Page 152 – LIFE

In Praise of the ‘Powder Puff Derby’

August 11, 2021February 18, 2012 by

“Sweet little Alice Van is as daredevilish a rider as ever came out of the Wild West,” LIFE informed its readers in the August 18, 1940, issue of the magazine. “Aboard a savage steer or proudly flaying a bucking bronco she has been the darling of hundreds of U.S. rodeos.”

But in late July of that year, at Tijuana’s Agua Caliente racetrack, Van “achieved new fame. Wearing borrowed silks and a pair of borrowed jockey pants (two sizes too large), she mounted a cheap claiming horse named Drum Music and rode him to victory by a nose in a revival of Agua Caliente’s famous Powder Puff Derby. Behind her as also-rans struggled six other girl jockeys on six other old nags.”

Today, at least some of the language used in that brief little feature in LIFE would be utter gibberish to the ears of the vast majority of readers. Silks? What silks? And what on earth is a “cheap claiming horse,” anyway? But in 1940, when thoroughbred horse racing was still an incredibly popular sport in the U.S., it’s a safe bet that many, and perhaps even most, of the magazine’s readers would know exactly what those phrases meant.

Here, LIFE’s Peter Stackpole offers a lighthearted look at racing back in the day, through the lens of a single race, the “Powder Puff Derby,” and half-a-dozen women jockeys, on a scorching summer afternoon at a track in Baja California, Mexico.

Oh, and by the way: “Silks” are the racing outfits worn by jockeys, featuring colors and patterns associated with a horse’s stable or owners; a “claiming horse” is a horse that can be bought or “claimed” until shortly before a race.

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

Original caption: “Weighing in before the race the girls are understandably nervous. Alice Van (third from left) is wondering whether Drum Music, the horse she will ride is any good. Because the girls generally refuse to diet and because they average about 10 lbs. more than men jockeys, their races are usually scheduled at the high weight of 130 lbs.”

Peter Stackpole Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Women jockeys in Baja California, Mexico, 1940.

Peter Stackpole Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Original caption: “From balcony of jockeys’ quarters the girls and two regular jockeys watch an early program race. Most of the girls are rodeo performers, enter for the fun of it.”

Peter Stackpole Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Weighing in for the Powder Puff Derby, Agua Caliente Racetrack, Mexico, 1940.

Peter Stackpole Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Original caption: “Scales read 119 as Alice steps on them as jockey Martin Fallon, smoking a big cigar, leers up at her. She is a former Cheyenne ‘Frontier Days’ champion rider.”

Peter Stackpole Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Alice Van and her husband/manager place bets at the track in Baja California, Mexico, 1940.

Peter Stackpole Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Women jockeys in Baja California, Mexico, 1940.

Peter Stackpole Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Alice’s horse, Drum Music, won the race.

Peter Stackpole Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Original caption: “After race Alice poses for picture with Drum Music and Drum Music’s owner Tom Hunt, a horseman from San Ysidro, California. Hunt won $500. Alice won a wrist watch.”

Peter Stackpole Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Dior in 1948: Rare Photos From the Birth of the ‘New Look’

January 20, 2020February 16, 2012 by

In March 1948, LIFE introduced its readers to a pioneering French fashion designer and what the magazine called his “revolutionary” vision. The monsieur in question was none other than (in writer Jeanne Perkins marvelous characterization) “a timid, middle-aged, insignificant-looking little Frenchman named Christian Dior,” and the fashion earthquake he unleashed was something called, simply and unforgettably, the New Look.

Here, LIFE.com not only offers a glimpse back at a seminal moment in fashion history, but presents pictures—some that appeared in the magazine, many that were never published—by some of LIFE’s finest photographers, taken at a Dior show in Paris in 1948, when the New Look was all the rage and a timid, middle-aged, insignificant-looking little Frenchman astonished and thrilled the couture world.

Below is an abridged version of the article that ran in the March 1, 1948, issue of LIFE, beneath the one-word headline: DIOR.

Like all great revolutionists, Christian Dior is a creature of destiny. He did not create the New Look single-handed. But he appeared at the psychological moment as its man on plush horseback. As far back as the late 1930s Martha Graham's modern ballet troupe was wearing the knee-covering, bosom-exposing garments currently featured as the New Looks. In 1941 Harper's Bazaar solemnly warned its readers: 'Watch your skirt length. If this longer skirt length looks right to you, you're a woman of the future.' Dior senses this situation ('I know very well the women'). He also senses that the time was exactly ripe to convert these minority manifestations into a powerful mass movement. . . .

Although scarcely anyone had ever heard of him before last year, Christian Dior had been a minor league figure in Paris dress business, on and off, since 1936. About a year and a half ago, with backing from a French gambler and millionaire named Marcel Boussac, he left a job as one of Lucien Lelong's numerous assistants to open his own dress shop a fine old mansion on the Avenue Montaigne, a few steps away from the Champs Elysées. He plunged lavishly, staking everything on a single throw. For four months 85 decorators and painters labored to produce an atmosphere of discreet elegance unequaled in any existing Paris salon de couture. When the setting was ready, Dior retired to his little country house near Fontainbleau and meditated for a week. He returned from his lonely vigil, his pockets stuffed with 300 designs scrawled on odd bits of paper.

"I'm a mild man," Dior says, "but I have violent tastes." Violent tastes were precisely what the situation demanded. Dior went all-out for his new line. His narrow waists became as much as 2 inches narrower by means of specially installed corsets. His low necks were so low that they barely stopped at the waist. Other designers might sidle up to old-fashioned femininity and romance; Dior tackled it headlong.

“Three weeks ago,” LIFE concluded, “the new spring showing of Dior models opened in Paris. ‘Chalk up another fast one for Christian Dior,’ exhorted WNBC’s Peter Roberts. ‘Yesterday he let the world in on his ideas for 1948. And the folks who should know were betting dollars to doughnuts he was going to lengthen skirts a little more. But friend Dior shortened skirts! Not much but shortened. Just one inch. . . .'”

Christian Dior in his Paris salon, 1948

Frank Scherschel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Christian Dior dresses showed a marked Edwardian trend; this one had an old-fashioned corset cover top.

Mark Kauffman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dior fashion show, Paris, 1948.

Mark Kauffman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dior fashion show, Paris, 1948

Mark Kauffman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dior fashion show, Paris, 1948.

Mark Kauffman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Christian Dior with his seamstresses, 1948.

Tony Linck The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Paris seamstresses mobbed their boss, Dior, on St. Catherine’s Day (Nov 23), the traditional spinsters holiday. LIFE commented, “Dior is rich, kind and unmarried.”

Tony Linck The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dior decorated his home, a fourth floor walk-up in the heart of Paris, to resemble his parents’ home as it was in 1900.

Frank Scherschel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Christian Dior dress, 1948.

Frank Scherschel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

1967: Pictures From a Pivotal Year

August 9, 2021February 15, 2012 by

That the 1960s still hold remarkable sway over the American psyche is hardly a matter of debate. How people respond to the decade’s grip on the national imagination, on the other hand well, that’s a bit more problematic.

Some find it heartening that the Sixties still resonate at all, with men and women who lived through those years and millions more who were born long after the decade ended; others decry the fact (or what they see as the fact) that the ideals of the era have been irretrievably co-opted by the triumph of turbocharged consumerism; still others find the entire mythology of the Age of Aquarius utterly obnoxious and tiresome, and can not wait for the Woodstock Generation to, quite frankly, die off.

But even the most ardent Sixties-bashers can sometimes find themselves inexorably drawn to the era or, as the case may be, to one specific, pivotal year.

Take 1967. There was an awful lot going on in the U.S. and around the world at the time. The war in Vietnam was only getting bloodier. Race riots rocked American cities. Baseball fans reveled in one of the most exciting pennant races in history. A young comedian named Woody Allen was killing in Vegas. Iran crowned a new Shah. The “counterculture,” in all its protean forms, was in full bloom. Hippies were flooding to San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury soon to be followed by far more toxic forces (meth and heroin, for example, and the casualties that customarily follow in their wake) that would effectively bring an ugly end to the “Summer of Love” almost before it began.

The photos in this gallery are not meant to represent the “best” pictures made by LIFE’s photographers in 1967. Instead, in their variety of style and theme, they illustrate the fluid, volatile new world that millions were struggling to come to grips with, and to somehow safely navigate, throughout the charged weeks and months of that long, strange year.

An American machine gunner on patrol by helicopter over Vietnam’s Mekong Delta in 1967.

Larry Burrows Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Woody Allen (then better known as a stand-up comedian than a filmmaker) plays his clarinet in a Las Vegas hotel room, 1967.

Bill Ray Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A store owner guards his property in Detroit during the 1967 riots, behind a sign he made that, he hoped, might help spare his shop from attack by roving mobs.

Lee Balterman Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

An astronaut descends the ladder of a life-sized, model lunar module during a simulation of a moon landing, 1967.

Ralph Morse Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Contact sheet with the last strips of film found in LIFE photographer Paul Schutzer’s camera after he was killed while traveling with Israeli soldiers during the Six-Day War in 1967. Schutzer was killed by a 57mm Egyptian shell that hit the vehicle he was riding in on June 5, 1967. He was 37 years old.

Paul Schutzer Time & Life Pictures

Grinning Israeli soldiers give the thumbs up in one of the very last pictures taken by photographer Paul Schutzer before he was killed during the Six-Day War in 1967.

Paul Schutzer Time & Life Pictures

Eastern Orthodox Church Patriarch Athenagoras I, Archbishop of Constantinople (Istanbul), visits a sick member of the church, 1967.

Carlo Bavagnoli Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Novelist Harold Robbins (“the man who turns sex and adventure into cash,” according to LIFE) and his family, wife Grace and daughter Adrianna, at their villa in the hills above Cannes, France, in 1967.

Loomis Dean Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Carl and Shirley Stokes walk through the snow on their way to vote in the Cleveland mayoral race in November 1967. Stokes, 40 years old at the time, defeated Seth Taft (grandson of the former president) to become the first-ever African American mayor of a major U.S. city.

Lee Balterman Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

American soldiers of 2nd Battalion, 503rd Airborne Infantry, 173rd Airborne Division gear up for a long range patrol during Operation Junction City, a massive 1967 search and destroy operation in Vietnam conducted in hopes of clearing People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) and National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam units from the area northeast of the capital of Saigon.

Co Rentmeester Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Actress Mia Farrow, a.k.a., Mrs. Frank Sinatra, ready for a night out in New York in 1967.

Bill Eppridge Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Vietnam protesters at Kezar Stadium in San Francisco during one of many rallies around the country in April 1967.

Ralph Crane Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Carl Yastrzemski, 1967

Jerry Brimacombe Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Novelist James Jones (From Here to Eternity, The Thin Red Line, Go to the Widow-Maker) in his art-filled Paris home in 1967.

Loomis Dean Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The Shah of Iran, Mohammad Shah Pahlavi, poses with his son, Prince Reza, and wife, Farah, following his coronation in 1967.

Dmitri Kessel Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Jerry Orbach gestures toward co-stars Rudy Challenger and Jennifer Warren during rehearsals for the 1967 Off-Broadway hit, Scuba Duba.

Ralph Morse Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The Beatles Take America, 1964

January 20, 2020February 14, 2012 by

When John, Paul, George and Ringo first made it across the pond in 1964 to play before their adoring, screaming fans in the States—including, famously, performances on The Ed Sullivan Show that mark, for many people, the true beginning of rock and roll’s British Invasion—LIFE photographers were there to capture the Liverpool lads’ wry spirit, their charm and their youth. (Were they really ever that young?)

Below is a short selection of pictures from 1964, when a quartet of mop-topped Brits landed on America’s shores and changed the pop-culture landscape forever.

John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr posed in a portrait on a black backdrop in January 1964.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Two days after their U.S. TV debut on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” the Beatles played for 8,000 fans at their first American concert, at the Coliseum in Washington, D.C., on February 11, 1964. Ticket price: $3.

Stan Wayman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Beatles joked and smoked at a press conference in August 1964 at the start of their U.S. tour.

Bill Ray The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Beatles waved to fans as they arrived at the Los Angeles airport in August 1964 for a press conference at the start of their second American tour.

Bill Ray The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Police held back a crowd of fans at the Los Angeles airport in August 1964.

Bill Ray The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

At Beatles concerts, like this American show in 1964, screaming crowds often drowned out the band.

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

John, Paul, George and Ringo in a (very, very cold) Miami swimming pool in February 1964.

John Loengard The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Behind the Scenes: The Run-Up the Oscars, 1972

August 9, 2021February 13, 2012 by

Like much of the early Seventies, 1971 was a very good year for film aficionados who prized variety in the movies as highly as they valued quality. A Clockwork Orange, The Last Picture Show, The French Connection, Sunday Bloody Sunday, Klute, McCabe & Mrs. Miller the titles released in that single 12-month span are among the most revered and influential of the entire decade.

Of course, for even the most artistically minded filmmakers, all the accolades in the world can quickly pale beside an Oscar nomination or, the summit of happiness, an Oscar win. That thrilling, glitz-fueled night in Los Angeles, meanwhile, when much of the world seems to hold its breath waiting for the words, “And the Oscar goes to …” (or, as it was put in 1972: “The winner is …”) has become a cultural touchstone in its own right, with the show’s production values, jokes, performances and, of course, clothes as closely analyzed as the films the Academy honors each year.

In March 1972, LIFE magazine sent photographer Bill Eppridge to Los Angeles to photograph behind the scenes during the run-up to that year’s Oscar night, capturing images of everything from the dead-of-night delivery (by station wagon!) of the nomination lists to the destruction of the Price Waterhouse typewriter ribbons on which ballots were tallied.

Here, LIFE.com presents a gallery of both published and unpublished photographs from Eppridge’s fascinating, revealing assignment, an insidery piece titled, a bit acidly, “The Oscar Game.”

As for the April 10, 1972, ceremony itself, which took place weeks after Eppridge’s shoot and was hosted by the powerhouse lineup of Sammy Davis, Jr., Jack Lemmon, Helen Hayes and Alan King the big winners were The French Connection (five Oscars, including Best Picture, William Friedkin for Best Director and Gene Hackman for Best Actor); Fiddler on the Roof (three statuettes); Jane Fonda (Best Actress for Klute); and Peter Bogdanovich’s beautiful, profoundly heartfelt Last Picture Show, which scored a rare win when Ben Johnson and Cloris Leachman won Best Supporting Actor and Actress awards for their roles in the film.

Original caption: “At 2 AM Price Waterhouse delivers 10,000 copies of the nominations lists to the Academy Award Theater.”

Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: “While nominations are being tallied, studios inundate the Academy with photographs and biographies of actors, directors and films they hope will be nominated…. Material on those not nominated is stacked away and later returned.”

Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Members of the Academy enter an auditorium for a screening of an Oscar nominated film, 1972.

Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Photographers shooting the honorary announcers who were there to announce the nominees on television.

Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: “As the list of nominees is read, TV cameras and dozens of reporters jam the morning press conference.”

Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: “Each night during the ballot counting at P.W. [Price Waterhouse], even the used portions of typewriter ribbons are sealed in a lockbox.”

Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: “Peering forlornly at near-full screening schedule, a studio rep tries to find a time to show a nominated film.”

Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption “The $200 ‘beefed-up’ metal cabinet holding ballots and worksheets is locked in a specially secured room.”

Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Rehearsing for a production number prior to the 1972 Academy Awards.

Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Envelope used by Price Waterhouse to enclose the name of Academy award winner

Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Miles Davis: Photos of a Jazz Giant in 1958

August 9, 2021February 13, 2012 by

When LIFE photographer Robert W. Kelley shot a few rolls of film at an intimate jazz gig on May 14, 1958, evidently neither he nor the magazine’s editors were jumping out of their skins with excitement.

Kelley provided scant notes describing the evening: just the date, the city and the subject’s name, “Miles Davis,” scrawled on the small archival file of the resulting photos. Why the pictures which capture the great, groundbreaking trumpeter, then just 31 years old, leading his band in an unnamed New York venue never made it into print remains a mystery to this day. [NOTE: A comment below cites research that places Davis and his band at New York’s Cafe Bohemia on that night. Ed.]

At this pivotal moment in his career, Davis was cementing a new iteration of his sextet, with John Coltrane, drummer Jimmy Cobb, bassist Paul Chambers, alto saxophonist Julian “Cannonball” Adderley and pianist Bill Evans. Less than two weeks after these pictures were made, that astonishing lineup would begin recording 1958 Miles, and by the following March they were at work on the best-selling and arguably the single most influential jazz album of all time: Kind of Blue.

Even artists outside of jazz rockers like Duane Allman and Pink Floyd’s Richard Wright, for example have cited Kind of Blue as inspiration. Davis’ friend Quincy Jones, meanwhile, has said: “I play Kind of Blue every day. It’s my orange juice.”

Maybe Kelley’s 1958 photos never ran in LIFE because seeing and hearing jazz greats on any given night felt so commonplace in New York at the time—the music mecca Birdland, after all, was just around the corner from the Time-Life Building. Maybe pictures of a groundbreaking young master of the art weren’t something to get worked up about.

But six decades later, when Miles Davis’ star shines brighter than ever and he’s acknowledged as one of the genuine titans of 20th century music, it’s hard not to get excited by the opportunity to see previously unpublished pictures of the man and the rest of his legendary sextet.

Miles Davis plays with his sextet in New York City, 1958.

Robert W. Kelley Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Miles Davis (right) plays his trumpet beside a promising talent he’d recruited for his sextet in 1955, a man who’d go on to become a jazz giant in his own right: tenor saxophonist John Coltrane. Not long before this photo was taken, Coltrane had rejoined Davis’ group after a sojourn away with Thelonious Monk.

Robert W. Kelley Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Miles hangs back while drummer Jimmy Cobb and bassist Paul Chambers (out of frame) play. It was only May of 1958, but the year was shaping up to be a busy one for Davis: Weeks earlier he had finished recording Milestones, a classic work signaling new stylistic directions, and by July he’d begin the sessions for the Porgy and Bess soundtrack.

Robert W. Kelley Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Miles Davis in New York, 1958

Robert W. Kelley Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

For a 1958 TIME magazine profile, Davis explained the birth of his playing style, beginning with a local instructor in his hometown of East St. Louis, Ill.: ” ‘Play without any vibrato,’ he used to tell us. ‘You’re gonna get old anyway and start shaking.’ That’s how I tried to play — fast and light and no vibrato.”

Robert W. Kelley Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Miles Davis adjusts the mouthpiece of his trumpet at a New York club in 1958. He famously paid as much attention to what notes he did not play as to those he did. “I always listen to what I can leave out,” he once said.

Robert W. Kelley Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

As he became more successful, Davis’ reputation as snappish and disrespectful of his audience — he was famous for turning his back to the crowd — became legend, earning him the nickname “The Prince of Darkness.” But his friends said Miles was sometimes misunderstood. Remembering Miles in 1991, Herbie Hancock explained to People magazine that Davis was not shunning his fans in concert, he was merely focusing on the music and his band.

Robert W. Kelley Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Miles Davis, 1958.

Robert W. Kelley Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Davis had a gift for seeking out the best talent on any instrument. In 1955, he recruited bassist Paul Chambers, just 20 years old but already a virtuoso, influential player.

Robert W. Kelley Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Drummer Jimmy Cobb

Robert W. Kelley Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Miles Davis in a New York nightclub in 1958

Robert W. Kelley Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Even after the mighty transformation of his own style in 1958, Miles Davis continued to switch things up, experimenting in later years with fusion, funk and rock. “I have to change,” he once said. “It’s like a curse.”

Robert W. Kelley Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

More Like This

arts & entertainment

In Praise of the ‘Powder Puff Derby’

Dior in 1948: Rare Photos From the Birth of the ‘New Look’

1967: Pictures From a Pivotal Year

The Beatles Take America, 1964

Behind the Scenes: The Run-Up the Oscars, 1972

Miles Davis: Photos of a Jazz Giant in 1958

The Mona Lisa’s One and Only Visit to America

The Devil You Don’t Know: Fashion Editor Carmel Snow

When the Movies Got Smaller

They Don’t Make Them Like This Anymore

Anatomy of a Hitter: Gjon Mili Photographs Ted Williams

Lawrence Welk: America’s Unlikely “Most Popular Musician”

More Like This

Subscribe to the LIFE Newsletter