Page 134 – LIFE

LIFE Goes to the Miss America Pageant, 1945

August 17, 2021September 6, 2012 by

For years, one of the signature draws along the famous boardwalk in “the world’s favorite playground” of Atlantic City, N.J. was the annual Miss America pageant, long held every September in that neon city by the sea. Conceived in 1921 as a way to keep at least some of the summer crowds around and, of course, spending money after Labor Day, the pageant lit up Atlantic City for nine decades before packing up and moving, in 2006, to Vegas. (The contest returned to Atlantic City in 2013 but left again in 2019.) As the granddaddy or rather, the grandma of beauty contests, the pageant seemed to say something at once profound and quite silly about the culture that spawned it.

In fact, the reader will notice that that description might well apply to the pictures in this gallery, as well photos made by LIFE’s Alfred Eisentaedt during the 1945 competition in Atlantic City. (Only one of the pictures here, the first slide, ever ran in the magazine; the rest remained unpublished.)

Sure, there were speeches and displays of genuine talent on stage. But more often than not, the images that emerged from the two-day (now three-day) affair featured scores of women, most of whom seemed and who still seem to be cut from very much the same physical mold, wearing very small bathing suits and posing or parading in high heels.

That the Miss America title for many decades really meant Miss Caucasian America certainly undercut the pageant’s unspoken but strongly implied claim to celebrate and judge an entire nation’s loveliest and most talented women. Black women did not even begin competing in the pageant until the 1970s, and the first African-American Miss America, the wonderful Vanessa Williams, would not be crowned until 1984, a full six decades after the pageant began.

But that sort of problematic history aside, the Miss America pageant remains a signature cultural happening, while the Miss America Organization provides tens of millions of scholarship dollars annually to thousands of young women who, without that money, might not be able to attend college. In fact, it just so happens that the Miss America featured in this gallery, Bess Myerson incidentally, the first Jewish winner of the pageant was the very first Miss America to receive a scholarship as part of her victory prize.

The winner of the 1945 Miss America pageant, 21-year-old Bess Myerson of New York.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Spectators line up during the Miss America pageant festivities in Atlantic City, 1945.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bess Myerson, Miss America, 1945.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Scene outside the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City, 1945.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Scene during the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City, 1945.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Outside the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City, 1945.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Contestants in the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City, 1945.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Miss America pageant in Atlantic City, 1945.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Contestant in the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City, 1945.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Contestants in the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City, September 1945.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Inside the Warner Theater during the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City, September 1945.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Miss America pageant in Atlantic City, September 1945.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Contestants in the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City, September 1945.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bess Myerson, Miss America in 1945, Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bess Myerson, Miss America in 1945, meets the press, Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Miss America contestants in Atlantic City, September 1945.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Miss America pageant in Atlantic City, September 1945.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Miss America Bess Myerson (right) and friend, Atlantic City, New Jersey, September 1945.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

LIFE With Clint Eastwood: On the Set of Dirty Harry, 1971

August 17, 2021September 5, 2012 by

Clint Eastwood, now internationally acclaimed as a directer as well as actor, was known mostly as a star of Westerns when LIFE by photographer Bill Eppridge trained his camera on him in 1971. The images here were made on the set of a movie that would introduce a character with whom, for better or worse, Eastwood has been associated ever since: the brutal, gun-happy rebel cop, “Dirty Harry” Callahan.

But what’s also revealing and all these years later, somehow kind of sweet, is the way LIFE talked about Eastwood in the cover story that ran in the magazine in July 1971, five months before Dirty Harry hit theaters and, quickly, became a controversial cultural touchstone. Right there, on the cover of the issue, is the (perhaps) tongue-in-cheek words observation that sets the tone for the profile inside: “The world’s favorite movie star is—no kidding—Clint Eastwood.”

Then there’s the title of the piece: “Who Can Stand 32,580 Seconds of Clint Eastwood? Just About Everybody.” (The number refers to the time it would take to watch all the films in a nine-hour film festival of early Eastwood “spaghetti Westerns” that was running at the time.)

