Douglas, 1949.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Groucho Marx in rehearsal, 1960.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Chico and Harpo Marx, 1959.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Harpo Marx, 1948.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

George Burns and his wife, Gracie Allen, 1958.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Paul Newman had make-up removed on the set of The Battler (TV play), 1955.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Buster Keaton and Donald O’Connor rehearsed for a movie based on Keaton’s life, 1956.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Cecil B. DeMille, Billy Wilder and Gloria Swanson during the filming of Sunset Boulevard, 1949.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

James Dean on location for the movie Giant, 1956.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bob Hope, 1962.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Elizabeth Taylor at a party after winning the Oscar for her performance in BUtterfield 8, 1961.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty at the Academy Awards, 1962.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly backstage at the RKO Pantages Theatre during the 28th Annual Academy Awards, 1956.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dorothy Dandridge at home, 1954

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dizzy Gillespie during a jam session, 1948

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bob Hope (right) and Frank Sinatra rehearsing for The Bob Hope Show, 1962.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sammy Davis Sr., Sammy Davis Jr. and Will Mastin on stage at Ciro’s in West Hollywood, 1955.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bobby Darin in his dressing room, 1959.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Ella Fitzgerald, 1958.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Actress-model Suzy Parker, 1957.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Edith Piaf was caught in a montage of expressions and gestures while singing during her performance at New York’s Versailles nightclub, 1952.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Shelley Winters in a booth with mirrors, 1949.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Marcel Duchamp with Dada artwork, 1953.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

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LIFE: Revisiting ‘American Elegance’ in 1950s Fashion

Hollywood Spectacular: From LIFE’s Great Chronicler, Allan Grant

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