Page 87 – LIFE

‘How a Wife Should Undress’: Dubious Advice From 1930s Strippers

November 2, 2020October 27, 2014 by

We’ve all met them: men and women who insist on claiming, despite all evidence to the contrary, that the world was a better, simpler, more civilized place “back then.” Exactly when “back then” might have been is, of course, always left a little unclear.

The fact is, not everything was better, simpler or more civilized for everyone back in the day. To take just one example of how things were hardly better or more civilized for a solid half of the adult population in America as recently as, say, 75 years ago, take a quick look at a feature from a 1937 issue of LIFE magazine. Now, we’re hardly prudes, and we always get a good laugh out of something as over-the-top as this series of pictures illustrating how a wife should (and should not!) undress for her husband.

At this point, we should state that LIFE.com believes that the entire phenomenon of the Allen Gilbert School of Undressing is an elaborate—and from a marketing standpoint quite brilliant—joke.

As LIFE informed its readers in its Feb. 17, 1937, issue:

Frankly as a social measure Allen Gilbert, who puts on shows for such topnotch burlesque houses as Manhattan’s Apollo and Philadelphia’s Schubert, is starting a School of Undressing in Manhattan this month. There wives, anxious to improve their marital manners, will learn the correct way to take off their clothes. Mr. Gilbert feels that many a marriage ends in divorce court because the wife grows sloppy and careless in the bedroom. “I am dedicating my school to the sanctity of the American home,” he says. The Gilbert faculty is recruited from the ranks of burlesque performers from all over. Already 48 wives who suspect there is something wrong with their disrobing methodology have signed up for the $30 Gilbert course of six lessons. From these they will learn how to make going to bed appear a thing of charm and pleasure rather than a routine chore.

Mr. Gilbert plans to put on a revue next spring entitled Sex Rears Its Ugly Head. It may be that this current lapse into pedagogy is partially motivated by the knowledge that advance publicity for the producer is not a bad thing.

Joke or no joke, hoax or no hoax, one thing is as true today as it was way back then: sex sells.

Professor Connie Fonzlau at the Allen Gilbert School of Undressing in New York demonstrated “the worst possible method of disrobing,” 1937.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

School of Undressing professor Connie Fonzlau demonstrated the “unpardonable sin” of “working on two sides at once,” 1937.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Burlesque star June St. Clair and Professor Connie Fonzlau demonstrated the right and wrong ways to disrobe.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Burlesque star June St. Clair and Professor Connie Fonzlau demonstrated the right and wrong ways to disrobe at the Allen Gilbert School of Undressing in New York, 1937.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Burlesque star June St. Clair demonstrated “how wives should undress in front of their husbands” during a class at the Allen Gilbert School of Undressing in New York, 1937.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

How A Wife Should Undress

How A Wife Should Undress

LIFE Magazine, Feb. 15, 1937

Marilyn Monroe at Home in Hollywood: Color Portraits, 1953

February 25, 2020October 26, 2014 by

In a quiet tribute to Marilyn Monroe, LIFE.com presents a series of color pictures by Alfred Eisenstaedt, made at the movie legend’s Hollywood home more in the spring of 1953, when the actress was just 26. What’s perhaps most striking about these photos, especially in light of all we now know about Marilyn’s fraught and deeply sad life, is how relaxed, self-possessed and (dare we say it?) how happy she looks.

In 1953, her biggest, brightest roles in Bus Stop, The Seven Year Itch, and the American Film Institute’s greatest American comedy of all time, Some Like It Hot were still ahead of her, as were her unlucky marriages to Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller and her increasingly lonely, desperate last years. But it’s worth noting that she really does not resemble a legend, an icon or an idol in these pictures. Instead, she looks like a beautiful young woman evidently at peace with herself and her place in the world.

All of that, of course, would soon change, and change for the worse.

But not yet, Eisensteadt’s portraits seem to say. Not yet.

