Page 32 – LIFE

The Perfect Day of an Imperfect Player: Don Larsen’s World Series Moment

October 13, 2022October 13, 2022 by Bill Syken

In the course of his baseball career, Don Larsen lost more games (91) than he won (81). He bounced between seven teams in 14 seasons. The only time he led the majors in any statistical category was in 1954—and that was for losing 21 games with the Baltimore Orioles. He might aptly be described as a journeyman, except that his journey went to one place that no pitcher has even been, before or since.

On October 8, 1956, Don Larsen threw the only perfect game ever in the World Series, pitching for the New York Yankees in Game 5 against the Brooklyn Dodgers. How unlikely was it that Larsen be the one to accomplish this feat? Consider that Larsen had also pitched in Game 2 of that year’s World Series, and he was pulled after giving up four runs in less than two innings.

But in Game 5 he was perfect, and after retiring all 27 batters he faced, suddenly everyone wanted to know about him. In its Oct. 22, 1956 issue, LIFE wrote about Larsen’s unexpected star turn in a story headlined “The Rewards of Pitching a Perfect Game.” In it Larsen marveled, “Last night I was a bum, and tonight everyone wants to meet me.”

The story talked about the rush of interviews and endorsements that were headed Larsen’s way. It also delved into his reputation as a player who loved to party, and mentioned how he had once crashed his car at five a.m. With his new success, LIFE wrote, “Instead of being off with a couple cronies at his favorite 57th street bar, he was the center of attention in a plush Broadway nightclub.'”

LIFE photographer George Silk, who shot Larsen’s perfect game for the magazine, was also along to document the fruits of his newfound success, such as the night that the 6’4″ Indiana native shared a corner booth with TV star Jackie Gleason at Toots Shor’s.

Larsen left baseball after 1967, but he continued to tell the story of his perfect World Series game to rapt audiences for decades to come. In a 1996 story for Sports Illustrated, looking back on his feat 40 years later, Larsen reflected, “People said I didn’t do enough in my career, and maybe they’re right. But I had one great day.”

Don Larsen rears back during his perfect game in the 1956 World Series at Yankee Stadium.

George Silk/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Don Larsen met the press after throwing the first perfect game in World Series history, 1956.

George Silk/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Don Larsen was the center of attention after throwing the first perfect game in World Series history, 1956.

George Silk/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Don Larsen autographed a baseball for Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley after Larsen threw a perfect game for the Yankees in Game 5 of the 1956 World Series.

George Silk/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Yogi Berra (left), who caught Don Larsen’s perfect game in Game 5 of the World Series, chatted with Dodgers pitched Sal Maglie, who was on the losing side of that historic outing, 1956.

George Silk/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Yankee pitcher Don Larsen appeared on TV a few hours after his perfect game in the 1956 World Series.

George Silk/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Don Larsen was awarded this Corvette after being named the MVP of the 1956 World Series.

George Silk/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Don Larsen enjoyed a night on the town with his date, nightclub singer Audrey Armstrong, and an unidentified man at Danny’s Hide-A-Way on East 45th Street in Manhattan.

George Silk/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

After his perfect game Don Larsen earned a spot in the corner table at Toots Shor’s restaurant in New York, in the company of comedian Jackie Gleason and Mr. Shor himself.

George Silk/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Yankee pitcher Don Larsen with Jackie Gleason, Toots Shor, and his agent, Frank Scott, at Shor’s restaurant, October 1956.

George Silk/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Don Larsen (left) with Jackie Gleason and Toots Shor at Shor’s restaurant in New York City, when Larsen was the toast of the town after throwing a perfect game in the World Series, October 1956.

George Silk/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Remembering Angela Lansbury in LIFE

October 12, 2022October 12, 2022 by Bill Syken

Angela Lansbury, who died on October 11, 2022 at age 96, charmed television audiences as the star of Murder She Wrote for twelve seasons, from 1984 to 1996.

But while Jessica Fletcher may have been her signature role, Lansbury had a long and accomplished career on the stage and screen. The first of her three Academy Award nominations came in 1945 for her supporting role in Gaslight, and the first of her six Tony Awards came in 1966 for perhaps the defining role of her stage career, in the show Mame.

Her star turn in Mame was also the occasion for one of Lansbury’s appearances in LIFE magazine. She was featured in a story in the July 21, 1967 issue on big stars in shows on lengthy runs, and LIFE photographer Mark Kauffman captured her limbering up before taking the stage. What stood out in that story is that while many of the other stars complained about the hardships of a long Broadway run, Lansbury expressed nothing but gratitude. Perhaps foreshadowing her 12 seasons on Murder, She Wrote, she sounded like she was happy to answer the call for as long as people wanted to see her. “When at last you’re there, as a star, with all these people loving you, let me tell you something—you don’t give it up in a hurry,” she said.

Lansbury was just breaking out as a film star on the occasion of a particularly glamorous LIFE shoot, when she posed for Walter Sanders on the set of the 1946 movie The Harvey Girls. In that musical, she co-starred with Judy Garland, playing a dance hall girl in the old West. The ornate costumes and stage sets resulted in images that are memorable and quite striking, especially to people who only know Lansbury from Murder, She Wrote.

Perhaps Lansbury’s most memorable LIFE image came as part of a picture series by Alfred Eisenstaedt on lunch in America. For that series he photographed a cross-section of Americans at their mid-day meal, ranging from construction workers to the Secretary of State. When Eisenstaedt shot Lansbury, ahe was in period costume for the filming of the movie The Court Jester, having a burger with co-star Basil Rathbone at the studio commissary. As with so many photos of Lansbury, what stands out are her expressive eyes, ones that held the gaze of American audiences for so many decades.

Angela Lansbury on the set of the 1946 film The Harvey Girls.

Walter Sanders/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Angela Lansbury in the film The Harvey Girls, 1946.

Walter Sanders/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Actress Angela Lansbury in the 1946 film The Harvey Girls.

Walter Sanders/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Angela Lansbury on the set of the 1946 movie The Harvey Girls.

Walter Sanders/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Angela Lansbury on the set of the 1946 film The Harvey Girls.

Walter Sanders/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Angela Lansbury on the set of the film The Harvey Girls, 1946.

Walter Sanders/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Angela Lansbury on the set of the 1946 film The Harvey Girls.

Walter Sanders/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Actors Joan Plowright (left) and Angela Lansbury in scene from the Broadway play A Taste of Honey, 1960.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Actress Angela Lansbury limbering up for hit Broadway show `Mame’ in 1967.

Mark Kauffman/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Angela Lansbury limbered up before a performance of Mame on Broadway, 1967.

Mark Kauffman/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Couples Walkathon That Lasted Five Months

October 6, 2022October 6, 2022 by Bill Syken

“So whaddya want to do tonight?”

“There’s some people walking around a dance hall all day and night. They’ve been at it for months. We could go cheer them on.”

“Or see if they finally collapse?”

“Exactly. And we can stay as long as we want.”

“Let’s go!”

The Great Depression was so brutal in part because it lasted so long, from 1929 to 1939. One peculiar window of what it was like to live in that miserable age was an entertainment phenomenon known as the walkathon.

Today the word “walkathon” might bring to mind a fund-raising event such as Penn State’s Thon, in which students stay on their feet for 24 hours to help kids with pediatric cancer. The walkathons of the Depression era were entirely different. They were spectacles of endurance and pain tolerance, held in a confined space, and they could last for weeks or months.

The competitors were usually couples. In some cases the events were called “dance-athons,” but whatever the name there was usually little dancing, which at that time was frowned upon in public settings. LIFE’s story on walkathons in its May 30, 1938 issue said: “People go to a walkathon not to see performers dance, which they don’t, but to see them suffer under the agonies of overwhelming exhaustion.”

Watching people walk for days on end sounds like it could get boring, but audiences loved it, according to a recent history on ultrarunninghistory.com: “Thousands, and even tens of thousands of curious onlookers would pay 25-50 cents to watch the carnage as long as they pleased. The walkathons were so popular that they were even regularly broadcast multiple times per day by radio stations.”

Walkathons pre-dated the Depression, but they peaked in popularity as the nation’s fortunes dwindled.

How did they work exactly? The top competitors were rewarded with prize money, and they were allowed rest period each hour. But according to ultrarunninghistory.com, promoters would change the rules at any moment, either to juice up the action or bring the competition to an end:

In order to have an event last for weeks, generally after the first three hours, rests were given each hour. For example at a 1932 walkathon in Oregon, contestants would walk for 45 minutes, and then rest/sleep 11 minutes off stage. They would come back out at the sound of a gong or airhorn and then sit in front of the audience for four minutes getting ready for the next hour. Sometimes during the evenings, cots were brought out onto the floor in front of the crowds and walkers were forced to stay on the floor to rest and sleep….As the days would go on with no end in sight, promoters wanting to wrap things up and move to the next city, would change the rules, making walking periods longer or resting periods shorter. Promoters would use the intense “derby” periods to wear down the contestants. A walkathon in Austin, Texas forced the walkers to “sprint” for two hours until a doctor put a stop to it. They next tried to “sleep out” the group. Contestants were tied together five feet apart and not allowed to hold each other up. The lights over the floor were turned out and the band played lullabies. The walkers could only pull on the rope to try to keep their partner from falling asleep. These were called Zombie Treadmills. (The Austin American, Dec 18, 1933).

LIFE’s story focused on the last stages of a particularly long walkathon in Chicago that had gone on for five months. According to the magazine, the Chicago event was but one of 40 marathons happening in America at the time.

LIFE’s photos, taken by Bernard Hoffman, capture the exhaustion of the walkathon’s last remaining couples as they leaned on each other in a barren dance hall to keep themselves from collapsing. While there is an undeniable sadistic cruelty in the spectacle, the images also capture the nobility of the competitors, and create an unlikely metaphor for life in that era.

The most famous photo from the Great Depression is Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother, which shows an overwhelmed woman wondering how she will feed and care the children that have draped themselves over her. Hoffman’s pictures tap into that same sense of desperation and resolve. At the time of the Chicago competition, the Depression had been going on for nearly a decade. Handling that was the real endurance test for most Americans. Watching couples literally prop each other up and try to stay on their feet day after day is exactly what so many Americans were doing in their everyday lives.

An overhead view of exhausted couples struggling to stay upright during a weeks-long walkathon in, Chicago, 1937. This marathon lasted approximately five months, with couples (and individuals) often required to remain in motion for at least 45 minutes out of every hour.

Berhard Hoffman/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Exhausted couples struggle to stay upright during a walkathon in Chicago, 1937. This marathon lasted approximately five months.

Berhard Hoffman/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

At the end of a record five-month Chicago walkathon, a judge presides over the two remaining couples.

Berhard Hoffman/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A couple hangs on during the later stages of a five-month walkathon in Chicago, 1937.

Berhard Hoffman/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A couple during the later stages of a five-month walkathon in Chicago, 1937.

Berhard Hoffman/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A couple toward the end of a walkathon competition that lasted five months, Chicago 1937.

Berhard Hoffman/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A five-month walkathon in Chicago reached its final stages, 1937.

Berhard Hoffman/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The scene toward the end of a five-month walkathon competition in Chicago, 1937.

Berhard Hoffman/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Spectators at a walkathon competition in Chicago, 1937.

Berhard Hoffman/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Celebrities in Bed

September 29, 2022September 29, 2022 by Bill Syken

The bed may seem like an unusual place to stage a celebrity portrait. What’s even more surprising is the many moods that LIFE photographers were able to achieve when they brought their subjects under—or in most cases, on top of—the covers.

The most obvious mood to create is that of seduction, which Peter Stackpole did with his photo of actress Rita Hayworth. That image from 1945 captures the hold she had on her audience, later vividly portrayed in a classic scene in The Shawshank Redemption.

But some of LIFE’s bed portraits have a heavier mood. Consider a photo of William S. Burroughs, taken by Loomis Dean. The author of such novels as Naked Lunch and Junky is wearing a suit as he sits on a narrow bed with a squishy-looking mattress, while a bright light shines overhead in a modest-looking room. While the bed is nominally in a place of repose, nothing about this picture looks comfortable, which is fitting for the man who produced some of the most memorably disturbing literature of the 20th century.

Another man who looked uncomfortable in his bedroom portrait—Richard Nixon. He was photographed by Cornell Capa in 1952, the year he would be elected Vice President. Like Burroughs, he wears a tie and dress clothes. Here the future President sits up on a narrow bed, his dress shoes on the bedquilt as he reviews documents that he has propped on his legs.

Nixon is not the only subject to take his work into bed. Vladimir Nabokov is somehow writing while lying on his back (although this was not his normal routine). Comedian Bob Hope talks on the phone while getting a foot massage in a picture that makes the bed seem like the touring comedian’s office. Henri Matisse pulls off the impressive trick of sculpting in bed—though using the bedroom as a place of creation is has some precedent among great artists.

Of course some some subjects appear to be relaxed and enjoying themselves. John F Kennedy and wife Jackie play with their daughter Caroline. Author W. Somerset Maughm enjoys the luxury of breakfast in bed. Actors Jimmy Stewart and Paulette Goddard are each seen reading in bed, in very different circumstances—she is traveling on a transatlantic cruise, and he is back at his family home after having served in World War II.

The most striking bedroom photo may be of Sophia Loren and her husband, movie producer Carlo Ponti. The picture was among those taken by Alfred Eisenstaedt for a story on the couple moving into their dream house, a 50-room villa near Rome. The shoot was no doubt exhausting for an article that ran at ten pages in LIFE. Eisenstadt photographed the actress by the pool, picking fruit, and wearing many different outfits in the home’s various settings. In bed with her husband, more than any of the other stars that LIFE shot in their bedrooms, she truly looks as if she needs to lay down.

Actress Rita Hayworth lounging on her king size bed at home, 1945.

Peter Stackpole/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

William Burroughs, novelist.

Loomis Dean/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Richard M. Nixon sitting on his bed reading over paperwork, 1952.

Cornell Capa/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Actress Maureen O’Hara at her home reclining in bed while sewing, 1946.

Peter Stackpole/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Author W. Somerset Maugham getting breakfast in bed from a maid while summering on Cape Cod, 1944.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Actress Elizabeth Taylor at age 13, sitting in her bedroom holding her chipmunk, Nibbles.

Peter Stackpole/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Hockey great Jean Beliveau, the center for the Montreal Canadiens, 1953.

Yale Joel/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

John F. Kennedy, then a U.S. Senator, cuddling his darling baby daughter Caroline in bed at home as her mom Jackie looks on, 1958.

Ed Clark/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

James Stewart, back home after serving in World War II, read in bed at his parents’ house, Indiana, Pa., 1945.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Actress Paulette Goddard having breakfast in bed in her cabin aboard the liner Queen Elizabeth during a North Atlantic crossing, 1948.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Henri Matisse sculped while sitting in bed in his apartment, circa 1951.

Dmitri Kessel/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Actress Kim Novak, 21, lounging on a satin bed, 1954.

J.R Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Comedian Bob Hope talking on telephone while lying in bed, 1962.

Allan Grant/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Actress Sophia Loren and husband, producer Carlo Ponti, after moving into their 50-room villa outside Rome, 1964.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Author Vladimir Nabokov writing in a notebook on the bed, 1958.

Carl Mydans/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jayne Mansfield lounges on a bed with her dog in her lavishly decorated home, known as ‘The Pink Palace,’ Los Angeles, 1960.

Allan Grant/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Andrews Sisters sitting on round bed, 1948.

Allan Grant/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Absurdist comedian Fred Allen with his wife Portland, 1940.

Nina Leen/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Actor Dustin Hoffman napping in a brass bed at home, 1969.

John Dominis/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Cheers: Where Everybody Knows Your Name

September 27, 2022September 27, 2022 by Bill Syken

The following is from LIFE’s new special anniversary edition on the television classic Cheers, available at newsstands and online:

Diane Chambers never quite fit in at Cheers. A frustrated barmaid who dreams of being a famous novelist, she often feels left out by the staff and barflies who call the pub on Boston’s Beacon Street home. To make it up to her, Sam Malone, her boss and on-again-now-off-again boyfriend, takes part in a Diane Chambers Night with the bar’s other denizens. They escort Diane to a staging of her favorite opera, Lucia di Lammermoor. Afterward, when the couple return by themselves to the empty bar, she is giddy. They kiss and she admits, “Oh, Sam, I can’t fight it. Everything tonight has been leading me right into your arms.” But oh, no. Not again. Diane quickly thinks about what is happening and stops herself. “We are developing a very special relationship,” she explains to Sam, “and it would be wrong to jeopardize it by having sex.” Babe magnet that Sam is, he nervously replies, “No. I want to jeopardize it with sex.” Yet her analysis and hesitancy can’t stop, and of course nothing is consummated.

Will they? Won’t they? Oh, please! Put them together. From its premiere on September 30, 1982, this comedy starring Shelley Long and Ted Danson offered a high-proof distillation of the best of the screwball films from the mid-20th century. The sexual tension between the two characters went on for years, and in season 5, the writers offered up a touching “What if?” segment dealing with Diane and Sam’s first attempted wedding. We spy the aged couple in their home. She tells him, “I wouldn’t trade one minute of my life with you for a Nobel Prize in Literature.” Content, they quietly dance. But alas, the wedding never happens, Diane heads off to finish her great American novel, and Long departed the show to make movies. Luckily for viewers, in her place arrived the incomparable Rebecca Howe, played by Kirstie Alley, who brought a new, maddeningly funny dynamic to the show as a corporate striver with a heart of mush.

Throughout Cheers’s amazing 275-episode run, viewers watched Diane and Sam and then Rebecca and Sam twist their egos and insecurities as they fell in and out of friendship, love, and bed, all the while resisting the need to dissolve their ossified cores to achieve a happily ever after. And the fact that they found it so hard to achieve marital or at least relationship bliss meant perfect chemistry within this roiling beaker of sitcom television.

Such sniping I-love-you-but-refuse-to-admit-it couples are now a staple of TV: Think of Ross and Rachel on Friends and Jim and Pam on The Office. Yet the ill-fated Cheers pairs were the first such matches on network TV. Created by James Burrows and Glen and Les Charles, who had previous success with Taxi, Cheers proved revolutionary for many other reasons. It was the first sitcom to have an evolving story line instead of self-contained episodes. To do this, before each new season the writers plotted out the arc for the coming two dozen episodes—a practice now expected for shows.

Thirty years after its final season aired, the series’s story line and razor-sharp gags are still well aimed and endearingly landed. Simple yet nuanced, the half-hour show unfolded like a must-see one-act play about barflies and bar workers, malcontents and the misunderstood. It was all beautifully brought to life by a perfectly tuned ensemble that included Long, Danson, and Alley, as well as Nicholas Colasanto, Kelsey Grammer, Woody Harrelson, Bebe Neuwirth, Rhea Perlman, John Ratzenberger, and George Wendt sitting and standing around a bar as they gabbed about life, sports, love, trivia—lots of trivia—and hopes. All desired understanding, companionship, and fulfillment. For them, it could be found in a mug of ale as they laughed and cried into their drinks, a barstool away from a fellow lonely soul dinging them with a pithy line or handing them a paper napkin to dry their eyes.

While Cheers at first earned abysmally low ratings—Burrows jokes to LIFE, “We like to say we were 77th out of 76 shows”—it was eventually recognized by critics and embraced by a growing fan base. Over 11 seasons, Cheers turned into a television juggernaut. It garnered 117 Emmy nominations and 28 golden statuettes, making this NBC show essential viewing, with all episodes now available anytime on Hulu, Peacock, and other streaming sites.

Still fresh, funny, and poignant four decades later, the show about a bar and its inhabitants is a rare vintage that has beautifully aged. That is why it’s worth sidling up to your TV and savoring it again and again. Drinking not required.

Here is a selection of photos from LIFE’s new special anniversary issue, Cheers: Where Everybody Knows Your Name.

Frank Carroll/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty

Bar favorite Norm (George Wendt) in the Season One episode “Friends, Romans and Accountants.”

Paul Drinkwater/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty

The romance between Sam (Ted Danson) and Diane (Shelley Long) got off to a slapstick start in the opening episode of Season 2.

Gary Null/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty

Resident know-it-al Cliff (John Ratzenberger) has to answer a challenge to a fight in the Season 2 episode “Cliff’s Rocky Moment.”

NBCU Photo Bank/Getty

In a memorable episode from Season 2 of Cheers titled “Homicidal Ham,” Diane tried to help an obsessive ex-con become an actor.

NBCU Photo Bank/Getty

Rebecca Howell (Kirstie Alley) stepped in as Sam’s new love interest in Season 6, after Shelly Long left the cast.

Ron Tom/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty

Salty barmaid Carla (Rhea Perllman) in the episode “Baby Balk” that opened Season 10.

Kim Gottlieb-Walker/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty

In the Season 9 episode “Wedding Bell Blues,” Sam tried to save Rebecca from a making a marital mistake.

Kim Gottlieb-Walker/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty

The final episode of Cheers featured the return of Shelly Long as Diane Chambers.

Paul Drinkwater/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty

Crowds during the filming of the final episode of the 11-season run of Cheers.

Charles Krupa/AP/Shutterstock

Bye Bye, Bambino: The Funeral of Babe Ruth

September 23, 2022September 23, 2022 by Bill Syken

If you don’t think Babe Ruth was a head of state—well, you’re right in the most literal sense. He was a ball player.

But in another sense, he was absolutely a head of state. It’s just not the kind of state that you can find on a map. His state was baseball, and he ruled it like no other. And that mattered to a lot of people, especially in the middle parts of the last century, when baseball was the undisputed national pastime. “It wasn’t that he hit more home runs than anybody else,” said legendary sportswriter Red Smith. “he hit them higher, better, farther, with more theatrical timing and a more flamboyant flourish.”

And so when when the Yankee slugger died from cancer at the age of 53, he received the kind of tribute normally reserved for kings and presidents. His funeral was a multi-day, multi-site affair, with the locations including St. Patricks Cathedral in midtown Manhattan, Westchester County’s Gate of Heaven Cemetery (whose other internees include James Cagney, Sal Mineo and Ralph Branca), and Yankee Stadium.

In the report on his funeral in the Aug. 20, 1948 issue, LIFE expounded on the unique place of the Babe in American culture. “In his 53-year lifetime he won a unique hold on U.S. affections,” LIFE wrote of the man who told sick kids he would hit home runs for them and came through. “…”The Babe loved applause as much as he did hot dogs, and he personified that spectacular age of U.S. sports, the 1920s,” And as LIFE pointed out, the other big sports stars of the 20s—Bill Tilden, Bobby Jones, Jack Dempsey—didn’t linger in the American imagination anywhere close to the way Ruth did.

And that is why the crowds assembled, and that is why LIFE assigned two staff photographers to the event, Cornell Capa and Martha Holmes. Some of the pictures capture the pomp of the moment. Some capture deeper emotion. What, ff happening behind the eyes of Joe DiMaggio, the Yankee legend who was at St. Patrick’s Cathedral and was the rare person who could see Ruth as a peer?

But the most poignant pictures are the ones that were taken at Yankee Stadium, where Ruth lay in state for two days in an open casket. The mourners are young and old, male and female, some dressed formally but most in their everyday clothes. An estimated 100,000 fans came by to see the Babe one last time in the House That Ruth Built.

Babe Ruth’s funeral at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, 1948.

Martha Holmes/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Babe Ruth’s funeral, 1948.

Martha Holmes/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Babe Ruth’s Funeral, 1948.

Cornell Capa/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Men standing solemnly outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral for funeral of baseball player Babe Ruth, 1948.

Cornell Capa/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock