Page 132 – LIFE

The Dawn of Camelot: JFK’s Inauguration

November 19, 2024January 5, 2013 by

January 20, 1961, was a bitterly cold day in Washington. And yet, as John and Jackie Kennedy set out on foot from the White House to the Capitol for JFK’s inauguration as president, the sense of cheer and confidence was palpable.

This was the dawn of “Camelot“—the evocative label associated with Kennedy’s administration, born of the young president’s fondness for the musical of the same name. LIFE magazine sent several of its best photographers to D.C. to chronicle the inauguration (and its slew of star-studded parties). A week later, the magazine ran nearly 20 pictures from the event. Many, many more photos were not published in LIFE. Here, LIFE.com presents the best of those pictures that ran, and many that did not.

In his inaugural address one of the most memorable in history Kennedy did not skirt the very real, very present danger posed by mutual mistrust and enmity between East and West at the height of the Cold War, nor did he accept that danger as a fixed, immutable state of affairs.

“If a beachhead of cooperation,” he said, “may push back the jungle of suspicion, let both sides [America and its allies, and the Soviet Union and its satellites] join in creating a new endeavor not a new balance of power, but a new world of law, where the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved. This will not be finished in the first 100 days. Nor will it be finished in the first 1,000 days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.”

“To those nations who would make themselves our adversary,” Kennedy said, “we offer not a pledge but a request: that both sides begin anew the quest for peace, before the dark powers of destruction unleashed by science engulf all humanity in planned or accidental self-destruction.”

Perhaps the most heartfelt words uttered that day, meanwhile, came not from JFK, but from the 87-year-old poet Robert Frost. A four-time Pulitzer Prize winner and the quintessential New England bard (albeit born in California), Frost penned a new poem for the inauguration, but the intense glare of the January sun made it impossible for him to read his own manuscript. After struggling for a bit, and after Lyndon Johnson stood and tried to help (using his own top hat to shield the page), Frost abandoned the effort and instead recited, from memory, a famous, earlier poem: “The Gift Outright,” written nearly 20 years before, which reads in part, “we gave ourselves outright … To the land vaguely realizing westward.”

It seemed then, and still feels, an appropriately optimistic sentiment in the early days of the 1960s.

John and Jackie Kennedy walked to JFK’s inauguration ceremony from the White House, January 1961.

Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

From left: Jackie Kennedy, turned to someone behind her; President Dwight Eisenhower; President-Elect Kennedy; and on the right, Vice-President-Elect Lyndon Johnson and outgoing VP Richard Nixon, January 1961.

Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

John and Jackie Kennedy dressed in formal wear on the evening before the inauguration.

Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

People bundled up as they lined Pennsylvania Avenue for the Inauguration.

Leonard McCombe/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A smiling President Kennedy and the First Lady Jackie Kennedy rode through cheering crowds in the Inaugural Parade, January 1961.

Leonard McCombe/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A freak overnight storm dumped inches of snow on to Washington on the eve of JFK’s inauguration.

Andreas Feininger/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Eisenhower’s secretary, Ann Whitman, helped the president don a borrowed tie on the morning of the inauguration, January 1961.

Ed Clark/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Jackie Kennedy at her husband’s Inaugural Gala.

Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

On the night before the inauguration, many of the biggest names in show business came together for a gala produced by Kennedy’s friend and supporter, Frank Sinatra, and Kennedy’s brother-in-law, Peter Lawford.

Leonard McCombe/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Sidney Poitier read a statement at the Inaugural Gala.

Leonard McCombe/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

John Kennedy spoke to the crowd during the evening of the Inaugural Gala.

Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

John Kennedy among well-wishers at the inaugural gala.

Joseph Scherschel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Gene Kelly performed at John Kennedy’s Inaugural Gala

Leonard McCombe/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A woman in a gown and a man in a suit with a top hat danced at one of the ball’s celebrating John Kennedy’s inauguration.

Leonard McCombe/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

John and Jackie Kennedy in the Presidential Box overlooked the crowd during JFK’s Inaugural Ball, January 1961.

Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

John Connally (left), John and Jackie Kennedy, Dwight Eisenhower and others prepared at the White House for the inauguration, January 1961.

Ed Clark/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Lady Bird Johnson, Jackie Kennedy, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon during JFK’s inauguration.

Joe Scherschel/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A man bundled against the cold during John Kennedy’s inauguration, January 1961.

Leonard McComb/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Robert Frost, 87, read a poem at John Kennedy’s inauguration.

George Silk/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

John Kennedy spoke to the press during a snowstorm the day before his inauguration.

Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The Army’s Pershing medium-range ballistic missile made its first appearance before the general public in Kennedy’s Inaugural Parade, January 1961.

Al Fenn/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A Buffalo Bill character performed at the inaugural parade, January 1961.

Al Fenn/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Jackie Kennedy at the D.C. Armory during the Frank Sinatra- and Peter Lawford-produced gala.

Paul Schutzer/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

John Kennedy at his inauguration, January 1961.

Joe Scherschel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Four past, present, and future First Ladies side-by-side during John Kennedy’s inauguration, January 1961 (from left): Pat Nixon, Mamie Eisenhower, Lady Bird Johnson, and Jacqueline Kennedy.

George Silk/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Richard Nixon and Jack Kennedy spoke during a reception after JFK was sworn in as president, January 1961.

Ed Clark/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

John F Kennedy watched former president Harry Truman, 77, sign his autograph on a program during the inaugural luncheon, January 1961.

Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Dwight D. Eisenhower’s driver tok the snow chains off the tires of his limo before driving the former president and his wife Mamie home, January 1961.

Ed Clark/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

John Kennedy delivering his Inaugural Address.

George Silk/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Photographer Spotlight: Michael Rougier

January 6, 2021January 3, 2013 by

Born in England on June 16, 1925, Michael Rougier began his career as a photographer for the Montreal Standard newspaper. His big break came when he was assigned to photograph cattle being shipped to Argentina from Canada. While in Argentina, he made photos of the then-camera shy Eva Perón, eventually smuggling the pictures out of the country and back north. Those images ran in both the Standard and in LIFE, where he was hired as a staff photographer in November 1947, remaining with the magazine for more than two decades. (He eventually left at the end of 1971, a year before LIFE ceased publishing as a weekly.)

During his 24 years with the magazine, Rougier displayed the sort of versatility for which so many of LIFE’s photographers were known. He covered the Korean War with his greatest work focusing on children orphaned by that conflict. He covered the Hungarian revolution of 1956, weddings in North Dakota, Boy Scouts, horse racing, drug-addled Japanese teens and countless other stories, in countless other locations. He exemplified the ideal of the staff photographer, for whom no assignment was too small (or too big).

Early in his career at LIFE, he accepted a handful of assignments that illuminated his compassion for the powerless. The first was a story about a blind poodle named Midget. The story goes that he almost passed out in the operation room while Midget was being operated on to restore her sight. He also photographed a story in Texas in 1948 about a cat that got around via wheelchair. He even adopted a goat after covering a “goat round-up” in Virginia in 1950.

The one story that most perfectly captures Rougier’s remarkable empathy for his subjects, however, involved a Korean orphan named Kang (see slide #4 in this gallery). In 1951, he was sent to southeast Asia to cover the Korean War (replacing his LIFE colleague, John Dominis). While there, Rougier came across the Taegu orphanage and met Kang, a boy who would eventually be introduced to the LIFE’s readers as “the boy who wouldn’t smile.”

At one point, Rougier sent a remarkable open letter to his colleagues back at Time Inc. in New York asking—in fact, almost begging—for assistance to help Kang and the orphanage. (“You might be a helluva long way from war in a bar in New York but these kids can’t remember anything but war few of them remember anything of their life before their mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters were killed right before their eyes. Get the contacts of my first take and look at them look at Kang and then please send some stuff.”)

The letter got results. The orphanage received money, books, vitamins, clothing. Kang did, eventually, smile and was adopted by an American family.

From the first, Rougier was recognized as a stellar photojournalist by his peers, and won Magazine Photographer of the Year honors from the National Press Photographers Association in 1954.

In 1964, meanwhile, on assignment in Antarctica, Rougier almost met his death when he was seriously injured after tumbling more than 600 feet down a mountainside while covering scientists who were working at the bottom of the world studying glaciers. Today, the peak is called “Rougier Hill,” in honor of the intrepid photographer who nearly died on its slopes.

Michael Rougier, who was an accomplished sculptor in addition to being a masterful photojournalist, died in Canada on January 5, 2012.

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

A father sits on the floor of Grand Central in New York while waiting for train with his sons during a snowstorm, 1948.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Korean War, 1951.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

An wounded Indian ambulance driver clenches his hands indicating the intense pain he’s enduring after having his leg almost completely blown off, Korea, 1951.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Korean orphan Kang Koo Ri eats a meal in an orphanage after American soldiers found him next to dead mother, 1951.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Communist students jubilantly snake dance through the street during an anti-American May Day rally in Tokyo, 1952.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Korea, 1952.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

John Ploch, an imprisoned American who had not been reported as a POW by the North Koreans during the Korean War, sits in dazed disbelief as he is processed during a prisoner exchange, 1953.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The last American to die before the Korean War truce was signed — a 22-year-old Marine Corporal killed by a Chinese mortar.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A Chinese soldier on a battlefield with a burial detail, searching for bodies, after the Korean War cease-fire, objecting to being photographed, 1953.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Hall of Fame jockeys Willie Shoemaker and Eddie Arcaro, 1954.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A draftee relaxes on his bunk during basic training, Fort Carson, Colorado, 1955.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Immigrants arrive in the U.S., 1955.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A Hungarian man sings a patriotic song as Soviet tanks move into Budapest during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Hungarian resistance fighters fire toward a Russian observation plane shortly before the Soviet annexation of Hungarian territory, 1956.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Hungarian resistance fighters, 1956.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A disabled tank near coffins being used for the bodies of Russian soldiers killed during the popular uprising against the Communist-backed Hungarian government, Budapest, 1956.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Women march in honor of countrymen who died fighting the Soviets during the Hungarian uprising of 1956.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mexican field workers examined before being put to work, 1959.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Harry S. Truman at Speaker of the House (D-TX) Sam Rayburn’s funeral, 1961.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Actor Mickey Hargitay kisses his wife, Jayne Mansfield, after their rescue from an overturned boat in the Bahamas in 1962.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Anti-American riots, Panama City, Panama, 1964.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Seventeen-year-old Yoko, with arms outstretched, Japan, 1964.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Yoko (left) ends a long night of clubbing by sleeping on a futon in a friend’s room, Japan, 1964.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Kako, languid from sleeping pills, is lost in a world of her own in a jazz club in Tokyo, 1964.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Robert F. Kennedy lends moral support to striking grape pickers and their leader, Cesar Chavez (on hunger strike), 1968.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Frank Sinatra sits quietly a few minutes before what he said, at the time, was his final concert, Hollywood, 1971. He came out of retirement two years layer, and would record and perform for many more years.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

LIFE photographer Michael Rougier, kneeling on ground with a Korean orphan.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mickey Cohen: Gangster in the Sun

August 10, 2021January 1, 2013 by

It might seem strange, at first, that a city as closely associated with sun and fun would also be the city that helped spawn, and has been the location for, so many classics in the great American literary and film genre known as noir. But the fact remains that acknowledged heavyweights like Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald and James Ellroy as well as countless lesser writers set their sordid, riveting crime stories firmly in Los Angeles, while Hollywood’s greatest noir thrillers, from Double Indemnity to L.A. Confidential, have reveled in casting a cold, hard light on the shadowy underbelly of the City of Angels.

In 2013 the star-studded but not especially successful movie Gangster Squad added to the ranks of L.A. noir. The movie starred Ryan Gosling, Josh Brolin, Emma Stone and, most intriguingly, Sean Penn as a legendary Brooklyn-born Jewish mobster. As it so happens, Penn’s character—in real life a portly, dangerous and weirdly charismatic thug, Meyer Harris “Mickey” Cohen—was exactly the sort of mid-20th-century figure whose exploits and demeanor were catnip to the editors of LIFE magazine. It’s not that the men (and, very occasionally, women) calling the shots at LIFE were enamored of bookies and racketeers. But Mickey Cohen was one of those rare gangsters—Crazy Joe Gallo, another Brooklyn boy with his connections to show biz, also comes to mind—who were more than just mindless mob enforcers. Street-smart, disarmingly blunt and true to their own insular, twisted ethical code, criminals like Cohen and Gallo exuded a kind of rough, lethal charm. And like Gallo, Cohen was a bona fide celebrity in his lifetime even a kind of anti-establishment pop-culture hero.

In its January 16, 1950, issue, LIFE published a feature titled, simply, “Trouble in Los Angeles,” focusing on a wave of organized crime and political corruption so widespread it made supposedly crooked places like Chicago look like models of probity. Front and center in the piece was none other than Cohen himself, the fleshy, self-satisfied face of Southern California sociopathy an “exhibitionist hoodlum,” as LIFE characterized him. In fact, Cohen and his wife LaVonne appeared in several photos in the article, for all the world just another happily married couple who had settled in California for no other reason than the forgiving climate and who remained in L.A. because Mickey’s commercial concerns—nightclubs, flower shops, gas stations, Michael’s Exclusive Haberdashery on Sunset Boulevard, etc.—needed his constant attention.

Here, LIFE.com offers a series of photographs by Ed Clark from 1949 featuring Mickey and LaVonne Cohen in their natural environment, as they hoped the world might see them: quiet, sober, eminently respectable members of the community, without a care in the world, enjoying life beneath the kind and lidless California sun.

Original caption: “Gangster Mickey Cohen sits amid the front pages of newspapers that helped make him the city’s’ most infamous citizen, Los Angeles, 1949.”

Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mickey Cohen, 1949.

Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mickey Cohen at home in Los Angeles, 1949.

Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mickey Cohen, 1949.

Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Original caption: “Angry and hungry, Mickey eats sandwich as he leaves home with cop who arrested him for cursing other officers. Mickey called arrest persecution.”

Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mickey Cohen with his wife, LaVonne, at home, 1949.

Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mickey Cohen at home in Los Angeles, 1949.

Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mickey Cohen’s wife, LaVonne, at home in Los Angeles, 1949.

Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Gangster Mickey Cohen smells flowers at home in Los Angeles, 1949.

Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mickey Cohen plays with dogs at home in Los Angeles, 1949.

Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mickey Cohen, 1949.

Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mickey Cohen’s wife, LaVonne, at home in Los Angeles, 1949.

Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mickey Cohen’s wife, LaVonne, 1949.

Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mickey Cohen’s wife, LaVonne, at home in Los Angeles, 1949.

Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Gangster Mickey Cohen at home with a book given to him by the Hebrew Committee of National Liberation, Los Angeles, 1949.

Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mickey Cohen’s enforcer, “Johnny Stomp” Stompanato (famously stabbed and killed by Lana Turner’s 14-year-old daughter, Cheryl Crane, in 1958), business manager Mike Howard and Cohen pose in Cohen’s office in Los Angeles, 1949.

Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Gangster Mickey Cohen at home in Los Angeles with his business manager, Mike Howard, 1949.

Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Gangster Mickey Cohen at home in Los Angeles, 1949.

Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mickey Cohen, 1949.

Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mickey Cohen signs an autograph for a young fan, Los Angeles, 1949.

Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mickey Cohen hauled in by the cops, Los Angeles, 1949.

Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mickey Cohen, 1949.

Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

LIFE With Jane Fonda: Behind the Scenes on the Camp Classic, ‘Barbarella’

December 22, 2020December 20, 2012 by

The list of movies that were dismissed by critics or that simply bombed at the box office when first released, only to enjoy a renaissance and renewed appreciation after years of neglect, is as long as it is distinguished. The Wizard of Oz, Blade Runner and It’s a Wonderful Life are just a few of the now-celebrated films that looked, on their first go ’round, like they were doomed to eternal obscurity.

And then there are movies like Barbarella. While the 1968 psychedelic-sci-fi-meets-soft-porn marvel doesn’t quite warrant the accolades accorded to genuine classics, it still has aged rather well for such a bizarre creation. No one in his or her right mind would ever call it great; but decades after it was unleashed on a head-scratching public, Barbarella feels like a movie that, if released today, might well garner raves for its garish retro stylings, or its warm evocation of late Sixties camp. Or something.

Love it or like it—very few people would admit actively hating it—Barbarella will probably last forever as a pop-culture curiosity not because it’s a misunderstood auteur gem, or because it was ahead of its time, but for one reason and one reason only: Jane Fonda. Playing a 41st-century “astronautical aviatrix” and “Queen of the Galaxy,” the 30-year-old Fonda gives a playful, sexy and self-possessed performance in the movie — in short, she appears to be having fun in the singularly absurd role, with its even more absurd outfits and preposterous plot twists. (In the future, it seems, clothing will be revealing, uncomfortable and, more often than not, made of hard plastic, while mad villains will occasionally attempt to vanquish their enemies via mechanically induced and literally heart-stopping orgasms.)

Here, LIFE.com presents a series of pictures—many of which were not published in LIFE—made on the set of Barbarella by Carlo Bavagnoli. Here is Henry Fonda’s precocious daughter, all grown up, married to Barbarella‘s director, Roger Vadim, and photographed at a pivotal point in her already remarkable career.

By 1968, after all, she had starred in well-received comedies like Cat Ballou (in the title role) and Barefoot in the Park, with Robert Redford. Within a few short years she would be winning major screen honors for example, the New York Film Critics Circle Award for They Shoot Horses Don’t They (1969) and for Klute (1971). For the latter, of course, she would also earn the first of her two Best Actress Oscars.

After Barbarella, Fonda would become a political lightning rod for her anti-Vietnam activism; she would earn the enduring enmity of countless veterans with a hugely controversial trip to Vietnam in 1972 that earned her the nickname (or badge of dishonor, depending on one’s perspective), “Hanoi Jane”; she would marry the prominent Sixties political activist Tom Hayden and, years later, “Captain Outrageous” himself, Ted Turner; she would remain, always, a vocal advocate for progressive causes.

She would, in short, lead (and she continues to lead) an absolutely amazing American life.

Barbarella, meanwhile, continues to lead its own only slightly less amazing life, as a cult classic and a prime example of a genre that, alas, has seen far too few entries of late: namely, futuristic goofball erotica. It might not have won its young star any awards, but all these years later, people still watch it, and many of those fans genuinely, without a trace of irony, enjoy it. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Cover image from the March 29, 1968, issue of LIFE: Jane Fonda in the title role of the movie, Barbarella.

Carlo Bavagnoli / The LIFE Picture Collection

The set of Barbarella, 1968.

Carlo Bavagnoli / The LIFE Picture Collection

Jane Fonda as Barbarella, 1968

Carlo Bavagnoli / The LIFE Picture Collection

Jane Fonda at the mercy of the evil Durand-Durand (Milo O’Shea) in the “excessive machine” on the set of Barbarella, 1968.

Carlo Bavagnoli / The LIFE Picture Collection

Jane Fonda ensconced in the “excessive machine” on the set of Barbarella, 1968. At right is her husband, the director Roger Vadim.

Carlo Bavagnoli / The LIFE Picture Collection

Jane Fonda and her husband, the director Roger Vadim, on the set of Barbarella, 1968.

Carlo Bavagnoli / The LIFE Picture Collection

Jane Fonda (in white) and other cast members on the set of Barbarella, 1968.

Carlo Bavagnoli / The LIFE Picture Collection

Jane Fonda and Milo O’Shea (as Durand-Durand), 1968.

Carlo Bavagnoli / The LIFE Picture Collection

Guardian Angel (John Phillip) carried off Barbarella.

Carlo Bavagnoli / The LIFE Picture Collection

Jane Fonda as Barbarella, 1968

Carlo Bavagnoli / The LIFE Picture Collection

Design Genius: Charles and Ray Eames

August 8, 2021December 15, 2012 by

Some things designed and built by our fellow humans are so much a part of our visual landscape that, even if they haven’t been around forever, it takes an effort of will to imagine a world without them. Several Apple products come to mind. The Brooklyn Bridge. The 1956 Corvette convertible (preferably candy-apple red … but any color will do).

These and so many other marvels of imagination and execution offer us a glimpse of that ideal world where form and function merge into a seamless and occasionally breathtaking whole. They are tools that are works of art. And vice versa.

And then there are those quieter, simpler, but no less-beautiful items (or their knock-offs and imitators) that are also, seemingly, everywhere and that somehow we so seldom really see. We take them for granted not only because they’re ubiquitous, but because they do exactly what they’re meant to do without calling attention themselves.

Case in point: the Eames molded-plywood LCW (“Lounge Chair Wood,” below), with a silhouette so familiar that it might have been there, in our collective field of vision, forever. Considering its organic lines, so pure that they have about them an air of inevitability, the “Eames chair” as it has long been known might have been carved into existence around the same time as, say, the buttes of Monument Valley. In reality, the famed husband and wife design team of Charles and Ray Eames (rhymes with “dreams”) introduced the chair in the 1940s, and followed it up with a slew of other mid-century design and architecture icons, including their leather-and-molded-plywood lounge chair and ottoman; the IBM pavilion at the 1964 New York World’s Fair; and their own lovely, perfectly Modernist California home, Eames House (1949).

Few design studios of the past 100 years can lay claim to as many innovations and as many influential creations as the practice that Charles and Ray ran for decades: the celebrated Eames Office. Here, LIFE.com offers a series of pictures many of which were not published in LIFE made in 1950 by photographer Peter Stackpole at the newly built Eames House. Today, the house is on the National Register of Historic Places and is an official National Historic Landmark. Back then, it was just another intriguing design by a man and woman who, in many ways, were literally helping to shape the second half of the 20th century.

As LIFE told its readers in the September 11, 1950 issue, in which some of these pictures first ran:

Charles Eames, whose stark, comfortable chairs in the last five years have made him the best-known U.S. designer of modern furniture and a winner in the Museum of Modern Art furniture competition, recently designed a house and adjoining studio for himself near Santa Monica, Calif. As might be expected of a man whose chief concerns are simplicity, functionalism and economy, Eames’s own house is simply built of steel trusses, bright stucco panels and treat curtained expanses of glass. It is extraordinarily functional, built for a couple that likes to live without servants or cocktail parties and work surrounded by the varied objects that interest them. And when work or contemplation pall, the Eameses have the ocean just across the meadow from their home.

Of the now-legendary 20th-century design object, the Eames chair, which Eames first introduced in 1946, LIFE wrote that its “popularity started slowly, then snowballed until it is now selling at the remarkable rate of 3,000 a month… A vague businessman, Eames does not know how much the chair has made for him… Eames is so interested making the products of his drawing board available at the lowest coast that the modest retail price of his newest chair ($32.50) bothers him [and] he guilty feels that it should sell for less.”

