Page 16 – LIFE

Eisenstadt’s Images of Change in the Pacific Northwest

June 3, 2024June 3, 2024 by Bill Syken

In 1939 LIFE devoted a themed issue to the future of America, and it led off its reporting with a big piece on the Pacific Northwest, which the magazine predicted would be an engine of of growth as the country looked to move past the Great Depression. The region was described by hopefuls as “the last frontier” and “the promised land.” The big change afoot at the moment was the construction of the Grand Coulee Dam, which would became a major new source of power. And the Pacific Northwest in general was hailed for natural resources that were waiting to be tapped, and whose vast expanses were still only lightly populated. LIFE wrote, “Beyond the cities of the coast lie mighty reaches of forest, mountain, valley and river where you may go for miles and miles and see only a thread of railroad track or a lonely settler’s clearing as evidence of man’s presence on the giant earth.”

Alfred Eisenstaedt expertly captured the change that was coming to this Eden. Many of his pictures are striking on their own, from the images of a man at work in a teeming Seattle lumber yard, to dam construction, to the fishermen along the majestic Columbia River, to the characters of rural life. But taken together, Eisenstaedt illustrated what it looks like when civilization comes to the prairie. Consider his image of barefoot boys riding a tricycle alongside a highway that is only going to get busier.

LIFE wrote that these photos of Eisenstein were documenting not just a pivotal moment for the Northwest, but for the Amerca as a whole. The piece ended with this somber message to readers about a country making a fundamental transition:

The old American frontier, where a strong man with an axe and plow could take up free land and make his way regardless of his neighbors, is gone. In the industrial civilization of today and tomorrow, no region, no city, no business, no individual in America will ever be able to prosper alone and independent of the rest. The new frontier is one on which, working together for the common good, American will use their great technical and creative resources to produce the full abundance of which the American land is capable, an abundance which will make the long American Dream of dignity and freedom and equal opportunity for every citizen at last come true.

Fishing on the Columbia River in Oregon, 1939.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Fishing on the Columbia River in Oregon, 1939.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Life in the Pacific Northwest, 1939.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Life in the Pacific Northwest, 1939.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Construction of the Grand Coulee Dam, 1939.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Grand Coulee, Washington, 1939.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Grand Coulee, Washington, 1939.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Life in the Pacific Northwest, 1939.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Life in the Pacific Northwest, 1939.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Life in the Pacific Northwest, 1939.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A post office in the Pacific Northwest, 1939.

Exterior view of a post office in the US Northwest region, 1939.

Life in the Pacific Northwest, 1939.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Children playing on seesaws in the Pacific Northwest, 1939.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Life in the Pacific Northwest, 1939.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A sheep ranch in the Pacific Northwest, 1939.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Life in the Pacific Northwest, 1939.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Seattle Cedar Lumber Manufacturing Company, 1939.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A man at work at the Seattle Cedar Lumber Manufacturing Company, 1939.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Life in the Pacific Northwest, 1939.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Seattle, 1939.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Blue Lake, Washington, 1939.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A skier at a resort in the Pacific Northwest, 1939.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Amazing Story Behind “Jumpman”

June 1, 2024May 31, 2024 by Bill Syken

Co Rentmeester took countless memorable photographs during his years as a LIFE photographer, on a wide range of subjects, from the Watts riots to the war in Vietnam to snow monkeys in Japan. But no image of his has reached more people than the one he shot of Michael Jordan back in 1984—and that’s because it inspired the Jumpman logo that now appears on Jordan brand clothing, which generated $6.59 billion in revenue for Nike in 2023.

“I see it ten times a day,” Rentmeester says. But the logo is more a source of irritation than pride, because he believes he was never properly compensated. He sued Nike in a case that in 2018 went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The courts ultimately sided with Nike. So now Rentmeester is taking his argument to the public in a new documentary called Jumpman. The film premieres on June 7 at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York.

The film recounts in fascinating detail Rentmeester’s fateful 1984 photo shoot with Jordan, which took place on a hillside on the University of North Carolina campus in Chapel Hill. Because Rentmeester still has all the alternate takes with Jordan and also test images he shot with an assistant playing the role of the basketball star, the documentary is able to demonstrate the aesthetic and technical reasons behind Rentmeester’s history-making request to Jordan. Rentmeester asked him to do a ballet leap, going straight up into the air with his legs split, rather than a conventional basketball jump that creates momentum toward the hoop. Rentmeester’s unusual request resulted in a signature image for a man who would go on to become the most famous athlete on the planet.

Soon after that shoot Jordan would begin his NBA journey as a player for the Chicago Bulls, and also as a spokesperson for Nike. As the documentary shows, making use of original documents from back then, Rentmeester received a request from Nike for two slides from that hillside shoot, to use for presentations only, not reproduction. Nike paid Rentmeester $150 for sending the images out on loan. Then, about a month later, Rentmeester traveled to Chicago and was stunned to see an image of Jordan on a billboard, replicating the ballet jump, except in red-and-black Nike gear. “It was like I was hit in the stomach,” he says.

Rentmeester protested to Nike. They responded by offering him $15,000 to use the image for two years, plus the promise to employ him on future advertising shoots, Rentmeester says. He took the deal. At this point in his career he was working as a freelancer, had young children, and was not positioned for a long legal battle with a deep-pocketed corporation. The promised work, he says, never materialized.

Rentmeester only headed back to court in 2014, when he found a lawyer who took on the case pro bono. But a district court ruled against Rentmeester, stating that a pose only received thin protection, and that small differences such as the turn of Jordan’s hand or the angle of his foot were enough to make Nike’s image distinct from the original.

Rentmeester sees that decision as not only an injustice against him but as an insult to the art of photography in general. “I didn’t take the picture. I made the picture,” he says in the documentary. “Obviously they did not make a picture. They took a picture.”

It further irked Rentmeester that his case never came before a jury. He believes a panel of regular people would recognize the truth of what happened.

Jumpman, with a running time of a brisk 22 minutes, was directed by Tom Dey, who has helmed such feature films as Failure to Launch and Shanghai Noon, and who knew this story intimately because he is married to Rentmeester’s daughter Coliena, who is also a photographer.

“Because he is my father-in-law, I’ve lived through this saga at arm’s length over the last two decades,” Dey says. “I could tell that it was exhausting him.” Forty years after that initial photo shoot with Michael Jordan, Dey believed it was time that Rentmeester get credit for his work: “I thought, `If we make a film about this, he can address the court of public opinion, and the public can make up their own minds.”

From June 6 to 11 a related photography exhibit, which covers the Jordan shoot and the rest of Co Rentmeester’s illustrious career, will run in a gallery at 127 Greene Street in New York City.

Co Rentmeester photographed Michael Jordan in Chapel HIll, N.C. for a story on stars of the 1984 Olympics; that shoot would produce the famous Jumpman pose.

Courtesy of Co Rentmeester

A still of photographer Co Rentmeester from the 2024 documentary “Jumpman.”

Courtesy of Co Rentmeester

A still from the 2024 documentary “Jumpman.”

Courtesy of Co Rentmeester

In 1984 Michael Jordan jumped straight up while doing a ballet split on a hillside in Chapel Hill, N.C., with a toy basket staged cannily in front of him, in 1984; the image led to a lawsuit between its photographer, Co Rentmeester, and NIke over the company’s “jumpman” logo.

Courtesy of Co Rentmeester

Heartland Cool: Teenage Boys in Iowa, 1945

May 24, 2024May 24, 2024 by Bill Syken

In its June 11, 1945 issue LIFE photographer Nina Leen went to Des Moines, Iowa to document the world of teenage boys during World War II. What she found was a reassuringly normal slice of heartland life. The headline announced: “Teen-Age Boys: Faced With War, They are Just the Same as They Have Always Been.”

What did that mean, exactly? It meant that these teenage boys, much like their counterparts in more peaceful periods of 20th century America, were chiefly concerned with playing, eating, sleeping, and dating. This was true despite the reality that “The most important fact in the lives of American teenage boys is that they may have to go and fight Japan.”

LIFE elaborated further on what was on the minds of these youngsters:

The old skills are still admired—the ability to swim well, to memorize the names of football heroes, to have a quick wisecrack for the day’s every small event, to be popular. The ancient foibles are still pursued—homework is done in ten minutes. Mother is looked upon as a lovable servant, home is only for eating and sleeping. The greatest talent is an asset for endlessly happy skylarking.

The main way that the war impacted these young men was gas rationing, because it put a crimp in their fascination with cars, although they found ways to get around that. LIFE wrote, “In an almost gasless society, U.S. boys still have their old jalopies. They have found that a half-hour’s fast talking will usually net them an A coupon from dad and that their motors can often be made to run on a kerosene mixture.” The story put forth that the boys clung to their old cars because it helped with another chief interest of teenage boys is Des Moines, which was dating teenage girls in Des Moines.

Three months after this story ran, Japan surrendered, bringing an end to World War II. This meant that these boys were not only staying home but would have plenty of gas in those cars before too long.

Tom Moore, 17, examined the results of his first shave, Des Moines, 1945.

Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A teenage boy reached for a comb as he checked his reflection, Des Moines, Iowa, 1945

Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Teenage boys attempted to infiltrate what LIFE called “a hen party,” Des Moines, 1945.

Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Teenager Richard Burns of Des Moines liked to have a cola and half of a box of Cheez-Its before going to bed, Des Moines, 1945.

Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Teenage boys checked out the comic books and magazines at their local drug store, Des Moines, 1945.

Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Teenage boys and girls enjoyed milkshakes at the drug store, Des Moines, 1945.

Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Teenage boys on a Saturday afternoon in Des Moines, Iowa, 1945.

Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Entering through windows was an initiation ritual for a club which called itself “the Molesters,” Des Moines, 1945.

Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A teenage boy in Des Moines, Iowa, 1945.

Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A teenager worked on a smashed fender in a garage in Des Moines, Iowa, 1945.

Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Teenaged boys worked on their 1927 Ford Model T in Des Moines, Iowa, 1945.

Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Teenage boys in Des Moines, Iowa, 1945.

Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A teenage boy received a haircut, Des Moines, Iowa, 1945.

Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A teenage boy in Des Moines, Iowa, 1945.

Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Boys in Des Moines, Iowa, 1945.

Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A teenage boy in Des Moines, Iowa, 1945.

Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Ageless Rolling Stones, Through the Ages

May 21, 2024May 21, 2024 by Bill Syken

The summer of 2024 will be just like the summer of 1964 in at least one regard, and it has nothing to do with the Olympics or any presidential elections. Once again The Rolling Stones will be touring the United States.

Back in 1964 the Stones embarked on their first U.S. tour, in support of their self-titled debut record. Sixty years later they are, astoundingly, back it at. Will the 2024 U.S. tour be the last for band that has brought satisfaction —and “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction“—to so many? It certainly could be, although at this it seems unwise to ever question the longevity of a band that has been carrying on this long.

Of course, as the photos in this collection show, the band has changed over the years. In early photos from Walter Daran and LIFE staff photographer John Loengard, the band’s lineup includes Brian Jones, a founding member who would dismissed from the band in 1969 and later drown in a swimming pool. Also shown in photos across the band’s eras is Charlie Watts, the elegant drummer who was there from the beginning and died in 2021.

But all these decades later, frontmen Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are still at it, despite both being 80 years old. Their longevity is a rock and roll miracle, when you think about it, surviving as they have in a business that has a way of chewing people up.

In 2024 the Stones released a new album, their first since 2005 and their 31st studio effort overall, called Hackney Diamonds. What else would they do but get out on the road to support it?

The Rolling Stones performed on The Ed Sullivan Show, 1965.

John Loengard The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Rolling Stones perform on a chandelier-filled set on the ‘Ed Sullivan Show,’ May 2, 1965. From left, guitarists Keith Richards and Brian Jones, singer Mick Jagger, bassist Bill Wyman, and drummer Charlie Watts.

John Loengard/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Drummer Charlie Watts during a Rolling Stones performance at the Forest Hills Tennis Stadium in New York, 1966.

Walter Daran/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Brian Jones during a Rolling Stones performance at the Forest Hills Tennis Stadium in New York, 1966.

Walter Daran/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mick Jagger performed during a 1966 Rolling Stones concert.

Walter Daran/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mick Jagger and The Rolling Stones performed at Live Aid concert in Philadelphia, 1985.

DMI

Mick Jagger and Tina Turner performed together at Live Aid in Philadelphia, 1985.

DMI

The Rolling Stones in concert: Ronnie Wood, Mick Jagger, Charlie Watts, Keith Richards and Bill Wyman.

DMI

Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones performed in 1989.

DMI

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.

DMI

Mick Jagger during the Rolling Stones’ ‘Voodoo Lounge’ tour, 1994.

DMI

Mick Jagger performed during The Rolling Stones’ 1994 “Voodoo Lounge” tour.

DMI

Keith Richards took center stage during the Rolling Stones’ ‘Voodoo Lounge’ tour, 1994.

DMI

Keith Richards during the 1994 “Voodoo Lounge” tour, 1994.

DMI

Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones during band’s ‘Voodoo Lounge’ tour, 1994.

DMI

LIFE Said This Invention Would “Annihilate Time and Space”

May 20, 2024May 20, 2024 by Bill Syken

In September 1944, World War II still had a year to go, but that didn’t stop LIFE from looking ahead to peacetime in its Sept. 4, 1944 issue. The magazine ran big story on the new technology that it predicted would reshape life after the war. The story was headlined, “Television: The Next Great Development in Radio is Ready Now For Its Enormous Postwar Market.”

However odd it seems today to speak of television as a “great development in radio,” LIFE was dead-on in assessing how big a deal the combination of sound and moving pictures would be:

Within the first postwar decade television will be firmly planted as a billion-dollar U.S. industry. Its impact on U.S. civilization is beyond present prediction. Television is more than the addition to sight to the sound of radio. It has a power to annihilate time and space that will unite everyone everywhere in the immediate experience of events in contemporary life and history.

After getting readers excited about the new technology, the story then went on to detail its mechanics. The photos by Andreas Feininger are beautiful and fascinating in the way they contrast the machinery of the tubes and plates with the resulting image they produce of a female model whose presence is a kind of siren song. All that glass and metal, dear reader, will magically bring this woman into your living room.

At the time this LIFE story ran, very few Americans owned television sets. In 1946, the first year the government has data for television ownership, the total number of sets in American households was 8,000. By 1951, though, the number had ballooned to more than 10 million.

The LIFE story correctly predicted that TV would give Americans the new power to witness history live, and that was transformative. Part of the immense power of the signature moments of the original run of LIFE magazine—whether it be triumphs such as the moon landing or tragedies like the assassination of John F. Kennedy—was that Americans experienced those moments together, huddled around their televisions, seeing the same things at the same time.

The lens, at right, focused its image onto a plate in an RCA television camera tube, 1944.

Andreas Feininger/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

This “dissector camera tube” was part of a 1944 story in LIFE on the brand new technology of television. Here’s how the magazine described the tube’s function: “Image is focussed on light-sensitive plate (left). Electrical field transforms visible image into extended electronic image…Electromagnetic field pulls this extended image back and forth in front of scanning finger mounted vertically at front of tube.”

Andreas Feininger/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A Schmidt projector threw this image of a model onto a screen. A 1944 article in LIFE on the new TV technology stated that “projection screens will be part of postwar home receivers.”

Andreas Feininger/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A 1944 LIFE story on how television worked showed an image of girl being focused through a lens, 1944.

Andreas Feininger/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A color television camera, 1944.

Andreas Feininger/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

An image from LIFE’s look at the technical side of the emerging technology known as television, 1944.

Andreas Feininger/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

In a 1944 story about emerging television technology, this demonstration photo illustrated how lines came together to make a picture.

Andreas Feininger/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

LIFE Gushed That This Actress Was “Paulette, Hedy and Ava, All in One”

May 14, 2024May 14, 2024 by Bill Syken

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

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