Page 130 – LIFE

LIFE’s First Cover Story: Building the Fort Peck Dam, 1936

November 19, 2020November 16, 2012 by

“If any Charter Subscriber is surprised by what turned out to be the first story in this first issue of LIFE,” the magazine’s editors wrote in the Nov. 23, 1936 issue, “he is not nearly so surprised as [we] were. Photographer Margaret Bourke-White had been dispatched to the Northwest to photograph the multimillion dollar projects of the Columbia River Basin. What the editors expected were construction pictures as only Bourke-White can take them. What the editors got was a human document of American frontier life which, to them at least, was a revelation.”

Thus the men and women behind what would become one of the longest-lived experiments—and one of the greatest success stories of 20th-century American publishing—introduced themselves, and their inaugural effort, to the world.

In her riveting 1963 autobiography, Portrait of Myself, Bourke-White recalls the heady experience working for LIFE on the debut issue, and on countless subsequent assignments for what would become one of the indispensable weeklies of the past 100 years:

A few weeks before the beginning, Harry Luce called me up to his office and assigned me to a wonderful story out in the Northwest. Luce was very active editorially in the early days of the magazine, and there was always that extra spark in the air. Harry’s idea was to photograph the enormous chain of dams in the Columbia River basin that was part of the New Deal program. I was to stop off at New Deal, a settlement near Billings, Montana, where I would photograph the construction of Fort Peck, the world’s largest earth-filled dam. Harry told me to watch out for something on a grand scale that might make a cover.

“Hurry back, Maggie,” he said, and off I went. I had never seen a place quite like the town of New Deal, the construction site of Fort Peck Dam. It was a pinpoint in the long, lonely stretches of northern Montana so primitive and so wild that the whole ramshackle town seemed to carry the flavor of the boisterous Gold Rush days. It was stuffed to the seams with construction men, engineers, welders, quack doctors, barmaids, fancy ladies and, as one of my photographs illustrated, the only idle bedsprings in New Deal were the broken ones. People lived in trailers, huts, coops anything they could find and at night they hung over the Bar X bar.

These were the days of LIFE’s youth, and things were very informal. I woke up each morning ready for any surprise the day might bring. I loved the swift pace of the LIFE assignments, the exhilaration of stepping over the threshold into a new land. Everything could be conquered. Nothing was too difficult. And if you had a stiff deadline to meet, all the better. You said yes to the challenge and shaped up the story accordingly, and found joy and a sense of accomplishment in so doing. The world was full of discoveries waiting to be made. I felt very fortunate that I had an outlet, such an exceptional outlet, perhaps the only one of this kind in the world at that time, through which I could share the things I saw and learned.

Long after Margaret Bourke-White’s remarkable photos from the Depression-era wilds of Montana graced the pages of that first issue of LIFE—one of her characteristically monumental “construction pictures” (as the editors put it) served as the cover image for that issue—LIFE.com presents the Fort Peck Dam feature in its entirety, along with a number of Bourke-White photos that did not appear in the original cover story.

Here is a portrait of a community brought together by circumstance, i.e., by FDR’s New Deal, in a barren place, in an unimaginably hard time, for the express purpose of building one of the chief engineering marvels of the age. (Fort Peck Dam is still, today, the highest of all the major dams along the great Missouri River.) Bourke-White’s photos, meanwhile, capture the vast scale of the audacious project and the far more intimate scope of the human capacity for finding joy or, at the very least, a kind of rough pleasure and fellowship wherever one can, whatever the odds.

So, while LIFE’s “charter subscribers” and its editors might have been surprised “by what turned out to be the first story” in the magazine’s history, in retrospect Bourke-White’s tale seems, with its heroic overtones, its astonishing photography and its focus on the human aspect of a superhuman effort, an apt introduction to LIFE’s mission and its method.

Workers on Montana’s Fort Peck Dam blew off steam at night, 1936.

Margaret Bourke-White / The LIFE Picture Collection

In Wheeler, near Fort Peck, Montana, Frank Breznik (left) was the law. He had previously been a traveling salesman in Atlantic City.

Margaret Bourke-White / The LIFE Picture Collection

Wheeler, Montana, was one of the six frontier towns around Fort Peck.

Margaret Bourke-White / The LIFE Picture Collection

The area’s latest hotspot was a town called New Deal.

Margaret Bourke-White / The LIFE Picture Collection

LIFE’s first issue declared, “The only idle bedsprings in New Deal are the broken ones.”

Margaret Bourke-White / The LIFE Picture Collection

Beneath a “No Beer Sold to Indians” sign, a woman tossed back a drink.

Margaret Bourke-White / The LIFE Picture Collection

Life in the cowless cow towns was not cheap for its day.

Margaret Bourke-White / The LIFE Picture Collection

Lt. Col. T. B. Larkin was the head of the dam project.

Margaret Bourke-White / The LIFE Picture Collection

Bar X, Montana, 1936.

Margaret Bourke-White / The LIFE Picture Collection

The only alcohol that could be sold legally was beer by the glass, but at Ruby’s Place and others like it, liquor was also sold at a back bar.

Margaret Bourke-White / The LIFE Picture Collection

One-fourth of the Missouri River would run through this steel “liner.”

Margaret Bourke-White / The LIFE Picture Collection

Major Clark Kittrell was the No. 2 man on the Fort Peck Dam project.

Margaret Bourke-White / The LIFE Picture Collection

Ed’s Place, Montana, 1936.

Margaret Bourke-White / The LIFE Picture Collection

Ruby, second from the left, was the founder of the town of Wheeler—and its richest woman. She had come to Montana with experience in the Klondike.

Margaret Bourke-White / The LIFE Picture Collection

Drinking at the bar Finis, Montana, 1936.

Margaret Bourke-White / The LIFE Picture Collection

Mrs. Nelson washed New Deal, Montana, without the aid of running water.

Margaret Bourke-White / The LIFE Picture Collection

One of the several frontier towns near the site of the Fort Peck Dam, Montana, 1936.

Margaret Bourke-White / The LIFE Picture Collection

Men and women in one of the several frontier towns near the site of the Fort Peck Dam, Montana, 1936.

Margaret Bourke-White / The LIFE Picture Collection

A bar in a town near the Fort Peck Dam, Montana, 1936.

Margaret Bourke-White / The LIFE Picture Collection

A bar in one of the several frontier towns near the site of the Fort Peck Dam, Montana, 1936.

Margaret Bourke-White / The LIFE Picture Collection

Workers in one of the several frontier towns near the site of the Fort Peck Dam, Montana, 1936.

Margaret Bourke-White / The LIFE Picture Collection

Wood was for sale in one of the several frontier towns near the site of the Fort Peck Dam, Montana, 1936.

Margaret Bourke-White / The LIFE Picture Collection

A beauty shop near the site of the Fort Peck Dam, Montana, 1936.

Margaret Bourke-White / The LIFE Picture Collection

One of the several frontier towns near the site of the Fort Peck Dam, Montana, 1936.

Margaret Bourke-White / The LIFE Picture Collection

Men worked on the construction of Fort Peck Dam, Montana, 1936.

Margaret Bourke-White / The LIFE Picture Collection

Construction of Fort Peck Dam, Montana, 1936.

Margaret Bourke-White / The LIFE Picture Collection

First LIFE cover November 23, 1936.

Margaret Bourke-White / The LIFE Picture Collection

LIFE Magazine Nov. 23, 1936

Margaret Bourke-White LIFE Magazine

Penn Station, 1963: Walker Evans’ Portraits of a Lost Treasure

January 30, 2022November 15, 2012 by

One of the enduring cultural battles fought in the Unites States and in countless other countries, as well over the years involves the forces of “progress” arrayed against proponents of “tradition.” In this conflict, advocates of progress are generally seen as forward-thinking optimists or greed-driven destroyers of all that is good and noble in the culture, while traditionalists are characterized as either bastions of reason and good taste or hopelessly outdated relics who really ought to get out of the way and let the rest of us move ahead.

However one views the opposing sides, it’s unlikely that many people alive today would come down on the side of “progress” in respect to at least one particular American beauty that fell victim to modernization five long decades ago: New York’s original, magnificent Pennsylvania Station.