Eames likes to say his job is “the simple one of getting the most of the best to the greatest number of people for the least.” Few men are so earnestly dedicated to their jobs. To feed an insatiable interest in the looks of things, he and his wife take frequent sleeping-bag trips into the surrounding seaside and desert areas collecting weeds, rocks and driftwood whose appearance they want to study. Eames has a distaste for the superfluous that sometimes even affects his speech: “Take chair by wall,” he may invite a visitor. Commented awed movie director Billy (Sunset Boulevard) Wilder, “He even has the guts to sit there and be quiet if he hasn’t anything to say.”

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

Ray Eames at home in California, 1950.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: “Charles Eames … earnest, reticent, eternally bow-tied man of 43. Decoration on heating duct at left is a piece of Eames whimsy.”

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: “Interior view shows living room’s 17-foot-high ceiling, unadorned steel-truss construction, to which Eames clamps lamps for varied lighting effects. He puts up the pilings from an old pier outside the door because he liked their looks. He similarly suspended a Chinese owl kite and toy French horn from the ceiling.”

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Charles and Ray Eames at home in California, 1950.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Eames House, 1950.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: ” Natural designs embodied in Mojave desert plants fascinate Eames, who likes to mount them on the wall of his studio. From them, he says he gets ideas for his own designs.”

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Eames designed chairs, 1950.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Ray Eames at home in California, 1950.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: ” New toy, a part of which he is spinning here, was designed by Eames of colored cardboard sections which are easily joined by a child to form odd shapes.”

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Charles and Ray Eames at home in California, 1950.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Eames chair, 1950

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Eames-designed (and decorated) chair, 1950.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Charles Eames with a chair he designed and decorated, California, 1950.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Ray Eames at home in California, 1950.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Exterior view of Eames’ house shows how it nudges into a hillside, is fronted by eucalyptus trees. The studio-office is at right, joined to house by a patio.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Refined Retail in Texas: Inside the First Neiman Marcus

December 30, 2019December 11, 2012 by

The store that was born on the corner of Ervay and Main Streets in Dallas has become, like most other things from Texas, larger than life. When Neiman Marcus was founded as a purveyor of luxury womenswear and goods in 1907 by department store buyer Herbert Marcus and his sister and brother-in-law, Carrie and A.L. Neiman, it was a gamble on an untapped market. Though Dallas is now an urban center, it was more of a down-home midwestern town when doors opened to the public on Sept. 10 of that year.

The gamble paid off—wealthy oil wives and society matrons quickly raided the racks of Neiman Marcus’ collection of on-trend finery, thankful for a fashionable outpost. Shoppers bought out its entire first inventory, earning the store $3,000 in its first year. By 1944, one year before these photos were taken for LIFE, it made $398,000.

Neiman Marcus helped turn Dallas into a new, off-center fashion metropolis. Its exclusive, personalized style earned it widespread recognition. In LIFE’s September 3, 1945, edition, the in-store shopping experience was characterized as such: “The store’s executives regularly roam through the departments, giving advice on some of the graver problems of fashion and sometimes sternly censoring salesgirls’ suggestions. They have been known to stop a $1,000 sale because they though the article bought was unsuited to the customer who wanted to buy it.”

Today, Neiman Marcus is equally as refined, but the store has grown much bigger than its Lone Star State britches. Its 42 locations across the U.S. are augmented by the annual Christmas catalogue. Released every year since 1939, it stirs up a mini dust storm of awe and incredulousness each year with its list of outrageous (in price and concept) gifts. The 2019 “Christmas Book” offered, among other extravagances, a $700,007 Aston Martin designed by Daniel Craig (aka James Bond), a $35,000 Moét & Chandon vending machine and a $70,000 luxury doghouse.

These frivolities only add to Neiman Marcus’ old-school glamour and charm. These previously unpublished LIFE photographs capture a postwar society decked out in sable neckpieces, birdcage veiled hats, and designer umbrellas. The attentive salesfolk and customized attention proved that fashion had a chance outside New York and Los Angeles any time of year.

The entrance to the Neiman-Marcus store in Dallas, 1945.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Models displayed the newest designs, sometimes before Fifth Avenue or Wilshire Boulevard saw them, in the fashion salon on the second floor.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock