The year 2023 has been a hot one at the cinema for men who were fixtures in LIFE magazine during its original run. This summer moviegoers flocked to see Christopher Nolan’s rendering of the life of Robert Oppenheimer, and now, Bradley Cooper is delivering a biopic of Leonard Bernstein with his Netflix release Maestro on December 20th.
The pages of LIFE chronicled the rise and rise of the legendary conductor. In its Jan. 7, 1957 issue LIFE ran a multi-page story on Bernstein headlined “Busy Time for a Young Maestro.” He was conducting thrice-weekly performances with the New York Philharmonic, while also dividing attention between one musical he had on Broadway, Candide, and another that was on its way and would elevate his star even higher—West Side Story. Bernstein also had ballets on his plate and five records in the pipeline in which he was either the conductor, composer or performer. “It’s perfectly possible to do all the things I have to,” he told LIFE, “but it’s a little hard doing them all at once.” The photos for that story, shot by Alfred Eisenstaedt, also gave a window into Bernstein’s personal life, showing Bernstein and his wife Felicia (played in the film by Carrie Mulligan) at home with their children around the piano.
In 1958 LIFE photographer Gordon Parks captured more memorable images of Bernstein when following him around for that year’s opening for the Philharmonic, including a lovely photo of Bernstein and Felicia dancing at the end of the night.
His further appearances included a 1969 article about Bernstein as he prepared to leave the New York Philharmonic at age 50. This was the end of a major chapter in Bernstein’s career, and the tone of the story, by Thomas Thompson, was elegiac. Here’s how it ended:
John F. Kennedy said, after a gala at the Washington Armory, that there was only one person he would never want to run against. Laurence Olivier once said that if he had the choice to be anyone in the world besides himself, he would choose but one other man. In the last hours of a long night in London, this envy of Kennedy and Olivier sat at a gleaming Steinway in his hotel suite, pounding out private crashing chords, wondering if 50 is halfway, the beginning, the end. This captive of the modern age, this effect and cause, this musician who could perhaps bring back the era of symphonic genius if there were the time but who wonders if there were the time would there also be the genius, this man, Leonard Bernstein, dreams of catching his breath and maybe his life.
Bernstein would in fact keep a busy schedule in the decades after he left the Philharmonic, and up through the last years of his life. His last major event was a historic one: on Christmas Day 1989, in Berlin, he conducted a performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, not far from the Brandenburg Gate, to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall. He led his final concert at Tanglewood with the Boston Symphony Orchestra on Aug. 19, 1990. He died on Oct. 14 of that year, from a heart attack, at age 72.
Leonard Bernstein, 1955.
Gordon Parks The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Leonard Bernstein, 1954.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Leonard Bernstein, 1955.
Gordon Parks/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Leonard Bernstein and wife Felicia played pianos at home while their children Alexander (left) and Jamie (third from left) joined in, 1956.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein with his wife, actress Felicia Montealegre, and children Alexander and Jamie, at the piano in their home, 1956.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Leonard Bernstein conducting a rehearsal of the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall, 1956.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra during a rehearsal for the ‘Mathis der Maler’ performance on December 20-21, Carnegie Hall, New York, 1956.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein walked past Carnegie Hall, where he would be conducting the New York Philharmonic’s performance of Paul Hindemith’s symphony ‘Mathis der Maler’, December 1956.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Leonard Bernstein talking on the phone at Carnegie Hall after a New York Philharmonic rehearsal, December 1956.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Maestro Leonard Bernstein getting a cologne rubdown from his wife, actress Felicia Montealegre, during intermission for his concert conducting the New York Philharmonic orchestra at Carnegie Hall, 1956.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Stephen Sondheim (left) discussed rehearsal schedules for the Broadway opening of West Side Story with composer Leonard Bernstein (center) and choreographer Jerome Robbins (right), 1957.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Leonard Bernstein on opening night for the New York Philharmonic, 1958.
Gordon Parks/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Conductor Leonard Bernstein (left) talking with composer Jules Styne on opening night for the New York Philharmonic, 1958.
Leonard Bernstein and his wife on the opening night of the New York Philharmonic, 1958.
Gordon Parks/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Leonard Bernstein with his wife Felicia, 1958.
Gordon Parks/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Composer Leonard Bernstein dancing with his wife on opening night for the New York Philharmonic, 1958.
Gordon Parks/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Conductor Leonard Bernstein, 1959.
Carl Mydans/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Leonard Bernstein conducting vocal soloists and the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall, 1960.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Conductor Leonard Bernstein rehearsed Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony at Carnegie Hall, 1960.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Conductor Leonard Bernstein, First Lady Jackie Kennedy (center) and John D, Rockefeller III (left) at the opening of the Lincoln Center Philharmonic Hall, 1962.
Ralph Morse/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Leonard Bernstein at the podium for the first performance ever at Lincoln Center’s Philharmonic Hall in New York, 1962.
Thanks to a new partnership, you can now have the highest-quality prints of LIFE’s greatest photos in your home.
The new Lifephotostore.com allows you to order prints of photos by Alfred Eisenstaedt, Nina Leen and the rest of LIFE’s great photographers. The shop is a collaboration between LIFE and Pixels.com, a leader in print-on-demand artworks. Alex Young, the company’s vice president of operations and business development, says that matching their expertise with LIFE’s vaunted collection fulfills a longtime goal.
“Since 2006, we’ve been in business to help artists, photographers, and content owners monetize their images across custom wall decor and merchandise,” Young says. “In addition to our community of 700,000 artists and photographers, we’ve been building out a roster of some of the most popular licensed content companies in the world including Getty, Sports Illustrated, TIME magazine, MLB, and the NBA. LIFE’s iconic imagery has long been on our wish list.”
The pride of the company is its technology and the quality of its reproductions. “`Print-on-Demand’ is often thought of as producing novelty items like pillows or shot glasses where the focus isn’t necessarily on accurately reproducing the color and contrast of the original image,” Young says. “With the best-in-class wall decor we produce out of more than a dozen locations around the world, each piece is custom-built to fit the uncropped version of the original image and printed with archival inks on fine art papers and substrates.”
The LIFE store features a curated collection of 10,000 photos, the most popular and beloved from among of the millions of images in LIFE’s vast archive. The images presented here are the ten most popular LIFE photos with print-on-demand customers. This top ten includes celebrities from Marilyn Monroe to Eddie Murphy, and also scenes of high fashion and of barnyard hijinks. It’s just a hint at the great variety of photographic treasures that you can have custom-printed.
Most customers print the photos as wall art, with options ranging from posters to canvas prints and more. The store also allows you to print LIFE’s photos on coffee mugs, throw pillows, and a long list of home products.
LIFE’s pictures have amazed and inspired viewers for generations. Take a look around the store and see which photos you can have printed for your home, so they can amaze and inspire you every day.
Models wearing latest dress designs from Christian Dior, 1957.
Loomis Dean/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Portrait of actress Marilyn Monroe on patio of her home.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Steve McQueen aims a pistol in his living room.
Photo by Loomis Dean/The LIFE Picture Collection/Meredith Corporation
Comedians Rodney Dangerfield and Redd Foxx, 1982.
David Mcgough/Life Picture Colletion/Shutterstock
Albert Einstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer, Princeton University, 1947.
Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Comedian Eddie Murphy (left) and singer Rick James following Murphy’s performance at Madison Square Garden, 1986.
David Mcgough/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Sophia Loren laughing while exchanging jokes during lunch break on a movie set, 1961.
Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Mickey Mantle, Yankee Stadium, 1965.
John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Fresh milk at Arch Badertscher’s dairy farm. 1954.
Nat Farbman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Jack Nicholson relaxing at home in Los Angeles, 1969.
The Aug. 6, 1951 issue of LIFE featured a back-to-college fashion spread that was all about the fabric. The pictures for the story were shot by LIFE’s legendary photographer Nina Leen, and they highlighted clothes which were light enough to be worn in those early days of the fall semester, when students were still figuring out where their classes were.
Here’s the sales pitch from LIFE’s story, which was headlined “Chameleon Cottons: New Eye-Fooling Fabrics Look Like Anything But What They Are.”
With more body and versatility than their gingham cousins, they are styled to substitute for wool and are a lot cheaper. A canny college shopper can pick cotton for any item in her wardrobe….Since college girls have always found wool uncomfortably warm during the first weeks of school, the smartest students are now likely to appear in fashionable year-round cottons that look like fall but feel like Indian summer.
Some photos show models on what could be a campus, while at least a couple show the young women out on the town. Still others have the models playing with a lively Dalmatian. While it’s the rare college student who takes a dog to college—Bruiser of Legally Blonde is more the exception than the rule—Dalmatians have long been a favorite of fashion photographers.
LIFE’s 1951 take of campus fashion is definitely of its time, both for the conservative nature of the clothes and also the fascination with cotton. This was 1951, and the real fabric revolution of the 1950s, the introduction of polyester and other synthetics, was soon on its way. And while LIFE’s story touted the affordability of cotton, some of the clothes in this shoot were not inexpensive; the quilted jacket cast $25, the equivalent of nearly $300 in 2023. That would be a lot for most college students, and it’s a sign of why cheaper substitutes would prove so popular.
This Peruvian jacket with heavy twill retaining authentic detailing and cost $9; it was featured in a story about campus fashion, 1951.
Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
This quilted jacket ($25) featured ribbing below the elbows; it was featured in a story on college fashions, 1951.
Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
From a LIFE story on campus fashions featuring chameleon cottons, 1951.
Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
From a LIFE story on college fashions featuring chameleon cottons, 1951.
Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
From a LIFE story on college fashions featuring chameleon cottons, 1951.
Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
This party dress had three separate parts, a blouse and petticoat ($5.95 each) and a black corduroy jumper ($14.95); it was featured in a story on campus fashions, 1951.
Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
From a LIFE story on college fashions featuring chameleon cottons, 1951.
Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
From a LIFE story on college fashions featuring chameleon cottons, 1951.
Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
From a LIFE story on college fashions featuring chameleon cottons, 1951.
Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
This $50 cotton town suit with triangular button closings was designed for all-year wear; it was featured in a story on campus fashions, 1951.
Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
From a LIFE story on college fashions featuring chameleon cottons, 1951.
Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
From a LIFE story on college fashions featuring chameleon cottons, 1951.
Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
From a LIFE story on college fashions featuring chameleon cottons, 1951.
In its March 10, 1952 issue LIFE magazine served its readers photos of the “sailing rocks” of the Racetrack Playa, a dry lake bed near Death Valley, California. The stones don’t do anything really wild like zip around in front of people, but they have moved at some point, and we know it by the tracks they have left behind at the Racetrack and also at a few similar locations around the globe. LIFE’s photos by Loomis Dean captured the phenomenon that keeps the Playa Racetrack a tourist destination all these years later.
On a dry lake bed high in the Panamint Mountains near Death Valley sit several dozen boulders whose peculiar behavior has long been a nightmare to geologists. The boulders, which weigh up to a quarter ton, stand at the ends of long, gouged-out paths which show that they periodically respond to unknown forces and skate about on the flat earthen floor.
LIFE painted the situation as a complete mystery, mentioning disproved theories from everyday folks that attributed the stones’ movement to the lake bed tilting back and forth, or perhaps to “Russians tampering with the magnetic pole.” (This was the early days of the Cold War, mind you). LIFE ended its writeup by saying “The mystery may never be completely solved. When humans observers are about, the stones refuse to budge an inch.”
But since 1952 scientists, when not busy exploring space and inventing cell phones and so forth, did come up with a leading hypothesis, which is that the stones’ skating is likely caused by the movement of thin sheets of ice that can form there in wintertime, with high winds perhaps helping to push stones along.
Though sometimes the stones have moved for reasons that are all too explicable—such as in 2013, when some stones were stolen. A park spokesman expressed both disappointment and confusion at the theft, saying “They don’t seem to understand that outside the Racetrack, these stones have no value.” Other visitors have damaged the site by taking the “Racetrack” name literally and driving their cars on it.
Sometimes human behavior is a mystery all its own.
The “sailing stones” of the Racetrack Playa in Death Valley, California, 1952.
Loomis Dean/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The “sailing stones” of the Racetrack Playa in Death Valley, California, 1952.
Loomis Dean/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
LIFE’s 1952 story on the sailing stones of Racetrack Playa in Death Valley included this photo of stone-like objects described as “burro droppings” that had likely been moved by the same forces as the stones.
Loomis Dean/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The sailing stones of the Racetrack Playa in Death Valley, California, 1952.
Loomis Dean/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
This three-quarter-ton stone left its mark after moving across a dry lake bed in Death Valley, 1952.
Loomis Dean/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
“Sailing stones” left tracks as they drifted across Racetrack Playa in Death Valley, California, 1952.
Loomis Dean/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
A small stone left these intricate tracks on the Racetrack Playa in Death Valley, California, 1952.
Loomis Dean/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
LIFE’s 1952 story on the Racetrack Playa described this photo as being from a “ghost experiment,” guessing that an amateur scientist had tied up the rock to keep it from moving, but over time the rope had eventually rotted away.
Who doesn’t want to finish the summer in style? If that was the goal of these Santa Monica lifeguards and their friends, then mission accomplished. The party captured by LIFE photographer Peter Stackpole certainly looks like grand old time, especially because these lifeguards pulled their lunch straight from the ocean.
The story that ran in the Nov. 18, 1940 issue was titled “LIFE Goes to a Lifeguard Party.” The lifeguards and their friends sailed a short ways north to Point Dume for the day, but the story drew on the glamor of their Santa Monica origins, talking about how these young men were responsible for protecting Cary Grant, Norma Shearer, Marion Davies and other movie stars who had beach homes in their territory. The lifeguards were at least connected enough to borrow a boat for their party from actor Arthur Lake, best known for playing Dagwood in the Blondie movies based on the popular comic strip. LIFE’s story described the female party guests as “Aquabelles from the San Francisco Fair,” which seems to reference to a show called Aquacade that had been popular around the country and had set up shop in San Francisco that summer.
A highlight of this lifeguard party was when they took Lake’s boat out, dropped anchor, and began to forage in the Pacific. Here’s how LIFE described the scene:
Diving for abalone, lobster and octopus in beds of entangling kelp is a hazardous sport, hence the Aquabelles stayed on the paddling boards, spotted game by peering into the depths through gas masks (used professionally by the guards when searching for drowning victims) and let their expert hosts do the underwater work….Boys dived for abalone and for spiny lobsters which they captured by grabbing their feelers, yanking them out of their holes. Soon they had enough for lunch.
After securing their catches, the lifeguards went to the shore to boil the seafood and then returned to their sloop to dine.
After eating, they took their boat home to Santa Monica and despite the fine day there was a wistful feeling about summer coming to an end. LIFE’s story closed on this note: “As they sailed home through the slashing sunlight, they realized with quick regret that the day had been brief, the hot golden summer finally fled. Soon winter’s fogs would billow over empty beaches from the sea.”
Santa Monica lifeguards partied at the end of their season, California, 1940.
Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Scene from a season-ending party for Santa Monica lifeguards, 1940.
Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Paddlers gathered over a bed of kelp where they hoped to find lobsters and abalone for the Santa Monica lifeguards’ season-ending party, 1940..
Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
A member of a lifeguard’s party dove for abalone that would be part of their end-of-summer seafood feast, California, 1940.
Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The octopus was among the catches of the day for the season-ending party for Santa Monica lifeguards, 1940.
Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
A member of the lifeguard party killed a recently-caught octopus by biting its head, Santa Monica, California, 1940.
Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Part of the freshly caught lunch at a season-ending party for Santa Monica lifeguards, 1940.
Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The seafood that had been pulled from the water was cooked on land and then taken back aboard their boat during the Santa Monica lifeguards’ season-closing party, 1940.
Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Santa Monica lifeguards relaxed after an on-boat lunch of freshly caught seafood during their season-ending party, 1940.
Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Santa Monica lifeguards and their guests relaxed after lunch aboard a boat at their season-ending party, 1940.
Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The Santa Monica lifeguards sailed home from Point Dume at the close of their season-ending party, 1940.
Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The show biz ladder had few rungs lower than Anthony Dominick Benedetto’s gig at Riccardo’s, the Italian restaurant in his hometown, Astoria, Queens, New York, where, at 16, he worked as a singing waiter. But the artist the world came to know as Tony Bennett worked the dining room the same way he would the Copa or Carnegie Hall—he gave it his all. “We’d get a request from a customer and then I’d run back into the kitchen to work out the arrangements,” he recalled in his 1998 memoir, The Good Life. “I really cut my teeth as a performer at that job.”
His dreams then did not extend beyond the beckoning lights of nearby Manhattan. “When you’d see this big city,” he told the New York Times decades later, “you’d say, ‘Boy, wouldn’t it be great to become famous in that great city there?’” Tony Bennett and his music would conquer territories far beyond the island of Manhattan. “If America is a song,” Anthony Hopkins said in the narration of a 2007 PBS American Masters, “Tony Bennett is its singer.”