But even back then, Eastwood’s singular appeal as a Hollywood stud with far more going on under the surface than most of his hits up until then might suggest comes through. While his biggest fans (among moviegoers and critics alike) in 1972 could hardly have envisioned the esteem and the affection he would enjoy into his 80s, the Clint in the LIFE profile, and in these pictures, is a man clearly and fully at ease with himself. He’s a star who knows, as he says in the article, that “you have to give people good entertainment … If I started to pay too much attention to what the reviewers say, I’d have an ulcer.”

Four decades later, the reviewers are still trying to decipher Eastwood. And it’s clear that, four decades, later, he still doesn’t much care if they ever succeed.

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

Original caption: “Swathed in bandages after a brutal beating scene in Dirty Harry, Eastwood rarely escapes mayhem in films. His fans appreciate that he gives more than he takes.”

Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Clint Eastwood on the set of the 1971 movie, Dirty Harry.

Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

LIFE Fires Up the Barbecue

August 17, 2021August 31, 2012 by

If there’s one consolation during the scorching, often unbearably humid days of summer, it’s the prospect of being outdoors with friends and family, swapping stories and enjoying a cold beverage as a huge variety of food cooks on a nearby grill, filling the air with the mouthwatering aroma of a good old-fashioned barbecue.

Here, LIFE.com offers up a selection of photographs celebrating one of the season’s time-honored traditions: the picnic and barbecue, or barbeque, or BBQ. However you spell it, it still translates as “delicious.”

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

Backyard barbecue, 1953

Gordon Parks Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

One of only thirteen American women — known as the Mercury 13 — to participate in NASA’s Mercury space program, Jerrie Cobb (left) barbecues in 1959.

Ralph Crane TIME & LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Jerrie Cobb keeps watch over the grill, 1959.

Ralph Crane TIME & LIFE Pictrues/Shutterstock

Barbecue, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, 1953

Eliot Elisofon Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Family barbecue, 1960

Ralph Crane TIME & LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Cape Cod, Massachusetts, 1953

Eliot Elisofon TIME & LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Beach barbecue, Massachusetts, 1953

Eliot Elisofon TIME & LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Beach barbecue, Florida, 1956

Lisa Larsen TIME & LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

UCLA fraternity picnic and barbecue, 1940s.

Walter Sanders TIME & LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Florida barbecue, 1961

Lynn Pelham Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Vermont barbecue, 1957

Walter Sanders TIME & LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

John D. Lodge (in the suit), the governor of Connecticut from 1951-55, surveys the scene at a salmon barbecue in 1953.

Ed Clark TIME & LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Fairfield County barbecue, Connecticut, 1949

Nina Leen TIME & LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Bobby Fischer: Mind Games

August 12, 2021August 30, 2012 by

Bobby Fischer was only 29 when, in the midst of the Cold War, he defeated the Russian defending champion Boris Spassky in the World Chess Championship on September 1, 1972, ending 24 years of Soviet dominance in the intense, rarefied realm of big-league chess. The match, held in Reykjavik, Iceland, was a massively hyped event “The Match of the Century” with a build-up worthy of a Super Bowl or the Olympics and the sort of pre-battle media conjecture usually reserved for heavyweight title bouts. Which, in a sense, the match was.

That Fischer was a genius, with one of the most innovative and thrilling minds ever to address a chess board, is largely undisputed. He played in eight U.S. chess championships and won all eight, decisively. In 1956, when he was just 13, he defeated the celebrated American chess master, Donald Byrne, in what Chess Review pegged as “The Game of the Century.” He routinely won international matches by record margins, and in the early 1970s was the number-one rated player in the world for more than four years.

But as renowned and imaginative a Chess Master as Fischer was, in later years his bizarre behavior and his increasingly strident political views (virulently anti-American and anti-Semitic, for the most part, although his mother was Jewish) overshadowed his brilliance and his accomplishments. When he died in 2008, he was living in Iceland—the scene of his greatest professional triumph, and where he had been granted full citizenship in 2005. The American Chess Federation had permanently revoked his membership years before, after he publicly applauded and defended the September 11, 2001, terror attacks as utterly justified and predictable payback in light of America’s policies in the Middle East and elsewhere around the globe. (“The U.S. and Israel have been slaughtering the Palestinians for years,” he said shortly after 9/11.)

Long before he beat Spassky, however, and five decades before he finally went to ground in Iceland to live out his last days, LIFE’s Carl Mydans photographed Fischer as a prodigiously talented (and, already, clearly a bit odd) young man living in Brooklyn, New York.

In a February 1964 profile of Fischer, “One-Track Mastermind,” that LIFE published more than a year after Mydans made his photographs, the magazine noted:

Once in a while Bobby Fischer strolls into one of the Times Square amusement arcades and stokes coins into a pinball machine. If you noticed him at all as he stands there, staring at the lighted scoreboard, you’d probably write him off as just another lost young man, and maybe not a very bright one.

You would be mistaken. Bobby hasn’t the slightest flicker of doubt about who he is or what he wants to do. In an age that idolizes well-roundedness he has a single aim: “All I want to do, ever,” he says,” is play chess.”

But even in this genuinely glowing portrait of a quirky, brilliant loner, there are nevertheless hints of a monomaniacal self-absorption and a dismissive attitude toward anyone not Bobby Fischer that, encountered years later, feel very much like the early rumblings of profound trouble to come.

His sister, LIFE notes, taught him chess “when he tired of Parcheesi and other children’s games,” but Fischer’s attitude toward women in general comes across even for the early 1960s as sneeringly adversarial.

“Women are lousy at chess. They’re meant to say at home. I bet I could take any man of average intelligence, a rank beginner, give him, oh, around two months of lessons, and have him at the end of that time beat the women’s world champion. Any man.”

Near the end of the piece, the narrow but unfathomably deep focus of Fischer’s life comes into pitiless focus:

Always in his mind are the 64 squares of the chessboard, with its pieces arranged in one of millions of possible combinations. Always he is thinking of his next match.

“It’s not exactly easy, keeping up the [U.S.] championship,” he says. “It’ll keep me busy all the rest of my life.”

Here, LIFE.com presents a selection of photos most of which never ran in LIFE that capture the phenomenally gifted (and commensurately confident) Fischer as he leaves his “child prodigy” years behind and enters, a tad awkwardly, the fraught world of adulthood. This is a portrait of the chess artist as a young man: images capturing a relatively calm stage in a life that, for all of its triumphs, would grow increasingly dark and relentlessly unbalanced as the years passed.

Bobby Fischer in New York City, 1962

Carl Mydans The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bobby Fischer with his half-sister, Joan, and her daughter, Elisabeth, 1962.

Carl Mydans The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bobby Fischer in New York City, 1962

Carl Mydans The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bobby Fischer in New York City, 1962.

Carl Mydans The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bobby Fischer on the subway, New York, 1962.

Carl Mydans The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bobby Fischer in a used bookstore, New York, 1962.

Carl Mydans The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bobby Fischer plays chess with an unidentified opponent , New York, 1962.

Carl Mydans The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bobby Fischer at a ballgame, New York, 1962.

Carl Mydans The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: “With chess problems spinning in his head by the millions, Bobby relaxes at a coin pinball machine.”

Carl Mydans The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bobby Fischer in New York City, 1962.

Carl Mydans The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Neil Armstrong: Private Man, Public Hero

August 12, 2021August 27, 2012 by

Neil Armstrong, who died in 2012, was one of those rare, genuine heroes whose legend grew larger with passing years not because he nurtured the myths that attached to him as the first human to walk on the moon, but because he quietly, resolutely refused to play the role of the publicly lauded Great American.

And yet, as private as he was, much of Armstrong’s career with NASA was chronicled, in depth, by LIFE magazine and other media. They were there, covering Armstrong’s role as one of the agency’s astronauts — an astronaut who would ultimately become far more famous than most by virtue of his role on the Apollo 11 flight, but who was, for the entirety of that career, as disciplined a team player as the space program ever produced.

[Order the LIFE Book, Neil Armstrong 1930-2012]

Evoking Armstrong’s personal and professional ethos to perfection, LIFE in 1969 wrote of him: “He grew up in Middle America during the Depression, steered by a set of stern and stubborn values: work hard, smile, save your money, count your blessings (things could be worse) and pray a lot (things could be better). Also: learning is the salvation of the human race, and sloth by far its greatest peril.”

Neil Armstrong worked hard. He inspired others not by any self-consciously grand gestures, but by his dedication to excellence and his tenacious search for ways to further human knowledge and human experience; by firing imaginations around the globe with his humility (“One small step for a man …”); and by his quiet, understated, unquestionable courage.

Neil Armstrong, commander of the Apollo 11 mission to moon, in training for his work on the lunar surface, 1969.

Ralph Morse Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Neil Armstrong, LIFE magazine, July 25, 1969

Apollo 11 lifts off on its historic flight to the moon, July 16, 1969.

Ralph Morse Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Jan Armstrong, wife of astronaut Neil Armstrong, and sons gaze up as Apollo 11 heads for space, Florida, 1969.

Vernon Meritt III Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Neil Armstrong and family, 1969.

Ralph Morse Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Neil Armstrong plays with his 10-year old son Mark, spring 1969.

Ralph Morse Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin chat over drinks in Houston before their historic flight.

Ralph Morse Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

NASA’s newest astronauts, 1963: Bottom row (from left): James Lovell Jr., James McDivitt, and Charles Conrad Jr.; second row: Elliot See Jr. and Major Thomas Stafford; third row: Captain Edward White II and Lt. Commander John Young; top row: Neil Armstrong and Major Frank Borman.

Ralph Morse Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Neil Armstrong beside a prototype lunar lander module, Edwards Air Force Base, 1964.

Ralph Morse Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Gemini 8 astronauts David Scott (left) and Neil Armstrong, 1966. Their March 1966 Gemini mission was NASA’s sixth manned space flight.

Ralph Morse Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Gemini 8 astronauts Neil Armstrong and David Scott, floating in the Pacific after splashdown, 1966.

NASA/LIFE

Neil Armstrong training for the Apollo 11 mission, Ellington Air Force Base, Texas, 1968.

Lynn Pelham Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Neil Armstrong ejecting safely as a “flying bedstead” (a prototype lunar lander) crashes and burns, 1968.

Apollo astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin operate a simulator prior to their lunar mission, 1967.

Ralph Morse Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Apollo 11 Lunar Module pilot Buzz Aldrin; Command Module pilot Michael Collins; Mission Commander Neil Armstrong, March 1969.

Ralph Morse Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A view of Earth from space during the Apollo 11 mission, July 1969.

NASA/Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin stands on the lunar surface, photographed by Neil Armstrong, July 1969.

NASA/Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin plant the American flag on the moon, July 1969.

NASA

Buzz Aldrin on the moon, photographed by Neil Armstrong, July 1969.

NASA/Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Jan Armstrong follows the Apollo 11 mission on television with friends and neighbors, 1969.

John Olson Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Astronaut Neil Armstrong making historic moonwalk during Apollo 11 lunar mission, 1969.

CBS News/Time & Life Pictures

A tired but quietly jubilant Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong in space capsule after his historic walk on moon, July 1969.

NASA

Footprint left on the moon by Apollo 11 astronaut, 1969

NASA/Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

President Richard Nixon speaks with Apollo 11 astronauts Armstrong, Collins and Aldrin (still in their quarantine room) aboard the recovery ship Hornet following the crew’s return to Earth, July 24, 1969.

Apollo 11 astronauts Armstrong, Collins and Aldrin peer out the window of their quarantine room aboard the recovery ship Hornet following their return to Earth after historic mission to the moon, July 24, 1969.

NASA/Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Michael Collins, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong chat inside the quarantine room in Houston, July 30, 1969.

AFP/Shutterstock

Collins, Armstrong and Aldrin inside a glass-enclosed cage to preserve their post-mission quarantine, July 1969.

Arthur Schatz Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins wave to crowds during a parade celebrating their return from the moon, August 1969.

NASA/LIFE

A photo of the American flag on the moon, taken during lift-off from the lunar surface, July 1969.

NASA

Neil Armstrong training for the Apollo 11 moon mission, Ellington Air Force Base, Texas, 1968.

Lynn Pelham Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The March on Washington, 1963

December 18, 2019August 27, 2012 by

So many scenes from the August 28, 1963, March on Washington are now familiar to so many of us and the cadence of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech is so much a part of the national consciousness it’s easy forget that for the hundreds of thousands of people who marched and rallied that day, the event was wholly, thrillingly new.

There had been, of course, other civil rights protests, marches and demonstrations. But none had been so large (estimates range from 200,000 to 300,00 people) and none garnered so much attention before, during and, especially, after the event itself.

The landmark 1957 Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom, for example, which also took place in the nation’s capital, had shown everyone—segregationists and civil rights proponents—that large, peaceable rallies in the heart of Washington were not only possible, but were necessary if the movement was going to achieve its central, early goals of desegregation and voting rights reform.

[Buy LIFE’s special edition on Martin Luther King Jr.]

But the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was on a scale so much larger than anything that had come before that it is rightly recalled as a touchstone moment for the Civil Rights movement: a single event so significant that the history of the movement can, in a sense, be measured in terms of Before the March, and After the March. The day is remembered almost exclusively for MLK’s “Dream” speech, famously delivered to the throngs from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

(“I Have a Dream” was, in a way, a work in progress. King had delivered a speech to tens of thousands of people in Detroit several months before, for example, that included several sections and phrases that he included in his Washington address.)

Here LIFE.com presents a selection of pictures most of which never ran in LIFE magazine commemorating that day. What is especially moving about so many of these pictures (those shot “on the ground” by Paul Schutzer, in particular) is that they illustrate the scene as witnessed not by those who led and organized the event, but by those in the crowd. There is huge emotion here, and excitement and the photos evince a palpable sense of inclusion. One is left with a feeling that power was, if only for a moment, passing to the people.

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

Martin Luther King Jr. addressed the crowd during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, August 28, 1963.

Francis Miller The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Scene from the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, August 28, 1963.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Lena Horne at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, August 28, 1963.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Scene from the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, August 28, 1963.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, August 28, 1963.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Joan Baez sang during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, August 28, 1963.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Odetta performed during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, August 28, 1963.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, August 28, 1963.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Actress and activist Ruby Dee, who with her husband, Ossie Davis, served as “master and mistress” of ceremonies at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, August 28, 1963.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

An overalled couple with the New York delegation joined the crowd by the Lincoln Memorial.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, August 28, 1963.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

More Like This

history

LIFE Goes to the Miss America Pageant, 1945

LIFE With Clint Eastwood: On the Set of Dirty Harry, 1971

LIFE Fires Up the Barbecue

Bobby Fischer: Mind Games

Neil Armstrong: Private Man, Public Hero

The March on Washington, 1963

The Strangest College Class Ever

After the Breakthrough: Desegregation at Little Rock’s Central High

Jimmy Carter: A Noble Life

Meet Lady Wonder, the Psychic Horse Who Appeared Twice in LIFE

“For Here Was Born Hope”: Christmas and Easter in Bethlehem, 1955

A Healing Return: Marlene Dietrich Goes Back to Germany, 1960

More Like This

Subscribe to the LIFE Newsletter