“I get many letters from all over the country about Sherlock Holmes,” the detective’s creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, once said. “One letter actually contained a request for portraits of Sherlock at different periods of his life.” Other fans requested autographs—from Holmes, not Doyle.
No literary character has blurred the line between reality and fiction more than Sherlock Holmes—and not just because readers continue to believe that he’s real. In the 56 stories and four novels that began with 1887’s A Study in Scarlet, Holmes became one of the first detectives (fictional or otherwise) to use chemistry, toxicology, blood stains, and ballistics to solve crimes—all of which contributed to real-life advances in criminology. In 1910, Holmes inspired a pioneer of modern forensic science, Edmond Locard, to build the world’s first crime lab—23 years after Doyle simply invented one.
In her book Mastermind, psychologist Maria Konnikova uses neuroscience and psychology to show how Holmes’s methodologies can help our brains develop. And the detective’s emphasis on simplicity can help modern doctors who feel overwhelmed by new technical information, according to the journal Medical Humanities. “It is of the highest importance in the art of detection to be able to recognize, out of a number of facts, which are incidental and which vital,” the journal quotes Holmes. “Otherwise your energy and attention must be dissipated instead of being concentrated.”
But Holmes’s real-world relevance exists only because his fictional world seems so, well, real—despite its abundance of delightful absurdities. (A phony hellhound! A blowgunwielding dwarf! A priceless gem hidden in a Christmas goose!) The stories’ heady mix of rationality and gee-whizzery, of credulity and skepticism, is also reflected in the wildly disparate lives of the character and his creator. “The world is big enough for us,” Holmes said. “No ghost need apply.” But Doyle himself believed in ghosts—not to mention fairies.
In LIFE’s special issue on the power of Doyle’s creation, you’ll find the stories of these two men: one of them real, the other realer than real—both of them immortal.
Holmes captured another criminal in this illustration by Sidney Paget, which appeared in the Strand Magazine in October 1903 with the story “The Adventure of the Empty House.”
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An illustration from one of Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous Holmes stories, The Hound of the Baskervilles, published in 1901-2.
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In this illustration by Sidney E. Paget, the first artist to draw the detective, Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty battled to their apparent death at the edge of Reichenbach Falls.
Universal History Archive/Getty
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, with his second wife, Jean Elizabeth Leckie.
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Benedict Cumberbatch played Sherlock Holmes on the BBC in 15 mysteries that aired between 2010 and 2017.
Robert Downey Jr. (right) and Jude Law portrayed Holmes and Watson in the 2011 film “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows,” a follow-up on their 2009 film Sherlock Holmes.
Jackie Gleason was one of the great entertainers of the early years of television. His most enduring work is the sitcom The Honeymooners, whose original run of 39 episodes from 1955-56 is regarded as a classic of the medium, with Rolling Stone recently rating it as one of Top 10 sitcoms ever. But Gleason had many other TV projects in those years, including hosting the wildly popular variety program The Jackie Gleason Show. He would often introduce acts with the signature phrase, “And away we go.”
LIFE magazine repurposed that catchphrase in its Oct. 5, 1962 issue with the headline “And Away We Go—Again,” for a cover story about Gleason’s return to television as the host of a new variety show.
To promote this show, Gleason chartered a train and went on a cross-country tour. (Why a train? Gleason became afraid of flying after a plane that he was on had to make an emergency landing in Tulsa, Oklahoma after two if its engines failed.) As LIFE reported, “The five-car Gleason special, which cost $90,000 for the ten day trip, carried his company of TV performers and a six-piece jazz band.”
LIFE photographer Allan Grant was along for the ride. Three of Grant’s photos from that train trip ran in the magazine—one of him dancing to the music of the live band on the car, one of him with balloons with the words THE GREAT GLEASON EXPRESS, and another of him celebrating a golf shot with some of his famously exuberant body language during one of the tour’s stops. But Grant shot 844 images in total, and they tell a story that goes beyond the show that Gleason was promoting, creating a deep and broad portrait a comedy star.
First, Jackie Gleason liked to live large, and these photos capture that Rabelaisian aspect of his a public persona. At his tour stops Gleason hits the race track and the pool hall as well as the golf course, and in all these settings he is flanked by the attractive women in his traveling party. On the train, he was photographed dancing with those women while the live band played. It feels like everything is set up so that Gleason could at any moment turn to the camera and utter another one of his catch phrases, “How sweet it is.”
Grant’s camera also captures the less sweet moments. There are shots in which the 46-year-old entertained looks understandably exhausted. Then there are the photo-ops that land flat—such as when Gleason mounts a horse-drawn wagon, or pumps one of those old-time hand rail cars.
Above all, the photos show what it means to have the heart of an entertainer.
Gleason, born in Brooklyn, N.Y., came from difficult circumstances. His older brother died when he was three; his father abandoned the family five years later; his mother died of sepsis when he was 19. Many great comedians forged their audience-pleasing skills during tough times, but wherever it came from, Gleason had a gift for entertaining which showed early, emceeing the school talent showas an eighth grader. He would drop out of high school and take a job as a master of ceremonies at a local theater. He developed not only a quick wit but a vaudevillian versatility with song and dance that would serve him throughout his career.
And long after he had made it big, he continued to work tirelessly. His list of show business credits is improbably long. In addition to his television work he appeared in plenty of movies, earning an Academy Award nomination in 1961 for his portrayal of pool legend Minnesota Fats film in The Hustler. Gleason was also prolific in the field of music, issuing an astounding 47 jazz albums. But, as Gleason told LIFE in 1962, “TV is what I love best,” he said, “and I’m too much of a ham to stay away.”
In Grant’s pictures what you see, above all else, is Gleason’s ability to be the life of the party. It’s no mystery why, whenever the train stopped at he met with the public, the halls were packed. When he relocated his show from New York to Miami in 1964, he revved up the Great Gleason Express again for the move down. He certainly a man who enjoyed the ride.
Jackie Gleason on “The Great Gleason Express” tour promoting his return to television, 1962.
Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Jackie Gleason on “The Great Gleason Express” tour promoting his return to television, 1962.
Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Jackie Gleason on “The Great Gleason Express” tour promoting his return to television, 1962.
Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Jackie Gleason on “The Great Gleason Express” tour promoting his return to television, 1962.
Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Jackie Gleason on “The Great Gleason Express” tour promoting his return to television, 1962.
Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Jackie Gleason on “The Great Gleason Express” tour promoting his return to television, 1962.
Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Jackie Gleason on “The Great Gleason Express” tour promoting his return to television, 1962.
Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Jackie Gleason on “The Great Gleason Express” tour promoting his return to television, 1962.
Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Jackie Gleason on “The Great Gleason Express” tour promoting his return to television, 1962.
Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Jackie Gleason on “The Great Gleason Express” tour promoting his return to television, 1962.
Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Jackie Gleason on “The Great Gleason Express” tour promoting his return to television, 1962.
Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Jackie Gleason on “The Great Gleason Express” tour promoting his return to television, 1962.
Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Jackie Gleason on “The Great Gleason Express” tour promoting his return to television, 1962.
Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Jackie Gleason on “The Great Gleason Express” tour promoting his return to television, 1962.
Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Jackie Gleason on “The Great Gleason Express” tour promoting his return to television, 1962.
Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Jackie Gleason on “The Great Gleason Express” tour promoting his return to television, 1962.
Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Jackie Gleason on “The Great Gleason Express” tour promoting his return to television, 1962.
Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Jackie Gleason on “The Great Gleason Express” tour promoting his return to television, 1962.
Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Jackie Gleason on “The Great Gleason Express” tour promoting his return to television, 1962.
Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Jackie Gleason on “The Great Gleason Express” tour promoting his return to television, 1962.
Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Jackie Gleason celebrated making a shot at the Broadmoore Hotel, Denver, during a 1962 publicity trip promoting his return to TV.
Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Comedian Jackie Gleason at Broadmoore Hotel, Denver, during publicity trip re his return to TV.
Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Jackie Gleason on “The Great Gleason Express” tour promoting his return to television, 1962.
Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Jackie Gleason on “The Great Gleason Express” tour promoting his return to television, 1962.
Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Jackie Gleason on “The Great Gleason Express” tour promoting his return to television, 1962.
Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Jackie Gleason on “The Great Gleason Express” tour promoting his return to television, 1962.
Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Jackie Gleason on “The Great Gleason Express” tour promoting his return to television, 1962.
Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Jackie Gleason on “The Great Gleason Express” tour promoting his return to television, 1962.
Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Jackie Gleason on “The Great Gleason Express” tour promoting his return to television, 1962.
Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Jackie Gleason on “The Great Gleason Express” tour promoting his return to television, 1962.
Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Jackie Gleason on “The Great Gleason Express” tour promoting his return to television, 1962.
Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Jackie Gleason on “The Great Gleason Express” tour promoting his return to television, 1962.
Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Jackie Gleason on “The Great Gleason Express” tour promoting his return to television, 1962.
Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Jackie Gleason on “The Great Gleason Express” tour promoting his return to television, 1962.
Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Jackie Gleason on “The Great Gleason Express” tour promoting his return to television, 1962.
The following is from the introduction to LIFE’s new special issue The Lord of the Rings: The Origins, the Stories, the Extraordinary Adventure, available at newsstands and here, online:
“Fantasy has a history of misfires,” filmmaker Peter Jackson told Entertainment Weekly in 2001, just weeks before the release of his first movie based on The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien’s literary landmark. “For every other genre—Westerns, war—you can name truly amazing films. So fantasy is interesting, because there aren’t really any clichés. It’s [a chance] to give an audience an original experience.”
Back in 1937, that’s precisely what the fledgling novelist and distinguished Oxford professor had done with The Hobbit. His debut, set in his imagined world of Middle-earth, drew on a long-running fascination with fairy tales and Norse myth, creating a high-fantasy world unlike anything ever previously committed to paper. The tale of a resolute homebody, hobbit Bilbo Baggins, drawn into a quest—involving wizards, dwarves, elves, giant spiders, a fire-breathing dragon, a hoard of gold, and a massive conflict among five armies—immediately captured the public’s imagination and vaulted the novel to best-seller status.
Tolkien then spent 17 years crafting the sequel, and it proved worth the wait. Spanning more than 1,100 pages over three volumes, The Lord of the Rings told a far more complicated story, dense with mythology and invented languages, and made for a dazzling read. Even if it perplexed certain critics, it gained an immediate foothold with a generation of readers and forever changed the cultural landscape.
“His work reflected the potential of fantasy as a genre, and its influence extended beyond fantasy as well,” says Tolkien scholar Amy H. Sturgis, an author and professor at Lenoir-Rhyne University in North Carolina. “His stories spawned many imitators, but they also continue to inspire creators who seek to tell different tales from other perspectives. Just think of modern mythologies like Star Trek or Star Wars; they use detailed maps and created languages and invented histories for imaginary cultures in order to build immersive worlds and galaxies. They invite audiences to inhabit these fictional landscapes and explore the human condition through their hopeful morality tales. That’s Tolkienian storytelling.”
The Lord of the Rings novels found an especially receptive audience among the American counterculture, becoming fixtures on university bookshelves across the country, which grew their popularity and influence. “The hobbit habit seems to be almost as catching as LSD,” proclaimed Time magazine in 1966. “On many U.S. campuses, buttons declaring FRODO LIVES and GO GO GANDALF—frequently written in Elvish script—are almost as common as football letters.”
Among those Me Generation fans was future author Stephen King, who has cited The Lord of the Rings as one of his 10 favorite novels. “Hobbits were big when I was nineteen,” King writes in the introduction to one of the books in his Tolkien-inspired Dark Tower series. “There were probably half a dozen Merrys and Pippins slogging through the mud at Max Yasgur’s farm during the Great Woodstock Music Festival, twice as many Frodos, and hippie Gandalfs without number,” he continued, naming popular characters from the saga.
In the decades since, The Lord of the Rings has served as a gateway for readers to discover the joys of adventure stories set in worlds far beyond their own. It has inspired authors to explore the furthest reaches of their imaginations and conjure countless stories that are equally beloved. “Of all the authors [that] had an impact on me . . . Tolkien is right up there at the top,” said George R.R. Martin, whose novels spawned the blockbuster TV series Game of Thrones, in 2019. “I yield to no one in my admiration for The Lord of the Rings—I re-read it every few years. It’s one of the great books of the 20th century . . .”
