Page 37 – LIFE

Just for Fun: A Look Back at LIFE’s Tongue-in-Cheek Gift Guides

December 24, 2021December 15, 2021 by Bill Syken

The desperate quest to please loved ones can lead to purchases around holiday time that you would never consider the other eleven months out of the year.

In 1953 LIFE acknowledged the occasional absurdity of holiday commerce with a guide to some the odder “fancy” items being offered to shoppers. LIFE photographer Yale Joel wittily executed the idea by shooting these silly objects in a high-fashion setting, as if a jewel-encrusted spray gun was in fact the pinnacle of glamour.

Then, in 1969, photographer Yale Joel came back with a more outlandish version of the same premise.

The guide in LIFE’s December 7, 1953 issue was headlined “Good-for-Nothing Gifts,” with the tagline, “they are better to give than to receive.” According to the story, one of the hottest gift of 1952 was—for real—a sequined fly swatter. This meant that in 1953, manufacturers produced fancy versions of other household objects to try to capitalize on the trend. This led to all sorts of odd offerings: “Holiday shoppers whose main object is to pamper the recipient may choose jeweled backscratchers which are almost too pretty to use, velvet eyeglasses which are designed to be worn instead of a hat, timepieces for pets who cannot tell time.”

Thus did ordinary objects gain big price tags. The encrusted backscratcher, for instance, retailed for $6.95 at Lord and Taylor—which would about $70 in 2020 prices. Even today, you can buy backscratchers in packages of six for ten bucks.

But Lord & Taylor’s bejeweled backscratcher was a major bargain compared to the gifts Joel shot for another tongue-and-cheek gift guide years later in LIFE’s December 12, 1969 issue. This guide promised to have “something for everyone, and a few things for nobody.”

The guide included an 80-carat diamond for $450,000 (more than $3 million today), a “Masterpiece of the Month” club for art lovers ($1 million, or $7.2 million today) in which buyers would receive works of 20th century masters by mail, and a kit for making your own fur coat from 75 sable fur pelts for $125,000, “including tailoring.”

Then there’s a giant phone receiver ($5, or $36 today), which would get this gift guide’s award for Best Sight Gag.

If nothing else, Joel and the editors of LIFE seemed to be having fun. Maybe that’s the real lesson for stressed-out shoppers: It’s the holidays. You may want everything to be perfect, but don’t forget to enjoy yourself.

This dog collar, which featured a Swiss watch, was made by Hammacher Schlemmer and cost $50 in 1953; a version with a compass instead of a watch cost $22.

Yael Joel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

These velvet glasses that slid back on the head were sold by Lord & Taylor for $15 in 1953.

Yael Joel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

This satin edged sleep mask, edged with gold braid and had gold eyelashes, brows and twinkling stars, sold for $3.95 in 1953 from Lord & Taylor.

Yael Joel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

This back-scratcher encrusted with gilt, pearls and seashells was sold by Lord & Taylor for $6.95.

Yael Joel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Bloomingdales sold this spray gun that was coated with gilt and trimmed with flowers for $7.95 in 1953.

Yale Joel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

These work gloves with red felt fingernails and a large ring on the wedding finger sold for $2.95 in 1953.

Yale Joel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

This 80-carat uncut diamond from Tiffany’s would have been quite the holiday splurge at $450,000 in 1969.

Yale Joel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

This oversized receiver, “for really big calls” as LIFE put it in 1969, was sold by Hammacher Schlemmer/Invento for $5.

Yale Joel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

This smashed radio on top of a broken mirror was presented as a “mixed media sculpture” gift idea in 1969, with a $35 price tag.

Yale Joel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

This Honeywell “kitchen computer,” suggested for budgets, menus and other calculations, went for $10,600, with a two-week course in programming included.

Yale Joel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

The cost of creating “a unique fur coat, with 75 of the world’s most expensive pelts” from Russian crown sable was $125,000—including tailoring—in 1969.

Yale Joel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

LIFE Takes a Bath: Classic Pics of People (and Pets) Enjoying a Soak

December 13, 2021December 13, 2021 by Bill Syken

Taking a bath might sound like a simple act, but this collection of photos from the archives of LIFE shows more variety than you might have imagined.

The breadth is hinted at in the first two photos in the collection. One is of actress Jayne Mansfield from LIFE’s Aug. 18, 1961 issue, taking a tub in a bathroom that is decorated floor-to-ceiling in pink shag. The room is, like the voluptuous blonde herself, an over-the-top expression of 1950s femininity. The photo also presents the bath at its most familiar, as a moment of relaxation and indulgence.

Contrast that with the bath taken by coal miner Mabrey Evans, which captures in one image the challenges of his circumstances. The photo was taken for a story in LIFE’s May 10, 1943 issue on labor issues in the coal industry. The story described how after a hard day of work, Evans would kneel in front of a washtub and scrub himself clean:

The washing process takes Miner Mabrey Evans about 45 minutes every evening. He carefully washes his hands, arms and chest first in a tub of hot water, and then while he scrapes the grime off his face, Mrs. Evans rubs the coating of coal black from his back.

The contrast between the photos of the coal miner and the coquettish actress is but the beginning. The collection includes a Japanese laborers in a communal bath, a British prep school student braving a morning plunge in 35-degree water, an aging Mickey Mantle seeking relief for his injury-ravaged body after a baseball game, photojournalist Lee Miller taking an impudent bath in the apartment of Adolph Hitler, and a Tahitian woman recalling the paintings of Gauguin with her loll in the island waters.

Some of the most striking images in the collection are of soldiers. Some of these men clean themselves in washtubs, as did the weary coal miner. Some enjoy a communal soak in ancient Roman baths at Gafsa. One of the photos featuring soldiers in the most joyous in this collection, and also the most famous.

That picture features American soldiers cleansing themselves in the ocean on the island of Saipan in World War II. The battle, chronicled in harrowing detail by LIFE photographers Peter Stackpole and W. Eugene Smith, was a brutal one, resulting in the deaths of 29,000 troops and many more civilians. The context helps explain the emotion of this particular bath, as soldiers took advantage of a lull in the fighting to strip off their clothes and refresh themselves in the waters of the Pacific.

It is, in its way, the epitome of bathing, these men who have seen such horror finding momentary relief by submerging themselves in the revitalizing waters.

Jayne Mansfield combed her hair while bathing in the pink carpeted bathroom of her home, known as “The Pink Palace,” in Los Angeles, 1960.

Allan Grant; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Coal miner Mabrey Evans scrubbed his arm in a tub of hot water in Cambria County, Pennsylvania, United States, April 1943.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A student at Winchester College, an English boys school, took a morning bath in a cold tub in a room that was 35 degrees; his technique was to grasp the edges of the tub, plunge in bottom-first, and get out as quickly as possible, 1951.

Cornell Capa/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Artist Pablo Picasso taking a bath at his Riviera villa.

Photo by David Douglas Duncan /The LIFE Images Collection

Bathing was a complicated process for 24-year-old schoolteacher Dorothy Albrecht in rural Montana; first she needed to haul water from a cistern 100 yards away from her cottage and heat in on the stove before climbing into the washtub, 1941.

Hansel Mieth/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Photographer Lee Miller took a bath in Adolph Hitler’s apartment soon after the apartment was discovered by Allied forces, 1945.

David E. Scherman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Russell Finch, a writer, enjoyed the latest invention of the day, a portable television, while taking a bath, 1948.

George Skadding The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A girl in Tahiti, bathing, 1955.

Eliot Elisofon The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A Basset Hound being bathed in the back yard.

Photo by Robert W. Kelley/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Tokyo bath house, 1951.

Michael Rougier/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A nurse bathed two children, India, September 1957.

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Soldiers in their remote World War outpost of Amchitka Island, Alaska, bathed in halved oil drums, 1943.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Patients receive treatment on a hot baths spa, Hot Springs, Arkansas

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Steve McQueen and wife, Neile, took a sulphur bath in Big Sur, 1963.

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A woman used a new invention—a back brush equipped with front and rear-view mirrors so that she could see where she was scrubbing, 1947.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Actress Jeanne Crain on the set of the 1946 movie Margie.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Actress Jeanne Crain balanced a soap bubble on her index finger as she luxuriated in a bath in a scene from the 1946 movie, Margie.

Peter Stackpole/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Aspiring actress Jo Ann Kemmerling read a book in the small tub that was set up in the kitchen of her small New York City apartment, 1953.

Nina Leen/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Soldiers in the Roman Baths at Gafsa in Tunisia, 1943.

Soldiers Swim in Roman Baths at Gafsa

Mickey Mantle soaked in whirlpool bathtub after a game, 1964.

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Blondie, the pet lion, revelled in the shower spray of lukewarm water her owner Charles Hipp is directing on her pelt, at home, 1955.

Joseph Scherschel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

British soldiers of the Dorsetshire County Regiment took hot baths, 1944.

Actress Peggy Knudsen took a seaweed bath to produce better circulation and skin tone, 1961.

Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A Bald Eagle’s bath in California, 1949.

J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A photo from an essay on labor in Japan showed workers crowded in square cement bath, 1947.

John Florea/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Starlet June Preisser tried a milk bath—she didn’t like it—in preparing for a scene in the movie musical Strike Up the Band, 1940.

Peter Stackpole/LIfe Pictures/Shutterstock

American troops in the Pacific bathed during a lull in the fighting on the island of Saipan, 1944.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

LIFE’s 100 People Who Changed the World

December 7, 2021December 7, 2021 by Bill Syken

The following is adapted from the new special issue LIFE’s 100 People Who Changed the World, available at newsstands and online:

History never stops moving. It evolves. It is fluid. What history looks like today is different from what it looked like, say, a hundred years ago; and what today’s history-in-the-making looks like now may be seen very differently just 20 years from now. Did anyone in 1907 really think Henry Ford was changing the world when he started tinkering with how to make his Model T? Other than maybe Henry himself, probably not. Will Elon Musk be seen in 2040 as a world changer because of his electric Tesla? He may or he may not.

When combing the past and the present for a list such as the 100 People Who Changed the World, there are criteria to consider, to be sure, but there are no hard-and-fast rules. There are judgments to be made, but there are no certain truths. Our list was less a hardened document than a current collection—a collection of men and women who, for better and sometimes for worse, have made a clear mark on our civilization. Such a list is by necessity subjective and open to delicious debate.

But while history may be fluid, it does tend to crystallize over time: The significance of Aristotle or Catherine the Great is easy to see from here. And certainly the importance of some of history’s great characters was apparent to their contemporaries: George Washington or Pablo Picasso or Mother Teresa. Others were largely invisible in their own time, their contributions realized only long after they were gone: Karl Marx died in 1883, many years before his writings would inspire powerful communist societies; Alan Turing, who died lonely and tortured, is now lauded as the brilliant father of the computer; and Rachel Carson gained respect as a naturalist writer not long before her death, but appreciation for her impact on environmentalism has blossomed more recently.

Perhaps the most intriguing part of this exercise is pondering the ultimate impact of present-day figures. Steve Jobs makes the list by virtue of his influence on high tech and our daily lives. But what of Mark Zuckerberg, perhaps the founding figure of social media when he launched Facebook in 2004? His impact is huge, and he has made it possible for billions of people to come together; but the social media site has also made it easier to drive society apart, upending the news business and even the way elections are conducted. Can we yet evaluate the nature of Zuckerberg’s controversial creation and his ability to control it?

Similarly, Jeff Bezos presents a quandary. He might be seen as a retailing successor to Richard Sears, who made our list of 100 even though his great namesake legacy is now in bankruptcy. But Bezos also rides the wave of technology, and the power and reach of Amazon are frighteningly large. And by the way, without Robert Kahn and Vint Cerf, would we even have Zuckerberg and Bezos to kick around? Who are they, you ask? Just the guys who figured out a way for all the computers of the world to speak to each other, something we call the internet. If that invention hasn’t changed the world as we know it, well, tell us what has.

When it comes to game changers, Martin Luther King Jr. is of course included here for his enormous impact on civil rights. Yet King also has spiritual descendants whose work continues to alter our lives every day, including Alicia Garza. She’s the organizer who coined the phrase “Black Lives Matter” in 2013, after George Zimmerman was acquitted of murdering Florida teen Trayvon Martin. An anguished Garza posted “I continue to be surprised at how little Black lives matter . . . Our lives matter.” That sentiment was turned into a hashtag and became a movement that appears to be challenging racism in a way that has eluded the nation for centuries.

Will the moment last? Only time, of course, will tell. History will move inexorably forward, our questions today will have answers tomorrow, and lists like these will change—again and again and again.

Here are photographs of some of the people who made the list in LIFE’s 100 People Who Changed the World.

COVER IMAGES: (Mother Teresa) Tim Graham/Hulton/Getty; (Lincoln) Alexander Gardner/Library of Congress/Corbis/VCG/Getty; (Jesus) 3LH/SuperStock; (Einstein) Donaldson Collection/Michael Ochs Archives/Library of Congress/Getty; (MLK) Flip Schulke/Corbis/Getty; (Steve Jobs) Robert Galbraith/Reuters; (Beatles) John Dominis/ The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock; (Edison) Granger; (Hitler) Photo12/UIG/ Getty; (Eleanor Roosevelt) Marvin Koner/Corbis/Getty; (Gandhi) Wallace Kirkland/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock; (Oprah) Matt Baron/BEI/Shutterstock

Mother Teresa at a hospice for the destitute and dying in Kolkata, India, 1969.

Terry Fincher/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

In 1994 Nelson Mandela visited the cell in Robben Island Prison in South Africa where he had been held as a political prisoner from 1964 to 1990.

© Louise Gubb/Corbis/Getty Images

Circa 1910, women worked on an early outdoor version of the Henry Ford assembly line that would revolutionize mass production.

George Rinhart/Corbis/Getty Images

Sojourner Truth, an anti-slavery and women’s rights activist, held in her lap a photo of her grandson James Caldwell, who fought with a Massachusetts regiment and survived being a POW in South Carolina during the Civil War.

Everett/Shutterstock

Helen Keller, blind and deaf, felt the face of her teacher, Anne Sullivan.

Rolls Press/Popperfoto/Getty Images

Albert Einstein in 1947, twenty-six years after the groundbreaking physicist won the Nobel Prize.

Donaldson Collection/Library of Congress/Getty Images

Catherine de Medici inspected the results of the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, a crackdown she had ordered against Protestants in Paris in 1572.

Gianni Dagli Orti/Shutterstock

Billy Graham walked with children during an evangelical visit to Nigeria in 1960.

AP/Shutterstock

Oprah Winfrey in 2014 at the Critic’s Choice Awards, where the media entrepreneur had been nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Lee Daniel’s The Butler.

Matt Baron/BEI/Shutterstock

The 100 Most Important Photos Ever

December 7, 2021December 7, 2021 by Bill Syken

The following is adapted from the introduction to LIFE’s newcspecial issue 100 Photographs: The Most Important Pictures of All Time and the Stories Behind Them, available at newsstands and online:

Photos are proof. We know this from our own lives. Here’s what dad looked like when he was in high school. Look at this cake I baked. I ran into Taylor Swift at the mall—see, here we are in a selfie. A telling taunt of our age is “photos or it didn’t happen.”

The same holds true for the wider world. The pictures that really matter are the ones that prove something, that show us a definitive truth, that make us understand. Here’s what a human fetus looks like. Here’s the glory of Muhammad Ali. Here’s the shock we felt when the World Trade Center Towers collapsed.

In our quest to select the most important 100 photographs ever, we looked for pictures that demonstrated something important and meaningful. Some capture a news event or show the brutality of war. Others crystallize a particular cultural moment. Some take us on a fantastic voyage—up into space, perhaps, or inside the human body. Some photographs matter because they showed what cameras are capable of and illustrate the extraordinary power of photography as a medium.

The oldest photo we chose was the first one ever taken, of a French landscape in the 1820s. The process involved chemical applications and a multi-hour exposure that left an impression on a pewter plate. That grainy photo of the view outside the photographer’s window signaled our species’ transition to the world of pictures. Thanks to the internet and our smartphones, with their built-in cameras, we now see more images each day than the people who lived in a world of paintings and prints saw in a lifetime. Most of these photographs we flip past and forget. Others linger. The best reorient our understanding. The rare ones—the ones we feature in this special issue—change how we see the world.

Here are a few selections from LIFE’s new special issue 100 Photographs: The Most Important Pictures Ever and the Stories Behind Them

(clockwise from top left) Joe Rosenthal/AP/Shutterstock; Robert Beck/Sports Illustrated/Getty; Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection, [LC-DIG-fsa-8b29516]; NASA

Regarded as the first photo ever taken, this image of a French countryside was achieved when Joseph Nicephore Niepce placed a thin coating of light-sensitive phosphorous derivative on a pewter plate and then placed the plate in a camera obscura and set in on a windowsill for a long exposure.

Joseph Niepce/Hulton/Getty

Lewis Hine’s photos such as this one of “breaker boys” who picked pieces of slate from conveyor belts as freshly broken pieces of coal rolled by, helped raise support for child labor laws.

Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, National Child Labor Committee Collection, [LC-DIG-nclc-01130]

Elizabeth Eckford’s walk through a crowd of hateful tormentors into Little Rock Central High School in 1957 is a defining image of the tumultuous effort to desegregate schools.

Bettmann/Getty

The image of U.S. Marines planting the American flag on Iwo Jima during World War II has been called the famous news photo of all time.

Joe Rosenthal/AP/Shutterstock

In a defining image of the Vietnam war, the wounded Marine Gunnery Sgt. Jeremiah Purdie (center, with bandaged head) reached toward a stricken comrade after a fierce firefight south of the DMZ, October 1966.

Larry Burrows/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The Woodstock music festival that drew half a million people to an upstate New York farm in 1969 signified the best of that age’s hopes and dreams.

Bill Eppridge/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Michael’s Phelps’ win over Serbia’s Milorad Cavic by one hundredth of a second at the 2008 Olympics was a golden example of the photo finish.

Heinz Kluetmeier/Sports Illustrated/Getty

Egged on by the bogus claims of the outgoing 44th president, a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 in an historic attempt to disrupt the tallying of electoral college votes.

Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency/Getty

The Hubble Space Telescope’s photo known as Pillars of Creation captured the conditions in which new stars are born.

NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team

It’s a Wonderful Life: Tribute to A Masterpiece

November 30, 2021November 30, 2021 by Bill Syken

The following is adapted from the introduction to LIFE’s new special issue It’s a Wonderful Life: The Season’s Most Beautiful Film, available at newsstands and online:

Director Frank Capra’s 1946 fantasy, It’s a Wonderful Life, is one of the most beloved American motion pictures and a treasured part of the Christmas season. Generations of families have gathered round their televisions to share this deeply affecting, vividly filmed, and superbly acted parable: the story of George Bailey, a small-town banker on the brink of suicide saved on Christmas Eve by an avuncular angel who shows him a nightmarish vision of what the world would be like had George never been born. The Village Voice critic Andrew Sarris called the film “manifestly an all-time masterpiece.” In 2007, the American Film Institute ranked it 20th on a list of the 100 greatest American movies ever made. The film’s star, James Stewart, who is arguably perfect as George, considered it his favorite of all the movies he’d made—and so did Capra, who directed some of Hollywood’s best. “It’s a Wonderful Life sums up my philosophy of filmmaking,” the director wrote. “First, to exalt the worth of the individual. Second, to champion man—plead his cases, protest any degradation of his dignity, spirit, or divinity. And third, to dramatize the viability of the individual.”

And to think that, in large part, the film owes its iconic status to a bureaucratic bungle. When the movie was released in 1946—to a generally tepid response—U.S. copyright protection lasted 28 years. In 1974, it could have been renewed for another 28 years if Republic Pictures, the original copyright owner, had filled out some forms and paid a nominal fee. For whatever reason, Republic neglected to do so, and the film passed into the public domain. Before long, TV stations across the country, relieved of the burden of paying royalties, showed It’s a Wonderful Life repeatedly around the holidays. A 1993 Supreme Court decision allowed Republic to reclaim the film from public domain by copyrighting the story and music; the next year, the company cut a long-term deal to grant NBC exclusive broadcast rights to It’s a Wonderful Life, which the network typically aired from one to three times a year.

In the end, the movie’s mix of whimsy, sentimentality—and a dose of horror—captured the imaginations of millions again and again. “What is remarkable about It’s a Wonderful Life is how well it holds up over the years,” critic Roger Ebert wrote in 1999. “Some movies, even good ones, should only be seen once. When we know how they turn out, they’ve surrendered their mystery and appeal. Other movies can be viewed an indefinite number of times. Like great music, they improve with familiarity. It’s a Wonderful Life falls in the second category.”

No one could have imagined all this 75 years ago. But then, the life of It’s a Wonderful Life has been full of improbable twists and turns of fate. The film owes its origins to a story titled “The Greatest Gift” by Philip Van Doren Stern—a Civil War historian, of all things—who said the idea came to him while shaving. Stern revised and refined the tale repeatedly and had pretty much given up on publishing it when RKO Radio Pictures snapped up the rights and worked up a script. It kicked around for a bit—until RKO chief Charles Koerner sold the rights to Capra in 1945. At that point, the famous director was at a professional crossroads. In the 1930s he had built a sterling reputation for his handling of humor, sentiment, and pungent social commentary in movies such as It Happened One Night and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Capra celebrated ordinary folks who triumph over daunting adversaries; some called his films hokey—hence the term “Capra corn”—but few disputed that, by and large, they were deftly executed. Serving in the U.S. Army during World War II, Capra earned a chest full of decorations for his Why We Fight propagandist documentaries boosting the Allied effort. Now he was a civilian again, with a newly established production company, Liberty Films, and he was looking for just the right property to launch his postwar comeback.

The film’s appeal is manifold. Aside from the film’s spot-on performances, nostalgia, warmth, and emotion, Ebert noted, “the darker later passages have an elemental power, as the drunken George Bailey staggers through a town he wants to hate, and then revisits it through the help of a gentle angel.” Writing in Film Comment, Robin Wood called the movie “one of the greatest American films.”

Nevertheless, some otherwise admiring critics consider the movie flawed, among them Joseph McBride, a professor of film at San Francisco State University and author of the definitive 1992 biography Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success. McBride argues that the supernatural aspect of the story—its deus ex machina resolution—is rather “a cop-out.” In McBride’s view, “It’s a Wonderful Life is a film about a failure. I asked Capra whether it was autobiographical, and he said ‘What the hell do you think?’ He was a rich, successful Hollywood director who had just won the Distinguished Service Medal. But Capra was plagued by self-doubt and considered himself a failure.”

Few would agree with that assessment. Frank Capra was many things, including a difficult and profoundly complicated character, but no one can call him a bust, any more than his self-sacrificing, civic-minded, deeply troubled cinematic hero from Bedford Falls. Together, with a little help from an unlikely angel, they struck a chord—or, if you will, rang a bell—that after 75 years and counting, still resonates deep in the human heart.

Here are a selection of images from LIFE’s new special issue It’s A Wonderful Life: The Season’s Most Beautiful Film.

(foreground) MPTVImages; Photo colorization by Jordan J. Lloyd/Dynamichrome; (background) Dimitris66/DigitalVision Vectors/Getty

Jimmy Stewart during a break in the filming of It’s a Wonderful Life.

Martha Holmes/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mary (Donna Reed) and George (Jimmy Stewart) get to know each other as youngsters in a scene from It’s a Wonderful Life.

Bettmann/Getty

Mary (Donna Reed) and George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) in It’s a Wonderful Life.

CBS Photo Archive/Getty

George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) comforts daughter Zuzu (Karolyn Grimes) in It’s a Wonderful Life.

Rko/Kobal/Shutterstock

Clarence (Henry Travers) plays the angel to a troubled George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) in It’s a Wonderful Life.

CBS Photo Archive/Getty

The snowmaking machine on the set of It’s a Wonderful Life represented a great technical advance in its day, producing more realistic snow than had been previously seen in movies.

Martha Holmes/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed posed for a publicity portrait for It’s a Wonderful Life.

Silver Screen Collection/Moviepix/Getty

It’s a Wonderful Life premiered at the Globe Theater in New York City, 1946.

© RKO, Courtesy Photofest

Times Square: The Ultimate Gathering Place

November 30, 2021November 30, 2021 by Bill Syken

Most everyone knows Times Square as the place where more than a million people come every December 31 to watch the ball drop and welcome the new year.

But the attraction of this Manhattan crossroads is more than one night only. The role that Times Square plays in America’s largest city has been well captured by the pictures taken by LIFE photographers over the decades.

Times Square was given its name on April 8, 1904, soon after the New York Times set up offices nearby. It developed into the glitziest spot in the city, thanks to its abundance of entertainment spots and neon billboards.

The photos here capture the excitement and the hubbub, the celebrations and the showplaces. One of the most jarring pictures in the collection is in fact a rare photo of Times Square looking quiet and serene, thanks to a taxi strike that left its boulevards nearly free of traffic. (The idea of Times Square without people later became the centerpiece of a nightmare sequence in the 2001 Tom Cruise movie Vanilla Sky.)

The collection includes two celebrity portraits. One is a natural for the location: playwright Moss Hart and his wife, actress Kitty Carlisle. The other is of Robert Redford at the time when his career was taking off thanks to his performance in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and the photo is memorable for the way the actor’s Western aesthetic contrasts with the gritty backdrop of Times Square in 1969.

One of the most famous photos in the history of LIFE magazine was shot in Times Square, on a day when the space erupted in spontaneous celebration. It was 1945, and Japan was about to surrender, bringing an end to World War II. One exuberant man was going from woman to woman, planting his lips on them (and he was far from the only one doing so) when LIFE’s Albert Eisenstadt took the picture known as “The Kiss.” The photo has had a problematic afterlife, as a woman claiming to be the nurse in the photo came forward to describe the kiss as terrifying from her perspective, but the image nonetheless captures the national mood at the long-awaited end of World War II.

The crowds that day indicate the particular hold of Times Square on the civic imagination. It’s the place where people magnetically streamed because something important had happened, and they wanted to share the experience with others.

This photo is from a staged essay from 1940 on the “White Collar Girl,” the subject of the best-selling novel Kitty Foyle that was later adapted into a movie; here Carol Lorell, who resembled the movie’s star, Ginger Rogers, portrayed a scene in which the White Collar Girl, alone amid the glitz of Times Square, had finished her workday and was unsure to do with the rest of her evening.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Times Square on Dec. 31, 1941.

Gordon Coster/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Times Square in New York City on New Year’s Eve, as 1941 turned to 1942.

Gordon Coster The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Military police in Times Square on New Year’s Eve, as 1941 turned to 1942.

Gordon Coster The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The motorcade of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt moved through Times Square, 1944.

William Vandivert/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A Times Square billboard for the Broadway show Mexican Hayride, 1944.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Times Square billboard, 1944.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Pigeons and loiterers (visitors) gathered in cement island in the middle of Broadway in Times Square, 1944.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Customers peered at the wares inside a small, brightly-lit Times Square watch shop, 1944.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Times Square, 1944.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A strolling blind musician played guitar and harmonica along Broadway at night in Times Square in 1944.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Times Square, 1944.

Andreas Feininger/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Servicemen made calls to faraway family and friends from booths at the GI phone center in Times Square, 1944.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Getty Images

Sailors looked for fun in a curfew-closed Times Square.

(Photo by Carl Mydans/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation)

V-J Day celebrations in Times Square, August 14, 1945.

William C. Shrout The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

V-J Day kiss, Times Square, Aug. 14, 1945.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Times Square was uncharacteristically quiet during a 1949 taxi strike.

Yale Joel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Traffic congestion on Broadway looking north from 45th Street in Times Square, 1954.

Andreas Feininger/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Times Square, February 1954.

Andreas Feininger/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The cast of ballet Fancy Free danced in the middle of Times Square, 1958.

Gordon Parks/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Playwright Moss Hart with his wife, actress Kitty Carlisle, in Times Square, 1959.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Robert Redford in Times Square, between meetings, 1969.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Robert Redford hailed a cab in Times Square. Just a few blocks away, at the Biltmore Theater on 47th Street, was where the actor got his first major notices as the star of Neil Simon’s 1963 Broadway play, Barefoot in the Park.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The stroke of midnight began a new year, new century and new millennium as people celebrated in Times Square on Jan. 1, 2000.

Ted Thai/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

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