Page 62 – LIFE

The Kennedys and So Much More: The Brilliant Photography of Paul Schultzer

January 18, 2022June 5, 2017 by

On June 5, 1967 in the first hours of the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War, LIFE Magazine photographer Paul Schutzer was killed while riding in a half-track personnel carrier heading toward Gaza.

When he’d been hired in 1957, Schutzer was the youngest LIFE staff photographer. Over the course of a decade, until his death at age 36, he shot 491 stories for the magazine, including the 1960 Presidential campaign. At the Kennedy inauguration, he captured the iconic photograph of a beaming President with his glamorous wife, a symbol of the Camelot mystique.

During the magazine’s heyday, LIFE’s picture stories brought readers up close to unfolding events. For a photographer, an assignment was a passport to far-flung worlds and the front lines of history. Behind the scenes, Schutzer recorded the lives of leaders such as Presidents Eisenhower, Nixon and Kennedy, as well as Martin Luther King Jr. Describing her father’s work, Schutzer’s daughter Dena explains, “He focused on the people in power and the powerless, the people who were responsible for the events and those who were affected by them.”

From tensions at the Berlin Wall, to life in the war-torn villages of Vietnam, to the fight for desegregation by men and women demanding basic civil rights, the stories Schutzer covered required him to take numerous risks. Before boarding a bus heading to the Jim Crow south, he once wrote to his wife Bernice, “I’m going on the bus with the Freedom Riders. The magazine at first ordered me not to go, but the very reasons for not going, is the reason I must… This story should be told.” He was working at a time of American greatness, Bernice now recounts. “He wasn’t jaded or cynical.” He wanted to connect and did so by getting close. He carefully edited his own work after each assignment, telling his wife that he would have been lucky to have taken even ten great photographs in a lifetime.

Schutzer traveled extensively through Eastern Europe, where he was deeply affected by what he saw at the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp. His family tells LIFE that, particularly as a Jewish person living and working in the post-war years, he was inspired by the spirit and promise of the new state of Israel. So it was no surprise that, with war looming there in 1967, he was eager to be there. Determined, he prevailed on his friend Moshe Dayan, then Israel’s Minister of Defense, to embed with an assault unit.

He didn’t intend to stay long, saying to his wife that he was finished with war. He was shot soon after. “One perhaps can console oneself that Paul died where he wanted to die and gave his life for what he felt most. And that is true,” LIFE eulogized the next week. “But we have lost an exceptional, first-rate man in Yiddish this type is called a mensch. Paul was a mensch.”

After his death, LIFE received many condolences and tributes, including from the master photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, who said he admired Schutzer’s work and attitude toward photography. In a telegram, Robert Kennedy wrote, “Paul Schutzer was highly regarded as a professional and a friend of President John Kennedy and all those associated with him. His ability, intelligence, sense of humor, and devotion to his craft will be missed by his colleagues and friends.”

Schutzer’s complete photographic archive, a unique chronicle of the cold war era, has never been viewed, recognized retrospectively or compiled in a book. That is something his family hopes to one day achieve, but on the anniversary of his death here is a look at some of the highlights of that body of work.

President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy in the Presidential Box overlooking the crowd at inaugural gala, Jan. 20, 1961.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jacqueline Kennedy and her husband John F. Kennedy, on eve of his Presidential inauguration, Jan. 19, 1961. They attended a gala hosted by Frank Sinatra at the National Guard Armory, Washington, D.C.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Young women swoon at a campaign appearance of presidential candidate John F. Kennedy, late 1960.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

John F. Kennedy prepared a speech as admirers watched from outside a window, Baltimore, September 1960.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Supporters of presidential candidate John F. Kennedy, New York City, October 1960.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sen.John F. Kennedy campaigned in New York City, October 1960.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Supporters of presidential candidate John F. Kennedy on a campaign tour, 1960.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

President Kennedy walked hand-in-hand with daughter Caroline on St. Patrick’s Day at the White House, March 17, 1961.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Supporters of President John F. Kennedy, 1960.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

President John F. Kennedy watched a film in Press Secretary Pierre Salinger’s office, Feb. 2, 1961.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

