November 2014 - Page 6 of 6

Americans are on a never-ending quest for the best way to educate their children, trying different approaches to teaching, and sometimes different kinds of schools. Seven decades ago, LIFE visited what might be called a genius school at Hunter College—a school filled 450 apparently well-adjusted, engaged kids from ages three to 11, who just happened to enjoy IQs averaging around 150. (Post-graduate students, by comparison, generally fall in the 120-130 range.)

As LIFE noted in a March 1948 feature on the school:

The school they go to is P.S. 600, part of New York’s public-school system and the only institution in the U.S. devoted entirely to the teaching and study of gifted children. It is held in a wing of the college’s main building, in whose long corridors the bright little kids from 3 to 11 years old like to stop off for between-class chats.
Offhand, young geniuses would seem to present no immediate problems because they are usually bigger, healthier and even happier than average children. However, an educational problem exists simply because they are too bright for their age. If they are promoted rapidly through school on the basis of their studies they will end up as social misfits, unable to enjoy the society of children their own age. On the other hand, if they are held back with their own age group, their quick minds are apt to stagnate.
Hunter children know they are smart, but they are more humble than cocky about their intelligence. . . . Although their interest are advanced, their plans for the future have a refreshing normality. There is a 9-year-old who wants to be a fur trapper, an 8-year-old who wants to be a babysitter and a 7-year-old who wants to be president of the Coca-Cola Company.

Here, LIFE.com presents photos from the feature in the magazine, as well as pictures that never ran in LIFE.

Liz Ronk edited this gallery for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LizabethRonk.

Sandy, 7, lectured the science club on the behavior of neutrons in uranium. The diagram was left by the previous lecturer, a chemist.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A public “genius school” for 3-to-11-year-olds at New York’s Hunter College, 1948.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Genius school, 1948.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A study of time was made by 6-year-olds. Addressing the class, Lucy (standing, left) told what she found out in the library about old-fashioned candle clocks, and her remarks were copied on the blackboard with other students’ observations. The students were critical of each other’s work.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Building with blocks, instead of aimlessly stacking them, four-year-olds worked together to construct an apartment building with doormen, tenants and a garage.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Genius school, 1948.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Roy spun a yarn for his friends.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Roy spun a yarn for friends.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Playing chess, David (wearing glasses) moved a piece for Lennie. Both are seven and a half. David learned the game from his father, then he taught Lennie how to play.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Directing the orchestra, a 10-year-old girl received a lesson in conducting from the teacher. Students also had a choral society. Three-year-olds had rhythm bands.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Genius school, 1948.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Ralph, 11, planned to become a doctor.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

In a class in practical conversation in French for nine-year-olds, a waiter asked gentleman to approve the wine, as the lady consulted the French menu.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

This hairdo was designed by two five-year-olds, Joan (left) and Florence. They also liked to make candy and cookies in the school’s miniature kitchen.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Genius school, 1948.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Five-year-old Johnny, who taught himself to read, took from the library The Ring of the Nibelung. The library also included simpler books like the Bobbsey Twins.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

In a hallway of New York’s Hunter College, two three-year-olds stopped to talk. The little girl carried a poster inviting students to see the latest block exhibit.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Few stars of the 1950s were so compelling, so singular, that they came to define the era in which they lived and in which they created their most enduring work. Marilyn Monroe was one of those stars.

From her earliest days as an actress until late in her career when she had, against her will, been cast in the public eye as Hollywood’s ultimate Sex Goddess, Marilyn posed for LIFE magazine’s photographers. Here, LIFE.com presents a gallery of pictures—none of which ran in the magazine—by LIFE’s Ed Clark, a Tennessean with a profound talent for capturing the essence of people, both famous and obscure. His pictures of Marilyn offer a rare glimpse into the early days of an eventual pop-culture icon’s career, when a young actress was blissfully unaware of what the coming years would bring and was, it seems, just happy to be in “the industry” and getting noticed.

[Buy the LIFE book, Remembering Marilyn]

In a 1999 interview with Digital Journalist, Clark described how, in 1950, he received a call from a friend at 20th Century Fox about “a hot tomato” the studio had just signed: one Marilyn Monroe.

“She was almost unknown then, so I was able to spend a lot of time shooting her,” Clark recalled. After all, it was still early in her career, and she’d only just begun to gain attention: Three months before this shoot, she appeared as a crooked lawyer’s girlfriend in The Asphalt Jungle; two months later, she had a small role as an aspiring starlet in All About Eve.

“We’d go out to Griffith Park [in Los Angeles] and she’d read poetry. I sent several rolls to LIFE in New York, but they wired back, ‘Who the hell is Marilyn Monroe?'” (Three years later, Marilyn appeared on the cover of LIFE in a now-famous Clark photo, posing with her Gentlemen Prefer Blondes co-star, Jane Russell.)

Why LIFE never published the gold mine of photos seen in this gallery after Marilyn became a bona fide superstar, however, remains a mystery. The only clue: a brief note about the shoot in the LIFE archives, addressed to LIFE’s photo editor, indicating that “this take was over-developed and poorly printed.”

Whatever the reason, one thing remains perfectly clear: at 24 years old, in 1950, Marilyn Monroe was already something special.