The splendid Beaux-Arts style terminus, which took up two city blocks in midtown Manhattan and featured a 15-story ceiling and a waiting room almost as long as a football field, was inspired by some of the greatest architecture of the ancient world. Designed by the celebrated firm of McKim, Mead & White (the folks responsible for countless landmark buildings around the country), Penn Station was conceived and constructed on a scale that felt and looked at-once heroic and deeply, comfortingly human.

But in the late-1950 and early 1960s, places like the pink-granite and marble Penn Station were under assault by an attitude that judged anything more than a few decades old to be utterly suspect, while anything new, modern or contemporary was seen as good, better, best. Here, LIFE.com offers a number photos many of which never ran in LIFE shot by Walker Evans for a 1963 feature decrying the national mania for “progress.”

In the July 5, 1963, issue of the magazine, in an article titled, forthrightly, “America’s Heritage of Great Architecture Is Doomed,” LIFE sounded the alarm to its readers:

Above the scurry and tumult of travelers, clocks tick away the final hours of a grand and historic monument. New York’s Pennsylvania Station is doomed. Its herculean columns, its vast canopies of concrete and steel will soon be blasted into rubble to make way for a monstrous complex sports arena [today’s Madison Square Garden — Ed.], bowling alley, hotel and office building. The disaster that has befallen Penn Station threatens thousands of other prized American buildings. From east to west, the wrecker’s ball and bulldozer are lords of the land. In the ruthless, if often well-intentioned, cause of progress, the nation’s heritage from colonial days onward is being ravaged indiscriminately for highways, parking lots, new structures of modernized mediocrity.

The fact that LIFE’s dire forecast has not entirely come to pass Grand Central Terminal, for example, won reprieve from destruction just a few years after the LIFE article appeared, in large part because of outraged resistance from the likes of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis just goes to show that, every once in a while, reason and good taste can carry the day.

Graced by goddesses and eagles and crowned by a balustrade, Pennsylvania Station presents a serene and seemingly timeless facade to New York’s Seventh Avenue, 1963.

Walker Evans Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Original caption: “Massive bases of the facade are shadowy retreats for pigeons.” (The granite columns were 70 feet high.)

Walker Evans Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Pennsylvania Station, New York, 1963.

Walker Evans Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

In Praise of Unusual Flying Objects

January 20, 2020November 15, 2012 by

The original of these strange objects in the sky is not in question. They all came from Earth. They are not the stuff of science fictionza-well, except for one image of a craft built for sci-fi movie. Beyond that, the science here is all real, even if it appears a little strange at times.

This gallery celebrates aircraft—including jet packs; flying platforms, collapsible one-man helicopters and more– that show how badly people have wanted to fly, and the sorts of ingenuity we have unleashed in pursuit of that goal.

A slinky-like light pattern was produced by light-tipped rotor blades of a helicopter as it took off into the dark sky, 1949.

Andreas Feininger The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

An ascending gondola trailed a disk-shaped radio antenna during lift-off for high-altitude flight to observe the planet Venus, 1959.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Amphibious U.S. Navy plane, 1940.

Carl Mydans The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A helicopter attempted a three-point landing atop the heads of three women holding plywood squares as landing “pads,” 1948.

Bernard Hoffman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A man dropped a briefcase into the basket on the nose of a helicopter, 1942.

Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A parachute jumper who was testing equipment for the Irving Air Chute Co. received some help while struggling to reel in his billowing chute, 1937.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Children tried to catch toys that were released by a kite, 1949.

Bernard Hoffman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Stunt man Jack Wylie soared over the Chicago River, 1958.

Al Fenn/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

A test flight of the “strap-on” helicopter, 1957.

Ralph Crane The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Flying platforms were tested at an Air Force base, 1956.

Nat Farbman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bell engineer Harold Graham demonstrated the “Rocket Belt” at Fort Bragg in 1961.

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A balloon was inflated in preparation for a high-altitude ascent, 1959.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

American paratroopers landed in Korea, with one ripped chute still holding enough air to drop safely, 1950.

Howard Sochurek The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A blimp above New York, 1961.

Howard Sochurek The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A plane swerved toward LIFE photographer Allan Grant as one rocket motor failed to start, 1949.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The “Pulsa,” a collapsible one-man helicopter, 1952.

J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Men anchored a huge balloon, 1941.

John Phillips The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

An observation balloon spotting for a 155mm gun at Fort Bragg, 1940.

David E. Scherman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A blimp landed at a Naval air station in 1942.

William C. Shrout The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The model of the “Space Ark” rocket ship from the sci-fi classic, “When Worlds Collide” 1951

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The War is Over, and Cocktails are Being Served: St. Moritz, 1947

January 21, 2022November 12, 2012 by

Maybe it’s because LIFE magazine covered the Second World War so extensively, with dozens of photographers and correspondents logging tens of thousands of miles, reporting from places like Iwo Jima, the Ardennes and Berlin in the final days of the Reich—maybe that’s why the tone of its March 1947 report on the Swiss resort of St. Moritz feels at-once amused, and slightly annoyed.

Of course, LIFE had always paid attention to the idle rich, and when it felt like it, the magazine could be as fulsome and as frothy in its coverage of that fascinating breed as any other publication of the era. The magazine’s editors were well aware, especially in the post-war years, that a steady diet of garcinia cambogia extract, austerity, disaster and other hard-news staples might earn LIFE accolades, but the only sure way to sell copies (and ads) was to make sure there were stories on celebrities, royalty and other “beautiful people” in the mix.

In its March 10, 1947, issue, LIFE took a look at those beautiful people, in one of their more beautiful playgrounds, and while the photographs by Alfred Eisenstaedt convey the sheer luxury of the life they led, it’s hard not to detect just the slightest hint of a sneer in the way the piece was introduced. There’s no real animosity here; but nor is there much hand-wringing over the fact that for at least some of St. Moritz’s more absurd, and absurdly rich, habitues the world was changing beneath their feet.

The exiled royalty, minor princes, beauties, near beauties, sportsmen and bankers of the International Set consider St Moritz the place to spend a winter holiday. It is not just because this village, tucked high in the Alps of southeast Switzerland, is world-renowned as a winter sports center, with a famous Olympic bobsled run, unparalleled ski slopes and miles of beautiful mountain trails. It is mostly because St. Moritz is the most fashionable village in Europe. For more than half a century royalty has assembled on its Alpine slopes, at its outdoor cocktail bars and in its luxurious dining rooms. St. Moritz has always been the place to see the world’s great. It has also been the place for the not-so-great to be seen.

Somehow St. Moritz got through the war without closing. This winter, despite currency restrictions, the resort has all the sybaritic elegance of prewar years…. Only nowadays, as one native observed, “The princes are not princes any more.”

Original caption: “Midday cocktails at St. Moritz are served on the private ice rink of the Palace Hotel at a bar made of snow.”

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: “Egyptian Princess Nasli Shah (left), wife of Prince Abdel Moneim, goes for a stroll through the snow with young Peter Zervudachi and Princess Sixte de Bourbon-Parme, sister-in-law of Austria’s last empress.”

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: “Sunday sleigh rides are an ancient custom among natives of Engadine. With menfolk seated behind, they set out for a round of visits in neighboring villages, making a picturesque spectacle for the town’s guests.”

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

St. Moritz ,1947.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: “A chihuahua gets more attention on street than the conglomerate costume of his mistress. St. Moritz was crowded with many fashionable dogs, including one with leg splints as a result of a curling accident.”

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: “Fashionable center is Palace Hotel where many of Europe’s crowned heads have been guests. The hotel has 200 rooms. Rates start at $80 per week for good room and meals but bills somehow add up to much more.”

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

St. Moritz, 1947.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: “Thick coats, like those of Isabelle Nicole and her dogs, protect them from the 17-degree cold.”

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

St. Moritz, 1947.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Snow-covered winter-resort village. Hotel Chantarella in background. St. Moritz, 1947.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

St. Moritz, 1947.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: “Privileged dog gets thorough whisking when he returns to hotel from snowy streets.”

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Self-portrait of photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt standing in snow and holding his Leica camera while on assignment for LIFE in St. Moritz, Switzerland, 1947.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

‘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.