By the time of his death on July 21, 2023, at age 96, Bennett was more than a national treasure. “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” was his signature. But he put his heart into every song and the bel canto—the “beautiful music”—of his voice was heard around the world. “When it comes to heart,” critic (and Good Life coauthor) Will Friedwald wrote, “Bennett is a virtuoso.”
He leaves a legacy greater than his 50 million albums sold, his 90-plus singles, his 19 Grammy Awards amassed in a hit-making career that began in 1950 and found him still at it, releasing acclaimed albums, performing and even touring, well into his nineties. Long running acts of a younger generation like Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones will have to remain on the road another full decade and more to match Bennett’s longevity. Collaborations with music giants from Duke Ellington and Count Basie to 21st-century stars such as Amy Winehouse and Lady Gaga earned accolades in genres and music epochs that span the history of popular music from the post–World War II era to today.
The son of Italian immigrants—his father, Giovanni, emigrated at age 11; his mother, Anna, crossed the ocean in utero and was born in America—Bennett came from a long line of singers on his father’s side. “Singing,” he wrote, “is in my blood.” A mobbed-in-the-streets pop idol at 25, his star dimmed during the reigns of Elvis and the Beatles. But it was secured, thanks in part to “San Francisco,” the 1962 smash that kept his music in the air throughout a decade that saw the careers of contemporaries go into near permanent eclipse. At the same time, Bennett, a passionate and lifelong civil rights advocate, earned an honored place in the annals of the movement when he marched alongside Martin Luther King in 1964.
Beset in the 1970s by drug and money problems, he engineered a startling career resurgence in the following decades. “Tony Bennett has not just bridged the generation gap,” the New York Times wrote of his Grammy-winning 1994 MTV Unplugged performance, “he has demolished it.”
Indeed, his dimpled grin, like his gleaming green eyes, Roman nose and nobly tailored tuxedos, became as familiar to new generations of fans as his exultant performances, his devotion to the Great American Songbook classics and his unwavering optimism. “I’ve been singing for 60 years,” Bennett exclaimed at the 2005 Monterey Jazz Festival. “If I get lucky enough I’d like to sing for another 60 years. Beautiful!”
Through most of his later decades, Bennett enjoyed the good life indeed. After two otherwise failed marriages—the first produced two sons, D’Andrea (Danny) and Daegel (Dae, for short); the second, daughters Joanna and Antonia—he wed his long-time companion Susan Crow, a former New York City social studies teacher turned artist manager, in 2007. He devoted himself to another lifelong passion, painting, and to his and his wife’s arts education foundation. In a kind of monument to Bennett’s modesty, the New York City public school for performing and visual arts that he and his wife founded in his native Astoria is named not for Bennett but for his own musical hero, Frank Sinatra. In February 2021, his wife and sons revealed that Bennett had Alzheimer’s, the progressive, debilitating form of dementia that had first been diagnosed in 2016. While ravaging so much of life that he held dear, the disease had, almost miraculously it seemed, left his gift intact, allowing him to perform in concert right up until he gave his final public performance in August 2021. Thereafter he continued to perform at home, encouraged by his family and caregivers for singing’s therapeutic value. “There’s a lot about him that I miss,” Susan told AARP magazine in 2021. “Because he’s not the old Tony anymore.” After a pause to steady her voice, she added, “But when he sings, he’s the old Tony.”
Tony Bennett with his first wife, Patricia, in their Tenafly, N.J. home, 1957.
David McLane/NY Daily News Archive/Getty
Tony Bennett performed during Johnny Carson’s debut as host of The Tonight Show on Oct. 1, 1962.
NBCU Photo Bank/Getty
Tony Bennett was out with Frank Sinatra after a performance in Miami, 1965.
John Dominis/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Tony Bennett and Duke Ellington performed together at the Grammy Awards, 1966.
NBCU Photo Bank/Getty
Tony Bennett, circa 1970.
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty
Tony Bennett’s output of recordings was already voluminous when he posed for this photo in 1970; over the course of his career he would release 90 albums.
Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Tony Bennett with second wife Sandra and daughter Joanna at the London Zoo, 1972.
Everett Collection Historical/Alamy
Tony Bennett played with his daughter Joanna, then six years old, at his apartment on Central Park South in New York City, 1977.
Richard Corkery/NY Daily News Archive/Getty
Diana Krall and Tony Bennett performed at the 2018 CMA Country Christmas on Sept. 27, 2018 in Nashville.
Jason Kempin/Getty
Tony Bennett performed with Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden In New York City on April 12, 2019.