LIFE was quite the fan of Austrian actress Senta Berger, at least judging by the coverage it offered when she began making movies in the United States. The magazine introduced her to the American public in a 1965 story headlined “She’s Paulette, Hedy and Ava, All in One.”
For those not on a first-name basis with those leading ladies of the early days of cinema, the article filled in the details:
“When people look at Senta Berger, they see more than just an astonishingly pretty young woman. They see images of other famous beauties—a hint of Paulette Godard, a flicker of Hedy Lamarr, quite a lot of Ava Gardner—or whomever they remember as being dark and altogether wonderful.”
LIFE magazine photographer Bill Ray caught up with Berger when she was down in Mexico filming Major Dundee, which was directed by the legendary Sam Peckinpah. The movie starred Charlton Heston as the title character, who leads a military expedition in Mexico during America’s Civil War. Berger played a Mexican woman who has a romance with the Heston character. Major Dundee flopped in its day but has gained respect over the years, thanks in part to the release of a restored version which was closer to Peckinpah’s vision. The film now has a 97 percent fresh score on the review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes.
Ray captured Berger on the set of Major Dundee and also posing in a swimsuit and in the nude. It’s not difficult to see why the editors were gushing about Berger.
Even though Major Dundee wasn’t appreciated in its time, Berger’s career rolled on. In 1966 alone she appeared in six movies, and she would stayed busy for years, acting in film and television in productions on both sides of the Atlantic. The most recent of her 171 IMDB credits came in 2023, when she starred in the German romantic comedy Weisst du Nocht.
Austrian actress Senta Berger during the time she was shooting the 1965 film “Major Dundee” in Mexico.
Bill Ray/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Senta Berger and Charlton Heston relax between scenes during the filming of ‘Major Dundee,’ directed by Sam Peckinpah, Mexico, April 1964.
Bill Ray/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Austrian actress Senta Berger during the time she was shooting the 1965 film “Major Dundee” in Mexico.
Bill Ray/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Austrian actress Senta Berger during the time she was shooting the 1965 film “Major Dundee” in Mexico.
Bill Ray/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Austrian actress Senta Berger during the time she was shooting the 1965 film “Major Dundee” in Mexico.
Bill Ray/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Director Sam Peckinpah the filming of “Major Dundee” in Mexico, 1964.
Bill Ray/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Senta Berger and Charlton Heston during the filming of ‘Major Dundee,’ directed by Sam Peckinpah, Mexico, April 1964.
Bill Ray/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Charlton Heston and Senta Berger kiss by the water’s edge in a scene from the film ‘Major Dundee,’ directed by Sam Peckinpah, Mexico, April 1964.
Bill Ray/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Austrian actress Senta Berger during the shooting the 1965 film “Major Dundee” in Mexico.
Bill Ray/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Austrian actress Senta Berger during the time she was shooting the 1965 film “Major Dundee.”
Bill Ray/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Austrian actress Senta Berger during the time she was shooting the 1965 film “Major Dundee” in Mexico.
Two rangers quietly sat on a platform 25 feet up in a tree with a large pile of bananas and red buckets filled with milk. As I watched, a dozen orangutans quickly climbed and swung over to grab the fruit and stick their heads in the buckets for a drink. The orange-haired apes then lounged around, undisturbed by the humans alongside them.
Half a mile further into Borneo’s Kabili-Sepilok rainforest it was much less hectic. The air felt humid. I could smell the earth and hear the droning sound of cicadas filling the forest as I avoided the leeches dropping from above. Up ahead I spied another feeding platform. The rangers there sat alone as they scanned the trees but saw no signs of orangutans eager to eat. One of the men bellowed out an apelike long call to announce their presence. Soon a single female with an infant gripping its fur lowered from the canopy above. She snatched some fruit and quickly disappeared back into the jungle.
The Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre near Sandakan, Malaysia, serves as a temporary home for the apes. Infants rescued from habitats destroyed by logging and orphans whose mothers have been killed by poachers are treated and cared for, their beseeching hands reaching out to anyone who enters the nursery. “It’s difficult when the orangutans come in very young,” Reynard Gondipon, the center’s veterinarian, told me as he showed me through the facility. “I urge the rangers to hug them every now and then.” As they grow, the orangutans are moved out onto the grounds of the 9,000-acre center. There these naturally solitary creatures live alongside others as they learn the lore of forest life: how to climb, build nests, search for food, survive. Slowly, like the mother and child who disappeared into the canopy, they embrace the wilds. Once it is determined that they can fend for themselves, Sepilok’s staff transport them into the forest far away from humanity.
I have long been fascinated by our closest living relatives and our linked ancient ancestry. In the early 1980s I was thrilled to hear presentations by all three of the primatologists known as the Trimates—Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Biruté Galdikas—when they were in New York to discuss their studies of chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans. I recall Fossey mentioning a visit to the American Museum of Natural History’s Akeley Hall of African Mammals. While there, she stopped in front of the mountain gorilla diorama. The creatures behind the plate glass had been shot in 1921 by naturalist Carl Akeley during an expedition he led for the museum. Akeley soon after convinced the Belgian government—which controlled the land where those gorillas once lived—to create a national park to protect the apes. Fossey spoke of how she mourned the taxidermic creatures forever frozen in the case yet appreciated Akeley’s and the museum’s efforts to study and save those still in the wild. Of course, Fossey would die only a few years later as she herself fought to protect gorillas in the remote rainforests of Rwanda’s Virunga mountains.
The work Fossey, Galdikas, and Goodall dedicated their lives to is not for the faint of heart. Galdikas recently described to me the hardships she endured studying Borneo’s orangutans: “You are sitting in the swamp. It is so primeval. You couldn’t stand the buzzing of the mosquitos, the buzzing of the other insects, the horseflies that bite you. They really hurt, just a sharp hurt. And of course, the leeches.” But she also experienced true joy observing the magnificent animals, recalling how on Christmas Day 1971 at the start of her time doing her research she watched a mother and its child emerge from its tree nest. Galdikas called the sight “the best Christmas present.”
Humans and the great apes (chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans) and smaller apes (gibbons) share a common past. Our species diverged millions of years ago and evolved. Earth’s human population was about 1 million in 10,000 BCE, and 3 billion when Goodall arrived in Tanzania in 1960. There are now 8 billion people on earth. While the human population has exploded, that is not the case for apes. In 1900 there were more than 1 million chimpanzees in the wild. At most, a third of that number now exist. Orangutans have dropped from 300,000 to roughly 100,000.
Many more will perish, as the human population is expected to reach 10 billion by 2100. Apes’ numbers have been decimated, as they lose their habitats to deforestation and their lives to poachers. While there are laws to protect these species, trafficking is highly profitable. Each year, thousands of young apes are captured, with baby gorillas being offered for more than half a million dollars on social media sites like WhatsApp.
There are, though, hopeful signs for some ape populations as they and their habitats are being protected. The mountain gorillas in Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable Forest have seen their numbers increase from 254 in 1981 to more than 1,000 today, due to intense conservation practices and ecotourism.
To preserve their habitats, governments and organizations have trained locals to manage the forests. This creates jobs and encourages communities to protect what they have. The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund has trackers who monitor daily the largest of the apes where Fossey set up camp back in 1967. “These guys are the front line of conservation,” says Tara Stoinski, president of the fund. “They are the reason that these animals are still on the planet. These mountains are cold, they’re wet, and they are tracking up to 13,000 feet 365 days a year. They are true conservation heroes.”
Galdikas’ Camp Leakey and her Orangutan Care Center and Quarantine facility in the Indonesian village of Pasir Panjang 700 miles southwest of Sandakan similarly cares for and rewilds apes. And the new 117,000 acre Ekolo ya Bonobo, created by Claudine André in rainforests in the northwest of the Democratic Republic of Congo, has become home to freed bonobos. There are fewer than 2,500 Javan silvery gibbons left in the wild, and the Aspinall Foundation in conjunction with the Indonesian government has successfully reintroduced two dozen into protected areas.
Such work is an uphill and often dangerous battle. Legions of researchers, scientists, and volunteers have devoted their lives to watching over, studying, and protecting our magnificent relatives. As the great primatologist George Schaller wrote of the gorillas in National Geographic in 1995, which holds true for all the great and smaller apes, “We have a common past, but only humans have been given the mental power to worry about their fate.”
Nick Ledger/Alamy; (background) Gudkov Andrey/Shutterstock
A chimpanzee mother and her baby at the Conkouati-Douli National Park in the Republic of Congo.
Gudkov Andrey/Shutterstock
As it is with human children, chimpanzees like to have fun. Playtime is an important developmental activity and can lead to breathy laughter. Three-year-old Gizmo and his 8-year-old brother Gimli enjoyed a bit of roughhousing at Tanzania’s Gombe Stream National Park.
Anup Shah/Stone/Getty
The bonobo is often mistaken for a chimpanzee, but it smaller and slimmer.
Gudkov Andrey/Shutterstock
Gorillas are the largest living primates.
P. Wegner/imageBROKER/Shutterstock
Orangutans like these have the most intense mother-child relationship of any primate besides humans.
Freder/E+/Getty
The Siamang Gibbon makes sounds that can be heard two miles away.
Steve Clancy Photography/Moment/Getty
A lar gibbon and its child swing through the forest canopy.
Ever since Garfield swaggered onto the pages of 41 American newspapers on June 19, 1978, the rotund feline famous for his love of lasagna, naps, and sarcastic asides has occupied a special place in the cultural consciousness. Lazy, self-centered, and an unrepentant grump, the cat turned out to possess enough deadpan charm to entertain generations of audiences. Trends might come and go, but Garfield is no fad—in fact, he’ll be back on the big screen in 2024’s animated feature The Garfield Movie, voiced by none other than Chris Pratt.
The character has enjoyed a remarkable run, says creator Jim Davis, precisely because he’s both reliable and relatable, routinely expressing familiar feelings and frustrations. After all, who among us hasn’t wanted to eat pasta and nap all day? And does anyone actually like Mondays?
“I hold a mirror to the reader and show them [their lives] back with a humorous twist, that’s all,” Davis says. “We’re made to feel guilty for overeating, not exercising, and over-sleeping. Garfield relieves our guilt by enjoying all of those things. More often than not, when someone laughs at a Garfield gag, it’s because they’re thinking, ‘Isn’t that true?!’”
In an age when attaining a satisfying work-life balance seems virtually impossible, and at a time when everyone is constantly asked to do more, achieve more, be better or risk feeling less than, Garfield serves as a potent reminder that some days, the healthier option is just going back to bed. The furry protagonist was clearly ahead of his time when it came to the idea of self-care.
But Garfield was also very much a creature of the 1980s—maybe the creature of the 1980s, a decade that celebrated conspicuous consumption in all its myriad forms and transformed the character into an A-list superstar. During the “greed is good” era, Davis’s comic-strip cat could be found not only in daily newspapers around the globe—when daily newspapers were a thriving concern and most households were subscribers—but also on the New York Times best-seller list, the cover of People magazine, and as a balloon in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
That’s in addition to headlining his own Emmy-winning animated TV specials and a Saturday morning cartoon, Garfield and Friends, not to mention the onslaught of merchandise featuring the feline. T-shirts, posters, coffee mugs—you name it, Garfield was on it. At the height of the Garfield craze, people simply couldn’t get enough of the obnoxious yet imminently lovable cat.
“Garfield was all over the place,” says Robert J. Thompson, professor of popular culture at Syracuse University. “It was a user-friendly comic strip, which means not a whole lot of words and plenty of white space in between. And if you missed [Garfield] in the paper, you saw [him] in the licensing products and in the back windows of people’s cars or the TV specials. … Garfield was pretty much everywhere.”
Although no one could have anticipated just how successful Garfield would become, Davis had high hopes for how the cat might fare. He designed Garfield to appeal to the widest possible audience. In dreaming up the chubby character, Davis studied comic strips that were popular in the late 1970s and took notes. He’d noticed numerous high-profile offerings centering on dogs, most obviously Peanuts, with its anarchic beagle hero Snoopy. So he chose to create something for the world’s many cat lovers, taking inspiration from the felines who lived on his parents’ farm in Fairmount, Indiana.
“I pulled Garfield a little bit from several cats I knew, but more from the fat housecats that lived with my grandparents and friends—cats who had their own chair,” Davis told Entertainment Weekly in 2014. “It was the indoor cats that most influenced [Garfield]. He was also influenced by a lot of people. Basically, Garfield is a human in a cat suit. He exists in a cat’s body and moves like a cat and does many cat-like things, but really his basic personality is hopefully a lot like we all are, way down deep, with just our basic animal urges.”
To flesh out the strip, Davis developed characters—nerdy owner Jon Arbuckle, clueless dog Odie, obnoxious fellow feline Nermal—who could serve as foils for Garfield. As he explained to EW: “Jon has my eternal optimism. That’s me. I’m the guy whose glass is half full, always looking on the bright side of things. He’s a daydreamer, easygoing, puffy cheeks. I have that. … As Garfield is bright and cunning, Odie is not so bright, very accepting. Odie is a free spirit. It’s in the contrasts and the conflicts in the characters that humor is derived. If everybody looked alike and got along, there would be no humor.”
Additionally, Davis decided to omit timely political and cultural references. Garfield exists in a space where years don’t pass, characters don’t age, and no one ever argues about current events. “If you were to mention the football strike, you’re going to be excluding everyone else in the world that doesn’t watch pro football,” Davis explained to the Washington Post in 1982.
Although critics sometimes groused that the cartoonist played things too safe, the public loved Garfield, and once it took off, Davis almost never wavered from his gag-a-day approach. The comic strip’s visual style was simple, the humor grounded in universally relatable day-to-day experiences, all the better to translate for international audiences. “I don’t use any proper names, I try to use as few colloquialisms as possible, and about the only sport I recognize is golf, which is easily translatable,” Davis told the National Post in 2007. “[If] I have to do a gag that’s based on something I know will be difficult to translate, I always encourage the translators to capture the essence of the gag, the spirit of the gag, and write it for their own vernacular. In fact, for a while, Garfield loved sushi in Japan. Until Italian restaurants opened up and they knew what lasagna was.”
Garfield-mania did abate somewhat as the 1990s gave way to the 21st century, but the character never vanished from view. In 2002, Garfield was named the globe’s most widely syndicated comic strip by the Guinness Book of World Records. It made the leap to the big screen in 2004 with Garfield: The Movie, followed two years later by a sequel, Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties. An animated series called The Garfield Show subsequently premiered in America in 2009.
Garfield-branded merchandise continued to be big business—in 2018, the Guardian reported that the character brought in an estimated $750 million to $1 billion annually worldwide.
“I say this all the time: Everyone is a fan of something, and they want their fandom to tell the story of who they are,” says Amanda Cioletti, vice president of content and strategy for Informa Markets’ global licensing group. “Engagement with licensed properties can reflect identity and self-expression for audiences. Garfield speaks to many with his frank, no-holds-barred, lasagna-loving self. He’s got a timeless, gruff charm that resonates, no matter the decade.”
Although Davis sold the rights to Garfield to Viacom in 2019, he continues to play a hands-on role in the creation of the comic strip, ensuring that the characters and humor remain true to its essence. “I work in the same way with the same folks that I have for the last 35 years or so,” Davis says. “I write gags, and a couple of other people submit writing that I edit for use. I have long-time assistants who work on the drawing, inking, and coloring of the strip. I approve, sign, and date each strip before it goes out.”
The fact that Davis remains so invested in his signature creation sets Garfield apart from some other long-running comic strips that have been passed on to other artists, often to their detriment, says Mike Peterson, who authors the Comic Strip of the Day feature for website Daily Cartoonist: “You get a lot of ‘zombie strips,’ which are strips that have been taken over. The original artists have been dead for 50 years, but the strip goes on. They’re not very imaginative. They’re not very interesting. But Garfield is still being produced. I realize Jim Davis [is] not sitting in a garage someplace scratching that out on Bristol board, but it’s still a fresh strip every day. It’s a new piece.”
That freshness is vital in attracting new readers to Garfield, though, given the precipitous decline in print newspaper circulation, fans young and old have long since begun keeping up with the cat in other media. Davis’s strips can be found online, on such sites as GoComics, and in 2023, Random House published the 75th Garfield book, Garfield Fully Caffeinated. Meanwhile, other creators are penning adventures for the character—people like Judd Winick, the New York Times best-selling creator of Hilo, who grew up on Davis’s comic strips.