Of Tolkien’s many famous fans, however, few may understand and treasure his work more deeply than comedian and late-night talk show host Stephen Colbert, who can even read Tolkien’s invented Elvish language. “Tolkien’s work has been a lifelong haven for me—truly a light in dark places when all other lights went out,” Colbert wrote in EW in 2014. “For an awkward teenager, Middle-earth was a world I could escape to.”
Filmmaker Peter Jackson read The Lord of the Rings in his later teen years, not realizing he’d someday return Tolkien’s epic to the forefront of popular culture. Released between 2001 and 2003, Jackson’s cinematic Rings trilogy dominated the worldwide box office, earning billions and racking up countless critical accolades. No longer just the domain of fantasy devotees, the story of heroic Frodo Baggins and his quest to destroy the Ring of Power became inescapable—though some longtime Tolkien experts were less enamored with the movies than general audiences.
“Ever since the Jackson adaptations were released there have been fans who confuse what Tolkien wrote with what Jackson filmed,” say Tolkien scholars Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull in an e-mail to LIFE. “Jackson did well from his films, but they sharply [and] sometimes angrily divided Tolkien enthusiasts, some of whom praise them highly and accept their many departures from their source, while others—such as ourselves—find them seriously flawed.”
Subsequent attempts at adaptation have fared less well than Jackson’s Rings juggernaut. Theater producer Kevin Wallace raised about $25 million to mount a three-and-a-half-hour Lord of the Rings musical onstage in Toronto, in 2006. Unfortunately, according to the Guardian, the production was “an unmitigated disaster.” A retooled, trimmed-down version premiered on London’s West End in 2007 but unceremoniously closed the following year.
If anything, the musical’s woes speak to how challenging it can be to get Tolkien right. Jackson struggled with his follow-up adaptation of The Hobbit, which he also made into a trilogy. Although the films once again found commercial success, they didn’t catch fire in quite the same way his Rings trilogy had—by that point, Game of Thrones had become a sensation in its own right, offering fans a more mature take on the fantasy genre. (Jackson also stated that behind-the-scenes turmoil on the productions left him with less time to prepare than he might have liked.)
There are yet more Tolkien projects ahead. Amazon announced a Lord of the Rings series, due to arrive in 2022. Set during Middle-earth’s Second Age, the TV show will take place thousands of years prior to the period of Jackson’s movies. Early reports indicate that the first season will consist of 20 episodes, all shot in New Zealand, on a staggering $465 million budget.
Future adaptations will certainly come and go, but regardless of their success or failure, Tolkien’s writings will endure. Even though his stories were conceived long ago and unfold in a landscape different from our own, the crises the characters face and the work’s underlying themes remain imminently relatable and relevant.
“We live in a complicated world with multiple, simultaneous crises unfolding,” says Sturgis. “It is easy to feel not only stressed but also helpless and hopeless. . . . Tolkien reminds us that the smallest and most humble can be heroes; there is a part everyone can play in fighting the darkness and making the world better. Most importantly, Tolkien acknowledges that even in the direst of times, we have reason to hope. Our need for consolation, inspiration, and hope is evergreen.”
J .R. R. Tolkien, Oxford professor and author of The Lord of the Rings, 1955.
Haywood Magee/Picture Post/Getty
In The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring, those forming an alliance to wage war against evil included Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), Legolas (Orlando Bloom) and Boromir (Sean Bean) and, in the background, Gandalf (Ian McKellan) and Gimli (John Rhys-Davis).
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Sam (Sean Astin) had little trust for Gollum in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.
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Frodo (Elijah Wood) beheld the enchanting ring in The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.
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A rightwraith tracked Frodo (Elijah Wood), Sam (Sean Astin) Pippin (Billy Boyd) and Merry (Dominic Monaghan) early on their journey in The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring.
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Andy Serkis, with the help of special effects.,played the role of Gollum in The Lord of the Rings movies.
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Elrond (Hugo Weaving) and Arwen (Liv Tyler) in The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.
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Gandalf (Ian McKellan) took up arms in one of the brilliantly staged battle scenes in The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.
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Gandalf (Ian McKellan) in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
Director Peter Jackson (center) was flanked by screenwriters Fran Walsh (left) and Philippa Boyens after they won the Academy Award for best adapted screenplay for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, February 29, 2004.
