Page 47 – LIFE

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

“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

More Like This

lifestyle

Indiana Jones: Harrison Ford’s Icon of Neverending Adventure

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

Remembering Richard Stolley, Fabled Editor of LIFE, PEOPLE

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

Savoring a Tom Sawyer Summer

LIFE’s Ultimate Wedding Album

The Strangest College Class Ever

The Marienbad Cut: Gloria Vanderbilt Models A French Movie Hairdo

A Joyful Thanksgiving and a “Marriage Experiment”

Pamper House: America As It Was Learning to Treat Itself

Wild and Frozen: Minnesota at Its Coldest and Most Remote

A Lone Star Fashion Show, 1939

More Like This

Subscribe to the LIFE Newsletter