Winick told the website Comic Book Resources that it was a dream come true to be invited to contribute a short to BOOM! Studios’ 2017 graphic novel Garfield: Unreality TV, as he’d loved Garfield since childhood. “When I was 9 or so, it first started to run in my local paper,” Winick told Comic Book Resources. “It was around the same time that the second Garfield collection came out, Garfield Gains Weight. I was just nuts for it. I can’t tell you exactly what it was, but when I was little, I just thought it was so damn funny. Maybe it was because Garfield is so mean, maybe because it was kind of slapsticky, but it just hit me in the right sweet spot back then.”
It’s easy to forget just how revolutionary the notion of Garfield as a kind of lovable antihero was back when the cat first exploded onto the scene, Thompson notes. A protagonist who proudly embraces his flaws—who is, in fact, defined by them—felt entirely new and delightfully subversive. “We were just beginning to see those kinds of characters in the culture,” Thompson says. “Now, of course, it’s commonplace to have non-heroic [protagonists], from Mad Men to Breaking Bad to The Sopranos. They’re all [series about] antiheroes.
“But Garfield was coming out when that was still relatively new, and there was something appealing about his unapologetic, cynical, sarcastic, lazy, hedonistic, apathetic personality,” Thompson continues. “We had all certainly known cats like that, but we also recognized humans like that. In fact, I think a lot of us recognize portions of ourselves in [Garfield]. If we had someone else feeding us and providing a roof over our head like Garfield did, we would probably be happy to lie around all day, dreaming of lasagna and complaining about Mondays.”
And even though the sassy cat, who celebrated his 45th birthday in 2023, has entered middle age, he remains as witty and wily (and hungry) as he’s always been. Times may change, Davis notes, but Garfield remains the same. “Whether we read the comics over breakfast or after school or work each day, comic strips and their characters become a part of our lives,” Davis says. “They entertain us and make us feel a little better every single day. We can count on the comics. In a world where life is changing almost daily, Garfield still loves lasagna and hates Mondays.”
In The Garfield Movie (2024), Chris Pratt voices the title character, while Nicholas Hoult plays pal Jon Arbuckle and Harvey Guillén is Odie.
Courtesy of DNEG Animation
The Garfield Movie (2024) has one scene in which the cat is literally living large, much to the consternation of Odie.
Courtesy of DNEG Animation
A still from the 2006 movie Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties, which mixed animation and live action and had Bill Murray voicing the title character.
Photo by 20th Century Fox/Kobal/Shutterstock
Garfield creator Jim Davis showed a drawing of Odie to the dog who played Odie in Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties (2006).
Gemma La Mana/20th Century Fox/Kobal/Shutterstock
Garfield creator Jim Davis posed with Cathy Kothe in her Long Island home in 2014, Kothe holds the Guinness record for the largest collection of Garfield memorabilia, with more than 6,000 objects.
Courtesy of Cathy and Robery Kothe
For more than 30 years, plastic Garfield phones like this one had been mysteriously washing up on French beaches; the riddle was solved when a shipping container full of them that had been lost during a storm was found in a sea cave.
The new Max series The Synanon Fix captures the rise and fall of an organization that began as an well-regarded treatment program for addicts and ended up turning into something more sinister. The full title of the show, which is a documentary, poses the question, “Did the cure become a cult?”
The names of Synanon and its founder, Charles E. Dederich, may be unfamiliar to most people today—the group, which was founded in 1958, disbanded in 1991. But for a time it was a big deal, because people saw Synanon as a revolutionary way of dealing with a scourge that was on the rise. In 1962 LIFE ran a story on Synanon that was fairly glowing, with the headline declaring that the program offered addicts “a tunnel back to the human race,” and the story said “both doctors and narcotics experts look at Synanon as en exciting, practical approach, and even skeptical federal narcotics officers see promise in it.” The pictures from LIFE’s Grey Villet focussed on the anguish of addicts as they sought to get their lives back.
Dederich’s program featured a technique called the Synanon Game, which was an extreme version of group therapy. LIFE described it as “a dozen or so persons seated in a circle, telling the truth about each other, interrelating. Verbally, anything goes and the games are sometimes brutal, although never physically violent.”
Over the years Synanon evolved from a therapy into a way of life, with many adherents living on the Synanon compounds. When LIFE returned for a major profile of Dederich in 1969, the founder was more at the center of the story, which featured photographs from Ralph Crane and Fred Lyon. Dederich was by then already a polarizing figure. Here’s how that story opened:
A madman with delusions of grandeur. A saint. An opportunist. A brilliant executive. Latter-day Socrates. Loud, arrogant egotist. Hilarious comic. An earthquake. A herd of one elephant. Charles E. Dederich has been called all that, and more.
And again, that was before things really started to go sour, which they would, especially in the 1970s, after LIFE had ended its original run. A passage from a history of Synanon which appeared in TIME in advance of the Max series shows how disturbing the world of Synanon became in its later years:
As Synanon’s eccentric leader Dederich started to decline, so did the organization. He began drinking again after his wife died in 1977 and remarried soon after. Then, he decided everyone in Synanon would also benefit from remarrying, and called for wife-swapping. Suddenly, men and women who were married to one another at Synanon were divorcing and marrying different people affiliated with the organization.
After encouraging people to raise families at Synanon, he called for residents to be childless. Men started to get vasectomies, like Mike Gimbel, who credits Synanon for getting him clean and worked for the organization in the 1970s. He says in the series that he was in love with his wife, but they decided to separate when Dederich called for wife-swapping. When she got pregnant, she got an abortion because they were afraid of running afoul of Dederich. As he puts it in the final episode, “Synanon saved my life, but screwed it up too.”
The group was at its most extreme when it attacked a lawyer who had successfully sued Synanon on behalf of former members. Two Synanon members placed a live rattlesnake inside the lawyer’s home mailbox, and those members were eventually convicted of attempted murder.
With that level of drama its no wonder that, so many years later, documentarians have returned to this fascinating story.
Synanon founder Charles E. Dederich at a treatment center, 1962.
Grey Villet/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Synanon founder Charles E. Dederich talked to an addict who had come with his mother in an attempt to get clean, 1962.
Grey Villet/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Synanon Founder Charles E. Dederich posed at the group’s research and development center in California, 1968.
Fred Lyon/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Synanon founder Charles E. Dederich, 1968.
Fred Lyon/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Charles E. Dederich (center) at work with other Synanon members, 1968.
Fred Lyon/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Synanon founder Charles Dederich spoke at a gathering in Oakland, 1968.
Ralph Crane/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Charles E. Dederich with a group of Synanon members, 1968.
Fred Lyon/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Synanon founder Charles Dederich, 1968.
Ralph Crane/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Synanon founder Charles Dederich, 1968.
Ralph Crane/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Synanon founder Charles Dederich (left), 1968.
Ralph Crane/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Synanon founder Charles E. Dederich, 1968.
Fred Lyon/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Synanon founder Charles Dederich in his office, 1968.
Fred Lyon/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Synanon founder Charles E. Dederich relaxed in his office while blowing a tune on the recorder, 1968.
If you were looking for a relaxing afternoon on the water, the log canoe would not be the boat for you.
In its Aug. 9, 1954 issue, LIFE magazine wrote about a temperamental and demanding form of watercraft that was popular in the Chesapeake Bay area. The magazine described the log canoe as ‘fast, easily flipped, and tricky to handle.”
Tricky sounds like an understatement. In a log canoe the crew members had to place their body weight on boards that were propped up in the boat and extended out over the water. They did this in order to keep the boat from tipping. What’s worse was that if the winds shifted, the crew would have to dismount and move the boards to the other side of the boat and then mount them again, all without capsizing the boat in the process.
Here’s how LIFE put it:
It requires a crew of nimble-footed gymnasts whose chores are as precarious as a tightrope walker’s. Because the slightest breeze will capsize it unless the towering masts and a 1,000-square-foot expanse of sail are counterbalanced by human ballast, the crew extends boards out from the windward side and scrambles out on them to maintain the delicate equilibrium. When the wind shifts or the easily tipped craft comes about on a different tack, the boards must be shifted from one side to the other in maneuvers that require precise teamwork and add an exhilarating touch to the ancient art of sailing.
The log canoe may have required expertise to sail, but it was also picturesque, as evidenced by the photos taken by LIFE staff photographer George Skadding. And as impractical as these boats may seem, they continue to be part of the local flavor in the Chesapeake area today, with log canoe regattas running through the summer.
Log Canoe sailboats racing on the Chesapeake Bay, 1954; crew members needed to hang over the side to keep the boats balanced.
