Page 135 – LIFE

Korean War: Classic Photos by David Douglas Duncan

June 29, 2022June 22, 2012 by

Few people have lived as long, as varied and as complete a life as David Douglas Duncan. And certainly no photographers ever enjoyed a longer, more varied or more complete career than the Missouri native who became one of the indispensable photojournalists of the 20th century.

Born in Kansas City, Mo., on Jan. 23, 1916, Duncan started taking pictures for newspapers in the 1930s; joined the U.S. Marines after Pearl Harbor; made some of the most indelible photos to come out of World War II and, 20 years later, Vietnam. He documented civil strife and wars in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East, and he captured extraordinary beauty in environments as disparate as the west of Ireland and the deserts of America’s Southwest. He befriended and photographed people such as Picasso and Cartier-Bresson, and he produced the single greatest portfolio of pictures to emerge from the Korean War.

Here, LIFE.com presents a gallery of his celebrated pictures from America’s “Forgotten War.”

Several years before his death in 2018 at age 102, LIFE.com spoke with Duncan about his memories of the conflict — and his hope, in the end, that he might “show something of what a man endures when his country decides to go to war.”

Of his photograph of a Marine captain near the Naktong River after an attack by North Korean troops as ammunition ran dangerously low and reinforcements were nowhere in sight Duncan had written in his 1951 book, This Is War!: “Ike Fenton, drenched and with the rain running in little droplets from his bearded chin, got the news. His tattered Baker Company Marines had only those few rounds in their belts remaining. If the Reds were to launch one more attack they would have to be stopped with bayonets and rifle butts.”

But that attack never came. The Marines held the muddy, blasted, blood-drenched hill. “Radio communication was knocked out by the rain that day,” Duncan told LIFE.com, the recollection still vivid more than six decades later, “and Fenton had to shout most of his orders and sent runners when shouting wouldn’t do. God, he was a cool one. He never lost his head.”

Pictures bring back visceral memories, and Duncan recounted the circumstances around the making of some of his classic photos in a voice at once firm and touched with wonder at the immediacy of his own recall; at the horrors and heroism he witnessed; at the fact that he was there, recording it all.

“I cabled LIFE’s editors in August [1950] from Tokyo,” Duncan said, “and I told them I was heading back to Korea to try and get what I called ‘a wordless story’ that conveyed the message, simply, ‘This is war.’ Not long after that I was covering the fighting near the Naktong River, and I made the picture of Marines running past a dead enemy soldier, their fatigues absolutely soaked to the chest with mud and muck and god knows what else. And this ended up as the cover image for the book, This Is War!, when it came out a year later.”

From the hellish heat of summer to the arctic freeze of winter, Duncan traveled with Marines, documenting the grinding, torturous lives they led and that troops everywhere have always led in war zones the world over.

“It was forty below zero during the retreat from Chosin Reservoir,” Duncan recalls of one especially appalling battle in the winter of 1950. “And the wind chill! The wind was barreling down from Manchuria and must have made it closer to fifty or sixty degrees below zero. It was so damn cold that my film was so brittle it just snapped, like a pretzel. But I managed to unload and load the camera under my gear and get some film in there, and I got some usable shots.”

The two-week battle at Chosin, while ending with 30,000 United Nations troops fleeing from at least 60,000 Chinese soldiers that surrounded them, is seen as a decisive battle for one primary reason: it showed that outnumbered allied forces could battle through encircling enemy lines, while at the same time inflicting heavy casualties.

While recalling the unspeakable violence and gnawing deprivation of those years, Duncan makes a point of praising the Americans’ South Korean allies. “The thing that comes to mind right away, right now, when looking at these pictures again,” Duncan said, “is that at no time at no time did any Marine feel he had to look around to see what the South Koreans were doing behind him. The Marines in Korea never feared ‘friendly fire’ or artillery coming from the South Koreans from their allies like they did later in Vietnam, fighting with the South Vietnamese. The Koreans could be trusted.”

The Korean War lasted for roughly three years, from June 25, 1950 when North Korea invaded the South until July 27, 1953, when the United Nations Command, the North Korean People’s Army and the Chinese People’s Volunteers signed an armistice agreement. However, the South Korean president, Syngman Rhee, refused to sign the document meaning that, technically, North and South Korea remained at war.

Five years after the end of World War II, American soldiers were fighting again, the time in Korea. Here Marine Capt. Francis “Ike” Fenton pondered his fate and the fate of his men after being told that his company was nearly out of ammunition, 1950.

David Douglas Duncan

American Marines raced past a dead enemy soldier in Korea, September 1950.

