Page 43 – LIFE

Before She Was Catwoman: Julie Newmar in LIFE

August 16, 2021July 15, 2021 by Bill Syken

Julie Newmar gained her most enduring fame by playing Catwoman on the Batman television show of the 1960s, but she had been a presence on the stage and screen long before she ever donned the catsuit.

Newmar frequently played a role that was a staple in a certain kind of comedy: the attractive woman who leave men discombobulated simply by walking to a room. She was acting in such roles all three times she found herself in front of LIFE cameras.

In 1956 Gjon Mili captured her performing in the Broadway musical version of the comic strip Li’l’ Abner. Newmar had the small but memorable role of Stupefyin’ Jones (she would reprise the role in the 1959 film version), whose name embodied the effect she had on men.

In 1958, LIFE’s Ralph Morse took his turn shooting Newmar, this time for a role that would win her a Tony for Best Featured Actress. The show was a comedy called The Marriage-Go-Round, and Newmar played Katrin Sveg, a woman who comes from Sweden to stay with an older university couple—she’s the daughter of a colleague and suddenly grown up. Newmar’s character throws her hosts’ lives life into chaos by walking around wearing only a towel and asking the husband, a professor, to sire her a child, so the offspring will be the ultimate combination of beauty and brains. (Once again, Newmar reprised the role for the film version.)

In 1961 Newmar took on the role of one of the classic seductresses of the stage, Lola in “Damn Yankees.” As part of a broader, inventive photo shoot that was supposed to be a summer theater preview, LIFE photographer Nina Leen had Newman vamping around outdoors in front of scarecrow, and even trying out some baseball poses.

Suffice to say that Newmar had plenty of practice playing the sex kitten before she ever trained her abilities on Batman and had the Caped Crusader fumbling and bumbling like so many other men who shared a scene with her.

Julie Newmar (center) played Stupefyin’ Jones in the Broadway musical L’il Abner, 1956.

Photo by Gjon Mili/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Julie Newmar starred in the Broadway play “Marriage-Go-Around,” 1958; she won a Tony Award for her portrayal of Katrin Sveg.

Photo by Ralph Morse/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Julie Newmar starred in the Broadway play “The Marriage-Go-Round” in 1958; her character Katrin Sveg, was a provocative visitor from Sweden who at times wore only a towel.

Photo by Ralph Morse/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Julie Newmar in the Broadway play “The Marriage-Go-Round,” 1958.

Photo by Ralph Morse/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Julie Newmar, right, with Claudette Colbert in a scene from the Broadway play “The Marriage-Go-Round,” 1958.

Photo by Ralph Morse/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Julie Newmar, left, with Charles Boyer and Claudette Colbert in a scene from the play “The Marriage-Go-Round,” 1958.

Photo by Ralph Morse/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Julie Newmar, right, and Charles Boyer in a scene from “The Marriage-Go-Round,” in which her character has given Boyer’s a nude statue that she posed for.

Photo by Ralph Morse/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Julie Newmar in a photo shoot promoting her performance as Lola in “Damn Yankees,” 1961.

Photo by Nina Leen/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

New Jersey Turnpike: The Building of a “Superroad”

August 9, 2021June 30, 2021 by Bill Syken

If you should ever happen to get caught in slow traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike, console yourself with the knowledge that it used to be worse. Much, much worse. Crossing the Garden State was a true commuter quagmire in the days before the Turnpike was built.

That’s why LIFE hailed the opening of the Turnpike, one of the first roads of its kind in America, as a major event in its January 18, 1952 issue with a story titled “Newly Opened Superroad Unravels Chronic Traffic Jam.”

“A road like this is something motorists caught in the nightmare of New Jersey traffic have long dreamed of,” exclaimed LIFE.

The new roadway offered drivers an express route from the Delaware Memorial Bridge up toward the Lincoln Tunnel (and has since been extended north). Before the opening of the Turnpike, LIFE wrote, motorists traversing the state “had to fight their cars bumper to bumper along the Pulaski Skyway, curse their way through honking traffic in Elizabeth, spin around endless traffic circles and spend up five hours on the trip.”

With the turnpike the 118-mile journey could now be done “in two hours flat,” LIFE declared. (And that was before the invention of E-Z Pass.) Through various extensions built since its opening, the length of the turnpike is now 148 miles.The road is heavily used not just because of New Jersey’s attractions but because it serves as a major connector to points along the East Coast. In 1952 LIFE projected that “more that eight million cars a year” might use the turnpike, but now the road is used by well north of 200 milllion toll-paying vehicles per year. From the songs of Bruce Springsteen to the opening credits of The Sopranos, the thoroughfare has gained cultural currency as a roadway that is much-traveled, if not always beloved.

LIFE’s photos, taken by Bernard Hoffman and Andreas Feininger, chronicled this major construction project. The task was completed in only 23 months: a feat that becomes more impressive when you consider the logistical elements involved. As LIFE wrote in 1952:

In cities whole blocks of houses had to be torn down, families relocated, street crossing overpassed. Out in the country farmland had to be bought for the 300-foot right of way, 196 highways and railroads had to be crossed. To take care of real estate obstacles required 3,500 separate real estate deals and $17.5 million [about $172 million in 2021 dollars]. Out in the marshlands near Secaucus, engineers found six miles of the land a floating mire sometimes 100 feet deep. In this they sank large pipes packed with sand. They covered the right of way with heavy dirt, then removed the pipes, leaving vertical columns of sand to act as drains until the weight of the dirt squeezed the water from the mire. Then they removed the surplus dirt and built the highway on top.

Five years later the opening of the Garden State Parkway created a second express route across New Jersey. While you can say that the construction of the Parkway and the Turnpike was completed by certain dates, the expansion and maintenance of these roads is on ongoing project, one that this never really done, as builders race to keep pace with the needs of a nation on the move.

Workers built an overpass for the brand new New Jersey Turnpike, 1951.

Andreas Feininger/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Workers handled one of the more difficult parts of the construction of the New Jersey Turnpike as the roadway approached New York.

Andreas FeiningerThe LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Construction of a stretch of the New Jersey Turnpike near New York City, 1951.

Andreas Feininger/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Workers rode a lift during the construction of the New Jersey Turnpike, New Jersey, June 1951.

Bernard Hoffman/]/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Workers rode a lift during the construction of the New Jersey Turnpike, 1951.

Bernard Hoffman/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

A group of workers talked during the construction of the New Jersey Turnpike, June 1951.

Bernard Hoffman/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Workers assembled a support strut during the construction of the New Jersey Turnpike, June 1951.

Bernard Hoffman/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Dairy cattle, cut off from their barn by the New Jersey Turnpike, were driven through a special underpass built for them by the Turnpike authority.

Bernard Hoffman/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

A truck released hot liquid tar during the construction of the New Jersey Turnpike.

Andreas Feininger/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

A steam roller rolled over hot liquid tar during the construction of the New Jersey Turnpike.

Andreas Feininger/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

A steam roller rolled over the hot liquid tar during the construction of the New Jersey Turnpike.

Andreas Feininger/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Two men dug trenches to try to contain the water flooding from an open pipe during the construction of the New Jersey Turnpike, June 1951.

Bernard Hoffman/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

In the town of Elizabeth, 240 buildings were wrecked or moved to make room for the New Jersey Turnpike.

Bernard Hoffman/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

This Land is Your Land: LIFE Photos From All 50 States

August 11, 2021June 25, 2021 by Bill Syken

The rules for putting together this photo collection were simple: choose one, and only one, classic LIFE photo per state.

The one-photo limit created tough choices, because states are diverse places. Candidates for Massachusetts, for example, included a Cape Cod family vacation, an MIT classroom, and a touch football game at the Kennedy compound, among other possibilities. The photo that was finally chosen was an Alfred Eisenstaedt picture of Cape Cod fishermen, but you could argue that any of the above choices would be equally representative.

And the same is true for so many other states. Questions recurred: Do you emphasize city life or country life? The historic or the everyday? Do you favor the landscape or the people living in it?

As a whole these picture attempt, collectively, to do it all. The hope is that, when scrolling through all 51 photos at once (Washington D.C. is included), the viewer feels the sweep of the country’s variety and abundance. We have skiers in Vermont, juke joint patrons in South Carolina, commuters in Connecticut and showgirls in Nevada. While ties often went to the pictures featuring people outside and enjoying their environment, is there anything more wonderfully New Hampshire than the skepticism of a man listening to a primary speech with a weariness that captures what residents of the Granite state must endure every four years?

This exercise could be done a hundred times over, always producing different results—for California, maybe show the Academy Awards or the beach instead of the Golden Gate Bridge. Or for Pennsylvania, choose a photo from either Philadelphia or Pittsburgh, rather than couple cavorting a heart-shaped tub at a Poconos resort.

But that couple is having fun, and so are we. Please enjoy.

Children searched for creatures in tidal pool during ebb tide along the coast of Maine, 1943.

BERNARD HOFFMAN/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Voters listened to a candidate’s pitch in advance of the 1952 New Hampshire presidential primary.

Lisa Larsen/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

A child learned to ski in the Stowe area of Vermont, 1957.

George Silk/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Three Gloucester, Massachusetts fishermen putting in to harbor to mend nets in Cape Cod, 1940.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Sailing school in Newport, Rhode Island, 1959.

Peter Stackpole/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

A father is greeted by his family after returning home from work, Fairfield County, Connecticut, 1949.

Nina Leen/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

New York City heat wave, 1953.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Workers building an overpass for the brand new New Jersey Turnpike, 1951.

Andreas Feininger.The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Newlyweds at a Poconos resort in Pennsylvania, 1970.

GEORGE SILK/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

From a photo essay on life in Delaware, 1938.

PETER STACKPOLE/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, 1937.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Martin Luther King Jr. addressed the crowd during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, August 28, 1963.

Francis Miller The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, 1965.

George Silk/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Cave exploration in West Virginia, 1946.

Albert Fenn/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

North Carolina, 1944.

GABRIEL BENZUR/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

A night out at a juke joint in Greenville, South Carolina.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

President Dwight D. Eisenhower (sitting in golf cart) enjoys a round of golf at Augusta National in Georgia, 1956.

ROBERT W. KELLEY/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Miami Beach, Florida, 1940.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Selma, Alabama, 1968.

HENRY GROSKINSKY/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Springtime in Mississippi, 1949.

Loomis Dean/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Johnny Cash fished in a lake near his Tennessee home, 1969.

Michael Rougier/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

A mountain farm family, Kentucky, 1944.

Ed Clark/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

High school seniors nearing graduation, Mansfield, Ohio, 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway, 1939.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Henry Ford II in 1948, posing at the Ford plant with newest model Ford car and models A and T, created by his father and grandfather.

Gjon Mili/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Stunt man Jack Wylie soared over the Chicago River, 1958.

Al Fenn/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

The Gateway Arch in St. Louis approached completion, 1965.

ROBERT W. KELLEY/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

An Arkansas country music festival, 1972.

Michael Mauney/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

A woman and two children celebrated Mardi Gras in New Orleans, 1938.

WILLIAM VANDIVERT/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Running back Eugene “Mercury” Morris of West Texas State.

Bob Gomel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

In Oklahoma in 1942, agriculturists worked on the region’s catastrophic erosion problem.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The Pawnee Acre Community building during a Wednesday night social, Kansas, 1952

Howard Sochurek/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Route 30 in Nebraska, 1948.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A farm boy with his prize bull, Iowa, 1948.

Bob Landry/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Beer plant workers on a beer break, Milwaukee, 1949.

Frank Scherschel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Men being hauled across a frozen lake in a seigh, drawn by two horses, in Northwest Angle, Minnesota, 1950.

GEORGE SILK/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Construction on Mount Rushmore, South Dakota, 1940, a year before its completion.

Alfred EisenstaedtThe LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Pheasant hunters, North Dakota, 1946.

Wallace Kirkland/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Students played in front of their one-room school at Rygate, Montana, April 1941.

Hansel Mieth/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Jackson Hole, Wyoming, 1948.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Aspen, Colorado, 1947.

Peter Stackpole/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Zuni Pueblo, New Mexico, 1948.

W. Eugene Smith/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Route 66, Arizona, 1947

Andreas Feininger The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Native Americans herd sheep in southeastern Utah, 1947.

Loomis Dean/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Lumber workers in Idaho, 1940.

Hansel MiethThe LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

The Seattle World’s Fair, 1962.

Ralph Crane/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

A deer cooled his heels along the Oregon seashore, 1960.

Dmitri Kessel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Las Vegas, 1955.

Loomis DeanThe LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

The Golden Gate Bridge, photographed from a helicopter in 1952.

Margaret Bourke-White/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

A 49th star was added to the American flag when Alaska joined the union, 1958.

Dmitri Kessel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Surfer Rick Grigg caught a ride at Banzai Beach, Oahu, Hawaii, 1963.

George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Indiana Jones: Harrison Ford’s Icon of Neverending Adventure

October 20, 2021June 21, 2021 by Bill Syken

The following is excerpted from LIFE’s new special issue on Indiana Jones, available at newsstands and online:

A few years back, a rumor took hold in Hollywood that a successor might soon be named to take up the mantle of Indiana Jones. After all, Harrison Ford—who transformed the swashbuckling archaeologist into a cinematic icon in 1981’s Oscar-winning blockbuster Raiders of the Lost Ark— wasn’t getting any younger, and the character still had plenty of life left in him. Ford had played the role in three sequels—Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)— and Indy had proven so popular he’d appeared in a host of comic books, video games, and other media as well.

The odds-on favorite to pick up Jones’s signature bullwhip was Guardians of the Galaxy star Chris Pratt, who had a facility for both action and comedy and had proven himself as a box office draw. The problem? Ford wasn’t so keen on the idea of stepping aside for another actor.

“Nobody else is going to be Indiana Jones—don’t you get it? I’m Indiana Jones,” a delightfully irascible Ford, then 76, said on NBC’s Today in 2019. “When I’m gone, he’s gone. It’s easy.”

Given his strong feelings on the issue, it’s perhaps not so surprising that Ford already has pledged to star in a fifth movie as the globe-trotting, treasure-hunting professor; the as-yet- untitled adventure, which sees director James Mangold (Walk the Line, Ford v Ferrari) take over the franchise from Steven Spielberg, is set for release in 2022. Without the effortless charisma Ford brings to the role, one could argue there wouldn’t be a fifth film heading into production. It’s simply hard to imagine the character would have enjoyed the same staying power in the wider cultural consciousness without Ford in the battered brown fedora.

“Harrison Ford just has this unique screen presence,” says James Kendrick, professor of film and digital media at Baylor University and the author of 2014’s Darkness in the Bliss-Out: A Reconsideration of the Films of Steven Spielberg. “He’s one of the few actors who can be simultaneously larger than life and entirely down to earth at the same time. He has great humor. He has great timing. He has just the right kind of look. Obviously, he’s a very handsome guy, but he’s a little bit unconventional in his handsomeness, and he’s always willing to be self-deprecating. To me, that’s always been one of the really important elements of Indiana Jones. It makes him relatable. It makes him so enjoyable to watch, that he is so self-deprecating and is willing to be the brunt of jokes.”

Ford himself has noted that Indy’s fallibility is key to his charm: “One of the pleasures is that we allow him to get in too deep,” the actor told Entertainment Weekly in 2008. “He’s in over his head and has to pull himself out. A character without fear or with no sense of his own inadequacy would be a pain in the ass to be around.”

THERE’S NO question that Indiana Jones remains one of the best-loved creations ever brought to the screen: The American Film Institute ranked the character as the second greatest movie hero of all time—only Gregory Peck’s Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird tops him. Indy also notably placed ahead of superspy James Bond, Humphrey Bogart’s Rick Blaine in Casablanca, and Ford’s own Star Wars rogue, Han Solo—all three of whom in ways large and small inﬂuenced who Dr. Jones would become.

Spielberg, who stepped behind the camera on Raiders after enjoying enormous success with Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, had always harbored fantasies of directing a Bond movie, yet was turned down for consideration. When his close friend and Star Wars mastermind George Lucas pitched him the idea of the 1930s adventurer who travels the globe hunting rare antiquities, Spielberg found an opportunity to channel all his Bond ambitions. The filmmaker made a point to place Indy in impossible scrapes that he escaped through some combination of resourcefulness and dumb luck. Indeed, what he lacks in high-tech gadgetry he more than makes up for in good old-fashioned ingenuity. Raiders screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan once stated that his favorite line in the script was Indy’s response to his compatriot Sallah after he asks the archaeologist how he intends to retrieve the coveted biblical Ark of the Covenant, which has fallen into the hands of the Nazis. “I don’t know,” Jones says. “I’m making this up as I go.”

Both Spielberg and Kasdan have likened Ford’s appeal to that of classic leading men—actors including Steve McQueen, Peck, and of course Bogart—who naturally embodied a certain kind of rugged, rough-at-the-edges masculinity. They looked as if they had experienced life, and it hadn’t always been kind to them. Yet that worldliness made them all the more appealing.

Ford brought precisely that sort of magnetic energy to the screen as Han Solo, a character who arguably looms just as large in the actor’s ﬁlmography as the illustrious Dr. Jones. In fact, Lucas was reluctant to cast Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark, fearing that audiences could potentially have trouble seeing him as anyone other than the charming space scoundrel. He needn’t have worried. The moment Indy appears on screen for the first time, dressed in a brown leather jacket and his signature fedora, he’s clearly the perfect marriage of character and star. “Harrison Ford has a kind of core disreputability that makes him perfect for Indiana Jones,” says Time magazine ﬁlm critic Stephanie Zacharek. “The guy is pretty much a grave robber, and deﬁnitely a love-’em-and-leave-’em type . . . He’s at home anywhere in the world, but there’s also an air of entitlement about him—‘Hey, I’ve come here looking for this golden thingamajig’—as if he pretty much has a right to anything he wants, just for adventure’s sake. There’s something regally masculine about Ford that makes you buy him in this role.”

Throughout Raiders of the Lost Ark (retitled Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1999), Ford beautifully captures all the adventurer’s imperfections. Yes, he’s daring and quick-witted, but his plans don’t always work out. “What people tend to forget [is that] he loses at the end of Raiders,” Kendrick notes. “He’s supposed to get the ark, and it gets taken away from him by these seedy government bureaucrats who then hide it away because they’re afraid to deal with it. The last scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark is Indiana Jones walking away in semi-defeat after this boardroom meeting with some mid-level intelligence agents. For him to pull that off and still be heroic in a way, that’s a real balancing act.”

AS THEY RETURNED to the character in sequels, both Spielberg and Ford sought to preserve all he qualities that made Jones such a touchstone for generations of moviegoers. “Indiana Jones was never a machine,” Spielberg told Vanity Fair in 2008. “His imperfections, I think, make the audience feel that, with a little more exercise and a little more courage, they could be just like him. So he’s not the Terminator. He’s not so far away from the people who go to see the movies that he’s inaccessible to their own dreams and aspirations.”

That same year, a 65-year-old Ford starred in the character’s most recent big-screen outing, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, a sci-fi-inflected tale involving inter-dimensional beings. “He’s older in that one, and he still looks good, but he’s definitely owning the wear and tear, the creases on his face—it’s like a tiki mug,” says Zacharek. “Admittedly, it’s easier for guys to get away with looking weathered than it is for women, but Hollywood is kind to no one in the age game. I admire his bravura.”

In recent years, Ford has made the intriguing choice to revisit some of his best-loved roles, resurrecting Han Solo for 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens (and again for a brief cameo in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker) and reprising his replicant-hunting detective Rick Deckard for the 2017 sequel Blade Runner 2049. In some ways, it feels as though he’s giving the characters closure. So, a ﬁfth Indiana Jones with Ford donning the costume one last time? It makes sense.

And there’s no one who knows that character better than Ford. Not now. Not ever. He’s Indiana Jones.

Here are a selection of photos from LIFE’s special tribute issue to Indiana Jones, on sale now:

Cover image by Lucasfilm/Paramount Pictures/Masheter Movie Archive/Alamy

On the set of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Harrison Ford, cinematographer Douglas Slocombe (center),and director Steven Spielberg (right) work on the film’s opening action sequence.

© Paramount Pictures, Courtesy Photofest

Director Steven Spielberg on the set of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Photo by Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Shutterstock

The first Raiders sequel, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, came out in 1984 and began the practice of working Indy’s name into the title. Along with Harrison Ford (background) the movie featured (left to right) Jonathan Ke Quan and Kate Capshaw.

©Paramount/courtesy Everett Collection

In Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade (1989), Jones nears completion of his latest quest.

Photo by Lucasfilm Ltd/Paramount/Kobal/Shutterstock

After a lengthy layoff, Ford (here with Shia Lebeouf and Karen Allen) returned to his signature character in Indiana Jones and The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull (2008).

Photo by Lucasfilm/Paramount Pictures/Kobal/Shutterstock

Karen Allen reprised her role of Marion Ravenwood for director Steven Spielberg in Indiana Jones and The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull (2008).

Photo by Lucasfilm/Paramount Pictures/Kobal/Shutterstock

Cate Blanchett played Indy nemesis Irina Spalko in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008).

©Paramount/courtesy Everett Collection

Van Halen: The Dave Years, the Sammy Years, the Life, the Music, and the Joy

October 20, 2021June 17, 2021 by Bill Syken

The following is taken from LIFE’s special issue on Van Halen, and recalls the before-and-after moment in the band’s history when Sammy Hagar took over for David Lee Roth as lead singer on the 1986 album, 5150

There was never more anticipation (or trepidation) for a Van Halen album than for 5150. On the heels of the exhilarating 1984, David Lee Roth—Diamond Dave, Captain Dave, C’mon Dave gimme a break, can’t-crow-before-I’m-out-of-the-woods Dave—yes, David Lee Roth, had quit the band. And in his place strode the chosen (by Eddie) interloper Sammy Hagar, with a history of hits that ranged from the unbearable “I Can’t Drive 55” to the more plausible and far more engaging “I’ll Fall in Love Again.” For all of his solo success, Hagar, in Van Halen, remained a covered dish. What would the songs sound like? What would this be?

5150 arrived more than two years after 1984, an eon in Van Halen album terms, and it went platinum in a week. Lifted by a string of crowd-pleasers—”Why Can’t This Be Love,” “Dreams,” “Love Walks In”—the record soared to No. 1 on the Billboard charts and held for nearly a month. The musicianship was exceptional, of course, and the melodies were sweet and inhabiting, having been conceived in Eddie’s mind and touched by his gilded hands. Yet there was a sameness to the elements. The drums, bass, guitar, keyboards, and voice all seemed made of the same gleaming stuff. As if the entire album had been dipped in silver polish. Gone was the natural feeling, the scruffy immediacy that made you feel as if the band had plugged their Marshalls into the wall sockets and were jamming in your living room. This felt more proficient, cleaner, set apart.

Along with the hits, the album yielded a real kegger in “Summer Nights” as well as the best song that Van Halen–with-Hagar would ever produce. The title track, “5150,” included a gorgeous scattering guitar run, thumping drums, and a chorus that delivers the richest vocals, either guy, in the Van Halen catalog—from “Always one more” to “what that means,” it’s a rousing from-the-guts callout made all the riper for being a love missive to a recording studio.

It’s not at all tenable to say that a band that would go on to make an album titled For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge had grown up. But it did feel that way. Hagar was so earnest, where Dave had been jaunty. With 5150 it suddenly became apparent that being in Van Halen was serious business. Until then, we’d thought, they were just having fun.

Here is a selection of photos from LIFE’s special issue on Van Halen, available at newsstands and on Amazon.

Cover photo by Mark “WEISSGGUY” Weiss

David Lee Roth showed off his flair for going airborne while guitarist Eddie Van Halen shredded in the background during a show at the Rainbow in Finsbury Park, London on October 22, 1978.

Photo by Fin Costello/Redferns/Shutterstock

Eddie Van Halen, David Lee Roth, Alex Van Halen and Michael Anthony of Van Halen in October 1978.

Photo by Andre Csillag/Shutterstock

David Lee Roth and Eddie Van Halen were in total harmony at the International Amphitheater in Chicago on October 11, 1981.

Photo by Paul Natkin/Shutterstock

Van Halen, featuing (l-r) new lead singer Sammy Hagar, Eddie Van Halen and Michael Anthony, performed at the Brendan Byrne Arena in East Rutherford, New Jersey on August 1, 1986.

Photo by Ebet Roberts/Redferns/Shutterstock

Michael Anthony, Alex Van Halen, Eddie Van Halen and Sammy Hagar, June 1, 1986.

DMI/Time Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Michael Anthony (left) and Sammy Hagar of Van Halen performed at the Metro Center in Rockford, Illinois, March 16, 1986.

Photo by Paul Natkin/Shutterstock

Sammy Hagar and Eddie Van Halen, New York, 1986.

Ebet Roberts/Redferns/Shutterstock

Eddie Van Halen, 1994.

Lorne Resnick/Redferns/Shutterstock

Van Halen, featuring (left to right) Michael Anthony, Sammy Hagar, Alex Van Halen, and Eddie Van Halen, rocked the Target Center in Minneapolis on July 30, 1995.

Photo by Jim Steinfeldt/Michael Ochs Archives/Shutterstock

David Lee Roth and Eddie Van Halen were reunited, short-haired and on tour in 2007, performing at the Bobcats Arena in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Kevin Mazur/WireImage/Shutterstock

Remembering Richard Stolley, Fabled Editor of LIFE, PEOPLE

June 17, 2021June 17, 2021 by Bill Syken

Richard Stolley, the founding editor of People magazine and the man who acquired the Zapruder film while he was an editor at LIFE, died on June 16, 2021, at the age of 92.

“Dick Stolley was an essential force at LIFE through some highly influential years,” said Kostya Kennedy, editorial director at LIFE. “His spirit and his sensibility remain part of the active brand and magazine today. Landing the Zapruder films was a seismic event for LIFE, for journalism and for the world. In recent years Dick continued to be a friend of the brand, offering fresh ideas and cogent advice. He loved LIFE, journalism and the business—and that showed. This is a great loss.”

Dan Wakeford, editor and chief at People, said, “Dick Stolley was a legendary editor whose vision and execution established the most successful magazine of all time that America fell in love with. He was an amazing journalist whose work and magazine craft we still refer to every day at PEOPLE as it’s still so relevant. He wrote in his first editor’s letter in 1974, “PEOPLE will focus entirely on the active personalities of our time—in all fields. On the headliners, the stars, the important doers, the comers, and on plenty of ordinary men and women caught up in extraordinary situations.” And that is what we still do nearly 50 years later — we tell stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things and extraordinary people doing ordinary things. I’m indebted to Dick for creating a magazine with heart that is a force for good and changed millions of lives.”

The story of Stolley’s acquisition—for $150,000—of the Zapruder film, which recorded the assassination of President John F. Kennedy frame by painful frame, demonstrated his great resourcefulness. On the day of assassination Stolley had flown immediately from Los Angeles to Dallas and was in his hotel room when he received a phone call from a local freelancer named Patsy Swank.

“The news she had was absolutely electrifying,” Stolley recalled to TIME producer Vaughn Wallace. “She said that a businessman had taken an eight-millimeter camera out to Dealey Plaza and photographed the assassination. I said, ‘What’s his name?’ She said, ‘[The reporter who told her the news] didn’t spell it out, but I’ll tell you how he pronounced it. It was Zapruder.’ I picked up the Dallas phone book and literally ran my finger down the Z’s, and it jumped out at me the name spelled exactly the way Patsy had pronounced it. Zapruder, comma, Abraham.”

Acquiring the Zapruder film was one of many roles Stolley played in his magazine career. A native of Pekin, Ill. he started his journalism career with Time in 1953 and would eventually become LIFE’s managing editor. After leading People, he would became Time Inc,’s editorial director and senior editorial adviser before leaving the company in 2014.

In 2012, for a story for LIFE.com, Stolley recalled the early days of this career with actress Ann-Margaret, one of the many stars he had covered, and the two reminisced about their first meeting, when he was LIFE’s L.A. bureau chief. “I’m sitting in my office and suddenly it got quiet,” Stolley recalled. “All the typewriters stopped. I thought, ‘What the hell is going on?’ So I got up and I walked to the door. And what was happening? Ann-Margret was walking through the newsroom.”

One of the photos here is a classic image of Stolley at work, after a fire had destroyed the Bel Air mansion of Zsa Zsa Gabor in 1961. He is on the scene of breaking news, impeccably dressed, comfortably hand-in-hand with a celebrity, and looking completely in control—all the qualities that would help him become one of the great magazine makers of his age.

LIFE magazine editor Richard Stolley helped Zsa Zsa Gabor through the ruins of her Bel Air, Calif., home, destroyed by fire in November 1961.

Ralph Crane The LIE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Richard Stolley in 1975, when he was editor of People.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

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