Something about snowstorms brings out the kid in most of us. Memories of those blessed, reprieves from school “Snow day!” undoubtedly plays a part in the collective excitement, and whether it’s in a vast metropolis or a remote, small town, the prospect of a blizzard can elicit, along with some apprehension, great anticipation, a sense of thrill.
There’s concern, certainly, about our families, our neighbors, our power and heat, our ability to get out and about in the snow and its aftermath, but there can also be a pure, underlying excitement.
In December 1947, a huge, historic storm dumped record levels of snow on the northeastern United States. In New York City, where the snow fell quietly, and steadily, for hours and hours, several LIFE photographers stepped out of the magazine’s offices, cameras in hand, and recorded the scene. Here, we remember the Great Blizzard of 1947 with some photos that ran in LIFE, and many others that were never published in the magazine.
As LIFE put it to its readers in its Jan. 5, 1948, issue:
“At 3:20 in the morning it began to snow in New York City. By the time most New Yorkers were going to work the blanket lay three inches deep. But the city, used to ignoring all natural phenomena and reassured by a weather forecast of “occasional flurries,” went about its business. But as the day wore on this characteristic blasé attitude vanished. The air grew filled with snowflakes so huge and thick it was almost impossible to see across the street. They fell without letup all morning, all afternoon and into the night.
Long after night fall the illuminated news sign of the New York Times flashed an announcement to little groups of people huddled in Times Square that the snowfall, which totaled an amazing 25.8 inches in less than 24 hours, had beaten the record of the city’s historic blizzard of 1880. A faint, muffled shout of triumph went up from the victims.”
Liz Ronk edited this gallery for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LizabethRonk.
A snowbound automobile in the middle of New York City’s West 22nd Street between a long line of other cars buried at the curb.
Andreas Feininger The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
1947 Blizzard in New York City
Andreas Feininger The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
1947 Blizzard in New York City
Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
1947 Blizzard in New York City
Al Fenn The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
1947 Blizzard in New York City
Al Fenn The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
On the floor of Grand Central Station a father and his two young sons waited through the night for the train home.
Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
1947 Blizzard in New York City
Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
1947 Blizzard in New York City
Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
1947 Blizzard in New York City
Al Fenn The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
1947 Blizzard in New York City
Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
1947 Blizzard in New York City
Andreas Feininger The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
From mid-December 1944 through the end of January 1945, in the heavily forested Ardennes Mountains of Belgium, thousands of American, British, Canadian, Belgian and French forces struggled to turn back the final major German offensive of World War II. While Allied forces ultimately triumphed, it was a vicious six weeks of fighting, with tens of thousands dead on both sides. Today, the conflict is known as the Battle of the Bulge.
Here LIFE.com presents a series of photographs made by LIFE photographers throughout the fighting. Many of these pictures never ran in LIFE magazine, or anywhere else.
For its final offensive to succeed, Germany needed four factors to work in its favor: catching the Allies off-guard; poor weather that would neutralize air support for Allied troops; the dealing of early, devastating, demoralizing blows against the Allies; and capturing Allied fuel supplies intact. (Germany originally intended to attack on November 27, but had to delay its initial assault due to fuel shortages). On December 16, 1944, the German attack began: the Wehrmacht (the Third Reich’s unified armed forces) struck with 250,000 soldiers along an 85-mile stretch of Allied front, stretching from southern Belgium to Luxembourg.
The attack proved stunningly effective, at first, as troops advanced some 50 miles into Allied territory, creating the “bulge” in the American lines that gave the battle its memorable name.
American forces had been feeling triumphant—Paris had been liberated in August and there was a sense among some American and other Allied leaders that Germany was all but defeated. The attack in December 1944, officially labeled the “Ardennes-Alsace Campaign” by the U.S. Army, showed that any complacency was dangerously misplaced.
Nevertheless, as effective as the initial German efforts were, they failed to achieve the complete and early knockout of Allied forces that German military brass had counted on. (Wehrmacht Field Marshal Walter Model had given the attack only a 10 percent chance of success to begin with. The German name for the operation: Wacht am Rhein, or “Watch on the Rhine.”)
One of the most difficult aspects of the Bulge was the weather, as extreme—indeed, historic—cold wreaked havoc and turned relatively simple logistics of travel, shelter, and meals into a daily struggle. January 1945 was the coldest January on record for that part of Europe, and over the course of the battle more than 15,000 Allied troops were treated for frostbite and other cold-related injuries.
Before the attack, some German troops who spoke English disguised themselves as Allied soldiers. They made a point of changing road signs and generally spreading misinformation. Germans who did that and were captured were executed by firing squad. A few images in this gallery chronicle one such execution. The three Germans, LIFE magazine reported in June 1945 when the U.S. War Department released the images were German intelligence officers who were captured, tried and shot.
“The Nazis were carefully groomed for their dangerous mission [LIFE wrote]. They spoke excellent English and their slang had been tuned up by close association with American prisoners of war in German camps… Under the rules of the Hague Convention these Germans were classifiable as spies and subject to an immediate court martial by a military tribunal. After brief deliberation American officers found them guilty, and ordered the usual penalty for spies: death by firing squad.”
Other German efforts at sabotage, meanwhile, proved largely ineffective, including attempts to bribe port and railroad workers to impede Allied supply operations.
Perhaps the defining moment in the Battle of the Bulge came when the Germans demanded the surrender of American troops who were outnumbered and surrounded in the town of Bastogne. United States General Anthony McAuliffe replied to the ultimatum with a now-legendary one-word response “Nuts!” His men withstood several German attacks until they could be relieved by the 4th Armored Division.
“This is undoubtedly the greatest American battle of the war,” Winston Churchill said in the House of Commons following the Battle of the Bulge, “and will, I believe, be regarded as an ever-famous American victory.”
While the Allied forces triumphed, victory came at a heavy price, with nearly 20,000 Americans killed and tens of thousands more wounded, missing or captured. British troops suffered more than 1,000 casualties. For American forces, the Bulge was the bloodiest battle on the Western Front during the Second World War.
German losses were severe, with estimates ranging from 70,000 to 100,000 casualties (depending on the source).
With victory on January 25, 1945, the final triumph over Nazi Germany was in reach; Allied forces pressed their advantage and began the last push toward Berlin. On May 7, Germany agreed to an unconditional surrender. Less than five months after the Battle of the Bulge ended, the war in Europe was over.
—gallery by Liz Ronk
American troops in a snow-filled trench during the Battle of the Bulge.
John Florea The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
American GI’s chop a foxhole in the frozen ground by a haystack during the Battle of the Bulge. The machine gun was set up in preparation for a German counterattack, expected at any moment.
John Florea The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
An American artilleryman shaves in frigid cold, using a helmet for a shaving bowl, during the Battle of the Bulge, 1944.
John Florea The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
American troops man trenches along a snowy hedgerow in the northern Ardennes Forest during the Battle of the Bulge.
George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Allied troops around a fire in the Ardennes Forest during the Battle of the Bulge.
George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Shell craters left by an Allied barrage laid down to clean German infantry out of the woods and fields during the Battle of the Bulge, Belgium, 1944.
William Vandivert The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
American trucks and half-tracks in a snow-covered Ardennes field, Battle of the Bulge.
William Vandivert The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Battle of the Bulge
John Florea The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
German POWs on grave-digging duty during the Battle of the Bulge.
George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
A corpse beside a road during the Battle of the Bulge.
John Florea The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
German military wreckage, Battle of the Bulge.
George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The frozen corpse of a German soldier killed during the Battle of the Bulge.
John Florea The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Allied troops and the German dead, Battle of the Bulge.
John Florea The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Some of the 115 Americans who, LIFE reported, were “massacred at point-blank range” in a field after being captured by Germans in the early days of the Battle of the Bulge, 1944. The soldiers were herded into a field and machine-gunned; when found, many of the frozen bodies still had their hands above their heads.
John Florea The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Belgian civilians are evacuated by American troops, 1944.
George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
An American tank moves past another gun carriage which slid off an icy road in the Ardennes Forest during the Battle of the Bulge, Dec. 20, 1944.
George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Belgian residents of a northern Ardennes hamlet flee the fighting during the Battle of the Bulge, 1944.
George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
American GI, Battle of the Bulge.
George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Portraits of American soldiers during the Battle of the Bulge, December 1944.
George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
American troops with Belgian children, Battle of the Bulge.
George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
A wounded German soldier rests on makeshift bedding after being taken prisoner during an attack on an American fuel depot on Dec. 16, 1944, the first day of the Battle of the Bulge.
John Florea The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Germans surrender during the Battle of the Bulge.
George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
German POWs, Battle of the Bulge, January 1945.
George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
German prisoners, some of them wearing coveralls for camouflage in the snow, are herded by guards. (In close fighting, U.S. troops also used snow-camouflage suits.)
John Florea The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Photographed on Dec. 23, 1944, and published in LIFE in June 1945. Behind a cell block, German prisoners are bound to stakes by MPs. Tried and convicted as spies, they are about to be executed.
John Florea The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
A blindfolded prisoner is securely bound, hand and foot, to a stake in front of a concrete wall. A large white paper target is pinned over his heart. American MPs stand at attention until the firing squad’s commanding officer inspects the final arrangements. Belgium, 1944.
John Florea The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The volley is fired and three white puffs of smoke appear against the wall of the concrete block. The initial burst killed all three almost instantaneously. The firing squad, all military police, consisted of three groups of eight men, each with one additional marksman along as a spare.
John Florea The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
A German shot as a spy in the early days of the Battle of the Bulge, 1944.
John Florea The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
American troops in Belgium during the Battle of the Bulge.
George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Ask a dozen military historians to name the single most pivotal battle or campaign of World War II the one operation that saw the war’s momentum irrevocably swing from the Axis to the Allied powers and you’ll get a dozen answers. Did the pendulum shift as early as the Battle of Britain? At Midway? During the liberation of Paris? Kursk? The Battle of the Bulge? Stalingrad? A definitive answer is impossible.
But one campaign that everyone agrees was a significant turning point in the Allied effort was launched in July 1943. Before dawn on July 10 of that year, 150,000 American and British troops along with Canadian, Free French and other Allies, and 3,000 ships, 600 tanks and 4,000 aircraft made for the southern shores of the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea: the storied, 10,000-square-mile land of Sicily. Within six weeks, the Allies had pushed Axis troops (primarily Germans) out of Sicily and were poised for the invasion of mainland Italy and one of the most arduous 20 months of the entire war: the long, often brutal Italian Campaign.
Tens of thousands of troops, on both sides, were killed or listed as missing, while hundreds of thousands more were wounded. And, of course as in most every major campaign of the war hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed, while countless more were wounded, raped, left homeless and otherwise traumatized.
Here, LIFE.com presents a series of both rare and classic color pictures made throughout the Italian Campaign by the great Carl Mydans.
Finally, it’s worth noting that, within weeks of the start of the invasion of Sicily, the Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, who had ruled Italy for more than two decades, was booted from power and arrested. “Il Duce” subsequently escaped, with German help, and was then on the run or in hiding without cease for almost two years. He was captured by Italian partisans in late April 1945, summarily executed, and along with his mistress and several other Fascists literally hanged by his heels, in public, for all to see.
In early May 1945, the war in Europe ended.
American jeeps traveled through a bombed-out town during the drive towards Rome, World War II.
Carl Mydans/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
American armor moved up the Appian Way during the drive towards Rome.
Carl Mydans/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
American soldiers marched up the Appian Way during the drive towards Rome in World War II.
Carl Mydans/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Italians watched American armor pass during the drive towards Rome along the Appian Way, World War II.
Carl Mydans/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
A column of American medical vehicles during the drive towards Rome, World War II.
Carl Mydans/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
American soldiers rested in a courtyard during the drive towards Rome, World War II.
Carl Mydans/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
American troops stood in front of a bombed-out building during the drive towards Rome, WWII.
Carl Mydans/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Ruins of the town of Monte Cassino, a result of massive Allied bombing during an attempt to dislodge German troops occupying the city, 1944.
Carl Mydans/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Ruins in the Rapido Valley, 1944.
Carl Mydans/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
A German graveyard along the Esperia Road, photographed during the Allied drive towards Rome, World War II.
Carl Mydans/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Troops in the Liri Valley, on the road to Rome, Italian Campaign, 1944.
Carl Mydans/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
An American soldier tried to spot German positions during the Allied drive towards Rome, 1944.
Carl Mydans/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Liri Valley, on the road to Rome, 1944.
Carl Mydans/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
American troops camped by the roadside during the drive towards Rome, 1944.
Carl Mydans/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
An American soldier slept on a pile of rocks during the drive towards Rome, 1944.
Carl Mydans/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Liri Valley, on the road to Rome, 1944.
Carl Mydans/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
In the Rapido Valley, 1944.
Carl Mydans/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
American troops rested in a field during the drive towards Rome, 1944.
Carl Mydans/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
An American soldier took a meal break during the drive towards Rome, 1944.
Carl Mydans/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
American troops looked over German armor destroyed during the drive towards Rome, 1944.
Carl Mydans/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
The Italian Campaign, World War II, 1944.
Carl Mydans/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
British and South African soldiers held up a Nazi trophy flag while combat engineers on bulldozers cleared a path through the debris of a bombed-out city, Italian Campaign, World War II.
“The gratitude of every home in our Island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the World War by their prowess and by their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”—Winston Churchill addressing the House of Commons, Aug. 20, 1940
Of the countless memorable phrases uttered by the indomitable British Prime Minister during the war years, Winston Churchill’s tribute to and celebration of “The Few,” as the airmen of the Royal Air Force have ever since been affectionately known, endures as among his most moving and most heartfelt. (That not all of the pilots were, in fact, British—there were Poles, Czechs, Americans, Canadians, Irish, New Zealanders and others, as well—that fact hardly dilutes the power of the sentiment, or the intensity of Churchill’s and England’s gratitude to those fliers.)
In 1940’s pivotal, four-month Battle of Britain, thousands of these (mostly young) pilots held off fighters from the mighty German Luftwaffe, quite literally saving the Sceptered Isle from defeat at the hands of the Third Reich and proving to a skeptical world that the Nazi military juggernaut was neither inevitable nor invincible.
Here, LIFE.com offers charming, revealing portraits of The Few by photographer William Vandivert. (Most of these photos did not originally appear in LIFE magazine.)
As LIFE put it to its readers the following spring, when the magazine ran some of Vandivert’s pictures in the March 21, 1941, issue:
England’s most important young men today are the several thousand youth who fly the Hurricane and Spitfire fighters in the Battle of Britain. They undoubtedly saved England last fall from Nazi invasion. Hitler must knock them all out of the air over Britain before he dares to invade England this spring.
[In these pictures] LIFE takes you to an actual airfield of the RAF’s Fighter Command during the airblitz last fall. Here you see new kind of battle action what goes on on the ground at a fighter station while the fate of a nation is being fought out in the clouds.
These young British fliers, unlike their German opponents, are elaborately modest. There is little or no brag and swagger about them and they fight the Germans with a sort of casual perfection that is the envy of every other air force in the world. Their job calls for a fit young man of great calm and great optimism, preferably not in love. Very few of these young fighter pilots are married. Their ages range around 23. It takes moral self-confidence and concentration to kill early, often and quickly, without a sense of guilt.
Close to 3,000 RAF fliers took to the skies in the Battle of Britain. More than 500 were killed; around 80 percent of those lost were Britons. The chances of The Few ever being forgotten by the nation they helped save? Zero.
Liz Ronk edited this gallery for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter @lizabethronk.
Battle of Britain, RAF Fighter Command airfield, 1940.
William Vandivert The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Flying Officer Albert Gerald Lewis, a top ace of the RAF. The South African, pictured here at 22, shot down at least 28 Luftwaffe fighters—including, on one memorable day, six in a six-hour span.
William Vandivert The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Scene during the Battle of Britain, RAF Fighter Command airfield, 1940.
William Vandivert The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Scene during the Battle of Britain, RAF Fighter Command airfield, 1940.
William Vandivert The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Scene during the Battle of Britain, RAF Fighter Command airfield, 1940.
William Vandivert The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Scene during the Battle of Britain, RAF Fighter Command airfield, 1940.
William Vandivert The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Three armorers, called ‘plumbers,’ reloaded Hurricane’s eight machine guns with ammunition belts. Each gun got 300 bullets, enough to last through 15 seconds of firing which comes is brief bursts. Each plane needed twelve ground men to keep it up.
William Vandivert The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Scene during the Battle of Britain, RAF Fighter Command airfield, 1940.
William Vandivert The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Scene during the Battle of Britain, RAF Fighter Command airfield, 1940.
William Vandivert The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Royal Air Force ace Albert Gerald Lewis climbed out of his plane after an air battle above England, 1940.
William Vandivert The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Between flights, a member of the ground crew sat in the shade of his plane’s wing. See the emergency starter apparatus was at his feet, already hooked up, and four little holes in front edge of wing. Through these holes, four of plane’s eight machine guns could fire in unison.
William Vandivert The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
A pilot rested between flights.
William Vandivert The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Pilots at rest between flights.
William Vandivert The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Waiting for action, pilots lounged in lifebelts. The adjutant at far right answered telephone calls from headquarters. The intelligence officer beside him took reports from the pilots.
William Vandivert The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Two pilots (Flying Officer Albert Gerald Lewis on right, unidentified flyer at left), between flights.
William Vandivert The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Scene during the Battle of Britain, RAF Fighter Command airfield, 1940.
William Vandivert The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Scene during the Battle of Britain, RAF Fighter Command airfield, 1940.
William Vandivert The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Pilots and aircrew members scrambled to their planes during the Battle of Britain, 1940.
William Vandivert The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
“Of all the pageantry of the atmosphere,” LIFE noted in a June 1953 issue, “the most awesome and, as man has often thought, most fearful, are the auroras the ghostly streamers of colored light that appear on certain nights, usually in spring and fall, and spread upward from the horizon to the zenith, sometimes projected in shifting rays like searchlight beams, sometimes diffused in shimmering veils and curtains, sometimes dancing and pulsating like the flames of some unutterable cosmic fire.”
Here, decades later, LIFE.com pays homage to those “ghostly streamers” with a series of pictures made by J.R. Eyerman (called “Jay Eyerman” in that long-ago issue of the magazine) in northern Canada. In fact, Eyerman, who entered the University of Washington when he was 15 to study engineering, made these photos using a technique he himself devised.
In the 1957 book, LIFE Photographers: Their Careers and Favorite Pictures, author Stanley Rayfield notes that “Eyerman’s technical innovations have helped push back the frontiers of photography. He perfected an electric eye mechanism to trip the shutters of nine cameras to make pictures of an atomic blast; devised a special camera for taking pictures 3600 feet beneath the surface of the ocean; successfully ‘speeded up’ color film to make previously impossible color pictures of the shimmering, changing forms and patterns of the aurora borealis.”
The results, both technically and aesthetically, are glorious.
(Note: We’ve included a few of Eyerman’s black and white shots of the northern lights in this gallery, as we feel there’s something starkly beautiful about those pictures, too.)
—Liz Ronk edited this gallery for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LizabethRonk.
The aurora borealis, a.k.a., the northern lights, northern Canada, 1953.
J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The aurora borealis, a.k.a., the northern lights, northern Canada, 1953.
J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The aurora borealis, a.k.a., the northern lights, northern Canada, 1953.
J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The aurora borealis, a.k.a., the northern lights, northern Canada, 1953.
J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The aurora borealis, a.k.a., the northern lights, northern Canada, 1953.
J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The aurora borealis, a.k.a., the northern lights, northern Canada, 1953.
J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The aurora borealis, a.k.a., the northern lights, northern Canada, 1953.
J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The aurora borealis, a.k.a., the northern lights, northern Canada, 1953.
J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The aurora borealis, a.k.a., the northern lights, northern Canada, 1953.
J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The aurora borealis, a.k.a., the northern lights, northern Canada, 1953.
J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The aurora borealis, a.k.a., the northern lights, northern Canada, 1953.
J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The aurora borealis, a.k.a., the northern lights, northern Canada, 1953.
J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
J.R. Eyerman on assignment in Canada, kept his camera operable in the freezing cold while photographing the northern lights in 1953.
J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Born Natalia Nikolaevna Zacharenko in San Francisco at the height of the Great Depression, Natalie Wood (“Natasha” to close friends) was one of those rare stars who combined old-school glamor, powerhouse talent and smoldering sex appeal. Her death by drowning off the California coast when she was just 43 remains one of Hollywood’s enduring mysteries, and the source of unending rumors, investigations and speculation.
Here, LIFE.com presents a selection of photographs made by Bill Ray in 1963 a time in the 25-year-old Wood’s career when she had made the leap from actress to genuine movie star and, more importantly, to formidable Hollywood player. Many of the photos in this gallery were not originally published in LIFE, but appear in Ray’s book, My Life in Photography.
For Ray, the most striking memory of the several weeks that he spent with Wood and her showbiz cohorts is, unsurprisingly, Wood herself or, more specifically, her singular beauty.
“She was divine,” Ray told LIFE.com. “Really. She was divine to look at, and to photograph. She had that wonderful face, a great body, those amazing eyes just a beautiful young woman, and a lot of fun to be around.”
For the Dec. 20, 1963, issue of LIFE that focused wholly on the movies, Ray scored the choice, high-profile feature on Wood, which was the only piece in the issue that was devoted to a single actor or actress. “This was big stuff,” he says today of the assignment. “You know, back then photographers were never part of the meetings where these sort of assignment decisions were made, so to get the call for something of this magnitude I was thrilled.”
Thrilled, but hardly cowed or overawed. After all, by the time the Natalie Wood shoot came his way, Ray was a seasoned professional, having covered JFK, Elvis Presley, John Wayne and other huge names and famous faces. What comes through in many of his photographs is the sense that here was a photographer who genuinely enjoyed his work, while his subject was a strong young woman who had been in the public eye for so long that having her every move documented was hardly anything new.
As LIFE reminded its readers in that special year-end double issue back in 1963, Natalie Wood was about as self-aware and self-confident an actress as one was likely to meet:
Natalie Wood was in a crowd watching a movie being filmed 21 years ago when the director asked her do a bit: drop an ice cream cone and cry. Then and there, 4-year-old Natalie showed she was born to be a star: she wept so convincingly that the movies hired her and ever since they have been thankful for the foresight. . . . [Movies] still cannot get along without the glamor that stars bring. And Natalie, the biggest young star around, now holds Hollywood in her hand. Her latest performance in her 35th film, ‘Love With a Proper Stranger,’ may win her an Oscar. [She did earn an Academy Award nomination for the role, but Patricia Neal took home the Oscar for her work in ‘Hud.’] Natalie has talent which she uses brilliantly, temperament which she can control, and a dark fresh loveliness that glows from the screen. All this earns her a million dollars a year, along with something that means even more to her the power and the glory that stardom brings.
“Natalie Wood,” observed a prominent Hollywood director, … “has a stranglehold on every young leading-lady part in town. If a role calls for a woman between 15 and 30, you automatically think of her.”
This is exactly what Natalie has worked 21 years to get. She has battled producers and top studio heads with unyielding ferocity to win the roles she wants. Today, before she will do a picture, she demands and gets total approval of script, director, leading man, all actors, everybody clear down to make-up and wardrobe people.
One last detail that Bill Ray recalls about his time with Natalie Wood, however, casts something of a pall across his otherwise sunny memories. At some point during those several weeks, he joined Wood and a number of other people on a boat ride to Catalina Island (see slide 16 in the gallery) the same island off the California coast near which Wood would drown in the fall of 1981. When Ray heard about her death, he was stunned: not only because he had always liked her and remembered the time he spent with her with such fondness, but because he had been struck during that boat ride in 1963 by how uncharacteristically out of sorts she seemed.
“It was obvious to me,” Ray told LIFE.com, “that Natalie did not like being out on the water at all. When I heard that she’d drowned, in basically the same place where we’d been all those years before, I wasn’t just sad although that was part of it. I was also very, very surprised.”
Five decades later, the mystery of Natalie Wood’s death endures. Bill Ray’s pictures, meanwhile, shed a clear, poignant light on a time when the star’s already impressive career felt boundless, and her life charmed. The future, it seemed then, was hers for the taking.
The woman who guided Natalie to stardom was her mother, the Russian-born Mrs. Maria Gurdin (center). Stern and shrewd, she scrutinized scripts, haggled over fees, snd dressed her child in prim clothes when competitors wore sexy ones.
