Page 98 – LIFE

Maleficent Comes Alive! 1958 Edition

August 11, 2021May 25, 2014 by

“No witch ever swished her black cape with a witchier sneer,” wrote LIFE magazine of Maleficent, the now-iconic villainess of Disney’s 1959 classic, Sleeping Beauty. The angular, fiercely horned dark fairy, whose very name conveyed ill-will, took standards for dastardly animated characters to new heights and has reliably terrified generations of moviegoers.

The “Mistress of All Evil” was the product of both painstaking cel animation and live acting. LIFE photographer Allan Grant captured the moment as model Jane Fowler acted out some of the movements that made Maleficent a powerhouse villainess. Actress Eleanor Audley, the voice behind the evil stepmother in Disney’s Cinderella, also provided live-action modeling — and the chilling voice — for Maleficent. A team of animation artists used Fowler’s and Audley’s motions to bring Marc Davis’s medieval artwork-inspired designs to life.

Some critics voiced concern that scenes — especially a memorable bit with Maleficent as a dragon — were too frightening for children. The Los Angeles Times fretted that the film’s six production years, 300 artists and $6 million price tag would make it “the last as well as the biggest of these fairy tale features.”

Well, not quite. Angelina Jolie’s live-action film about Maleficent — with an estimated production budget of $180 million — has taken in more than $700 million internationally at the box office, a career best for the actress. Wicked.

Martha Groppo is a doctoral student studying history at Princeton University

Maleficent, 1958

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Ghosts of D-Day: Omar Bradley at Omaha Beach, June 1969

April 21, 2023May 24, 2014 by

In some ways, it’s a simple photograph: An old soldier stands on the shore at Normandy in June 1969, 25 years after the D-Day invasion. We can guess at some of what’s going through his mind: memories of comrades, living and dead; a kind of grim satisfaction in having played his part in an epic endeavor; a hope that, ultimately, the peace won by the violence that convulsed Omaha Beach — and that defined all the terrible battles that followed — was somehow worth it.

But in other, critical ways, it’s not a simple picture, at all. First, the old soldier is Gen. Omar Bradley, who as a three-star Lieut. Gen. in 1944 oversaw the training of the invasion force in England; was in command of all American forces — 1.3 million troops — aimed toward Berlin from the west after Normandy; and by the time he retired was one of only nine generals in American history to hold a five-star rank. (“I’ll see you on the beaches,” he famously told his men in the run-up to D-Day — and the man the troops called “a GI Joe with three stars on his shoulders” kept his word, landing on Omaha Beach just 24 hours after the invasion launched.)

But beyond the complexity of the man himself, there’s the wonderful story behind the making of the picture. As photographer Bill Ray remembers it, he had tried for days before the 25th anniversary of D-Day to convince the general — or rather, to convince Bradley’s numerous handlers — to fly out to Omaha Beach for an exclusive portrait for LIFE. “I begged, I pleaded, I cajoled,” Ray recalls. “I wanted to photograph this man who had played such a central role in the planning and execution of the D-Day invasion, on the beach, on the very spot where it had all taken place.”

Finally, after endless phone calls back and forth, the general consented. Ray hired a helicopter and, with Bradley pointing the way to the area of the beach where, to the best of his recollection, he had come ashore 25 years before, the photographer and the five-star general — in uniform — walked the strand, alone.

“After all the time I spent working to set this up,” Ray says, “actually taking the picture probably only took 15 minutes, tops. [Bradley] was a very quiet man, but it was obvious to me, as he stood there, that there was a lot going on under that calm demeanor.”

Ray laughs, and shares the punchline to the entire story.

“And you know what? After all that — the pleading, getting the helicopter, flying out to the beach, taking this exclusive picture of the man who commanded the First Army during D-Day — LIFE never ran the picture!”

Here, LIFE.com is pleased to rectify that long-ago oversight.

[See more of Bill Ray’s work at BillRay.com]

[Buy the LIFE book, D-Day: Remembering the Battle that Won the War — 70 Years Later]

Omar Bradley, Normandy, 1969

Bill Ray The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! It’s a Margay Kitten in a New York Apartment!

August 11, 2021May 23, 2014 by

It’s the early 1960s. You’re dropping by a friend’s place. You knock on the door — but brace yourself. In their house or apartment there just might reside a lithe jungle cat. These creatures usually call Central and South American forests home, but as LIFE explained to its readers in a December 1961 article, margays were adapting to a whole new habitat … a concrete jungle.

Today, they’re classified as Near Threatened on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s “Red List” of endangered species. But back in the ’60s, margays (along with leopards, chimpanzees and kangaroos) were kept by the rich and famous as novelty pets. The photo here is of Montezuma the margay — “the most elegant pet to be found in New York City,” according to LIFE — romping in the Manhattan home of Mr. and Mrs. Si Merrill.

Subsisting largely on a diet of beef or turkey heart, and the occasional side of watercress, the powerful feline was full of energy. “I don’t think I could live without a margay,” Mrs. Merrill told LIFE. But Monte (as he was known) could probably do all right without her. Margays live largely on birds in their native arboreal habitat — and New York, of course, has an abundance of plump pigeons.

Montezuma the Margay, New York, 1961

Al Fenn The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

World War II, After D-Day: Deeper Into Hell

March 8, 2022May 23, 2014 by

The Normandy invasion of June 6, 1944, was so vast in scope—and so punishingly effective in establishing an Allied beachhead on European soil—that people sometimes forget just how long the war lasted, and how brutal it remained, in both Europe and the Pacific after D-Day. The successes at Omaha, Utah, Juno, Gold and Sword beaches remain, rightly, among the most celebrated military operations in history—but for more than a year following those landings, the fighting went on, and on, and on in some of the war’s most appalling battles and campaigns.

Hundreds of thousands of Allied and Axis troops and untold thousands more civilian men, women and children died before Japan surrendered in September 1945, finally ending the war that for six years had reshaped the globe. This gallery features photographs — some of them iconic, many of them little-known — from Saipan, Bastogne, Iwo Jima, Berlin, Nagasaki: places where the war did not stop when Operation Overlord ended.

[Buy the LIFE book, D-Day: Remembering the Battle that Won the War — 70 Years Later]

Rescue workers helped pull victims from ruins of a building hit by a German V-1 “flying bomb,” July 1944.

Mansell The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A grizzled, battle-weary Marine peered over his shoulder during the final days of fighting on Saipan, July 1944.

W. Eugene Smith The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

American Marines in action during the fight for control of Saipan, summer 1944.

W. Eugene Smith The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Marines tended to a wounded comrades while the fighting rages on during the battle to take Saipan from the Japanese, 1944.

W. Eugene Smith The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

St. Lo, France, summer 1944.

Joe Scherschel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A Free French soldier dashes to aid a French resistance fighter took aim at a German sniper attacking a crowd during a tour by Gen. Charles DeGaulle following the liberation of Paris, August 1944.

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sniper attack, Paris, August 1944.

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

V-E Day, Paris

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Grim-faced American soldiers fighting on Okinawa listened to a radio broadcast of the surrender of Germany and the end of WWII in Europe, May 1945.

U.S. Army

A cathedral was turned into a makeshift hospital during the Allied campaign to retake the Philippines, December 1944.

W. Eugene Smith The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A nurse tended to wounded soldiers in a makeshift hospital located in a cathedral during the campaign to retake the Philippines, Dec. 1944.

W. Eugene Smith The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

This tired American soldier was just back from the front lines near the town of Murrigen during the Battle of the Bulge, December 1944.

George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

American General Anthony McAuliffe, commander of the 101st Airborne during the Battle of the Bulge.

U.S. Army

German POWs carried the body of an American soldier killed in the Battle of Bulge, January 1945.

George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A lace curtain shrouded the body of an American soldier awaiting burial in Bastogne cemetery, January 1945.

Russ Engel/U.S. Army

United States Marines (foreground) blew up a cave connected to a Japanese blockhouse on Iwo Jima, March 1945.

W. Eugene Smith The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

U. S. Coast Guardsmen assisted a wounded Marine returning from the fight on Iwo Jima, 1945.

U.S. Coast Guard

Crewmen fought fires on the deck of the USS Saratoga, which was badly damaged and set ablaze after being hit several times by Japanese bomber planes and kamikaze attacks off of Iwo Jima, 1945.

U.S. Navy

U.S. Marines of the 28th Regiment, 5th Division, raised the American flag atop Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima, on Feb. 23, 1945.

Joe Rosenthal AP Photo

Oberwallstrasse, in central Berlin, saw some of the most vicious fighting between German and Soviet troops in the spring of 1945.

William Vandivert The LIFE Picture Collecton/Shutterstock

Russian soldiers and a civilian struggled to move a large bronze Nazi Party eagle that once loomed over a doorway of the Reich Chancellery, Berlin, 1945.

William Vandivert The LIFE Picture Collecton/Shutterstock

American infantryman Terry Moore took cover as incoming Japanese artillery fire exploded nearby during the fight to take Okinawa, May 1945.

W. Eugene Smith The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

U.S. Marines waited to pick off enemies who fled a cave after it was attacked with an explosive charge during the vicious fight for control of Okinawa, 1945.

U.S. Marine Corps

A gutted trolley car amid Hiroshima ruins, months after America’s August 1945 atomic bomb attack on the city.

Bernard Hoffman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Nagasaki, September, 1945.

Bernard Hoffman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mother and child in Hiroshima, Japan, December 1945.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A photo album, pieces of pottery, a pair of scissors and shards of life strewn on the ground in Nagasaki, 1945.

Bernard Hoffman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

American officers (including neck-craning skeptic William “Bull” Halsey, third fr. left) lined the deck of the battleship USS Missouri (BB-63) while the Japanese delegation signed the official surrender document, Sept. 2, 1945.

Carl Mydans The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

V-J Day kiss, Times Square, Aug. 14, 1945.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dean Martin: Rare and Classic Photos of a Laid-Back Legend

December 30, 2019May 22, 2014 by

In the early- to mid-1960s, Dean Martin emerged as one of the most popular entertainers on the planet. He starred in major films, knocked the Beatles off the top of the charts with what would become his trademark tune, “Everybody Loves Somebody,” defined a new genre of cool with Frank Sinatra and the rest of the Rat Pack, and captained his own long-running TV variety show. He did all of it with the air of a man who had just woken from a nap and was still charmingly groggy.

In 1958 when the pictures in this gallery were made, Dino—while famous as one-half of the Martin & Lewis comedy duo—had not yet crossed over into superstardom. But he was certainly enough of a draw that LIFE magazine devoted a photo-filled seven-page feature to the man they dubbed “Make-a-Million Martin.”

[To] his skillfully used musical and comedy talents, he adds an ebullience that pervades everything he does. . . . Uninhibited, spry of mind and muscle, he maintains a state of relaxation that “makes Perry Como look like a nervous wreck.”

Keeping carefree appears to be the common denominator of the many Martins — showman, businessman, prankster, family man, self-styled hell-raiser and Hollywood social lion. In each role he works hard at making hard work look easy.

Here LIFE pays tribute to one of show business’ enduring, and most laid-back, superstars.

Dean Martin swung a golf club in order to stay loose on the set of the film Some Came Running, 1958.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra, 1958.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sammy Davis Jr. visited Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra on the set of Some Came Running, 1958.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra, 1958.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr., 1958

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dean Martin with Shirley MacLaine, 1958.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dean Martin listened to music at home, 1958.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dean Martin in the steam room, 1958.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

After a steam bath, Dean dined on beef and beer before his Sands act. With him are songsmith Sammy Cahn (seated) and helper Mack Gray.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dean Martin, 1958

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dean Martin charged onto stage, followed by Frank Sinatra, at a performance by Judy Garland. To make amends for heckling Garland from the audience, they contributed their talents to the show.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dean Martin on stage, 1958.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dean Martin, 1958

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dean Martin, 1958.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dean Martin, Judy Garland and Frank Sinatra, 1958.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dean Martin hosted a dinner at his Hollywood Dino’s Lodge restaurant. The menu before guest Edith Adams had been altered by her husband, TV’s Ernie Kovacs.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dean Martin advised Jimmy Van Huesen (foreground), Johnny Grant (left), Leo and Mrs. Durocher that the dinner would be “on separate checks.”

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dean Martin took a turn running a Sands roulette wheel. He pushed chips to a winner, telling her, “Either take it or get out of here.”

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dean Martin signed autographs, Las Vegas, 1958.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dean Martin with his wife, Jeanne, 1958.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dean Martin at home with his wife, Jeanne, 1958.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dean inspected his daughter Claudia’s hair. ‘Comb it with a broom?” he asked.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Young Dino flexed for his father, 1958.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Pop’s perplexity was registered as Gina strolled pensively in shoes large enough for two.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dean Martin at home, 1958.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Poker pals at Martin’s home included (clockwise from Dean at left) agent Jerry Gershwin, Tony Curtis, Milton Berle, Ernie Kovacs with 85-cent cigar, and director Billy Wilder.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dean Martin gave his son Dino a kiss and a dish of ice cream. “Eat it, it comes on the dinner,” said Dean.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A Milton Berle joke slayed Tony Curtis, Dean Martin, and publicist Warran Cowan. “Show Miltie a curtain, he takes a bow,'” said Dean.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dean Martin with his wife, Jeanne, at home, 1958.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

LIFE magazine, Dec. 22, 1958.

Two-Piece Be With You: In Praise of the Bikini

January 16, 2020May 18, 2014 by

On July 5, 1946, less than a week after the United States detonated an atomic bomb above tiny Bikini Atoll in the South Pacific, a Frenchman named Louis Réard an automobile engineer moonlighting as a fashion designer introduced to the sunbathing public what was billed as the world’s smallest swimsuit. Réard called his creation the bikini a name inspired, he later said, by the sight of women rolling up their bathing suits in order to acquire a more complete tan.

Two-piece swimsuits had, of course, been around for a long, long time before Réard came along. Greek urns and mosaics created more than 3,000 years ago depict women athletes wearing two-piece outfits. But Réard’s genius was to devise a garment, out of as little fabric as possible, that one could still legally wear in public.

He marketed his new fashion brilliantly, as well—pronouncing, for example, that a bathing suit wasn’t a true bikini unless both pieces could be pulled through a wedding ring.

Here, LIFE.com offers a celebration of a bathing staple that, through the years, has enjoyed and endured a dizzying array of permutations while always remaining, unmistakably, itself.

Some of the early photos in this gallery depict two-piece bathing suits that might, at first glance, look like bona fide bikinis—but, in Réard’s eyes, would not fit the bill. After all, can be wearing a genuine bikini if, say, one’s bellybutton is covered by a swath of nylon, no matter how elegant or tasteful that swath might be.

Bikinis are not for everyone. There are, thankfully, as many styles of bathing suit as there are human body types and temperaments. That said, it remains incontestably true that few sights can evoke thoughts of summer’s delights with quite the same visceral punch as the unmistakable silhouette of Monsieur Réard’s ingeniously simple, timeless design.

Model June Pickney, 1960.

Stan Wayman/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Actress Linda Christian in 1945.

Bob Landry/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Sunbathing in France, 1945.

Ralph Morse/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Actress Dona Drake playfully took aim with a rifle on the balcony of her Los Angeles home, 1942.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Model Lynn Jones, 1955.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

French actress Barbara Lange in a makeshift two-piece bathing suit she cut from one yard of cloth, 1945.

Nina Leen/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Santa Monica, Calif., 1940.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

This sun bather had creative tattoos, 1941.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Rita Hayworth at home in Los Angeles, 1945.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Florida, 1945.

Nina Leen/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Sunbathing in France, 1945.

Ralph Morse/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Beauty pageant winner Jackie Lee Barnes posed poolside in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1949.

Ed Clark/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Model in a bikini, 1950.

Ed Clark/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

French fashion model Christiane Richard wore a bikini while drinking her morning coffee, 1950.

Nat Farbman/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Jayne Mansfield posed with hot-water bottle likenesses floating around her, 1957.

Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Jayne Mansfield and unidentified man, 1961.

Stan Wayman/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Skin diving in Israel, 1960.

Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Sunbathing, 1961.

Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Actress Philomene Toulouse, cradling a pet fox, vied for attention at the Cannes film festival, 1962.

Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Cannes, France, 1962.

Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Atlantic City, New Jersey, 1964.

Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Hungarian model, 1965.

Walter Sanders/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Model Naty Abascal showed off designs on her chest and stomach, Bahamas, 1968.

Bill Eppridge/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Near Malibu, California, 1970.

Co Rentmeester/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Southern California, 1970.

Co Rentmeester/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

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World War II, After D-Day: Deeper Into Hell

Dean Martin: Rare and Classic Photos of a Laid-Back Legend

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