Some perspective: When White, who died on Dec. 31, 2021, eighteen days shy of her hundredth birthday, made her first entrance almost a century ago, Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison were alive, Lindbergh’s flight to Paris was several years away—and so were talking pictures, The Great Gatsby and penicillin. Babe Ruth had just hit his prime, the divine Sarah Bernhardt graced European stages and Impressionist master Claude Monet was still turning out water lilies.
White’s own career, meanwhile, would last more than 80 years, longer than the average American life expectancy, the show business equivalent of several geological epochs. She broke in with the dawn of television—in 1939, the year RCA introduced the technology at the World’s Fair, hyping its potential to foster the “unification of the life of the nation.” Through all the turbulent decades to come, White would endure, defying the odds of a brutally capricious industry in which even bona fide stars shine brilliantly for a few years, then burn out, fade away and cash their residual checks.
But Betty White never left us; never made anyone’s “Where Are They Now?” issue or “You Won’t Believe What They Look Like Today!” listicle. She was always there—present, accounted for and active, usually in front of a camera and eventually on the Web. And she did more than simply survive. Other icons have stuck around the pop culture landscape so long they came to be viewed as creaky relics—think of Bob Hope, whose interminable twilight made it hard imagine that he was an edgy and immensely influential comic in his day.
That’s the thing: It was always Betty White’s day—sunny and hot, in Cleveland and points beyond. By some miraculous alchemy she managed to remain popular—au courant, at times even outré, winning hearts and minds up and down America’s family tree, from the Greatest Generation to Gens X, Y and Z. White’s earliest fans could huddle up in front of the tube with their great-grandkids (or was it great-great?) and share a laugh—never at Betty, always with her. Most often the trigger was White’s comic trademark, the bawdy line—or sometimes scathing putdown—delivered with your mom’s smile and a cobra’s timing.
While her appeal may be universal, each age demographic does have its own Betty White. For the over-70 set, it may be Ike-Age Betty of the fabulous ’50s. That’s when she starred in (and produced) the sitcom Life With Elizabeth and pitched innumerable products as a go-to commercial spokeswoman. (Who else could sell Geritol at 32?) Boomers know White as the quippy game-show queen and talk-show guest—and of course for her Emmy-winning turn from 1970–77 on The Mary Tyler Moore Show as Sue Ann Nivens, the saccharine “Happy Homemaker,” who was a sexually ravenous harpy off camera.
The ’80s and ’90s brought The Golden Girls’ sweetly ingenuous Rose, the role and show that may first define her, and then the 21st century delivered a trove of new delights—caustic Elka on Hot in Cleveland; droll cameos on sitcoms, in Super Bowl spots and Funny or Die videos; hosting Saturday Night Live—after a national Internet campaign on her behalf. Google her and you’ll find sites like “Why We Love Betty White” and “30 Reasons Why Betty White is the Greatest Person Ever.”
So, what was it about Betty White? What was the secret sauce—or perhaps it was a love potion—behind her undimmed awesomeness. Perhaps the answer is something like Louis Armstrong’s reply to the question What is jazz?: “If you have to ask, you’ll never know.” But to hazard a guess, the source of her sorcery may simply lie in what can only be described as her quality of Betty Whiteness. First, that heart-shaped face, all chiseled cheeks and deep dimples. The Pepsodent smile, the turned-down nose and those eyes—sparkling, of course, but always with the puckish glint of someone who knows something we don’t. Then the voice—warm, merry and quintessentially American, like a heartland good morning. What you saw and heard was what you got, by all accounts. White lived 10 decades in this unforgiving world, conveying relentless good cheer all the way. That indomitable spirit sustained her through the devastating loss of her life’s love—third husband Allen Ludden, the popular game-show host. He died when White was not yet 60, four years before The Golden Girls began. “You can’t become a professional mourner,” White advised. “It doesn’t help you or others. Keep the person in your heart all the time. Replay the good times. Be grateful for the years you had.”
