The title of a 1957 feature on Brazil published in LIFE magazine was: “Growing Pains of a Big Country: Ambitious Brazil Has Great Riches, Fine Prospects — and Big Problems.” The operative word here, of course, is “big,” as Brazil is huge in many ways, not least in geographic size (the 5th largest country on earth) and in population (200 million people).
But enormous troubles—many of which stem, at least in part, from the country’s endemic corruption —have held Brazil back from realizing its phenomenal economic potential. A story with a similar headline could easily be written today. This gallery features color photos made when beautiful, troubled Brazil was enduring “growing pains” not dissimilar to what it has gone through in more recent times.
Rio’s peaks, while beautiful, also strangled traffic. Still, they made a lovely sight at dusk.
Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1957.
Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Decrepit engines, such as this 1904 wood burner on the Belem-Braganca run, plagued railroads. The eucalyptus logs they burned gave off the fragrance of cough medicine.
Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The basin of the Amazon river was home to 3.5 million people, a number of them recently arrived from Japan and Puerto Rico.
Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Brazil, 1957.
Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Brazil, 1957.
Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
This U.S.-built Dam, Peixoto, was constructed by a subsidiary of the U.S.-owned American and Foreign Power Company to serve industrial centers outside Sao Paulo.
Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Brazil, 1957.
Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Rio, 1957.
Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Brazil, 1957.
Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Brazin’s old capital was Salvador, north of Rio in the sugar-growing country. It lost its position to Rio in 1763, after gold was discovered farther South. Salvador is a double city, the lower part (foreground) built along the harbor, and the upper part, with churches, monasteries that date to 17th Century, on a high bluff.
Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Picking cotton, Brazil, 1957.
Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
This coffee plantation stood in the terra rosa (purple earth) territory of the state of Parana. The plantation, or fazenda, had its own little village of warehouses, workers’ houses and stores (center), surrounded by symmetrical rows of thousands of coffee trees 5 to 12 feet high. Each of these trees produced about one pound of coffee each year. The country produced almost half the world’s supply.
Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
A new capital was being built in Brasilia by workers who lived in a cluster of 2,000 temporary wooden buildings. Traders from the nearby cities came to sell dry goods and razor blades from suitcases on the streets. There was no finished road to the site and practically all traffic in and out was by plane.
Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1957.
Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
With most pictures—and certainly with most pictures made by professional photographers—we can grasp what’s happening inside the frame the moment we lay eyes on it. If the photograph is in focus, and if the action or subject of the picture is remotely discernible, it takes the eye a mere instant to tell the brain what’s going on.
That’s a couple kissing. There’s a sunset. That’s a baseball player sliding into home.
But some photos capture scenes so unfamiliar so outside the realm of what we usually see, or expect that it can take a while to wrap our minds around what’s depicted. Case in point: This Loomis Dean picture, made on the beach in Santa Monica in 1948. We know, when we first encounter it, that the photograph depicts a beach scene. We know that the central figure in the composition is a human being. But many of us, for a good while, are unable to understand, to really grasp, what’s happening.
The caption “A man flies off of a trampoline” explains how that fellow ended up there, soaring effortlessly (it would seem) through the air. But some of us will see this picture for the first time and, for a fleeting moment, before it all becomes clear, we might think we’re seeing . . . what? A misguided diver about to face-plant in the sand? Icarus falling from the sky?
In the summer of 1948, LIFE photographer Allan Grant set out on a trip from Omaha, Neb., toward Salt Lake City, Utah, traveling west through Nebraska and Wyoming along one of the most storied stretches in America: Route 30, part of the early transcontinental Lincoln Highway.
For reasons lost to time, none of Grant’s marvelous photos from that epic post-war road trip were published in LIFE. Now LIFE offers a series of Grant’s pictures from Nebraska and Wyoming made more than seven decades ago, in tribute to the human desire to get up and go.
Route 30 in Nebraska, 1948.
Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Route 30 in Wyoming, 1948
Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Route 30, 1948
Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Motel along Route 30, 1948.
Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Route 30 in Nebraska, 1948
Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Family sleeping outside by a billboard alongside Route 30 in Wyoming, 1948.
Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Route 30, 1948
Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Scene along Route 30, 1948.
Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Route 30, 1948
Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Route 30, 1948
Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Scene after driver fell asleep at the wheel on Route 30, Nebraska, 1948.
Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Motel along Route 30, 1948.
Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Route 30, 1948
Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Route 30, 1948
Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Route 30, 1948
Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Route 30, 1948
Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Route 30, 1948
Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Cars pulling out of a trailer camp onto Route 30, Nebraska, 1948.
Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The 1733 Dance Hall—reportedly 1,733 miles from both Boston and San Francisco—in Kearney, Neb., 1948.
Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
A driver filling a water bag at a gas station alongside Route 30, 1948.
Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Route 30, Nebraska, 1948
Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
A couple and their five-month-old daughter heading home to Cheyenne, Wyo., after a visit to Omaha, Neb., 1948.
Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Motor lodge along Route 30, 1948.
Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Route 30, 1948
Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Route 30, 1948
Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Route 30, 1948
Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Route 30, 1948
Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Motor lodge along Route 30, 1948.
Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Charles Corwin White, who bicycled from Los Angeles to New York in 1948, was photographed west of Rawlins, Wyo.
Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
In late July 1944, LIFE photographer Ralph Morse was on hand for what he called, in his typed notes from the scene, the “first organized entertainment in Normandy” after D-Day. In his photos of scantily clad women (and men) performing for hundreds of battle-weary troops, Morse chronicled a small, memorable reprieve in the midst of the Allied push south, toward Paris.
(A scan of the note that Morse sent to his editors along with his film is included with this story’s photos.)
A handful of Morse’s photos were published in the Aug. 14, 1944, issue of LIFE but most of the pictures featured in this gallery never appeared. In that Aug. ’44 issue, LIFE described the scene Morse witnessed at a “rest camp” for the troops:
“While the great breakthrough boiled southward [from Normandy toward Paris] a few U.S. soldiers were taking it easy at rest camps behind the lines. At one of the camps the men were entertained by an eager troupe of French vaudevillians called Les Grandes Tournées d’André Fleury.”
Les Grandes Tournées, it seems, had been organized in Paris three years before, while the French capital was under German control. In late May of 1944 the troupe set out for Cherbourg; on June 5, the day before the invasion, they set up in the ancient town of Carteret. When the Germans pulled in the face of the Allied onslaught, the performers were stranded, with little food or money.
So when a U.S. Army Special Service officer asked them to put on a show for American troops, they were happy to comply. “They were charging the Germans and French 30 to 60 francs,” Morse wrote in his notes. “Now they get 25 francs a head from the Special Service funds for each soldier at the showings.”
The money, by all accounts, was well-spent.
“The show is old-type vaudeville and plenty of legs,” Morse went on. “A perfect show for the battle-tired troops resting a few days. The girls not understanding English and the troops not understanding French . . . the remarks and wisecracks are terrific. Its value as medicine for the boys is tops. They are completely relaxed . . . and yell and scream to their hearts’ content.”
Liz Ronk edited this gallery for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter @lizabethronk.
An acrobatic dancer performed for U.S. troops lounging in the field at rest camp. The show featured girl dancers and two clowns, one of whom had once performed with Ringling Circus in New York. The girls heavily relied on dancing and pantomime because none of them spoke English.
Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Stage-door Johnnies talked with French dancers at their dressing tent. Most of dancers were Parisians. For soldiers in the camp, the show’s price of admission was paid by the Army Special Services Fund.
Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The first organized show for American troops after D-Day, Normandy, July 1944.
Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
First organized show for American troops after D-Day, Normandy, July 1944.
Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The first organized show for American troops after D-Day, Normandy, July 1944.
Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The first organized show for American troops after D-Day, Normandy, July 1944.
Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The first organized show for American troops after D-Day, Normandy, July 1944.
Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The first organized show for American troops after D-Day, Normandy, July 1944.
Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The first organized show for American troops after D-Day, Normandy, July 1944.
Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The first organized show for American troops after D-Day, Normandy, July 1944.
Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
A French performer in first organized show for American troops after D-Day, Normandy, July 1944.
Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The first organized show for American troops after D-Day, Normandy, July 1944.
Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
French performers in the first organized show for American troops after D-Day, Normandy, July 1944.
Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The first organized show for American troops after D-Day, Normandy, July 1944.
Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
French performers in the first organized show for American troops after D-Day, Normandy, July 1944.
Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
French performers in the first organized show for American troops after D-Day, Normandy, July 1944.
Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
French performers in the first organized show for American troops after D-Day, Normandy, July 1944.
Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
French performers in the first organized show for American troops after D-Day, Normandy, July 1944.
Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
French performers in first organized show for American troops after D-Day take a bow, Normandy, July 1944.
Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The World Cup has come a long way in popularity since 1966—which happened to be a magnificent edition of the tourney, as England won it all, on English soil, defeating West Germany in the final. While LIFE sent the great Art Rickerby to photograph the event, his pictures never ran in LIFE magazine. Viewed today, they provide a unique look at the planet’s greatest sporting event during a fascinating period in its history. Prominent in the photos is the legendary Pelé, who died on November 22, 2022 at age 82. Even though his Brazil team did not make it out of the group stage that year, he was a natural player for Rickerby to focus on, given that his Brazil teams had won the World Cups in 1958 and 1962 (and would win again in 1970).
In 2014 LIFE.com chatted about the 1966 photos with Alexi Lalas, the former U.S. national team star and current TV commentator.
Of the third photo in the gallery, of Pelé in Liverpool, Lalas notes that the picture “really got me thinking about the aesthetics of the sport, and it’s a reminder of one attribute shared by most soccer players that helps explain why so many people adore the game. Namely—these guys are not huge. They’re not giants. They look, in a way, like you and me, and that guy sitting across the aisle on the train, or wherever. In Pelé’s case, you have probably the single most famous athlete on the planet at the time—but he’s not a seven-foot-tall basketball player, or a 300-pound defensive end. Still, seeing him here, there’s no question you’re looking at an athlete. The way he carries himself, his undeniable presence. Despite his unimposing stature, you can just sense his physical power.”
Not all of Rickerby’s photos from England in the summer of ’66, however, were of official World Cup matches. In fact, some of his best, most revealing work captured moments far from the sold-out stadiums in London, Sheffield, Manchester or Birmingham.
“Look at that shot,” Lalas said of English kids riveted by Brazil’s goalkeeper, Gilmar, leaping to block a shot during practice in Liverpool (the second photo ). “There’s no way those kids ever forgot watching those players, that close. Their body language shows how thrilled they are. And no wonder! There’s something about watching practice sessions that’s totally different—and better, in a way—than watching a big game. I remember training at Oakland University in Michigan before the World Cup in ’94. The fans who came out to watch us might remember that experience more fondly than watching the game we played in the Silverdome in Pontiac. There’s a reason baseball fans go to batting practice and spring training — the chance of a real, authentic interaction with the players, away from the hoopla around a game.”
Liz Ronk edited this gallery for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter @lizabethronk.
Bobby Moore raised the World Cup trophy, July 30, 1966, after England defeated Germany, 4-2, in the final before 98,000 fans at Wembley Stadium, London.
Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Brazil’s goalkeeper, Gilmar, leapt to block a shot during a World Cup practice in Liverpool, 1966.
Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Brazil great Pelé entered the stadium in Liverpool, 1966.
Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
British soccer fans, 1966.
Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Fans welcomed the Brazil squad to the stadium, Liverpool, 1966.
Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Pelé was tackled during Brazil’s 2-0 win over Bulgaria, England, 1966.
Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
English fans happily swarmed around the Brazilian squad’s bus, 1966.
Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
World Cup, 1966, England.
Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Wembley Stadium, World Cup, 1966.
Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
England celebrated a score, World Cup, 1966.
Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Commenting on this photo of England celebrating a goal, Alexi Lalas said, “If I could bottle the feeling that comes with scoring a goal in a big match, future generations of my family would never have to work another day in their lives.”
Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Jack Charlton slid hard against West Germany, World Cup, 1966.
Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
England’s George Cohen vied with Argentina’s Silvio Marzolini during a World Cup quarterfinal match, 1966.
Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
World Cup final, England vs. West Germany, July 1966.
Five identical sisters who became known as the Dionne Quintuplets were born prematurely in a small village in Ontario, Canada, in May 1934. The quintet were a money-making juggernaut in the 1930s and 1940s, put on display as public curiosities, while their private lives were marked by misery, betrayal and alleged abuse at the hands of those closest to them. The text below is an edited version of an article that Dennis Gaffney wrote on the quintuplets for WGBH’s Antiques Roadshow site.
It’s worth noting, meanwhile, that while LIFE magazine—in its own way, and like so many other publications —contributed to the exploitation of the “Quins,” the magazine did have the sense to sound some prescient warnings about the nature of the quintuplets’ unusual and intensely proscribed upbringing. “Their formal schooling,” LIFE wrote in its Sept. 2, 1940, issue, “will never constitute a real education until the children can be exposed to the rough and tumble of life with less-supervised contemporaries. They have . . . developed no social immunities to the unprotected existence that they will someday have to face.” _________________________________________________________________________
On May 28, 1934, on a farm in the village of Corbeil, Ontario, near the Quebec border, a French-Canadian mother, Elzire Dionne, gave birth to five identical girls — Annette, Emilie, Yvonne, Cecile, and Marie. Born at least two months prematurely, each baby was small enough to be held in one hand; together they weighed only 14 pounds. Few expected they would survive . . . . But they did, and became the first quintuplets known to have survived infancy.
Soon the world was referring to the Dionne quintuplets as “miracle babies,” and they became a worldwide symbol of fortitude and joy during the Great Depression.
The girls themselves became a tourist attraction. By 1937, about 3,000 visitors were passing daily through the “Quintland” hospital compound where the sisters were being cared for. . . . Hollywood exploited their fame, and four movies were made about them in the 1930s all with happy endings.
But the real lives of the Dionne quintuplets were largely unhappy. On May 27, 1935, the provincial government of Ontario had taken the five sisters away from their parents, after their father, Oliva, signed a contract with promoters to exhibit the girls at the World’s Fair in Chicago. Although Oliva cancelled the contract a day after he signed it, the authorities stepped in anyway to protect the babies, they said, from germs, potential kidnappers, and exploitation.
Yet it was in the custody of the state that the girls became Canada’s largest tourist attraction. During the girls’ infancy, nurses would take them to a nursery balcony and show them one at a time to a crowd below, their names written on a card. In the media, the girls’ upbringing was characterized as privileged, with round-the-clock nursing and a swimming pool and playground all their own. But in reality their playground was surrounded with glass that allowed visitors to view them three times a day.
In their 1963 autobiography, We Were Five, they wrote of being isolated from others during their upbringing, only permitted to leave the compound a few times. “We dwelt at the center of a circus,” they wrote. “A carnival set in the middle of nowhere.” According to some estimates, Quintland brought in as much as $500 million to the Ontario province in less than a decade.
“Money was the monster,” they said in We Were Five, “So many around us were unable to resist the temptation.” Although their parents lived across the street from Quintland, the couple felt unwelcome there, and became infrequent visitors. “We didn’t know each other,” Cecile recalled.
At age 9, the Dionne couple won the girls back after a bitter custody battle, yet the girls’ new home was “the saddest home we ever knew,” they later wrote. They didn’t perceive their parents as saviors from Quintland; they came to see their mother as unloving and their father as controlling, even tyrannical.
At age 18, the Dionne sisters left home, breaking off nearly all contact with their family. Emilie became a nun and died of a seizure in 1954. Three married and had children, but divorced. Marie died of a blood clot in 1970. In the mid-1990s, the three remaining sisters Annette, Cecile, and Yvonne wrote in their book The Dionne Quintuplets: Family Secrets that their father had abused when he took them alone in the car.
Despite the enormous revenue generated by the quintuplets as a public curiosity, by 1941, when the girls were 7, only $1 million had been put in their trust fund; when they turned 21 and became eligible to receive the funds, only $800,000 remained. Their sheltered life did not prepare them for the real world, and when they were on their own Cecile said the girls had difficulty distinguishing a nickel from a quarter.
What funds they were provided eventually disappeared, and when Annette, Cecile and Yvonne reached their sixties, they lived together outside Montreal on a combined income of $746 a month. In 1998, they asked the Canadian government to compensate them for the trust fund money that had been lost or taken. The government’s first reply included an offer of $2,000 a month, but after a public outcry, a $4 million settlement was reached.
Dennis Gaffney is a writer based in Albany, New York, who has written for the New York Times, Reader’s Digest, Mother Jones and other publications, as well as for online outlets like the companion sites for PBS’s Antiques Roadshow and American Experience.
The text above is published here courtesy of Dennis Gaffney and WGBH/Antiques Roadshow.
The “Dionne Quintuplets” posed in their confirmation dresses on day of their first Holy Communion, 1940.
Hansel Mieth The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
A writing lesson in a nursery schoolroom was the Quins’ first exercise in the discipline of formal education. Above (left to right): Cecile, Annette, Emilie, Marie and Yvonne studied a word on the blackboard, then ducked their heads to print it out.
Hansel Mieth The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
From left to right: Cecile learned easily but lost interest quickly; Yvonne was the leader with initiative; Marie had caught up with her sisters in growth but was still the slowest of the five; Annette had developed the most marked musical talent; Emilie, left-handed, was the prankster.
Hansel Mieth The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Tourists visited the home of the Dionne Quintuplets, Canada, 1940.
Hansel Mieth The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
This souvenir store specialized in Dionne Quintuplets merchandise, 1940.
Hansel Mieth The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
People filed into the Dafoe Hospital observation pavilion for a quick glimpse of Quins. One-way screens and large signs saying ‘Silence’ minimized the distraction for the Quins.
Hansel Mieth The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The Dionne Quintuplets stood around their guardian, Dr. Allan Roy Dafoe, 1940.
Hansel Mieth The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
(Clockwise from top left) Marie, Emilie, Yvonne, Cecile, Annette Dionne, 1940.
Hansel Mieth The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
This barefoot shot defused a rumor about web toes, and also further confirmed their identicalness, through their shared partial fusion of the second and third toes, found only in one in a 1,000 people.
Hansel Mieth The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Three of the Dionne Quintuplets played in the yard of their home/compound, 1940.
Hansel Mieth The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Marie liked to make paper cutouts; here she did so with the indulgent approval of Mme. Gaetane Vezina, governess of the Quins.
Hansel Mieth The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Modeling in plasticine and sketching with crayon gave Emilie an outlet for her strong sense of color and form. Here she drew the plan of a house and grounds in colored plasticine strips.
Hansel Mieth The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Marie’s eyes were examined by Dr. William Hill of Toronto.
Hansel Mieth The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The Quins, after rising at 7:30 in the morning, dressed together in the big bathroom.
Hansel Mieth The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The Dionne Quintuplets sang on CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corp.) radio, 1940.
Hansel Mieth The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