An East German policeman attempted to stop Western photographers by flashing mirrors into camera lenses. Sept. 8, 1961. A month earlier, East Germany began cordoning off the Eastern sector of the city.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A seventeen-year-old East Berlin youth was helped by two West Berlin police officers after he climbed over the newly constructed wall from East Berlin, October 1961.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A young girl gazed through her apartment window which looked out on barbed wire fencing that topped the nearby Berlin Wall, December 1962.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Marilyn Monroe and her husband Arthur Miller drove to Connecticut in 1956, shortly after their marriage.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sen. John Kennedy with his brother at Robert Kennedy’s home in McLean, Va., May 1957.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Robert Kennedy and his wife Ethel before bedtime at their home in Maclean, Va, April 30, 1957.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A waiter lit a cigarette for a socialite at the Piedmont ball, 1958, Atlanta, Ga.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Lewis Cousins (C) sat in a class surrounded by white students. Cousins was the first black student to attend the newly desegregated Maury High School in Norfolk, Va, 1959.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Freedom Riders waited in a ‘Colored Waiting Room’ at a bus station in Montgomery, Ala., May 1961. The Freedom Riders rode buses throughout the south in the months following the Boynton v. Virginia Supreme Court case, which outlawed racial segregation on public transportation, in order to test and call attention to still existing local policies that ran contrary to national laws.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Near the Mississippi-Alabama border, members of the Alabama National Guard surrounded a bus carrying freedom riders, May 1961.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Julia Aaron and David Dennis with 25 other freedom riders were escorted by Mississippi National Guardsmen travelling from Montgomery, Ala. to Jackson, Miss., May 1961.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

White men threw stones at a bus carrying freedom riders protesting segregation in the south, as they travelled from Montgomery, Ala., May 1961.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Civil Rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King attended a prayer pilgrimage, May 17, 1957, Washington, D.C., on the third anniversary of the landmark Brown v. the Board of Education decision against segregation in public schools.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Demonstrators at a rallying point for the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom, May 17, 1957, Washington. D.C., held in support of desegregation.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke in front of the Lincoln Memorial before 25,000 people at the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom, May 1957 to mark the third anniversary of the landmark supreme court decision, Brown v. the Board of Education, which outlawed segregation in public schools. Among his landmark early addresses, King’s speech that day was known as “Give Us the Ballot.”

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Civil rights activists marched at the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom, May 1957 at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A U.S. Marine held an injured Vietnamese child while running under fire, November 1965.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Weary American Marines of 7th Regiment slept following intense fighting in the area around Cape Batangan during the Vietnam War, November 1965. Marines fought from dawn until dark in temperatures that reached 130 degrees before they secured the beachhead.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The eyes and mouth of a Vietcong prisoner were taped by U.S. Marines. This picture ran on the cover of LIFE’s Nov. 26, 1965 issue with the cover line, “The Blunt Reality of War.”

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Former teamster and labor leader Arthur L. Morgan testified against Jimmy Hoffa and others during labor racketeering hearings before a Senate Select Committee, August 1958.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A man lovingly combed his girlfriend’s hair; the photo was part of an essay entitled “The Italian Man,” 1963.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Actress Elke Sommer attended the Cannes Film Festival amid a sea of photographers, May 1962.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Israeli children of the Habad sect played with a horse and cart at a farm May 1960.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Israelis danced at the “Last Chance Cafe”, a night club in Beersheba, Israel, May 1960.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Miriam Stecher, a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp, showed her prisoner number in reaction to news of the arrest of Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi S.S. Colonel, one of chief architects of the holocaust, May 1960.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

An Israeli man rested beside a newly planted tree, 1965.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

This image of an Israeli military vehicle as it headed towards Gaza, then part of Egypt, was one of the last 23 frames taken by Paul Schutzer. He was killed on June 5, 1967, the first day of the Arab-Israeli Six Day War, when the half-track personnel carrier he was riding in took a direct hit from an Egyptian antitank shell.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The last frame on the roll of film found in Schutzer’s camera. He was killed by a 57mm Egyptian shell which hit the half-track personnel carrier he was riding in, June 5, 1967, the first day of the Arab-Israeli Six Day War.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Fight: A Legendary LIFE Photographer Battles Parkinson’s, 1959

January 14, 2020June 1, 2017 by

The great LIFE photographer Margaret Bourke-White was in Tokyo in 1952 when she first discovered that, in the middle of a physically demanding photojournalistic career, the dull pain in her left leg was becoming something more. Rising from a meal, she found herself, for a few steps at least, unable to walk.

As she would recount in an extraordinary LIFE story seven years later, it turned out after years of misdiagnosis and confusion that her brief stumble was a symptom of the onset of Parkinson’s disease, against which she would fight with everything she had for nearly two decades until her death at 67. It was, as the introduction to that 1959 article noted, the toughest battle ever faced by a woman who had seen many including literal battles in World War II, during which she served as the first woman accredited to cover the combat zones as a photojournalist.

With photographs by her fellow LIFE photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt, some of which are seen here, the story offered up the personal reflections of the woman who had taken the image that appeared on the first-ever issue of the magazine.

“When I opened some medical insurance papers one day and learned I had Parkinson’s disease, the name did not frighten me because I did not know what in the world it was,” she wrote, describing how she learned the name that her doctors had kept from her as they prescribed physical therapy for her unlabeled symptoms. “Then slowly a memory came back, of a description Edward Steichen once gave at a photographers’ meeting of the illness of Edward Weston, ‘dean of photographers,’ who was a Parkinsonian. I remembered the break in Steichen’s voice: ‘A terrible disease… you can’t work because you can’t hold things… you grow stiffer each year until you are a walking prison… there is no known cure…'”

The knowledge was, unsurprisingly, devastating to Bourke-White.

But she set her mind to learn what she could, to look for anything she could do for relief. She learned, she wrote, that she was just one of three quarters of a million Americans with the disease “often they appear to be struck down at their peak,” she wrote and that, despite this number and the fact that the symptoms had been observed for thousands of years, nobody knew what caused it or how to stop it. Though Bourke-White was an extreme devotee of her exercise routine and even underwent a then-cutting-edge brain surgery to “deaden permanently” part of her brain, she knew that the operation she’d received had only treated some of her disease and that there was no way to know how the symptoms would progress from there.

Today, more than half a century later, many of the questions that confronted Bourke-White remain frustratingly unresolved for those who receive the same diagnosis she did. Treatment options, however, have advanced significantly since Bourke-White’s time and new advances are offering the hope for something even better.

For one thing, says Dr. Rachel Dolhun, vice president of medical communications at the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, a person with Parkinson’s disease in the 1950s had no effective options for medication. The most widely prescribed therapy used today—levodopa, which temporarily addresses some Parkinson’s-related loss of dopamine, a movement-regulating brain chemical—wasn’t discovered until the late 1960s. It is now also understood in a way that it was not a few decades ago that many different brain chemicals and parts of the body are involved in symptoms linked to Parkinson’s, not just dopamine and the brain. In addition, the operation that Bourke-White received to basically destroy part of her brain is largely obsolete today, and a patient who was a candidate for brain surgery now would likely instead receive deep brain stimulation, which uses wires or electrodes to stimulate parts of the brain. (The physical therapy that was prescribed for Bourke-White, however, is one thing that hasn’t changed: exercise remains a key way to address symptoms.)

And Dolhun said that advances in genetic science in the last 20 years or so, by offering new insights into how the disease works, have opened up a new range of research angles and hope for a real cure, rather than just a better way to address the symptoms. For example, experts are excited by the testing of possible therapies that would target a protein called alpha-synuclein. “Right now, because of those understandings, the development pipeline is richer than it’s ever been,” she said.

Technology is also changing what’s possible for researchers and scientists. The Michael J. Fox Foundation is running an online clinical study in which patients can log on and tell researchers about what it’s like to live their experience of Parkinson’s disease, Dolhun said, and devices like wearables and smartphones are providing new ways to track and communicate about the symptoms. For example, whereas it used to be that a doctor might observe a patient’s tremor for 15 minutes at a time every couple of months, now an app or a watch can allow patients to log data that gives researchers a 24/7 look at information about those symptoms.

These new possibilities are particularly important when it comes to Parkinson’s disease, since the experience of what it’s like to live with and fight the symptoms is very individualized. “It’s a different journey for every single person who’s on it,” said Dolhun. “That’s why we need the patient experience to inform us so much, and that’s why it’s so important for patients to be involved directly in research.”

That’s also one reason why the openness of people like Margaret Bourke-White mattered in 1959 and continues to matter today. There can still be a stigma attached to telling others that you are experiencing something that might make them see you as weak or in need of assistance. But if those who have it keep their experiences to themselves, it’s harder for researchers to make progress toward a cure and harder for others with the diagnosis to feel that they’re not alone.

For Bourke-White, as she described for LIFE’s readers, her fight against Parkinson’s was, to the fullest extent possible, a reminder to keep working and enjoying what her body could do for every second possible. Nowadays, she wrote in 1959 after the surgery that helped her do that longer than would otherwise have been possible, “my fingers are more and more often loading my cameras, changing their lenses, and turning their winding buttons as I practice the simple blessed business of living and working again.”

“It’s not uncommon for people to feel shy about sharing their stories,” Dolhun said. “For [Bourke-White] to share her story so publicly I think really speaks volumes. When we see people come forward with their story, it’s not an uncommon thing for them to say, ‘I really wish I had shared it earlier.’ They feel a burden lifted.”

Straining to relearn how to speak distinctly after disease had blurred and weakened her voice, Bourke-White, with another patient, was taught by therapists (rear) to exaggerate lip movements.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Crumpling paper into balls, Miss Bourke-White worked to keep fingers from stiffening.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Face intent with effort, Margaret Bourke-White exercised as part of her fight against Parkinson’s disease.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A nurse aided photographer Margaret Bourke-White during a therapy session.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Margaret Bourke-White did the tango during a dance class meant to improve her coordination.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Margaret Bourke-White squeezed a towel.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Margaret Bourke-White with her camera during her later years, when the LIFE staff photographer was struggling with Parkinson’s disease.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Margaret Bourke-White during her Parkinson’s therapy.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A doctor explained an operation, here identifying the brain’s thalamus.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Researching her case, Miss. Bourke-White insisted on learning all details from Dr. Cooper (left) and Dr. Manuel Riklan, interviewed them as though on journalistic assignment. “I realized I had been through one of the greatest adventures of my life,” she explained. “The patient’s world was for me a new world. Experiencing surgery was like going on a new assignment.” She asked if she could watch a similar operation to one she had already had.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Margaret Bourke-White prepared to observe a surgery.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Margaret Bourke-White said, “I reached for his hand quite impulsively, when suddenly it stopped trembling. The balloon’s pressure had reached the right spot in the man’s brain. His once-rigid fingers were now relaxed, his hand steady for the first time in 10 years. Dr. Cooper asked him to make a fist, then open it. The fingers closed and opened easily. ‘God bless you, Dr. Cooper,’ the man said. For me this was a magic moment. I knew that in a few days, after the surgeon had deadened the area located by the balloon, this man would be up and about, his tremors relieved. I never met the man, or heard his name, but I shared with him a miracle.”

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

“Proof of progress,” she declared, “is that at long last I again can load my camera.”

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Margaret Bourke-White at home.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Margaret Bourke-White outside her home with her cats.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

See 30 of the Best Photographs of Children From the LIFE Magazine Archives

January 14, 2020June 1, 2017 by

When is the best time to celebrate children? Across the world, in nations from China to Cuba, June 1 marks what is now widely known as International Children’s Day, though some other nations mark it at different times throughout the year, and In November, the U.N. has its own Universal Children’s Day in November.

How about every day? It’s always a good time to celebrate the lives of children and remember the importance of protecting them so that they can fulfill their boundless potential.

Here, LIFE presents images that capture the breadth of experience of children around the world. Funny or serious, cute or moving, happy or sad, the kids shown here illustrate in their own ways an element that makes childhood special. They may be small, but their inner lives, as captured on film by LIFE’s expert photographers, are anything but.

Chinese-American children in San Francisco, 1936.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A boy was engrossed in playing marbles, US, 1937.

Pictures Inc. The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

An eskimo child in Canada, 1937.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A young Rumanian boy, 1938.

John Phillips The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Children in the blitzed north of England, 1940.

Hans Wild The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A young boy in the Tungkwan area of China, 1941.

Carl Mydans The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A farmer’s son held a pair of Hampshire piglets on farm in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, 1943.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Child actress Margaret O’Brien and her spaniel pet Maggie shared a bubble bath, Los Angeles, 1944.

Marie Hansen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

These children had their own military parade in Tarrytown, N.Y., 1944.

Eliot Elisofon The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

These children had just graduated kindergarten, 1945.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

An Austrian girl and her doll, 1946.

Nat Farbman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A Native American boy of the Chochiti tribe played the drum outside his home, Sante Fe, New Mexico in 1947.

W. Eugene Smith The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

David Henseley, suffering from polio, solicited funds for a new polio hospital. High Point, N.C., 1948.

Martha Holmes The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Four year old Flora and her sister Jacqueline Couch in Leslie County, Kentucky, 1949.

Eliot Elisofon The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Three young boys ate a Red Cross meal in Arizona, 1950.

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Koo Ri Kang, a Korean war orphan who would not smile, in South Korea, 1951.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Hansan Kaptan of Turkey, a nine-year-old prodigy, had an exhibition at a gallery in Paris, France, 1951.

Gordon Parks The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A child stood beside a miniature horse, Los Angeles, Calif., 1952.

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A young Jamaican girl scout watched the arrival of Queen Elizabeth II. Jamaica, 1953.

Cornell Capa The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A group of Boys Club little league baseball players put on their uniforms while sitting in a classroom, Manchester, N.H., 1954.

Yale Joel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Children hard at work at school in Iowa, 1954.

Gordon Parks The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A little girl looked at a doll through a window, Westchester, NY, 1955.

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A laughing boy on the street in Trastevere, Rome, 1958.

Carlo Bavagnoli The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

Little boys visiting from Chicago with their family slept on a subway car in New York, NY, 1959.

Stan Wayman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sandra Kunhardt pretended she was a doll, 1961.

George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A group of children in India, 1963.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Children watched the story of St. George and the dragon at the puppet theater in the Tuileries in Paris, France, 1963.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A young child in Vietnam, 1965.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Children in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, 1966.

Bill Ray The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Children at a school in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, 1972.

Co Rentmeester The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

See the 20 Times John F. Kennedy Appeared on the Cover of LIFE Magazine

January 6, 2021May 26, 2017 by

The first time the then-future president appeared on the cover of LIFE magazine, in 1953, the story was as light as could be: “LIFE Goes Courting With a U.S. Senator.” Over the course of several pages of photographs, the magazine fawned over the Massachusetts Senator the “handsomest” man in that legislature, 36 at the time, and his 23-year-old fiancée Jacqueline Bouvier. “We hardly ever talk politics,” Jackie told the magazine, alongside images of the two playing softball and football.

Over the course of the next decade, LIFE followed the young politician as he did much more than court. From his presidential victory in 1960 to the trials of governing, the events of his time demonstrated why LIFE and the JFK went together so well. Part celebrity report and part serious world news, the coverage captured the Kennedy magic.

But only a little more than half of the times that JFK appeared as the featured image or story on the magazine’s cover during its 37-year-run took place during that Kennedy decade. (When his face appeared on additional covers throughout the magazine’s publication run, it was as an inset or part of collage.) The rest, starting with the Nov. 29, 1963, issue, were different. After Kennedy’s assassination, his legacy endured. He was, as pictured in a 1966 cover that focuses on his brother Robert’s career, an inescapable figure in the background of the political and cultural history that followed.

July 20, 1953

Cover photo by Hy Peskin.

March 11, 1957.

Cover photo by Hank Walker.

April 21, 1958

Cover photo by Nina Leen.

August 24, 1959

Cover photo by Mark Shaw.

March 28, 1960

Cover photo by Stan Wayman.

November 21, 1960

Cover photo by Paul Schutzer.

December 19, 1960

Cover photo by Stanley Tretick.

January 27, 1961.

Cover photo by Leonard McCombe.

June 9, 1961. Cover photo by Paul Schutzer.

LIFE Magazine

August 4, 1961

Cover photo by Karsh.

July 13, 1961

Cover photo by John Dominis.

November 19, 1963

Cover photo by Karsh, Ottawa.

December 6, 1963.

Cover photo by Fred Ward.

October 2, 1964

July 16, 1965

Cover photo by Mark Shaw.

November 5, 1965

Cover painting by James Fosburgh.

November 18, 1966.

Cover photo by Bill Eppridge.

November 25, 1966

LIFE Magazine

Main cover photo by John Dominis, insert by Zintgraff.

LIFE Magazine

August 7, 1970.

Cover photo by Jaques Lowe.

Behind the Scenes With John Wayne, 1969

December 13, 2019May 25, 2017 by

John Wayne embodied a particular kind of American hero. In 1969, in the wake of what LIFE called a “splendid performance” in True Grit, the magazine examined the life of the American icon and reminded readers that, even though the world was changing rapidly, John Wayne was not.

After all, it was a time when audiences could also opt for a newer kind of star (exemplified in Dustin Hoffman, who shared the magazine’s cover with the Western icon). But John Wayne was still making Westerns, still riding horses, still holding onto his vision of right and wrong.

“Writers have a tendency to make me rough and tough, as if I’m ready to punch someone any minute,” the 62-year-old star told LIFE. “I’m not. I haven’t had a fight in many a year. I do see myself as pretty rough, even cruel on occasion, but never mean, never small, never petty.”

In fact, he wouldn’t even take a part to play a character whom he saw as mean or dishonest. If he was going to kill a man on screen, it had to be for a good narrative reason. Though he rued having once said that he didn’t need to act to do his job (the statement was poorly phrased, he explained to the magazine) it was also clearly the case that the John Wayne audiences still loved to watch on screen was, in many ways, the same man LIFE’s cameras captured on set and with his family.

“The reason I hate age,” he said, “is that I love this work so much.”

John Wayne during filming of the western movie “The Undefeated.”

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

John Wayne said that while his screen portrayals are comfortingly alike, not all represent his true self.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

John Wayne during filming of “The Undefeated.”

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

John Wayne and his moviemaking trophies and awards.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

John Wayne at home with his son Ethan.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The three youngest of Wayne’s seven children—John Ethan, 7; Marisa, 3; Aissa, 13—share the spotlight with Wayne and Pilar, his third wife.”

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

John Wayne during filming of “The Undefeated.”

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Horses from “The Undefeated.”

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

John Wayne during filming of “The Undefeated.”

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Off camera Wayne went on horseback to survey the 20,000-acre cattle spread near Phoenix in which he was a partner. `I was broke in 1960,” he said to LIFE. “Now I manage my own money.”

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

On the set of “The Undefeated” Wayne, surrounded by extras.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The backrub eased the pain of a shoulder separation suffered in a fall from a horse when his saddle slipped.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

John Wayne on the set of “The Undefeated.”

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Wayne slept in the custom-built trailer that followed him from location to location. “The only reason I hate age,’ he said, “is that I love this work so much.”

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Barbra Streisand at 19: Her Broadway Debut

December 13, 2019April 24, 2017 by

Barbra Streisand can boast of having more platinum-selling albums than any woman, and of winning an Academy Award. All that success was in front of her in the photos presented here. Back then, she was a 19-year-old making her Broadway debut in a lesser-known Harold Rome musical about the garment business, I Can Get It for You Wholesale.

Somehow, she looks as if she knows what’s coming, even if others didn’t. As LIFE magazine reviewed her performance in the May 18, 1962, issue:

“Barbra has a lovely face that goes well with Cry Me a River and other sad ballads that she sings in nightclubs. But for her stage role she makes herself look like a sour persimmon in order to play an overworked office girl who secretly wants to be called pet names instead of being yelled at all day long, ‘Miss Marmelstein!'” It was at least a kinder review than the one she received in the New York Times, which described Streisand as a “natural comedienne” but also “a girl with an oafish expression, a loud irascible voice and an arpeggiated laugh.”

It was Streisand’s role a few years later as Fanny Brice in Funny Girl that would make a more lasting impression on audiences and critics. As TIME reported in its April 10, 1964, cover story on her breakout, “as she sings number after number and grows in the mind, she touches the heart with her awkwardness, her lunging humor, and a bravery that is all the more winning because she seems so vulnerable. People start to nudge one another and say, ‘This girl is beautiful.'”

She had come a long way from her days as an introverted Brooklyn teen and the years before she removed an “a” from her first name, as a feature in TIME magazine explained:

Her recollections of a Brooklyn girlhood are somber. “It was pretty depressing, and I’ve blocked most of it out of my mind,” she says. She never knew her father. He was a school teacher who died of a cerebral hemorrhage when his daughter Barbara Joan was a year old (1943). Her mother spent the next three years lying in bed, crying, and living on her brother’s Army allotment checks until the checks stopped and she took an office job. Barbara spent her days in the hallways of the six-story brick apartment building they lived in, accepting handout snacks from neighbors.

As a slightly older kid, she used to go up on the rooftop, smoke, and think about being the greatest star. Down in the apartment, her mother warned her never to hold hands with a boy. “I never took part in any school activities or anything,” Barbra remembers. “I was never asked out to any of the proms, and I never had a date for New Year’s Eve. I was pretty much of a loner. I was very independent. I never needed anybody, really.”

…When she was 14, she made her first trip out of Brooklyn a subway ride to Manhattan to see The Diary of Anne Frank. “I remember thinking that I could go up on the stage and play any role without any trouble at all,” she says. After school at home, she used to smoke in the bathroom and do cigarette commercials into the mirror, but she never bothered to go out for school plays. “Why go out for an amateurish high school production when you can do the real thing?”

By the time the TIME cover story came out, Streisand’s three albums already made her the world’s best-selling female recording star on LP. And so much more was yet to come.

Nineteen-year-old Barbra Streisand played Miss Marmelstein in the 1962 Broadway play “I Can Get It For You Wholesale.”

George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Barbra Streisand, 1962.

George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Elliot Gould, who played the show’s unscrupulous hero, sang to his mother, played by Lilian Roth; Gould and Streisand, who met during the show, were married from 1963 to ’71.

George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock