Page 34 – LIFE

West Coast Wonderful: The Photography of Fred Lyon

March 25, 2022March 25, 2022 by Bill Syken

If you look at the breadth and variety in the photographs that Fred Lyon shot for LIFE magazine, you get a sense of the particular adventure of working for a general interest magazine.

“Every time the phone rang it would start me off in a different direction, usually some place I had never been or someone I had never known,” Lyon recalled in a recent phone interview.

Lyon, now as he was then, is based in San Francisco, and his assignments usually had a West Coast setting. From that perch he shot such varied subjects as news, fashion, food, and architecture. If there is any through-line that connects his work, it is that he managed to find joy and beauty in so many disparate situations.

Lyon, 97 years old, remains remarkably sharp. He is a lively storyteller who enjoys an amusing turn of phrase. Though he doesn’t go out on shoots anymore, he still makes and contributes to books, drawing on a vast archive of photos—he worked not only for LIFE, but for Vogue and numerous other clients. His most recent book, Inventing the California Look, out March 22, is about interior design. He has several other projects in the works.

Lyon recalls his LIFE association, which began in 1948, with great fondness. As a young photographer his agent had pushed for him to shoot for LIFE, he says, because once you are in that magazine, “no matter how bad the picture is, after that no one will ever question whether you are a good photographer.”

An early job that turned out to be surprisingly memorable involved riding around with a fledgling California politician as he introduced himself to the local population in his first bid for the U.S. Senate in 1950. Lyon sat in the front seat with Richard Nixon as he drove his station wagon from one small California town to another. As they reached the town center Nixon would starting playing march music on a phonograph in the front seat that connected to a loudspeaker on the car’s roof. As people gathered Nixon would introduce himself to voters and take their questions.

“He would confuse old people by doing the old high school debating gimmick of answering questions with other questions,” Lyon recalled. After they were back in the car, Nixon would loosen his tie, take the needle off the record and say to Lyon as they drove out of town, “Well, that’s all that shit.”

At that point Lyon sized up the future President thusly: “He has no style, and he has no future in politics.”

Some assignments were more fun, like a shoot Lyon did at the beach with two bikini-clad models. Here’s how Lyon recounts that adventure:

“When bikinis first became popular, of course LIFE was enthusiastic. Models were booked for the beach at Malibu. There was some sort of celebration the night before the shoot (there always was). In the morning, I sensed that I had done something unwise in the middle of the night. When I crept over to the telephone my scribbles revealed that I had booked elephants to meet the models at the beach. There were visions of the pachyderms holding each other’s tails and plodding out on Sunset Boulevard. My throbbing head could barely face bikinis, let alone elephants. The cancellation caught them in the nick of time, and even the models were grateful.”

Lyon staged another fashion shoot at a very different West Coast location—Alcatraz. The shoot starred two actresses from Point Blank, a cult classic crime movie that featured Angie Dickinson and Sharon Acker. The government had stopped using Alcatraz as a federal prison in 1962 and it had yet to make its transition to a historic monument. Lyon recalls Alcatraz as being cold and filthy, with papers strewn everywhere. He and the crew made it through the shoot with the help of thermoses of coffee and brandy.

“We managed the laugh a lot,” he recalls. “Maybe it was the brandy. My shoots were always happy shoots.”

Maybe not always. Lyon’s portfolio includes photos of a dark but fascinating piece of California history known as Synanon. At its outset Synanon, founded by Charles Dederich, was a pioneer in treatment of narcotics addiction, and Dederich is credited as the source of the expression “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” But in its later years Synanon morphed from a treatment program into a cult and a criminal enterprise. This fascinating deep dive into Synanon by L.A. Magazine opens with a chilling scene of a lawyer/journalist who dared to challenge Synanon being bit by a rattlesnake that had been shoved through the mail slot of his home.

Lyon shot his story on Synanon in 1969, before the movement’s darker impulses has taken over. Still, Lyon recalls not personally caring for Dederich. “He was an unpleasant man doing work that I realized was beneficial,” Lyon says.

And encountering characters such as Dederich was all part of the big adventure of shooting for LIFE. One upside of his association with the magazine was coming into New York and having occasional meetings the legendary Alfred Eisenstaedt, who stands as a giant on the roster of staff LIFE photographers. “He was to my way of thinking the perfect photojournalist,” Lyon says. “Everyone he met, he would try to extract everything from their brain right here and now.”

Some assignments resulted in valuable life lessons when Lyon least expected them. Once he was out on a more humdrum assignment, shooting the director of an opera company. Lyon said to him, “I hear you’re a hell of a fundraiser, whats your secret?” The director answered, “I tell people, Don’t die rich. Live rich.”

“You know what,” says Lyon, “I learned something.”

Actress Sharon Acker posed for a fashion shoot in Alcatraz, 1968.

Fred Lyon/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Angie Dickinson modeled for an Alcatraz fashion shoot, 1968

Fred Lyon/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Actress Sharon Acker posed for a fashion shoot in Alcatraz, 1968.

Fred Lyon/LIFE photos/Shutterstock

An opera performer was helped into his costume, 1948.

Fred Lyon/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Opening night of the Denver Symphony at the Tabor Theater, 1955.

Fred Lyon/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Richard Nixon as he was running for U.S. Senate in California, 1950.

Fred Lyon/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

A patient received radiation treatment for cancer at the University of California Medical Center, 1958.

Fred Lyon/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

At the I. Magnin Co. department store in San Francisco, the photographer’s son, Michael, tested a car during a pre-Christmas shoot, 1955.

Fred Lyon/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

A scene from the construction of an underground tunnel by the Pacific Gas & Electric ulitity company on the Feather River in Northern California, 1949.

Fred Lyon/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

A scene from work on the construction of a tunnel by the Pacific Gas & Electric utility company near the Feather River, 1949.

Fred Lyon/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Students enjoyed recess at Sassarini Elementary School in Sonoma, Calif. in 1959; the school was designed by architect Mario J. Ciampi.

Fred Lyon/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Students at the modernistic Westmoor High School, designed by architect Mario J. Ciampi, in Daly City, Calif.

Fred Lyon/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Women modeling knit bikini bathing suits on the California shore, 1959

Fred Lyon/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Vicky Drake, who worked as a topless dancer, ran a provocative but unsuccessful campaign for student body president at Stanford, 1968.

Fred Lyon/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Vicky Drake, who worked as a topless dancer, campaigned (unsuccessfully) for student body president at Stanford, 1968.

Fred Lyon/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Nancy Reagan, wife of Ronald Reagan, who was then the governor of California, posed at home, 1967.

Fred Lyon/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Nancy Reagan, the wife of then-Governor Ronald Reagan, posed in the California State capital, 1967.

Fred Lyon/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Charles E. Dederich, founder and leader of Synanon, 1969.

Fred Lyon/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Charles E. Dederich, founder and leader of Synanon, wore a hat with a moving tetrahedron as he wrote on a blackboard, 1969.

Fred Lyon/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Poached pears, photographed for LIFE’s “Great Dinner” series, 1968.

Fred Lyon/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

A Brazilian feijoda, featuring black beans, rice, sausages, baked bananas, onions and roast pork loin, photographed for LIFE’s “Great Dinner” series, 1968.

Fred Lyon/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Gnocchi being made in Italy, 1966.

Fred Lyon/LIFE PIctures/Shutterstock

Pork was prepared in Hawaii, 1969.

Fred Lyon/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

The Lovejoy Fountain Park in Portland, Oregon.

Fred Lyon/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

LoveJoy”Fountain Park in Portland, Oregon, by Lawrence Halprin.

Fred Lyon/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

An image from a five-day trip down the Colorado River, 1969.

Fred Lyon/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Fred Lyon, 1966.

Photo by Chuck Ashley

Self portrait by Fred Lyon, taken in the 1990s.

The Early Years of Late Night: Johnny Carson in New York

March 29, 2022March 25, 2022 by Bill Syken

The news that a new biopic of Johnny Carson is on the way, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, is exciting for a generation of fans who grew up knowing Carson as the one and only king of late-night television.

Carson was not the first host of the Tonight Show, but he was the one who defined the job and the format. Before he took over the show had been around for eight years, with two other hosts, Steve Allen and Jack Paar. Their tenures lasted roughly as long as a one-term presidency. Carson took over and reigned like a monarch. He ruled for 31 years, from 1962 to ’92.

He began that reign in New York City, taping the show there from 1962 to ’72. In 1967, LIFE photographer Arthur Schatz spent time with Carson at home and on the set. The story never ran, but the photos in the LIFE archives paint an intimate portrait of a star on the rise.

Carson’s New York years had their own particular flavor. In 2014 Sam Karshner wrote about that era for Vanity Fair, on the occasion of the Tonight Show coming back to Manhattan when Jimmy Fallon took over as host. The story noted how Carson, a Nebraska native, often made jokes about the dark side of life in New York, to the point where the city council asked NBC to make him lighten up:

To an out-of-towner who bragged on an audience card, “My hometown of Cincinnati has much cleaner streets than New York, signed Miriam,” he answered, “Pompeii, after Vesuvius went off, had cleaner streets than New York.” He joked about the city’s high crime rate: “New York is an exciting town where something is happening all the time—most, unsolved.” Not even New York’s weather was immune to ridicule—“It’s so cold here in New York that the flashers are just describing themselves.”

The Vanity Fair story also talks about Carson’s city life—including his home, which is captured in Schatz’s photos, right down to the telescope Dick Cavett jokes about:.

Dick Cavett remembers Carson’s first apartment, at 1161 York Avenue, as a “four-bedroom bachelor pad over the river with his telescope there, [which he] claimed he used for astronomy.” He had a car and driver available day and night. In the mornings he would play tennis alongside Mayor John Lindsay at the Vanderbilt Club, in the Grand Central Terminal Annex; later in the day he’d make the rounds—Patsy’s, Toots Shor’s, ‘21,’ Le Club, Danny’s Hideaway, even the Playboy Club. Like a true midwesterner, he was a meat-and-potatoes man his whole life and loved the row of steak houses between Lexington and Second Avenues in the East 40s—Colombo’s, the Palm, Pietro’s, Joe and Rose’s, the Pen and Pencil.

In 1972 Carson left New York and moved the show to southern California to be closer to the celebrities who populated his guest’s chair. After Carson retired in 1992, late night was slowly carved up into fiefdoms, like so much of the rest of popular culture. Most viewers now experience late-night TV after the fact, trough viral clips such this one (which is awesome, by the way).

It’s safe to say, no one will ever bring late-night America together like Johnny Carson.

Johnny Carson in the Tonight Show offices in New York, 1967.

Arthur Schatz/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Johnny Carson on the set of the Tonight Show in New York, 1967.

Arthur Schatz/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

MERY GRIFFITH AND JOHNNY CARSON

Arthur Schatz/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Johnny Carson and James Brown on the Tonight Show in New York, 1967.

Arthur Schatz/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Ed McMahon, James Brown and Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show in New York, 1967.

Arthur Schatz/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Johnny Carson on the set of the Tonight Show in New York, 1967.

Arthur Schatz/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

MERY GRIFFITH AND JOHNNY CARSON

Arthur Schatz/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Ed McMahon and Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show set in New York, 1967.

Arthur Schatz/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Johnny Carson on the set of the Tonight Show in New York, 1967.

Arthur Schatz/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Johnny Carson on the set of the Tonight Show In New York, 1967.

Arthur Schatz/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Johnny Carson on the set of the Tonight Show in New York, 1967.

Arthur Schatz/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Johnny Carson in the Tonight Show offices in New York, 1967.

Arthur Schatz/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Johnny Carson in New York, 1967.

Arthur Schatz/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Johnny Carson in his New York apartment, 1967.

Arthur Schatz/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Johnny Carson in New York, 1967.

Arthur Schtaz/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Johnny Carson in New York, 1967.

Arthur Schatz/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Harry Potter: The Story That Changed the World

July 5, 2022March 18, 2022 by Bill Syken

The following is from the introduction to LIFE’s special tribute issue Harry Potter: The Extraordinary Adventure.

“Debut author and single mother sells children’s book for £100,000.” So announced a July 1997 headline in the Guardian newspaper touting the record-breaking windfall novice writer Joanne Kathleen Rowling earned for Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. It was the first in a planned series of novels about a powerful young wizard drawn into an epic battle of good versus evil, and the article posited that Harry “could assume the same near-legendary status as Roald Dahl’s Charlie, of chocolate factory fame.”

Nearly two and a half decades later, it’s a safe bet that children are more well-versed in the adventures of Harry and his plucky best mates Ronald Weasley and Hermione Granger than they are with Dahl’s Charlie Bucket. Rowling’s characters have become a part of the global cultural lexicon thanks to the fantasy juggernaut. It seems nearly everyone’s heard of the Boy Who Lived. “The characters were so funny and so very specific, and the world came alive on the page,” says Anne Rouyer, supervising young adult librarian at the New York Public Library. “It was one of those books you could sell to any kid, whether they were [an avid] reader or a reluctant reader. Even now, kids just discover them, and they’re just as magical as they were 25 years ago.”

Looking back, few would have imagined the extent to which that first book’s young protagonist—an English orphan whisked away from a life of drudgery and abuse into a world where staircases move, paintings talk, and owls deliver the mail—would become a dominant force in popular culture the world over.

By the time the novel was released stateside in 1998 as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, it had become as plain as the beard on Dumbledore’s face that there was something special about the passion with which young readers devoured the 300-plus-page novel. Suddenly, everyone under the age of 12 knew the story of how the dark wizard Lord Voldemort murdered Harry’s parents, leaving the infant alive but with a prominent scar in the shape of a lightning bolt on his forehead. Words like Muggle and Quidditch became common parlance, and—gasp!—reading was suddenly cool.

“As a public librarian and a literacy advocate, what I found most amazing about the whole phenomenon was how Harry Potter encouraged younger kids to read ‘up’ in terms of their age group,” says Jack Martin, executive director of the Providence Public Library in Rhode Island. “You had four- and five-year-olds wanting to read these books that were geared to [older] kids … Everybody wanted to be a part of that universe.”

For that first generation who discovered Harry’s adventures, the story felt “fresh and new,” according to Dr. Frankie Condon, associate professor of English at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, where she teaches a class titled Popular Potter. “Rowling created a coterie of characters who spoke in a very modern way to a new generation of children contending with new ideas about difference … There’s just tremendous skill in the crafting of the books that you have to be impressed with.”

Not surprisingly, Hollywood came calling. The first movie adaptation, released in 2001, earned upward of $1 billion at the global box office, transforming actors Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and Emma Watson—who played Harry, Ron, and Hermione, respectively—from young unknowns into tween superstars. The subsequent films were similarly successful: The saga’s finale, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows—Part 2, which brought the series to an epic conclusion in 2011, boasted ticket sales totaling $1.3 billion worldwide.

Not everyone was enthralled, however. As the franchise continued to grip the public imagination, some conservative religious groups took issue with children reading stories that they felt glorified the occult; the American Library Association found that from 2000 to 2009, the Harry Potter novels ranked near the top of their list of titles that some found objectionable. But just as earlier attempts to ban comic books, heavy metal music, and video games had failed to sway young fans, the efforts to quash enthusiasm for Harry Potter generally met with little success.

Parodies and homages of all kinds proliferated. On TV, shows like Saturday Night Live, The Office, and
The Simpsons all got in on the act. Colleges founded leagues devoted to the wizarding sport of Quidditch, though the game had to be modified given that players didn’t have the magical luxury of chasing one another
on flying broomsticks. Musicians introduced “wizard rock,” a genre of quirky novelty songs inspired by the books. The group Harry and the Potters would routinely draw hundreds of spectators to their New York Public Library sets, where they performed such songs as “My Teacher is a Werewolf” and “Save Ginny Weasley.”

The founding members of the band also helped launch the Harry Potter Alliance with fellow aficionado Andrew Slack in 2005. The organization, which recently changed its name to Fandom Forward, was created with a mission to do good works in the world. “The books have helped to raise a very progressive generation of young people,” Condon says. “They teach young people to be wary of the violent exercise of power, not only over people’s bodies, but also over people’s minds. And they teach young people that the seeds of what we most despise and oppose are inside us, too.”

Yet the sterling reputation of the beloved franchise has been tarnished of late by none other than Rowling herself. In 2019, the author began to trumpet her support for a British tax expert fired from her job at a think tank over statements she had made on Twitter that some believe are transphobic. Rowling subsequently published a 3,600-word essay titled “J. K. Rowling Writes about Her Reasons for Speaking Out on Sex and Gender Issues.” In the piece, she claimed “empathy” for trans people, but she also included talking points often used by those who oppose LGBTQ+ rights. For many, it’s a perplexing turn of events—after all, in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Dumbledore admonishes: “It matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be!”

“I can’t explain that or justify it,” Condon says. “I can say that it threatens the legacy of the books. Of course, there’s a long history of writers saying and doing terrible things, even as they produce what have been received as great works of art. In this case, these are young people who this writer helped to raise up who … will have to [decide] whether they can turn the message of the books against the messenger without discarding the books themselves. She’s presented her readers, the people who’ve loved her work the most, with a terrible problem.”

In response, Radcliffe, Grint, and Watson issued strongly worded statements supporting trans women. Other public figures, including author Stephen King, waded into the conversation, too, many eventually coming out against Rowling. Two major fan sites, The Leaky Cauldron and MuggleNet, removed images of the author and announced they will not write about her non-Potter creative endeavors. In December 2021, US Quidditch and Major League Quidditch announced a pending name change in response to Rowling’s “anti-trans positions.”

Still, the author’s controversial statements haven’t diminished the overall health of the larger wizarding industry. Warner Bros. is set to release the third film in the Potter spin-off movie franchise, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, in April 2022, and performances of the Tony Award–winning play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child have resumed after the COVID-19 pandemic closed theaters in 2020.

Visitors are once again traveling to theme parks in Orlando, Hollywood, Japan, and China to enjoy rides, shops, and treats inspired by the books, and Warner Bros. Studio Tour London—The Making of Harry Potter is attracting fans to the Leavesden soundstages on which the movies were shot. This past summer saw the arrival of Harry Potter New York, billed as “an immersive three-story retail experience” and said to offer the world’s largest collection of Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts products.

The continued appetite might simply speak to the powerful hold the books and the much-beloved characters retain over the minds of readers who’ve grown up imagining which of Hogwarts’s four houses they might be sorted into. Would they belong to Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, or Slytherin? For those fans, the books weren’t just entertainment—they helped them make sense of the world, and of themselves.

“Like many readers, I was drawn to the books because they tapped into my fantasy of being special, but they teach us about the inescapability of the ordinary,” wrote author and editor David Busis in a 2017 New York Times opinion piece. “Ultimately, though, I don’t read J.K. Rowling—or M.T. Anderson, or Ursula K. Le Guin—because of what their books have to tell me about life. I read them because these writers have mastered the ancient magic of storytelling, and because they remind me of what it’s like to be young, living in a world that seems both simple and incomprehensible. Childhood taught us that wonder is our only true defense against the ordinary. We forget that at our peril.”

Here are a selection of photos from LIFE’s special tribute issue Harry Potter: The Extraordinary Adventure.

TCD/Prod.DB/Warner Bros./Alamy

Director Alfonso Cuaron on the set of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, 2004.

© Warner Bros./Courtesy Everett Collection

This behind-the-scenes photo shows the doubles for actors Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Robbie Coltrane on the set of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, 2007.

© Warner Bros./Courtesy Everett Collection

This first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was annotated by author J.K. Rowling.

Will Oliver/AFP/Getty

Dan Fogler (left) and Brontis Jodorowsky appeared in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, another series penned by J.K. Rowling.

© Warner Bros./Courtesy Everett Collection

This sketch by author J.K. Rowling showed the layout of her Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Nils Jorgensen/Shutterstock

This bookstore in Arlington, Va., was ready for the rush as Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the fourth book in the series, was about to go on sale in 2000.

Alex Wong/Newsmakers/Getty

Michael Gambon as Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, 2005.

© Warner Bros./Courtesy Everett Collection

Bill Hader played Dumbledore and Kristen Wiig was Minerva in a 2007 skit on Saturday Night Live.

Dana Edelson/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty

The franchise’s appeal extended to theme parks, as visitors enjoyed the Wizarding World of Harry Potter attraction at Universal Studios Beijing in 2021.

Kevin Frayer/Getty

Vintage Looks at the Indianapolis 500

March 9, 2022March 9, 2022 by Bill Syken

When first looking at Alfred Eisenstaedt’s photos from the 1939 edition of the Indianapolis 500, it’s the nostalgia that comes at you fast.

The race cars themselves really grab your eye. With their narrow bodies and open cockpits, the cars look as if they sprang directly from the imagination of a kid preparing for a soap box derby.

Then there’s the stands, which in one photo look as if they were hammered together by the Three Stooges the morning of the race.

The outfits are different too. One driver is so wrapped up in face coverings, not an inch of skin showing, that he could be the Invisible Man. The fans’ clothing, from the hats and ties to the undershirts, transport you to the late 1930s.

And what could be more old-school than the big celebrity at the event—not some reality TV star, but World War I flying ace Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, who later became an auto racer and president of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

The details in Eisenstaedt’s photos only enhance the nostalgia trip—the giant newsreel cameras, the sight of a driver at a pit stop drinking water from an actual glass rather than a squirt bottle, the sign that reads BLEACHER SEATS $1.

Of particular note to racing fans is the surface of the track, which was brick in those olden days. Today the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is still known as The Brickyard, though its racing surface is now paved with asphalt, except for three feet of brick at the start/finish line. Those bricks are kissed by the winners of the modern races as a ceremonial nod to the past—the history at Eisenstaedt documented in these photos.

The pictures tell the story of what appears to be an enjoyable day at the track—even if a share of the fans seemed to be napping on the infield. Eisenstaedt, while focussed on the scene more than the race, did capture the celebration of the winning driver, the legendary Wilbur Shaw. But he missed the sobering news of day, a mid-race crash that took the like of defending champion Floyd Roberts.

The story that ran in LIFE’s June 12, 1939 edition understandably focussed on the fatality, carrying the headline “145,000 Watch Sport of Death at Indianapolis Speedway.” LIFE illustrated the crash with frames of newsreel footage from one of those giant cameras.

LIFE’s story argued that the Indianapolis 500 was a Memorial Day tradition which needed to stop, and the writer’s tone suggested that the demise of auto racing was inevitable.

“American automobile racing had its heyday when the automobile and speed were new and thrilling,” LIFE wrote. “Its grueling tests and materials and innovations contributed mightily to automotive progress. But as speed became the possession of every motorist, as airplanes came along to outstrip the fastest automobile, car racing lost favor.” The story approvingly quoted columnist Bill Corum, who had written, “I can’t believe there is enough sport or enough scientific gain to justify the sort of Memorial Day Mrs. Floyd Roberts and her three children had yesterday.”

LIFE was wrong about the future of racing, which continued and thrived, despite a list of racing deaths that is now astoundingly long. Fans accepted crashes as a part of the sport. Famed Los Angeles Times columnist Jim Murray famously summed up the situation in 1966 with his pithy line in previewing another Indy 500 race: “Gentleman, start your coffins.”

While Eisenstaedt, more focussed on the characters around the track than straight sports photography, missed the fatal crash, he did capture the essence of the communal experience of race day, one that has been essential to keeping the sport alive.

A pit crew fixed a race car at the Indianapolis 500 in 1939.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The pit area at the Indy 500, 1939.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A driver at the Indy 500, 1939.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Fans at the Indy 500 in 1939.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

An aerial view of cars parked at Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the Indy 500 in 1939.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, a top fighter pilot during World War I who later became an auto racer and president of the Indianapolis Speedway, at the Indy 500 in 1939.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A scene from the Indy 500 in 1939.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Fans at the Indy 500 in 1939.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Race teams prepared for the start of the race on the brick track of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, 1939.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Cameras recorded the action at the Indy 500 in 1939.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A fan napped during the Indy 500 in 1939.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Fans at the Indy 500 in 1939.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A driver drank a glass of water during a pit stop at the Indy 500 in 1939.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Fans at the Indy 500 in 1939.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Cars traversed the brick track at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway during the Indy 500 in 1939.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Fans at the Indy 500 in 1939.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A man held up a scoreboard at the Indianapolis 500 in 1939.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Fans at the Indy 500 in 1939.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Spectators lucky enough to have found a place to park on the infield of the Indianapolis Speedway napped on the ground, while others in the background watched from the viewing platform at the Indy 500, 1939.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

This rear-engine model race car was stopped by a broken valve early in the Indy 500 in 1939.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Wilbur Shaw was doused with water after winning the Indy 500 in 1939.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Photographs on Fabrics: What a Dreamy Invention!

March 2, 2022March 2, 2022 by Bill Syken

Printing a photograph on fabric these days is no huge deal. Crafters can do it at home, and online shops make it easy to order, say, a batch of T-shirts with a baby picture on them for whatever birthday party is coming up.

But once upon a time printing photographs on fabrics was a gee-whiz accomplishment, and LIFE was there to have some fun with it.

“Until now anyone claiming to have seen a dinner dress decorated with life-size photographs of the wearer would have been met with breath-sniffing suspicion or clinical alarm,” LIFE said in its December 8, 1947 issue. “Today, however, such dresses can be made and photographs of everything from animals to pearl necklaces are being printed not only on dress fabrics but on upholster, pillows, ties, bathing suits and lingerie.”

The story was an occasion for LIFE photographer Nina Leen to creaTe some amusing pictures, such as the one of the man falling asleep on a pillow adorned with the face of actress Hedy Lamarr, or the one of the model wearing a dress covered with photographs of her own smiling face.

The photo in the story that presaged how this printing technology would actually be used in modern everyday life may well be the one of the woman whose shawl has a photograph of her dog. While LIFE’s story declared that ‘For the textile industry photographic fabrics are the big news of the year,” the printing of recognizable photos on clothes has, in modern life, been more for novelty products than conventional fashion.

It’s a common story of technology: it’s one kind of advance to be able to do something, and another to realize maybe you shouldn’t.

Model Norma Richter showed off a dress decorated with images of herself, 1947.

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

A model wore a shawl featuring a photo of her terrier dog, sitting beside her.

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Frank Sinatra pictures printed on huge bolts of rayon were created to cover pillows for adoring bobby-soxers, 1947.

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

This wall hanging, showing linemen at work, was made for AT&T and hung in company’s New York boardroom.

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

The Chrysler building appeared on the model’s tie as well as in the photo’s background, 1947.

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

This process of converting a photo onto a fabric print began with the photograph of a flower, 1947.

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

A textile factory manufactured fabric featuring the photograph of a rose, 1947.

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Part of the process for making a photographic print on fabric, 1947.

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

The fabric featuring the rose photo was ironed, 1947.

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

This lampshade was made with a photo of a flower printed onto fabric, 1947.

Nina Leen/LIFE Photos/Shutterstock

The handbag was designed with a photo of a flower, 1947.

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

A model wore a dress with a photograph of a rose printed on the fabric, designed by Martini to sell for about $70, 1947.

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

MAS*H: Extraordinary and Timeless

March 2, 2022March 2, 2022 by Bill Syken

The following is from LIFE’s new special issue M*A*S*H: TV’s Most Extraordinary Comedy, available at newsstands and online:

Each episode of M*A*S*H begins with the sound of an acoustic guitar, a B-minor chord strummed even before the first image appears. The subsequent theme song—and the opening images—have been in our heads for nearly half a century now: the back of Radar O’Reilly’s cap as he gazes up at the helicopters soaring in across the foothills; the names of principal cast members yellow-stenciled over the red-crossed rooftops of a tent city strung with loudspeakers; and, finally, the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, whose acronym has been familiar for more than 50 years, since the 1970 release of the film M*A*S*H, (which featured Sally Kellerman, who died on February 24, 2022, in the role of Margaret “Hot Lips” O’Houlihan) which two years later spawned the TV adaptation of the same name. The series endured for 11 seasons and concluded with the most-viewed episodic television event in history.

The theme song’s indelible melody was composed by Johnny Mandel, who wrote “The Shadow of Your Smile,” a song recorded by Frank Sinatra. But this tune, “Suicide Is Painless,” is his best-known work. He originally wrote it for the movie, which was drawn from a 1968 novel set during the Korean War, though it soon came to represent the Vietnam conflict, too, and the madness of war more broadly.

Thanks to the ongoing syndication of the television series, M*A*S*H has come to be viewed through a universal scrim of mosquito netting, a khaki-colored landscape of every war, with the olive drab wardrobe inevitably giving way to the olive-infused martinis. “Everything is painted green,” observes Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce, the hospital’s chief surgeon, played in the series by Alan Alda. “The clothes are green, the food is green—except the vegetables, of course. The only thing that’s not green is the blood.”

The helicopters, of course, were Army green, and the whap-whap of their rotors echoed the rhythmic rat-a-tat of the rapid-fire dialogue, which owed a debt to Groucho Marx, a hero of Larry Gelbart’s, the show’s cocreator and most renowned writer. Gelbart was the bard of Incheon. He made Hawkeye the king of the snappy comeback.

Is that an incoming mortar? “The mortar merrier,” Hawkeye says. Should they toast fellow surgeon Frank Burns? “He won’t fit in the toaster,” Hawkeye exclaims. In the television iteration of M*A*S*H, Hawkeye channels a peacenik Groucho when he says: “I’ll carry your books, I’ll carry a torch, I’ll carry a tune, I’ll carry on, carry over, carry forward, Cary Grant, cash-and-carry, ‘Carry Me Back to Old Virginny,’ I’ll even hari-kari if you show me how, but I will not carry a gun.”

There was other Marxist dialogue as well—Karl Marx, in this instance, not Groucho—for M*A*S*H was often tackling big ideas, though the lofty elements were almost always leavened by low comedy. As Corporal Max Klinger (Jamie Farr), in his never-ending bid to be discharged, tells his commanding officer Lieutenant Colonel Henry Blake (McLean Stevenson), “Sir, I have to confess: I’m a communist—an atheistic, Marxist, card-carrying, uh . . .”

“Bolshevik,” Blake barks.

“No—honest,” a defensive Klinger responds.

The umbrage Hawkeye took, combined with the comedy he used as a coping mechanism, conspired to make M*A*S*H a chronicle of war not unlike The Iliad, every bit as epic in scope and timeless in theme. M*A*S*H was set in the 1950s, conceived in the 1960s, debuted in cinemas and on TV in the 1970s, and concluded, before an audience of more than 100 million people, in the 1980s. In the decades since, it has run in syndication without pause, making M*A*S*H—including the best-selling book in 1968 and the Oscar-winning movie in 1970—an indelible fixture in American popular culture. “Now that it’s off, it’s on more than ever,” Gelbart quipped in his introduction to the The Complete Book of M*A*S*H, published a year after the show ended.

Before M*A*S*H, television comedies set in the military had been laugh-tracked diversions from war, not reflections on its true nature: McHale’s Navy; Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.;and The Phil Silvers Show (popularly known as “Sgt. Bilko”) were comforting. Television’s longest-running reflection on World War II was Hogan’s Heroes, set in a grim German prisoner of war camp yet played for guffaws.

The 251 episodes of M*A*S*H spanned 11 seasons, which was eight years longer than the Korean War. When it concluded its initial run, an English professor at Clemson University calculated that the 94.9 hours of episodes—excluding credits and commercials—were nearly the same length of time required to watch the complete works of Shakespeare. One could quibble with the exact math, but one thing is certain: The appeal of M*A*S*H was its Shakespearean melding of drama and humor, high and low, heavy and light. The series embraced timeless themes of love, death, joy, tragedy, war, sex, and booze. Or as Hawkeye once put it: “Our motto is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happy hour.”

The doctors of the 4077th were understandably thirsty, charged as they were with a soul-numbing task: sewing up wounded soldiers and sending them back to the front to fight again. “All their efforts were futile in a way, in that their project, their duty, [and] their obligation is to heal wounds, put people back together again, in the middle of an overall effort, which is to destroy life,” producer Gene Reynolds, who died at age 96 in 2020, told the Oral History archivists at the Television Academy Foundation. “The absurdity, the drollness, the futility of their putting bodies back together again, and the overall effort is to destroy them. It’s existential.”

That absurdity—restoring human life so that it might be destroyed—was a catch-22, and M*A*S*H owed a debt to the Joseph Heller novel that spawned the term, in which insanity was proof of sanity. It also paid homage to George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, with its recurring slogan, “War Is Peace.” The conundrum faced every week by the show’s surgeons, and the injured soldiers who passed through their operating theater, resonated with much of the American public when the show made its debut on CBS in 1972, while the United States was hoping to broker a settlement in Vietnam by bombing the North Vietnamese.

By the time the sets of M*A*S*H were struck from the lots in 1983 and re-assembled in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, the Vietnam War was long over, but more conflicts were to come. Alan Alda noted that the series was unfortunately evergreen, because war was likewise timeless. “As M*A*S*H goes into reruns,” Alda noted, “the Vietnam War is going into reruns, too.” That same year, 1983, the U.S. invaded the island nation of Grenada. Meanwhile, 241 U.S. Marines and military personnel died when their barracks were bombed in Beirut.

M*A*S*H achieved something remarkable: It was of its time, yet it remains relevant for all time. “Wherever they come from,” Hawkeye once said of the casualties on his operating table, “they’ll never run out.” And so M*A*S*H has stayed ever vital. It will—to paraphrase Hawkeye—carry on, carry over, carry forward.

Here is a selection of photos from LIFE’s new special issue M*A*S*H: TV’s Most Extraordinary Comedy.

Cover image by MPTVImages.com

Sally Kellerman, who died on February 24, 2022, played Margaret ‘Hot Lips” O’Houlihan in the 1970 film version of M*A*S*H.

Moviestore/Shutterstock

Frank Burns (Robert Duvall), Margaret O’Houlihan (Sally Kellerman) and Trapper John (Elliott Gould) in the film version of M*A*S*H, 1970.

20th Century Fox/Aspen/Kobal/Shutterstock

Director Robert Altman on the set of his 1970 film M*A*S*H.

20th Century Fox/Aspen/Kobal/Shutterstock

The poster for the 1970 movie M*A*S*H.

: Universal History Archive/Shutterstock

The television version of M*A*S*H starred Alan Alda as Hawkeye Pierce and featured Gary Burghoff, the lone carryover from the cast of the film, as Radar O’Reilly.

Steve Schapiro/Corbis/Getty

Radar (Gary Burgoff) laughed with Lt. Col. Henry Blake (left, played by McLean Stevenson, who left M*A*S*H after the third of its 11 seasons).

CBS Photo Archive/Getty

Behind the scenes at the filming of the final episode of M*A*S*H, which aired in 1983, the cast buried a time capsule. “Rather than leaving a time capsule in Korea, we should leave one on the lot,” said Jamie Farr (fifth from left), who played Cpl. Max Klinger. “We found a great place near the commissary.”

Paul Harris/Getty

The surviving cast and creators of M*A*S*H gathered in 2002 to celebrate the show’s 30th anniversary.

Randy Holmes/20th Century Fox/Kobal/Shutterstock

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