Marilyn Monroe at home, 1953.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A black-and-white contact sheet from Alfred Eisenstaedt’s 1953 photo shoot with Marilyn Monroe.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Marilyn Monroe posed casually at home, 1953.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Marilyn Monroe gazed into Alfred Eisenstaedt’s camera, 1953.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A black-and white-contact sheet from Alfred Eisenstaedt’s 1953 photo shoot with Marilyn Monroe.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Marilyn Monroe gazed into Alfred Eisenstaedt’s camera, 1953.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Marilyn Monroe at home, 1953.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A black-and-white contact sheet from Alfred Eisenstaedt’s 1953 photo shoot with Marilyn Monroe.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Marilyn Monroe at home, 1953.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A black-and-white contact sheet from Alfred Eisenstaedt’s 1953 photo shoot with Marilyn Monroe.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Marilyn Monroe at home, 1953.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A black-and-white contact sheet from Alfred Eisenstaedt’s 1953 photo shoot with Marilyn Monroe.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Marilyn Monroe, 1953.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Under a Mississippi Sun: Eisenstaedt’s Images of Sharecroppers

January 23, 2024October 23, 2014 by

In September 1936, two months before the debut issue of LIFE magazine hit newsstands, Henry Luce and his colleagues at Time Inc. produced an 80-page “dummy” issue of the as-yet-unnamed publication. Designed and produced, in large part, to spark interest among potential advertisers, the issue was the same sort of large-format, photo-driven entity that would soon become familiar to millions of readers around the world as a weekly called LIFE.

The dummy also featured the same combination of international news, celebrity coverage, science and tech reporting and downright goofy articles (one on playing golf in a massive rainstorm stands out) that LIFE would perfect in the coming decades. And, like countless issues of the magazine down through the years, the dummy included photographs by the one and only Alfred Eisenstaedt.

Eisenstaedt pictures (some of which made their way into another Time Inc. title, Fortune magazine, in 1937) chronicle the lives at work, at worship, at rest, at play of sharecroppers on “the world’s largest staple cotton plantation,” near Greenville, Mississippi.

Seen all these years later, what’s perhaps most astonishing about the photos, aside from their near-uniform excellence, is how companionable, and how intimate, they feel.

Made by a man born in what is now northern Poland; a World War I veteran who served in the German Army; a dapper figure who began his career as a photographer amid the heady cultural ferment of Weimar Germany and emigrated to the U.S. in the mid-1930s to escape growing Nazi oppression, Eisenstaedt’s pictures of poor, Mississippi cotton workers suggest that this worldly European Jew was able as he was throughout his career, with virtually everyone he photographed to make the subjects of his pictures perfectly comfortable.

Whether he was making portraits of legendary actresses, powerful politicians, famous scientists, superstar athletes or the average man, woman or child on the street, Alfred Eisenstaedt had the enviable gift of putting people at ease. (One notable exception: A booze-soaked Ernest Hemingway, who “almost killed” Eisenstaedt in Cuba in 1952.)

Here, LIFE.com presents a number of Eisenstaedt’s photos of 48-year-old sharecropper Lonnie Fair and his family, friends and neighbors, working their plots of soil on the Delta & Pine Land Co. plantation in Scott, Miss., in the midst of the Great Depression. (“Lonnie Fair,” Fortune reported in its March 1937 issue, “is a paragon of good fortune, as U.S. sharecroppers go. Last year he got $1,001.10 from D.P.L.: credit–$482.76, cash–$518.34.”)

There is poverty in these pictures, and, to a degree that might be shocking to those unfamiliar with the post-Civil War plantation business, there is exploitation, as well. No photojournalist worth his or her salt least of all Alfred Eisenstaedt would romanticize or otherwise trivialize the harshness of a sharecropper’s life.

But through Eisenstaedt’s lens, and through the man’s capacity for seeing things both clearly, and empathetically, the far deeper reaction most of us will experience after spending time with his photos is a probably one part wonderment, and three parts gratitude.

After all, would could fail to be thankful that a photographer of Eisenstaedt’s talent and compassion was dispatched to chronicle and, in a real sense, to immortalize this era, and these lives?

Ben Cosgrove is the Editor of LIFE.com

Liz Ronk, who edited this gallery, is the Photo Editor for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LizabethRonk.

1936 Rehearsal Sharecropper Essay

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

1936 Rehearsal Sharecropper Essay

The LIFE Picture Collection

LIFE Magazine Dummy, September 24, 1936

The LIFE Picture Collection

1936 Rehearsal Sharecropper Essay

The LIFE Picture Collection

1936 Rehearsal Sharecropper EssayArticle, “dummy” issue of magazine that would become LIFE, 1936.

The LIFE Picture Collection

Photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt in 1936

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

World War II Erupts: Color Photos From the Invasion of Poland, 1939

December 9, 2019October 21, 2014 by

On Sept. 1, 1939, one week after Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact, more than a million German troops, along with 50,000 Slovakian soldiers, invaded Poland. Two weeks later, a half-million Russian troops attacked Poland from the east. After years of vague rumblings, explicit threats and open conjecture about the likelihood of a global conflict in Europe, the Pacific and beyond the Second World War had begun.