David Douglas Duncan

Wounded when a mine blew up his Jeep, an ambulance driver sobbed by the side of the road after learning that a friend was killed in the blast, Korea 1950.

David Douglas Duncan

“Corporal Leonard Hayworth … shows his utter frustration as he has crawled back from his position only to learn that the ammo is gone. Coda: At the last moment, supplies arrived and the men were able to hold their position.” From David Douglas Duncan’s 1951 book, This Is War!

David Douglas Duncan

A wounded American Marine was carried on stretcher improvised from a machine gun, Korea 1950.

David Douglas Duncan

A column of American Marines marched down a canyon road dubbed “Nightmare Alley” during their retreat from Chosin Reservoir, Korea, 1950.

David Douglas Duncan

Marines retreated from the Chosin Reservoir, Korea, 1950.

David Douglas Duncan

American Marines marched down a canyon road dubbed “Nightmare Alley” during their retreat from Chosin Reservoir, Korea, 1950.

David Douglas Duncan

A weary American Marine hooded against the cold during the grim retreat from Chosin Reservoir, Korea, winter 1950.

David Douglas Duncan

A weary, exhausted Marine huddled against the bitter cold during the retreat from Chosin Reservoir, Korea, winter 1950.

David Douglas Duncan

A dazed, hooded Marine clutched a can of food during his outfit’s retreat from the Chosin Reservoir during the Korean War, December 1950.

David Douglas Duncan

The fight for Seoul, Korea, 1950.

David Douglas Duncan

“This,” Duncan told LIFE.com of a picture made during the fight for Seoul, “is the best picture I made in Korea of civilians—a family running down stairs, a father holding a baby, tanks firing away. Those tanks are taking fire from North Koreans right down the street!”

David Douglas Duncan

An American Marine slept in his halted jeep while a puppy whined in his ear during the retreat from the Chosin Reservoir, December 1950.

David Douglas Duncan

American Marines passed bodies of fallen comrades during the retreat from the Chosin Reservoir, December 1950.

David Douglas Duncan

Marines rested after making it through the canyon road known as Nightmare Alley during the retreat from the Chosin Reservoir, December 1950.

David Douglas Duncan

Marines filed past a truck loaded with dead troops during the retreat from the Chosin Reservoir, December 1950.

David Douglas Duncan

LIFE photographer David Douglas Duncan in Korea.

David Douglas Duncan

“Great Lady With a Camera”: Margaret Bourke-White, American Original

January 7, 2020June 13, 2012 by

At the risk of belaboring the obvious, we’ll state at the outset that one photo gallery can not, and will not, begin to encompass Margaret Bourke-White’s achievements as a LIFE photographer, a journalist and a witness to the glories and barbarity of the 20th century.

That said, this particular gallery has been built in the hope that a dozen memorable and, in some cases, landmark pictures might at least hint at the centrality of her work and to the story of photojournalism in the 20th century. One can make the argument that there are few other photographers of any time whose work can match the sustained excellence of Bourke-White’s.

She was known to friends and co-workers simply as “Maggie.” And after she routinely returned alive and well, with powerful photographs, from mortally dangerous assignments—riding along on bombing runs over Nazi Germany, getting stranded in the Arctic, surviving a helicopter crash in Chesapeake Bay—she was given a new surname by her LIFE colleagues: “Maggie the Indestructible.”

One of LIFE magazine’s four original staff photographers—her picture of Montana’s monumental Fort Peck Dam graced the cover of the debut issue in November 1936—Bourke-White broke ground again and again throughout her career, notching notable assignments not only as the first woman photographer to accomplish this or that, but as the first photographer, period, to cover a variety of momentous events and key figures (heroic and heinous). In 1930, she was the first Western photographer officially allowed into the USSR. She was America’s first accredited woman photographer in WWII, and the very first authorized to fly on combat missions. She was one of the first (and certainly the most celebrated) of the photographers to document the horrors of Nazi concentration camps after they were liberated in the spring of 1945. She was the last person to interview Mohandas Gandhi before he was assassinated.

Here, LIFE.com presents some of her most recognizable photos, all of which appeared in an article in the June 28, 1963, issue of LIFE titled, “Great Lady With a Camera” a celebration of the photographer that the magazine published in conjunction with the release of Bourke-White’s autobiography, Portrait of Myself.

“Miss Bourke-White,” LIFE told its readers, “for 25 years a member of LIFE’s staff, has put her career into an autobiography. . . . The following pages include a sampling of her photographs along with her gay and moving story, taken from the book, of a tyro’s first steps to success.”

Among the many thousands of words from the autobiography that LIFE published most of which concerned Bourke-White’s fascinating (and occasionally quite amusing) descriptions of her earliest forays into photography a brief, three-paragraph account of how she finally made her mark at the media empire that would ultimately become her professional home especially stands out:

In the spring of 1929, I received a telegram from a man I had never met: HAVE JUST SEEN YOUR [OHIO STEEL MILL] PHOTOGRAPHS. CAN YOU COME TO NEW YORK WITHIN WEEK AT OUR EXPENSE. It was signed: HENRY R. LUCE and under his name: TIME, THE WEEKLY NEWSMAGAZINE. I very nearly did not go. For two days the telegram lay unanswered, and then the yeast of New York began to work.
When I arrived, the inevitable portfolio under my arm, Mr. Luce and his associates explained that they were planning to launch a new magazine of business and industry. FORTUNE, they planned to call it and they hoped to illustrate it with the most dramatic photographs of industry that had ever been taken. Did I think this was a good idea, he wanted to know?
A good idea? This was the very role I believed photography should play. I said yes and went back to Cleveland to pick up my belongings. Before I left again for New York, I wrote my mother: “I feel as if the world has been opened up and I hold all the keys.”

It had. And she did.

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

Margaret Bourke-White, 27, stood on the scaffolding enclosing the under-construction Chrysler Building in New York, 1931.

The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Otis Steel Mill, Ohio, 1929.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Russian iron worker, Stalingrad, 1930.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Joseph Stalin’s great-aunt, 1932.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Fort Peck Dam, Montana, 1936. Bourke-White photographed the construction of the dam and the people working on it for LIFE’s first cover story.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Scene at a dam-workers’ Montana bar from LIFE’s first issue, 1936.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

An Allied artillery barrage at night, on the Italian front, 1944.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Buchenwald concentration camp prisoners stared in disbelief at their Allied liberators, April 1945.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Hindus fled Pakistan in the midst of a border war, 1947.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

South African gold miners, photographed more than a mile underground, 1950.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Statue of Liberty, photographed from a helicopter, 1952.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Margaret Bourke-White’s favorite self-portrait, made with the U.S. 8th Air Force in 1943.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Elvis Presley Mania, 1956

December 19, 2019June 5, 2012 by

In August of 1956—a year in which Elvis Presley released five No. 1 hits—LIFE magazine published a feature on Presley who was 21 years old and at the height of his powers. Elvis’s voice, looks and live performances were causing girls to scream and swoon; armies of boys to pick up guitars of their own; and legions of commentators, guardians of public morals and pop-culture critics to predict the end of civilization as they knew it if Elvis’ ungodly onstage gyrations were allowed to continue.

LIFE reported rather drily on the uproar in ’56, choosing to remain above the fray perhaps in hopes that Elvis would, eventually, just go away:

Up to a point the country can withstand the impact of Elvis Presley as a familiar and acceptable phenomenon. Wherever the lean, 21-year-old Tennessean goes to howl out his combination of hillbilly and rock and roll, he is beset by teenage girls yelling for him. They dote on his sideburns and pegged pants, cherish cups of water dipped from his swimming pool, covet strands of his hair, boycott disc jockeys who dislike his records (they have sold some six million copies). All this the country has seen before with Ray, Sinatra and all the way back to Rudy Vallee.

But with Elvis Presley the daffiness has been deeply disturbing to civic leaders, clergymen, some parents. He does not just bounce to accent his heavy beat. He uses a bump and grind routine usually seen only in burlesque. His young audiences, unexposed to such goings-on, do not just shout their approval. They get set off by shock waves of hysteria, going into frenzies of screeching and wailing, ending up in tears.

In Miami, one newspaper columnist called Presley’s performance “obscene.” In Jacksonville, he was threatened with jail. His impact had brought Presley a welcome taste of wealth and fame. But now it was bringing him some unwelcome attention.

Here, LIFE.com presents photos of Elvis—several of which never ran in LIFE magazine—when he was a young, reckless, charming, thrilling and, for some, downright unnerving rocker.

Elvis Presley in Florida, 1956.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

In Jacksonville, fans yelled their heads off at Presley’s performance.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Presley was on the mind of Baptist preacher Robert Gray.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Presley fans in Florida, 1956.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A 13-year-old, Steve Shad, imitated Presley’s moves in a Jacksonville record shop.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Presley promoter in Jacksonville was the side-burned drummer and disk jockey Scotty Ferguson.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Barber Joe Governale in Jacksonville gave Ronny Turner, 16, the duck-tail cut Elvis favored, leaving a rich overhang of hair in back of head.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

An antidote to Elvis was a church social at Murray Hill Methodist church two nights after Presley left. Before this dance, the group heard Presley denounced in a sermon on ”Hot Rods, Reefers and Rock ‘n Roll.”

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Civic leaders met with a Jacksonville judge to discuss ways of “curbing” Elvis Presley’s influence on local teens.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Teenagers in Trinity Baptist church, led by Revered Gray, prayed for the salvation of the soul of Elvis Presley.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Fans lined up outside a Florida theater before an Elvis concert, 1956.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Elvis Presley in Florida, 1956.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

For each of Presley’s six shows in two days in Jacksonville, 2,200 teenagers turned up. A line of uniformed cops and shore patrol seated in the orchestra pit kept the audience from storming over the footlights when Elvis sang his closing number, ‘Hound Dog.’

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Andrea June Stephens came to Jacksonville from Atlanta, Ga., after writing a prizewinning letter on why she would like to meet Elvis. Promised a dinner date with Elvis, she got instead a cheeseburger in a Jacksonville diner.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Elvis Presley in Florida, 1956.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Life Magazine, August 27, 1956

Elizabeth II: Rare and Classic Photos of the Queen

January 20, 2020June 2, 2012 by

Elizabeth II has enjoyed a remarkably long reign, ascending to the throne in 1952. TIME’s Belinda Luscombe once noted, deep into Her Majesty’s rule, that this particular Queen of England “is very likely the most portrayed woman on the planet. Billions of stamps, millions of coins and notes and hundreds of thousands of postcards bear her likeness. Her face, especially in profile, is recognized in every English-speaking land and is ubiquitous in several. Hers is not the exotic, come-hither face of a Marilyn or an Angelina. It’s the face of distant historic authority, a literal figurehead, having no real power but oodles of symbolic supremacy.”

[Buy the LIFE book, The Royal Baby.]

The portrayals in this gallery come from between 1953 and 1966, and most are quite informal. And while some images do convey “oodles of symbolic supremacy,” it’s also worth noting that, in at least a few of these shots, there’s also a welcome flicker of something that one hardly ever associates with Elizabeth: namely, a quite self-aware and yet wry sense of fun.

Princess Margaret (left), the future Queen Elizabeth II (third from left) and the Queen Mother (third from right) with the Grenadier guards on the occasion of Princess Elizabeth’s birthday, 1942.

David E. Scherman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Queen Elizabeth II (“a little fagged after four days of royal touring,” as LIFE put it in its Dec. 7, 1953, issue) prepared to speak at University of the West Indies, Jamaica, 1953.

Cornell Capa The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Queen Elizabeth II watched Maryland vs. North Carolina college football game at Maryland’s Byrd Stadium during her 1957 official visit to the United States.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles at Princess Margaret’s wedding in 1960

Loomis Dean The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Queen Elizabeth II speaking at a State Dinner in Ghana, 1961.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Queen Elizabeth II shook hands with a well-wisher while standing next to the General and Governor of Bermuda, Sir Alexander Hood, 1961.

Lisa Larsen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Queen Elizabeth II upon her arrival in India in 1961; she was the first British monarch to visit since George V in 1911.

Hank Walker The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Queen Elizabeth II during a visit to Sudan, 1964.

John Loengard The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Queen Elizabeth in Ethiopia in 1965.

John Loengard The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Queen Elizabeth II in Ethiopia, 1965.

John Loengard The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Queen Elizabeth II (right) and Prince Philip on a tour of Trinidad and Tobago, 1966.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Queen Elizabeth II during her 1966 tour of the Caribbean.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Marilyn Monroe in ’49: A Movie Icon in Training

January 9, 2020May 31, 2012 by

“I’m sending only brief captions,” a LIFE magazine correspondent wrote to his editors in February 1949, in notes accompanying photographs of a little-known actress. “For one thing, time is of the essence in getting the pictures to a plane. For another, the processes shot are not terribly complicated, showing as they do how Marilyn trains herself for hoped-for movie stardom by consulting specialists in singing, dancing and drama and how she is worked on by them in the effort to produce a wrapped-up package of talent to back up her photogenic sex appeal.”

Marilyn Monroe at this point had appeared (largely uncredited) in half-a-dozen utterly forgettable movies, and there was absolutely no guarantee, or even likelihood, that the 22-year-old’s “hoped-for movie stardom” would pan out. And yet, LIFE’s J,R, Eyerman saw enough of something, a special glimmer, in the fresh-faced beauty to chronicle the training that she evidently knew she needed. The Eyerman pictures in this gallery are among the very first that any LIFE photographer ever took of Monroe—and they were never published them. Marilyn wouldn’t show up in LIFE’s pages until October 1949, when she appeared along with seven other young Hollywood actresses.

[Buy the LIFE Special Issue Remembering Marilyn]

While it’s hardly evident in these warm and carefree photos, the next few months in Marilyn’s career would be marked by struggle. Later in 1949, desperate for money, she posed naked for a pinup calendar, a gig that paid her just $50 and later came back to haunt her. (The pictures wound up in the debut issue of Playboy).

But the beautiful and, crucially, tenacious Marilyn pushed on. She watched, practiced and learned, and as she honed her talent her opportunities grew. A slew of small roles—a memorable walk-on in the Marx Brothers’ Love Happy; a dramatic turn in John Huston’s great noir heist flick, The Asphalt Jungle; a luminous breakthrough in All About Eve—inspired Fox, the studio that dropped her back in 1947, to sign her to a new seven-year contract. By 1953, Marilyn Monroe’s “hoped-for movie stardom” was no longer an ingenue’s dream. She was lighting up the screen in movies (including Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire) that allowed her to sing, dance and act all the tools of the trade that she so studiously honed under Eyerman’s sympathetic gaze just a few years before.

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

Marilyn Monroe, 22, took dance lessons, Hollywood, 1949.

J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Marilyn Monroe, 22, took dance lessons, Hollywood, 1949. Her instructor is Nico Charisse, ex-husband of the actress and dancer, Cyd Charisse.

J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Marilyn Monroe, 22, took dance lessons, Hollywood, 1949.

J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Marilyn Monroe, age 22, Hollywood, 1949.

J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Marilyn Monroe, 22, took lessons with the acting coach Natasha Lytess.

J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Marilyn Monroe at age 22, Hollywood, 1949.

J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Four photographs of Marilyn Monroe at age 22, Hollywood, 1949.

J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Marilyn Monroe at age 22, Hollywood, 1949.

J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Marilyn Monroe, 22, took singing lessons with the bandleader Phil Moore at the famous West Hollywood nightclub, the Mocambo.

J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Marilyn Monroe, 22, took singing lessons with the bandleader Phil Moore at the West Hollywood nightclub, the Mocambo, in 1949.

J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Marilyn Monroe, 22, took lessons with the acting coach Natasha Lytess, Hollywood, 1949.

J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Marilyn Monroe at age 22, Hollywood, 1949.

J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mannequin Mayhem: Aftermath of an A-Bomb Test in Nevada

January 9, 2020May 30, 2012 by

In the spring of 1955, as the Cold War intensified and the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union escalated at a shocking pace, America—as it had many times before—detonated an atomic weapon in the Nevada desert. The test was not especially noteworthy. The weapon’s “yield” was not dramatically larger or smaller than that of previous A-bombs: the brighter-than-the-sun flash of light, the mushroom cloud and the staggering power unleashed by the weapon were all byproducts familiar to anyone who had either witnessed or paid attention to coverage of earlier tests.

Here, LIFE.com presents pictures made in the Nevada desert by photographer Loomis Dean shortly after a 1955 atomic bomb test. These are not “political” pictures. They are eerily beautiful, unsettling photographs made at the height of the Cold War, when the destructive power of the detonation was jaw-droppingly huge—although miniscule compared to today’s truly terrifying thermonuclear weapons. As LIFE told its readers in its May 16, 1955, issue (in which some of these photos appeared):

A day after the 44th nuclear test explosion in the U.S. rent the still Nevada air, observers cautiously inspected department store mannequins which were poised disheveled but still haughty on the sand sand in the homes of Yucca Flat. The figures were residents of an entire million-dollar village built to test the effects of an atomic blast on everything from houses to clothes to canned soup.
The condition of the figures—one charred, another only scorched, another almost untouched—showed that the blast, which was equivalent to 35,000 tons of TNT, was discriminating in its effects. As one phase of the atomic test, the village and figures help guide civil defense planning and make clear that even amid atomic holocaust careful planning could save lives.

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

In the test, this scorched mannequin indicated that a human at that distance would be burned but alive.

Loomis Dean The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Burned up except for its face, this mannequin was 7,000 feet from the blast.

Loomis Dean The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

This lady mannequin’s wig was askew though her a light-colored dress was unburned.

Loomis Dean The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Remains of a house [built for the test more than a mile from ground zero] after an atomic bomb test, Nevada, 1955.

Loomis Dean The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock