Page 128 – LIFE

‘I Was in LIFE’: Kim Novak Remembers

January 18, 2020February 12, 2013 by

In the early 1950s, right around the time she stole scenes as a pretty young thing driving Jack Lemmon nuts in the oddly titled 1954 comedy, Phffft!, Kim Novak caught the eye of LIFE magazine’s photographers, who were charmed by her talent, her haunting beauty and her determination to be not merely a star, but a genuine actress. Their fascination with the young Novak proved prescient: In the coming years, she would become one of the most accomplished and versatile movie stars of the decade, with credits including The Man With the Golden Arm, Pal Joey and, most notably, Hitchcock’s wholly unsettling masterpiece, Vertigo (1958).

In 1956, as her career was truly taking off, Leonard McCombe photographed Novak for a major cover story. Just 23 years old at the time, the actress was starring in the movie Picnic but was still uncertain of Hollywood and her place in it. Six decades after the peak of her career, LIFE.com reached out to the gracious Ms. Novak (born Marilyn Pauline Novak on Feb. 13, 1933, in Chicago) to find out what it was like to appear so prominently in LIFE at such a young age.

“I hoped to show the world my soul,” Novak told LIFE.com, flashing back to that confusing time. “I believed that fame had found me for a reason that I didn’t quite understand yet, and that LIFE magazine would help to give me a voice. Bottom line, I wanted the world to see that I was not just another Hollywood pretty face or sex symbol but the real McCoy!”

As lovely as McCombe’s March 1956 cover shoot turned out to be, and as flattering and insightful as the story was, Novak admitted feeling disappointed with its direction.

“Looking back,” she said, “I wish I had the opportunity to respond to more real situations. I’ve always been proud to be a reactor rather than an actor. For the cover shot I was handed a matching lavender umbrella, sweater and gloves then told to look into the camera and smile. I wanted a reason to smile, and was not yet a good enough actress to invent one.”

The McCombe photos inside the issue, however, were more accurate representations of what it was really like to be Kim Novak in 1956. For instance, of the photo in this gallery that shows her in a dressing room, breaking down in tears after being asked to model a dress and then merely cue a performance by a costar, Novak says: “I was distraught and even wrote a poem through my tears because I felt taken advantage of in my first major television appearance. I would have preferred it if LIFE used one of those more honest photos for the cover.”

McCombe followed Novak to appearances, fittings and even home to Chicago, but none of the pictures he made in all those weeks with her is more memorable and evocative of that time than the famous, first photograph in this gallery. On a New York-bound train, the stunning young star removes her jacket as several male passengers unabashedly gape. McCombe, Novak said, “captured a special moment in time. I’m pleased to have been the spark that started a fire in the train’s dining car that night.”

During that trip home, Kim known as “Mickey” to her family found that having McCombe capture not only her professional life but also her personal one was almost surreal. “The two worlds were so different,” she recalled, “and I didn’t know how to fit in either one.”

The third image in this gallery, meanwhile, subtly captures the actress’ ambivalence. “In a Beverly Hills restaurant,” read the caption to the photo, “Kim Novak sits with a faraway look as agents Al and Wilt Melnick hotly discuss her blossoming movie career.”

Novak admitted that her expression was not so much a dreamy “faraway look” as one of concern for her future. “I worried, because I was being treated like a commodity, and I didn’t know what to do about it,” she says. “I only knew I didn’t like it.”

While she might not have liked the sometimes brutally commercial aspect of moviemaking, stardom certainly had its perks for instance, as in the seventh photo, where she tried on $12,500 mink rented by studio designer Jean Louis.

“Yes, I loved glamour,” Novak told LIFE.com. “When I put on the gowns of Rita Hayworth, Greta Garbo and Joan Crawford, I felt transformed into someone else. It seemed like I could feel their energy running through my body.”

Of her favorite leading man, Jimmy Stewart, who starred with her in both Bell, Book and Candle and Vertigo, Novak remembered that “he could make me feel like I’d just slipped into my favorite warm fuzzy slippers by taking my hand when a gossip reporter walked on the set. He could make the whole world go away when things got to be too much for me to handle.”

Though she enjoyed much success in Tinseltown, Novak would eventually retire from acting and find fulfillment elsewhere. Married to veterinarian Robert Malloy for more than 40 years (Novak is a lifelong animal lover) and living in Oregon, where she enjoys painting. She has had some tough times—a serious, bone-breaking horse-riding accident in 2006; evidently successful treatment for cancer in 2010; depression and treatment for what she herself called, in a 2012 conversation with TCM’s Robert Osborne, bipolar disorder—but she has come through.

“After Harry Cohn died—he was the head of Columbia Pictures, where I was under contract—the choice of good scripts seemed to die with him,” Novak recalled, explaining her decision to leave the movies behind. “I grew tired of waiting for that good role to find me. I left Hollywood and the life of a movie star to make a path for my artistic desires without the handicap of false expectations. Today, when I’m not riding my horse in the mountains of Oregon, I’m painting the life around me, the life that I love. I am content.”

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

Kim Novak captured the attention of the men in the dining car on a train bound for New York.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

Kim Novak, 1956

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

In a Beverly Hills Restaurant Kim Novak sat with a faraway look as agents Al and Wilt Melnick hotly discussed her blossoming movie career.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

Kim listened to crystal gazer Zaza in Armando’s in New York.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

Novak fled in bitter frustration to her dressing room over her assigned role on The Ed Sullivan Show, where she angrily flung a vase of flowers to the floor and sobbed in abandon to a rose she destroyed: “I’m tearing this flower apart like I’m destroying my life.” As she often did, she later turned the episode into a little poem.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

Composed and given lines she wanted, Novak smoothed her dress as she prepared to go on The Ed Sullivan Show.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

Novak stopped in a for a family dinner in Chicago while on her way east. Seated (from left around table) beneath portraits of Kim were her mother, brother-in-law Bill Malmborg, childhood friend Barbara Mellon, her father, older sister Arlene and her Aunt Mildred.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

Novak tried on $12,500 mink rented by studio designer Jean Louis.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

A rare laugh from somber Kim Novak greeted a joke by Otto Preminger, who visited Kim while she was in New York. She had great fondness and respect for Preminger, who directed her in The Man With the Golden Arm and put her genuinely at ease.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

A long, glum goodbye to Mack Krim preceded the trip east. A theater owner, Krim was her constant escort in Hollywood. At the time of the story Kim put off the question of whether or not she is in love with him, saying she wanted to fulfill herself as an actress before getting married.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

Life Magazine cover, March 5, 1956

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

LIFE magazine, March 5, 1956.

Westminster Dog Show Champs and Contenders From the 1950s and 1960s

August 11, 2021February 11, 2013 by

The bond between dogs and humans has taken many forms: hunting companions, workmates, helpers and saviors. Then there are show dogs, the kind that take center stage every year at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. These dogs are primped, pampered and trained with the same dedication and diligence that world-class coaches bring to the prepping of elite athletes.

When the Westminster show descends on New York’s Madison Square Garden, it seems that everybody—even cat people!—are, for a few days at least, dog devotees. Enjoy this selection of four-legged friends from the 1950s and ’60s by the great Nina Leen.

Courtenay Fleetfoot of Pennyworth (a.k.a. “Ricky”), a Whippet, was chosen Best in Show at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, New York City, 1964.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Skye Terrier, Jacinthe de Ricelaine, 1964.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Vincenzo Calveresi with his four Maltese, 1955.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Maltese, 1955.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Ignoring a kick, a team of Maltese dogs stood motionless as owner Vincenzo Calversi tested their obedience, 1955.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Billy, a Miniature Poodle, 1964.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Dilettante, a Chow, 1964.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A Doberman in training ran behind an automobile near Roslyn, N.Y. with handler Peter Knoop.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Painted Lady, a Boxer, 1964

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mighty Man, a Brussels Griffon, 1964.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Westminster Dog Show, 1955.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A Wire Fox Terrier, Travella Superman of Harham, 1955.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

This Whippet, Courtenay Fleetfoot of Pennyworth, won Best in Show in 1964.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Courtenay Fleetfoot of Pennyworth won Best in Show, 1964.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Rare Photos From the Set of ‘Porgy and Bess’

February 1, 2022February 7, 2013 by

Not too many musical classics have experienced the sort of polar-opposite reactions from audiences and critics that Porgy and Bess has elicited ever since it debuted on Broadway in 1935. The opera, which features some of the most recognizable songs in all of American music, has been praised as a bold attempt to exalt African-American vernacular in the operatic canon, and pilloried as a patronizing, if not outright racist, caricature of black life in the South in the early 20th century. Even some of the black performers who have most ably filled principal roles in the opera through the years have voiced their reservations about the work.

The great St. Louis-born mezzo-soprano Grace Bumbry, for example, said of her own experience playing and singing the part of Bess: “I thought it beneath me. I felt I had worked far too hard, that we had come far too far to have to retrogress to 1935. My way of dealing with it was to see that it was really a piece of Americana, of American history, whether we liked it or not. Whether I sing it or not, it was still going to be there.”

Bumbry’s attitude is, arguably, the same that most people have chosen to take to the work. The opera might be filled with racial stereotypes; the songs might glorify the basest (quasi-mythical) aspects of Black culture; the characters might be emblematic of African American “types” anchored not so much in history as in the dominant culture’s notion of that history all that might be true, but the opera also, all these decades later, somehow endures. It has seen several revivals on Broadway (most recently in 2011) and musicians and singers as diverse as Miles Davis, Jascha Heifetz and Christina Aguilera have performed or recorded their own variations on the opera’s famous tunes.

Here, LIFE.com presents photos made on the set of the earliest film version of the opera Otto Preminger’s 1959 Porgy and Bess, starring Sidney Poitier, Dorothy Dandridge, Sammy Davis Jr. as the drug-dealing pimp, Sportin’ Life, and Pearl Bailey. LIFE magazine evidently loved it (see below), but the years have not been kind to the production, and one would be hard-pressed to find a critic today who doesn’t find the film an unsettling combination of strident and cartoonish.

It’s also worth noting of this production that Davis and Bailey recorded their singing parts; Poitier’s and Dandrdige’s songs were dubbed by two classical singers: Robert McFerrin (Bobby McFerrin’s dad) and Adele Addison.

This, meanwhile, is how LIFE introduced the movie to its readers in the June 15, 1959, issue of the magazine, in a multi-page spread featuring Gjon Mili’s vibrant color photos. (Only one of Mili’s pictures from that assignment is in this gallery; none of the other photos here ran in LIFE.)

The folk opera, Porgy and Bess, is a story of life, death and faithlessness in a Negro tenement called Catfish Row. It has come a long way since composer George Gershwin and author DuBose Heyward launched it hopefully on Broadway in 1935 and sadly closed it after 124 money-losing performances. Gershwin and Heyward were dead when success finally came through some fine U.S. revivals and a triumphant State Department-sponsored tour of Europe. Today Porgy and Bess is a national treasure and a beloved classic and comes finally to the movie screen.

Samuel Goldwyn had his troubles casting the film, but he wound up with some of the finest Negro actors and singers in the land — Sidney Poitier as Porgy, Dorothy Dandridge as Bess, Pearl Bailey as Maria, Sammy Davis Jr. as Sportin’ Life. The glory of the opera, its unforgettable songs, comes resplendently from the stereophonic soundtrack. All the favorites are there Summertime, I Got Plenty o’ Nuttin’, It Ain’t necessarily So, Bess, Yo Is My Woman Now. The plot, taken from the play by Heyward and his wife Dorothy, is unchanged in the movie as are the brilliant lyrics, written by Heyward and Gershwin’s brother Ira.

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

Porgy and Bess, 1959.

Gjon Mili Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Sidney Poitier on the set of Porgy and Bess, 1959.

Gjon Mili Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Dorothy Dandridge (Bess) and Brock Peters (Crown) on the set of Porgy and Bess, 1959.

Gjon Mili Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Sammy Davis Jr. in character as Sportin’ Life on the set of Porgy and Bess, 1959.

Gjon Mili Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Porgy and Bess, 1959.

Gjon Mili Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Dorothy Dandridge and Sidney Poitier on the set of Porgy and Bess, 1959.

Gjon Mili Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Pearl Bailey (Maria) in a scene from Porgy and Bess, 1959.

Gjon Mili Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Sidney Poitier on the set of Porgy and Bess, 1959.

Gjon Mili Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Porgy and Bess, 1959: At annual church picnic, the people of Catfish Row hear Sportin’ Life (Sammy Davis Jr.) sing his song of skeptical wickedness.

Gjon Mili Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Scene from the set of Porgy and Bess, 1959.

Gjon Mili Life Pictures/Shutterstock.

Porgy and Bess

Gjon Mili Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Dorothy Dandridge and Sidney Poitier on the set of Porgy and Bess, 1959.

Gjon Mili Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Brock Peters (Crown) on the set of Porgy and Bess, 1959.

Gjon Mili Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Porgy and Bess

Gjon Mili Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Brock Peters and Sidney Poitier act out violent scene from Porgy and Bess, 1959.

Gjon Mili Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Porgy and Bess, 1959.

Gjon Mili Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Sidney Poitier on the set of Porgy and Bess, 1959.

Gjon Mili Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Porgy and Bess, 1959.

Gjon Mili Life Pictures/Shutterstock

LIFE With Zsa Zsa Gabor: Rare Photos, 1951

August 12, 2021February 5, 2013 by

Anyone who has lived to be almost 100 likely has a few outlandish tales to tell. At least, one hopes they have tales to tell; it’s simply too awful to think of someone living through ten decades without one adventure, one great passion, one scandal worthy of relating over and over again. What’s the point of living a long life, after all, if one can’t look back with some complacency and pleasure at the glorious, memorable mistakes one made along the way?

With that in mind, we turn our attention to the one and only Zsa Zsa Gabor. Born Sári Gábor on Feb. 6, 1917, in Budapest, the middle sister of a middle-class Hungarian family between younger sister Eva (1919 – 1995) and older sister Magda (1915 – 1997) Zsa Zsa lived in the public eye for more than six decades, before her death at 99 in 2016.

Beautiful, glamorous and disarmingly funny; married nine times, divorced seven (one marriage was annulled); friend and lover to the famous; accused traffic cop-slapper (remember that weirdness back in 1989?); Bernie Madoff victim to the tune of something like $10 million; best-selling author; actress with scores of movies and TV appearances to her name one could argue that Zsa Zsa was, in fact, the very last of those outrageous, celebrated Hollywood figures (like her late friend, Liz Taylor) who routinely and unrepentantly provided scandal sheets and gossip columnists with fodder in the middle part of the last century.

Quotations attributed to her through the years, meanwhile, suggest a lively intelligence and a savvy, off-hand and charming worldliness behind her seemingly soft facade:

“A man in love is incomplete until he is married. Then he is finished.”

“Macho does not prove mucho.”

“I have never hated a man enough to give his diamonds back.”

“Husbands are like fires. They go out if unattended.”

“To a smart girl men are no problem. They’re the answer.”

Time, alas, was not kind to Gabor. Late in her life, she suffered strokes, was confined to a wheelchair and had her right leg amputated above the knee to combat an aggressive infection. Her obituary was written and prepped and then shelved several times in the past few years by media outlets, as she fought on against mounting odds, diminished but far from forgotten.

Here, LIFE.com recalls the younger Zsa Zsa with a series of photos by Ed Clark many of which never ran in LIFE from 1951, when she was barely known outside of California, but was quickly becoming as famous as her sister, Eva (who, incidentally, only married five times).

In its October 15, 1951, issue LIFE magazine introduced the 34-year-old Zsa Zsa to its millions of readers thus:

To television fans in most of the country, the only Gabor is blonde Eva, whose Hungarian beauty is a frequent, familiar and satisfying sight on their screens. But lately another Gabor, Eva’s sister Zsa Zsa, has begun to establish herself on the West Coast as a TV performer and wit of sorts. The show on which she appears is called Bachelor’s Haven and specializes in romantic counsel to men, a field in which Zsa Zsa feels herself highly qualified, from personal experience.

Her experience began about 15 years ago when, as a teenager in her native Budapest, she proposed to a Turkish diplomat over his teacups and became Mrs. Burhan Belge. But, says Zsa Zsa, “I was still a little girl playing with dolls,” and so in 1941 they were divorced. Zsa Zsa, whose given name is Sari, made her way to the U.S. and married hotel-man Conrad Hilton. After five hectic years of marriage, which were enlivened by a jewel robbery and Zsa Zsa’s tales of being mysteriously drugged and held captive in a Hollywood hotel, she and Mr. Hilton were divorced. In 1949 she married actor George Sanders. When he left for a movie role in England three months ago Zsa Zsa took a television job to fill her idle time. She now has signed a movie contract herself and is rated as the biggest new hit on West Coast TV, a rating she has earned by her beauty, ripe Continental accent and the Hungarian savoir-faire with which she tosses off her advice to the lovelorn.

“Men have always liked me and I have always liked men,” says Gabor, “but I like a mannish man, a man who knows how to talk to and treat a woman not just a man with muscles.” On Bachelor’s Haven, where she is a permanent panel member, Zsa Zsa is often peremptory. When she senses that a man does not meet her rigid standards, she dismisses the offender with a curt: “Him I would shoot.”

Zsa Zsa Gabor 1951

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

At the Oscars: A Star-Studded Rehearsal, 1958

January 14, 2025February 1, 2013 by

Back in the day, being a genuine Hollywood star entailed more than just acting (or looking good while sort of acting). Leading men and women had to sing, dance, play it straight, play the clown—in short, they had to know how to entertain.

Little wonder, then, that in 1958, when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences planned its 30th Oscars ceremony—the fifth ever to be televised—it called upon the town’s multi-talented screen icons to put on a barn-burner of a show.

LIFE photographer Leonard McCombe was a fly on the wall that year as stars such as Paul Newman, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Kirk Douglas and Mae West rehearsed for the big event. Only a handful of McCombe’s marvelous photos were published. Here, decades later, are the pictures that ran in LIFE, and many more that didn’t.

Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster with choreographer Robert Sidney, practicing a mock-bitter song-and-dance number called “It’s Great Not to Be Nominated”; the tune ribbed many of the year’s Oscar contenders.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Inside Los Angeles’ RKO Pantages theater, home of the Academy Awards from 1949 through 1959, Janet Leigh and Shirley MacLaine practiced a tune.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Zsa Zsa Gabor arrived at the 1958 Oscar rehearsals in pearls and a fur stole.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Paul Newman appeared to wait for a cue, as fellow Oscar presenter Doris Day consulted with a director (gesturing toward the audience). On the big night itself, Newman’s wife Joanne Woodward won Best Actress for The Three Faces of Eve .

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mae West and Rock Hudson rehearsed the flirty pop standard, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” as Academy president George Seaton looked on.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Clark Gable, 1958.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Shirley MacLaine, 1958.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Doris Day and Clark Gable prepared to present the winners of the writing awards, 1958.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bob Hope, who hosted (or co-hosted) the Academy Awards 19 times over his long career, appears to pick something off Betty Grable’s sweater; standing above them on the steps are Shirley Jones —then famous for the movie musicals Oklahoma! and Carousel—and MGM idol Van Johnson.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Debbie Reynolds, 1958

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Russ Tamblyn (center, in dark jacket and shirt with huge lapels), 23-year-old Best Supporting Actor nominee for Peyton Place, stands in a group with other unidentified young actors; to the lower right of the frame are Rock Hudson and Mae West.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster checked out the scene from the seats. On March 27, 1958—the day after the Oscars ceremony—their war film, Run Silent, Run Deep, was released.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Shirley MacLaine checked in with the orchestra, 1958 Oscars rehearsal.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Just a few months away from the release the Hitchcock classic, Vertigo, Jimmy Stewart (a co-host in 1958) popped up at rehearsals.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Top row, from left: Shirley Jones, Van Johnson, Mae West, Rock Hudson, and husband-and-wife dancing team Marge and Gower Champion. Bottom: Janet Leigh, Rhonda Fleming, Bob Hope, and Shirley MacLaine.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bob Hope during the rehearsals for the 1958 Academy Awards.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

LIFE on Both Sides of the Camera: Eisenstaedt’s Surprising Self-Portraits

August 12, 2021January 31, 2013 by

The great Alfred Eisenstaedt’s photographic vision wasn’t limited to the intimate portraits he produced of some of the 20th century’s most famous faces, from Marilyn Monroe and Frank Lloyd Wright to Mia Farrow and J. Robert Oppenheimer. After researching seemingly endless negatives, contact sheets, and Eisenstaedt prints, LIFE.com’s Liz Ronk rediscovered that the long-time LIFE photographer very often crowned his assignments with one last shot: creating captivating self-portraits, posing and frequently clowning with his subjects.

The realization that “Eisie” (as he was known by those lucky enough to call him a colleague or a friend) often turned the lens on himself in this way is likely to astonish photography aficionados and casual fans alike. Throughout his six-decade career, Eisenstaedt made some of the most immediately recognizable and most frequently reproduced images of the 20th century; that he also clearly enjoyed “playing tourist” and posing with the rich, the famous and the powerful as well as men and women whose names and occupations have been lost to history somehow brings the masterful photojournalist that much closer.

This legendary man, these self-portraits suggest, is actually more like many of us than we might have thought.

Eisenstaedt also famously carried with him an autograph book that, by the end of his life, was filled with page after page of signatures from long-forgotten artists, fellow photographers, legendary athletes, powerful world leaders in short, from anyone and everyone he happened to shoot.

The man’s habit of photographing himself with his subjects, and even asking for their autographs for his ever-growing collection, was not only well-known among by his colleagues at LIFE and elsewhere, but in at least one instance the seemingly whimsical tradition appears to have had a lasting influence on one of his younger peers. The celebrated sports photographer Neil Leifer recently told LIFE.com that early in his career, the notion of asking someone to pose for a picture after a shoot, or requesting an autograph of someone he had just finished shooting, struck him as vaguely unprofessional. It just was not something that a credible photojournalist did. Or so he thought.

“In the early 1980s I had an office next to Eisie’s in the Time-Life Building,” Leifer recalls, “and I saw that in his office he had framed photos of himself with JFK, Sophia Loren all these pictures where he was posing with people he had photographed on assignments for LIFE, and I thought, If Alfred Eisenstaedt, of all people, takes self-portraits with his subjects, and asks them for autographs, how unprofessional can it really be?“

Here, then, in tribute to the endearing penchant of one of the 20th century’s indispensable photographers a penchant to add a quiet, personal, visual coda to so much of his life’s work LIFE.com offers a selection of some of the most revealing and unexpected of Alfred Eisensteadt’s singularly charming self-portraits.

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

Marilyn Monroe and Alfred Eisenstaedt at Monroe’s Beverly Hills home, 1953.

Alfred Eisenstaedt Time & LIfe Pictures/Shutterstock

Alfred Eisenstaedt and Wataru Narahashi, Japanese cabinet minister, Tokyo, March 1946.

Alfred Eisenstaedt Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Alfred Eisenstaedt and LIFE’s National Affairs Editor, Hugh Moffett, on assignment in Kenya, 1966.

Alfred Eisenstaedt Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Alfred Eisenstaedt and Walt Disney, California, 1946.

Alfred Eisenstaedt Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Alfred Eisenstaedt with Jackie Kennedy and Caroline Kennedy in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, 1960.

Alfred Eisenstaedt Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Alfred Eisenstaedt and former sumo wrestling champion Tomojiro Sakata, Tokyo, 1946.

Alfred Eisenstaedt Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

President John F. Kennedy signs Alfred Eisenstaedt’s autograph book after a portrait session in the oval office, 1962.

Alfred Eisenstaedt Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Alfred Eisenstaedt poses with “beauty culturist” and the first woman to star in her own daily exercise TV show, Debbie Drake, 1962.

Alfred Eisenstaedt Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Alfred Eisenstaedt with student-artist Afewerk Tekle, 22, in Ethiopia, 1955. Tekle went on to become one of Ethiopia’s most celebrated painters.

Alfred Eisenstaedt Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Alfred Eisenstaedt and Haile Selassie

Alfred Eisenstaedt Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Sophia Loren and Alfred Eisenstaedt in the bedroom of her Italian villa, 1969.

Alfred Eisenstaedt Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Alfred Eisenstaedt pushes photographer Alice Austen in a wheelchair, Staten Island, New York, in 1951, one year before Austen died.

Alfred Eisenstaedt Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Alfred Eisenstaedt poses with two unidentified local men while on assignment for LIFE in India in 1963.

Alfred Eisenstaedt Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

In a photograph taken by LIFE colleague Bill Shrout, Alfred Eisenstaedt kisses an unidentified woman reporter in Times Square on VJ Day, August 14, 1945 a powerful visual echo (in retrospect) of the now-iconic, era-defining “sailor kissing a nurse” picture that Eisenstaedt himself shot that very same day.

William C. Shrout Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

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