Page 26 – LIFE

Wild Manhattan Nights: A Peek Inside The Latin Quarter, 1949

April 7, 2023April 7, 2023 by Bill Syken

In its Nov. 21, 1949 issue LIFE gave big play to a story centered around a Manhattan nightspot called the Latin Quarter, and breathlessly announced a trend in nightclub entertainment of “pretty girls who display as much flesh and as little covering as the law allows.” LIFE was so scandalized that it ran pages of photos from inside the club, including shots of dancing girls backstage, wearing even less than they did onstage.

The photos by George Silk captured the whole boisterous scene, which included not just chorus girls but also singers and a comic named Frank Libuse, who pretended to be a waiter while delivering slapstick merriment to upscale patrons in the white tablecloth setting. The Latin Quarter was located in Times Square—just a couple blocks from the Time & Life Building, which may help explain how the club caught the attention of LIFE’s editors. But the club was undoubtedly a big deal, and in its heyday welcomed such legendary entertainers as Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald and Milton Berle.

If the shows at the Latin Quarter sound like what you might expect to see in Las Vegas rather than in New York City, there may be a reason for that. LIFE’s story on the club ran in the days before Las Vegas had entered its major boom period in the 1950s. (And if you look at this LIFE story on Las Vegas from 1955, you can see that what sprouted in the desert bore strong resemblance to what the Latin Quarter was offering). While the LIFE piece on the Latin Quarter was intended to report on a trend of the moment, it also captured an element of New York culture that, like the Brooklyn Dodgers for example, was about to move west.

The Latin Quarter closed in 1969, and the space went through various incarnations as a theater and nightclub before it was torn down in 1989. On that location you can now find a hotel, perfectly situated for visitors who want to seek entertainment in the transformed and family-friendly Times Square.

Comic Frank Libuse, pretending to be a waiter, shot water at patrons seated at the Latin Quarter nightclub, New York City, 1949.

George Silk/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Comic and fake waiter Frank Libuse would “accidentally” brush patrons with a potted palm, Latin Quarter, New York City, 1949.

George Silk/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Frank Libuse, a comic who pretended to be a waiter, Latin Quarter, New York City, 1949.

George Silk/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Ernestine Mercer, who sang Cole Porter at the Latin Quarter, New York City, 1949. LIFE’s description of her performance said “Added attraction is Miss Mercer’s neckline, which keeps receding as a partner (left) throws money at her.”

George Silk/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Latin Quarter, New York City, 1949.

George Silk/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Latin Quarter, New York City, 1949.

George Silk/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Latin Quarter, New York City, 1949.

George Silk/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Latin Quarter, New York City, 1949.

George Silk/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Chorus girl-singer Linda Lombard rested her legs after a tough night on stage at the Latin Quarter, New York City, 1949.

George Silk/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Singer Linda Lombard, originally from Ohio, backstage at the Latin Quarter, New York City, 1949.

George Silk/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Singer Linda Lombard backstage at the Latin Quarter, New York City, 1949.

George Silk/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Singer Linda Lombard, backstage at the Latin Quarter, New York City, 1949.

George Silk/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Backstage at the Latin Quarter, New York City, 1949.

George Silk/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Latin Quarter, New York City, 1949.

George Silk/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Joy of Reading, Anywhere and Everywhere

April 6, 2023April 6, 2023 by Bill Syken

Reading might not seem like the most dramatic of subjects—Seinfeld fans will recall the episode in which George appalled the president of NBC by saying in a pitch meeting that he wanted to make a show in which people might just sit and read.

But images in the LIFE photo collection tell another story. Over the years the magazine’s photographers created many fascinating and resonant images of people lost in words. And those photos, viewed collectively, illustrate both the power and the great diversity of the reading experience.

For example, images here include:

—A soldier in a fox hole, savoring a letter from home.

—Sophia Loren perusing a newspaper while waiting on a movie set.

—The teenage son of the artist Christo passing the time with a book while his father erected one of his sculptures.

—Hockey great Jean Beliveau relaxing in bed with a novel.

—College girls at the University of Kansas reading their mail while sitting on their sorority house steps.

—Thomas Mann, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, reading in his armchair.

—Jackie Kennedy, First Lady and future book editor—reading to daughter Caroline in her bed.

And on and on. One particularly poignant photo shows baseball star Roy Campanella a few months removed from the car accident that left him paralyzed from the shoulders down. LIFE’s story on Campanella’s rehabilitation in the July 21, 1958 issue opened with a photo of the former Dodgers catcher hovering horizontally, face down, in a specially designed bed and studying a newspaper sports section spread out beneath him.

The benefits of reading are numerous: Experts believe that it strengthens your brain, reduces stress, improves empathy, helps you sleep better and staves off cognitive decline. That photo of Campanella makes evident another benefit, and underlines a common theme through so many of these images. Whether you are reading a letter, the newspaper or a great novel, you can be taken out of where you are and connect with another person, or even another world, all through the power of the written word.

Baseball star Roy Campanella, who suffered a broken neck in a car accident, reading a newspaper, 1958.

George Silk/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Marilyn Monroe at home, 1953.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Jackie Kennedy read to her daughter, Caroline, in Hyannis Port, Mass., in 1960.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jennie Magill reading a story to her children; the image is from a 1956 LIFE story on working mothers.

Grey Villet The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Wilson Riles, California State Superintendent of Public Education, read a storybook to his grandson, 1971.

Ralph Crane/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A tent-dwelling family at an Oregon read bedtime stories, 1969.

Photo by John Olson/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Indian leader Mohandas Gandhi reading next to a spinning wheel at home. (Photo by Margaret Bourke-White/The LIFE Picture Collection © DotDash Meredith)

Hockey great Jean Beliveau, the center for the Montreal Canadiens, 1953.

Yale Joel/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Babysitter Iva Peppe was engrossed in reading a magazine while Chad Gibson set up for a sneak attack, Des Moines, Iowa, 1957.

Leonard McCombe/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Reading the comics, Detroit, 1943.

Walter Sanders/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Boys shopped for comic books, Des Moines, Iowa, 1945.

Nina Leen/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Students in the library reading room at Howard University, 1946.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A student sits in a crowded library on the campus of Smith College, Northampton, Mass., 1948.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Beside his chuck wagon, cowboy Clarence Long read a western magazine, 1949. When he was through with the magazine he passed it to another cowboy. Such magazines were read and reread until the pages fell apart.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

Marilyn Lovell, wife of Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell, read a newspaper at home, April 1970.

Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Michael Caine read an article about himself, Los Angeles, 1966.

Bill Ray The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Charles M. Schulz, creator of Peanuts, at his California home, 1967.

Bill Ray/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Actor George C. Scott on set of the 1959 film Anatomy of a Murder. In the movie he played prosecutor Claude Dancer.

Gjon Mili/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A boy read newspaper comics while his leash-tethered mutt waited, New York City, 1944.

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Sportscaster Bill Stern read a newspaper as his Chesapeake Bay retriever sniffed a sidewalk grate, New York City, 1944.

Nina Leen/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Aspiring actress Jo Ann Kemmerling read a book in the small tub that was set up in the kitchen of her small New York City apartment, 1953.

Nina Leen/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The son of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Cyril Christo, read a book during the construction work on “5,600 Cubic Meter Package,” for Documenta IV in Germany, 1968.

Photo by Carlo Bavagnoli/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation.

The children of architect Nathaniel Curtis enjoyed the home he designed: Cathy (left) read on the patio while Francis (center) and David (right) played a game in the living room, New Orleans, 1965.

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

William Gerberding, a U.C.L.A. assistant professor of political science, read while waiting for the bus, 1964.

Bill Ray/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Soldier smiling while reading mail in a fox hole, 1945.

Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A solider read a letter at the U.S. naval base on Midway Atoll, 1942.

Frank Scherschel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A sailor relaxed aboard a US Navy cruiser at sea read a copy of Life magazine, 1942.

Ralph Morse/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

German POWs read on their cots inside one of the prisoner of war barracks at Camp Blanding in Tallahassee, Florida, June 1943

Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Former Japanese war minister Hideki Tojo read in the yard of the Omira prison where he was being held for war crimes, Nov. 1945.

George Silk/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Men talking and reading the newspaper in the local market, Maine, United States, 1942

Bernard Hoffman/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Actress Greer Garson read while relaxing in a hammock near her pool at her Hollywood home, 1943.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

New York City, 1943.

Ralph Morse/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

People reading newspapers with the headlines of the D-Day invasion at the Pershing Square Park, Los Angeles, June 6, 1944.

John Florea/Life Picture Collecrtion/Shutterstock

Woman relaxing on sofa, Phoenix, Az., September 1952.

Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A teenage babysitter read to the boys she was watching, St. Louis, 1944.

Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A photo from an essay illustrating Richard Wright’s memoir Black Boy, 1945; to escape the wrath of his grandmother, Wright used to sit behind the barn to read.

Ed Clark/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A father read his daughter the Sunday comics, United States, August 1946.

Nina Leen?Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Department store magnate Bernard F. Gimbel reading his competitor’s advertising, under picture of his wife painted by De Guttman, 1949.

Eliot Elisofon/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A barber in a small New England village, 1950.

Yale Joel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Young polio patients read letters from home while gathered around mailroom desk during mail call at FDR’s Georgia Warm Springs Foundation where they were receiving intensive treatment while being boarded there, November 1938..

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Women reading books and newspapers, Atlantic City, N.J., 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Students read and relaxed at the ATO house at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn., 1940.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

At the University of Kansas, Kappa Alpha Theta sorority members read letters and newspapers,1939.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jill Corey’s father, a coal miner in Avonmore, Pa., eagerly reading the first letter home from daughter, who had moved to New York to become a professional singer, 1953.

Gordon Parks/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A high school girl at the Newburyport Free Library in Massachusetts, 1943.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Fire Chief Bob Harmon of Hamilton, Ohio reading the newspaper at home while listening to the radio, from the LIFE essay “An American Block” about home life during wartime, 1943.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Children reading the comics, Hamilton, Ohio, October 1943.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Actress Sophia Loren read a newspaper by candlelight while in costume for her role in movie Madame Sans-Gene, 1961.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

On a Sunday afternoon in Emporia, Kansas, Sante Fe Railroad timekeeper John Tholen, 52, read newspaper with his wife and two sons, who are Kansas National Guardsmen, on their front porch, 1942.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Hair salon, New York City, 1952.

Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dutch billiards prodigy Renske Quax (left) read comic books with his sister, Holland, 1953.

Nat Farbman/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Frenchmen reading newspaper reports of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, 1963.

Ralph Crane/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Out on Hampstead Heath in London, British author Colin Wilson sat underneath a tree wrapped in a sleeping bag, reading a book, 1956.

Mark Kauffman/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

At Cumberland Mountain Farms in Scottsboro, Alabama, barefoot young boys sat outside on chairs made from tree sections and read during school, 1936. Cumberland Mountain Farms, like nearby Skyline Farms, was a government-sponsored resettlement project designed to help out-of-work farmers and their families.

Carl Mydans/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Novelist Thomas Mann at home, circa 1939.

Carl Mydans/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Comedian and actress Phyllis Diller read a copy of Vogue magazine, St. Louis, April 1963.

Francis Miller/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Visitors to TIME’s Reading Room at the Chicago World’s Fair, 1933.

Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Navy crewmen on a submarine, 1939.

Carl Mydans/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A boy read a comic strip while getting a haircut in Garden City, New York in 1942

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Robert Kennedy, then the U.S. attorney general, read a book while walking with his three dogs, 1964.

George Silk/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Warship, 1943.

Ralph Morse/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Anchorage, Alaska, 1958.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Author Hoffman Reynolds Hays read among the shelves, New York City, New York, 1944

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

New York Public Library, 1944.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Ain’t No Party Like a Statehood Party: When Alaska Joined the Union

March 30, 2023March 30, 2023 by Bill Syken

America’s purchase of Alaska for $7.2 million in 1867 was regarded as such a bad idea at the time that people referred to it as Seward’s Folly, named after Secretary of State William H. Seward, who negotiated the deal with Russia.

But Alaska’s abundant resources and also its strategic value during World War II (see LIFE’s story on the Aleutian campaign) helped ease its journey from territory to full-blown statehood, which the U.S. Congress approved on July 7, 1958.

While statehood would not become official for Alaska until President Dwight D Eisenhower signed the paperwork on Jan. 3, 1959, the congressional vote was enough to set off celebrations. Here’s how LIFE described the scene in its July 14, 1958 issue, in a story headlined “A Jubilant Land of Promise: Alaska Makes It As a State”:

The whooping and hollering around a huge bonfire in Anchorage and the ear-splitting smiles in the Capitol in Washington were set off by the same fine news: Congress had approved statehood for Alaska. The battle, first begun in 1916 and marked by disheartening defeats through the years, was over. From Umnat to Umnak sirens screamed, toasts were drunk and there was wild jubilation….Alaskan statehood, said Texas congressman Jim Wright, “proves there is still something dynamic and attractive and growing in the American experiment in free government.”

The pictures from LIFE photographer Dmitri Kessel capture the jubilation in the 49th state, where headlines declared “We’re In” with the biggest typeface possible. In Anchorage residents danced, built a massive bonfire and raced around it on horseback. They unfurled an American flag big enough to cover a downtown building and affixed to it an oversized 49th star. Alaska’s status as the largest state in the union was proclaimed with a sign hung on a moose during a downtown parade.

In its coverage LIFE dubbed Alaska “The Last Great U.S. Frontier” and all these years later the state, with its challenging climate, abundant wildlife and vast expanses of undeveloped land, retains that character. In 1957 a mere 231,000 people occupied Alaska’s 665,400 square miles, and today the state’s population remains a relatively sparse 733, 583. Perhaps that it why it has been a magnet for reality shows and occupies a unique place in the American landscape. While being part of the union, it also remains a world apart.

Alaska statehood celebration, 1957.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Alaskans pinned the 49th star to the U.S. flag to celebrate the state’s acceptance into the union.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Alaskans pinned a 49th star to the US flag to celebrate acceptance into the union, 1957.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Alaska statehood celebration, 1957.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Alaska statehood celebration in Anchorage, 1957.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Alaska statehood celebration, 1957.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

President Dwight D. Eisenhower (left) celebrated the news of Alaska’s being voted into the union with state governor Mike Stepovich (center) and U.S. Secretary of the Interior Fred Seaton, 1957.

Hank Walker/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Alaska governor Mike Stepovich (right) and U.S. Secretary of the Interior Fred Seaton posed with submitted redesigns of the U.S. flag to reflect Alaska’s pending admittance to the union, 1957. Some flag designs included a 50th star in anticipation of Hawaii joining, which it would do in 1959.

Hank Walker/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Remarkable Species Known as KISS

April 4, 2023March 30, 2023 by Bill Syken

The following is excerpted from LIFE’s new special edition on KISS, available online and at newsstands:

Conversations about KISS tend to revolve around the band’s extraordinary appearance and extravagant showmanship. Their “sexified Kabuki makeup. [Their] black and silver warrior bondage gear and seven-inch platform heels,” as Tom Morello put it in his 2014 speech inducting KISS into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. At a live performance, Morello pointed out, you might experience, “the place blowing up with explosions, screeching with sirens . . . bare knuckled and bad ass.” KISS elevates off the stage on glowing platforms. Gene spits flames. Paul flies over the crowd. Comic book superheroes come to life. Rock and roll has rarely known such giddy gall.

Nearly from the start, those industry-lifting shows were so outsized, so audacious, that you didn’t even have to be there to feel them. The live albums—KISS Alive!, released in 1975, and KISS Alive II, released two years later—could set your house afire. Wait, was that the sound of a rocket ship going off? A race car?

I first heard Alive II several years after it came out. I’d just come home from school, and I was in my bedroom. I had a small plate of Chips Ahoy! cookies and a glass of milk on the bookcase.

Alive II is a double album. I slid the first record out of its sleeve, put it on the turntable, and set down the needle. Then I stepped back and took a cookie off the plate. I was 11 years old. I had heard about and seen images of KISS—they were on lunch boxes—but I had no idea what to expect.

First the crowd noise. Then: “You wanted the best, and you got the best! The hottest band in the world, KIIISSS!” That went straight into the Gatling-gun opening riff of “Detroit Rock City,” then the drumroll, the big one-two entry chords, and Ace Frehley’s massive guitar slide. My eyes went as wide as the record itself. I put my hand over my mouth and I closed the door to my room. Was it even safe to be listening to something like this? I suddenly had a secret: That this existed! That this was KISS! A brave new world with such creatures in it. I didn’t know if anyone else should find out.

Alive II (like Alive!, as I would later discover) felt completely unbound and joyous. Urgent. There’s the moment when Paul Stanley, unable to contain himself in announcing the song, belts into the crowd: “All right! ‘Love Gun!’ ” Or during “God of Thunder,” when the drum solo closes with three momentous gongs, sounding the tocsin as it were, and Paul yells, “Peter Criss on the drums!” and the verse picks up immediately with Gene, the God of Thunder himself, singing in his guttural snarl: “I’m the lord of the wastelands, a modern-day man of steel.” Comic book hero indeed. In producing their live albums, KISS went into the studio to overdub and rework the tracks for maximum effect—and that is precisely the effect they had.

For professional musicians the moment of being felled by KISS can be unambiguous. When I asked the guitarist Glenn Sherman why he loves KISS, he answered: “ ‘Deuce’: Listen to the F-chord played in the first chorus under the line ‘You know your man is working hard.’ The most perfect power chord I’ve ever heard.” Sherman is referring specifically to the version of ‘Deuce’ on Alive!, the first song on the album that changed everything for KISS, when the notion of their global success went from improbable to inevitable.

***

The Hall of Fame induction was criminally overdue. That’s almost certainly because in the glare of KISS’s style, the substance of the music itself—those driving, unadorned, scrappy, gorgeous songs upon which the entire priapic colossus of the band is built—gets overlooked. “Here’s a statement only a fool would contradict: There’s never been a band inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame whose output has been critically contemplated less than the music of KISS,” Chuck Klosterman wrote in Grantland. “I’d guess 50 percent of the voters who put KISS on their Rock Hall ballot have not listened to any five KISS records more than five times; part of what makes the band so culturally durable is the assumption that you can know everything about their aesthetic without consuming any of it.”

KISS has produced 30 gold records, more than any American rock band ever. Destroyer, Rock and Roll Over, and Love Gun all went multiplatinum. KISS’s songs were what led record executives to bet on the band in the first place. (Early on, their distributor, Warner Bros., liked the music but wanted KISS to ditch the makeup.) Morello in his induction speech reeled off a list of about a dozen Grammy-Award winners who drew from KISS: Metallica, Lady Gaga, Pearl Jam, Foo Fighters . . . on and on.

The 1994 album Kiss My Ass, a compilation of KISS songs covered by musicians who’ve openly declared a debt, includes recordings by Lenny Kravitz and Stevie Wonder, the American Symphony Orchestra, Yoshiki, Anthrax, and the Gin Blossoms. That Garth Brooks sings “Hard Luck Woman”—a KISS ballad with a cowboy swing—seemed the obvious fit for the country megastar, but it was not the song that Brooks initially had in mind. “It’s gotta be ‘Detroit Rock City,’ ” he said when asked what he wanted to play. (Alas, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones had claimed “Detroit” first.) Nirvana wasn’t on Kiss My Ass, but in 1989 they recorded a cover of KISS’s “Do You Love Me?”

Even now teenagers across the country—oblivious to KISS concepts of the Demon, the Starchild, the Spaceman, or the Cat—might bop around in their air pods singing “I Was Made For Lovin’ You,” the disco-era song reborn in TikTok compilations more than four decades after it broke as the lead single off KISS’s Dynasty album.

KISS wouldn’t have been the global force it became without the voluminous shtick. But the band wouldn’t have been anything at all, of course, without the music. If KISS’s principals were inspired by the Beatles, you can just as easily trace the band’s beginnings further back to the primordial soup of rock and roll, those fertile muddy waters that eventually enabled KISS to evolve into a species all its own. The hardest thing to do in rock and roll, in anything, is to be original. Fifty years after their debut album there has never been another band like KISS.

Here are some photos from LIFE’s new special edition on KISS:

Photography Ross Halfin

Members of the band KISS (from left to right: Ace Frehley, Peter Criss, Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons) in 1975.

Fin Costello/Redferns/Getty

KISS on the town in New York City, 1976.

Richard Corkery/NY Daily News/Getty

Paul Stanley of KISS shredded on stage during a 1975 concert in Detroit.

Fin Costello/Redferns/Getty

KISS posed with members of the Cadillac (Mich.) High School football team, 1975.

Fin Costello/Redferns/Getty

Members of KISS (left to right: Gene Simmons, Ace Frehley and Paul Stanley) display their showmanship during a 1977 concert.

Michael Putland/Hulton/Getty

KISS drummer Peter Criss (left) and band manager Bill Aucoin were filmed for a 1977 NBC News report, “The Land of Hype and Glory.”

NBC NewsWire/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty

Members of the KISS Army fan club on the march in Australia before a performance by the band in Sydney, 1980.

Peter Morris/Fairfax Media/Getty

KISS in Munich, Germany, November 1983.

Fryderyk Gabowicz/picture alliance/Getty

Paul Stanley, Tommy Thayer and Gene Simmons of KISS live in Munich, 2008.

Denis O’Regan/Premium Archive/Getty

KISS being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, April 2014.

Larry Busacca/Getty

LIFE Goes to a Motorcyle Rally

March 23, 2023March 23, 2023 by Bill Syken

It calls itself as “the world’s oldest motorcycle rally,” and in June 2023 the town of Laconia, New Hampshire will host the 100th edition of its Motorcyle Week.

In 1947 LIFE sent photographer Sam Shere to chronicle an early but already bustling version of the gathering, and the magazine’s story in its Aug. 11, 1947 issue was inspired in part by the growth of cycling as a social activity in the years following World War II. “Today’s 200,000 “bike” riders are organized like so many Panzer units into well-disciplined clubs with costumes,” LIFE wrote. “…To these stalwarts the motorcycle is a white charger, an emblem of knighthood. The gas fumes, the roaring wind, and the staccato snorting of the exhaust enchant them.”

Shere’s photos capture the joyful juxtaposition of leather-clad bikers converging on a quaint New England setting. But the images that stand out most feature cyclists from the Motor Maids of America. The group, dedicated to bringing female motorcyclists together, began in 1940 with a few dozen riders and today boasts a membership of about 1,300. The photos from the Laconia rally include shots of the group’s founder, Dot Robinson, with her 15-year-old-daughter Betty. Their Motor Maids uniforms are both jaunty and a tad formal. They make the Motor Maids look like meter maids gone rogue.

They also help the Laconia rally look like a rollicking good time.

A motorcyle rally in Laconia, New Hampshire, July 1947.

Sam Shere/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Motorcycle rally, Laconia, N.H., 1947.

Sam Shere/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Motorcycle rally Laconia, N.H., 1947.

Sam Shere/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dot Robinson (right), founder of the Motor Maids of America, and her daughter Betty, 15, at a motorcycle rally in Laconia, N.H., 1947.

Sam Shere/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dot Robinson (leftt), founder of the Motor Maids of America, and her daughter Betty, 15, at a motorcycle rally in Laconia, N.H., 1947.

Sam Shere/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Motorcycle rally, Laconia, N.H., 1947.

Sam Shere/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Motorcycle rally, Laconia, N.H., 1947.

Sam Shere/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

At a motorcycle rally in Laconia, N.H. in 1947, some riders wore personalized protective leather belts.

Sam Shere/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

At a motorcycle rally in Laconia, N.H. in 1947, some riders wore personalized protective leather belts.

Sam Shere/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

At a motorcycle rally in Laconia, N.H. in 1947, some riders wore personalized protective leather belts.

Sam Shere/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Motorcycle rally, Laconia, N.H., 1947.

Sam Shere/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A race at the annual motorcycle rally in Laconia, N.H., 1947.

Sam Shere/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Young Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Following His Own Tune

March 20, 2023March 20, 2023 by Bill Syken

It says something about the scale of the accomplishments of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar that, more than 30 years after he retired from playing basketball, he remains a regular presence in the public sphere.

In February 2023 the six-time NBA MVP and six-time NBA champion graciously handed a ceremonial basketball to Lebron James to commemorate James breaking Abdul-Jabbar’s NBA all-time scoring record, which had stood since 1984. Abdul-Jabbar was also a central character in the HBO series Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty that debuted in 2022 and has been renewed for a second season (and which Abdul-Jabbar, like many other former Lakers, has criticized for its inaccuracy). Abdul-Jabbar has also gained notice an author and also as an opinion writer, expressing his insights on race and other societal issues.

It was evident that he was not a typical athlete when LIFE profiled Abdul-Jabbar in its Feb. 17, 1967 issue. At that point he was 19 years old and a sophomore at UCLA, and he was still known by his birth name of Lew Alcindor (he would change it after converting to Islam in 1968). This was also before he began wearing his familiar goggles on the court, a protective measure he took after suffering a scratched cornea. It was also before he would lead UCLA to three NCAA championships and a record 71 consecutive wins.

The mood of the LIFE profile is captured by a quote from the young star, “The world wasn’t made for people over six foot two.” (The story gives his height as 7’1 3/8″, though the NBA lists it as 7’2″). The story presents him as a loner who values his privacy and is not at all comfortable with the spotlight. The photos by Bill Ray show a basketball star who, in the course of trying to live an ordinary life, can’t help but stand out because of his size. Abdul-Jabbar towers over his then-girlfriend as they walk around campus. His visit to a music store has the feel of a scene from Gulliver’s Travels. “I wish I could become a musician,” Abdul-Jabbar told LIFE. “That’s the one thing in the world that I would really enjoy.”

Perhaps the most eye-grabbing of Ray’s photos show Abdul-Jabbar shopping for clothing, and getting measured for a pair of dress pants (length: 51 inches). The tailor—who, it must be noted in fairness, seems to have been on the shorter side—needed to stand on a chair to get the Abdul-Jabbar’s measurements. The shop manager quipped to LIFE, “The only pants longer than these are for a redwood tree.”

It’s the kind of not-very-witty joke the cerebral basketball great must have heard a thousand times in his life, and it gives a sense of why, at such a young age, he was already cherishing his privacy.