Of course, White also said things like “Why do people say ‘grow some balls’? Balls are weak and sensitive. If you wanna be tough, grow a vagina. Those things can take a pounding.” She was earthy and ribald to the end, a gingerbread cookie spiked with tequila, and somehow even though we knew it was coming, we were always surprised. The racy old lady is a stock comic character, but White defied the stereotype—her risqué zingers weren’t for incongruous effect or Mae Westian camp. She was genuinely, unabashedly sexual—with #nofilter.
That was one of her most valuable contributions. Aging can be a terrifying prospect, and ageism is epidemic in American society. If you’re over 50 you’re dead wood in many quarters, even invisible (except to AARP, which won’t leave you alone). Seniors, the elderly, people of “a certain age”—whatever you call them, they’re often treated as second-class citizens, diminished in ways large and small—subject to microaggressions, to use a current term of art. In a youth-obsessed culture, being called “old” is an insult. There’s the eye roll of millennial contempt; still worse may be the well-meaning condescension. Think of those cell-phone commercials that suggest retirees are too dim to handle technology. And of course, they’re post-sexual. How many of us, when young, saw an older couple hold hands or kiss, and thought, Aww, aren’t they cute? Reducing them, as it were, to puppies or kittens?
Betty White wasn’t cute, at least not in that way. And she was always in her prime. She may have logged more years than some Monets last on museum walls, but like the Frenchman’s garden landscapes, she remained forever fresh and radiant. And she never got old.
Betty White in 1957, photographed for her sitcom Date With the Angels.
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Betty White and actor Lorne Greene hosted the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1965.
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Betty White often delighted as a guest on game shows, as she did here on Password in 1967 with host, Allen Ludden (right), who was also her third husband.
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White starred as Rose Nyland on the beloved sitcom Golden Girls; here she appears with (from left to right) guest star Burt Reynolds and co-stars Estelle Getty, Bea Arthur and Rue McLanahan.
Alice S. Hall/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty Images
Betty White and Mary Tyler Moore (right) presented Tina Fey with the Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series for her show 30 Rock in 2008.
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Betty White performed with Molly Shannon (center) and Ana Gasteyer (left) on Saturday Night Live in 2010.
Ever since the first Winter Olympics in 1924, women athletes have competed for gold with the same intensity, grace and power as their male counterparts — even if, in ’24, the only events in which women were allowed to take part were figure- and pairs-skating. At the 2022 edition of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, meanwhile, competitors from around the globe will put it all on the line in a diverse array of events that includes new events such as big air freestyle, monobob (or one-person bobsleedding) and snowboard cross. Among the star attractions on the U.S. team are women such as skier Mikaela Shiffrin, bobsledder Lolo Jones, snowboarder Chloe Kim, and short track speed skater Maame Biney.
Here, in acknowledgement of the long, icy, often-uphill trail that sportswomen have had to navigate through the years, LIFE offers a series of Winter Olympics photos from the 1940s to the 1970s — pictures featuring the still-famous (Peggy Fleming, Lidiya Skoblikova, Andrea Mead Lawrence) as well as more than a few largely forgotten female athletes who made a mark in the Olympics, whether they medaled or not.
Fifteen-year-old Andrea Mead Lawrence, the first American alpine skier to win Olympic gold, trained in 1947.
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Six-time U.S. national figure-skating champion Gretchen Merrill, St. Moritz Olympics, 1948.
Mark Kauffman/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
French figure skater Jacqueline du Bief, St. Moritz, 1948.
Mark Kauffman/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
British figure skater Jeanette Altwegg, bronze medalist at St. Moritz, 1948.
Walter Sanders/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Canadian Patricia Gault, St. Moritz, 1948.
Mark Kauffman/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Olympic figure skater, St. Moritz, 1948.
Walter Sanders/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Gretchen Merrill, St. Moritz Olympics, 1948.
Walter Sanders/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
American skier Brynhild Grasmoen, St. Moritz, 1948.
Walter Sanders/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Great Britain’s Sue Holmes, Cortina, Italy, 1956.
Frank Scherschel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Unidentified skater, Cortina, Italy, 1956.
Frank Scherschel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Unidentified athlete, Cortina, Italy, 1956.
Frank Scherschel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
American figure-skating silver medalist Carol Heiss, Cortina, Italy, 1956.
American silver medalist Penny Pitou (left) and German downhill gold medalist Heidi Biebl, Squaw Valley, 1960.
Nat Farbman/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Slalom silver medalist Betsy Snite (USA), Squaw Valley, 1960.
Ralph Crane/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
American downhill skier Penny Pitou (silver medalist), Squaw Valley, 1960.
Nat Farbman/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
American downhill skier Penny Pitou (silver medalist), Squaw Valley, 1960.
Ralph Crane/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Unidentified athlete, Squaw Valley, 1960.
George Silk/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Figure skater Carol Heiss (gold medal, Ladies Singles), Squaw Valley, 1960.
George Silk/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Figure skater Carol Heiss (gold medal, Ladies Singles), Squaw Valley, 1960.
Ralph Crane/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Russian speed-skating gold medalist Lidiya Skoblikova (center), with Poland’s Elwira Seroczynska (left, silver) and Helena Pilejczyk (right, bronze), Squaw Valley, 1960.
Ralph Crane/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Unidentified athlete, Innsbruck Olympics, 1964.
George Silk/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Unidentified athlete, Innsbruck Olympics, 1964.
George Silk/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
American skier Jean Saubert (center) received kisses from French downhill gold and silver medalists (and sisters), Christine and Marielle Goitschel, Innsbruck Olympics, 1964.
Ralph Crane/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Unidentified athlete, Innsbruck Olympics, 1964.
George Silk/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
Left to right: Christine Goitschel, Jean Saubert, and Marielle Goitschel, Innsbruck, 1964
George Silk/Life Pictures/Shutterstock
American speed skater and four-time Olympic medalist Dianne Holum, Grenoble Olympics, 1968.
The desperate quest to please loved ones can lead to purchases around holiday time that you would never consider the other eleven months out of the year.
In 1953 LIFE acknowledged the occasional absurdity of holiday commerce with a guide to some the odder “fancy” items being offered to shoppers. LIFE photographer Yale Joel wittily executed the idea by shooting these silly objects in a high-fashion setting, as if a jewel-encrusted spray gun was in fact the pinnacle of glamour.
Then, in 1969, photographer Yale Joel came back with a more outlandish version of the same premise.
The guide in LIFE’s December 7, 1953 issue was headlined “Good-for-Nothing Gifts,” with the tagline, “they are better to give than to receive.” According to the story, one of the hottest gift of 1952 was—for real—a sequined fly swatter. This meant that in 1953, manufacturers produced fancy versions of other household objects to try to capitalize on the trend. This led to all sorts of odd offerings: “Holiday shoppers whose main object is to pamper the recipient may choose jeweled backscratchers which are almost too pretty to use, velvet eyeglasses which are designed to be worn instead of a hat, timepieces for pets who cannot tell time.”
Thus did ordinary objects gain big price tags. The encrusted backscratcher, for instance, retailed for $6.95 at Lord and Taylor—which would about $70 in 2020 prices. Even today, you can buy backscratchers in packages of six for ten bucks.
But Lord & Taylor’s bejeweled backscratcher was a major bargain compared to the gifts Joel shot for another tongue-and-cheek gift guide years later in LIFE’s December 12, 1969 issue. This guide promised to have “something for everyone, and a few things for nobody.”
The guide included an 80-carat diamond for $450,000 (more than $3 million today), a “Masterpiece of the Month” club for art lovers ($1 million, or $7.2 million today) in which buyers would receive works of 20th century masters by mail, and a kit for making your own fur coat from 75 sable fur pelts for $125,000, “including tailoring.”
Then there’s a giant phone receiver ($5, or $36 today), which would get this gift guide’s award for Best Sight Gag.
If nothing else, Joel and the editors of LIFE seemed to be having fun. Maybe that’s the real lesson for stressed-out shoppers: It’s the holidays. You may want everything to be perfect, but don’t forget to enjoy yourself.
This dog collar, which featured a Swiss watch, was made by Hammacher Schlemmer and cost $50 in 1953; a version with a compass instead of a watch cost $22.
This Honeywell “kitchen computer,” suggested for budgets, menus and other calculations, went for $10,600, with a two-week course in programming included.
The cost of creating “a unique fur coat, with 75 of the world’s most expensive pelts” from Russian crown sable was $125,000—including tailoring—in 1969.