George Skadding/Life Picutre Collection/Shutterstock
Log Canoe sailboats racing on the Chesapeake Bay, 1954; crew members needed to hang over the side to keep the boats balanced.
George Skadding/Life Picutre Collection/Shutterstock
Log Canoe sailboats racing on the Chesapeake Bay, 1954; crew members needed to hang over the side to keep the boats balanced.
George Skadding/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Log Canoe sailboats racing on the Chesapeake Bay, 1954; crew members needed to hang over the side to keep the boats balanced.
George Skadding/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Log Canoe sailboats racing on the Chesapeake Bay, 1954; crew members needed to hang over the side to keep the boats balanced.
George Skadding/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Log Canoe sailboats racing on the Chesapeake Bay, 1954; crew members needed to hang over the side to keep the boats balanced.
A log canoe sailboat sailing in the sea, during the race at the Chesapeake Bay, July 1954.
Log Canoe sailboats racing on the Chesapeake Bay, 1954; crew members needed to hang over the side to keep the boats balanced.
George Skadding/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Log Canoe sailboats racing on the Chesapeake Bay, 1954; crew members needed to hang over the side to keep the boats balanced.
George Skadding/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock
In 1950, LIFE Photographer Mark Kauffman captured the so-called “Coca-Colonization” of the sugary soft drink’s formal introduction to France. The drink had been unofficially available for consumption in France before World War II, and the first bottle was imported to Bordeaux in 1919. However, the American company began an energetic marketing campaign in France in 1950 to maximize the popularity the drink had gained in the United States.
Created in the late 19th century as a pseudo-medicinal beverage, Coca-Cola soon became a sweet, artificial refreshment that reflected American capitalism, culture, and society. And while Coca-Cola was initially based on French coca wine, the people of France were skeptical of the first widely-marketed, flavorful nonalcoholic beverage.
Coca-Cola Comes to France, 1950. (Mark Kauffman/LIFE Picture Collection)
Coca-Cola crew giving a free taste in France, 1950. (Mark Kauffman/LIFE Picture Collection)
The French did not want their country to be overtaken by American enterprises and so they tried to prevent the mass production of ‘Coke’ (as the beverage would come to be known) in France. Today, however, the beverage is manufactured in France, and all across Europe, although the recipe varies slightly from the original American version.
Squeezing through the narrow streets of Paris, and zooming past iconic landmarks in the French capital, Mark Kauffman snapped photographs of a Coca-Cola delivery truck bringing the beverage to the people of France in 1950. “Buvez Coca-Cola Bien Glace” (translated to “Drink Ice Cold Coca-Cola”) emblazoned on the vehicle captured the attention of both the young and old. However, skeptics of the drink also ranged in age, and winegrowers in the famous wine region strongly suggested that the drink was addictive.
A man in a beret spits a mouthful of Coca-Cola at the camera – Paris, France, 1950. (Mark Kauffman/LIFE Picture Collection)
Skeptical French winemaker tasting Coca-Cola for the first time, 1950. (Mark Kauffman/LIFE Picture Collection)
Regardless of the initial protest against the splendidly sweet beverage, the French government granted Coca-Cola a license in 1952 and the consumption in France officially began. However, even today, on a per capita basis, the French drink less Coke than any other European country. The sugary beverage may still be popular worldwide, but scroll through the rest of the gallery below to see initial reactions to Coca-Cola coming to France!
Couple drinking Cola-Cola at a French Cafe in Paris, 1950. (Mark Kauffman/LIFE Picture Collection)
Coca-Cola Comes to France, 1950. (Mark Kauffman/LIFE Picture Collection)
Coca-Cola truck driving past Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, France, 1950. (Mark Kauffman/LIFE Picture Collection)
Woman drinking Coca-Cola at a wine shop in Paris, France – 1950. (Mark Kauffman/LIFE Picture Collection)
Coca-Cola representative pouring a glass of Coke for a Parisian to taste, 1950. (Mark Kauffman/LIFE Picture Collection)
Coca-Cola truck driving though Paris, France – 1950. (Mark Kauffman/LIFE Picture Collection)
A Coca-Cola delivery driver sits in the open door of his truck while on a break, France, 1950. (Mark Kauffman/LIFE Picture Collection)
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