The ostensible aim of Germany’s unprovoked assault, as publicly stated by Hitler and other prominent Nazi officials, was the pursuit of lebensraum that is, territory deemed necessary for the expansion and survival of the Reich. But, of course, Hitler had no intention of ending his aggression at Poland’s borders, and instead was launching a full-blown war against all of Europe. (On Sept. 3, both England and France declared war on Germany but not on the USSR.)

The invasion during which German troops, especially, drew virtually no distinction between civilians and military personnel and routinely attacked unarmed men, women and children lasted just over a month. Caught between two massive, well-armed powers, the Polish army and its Air Force fought valiantly (contrary to legend, which has the Poles surrendering quickly, with barely a whimper). In the end, Poland’s soldiers and aviators, fighting on two fronts, were simply overwhelmed.

In the weeks and months after the invasion, a German photographer named Hugo Jaeger traveled extensively throughout the vanquished country, making color pictures of the chaos and destruction that the five-week battle left in its wake. Here, LIFE.com presents a series of Jaeger’s pictures from Poland: portraits of a country subjugated not by one enemy, but by several. There

IJaeger’s photos include chilling images of evil–Hitler and other Nazis—and we see early, unsettling evidence of the violence, unprecedented in its scope, that would soon be visited upon scores of countries and countless people.

Refugees near Warsaw during the 1939 German invasion of Poland. (Sign reads, ‘Danger Zone — Do Not Proceed.’)

Hugo Jaeger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Burned-out tank, Warsaw, 1939.

Hugo Jaeger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Adolf Hitler (right) prepares to fly to the Polish front, 1939.

Hugo Jaeger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Post-invasion Poland, 1939.

Hugo Jaeger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Unfinished Polish bombers, 1939.

Hugo Jaeger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Near Sochaczew during the German invasion of Poland, 1939.

Hugo Jaeger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Polish soldiers captured by Germans during the invasion of Poland, 1939.

Hugo Jaeger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Polish soldiers and a Red Cross nurse captured during the invasion of Poland, 1939.

Hugo Jaeger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Captured Polish soldiers, 1939.

Hugo Jaeger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

German troops prepare for victory parade after the invasion of Poland, 1939.

Hugo Jaeger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

German victory parade in Warsaw after the invasion of Poland, 1939. (Hitler is on platform, arm raised in Nazi salute.)

Hugo Jaeger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Adolf Hitler views victory parade in Warsaw after the German invasion of Poland, 1939.

Hugo Jaeger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Right to left, front row: Adjutant Wilhelm Brueckner, Luftwaffe fighter ace Adolf Galland, Gen. Albert Kesselring and Gen. Johannes Blaskowitz view the victory parade in Warsaw after the German invasion of Poland, 1939.

Hugo Jaeger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Head of the SS Heinrich Himmler (right), one of the chief architects of the Holocaust, speaks with an unidentified officer in Warsaw after German invasion of Poland, 1939.

Hugo Jaeger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Warsaw citizens buried their dead in parks and streets after the invasion of Poland, 1939.

Hugo Jaeger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Street scene following the German invasion of Poland, 1939.

Hugo Jaeger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

German nationals prepare for repatriation during the invasion of Poland, 1939.

Hugo Jaeger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Polish farmers and peasants flee German military during invasion of their country, 1939.

Hugo Jaeger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Polish women clean captured Polish guns in Modlin Fortress, north of Warsaw, 1939.

Hugo Jaeger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jewish women and children in Gostynin, Poland, after the German invasion, 1939.

Hugo Jaeger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Polish refugees, Warsaw, 1939.

Hugo Jaeger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Warsaw, 1939.

Hugo Jaeger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Near Modlin Fortress, Poland, 1939.

Hugo Jaeger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Scene in post-invasion Poland, 1939.

Hugo Jaeger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Poles stand beneath monument to Polish patriot, Jan Kilinski, 1939.

Hugo Jaeger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Near Sochaczew during the German invasion of Poland, 1939.

Hugo Jaeger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Near Danzig after the German conquest of Poland, 1939.

Hugo Jaeger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Flea market in post-invasion Warsaw Ghetto, 1940.

Hugo Jaeger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Near Warsaw, fall 1939; sign points to the battle front.

Hugo Jaeger—The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

LIFE at Home With Showbiz Superstars

February 25, 2020October 20, 2014 by

Access is a big word in media–as in access to stars and celebrities.In its prime, LIFE magazine almost alone among the popular culture publications of its day enjoyed the sort of access to A-list stars (as well as to lesser lights) that today’s tabloids only dream about.

Here, a fond look back at some of the 20th century’s biggest, brightest entertainers, in the friendly confines of their own homes.

Marilyn Monroe at her Hollywood home in 1953.

Alfred Elsenstaedt; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Steve McQueen and his first wife, TV actress Neile Adams, dress for a warm day at their Hollywood home in 1963.

John Dominis; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Jayne Mansfield combed her hair while bathing in the pink carpeted bathroom of her home, known as “The Pink Palace,” in Los Angeles, 1960.

Allan Grant; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The Jacksons (clockwise left to right: Jackie, Marlon, Tito, Jermaine, and Michael) join parents Joe and Katherine in their backyard in Encino, California in 1970.

John Olson; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Vivien Leigh at home with her Oscar for Gone With the Wind, 1940.

Peter Stackpole; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Paul Newman cooked eggs for Anthony Perkins in Newman’s kitchen in 1958 in Hollywood.

Leonard McComb; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman, whose marriage would last 50 years (until his death in 2008), shared a laugh as they dressed in their Hollywood home in 1959.

Gordon Parks; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Sophia Loren picked flowers at the Italian villa she shared with producer Carlo Ponti in 1964.

Alfred Elsenstaedt; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Bette Davis and her Pekingese, Popeye the Magnificent, at home in Beverly Hills in 1939.

Alfred Elsenstaedt; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Actress Maureen O’Hara relaxed at home in Los Angeles in 1946.

Peter Stackpole; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Liberace danced on top of the keys of his piano-shaped pool in California in 1954.

Loomis Dean; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Oscar-winning actress Claudette Colbert posed in a two-piece evening dress in front of the fireplace in her home in Los Angeles’ posh Holmby Hills neighborhood in 1939.

Alfred Elsenstaedt; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Ricky Nelson sat on the diving board of his family’s pool in Hollywood in 1958.

Hank Walker; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Greer Garson sits her living room at home in Los Angeles’ exclusive Bel Air neighborhood, picking out records to play in April 1943, a month after her Best Actress Oscar victory for Mrs. Miniver.

Peter Stackpole; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Sisters and frequent rivals Joan Fontaine and Olivia de Havilland shared a family moment as they looked out over Beverly Hills from Fontaine’s home in 1942.

Bob Landry; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Carole Lombard drank a cup of coffee and talked on the telephone at her Hollywood home in October 1939.

Alfred Elsenstaedt; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

At Home With Tippi Hedren, Melanie Griffith and a 400-Pound Lion

January 4, 2021October 17, 2014 by

Tippi Hedren, perhaps most famous for her role in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, is an actress of formidable gifts. Hitch said, when directing her in that classic film, that Hedren had “a faster tempo, city glibness, more humor [than another frequent Hitchcock heroine, Grace Kelly]. She displayed jaunty assuredness . . . and she memorized and read lines extraordinarily well.”

But her role as an animal-rights activist and conservationist might well be Hedren’s most lasting legacy. For decades, her Roar Foundation and the animal sanctuary, Shambala Preserve, in California have advocated for big (and not so big) cats from lions and leopards to bobcats and servals and she’s been honored with a host of humanitarian and conservation awards through the decades.

In 1971, LIFE photographer Michael Rougier spent time with Hedren; her teenage daughter, Melanie Griffith (from Hedren’s first marriage, to Peter Griffith), her then-husband, the agent and movie producer, Noel Marshall; and others at their home in California. Also in attendance: Neil, a 400-pound mature lion, who occasionally slept in the same bed as Griffith and, as these pictures attest, had the run of the house, from the kitchen to the living room to the swimming pool.

Hedren has since acknowledged that it was “stupid beyond belief” to put her family at risk by allowing an animal with “no conscience or remorse genes” to roam free. On that, at least, we can all agree even if these pictures make Neil look like the world’s biggest pussycat.