Harry Potter: The Story That Changed the World

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

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

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

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

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!

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

M*A*S*H: Extraordinary and Timeless

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

Easter Fashion Fun: Making Clothes For the Whole Giant Family

The April 7, 1952 issue of LIFE featured one of the magazine’s most iconic covers—a photograph of a young Marilyn Monroe at a moment when the young star was becoming, as the magazine announced, “the talk of Hollywood.” This was a time before televisions were commonplace, and the Internet was obviously nonexistent, which meant this cover would have landed in America’s mailboxes like the proverbial bombshell.

For additional context on life in the early 1950s, consider another story in that same issue of LIFE, one which was much squarer and also gauged to the issue’s publication date in early April. The story was about the O’Neil family of Boston. They had ten daughters, and they made their own matching clothes for Easter.

“Operation Easter took over the whole house of Mr. and Mrs. Daniel O’Neil,” LIFE wrote. “There, amid the urgent clatter of an electric sewing machine and the psst of wet fingers on hot irons, the entire family was engaged in the monument task of turning out almost identical Easter outfits.”

Wearing new clothes on Easter is a centuries-old tradition meant to symbolically honor the resurrection of Jesus. For the O’Neils, honoring that tradition required collaboration among the family members, who ranged from ages 3 to 19. “Mrs. O’Neil sewed, the biggest girls ironed, the middle-sized girls attached buttons and the smallest girls attached basting thread and retrieved dropped thimbles,” LIFE wrote.

The O’Neils had this is common with Marilyn: they were in show business too, in their way. “The Ten O’Neil sisters,” as they were known, regularly appeared in Easter parades in matching outfits and gave musical performances. The1952 burst of outfit-making documented by LIFE photographer Nina Leen was “in preparation for a weekend migration to New York where the O’Neils were scheduled to appear on an Easter television program.”

The O’Neil sisters continued their public appearances well into adulthood. Their website includes a photo from the Boston Herald in 1983 of them marching arm-and-arm in Boston’s Easter parade. The website also includes a page which at the top has the Marilyn cover and their family portrait in matching outfits side-by-side, showing there is more than one way to make a memorable picture.

Mrs. O’Neil pinned up hems on all ten of her daughters’ dresses in preparation for Easter, 1952.

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

The O’Neil girls’ hats and gloves were inspected by the youngest sisters in preparation for Easter, 1952.

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

One of the sisters, Jane, ironed a skirt while her mother and sisters worked another suit in preparation for Easter, 1952.

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Cutting cloth for the Easter suits, Mrs. Daniel O’Neil and her daughters working from a paper McCall’s pattern, 1952.

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

The O’Neil family readied for Easter, 1952.

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

A little O’Neil admiring her four big sisters in their new Easter finery, 1952.

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

The O’Neil family readied for Easter, 1952.

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Daniel O’Neil with one of his ten daughters in a new Easter outfit, April 1952.

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

The O’Neil family modelled their new Easter wear, April 1952

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Are City Dogs Better Off Than Country Dogs?

Many decades ago LIFE took a bold stance by suggesting that dogs in the city were better off than those in the country. Yes, the magazine actually put forward the idea that dogs thrived more living in cramped apartments than in places where they could frolic through fields and streams.

“Deprived of wide open spaces, they are just as happy and healthy as country dogs and live years longer,” declared a headline in LIFE’s April 3 ,1944 issue. The article used as its chief source a book called How to Raise a Dog in the City and In the Suburbs by Dr. James Kinney, which claimed that city dogs lived two to three years longer than country dogs. The story offered this rationale for the disparity: “City owners lavish more affection on dogs than country owners, not because city dogs are more lovable but because they are more often underfoot. A dog thrives as much on affection as it does on wide-open spaces.”

All these decades later, some still argue that city dogs are better off. A recent article on Vetstreet points out in the country, dogs there are more likely to roam unleashed, which means that they get hit by cars more often. Country dogs also encounter more types of parasites. And if a dog has some intestinal disease, the city owner is more likely to notice, because the evidence will be left in on a carpet rather than amid the bushes.

One counter-argument for country life is that dogs are simply happier there. According to a study reported on in Psychology Today, city dogs are much more fearful and anxious than their country cousins. The study found that city dogs were 45 percent more likely to be afraid of strange people, and 70 percent more likely to be afraid of strange dogs.

Also, the pictures of city dogs that LIFE photographer Nina Leen in 1944 to illustrate the story sometimes run counter to story’s premise—or, to put it more simply, some of the dogs don’t seem all that happy as they go on their walks in New York. The grumpiest-looking dog belonged to actress-model Joan Caulfield, whose West Highland terrier named Witty attempted to hide away in the hedges. Just about all the dogs that Leen photographed belonged to public figures, such as actors Frederic March and Ruth Gordon, but it’s not clear that they benefitted from the reflected glory.

Wherever you live, there’s plenty of evidence that owning a dog is good for the owner, both mentally and physically. In other words, what studies show most clearly is that people and dogs are better off with each other, and that’s true anywhere in America.

Actor Fredric March w.alked his cocker spaniel in the rain, 1944.

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Actress Joan Caulfield briskly walked her West Highland terrier Witty, down Fifth Avenue in New York City, 1944.

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Actress Joan Caulfield reached deep down behind a hedge to extract her West Highland terrier Witty, while trying to take him for a walk in New York City, 1944.

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Actress Joan Caulfield lifted her West Highland terrier Witty, out from behind a hedge, while trying to take him for a walk, 1944.

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Artist Earle Winslow, with a painting under his arm, struggled to control his stubborn Irish setter, New York City, 1944.

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Artist Earle Winslow (right) showed his painting to a friend while struggling to keep his Irish setter under control, New York City, 1944.

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Artist Earle Winslow, with a painting under his arm, struggled to keep his Irish setter under control, New York City, 1944.

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Model Mimi Berry walked her cocker spaniel, who carried a package for her, 1944.

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Metropolitan Opera singer Lauritz Melchior with his wife and their Great Dane, 1944.

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Sportscaster Bill Stern read a newspaper as his Chesapeake Bay retriever sniffed a sidewalk grate, New York City, 1944.

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Ed Sullivan, then an entertainment columnist before he became a television host, brought his black Scottie dog to a fenced-in area on the street in New York City, 1944.

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Conductor Artur Rodzinski and his wife with their poodle at 57th St. and 5th Ave in New York City, 1944.

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Actress Joan Roberts, wearing her costume for the musical Oklahoma, walked Goggles, her English bulldog, during the show’s intermission, New York City, 1944.

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Actress Joan Roberts, wearing a costume for the musical Oklahoma, walked her English bulldog Goggles during intermission, 1944.

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Actor John Boles coaxed his stubborn schnauzer puppy to jump a concrete barrier New York City ,1944.

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Actress Margaret Webster’s two Cairn terriers checked out a cat perched in the window, New York City, 1944.

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

William F. Schlemmer, of Hammacher-Schlemmer, walked his Yorkshire terriers, New York City, 1944.

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Comedian Jimmy Durante walked his Irish setter in Times Square, 1944.

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Author Fannie Hurst enjoyed the jumping antics of her Yorkshire terrier Orphan Annie, New York City, 1944.

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Actress Ruth Gordon walked her black poodle, New York City 1944.

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Actress Cornelia Otis Skinner, clad in a sheared beaver fur coat, walking her dogs in New York City, 1944.

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Music conductor Andre Kostelanetz with his sheep dog Puff, New York City, 1944.

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

This Maltese poodle/wire-haired terrier mix called Pooch was cuddled by its owner, former Metropolitan Opera singer Thalia Sabaneev, New York City, 1944.

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Former Metropolitan Opera singer Thalia Sabaneev’s Maltese poodle/wire-haired terrier mix called Pooch was featured on the cover of LIFE magazine’s issue of April 3, 1944.

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

A boy read newspaper comics while his leash-tethered mutt waited, New York City, 1944.

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

More Like This

animals

Meet Lady Wonder, the Psychic Horse Who Appeared Twice in LIFE

animals

Before Moo Deng: Little Hippos in LIFE

animals

The First Beagles Whose Ears LBJ Just Had to Tug

animals

Bears: Strong, Wise, and Increasingly Among Us

A rhesus monkey in Puerto Rico, 1938. animals

Behind the Picture: Hansel Mieth’s Wet, Unhappy Monkey

animals

Apes: Their Remarkable World