Page 99 – LIFE

Chicago: LIFE in a Great City

December 30, 2019May 26, 2014 by

Inspired by these extraordinary pictures, made by LIFE photographers from the 1930s to the 1970s, Chicago-based journalist Chuck Sudo pays tribute to the town he loves: the Windy City, that toddling town, sweet home Chicago.

Architect Daniel Burnham, whose fingerprints are all over so much of modern Chicago, famously advised, “make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized.”

That, in a proverbial nutshell, is Chicago at its finest: daring to dream and willing to put in the effort to make those dreams reality — whether that means establishing a trading post atop a marsh, rebuilding after a legendary, catastrophic fire or fashioning an iconic skyline that stretches halfway to the heavens. The photos here perfectly capture the realized dreams of the men and women of Chicago, and epitomize why the 20th century was, so emphatically, “The American Century.”

Passion — daring to dream — permeates the town and, in large part, defines Chicagoans, both native-born and adopted. This is the city that gave us Nelson Algren, Studs Terkel, Gwendolyn Brooks, Carl Sandburg, Roger Ebert, Mike Royko. Chicago is where Oprah Winfrey and Michael Jordan became global superstars. It is the birthplace of the Temperance movement — and it’s where booze flowed like water during Prohibition. Over the decades, its politicians and mobsters have often been indistinguishable from one another, while Chicago’s struggles with poverty, violence and political corruption — like those of any other great, international metropolis — are as old as the city itself.

In the end, though, Chicago’s well-documented woes are as much a part of the city’s fabric as its glories, its triumphs, its world-class cultural achievements.

Daniel Burnham also wrote, “aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not die, but long after we are gone be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistence.” Those of us who call ourselves Chicagoans continue to dream big, to reach higher, hoping to add our names to the city’s bold, forever unfolding narrative — and inspire the dreams of future generations in the city we love.

Chuck Sudo was born and raised on Chicago’s Northwest side. Follow Chuck @bportseasoning.

The El Capitan stopping in Chicago, 1939.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A crowd of 10,000 at an “America First Committee” rally listened to speeches promulgating isolationism and urging the cutting off of aid to Britain, Chicago Arena, 1941

William C. Shrout The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Chicago, 1941.

Horace Bristol The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Chicago Sun newspaper, 1943.

Wallace Kirkland The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Chicago train yard, 1943.

Walter Sanders The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

News of the D-Day invasion, Chicago, 1944.

Gordon Coster The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Tenement, west side of Chicago, 1944.

Gordon Coster The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Chicago, 1944.

Gordon Coster The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Chicago Blackhawks players Bill Mosienko (left) and Max Bentley (right), 1946.

Frank Scherschel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Commuters were stranded during a railroad strike, Chicago, 1946.

Mark Kauffman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

People gathered on the street to watch a satire of political officials, Chicago, 1947.

Wallace Kirkland The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Children in a junk-littered lot, Chicago, 1947.

Walker Evans The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Chicago, 1947.

Walker Evans The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Empire State Express at the Chicago Railroad Fair, 1948.

George Skadding The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Children watched a giant animated figure of Paul Bunyan, Chicago, 1949.

Francis Miller The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Y.M.C.A. hotel, Chicago, 1951.

Ralph Crane The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Chicago nightclub, 1952.

Gjon Mili The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Legendary Chicago club owner Matt Schulien entertained patrons, 1952.

Gjon Mili The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Sea Restaurant, Chicago, 1952.

Wallace Kirkland The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Michigan Senator Blair Moody (right) and Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. conferred during the 1952 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Hank Walker The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

An aerial view overlooked the network of tracks for some 20 major railroads converging on Union Station (upper left), Chicago, 1954.

Andreas Feininger The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Cleveland Indians played the Chicago White Sox, 1954.

Francis Miller The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Prudential Building, Chicago, 1954.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The beloved Ernie Banks of the Chicago Cubs, 1955.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Chicago detectives forced their way into an apartment, 1957.

Gordon Parks The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Poet Carl Sandburg looked out a window in the Chicago Board of Trade Building, 1957

Grey Villet The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bill Klose, a Cub fan who threw out the first ball of season, 1957.

Frank Scherschel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Boston’s Ted Williams waited while a White Sox pitcher warmed up at Comiskey Park, 1957.

Frank Scherschel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Chicago, 1957.

Francis Miller The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Stunt man Jack Wylie flew over the Chicago River, 1958.

Al Fenn The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Midway Airport, 1960.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Chicago garage, 1961.

Andreas Feininger The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Chicago, 1961.

Andreas Feininger The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mies van der Rohe buildings, Chicago, 1961.

Andreas Feininger The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bears linebacker Dick Butkus in a game against the Rams, 1965.

Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Chicago welcomed astronauts James McDivitt and Ed White, 1965.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

National Guardsmen in front of a store during riots following the murder of Martin Luther King Jr., Chicago, April 1968.

Lee Balterman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

O’Hare Airport, 1970.

Co Rentmeester The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A TWA plane landed at O’Hare, 1970.

Co Rentmeester The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Father’s Day Special: LIFE With Famous Dads and Their Daughters

August 11, 2021May 26, 2014 by

Back in 1995, the singer-songwriter and cartoonist Peter Blegvad released a song later made semi-famous when a cover version by Loudon Wainwright III was featured on the soundtrack for Judd Apatow’s Knocked Up. The song, “Daughter,” is as sweet and true as any song ever written by a parent to a child, and manages to capture in relatively few words the intense, tender, exasperating and, through it all, loving relationships that dads and daughters enjoy — or, at times, simply endure.

(Wainwright, interestingly, enough, is the father of Rufus Wainwright and the son of a longtime LIFE magazine writer and editor, Loudon Wainwright, Jr.)

Here, in a special Father’s Day gallery, LIFE.com applauds that unique familial bond with photos of famous fathers and their daughters and, for a little variety, one famous daughter and her dad.

Blegvad’s lyrics to “Daughter,” meanwhile, are worth celebrating in their own right. See them below.

“Daughter”

Everything she sees
she says she wants.
And everything she says she wants
I see she gets.

That’s my daughter in the water,
everything she owns I bought her,
Everything she owns.
That’s my daughter in the water,
Everything she knows I taught her.
Everything she knows.

Everything I say
She takes to heart.
And everything she takes,
She takes apart.

That’s my daughter in the water,
Every time she fell I caught her,
Every time she fell.
That’s my daughter in the water
I lost every time I fought her.
Yeah, I lost every time.

Every time she blinks
she strikes somebody blind,
And everything she thinks
Blows her tiny mind.

Happy Father’s Day, everyone.

[MORE: See the LIFE gallery, “LIFE With Famous Moms.”]

John Barrymore and daughter Diana, 1942

Eliot Elisofon The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Alfred Hitchcock and daughter Patricia, 1942

Gjon Mili The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Orson Wells, Rita Hayworth and daughter Rebecca, 1945

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Michael Redgrave and daughter Lynn, 1946

Ian Smith The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Gary Cooper and daughter Maria, 1949

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jackie and Rachel Robinson With Daughter Sharon, 1950

J.R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Pablo Picasso and daughter, 1951

Dmitri Kessel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Harry Truman and daughter Margaret, 1952

George Skadding The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Desi Arnaz with daughter Lucie – and Lucille Ball with Desi Arnaz Jr., 1953

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Richard Burton and daughter, 1957

Gordon Parks The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

John F. Kennedy with daughter Caroline, 1958

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dean Martin with daughter, 1958

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Tony Curtis with daughter Jamie Lee, 1959

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

John Glenn with daughter, 1959

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Henry Fonda with daughter Jane, 1960

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Ann-Margaret with her father, 1961

Grey Villet The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Burt Lancaster with daughter, 1961

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Al Hirschfeld with his daughter Nina, whose name he famously worked into his drawings, 1961.

(c) Bob Gomel / Courtesy of Bob Gomel

Malcolm Carpenter with daughter Candy, 1962

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

John Mills with daughter Hayley, 1962

Ralph Crane The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Steve McQueen and Daughter, 1963

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Robert F. Kennedy with daughter Mary, 1963

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Lyndon Johnson with daughters Lucy and Lynda, 1964

Stan Wayman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Vikings QB Francis Tarkenton and daughter, 1965

Stan Wayman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Frank Sinatra and daughter Nancy, 1965

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Charlie Chaplin and daughters Josephine and Victoria, 1966

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Charles Schulz and daughter, 1967

Bill Ray The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Paul Newman with daughter and wife Joanne Woodward, 1968

Mark Kauffman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Robert Redford and daughter Shauna, 1969

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dustin Hoffman and Daughter Karina, 1969

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jack Nicholson and daughter Jennifer, 1969

Arthur Schatz The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Donald Sutherland and daughter Rachel, 1970

Co Rentmeester The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Richard Nixon and daughter Patricia, 1971

Walter Bennett The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bill Clinton with daughter Chelsea and wife Hillary, 1993

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Surfing, U.S.A.

July 30, 2020May 26, 2014 by

The best surfing photos can capture an essence of the sport—and so can observations from some of the greatest surfers of all time. Some pithy of words of wisdom follow, as well as some extraordinary images of surfing in days gone by.

“Out of water, I am nothing.” Duke Kahanamoku

“Surfing’s one of the few sports where you look ahead to see what’s behind.” Laird Hamilton

“It’s like the mafia. Once you’re in, you’re in. There’s no getting out.” Kelly Slater

“If in doubt, paddle out.” Nat Young

“One of the greatest things about the sport of surfing is that you need only three things: your body, a surfboard, and a wave.” Naima Green

“I surf to get tan.” Shane Dorian

“It’s not tragic to die doing something you love.” Mark Foo, who would drown while surfing at Mavericks in California in 1994

“I’ve tried changing my surfing, which is the worst thing you can do. Everyone surfs their own way. If I try to surf like someone else, I look like a dork.” Andy Irons

“Surfing is such an amazing concept. You’re taking on Nature with a little stick and saying, ‘I’m gonna ride you!’ And a lot of times Nature says, ‘No you’re not!’ and crashes you to the bottom.” Jolene Blalock

“I could not help concluding this man had the most supreme pleasure while he was driven so fast and so smoothly by the sea.” Captain James Cook, on watching a Hawaiian surfer in the late 18th century

“Surfing is very much like making love. It always feels good, no matter how many times you’ve done it.” Paul Strauch

“You’re sayin’ the FBI’s gonna pay me to learn to surf?” Johnny Utah (Keanu Reeves), Point Break

“If it swells, ride it.” Anonymous

Surfers, Malibu, California 1961

Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Surfing, California, 1950.

Loomis Dean/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Surfing, Lima, Peru, 1959.

Frank Scherschel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Surfing, Malibu, California 1961

Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Surfing, Hawaii, 1959.

Ralph Crane/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Surfing, Manhattan Beach, Calif., 1965.

Ralph Crane/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Surfing, Australia, 1958.

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Surfing, Hawaii, 1963.

George Silk/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Surfing, Lima, Peru, 1959.

Frank Scherschel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Surfing, Malibu, Calif., 1961

Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Surfing, Hawaii, 1959.

Ralph Crane/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Surfing, Malibu, Calif., 1961.

Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Surfing, Malibu, California, 1961.

Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Sixteen-year-old Kathy Kohner (the real-life inspiration for the character of Gidget) rode a wave, Malibu, Calif., 1957.

Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Surfing, Malibu, California, 1961

Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Surfing, San Onofre, California, 1950.

Loomis Dean/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Surfing, Lima, Peru, 1959.

Frank Scherschel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Surfing, Malibu, California, 1957

Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Surfing, San Onofre, California, 1950

Loomis Dean/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Surfing, San Onofre, California, 1950.

Loomis Dean/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The Real Story Behind the Best Photo Ever Made of a Delighted Mom-to-Be

August 11, 2021May 25, 2014 by

We’re not the first site to put this 1954 Wallace Kirkland photo online. In fact, it’s been bouncing around the Internet for years. The estimable Maggie Koerth, for instance, posted it on Boing Boing a while back, while posing the compelling question: What was the nature of the prenatal gender-screening compound mentioned in the caption that has accompanied the picture all over the Web?

The caption referenced in Koerth’s post, and reproduced by countless blogs, reads: “Mrs. Jane Dill, four months pregnant, reacts to the news that she is carrying a baby girl, Northbrook, Ill., 1954. She had just taken a test, administered by the unidentified man in the lab coat, by placing a wafer soaked in a secret formula on her tongue.”

All well and good — except that, alas, that is not the caption that accompanied the photo when it originally ran in LIFE magazine in 1954, nor is the man in the lab coat unidentified. The caption beneath the photo in that long-ago issue of LIFE reads: “Mrs. Dill reacts happily as [Charles] Welbert shows her sex-test wafer which remains colorless, indicating second child will be girl she wants.”

(Koerth and others can certainly be pardoned for citing the former caption, as the original description of the photo, as far as we can determine, is only to be found in that 60-year-old issue of LIFE. For some reason, the original caption did not follow the picture from the printed page to the digital realm.)

The May 1954 article, meanwhile, provides more information about what’s really going on in Kirkland’s photo:

Mrs. Jane Dill . . . whooped with delight at the glad news. She had just been informed by Charles Welbert that her unborn child will be a girl. “Oh, I’m so glad,” she exclaimed. “I have one little girl already. Now I’ll have two.”

But was Welbert right? Nobody can be sure until August, when Baby Dill is born. [Note: “Baby Dill” was, indeed, a girl. — Ed.] Welbert, a Frenchman, is in the U.S. to promote a sex-prediction test devised by Jean Reisman. In 30,000 cases in France, claim Welbert and Reisman, the test was 98% accurate. Their statistics have not been subjected to impartial analysis, but the chance that the test might really work has brought Welbert U.S. customers by the hundreds.

The test, now being marketed mostly by mail, seems amazingly simple. A tiny paper wafer soaked with a secret chemical formula is placed on the mother’s tongue for 15 seconds to absorb a sample of her saliva. Then it is mailed — with a $5 fee — to Welbert who adds another chemical. If the wafer turns purple, it means male hormones have been detected. The baby will be a boy. A colorless wafer: a girl.

Most scientists are profoundly skeptical. No previous test — whether based on the moon and stars, on X-rays of the fetus or on examination of the mother’s eyes, blood, tears, shape of abdomen or samples of the fluid surrounding the fetus itself — has ever proved to be both accurate and safe.

Ultimately, though, we’re not especially interested in whether or not Reisman’s test was scientifically legit. We don’t know, for example, if the process he devised was ever peer-reviewed. Instead, we’re posting Kirkland’s photo — and the text of the article in LIFE — for two reasons. First, to correct some inaccuracies that have been out there for a while regarding the photograph, and the people in it.

Second, we’re publishing this for the simple reason that it’s a marvelous, memorable, enormously enjoyable picture. It has energy to spare, of course, and beyond Mrs. Dill’s near-manic delight there is the evident good will or is it self-satisfaction? in the hint we see of Welbert’s grin.

Maybe today’s home pregnancy tests, as remarkable and welcome as they are, reliably generate this sort of over-the-top reaction. But somehow, we doubt it.

Mrs. Jane Dill reacts with joy, 1954

Wallace Kirkland The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

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

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

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