Page 44 – LIFE

“Baldy and the Long Hairs”: A Very 1950s Casting Call

June 11, 2021June 11, 2021 by Bill Syken

In 1959 Dallas photographer William Langley had a problem: he needed a long-haired model for a shoot—the woman’s hair needed to blow in the breeze. But no local agency had a model who could do the job. Their hair was all too short.

But then the Dallas Morning-Herald ran a story on Langley’s situation—a story which called long hair “as out of date as a raccoon coat.” So what happened? Regular women with long locks swarmed Langley’s studio, all ready to let their hair down.

LIFE photographer Thomas McAvoy dropped in to Langley’s studio to document the festivities for a story in LIFE’s June 15, 1959 issue titled “Baldy and the Long Hairs.” The headline conveys the general tenor of the coverage.

“Amid the great cascade of handsome hair falling down the backs of 30 attractive young girls, a lone and barren bald spot shone out,” LIFE wrote. “The owner of the bald spot, Dallas Photographer William Langley, was happily surrounding himself with a feminine commodity he had recently despaired of ever finding.”

“Baldy and the Long Hairs” is the kind of light, oddball story that was always part of the editorial mix at LIFE, but Langley’s dilemma actually provides a glancing view of a significant cultural current. In the 1950s female beauty icons had short-to-medium length hair, as befitting a neater and more contained era. Think about Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe, and especially Doris Day, whose “helmted” look was influential, and anything but unruly.

Then everything changed in the 1960s, as hippies let their freak flags fly and societal norms were turned on their heads, so to speak. The term “long hairs” that appeared jokingly in the 1959 LIFE headline would become synonymous with the counterculture of the 1960s. (As for the other slang term in that headline, it would be another twenty years before basketball star Michael Jordan would make “baldies” cool).

In short, Langley’s problem was very much of its day. In 1969 the photographer would have had a much easier time finding a model whose hair was meant to be blowin’ in the wind.

Dallas photographer William Langley and women auditioning for a long-haired modeling job, 1959.

Thomas McAvoy/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Dallas photographer William Langley examined the hair length of the auditioning models, 1959.

Thomas McAvoy/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Dallas photographer William Langley checked the hair length of one of his auditioning models, 1959.

Thomas McAvoy/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

“Baldy and the Long Hairs,” LIFE, 1959.

Thomas McAvoy/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Modelling job winner Mary Parkhurst, 1959.

Thomas McAvoy/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Savoring a Tom Sawyer Summer

June 14, 2021June 8, 2021 by Bill Syken

An article in the October 9, 1970 issue of LIFE, titled “A Tom Sawyer Boyhood—1970s Style”, told the story of a world that was slipping away.

Photographer Vernon Merritt ventured to Hannibal, Missouri, where Mark Twain had spent his youth, and chronicled how 12-year-old Patrick Powell whiled away the days in this town by the Mississippi River, and suggested that ecological degradation would soon make such pastimes impossible.

“Boyhood hasn’t changed much in Hannibal since Mark Twain’s time, but the river has,’ the story began, striking its theme. “Behind Pat’s house runs a small branch, but it’s too polluted for fishing or swimming.”

In the story Powell comments several times about how modern life is intruding on his paradise, and it wasn’t just the pollution in the river. When riding his horse or playing marbles in Huckleberry Park, Powell could smell the nearby concrete plant.

But however much modern life was encroaching on his paradise, the photos still paint the picture of a dream summer. Powell and his friends swung on tires and splashed in the river. Sometimes they laid down in the stream and let the water rush over them. They rode not only horses but also Sting-Ray bicycles. They played baseball in addition to marbles. It all looks pretty sweet.

The most disturbing detail is actually something Powell and his friends did by choice: they smoked cigarettes which is, to put it briefly, bad. If this story about Powell was a Netflix show, the cigarette smoking would earn it a warning label. (In the story Powell claimed to not even smoking, and shunted the blame for it to his older brother). But setting aside the presence of the cancer sticks, a half-century down the road, Powell’s boyhood in fact looks like a dream.

The story observed that Hannibal’s population was shrinking. Over the course of the 1960s it had dropped about 12 percent, to 18,500. The gradual erosion has continued since then, with Hannibal’s contemporary population slipping toward 17,000.

“His mother says there is no future for the family in Hannibal, but Pat can’t imagine living in any other place,” the LIFE story reported. “He says he’d feel too cooped up in the city.”

Viewing these photos, Powell’s reluctance to leave Hannibal was entirely understandable.

Patrick Powell attempted what he and his friends called a “goofy gainer” off of a rope swing in Hannibal, Mo. 1970.

Vernon Merritt/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation .

Patrick Powell threw rocks at a passing train; from the perch in this photo, he told LIFE in 1970, “you can smell the cement plant good.”

Vernon Merritt/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Patrick Powell rode with Sugar and her colt Wahoo through Huckleberry Park, Hannibal, Mo., 1970.

Vernon Merritt/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Patrick Powell and his friends soaked in Bear Creek, Hannibal, Mo. 1970.

Vernon Merritt/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Hannibal, Missouri, 1970.

Photo by Vernon Merritt/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Patrick Powell ran in the water, Hannibal, Mo., 1970.

Vernon Merritt/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Powell and friends rode their Sting-Rays through the weeds, Hannibal, Mo., 1970.

Vernon Merritt/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Patrick Powell and friends rode their Sting-Rays through the weeds, Hannibal, Mo. 1970.

Vernon Merritt/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Powell found this pinch bug under a railroad tie and tried to keep him as a pet. “He lived a long time, but I fed him a worm and the next day he died,” Powell told LIFE in 1970. “I guess the worm had DDT in him.”

Vernon Merritt/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Patrick Powell in a field of wheat, Hannibal, Mo., 1970.

Vernon Merritt/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Patrick Powell’s pastimes included smoking, which he said he didn’t like but had tried at the urging of his older brother. “Mom knows we did it but she just laughed when she found it,” Patrick told LIFE in 1970.

Vernon Merritt/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Powell said he disliked going to downtown Hannibal “because I hate the mean snotty kids there that throw bubblegum on the sidewalks so it sticks to your feet, and you can’t go into the store until you pick it off.”

Vernon Merritt/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Patrick Powell, Hannibal, Mo., 1970.

Vernon Merritt/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Patrick Powell and friend, Hannibal, Mo., 1970.

Vernon Merritt/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Patrick Powell, Hannibal, Mo., 1970.

Vernon Merritt/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Patrick Powell (left) played marbles in Huckleberry Park, not far from his home in Hannibal, Mo., 1970.

Vernon Merritt/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Patrick Powell, Hannibal, Mo., 1970.

Vernon Merritt/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Patrick Powell and friend, Hannibal, Mo., 1970.

Vernon Merritt/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

LIFE’s Ultimate Wedding Album

June 4, 2021June 4, 2021 by Bill Syken

Over the years LIFE photographers have covered a great many weddings. These include the unions of royals such as Queen Elizabeth, Princess Margaret and King Hussein. They also include the nuptials of American versions of royalty, with movie stars such as Elizabeth Taylor, Rita Hayworth, Elvis Presley and Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.

Quite possibly the greatest wedding LIFE photographed is that of John and Jackie Kennedy—a political couple with celebrity qualities. They were married in 1953, years before JFK reached the White House, which helps explain the unusual intimacy of the photographs. Four shots from that remarkable set are included in this survey, but for a deeper dive, click here.

This story also includes some novelty weddings—the bride and groom underwater! Four sisters in one ceremony! Others document ordinary people celebrating the life-changing day—some of the most charming pics are of an everyday couple who married in a Nebraska farmhouse.

The magic of the wedding day is precious, and perhaps all the more so because the romance and optimism of the moment can prove fleetting. The phrase “till death to us part” was certainly a promise unkept for 18-year-old Elizabeth Taylor’s and her groom Nicky Hilton, the hotel heir. They divorced after only 205 days, and he was the first of her eight husbands.

That may explain why it’s hard not be charmed by the last photo of this set, of an unknown bride and groom captured walking on the streets of Paris. The bride and groom walk arm-and-arm, but they have no giddiness to them at all. They are not even in the foreground of this photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt—that place of honor goes to an older woman who walks alone, grimacing in either physical or mental discomfort. The contrast is pure, and the photo is richer for it.

Senator John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline at their wedding reception, Newport, Rhode Island, 1953.

Lisa Larsen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jacqueline Kennedy danced with her husband, John F. Kennedy, at their wedding reception, Newport, R.I., Sept. 12, 1953.

Lisa Larsen/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Flower girl Janet Auchincloss, half sister of the bride, talked to Kennedy while the bride looked out the window at guests waiting to go through the receiving line.

Lisa Larsen/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

John and Jackie Kennedy with groomsmen and other guests on their wedding day, Newport, R.I., Sept. 12, 1953.

Lisa Larsen/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The marraige of Elizabeth and Philip. Royals on the balcony of Buckingham Palace: (l. to r.) King George VI, Princess Margaret Rose, unidentified, Princess Elizabeth, Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mother Mary after the wedding of Elizabeth and Philip, Nov. 20, 1947.

William Sumits / LIFE Picture Collection

Bride and groom facing each other on their wedding day during World War II, Holland, circa 1945.

George Silk/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Liz Taylor on her (first) wedding day, May 6, 1950. The marriage to Nicky Hlton would last less than one year.

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Actress Elizabeth Taylor, age 18, in beautiful satin wedding gown (cost $1,500, a gift from MGM studios) holding hands w. her husband Nicky Hilton outside church after their wedding ceremony, 1950.

Seamstresses work on Grace Kelly’s wedding dress and veil, conceived by MGM’s wardrobe designer, Helen Rose, Hollywood, Calif., 1956.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier kneel during Mass at their religious wedding, April 1956.

Thomas D. McAvoy The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bob Smith and Mary Beth Sanger kiss after their underwater wedding in San Marcos, Texas, 1954.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mary Beth Sanger and Bob Smith emerge from a tank during their underwater wedding, 1954.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Elvis and Priscilla Presley on their wedding day, May 1 1967, at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas.

Photo by Frank Edwards/Fotos International/Archive Photos/Shutterstock

Lauren Bacall fed wedding cake to her groom, Humphrey Bogart, after their marriage ceremony in Ohio, 1945.

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The royal coach transporting Queen Elizabeth to the wedding of Princess Margaret, 1960

Loomis Dean/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Queen Elizabeth (L) with Prince Charles (2L) and Elizabeth II at Princess Margaret’s wedding, 1960.

Loomis Dean/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

The Hund sisters—all four of them—got married on the same day in a group ceremony in San Bernardino, Calif., here the mother of the brides, Mrs. Justin Hund (R) leading her four daughters and attendants to the church.

Bill Eppridge/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

The Hund sisters—Jeanette, Janice, Joanie and Judith tossed their bouquets in unison after getting married in a quadruple ceremony in San Bernardino, Calif., in 1971.

Bill Eppridge/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

The wedding of King Hussein of Jordan and Toni Avril Gardiner who was British, 1961; the couple reportedly met while she was working as an assistant on the set of the movie Lawrence of Arabia.

JAMES BURKE/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

A bride prepared for her wedding, wearing a 19th century wedding dress, 1962.

Photo by Michael Rougier/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Bride Barbara Alvin attending her kitchen shower before her wedding, 1947.

Nina Leen/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Bride Barbara Alvin shopping with her mother for a wedding cake for her wedding, 1947.

Nina Leen/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

The wedding reception of actress Rita Hayworth and Aly Khan at Chateau de l’Horizon in France; their initials float in the pool, 1949

NAT FARBMAN]/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Prince Aly Khan watched his bride, actress Rita Hayworth, cut into their wedding cake with a glass sword at Khan’s Riviera Chateau de L’Horizon in France, 1949.

Nat Farbman/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

The wedding of Sherita Lambrecht and Edmund Dean Harlow in Nebraska, 1961.

MICHAEL ROUGIER/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

High school sweethearts Sherita Lambrecht and Edmund Dean Harlow left the church after their wedding in Nebraska, 1961.

Michael Rougier/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Wedding of Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher, 1955

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

An elderly woman walked along that street while a bride and groom strode behind, Paris, 1963.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Bob Dylan: America’s Greatest Songwriter

January 18, 2022May 14, 2021 by Bill Syken

The following is excerpted from LIFE’s special issue Bob Dylan: America’s Greatest Songwriter, available at newsstands and on Amazon.

The unorthodox selection of Bob Dylan as the 2016 recipient of the Nobel Prize in
Literature was bound to cause controversy. He became the first American to win
the prize since Toni Morrison in 1993 and, more significantly, he became the first songwriter, from any country, to win it ever.

Although there had been a quiet groundswell for Dylan-as-Nobelist over the years—supported in part by university academics who teach his lyrics in their classrooms—many within the literary community squirmed. What about Philip Roth? What about Don DeLillo? What about . . . ? The novelist Irvine Welsh derided the Dylan selection as an “ill-conceived nostalgia award.” The poet Natalie Diaz wondered why the late Bob Marley never was considered. Some writers groused about ancillary things: Dylan is rich and famous enough already! He doesn’t need it! Or, Song lyrics aren’t really literature! More than one writer suggested that Dylan follow the path of philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, who in 1964 was awarded the Nobel but refused to accept it.

Yet many others, indeed the heavy bulk of the public commenters, were thrilled at the choice—both in admiration of Dylan’s writing and also because the committee had shown a willingness to buck tradition and test institutional bias. At the vaunted Swedish Academy the times were a-changing. “The frontiers of literature keep widening,” Salman Rushdie told Britain’s Guardian in 2016, while lauding Dylan as a personal inspiration. “It’s exciting that the Nobel Prize recognizes that.” Billy Collins, America’s former poet laureate, gave his blessing to Dylan’s Nobel. Songwriters cheered for one of the own. (“Holy mother of god,” wrote Rosanne Cash.) Barack Obama tweeted his congratulations.

Dylan stood by impassively, letting all the fuss blow in the wind. He didn’t bother to respond to the Academy’s call informing him of their choice. (“Impolite and arrogant,” a committee member griped.) He played concerts in Tulsa, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Albuquerque, and El Paso—even now, at nearly 80, Dylan is frequently on tour—without mentioning the Nobel to the crowd. A note acknowledging he’d won the award went up as a short aside on his website but then was taken down. Weeks went by before Dylan said anything publicly at all. When he finally did, he told a reporter that he would attend the award ceremony, “If at all possible.” Later he said he didn’t think he’d make it there after all. Dylan being Dylan.

According to the official release, Dylan was named literature’s 113th Nobel laureate for, “having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.” The Swedish Academy’s permanent secretary at the time, Sara Danius, compared Dylan to Homer and Sappho and said that reaching the decision had not been difficult. “We’re
really giving it to Bob Dylan as a great poet—that’s the reason we awarded him the prize,” said Danius, who died in late 2019. “He’s a great poet in the great English tradition, stretching from Milton and Blake onward. And he’s a very interesting traditionalist in a highly original way. Not just the written tradition but also the oral one; not just high literature but also low literature.”

High or low, literature—or rather what we might mean by it—is not easy to define. Merriam-Webster has it simply as: “written works . . . that are considered to be very good and to have lasting importance,” a measure by which the writing not only of Bob Dylan, William Faulkner, Alice Munro, and every other laureate clearly qualifies but also such works as, say, the Guinness Book of World Records, Mad magazine, and the 2020 Chevy Impala owner’s manual. Perhaps then, we mean something else by literature, something about texts that communicate implicitly as well as explicitly, that find a way to say things that might otherwise not be said, that have, at their center, a conscience. The will of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish philanthropist who set up the whole Nobel enterprise, decrees that the literature prize go to someone who produced “the most outstanding work in an idealistic direction.” The type of works considered, the Nobel Foundation says, should be “not only belles lettres but also other writings which, by virtue of their form and style, possess literary value.”

Whether heard in song or read on the page, Dylan’s lyrics clearly contain many of the distinguishing qualities of great poems and novels. They’re hewn to engaging narratives. They’re often allegorical and richly emotional. They reveal themselves more fully over sustained analysis (hence the college courses). Dylan’s work is often political, of course, though rarely strident. It’s hard to imagine any writer of English listening attentively to Dylan’s lyrics without being affected by the language, the structure, and the content. They are words that stand the test of time.

The list of Nobel laureates is hardly definitive. (Tolstoy never won it. Pearl S. Buck did.) But many of the giants are there. And the imprimatur of the prize is on a scale of its own. In declining the award, Sartre spoke of the impact that it would have had upon how he was perceived. “If I sign myself Jean-Paul Sartre it is not the same thing as if I sign myself Jean-Paul Sartre, Nobel Prize winner.” He added, “The writer must therefore refuse to let himself be transformed into an institution, even if this occurs under the most honorable circumstances.” In the case of Dylan—who gained his audience partly by pricking the establishment and now, perhaps in spite of himself, has become a part of it—Sartre’s is not an irrelevant concern.

The Nobel Prize, for all its momentous heft, will never outweigh Dylan’s true accomplishment. His powerful, beautiful, transformative and unforgettable songs helped to spur righteousness through the heart of the civil rights movement. Dylan’s words were sung by marchers on the road from Selma to Montgomery. They were sung as preamble to Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, D.C. That remains Bob Dylan’s noblest mark. The 2016 Nobel Prize was simply a crowning honor in an extraordinary life.

Here are a selection of images from LIFE’s special issue Bob Dylan: America’s Greatest Songwriter.

David Gahr/Premium/Shutterstock

Bob Dylan In Christopher Park, New York CIty, January 22, 1965.

Photo by Fred W. McDarrah/Shutterstock

Dylan’s handwritten lyrics to “The Times They Are a-Changing,” which he composed in 1963.

Chris Hondros/Shutterstock

Bob Dylan played piano during the recording of his album Highway 61 Revisited, 1965.

Michael Ochs Archives/Shutterstock

Dylan played an electric guitar on stage for the first time at the Newport Folk Festival, July 25, 1965.

Alice Ochs/Michael Ochs Archives/Shutterstock

Dylan with Richard Manuel (left), who was part of his backing band and later gained renown as a member of The Band, 1966.

Jan Persson/Redferns/Premium/Shutterstock

Bob Dylan in London around the time of his noted Royal Albert Hall concerts in 1966.

Photo by Daily Herald/Mirrorpix/Mirrorpix via Shutterstock

French Culture Minister Jack Lang presented Bob Dylan with the Croix de Commandeur des Arts et Lettres (Arts and Literature Commander Cross) in Paris. January 30, 1990

Yves Forestier/Sygma/Shutterstock

Bob Dylan performed during the AFI Life Achievement Award: A Tribute to Michael Douglas at Sony Pictures Studios on June 11, 2009 in Culver City, California.

Kevin Winter/Shutterstock for AFI

Where it Happened: A Former G.I. Takes His Bride on a Battlefield Tour

May 7, 2021May 6, 2021 by Bill Syken

When World War II was at its peak, U.S. Army Sgt. Ernie Kreiling fought in the battlefields of northern France. In 1947, with the hostilities ceased, Kreiling returned to France with his bride Jean to give her—and, by extension, the readers of LIFE—a tour of his days of combat.

“They traveled light and slept in haylofts, found the spot where the sergeant had heard his first shot, and the ridge where he had taken his first prisoner,” wrote LIFE in its June 2, 1947 issue. “They even discovered a French family who had never expected to see the quiet soldier from Illinois again. With Memorial Day approaching, they did not forget Ernie’s friend who never came home again.”

Ernest Kreiling served as a staff sergeant in the Army from 1941 to ’45, and was awarded a Bronze star for bravery in action. The Kreilings, who had met in high school in Peoria, Ill., were married for 62 years, until Ernie’s death in 2008. After the war he worked as a syndicated columnist and critic, and he taught communications at the University of Southern California. Jean, who died in 2010, worked as a real estate agent and broker.

Their tour through France is one worth revisiting, as a reminder of the enormous human cost of the war. During World War II 407,316 American soldiers lost their lives and another 671,278 were wounded. The global totals are even more staggering: for all countries an estimated 15 million soldiers and 45 million civilians died in the war, with Russia, China and Germany suffering the highest casualty totals.

This photoset was taken nearly two years after the end of hostilities, but the landscape is still littered with the wreckage of war. The destruction is still very much present. But the young couple also has their moments of joy. Look at Jean and Ernie goofing around in the foxhole where he heard his first enemy shell. He could laugh about it now.

Ernie and Jean Kreiling shared a laugh as he showed her the foxhole where he first heard an enemy shell.

Tony Linck/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

The Kreilings examined a wrecked jeep during tour of battlefields in northern France, 1947.

Tony Linck/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

The Kreilings toured the battlefields of France, 1947.

Tony Linck/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

The Kreilings rode their bicycles past a German grave in northern France, 1947

Tony Linck/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

The Kreilings reconnected with a French family he met when he was a U.S. Army sergeant during World War II.

Tony Linck/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Ernie Kreiling showed his wife Jean how he washed socks in a stream during the war.

Tony Linck/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

During their tour of the battlefields of Northern France, the Kreilings stopped to talk to a local farmer.

Tony Linck/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Ernie Kreiling showed Jean the hayloft where he spent Thanksgiving 1944.

Tony Linck/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

The Kreilings overlooked a valley where he fought during World War II.

Tony Linck/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

The Kreilings on their tour of France, 1947.

Tony Linck/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Ernie and Jean Kreiling during their battlefield tour, France, April 1947.

Tony Linck/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

The Kreilings toured the battlefields of northern France, 1947.

Tony Linck/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

The Krelings toured the battlefields of northern France, 1947.

Tony Linck/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

The Kreilings toured the battlefields of France, 1947.

Tony Linck/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

The Kreilings on their tour of France, 1947.

Tony Linck/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Former G.I. Ernie Kreiling and his wife Jean visited a cemetery in France, 1947.

Tony Linck/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Former GI Ernest Kreiling and his wife Jean visited the grave of his best friend in France, 1947.

Tony Linck/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Feeling a Draft: LIFE’s Ode to Beer Drinkers

April 30, 2021April 28, 2021 by Bill Syken

In 1949 LIFE staff photographer Frank Scherschel undertook a photo essay on beer drinkers. The essay never ran in the magazine, and without any accompanying story, it is difficult to say why he, ah, poured himself so eagerly into this topic.

The explanation is likely the obvious one. Beer, which humans have been drinking since at least 5000 B.C. and probably longer, is a sudsy bedrock of American culture. It is equally craved by the carefree college student on spring break and the laborer looking for release after a shift. In 2019 the U.S. distributed about 2.8 billion cases. That’s a lot of beer, for better or worse. Homer Simpson summed up the conundrum of America’s love affair with drinking when he hoisted a frosty mug of beer and hailed alcohol as “The cause of, and the solution to, all of life’s problems.”

Scherschel’s essay, capturing beer drinkers in largely festive settings, mostly feels like a celebration. He appears to have done most or all of his shooting in and around Milwaukee, the beer capital of America. He took many shots in what appears to have been a joyous company picnic for auto manufacturing employees, complete with dancing and live music and beer being quaffed from large metal containers. Other images in Scherschel’s essay include a bride and groom mid-toast, a Miller High life vendor at a baseball game (likely the minor league team which called itself the Milwaukee Brewers, which played before the big-league team arrived in town). Scherschel’s most meta image is of beer company employees enjoying a beer break.

Scherschel also naturally ventured into a bar. In shooting the patrons there, he captured moments both communal and solitary. We don’t know who these people are and can only guess at their situations. But the bar Scherschel visited is a place where Homer Simpson would fit right in.

Beer drinking essay, 1949.

Frank Scherschel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Beer Drinking, 1949.

Frank Scherschel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Beer drinking essay, 1949.

Frank Scherschel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

A bride and groom shared a toast, 1949.

Frank Scherschel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

A beer vendor hawked Miller High Life at a minor league baseball game in Milwaukee, 1949.

Frank Scherschel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

A beer purchaser in Milwaukee, 1949.

Frank Scherschel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Beer drinking essay, 1949.

Frank Scherschel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Beer drinking essay, Milwaukee, 1949.

Frank Scherschel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Beer drinking essay, 1949.

Frank Scherschel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Beer drinking essay, Milwaukee, 1949.

Frank Scherschel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

The entertainment at his company picnic had beer as well, Milwaukee, 1949.

Frank Scherschel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Beer drinking essay, 1949.

Frank Scherschel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

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

Frank Scherschel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Men enjoyed beer while playing poker in a garage, 1949.

Frank Scherschel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

A man relaxed in a hammock with a beer beside him, 1949.

Frank Scherschel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

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“Baldy and the Long Hairs”: A Very 1950s Casting Call

Savoring a Tom Sawyer Summer

LIFE’s Ultimate Wedding Album

Bob Dylan: America’s Greatest Songwriter

Where it Happened: A Former G.I. Takes His Bride on a Battlefield Tour

Feeling a Draft: LIFE’s Ode to Beer Drinkers

A Healing Return: Marlene Dietrich Goes Back to Germany, 1960

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“Robot Planes”: When the U.S. Military Unveiled Its First Drones

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