Page 37 – LIFE

There’s Quaint, and Then There’s a Story on Phone-Obsessed Teens from 1956

August 23, 2022August 10, 2022 by Bill Syken

In 2022 teenagers spending an average of seven hours a day engaged with their screens. There’s plenty of reason to wonder why this is ruinous—addictive algorithms, the highs and lows of being liked or ignored on social media, and so on.

But a LIFE photo essay from 1956 shows that while the power of the cellphone is new, the phenomenon of teenagers being addicted to phones goes back to the days of the rotary dial.

In 1956 LIFE staff photographer Grey Villet shot a photo essay documenting the teenage obsession with telephones. The subject was timely back them because the 1950s were the decade in which in became landlines became more common than not in American homes. Then as now, teenagers loved to use phones to connect with their friends.

Villet’s essay never ran in the magazine, so we don’t know much about the people in the story, including where they lived or their exact age. But Villet shot enough pictures of them away from home to confirm that they were high school students.

The details of their lives are secondary, though, to the landline era that Villet captured so vividly.

There’s the picture of a teenaged girl running down the stairs after her little brother has answered the phone. The photo captures the particular panic of a personal call being intercepted by a nosy sibling in the same home.

Another picture shows mother trying to wrest the receiver from a daughter who has been tying up the line. And another of a brother popping into her room, presumably checking to see when she will be done.

But Villet’s piece de resistance is a photo sequence of a teenage girl in her room, going through physical contortions over the course of a long phone conversation. She is on her back, then flipped over, legs akimbo. And then she slides halfway off the bed, and then all the way down to her floor. If George Balanchine had choreographed a ballet titled “Teenage Girl Talks on Phone, 1956” this is what it would look like.

That was all decades ago, and now the percentage of households with landline only is in the low single digits. Since 2014 households with only cellphones became the most common sort.

The most hilariously dated aspect of Villet’s 1956 essay is not the sight of an entire household sharing a phone that performs no additional functions. It’s the photos that Villet took of the kids outside the house. We see them at a basketball game, trying on a dress at a store, and at a school dance. It’s not clear exactly what the point of those shots was meant to be back then, but what stands out now is that these kids are enjoying all kinds of activities without a cellphone in sight.

Photo essay on teenagers and telephones, 1956.

Grey Villet/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A Surreal and Starry Tour of The Universal Studio Lot

August 4, 2022August 4, 2022 by Bill Syken

Universal has been around since the beginning of cinema. Founded in 1912, it is now the oldest surviving studio in the United States. The company has given us such memorable creations as Abbott and Costello, Norman Bates, E.T., the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park and the drivers of the Fast and Furious series, just to name a few.

Tourists wanting a peek behind the curtain of how movies are made have been flocking to the famous Universal Studios tour 1964. The year before that—and not long after the studio had been acquired by a new corporate overlord, MCA— LIFE photographer John Dominis took a personal journey around dream factory, and his pictures from that visit are delightfully surreal.

In one photo, extras in cowboy costumes ate lunch at the studio commissary while another Native American extra stood patiently behind them. In another, a man walked through the lot carrying boulders on his shoulders, looking like he was accomplishing some Herculean task when he was in fact carrying props made of rubber.

And what is more surreal that seeing the stars of the silver screen in everyday life. The photos of Cary Grant and of Gregory Peck seem to have been taken after Dominis bumped into these legendary leading men as they were walking about. Dominis also catches actors Tippi Hedren and Angie Dickinson at work. Hedren is in a screen test for the Alfred Hitchcock movie Marnie, while Dickinson is having makeup done, and that is likely the strangest picture of the bunch. A makeup artist is creating a mask for her, and the contrast between the cool glamour of the movie star and the disembodied faces from other masks looming behind her looks like it could be the setup for a horror film.

Dominis’s pictures hint at why the Universal tour remains such an attraction. In most businesses the rule is that you’re better off not knowing how the sausage is made, but movies are the exception. Going behind the scenes only deepens the attraction.

The Universal studio lot in Hollywood, 1963.

John Dominis/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Actor Cary Grant at the Universal studio lot in Hollywood, 1963.

John Dominis/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

WIth a commisary counter full of movie extras clad as cowboys. lone Native American extra Iron Eyes Cody stands waiting for a seat during lunch break in filming of a Western TV show at Universal Studios, 1963.

John Dominis/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Actress Tippi Hedren screen testing for Alfred Hitchcock’s movie Marnie at Universal Studios, 1963.

.John Dominis/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Makeup artist Bud Westmore prepared actress Angie Dickinson for mask-making at Universal City Studios in Los Angeles, California, 1963.

John Dominis/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Universal studio lot, Hollywood, 1963.

John Dominis/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A prop man pulled a cart at the Universal studio lot, 1963.

John Dominis/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A prop man pulled a car at the Universal lot, Hollywood, 1963.

John Dominis/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A prop man pushed a stuffed lion at the Universal lot in Hollywood, 1963.

John Dominis/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Universal studio lot, Hollywood, 1963.

John Dominis/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Men at work on the Universal lot in Hollywood, 1963.

John Dominis/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Cats gathering for a feed at the Universal lot in Hollywood, 1963.

John Dominis/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Universal studio lot, Hollywood, 1963.

John Dominis/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Universal studio lot in Hollywood, 1963.

John Dominis/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Actor Gregory Peck, Universal studio lot, 1963.

John Dominis/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

People traveling by wagons in a scene from a film at Universal studio lot in Hollywood, 1963.

John Dominis/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A prop man carried large rubber rocks at the Universal studio lot, Hollywood, 1963.

John Dominis/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Prop men tossed a rubber rock at the Universal studio lot in Hollywood, 1963.

John Dominis/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A night view of the Universal studio lot, Hollywood, 1963.

John Dominis/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Seeds of Inspiration: Wonderful Watermelon Moments

August 11, 2022July 29, 2022 by Bill Syken

The watermelon is a big red signal of summer. And as the photo at the top of the story suggests, there is something inherently fun about this juicy and oversized fruit. In that photo from the old game show Play Your Hunch, the couple had to guess the weight of the watermelon, and you would be hard pressed to name anything else in the grocery aisle that would make the challenge as zany as that hefty—we’ll guess 19 pounds—piece of produce.

The wonderful watermelon popped up many times over the years in the pages of LIFE, and in all kinds of settings. It was once even the centerpiece of a boozy beach blowout.

A 1948 story in LIFE carried the oh-so-tantalizing title Fun on the Beach: Summer Finds Americans Shedding Clothing and Inhibitions at Seaside. The watermelon was the star of the party, as revelers turned it into a vehicle for alcohol. One caption spoke enviously of the young people “stretching out and sipping spiked watermelon punch.” The photos here give rich documentation of the party people arriving at the San Diego beach with watermelons in tow, infusing the watermelons with alcohol, and then drinking from the watermelons as day turned to night.

LIFE has on more than one occasion gone to the farms to show where these mighty melons are harvested. LIFE staff photographers Wallace Kirkland, chronicler of so many scenes of American agriculture, took photos of a watermelon harvest in Illinois in the 1940s, and the legendary Loomis Dean documented workers in the fields of Imperial Valley in Califlornia, showing in one beautiful picture how the laborers formed a human conveyer belt to help get the melons into the back of a truck.

In 1960 LIFE applied a deliriously dramatic headline, “Major Melon Massace in Metuchen” to the story of a watermelon eating contest in New Jersey. A local real estate agency had sponsored the contest in an example of old-school brand building. The photos, in addition to showing cute kids chomping away, show how watermelons have evolved between then and now, because all those melons had the black mature seeds that have all but been eliminated from the product on sale in today’s grocery stores. (Seedless watermelons, a testimony to the power fo plant breeding, began to take over the market in the 1990s, ). At the New Jersey contest those black seeds inspired gamesmanship among contests who picked them out before the contest’s official start. The story closed with a quote from one boy who hadn’t. He complained, “I swallowed so many seeds I’m going to grow a watermelon patch in my stomach.”

A spiked watermelon beach party in San Diego, 1948.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Migrant workers harvesting watermelons in the Imperial Valley, California, 1947.

Loomis Dean/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Workers harvesting watermelons in the Imperial Valley, California, 1947.

Loomis Dean/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

An Illinois watermelon harvest, 1946.

Wallace Kirkland/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A little boy eating watermelon by the handful while sitting on a pile of melons, 1946.

Wallace Kirkland/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Watermelon harvesting, 1943.

Wallace Kirkland/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Watermelon harvest, 1943.

Wallace Kirkland/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Scene from a watermelon harvest, 1943.

Wallace Kirkland/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Watermelon-eating contest, New Jersey, 1960

Joe Scherschel/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

After the watermelon-eating contest, New Jersey, 1960.

Joe Scherschel/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Watermelon eating contest in New Jersey, 1960.

Joe Scherschel/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Watermelon contest, 1960.

Joe Scherschel/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Watermelon-eating contest, New Jersey, 1960.

Joe Scherschel/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Watermelon-eating contest winners Barbara Walp, 10, and Willy Jones, 13, were crowned king and queen of the watermelon festival by Miss New Jersey, Susan Barber, 1960.

Joe Scherschel/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Leigh Wiener’s Art and Craft

July 6, 2022June 29, 2022 by Bill Syken

Leigh Wiener was passionate about photography. He made a career of it, first of all, shooting more than 300 assignments for LIFE and many more for the Los Angeles Times and other publications. But he was an advocate for the craft as well. He was the creator and cohost of a television show called Talk About Pictures, devoted to the practice of photography. His guests were either fellow professional photographers or celebrities who liked to spend time behind the camera as well as in front of it, and the show aired from 1978 to ’82 on NBC regional affiliates and then on PBS. Wiener’s dedication to the finer points of the craft also comes through in his book How Do You Photograph People? which serves both a collection of his portrait work and also an instructional guide.

Wiener was born in Brooklyn in 1929 and built his career in Los Angeles. His range is such that he published a limited edition book on the death of Marilyn Monroe and also had an exhibition staged of the photos he took on the last day of Alcatraz Island. He died in 1993, from a rare skin disease that may have been the long-term result of his photographing atomic tests and other nuclear related subjects in the 1950s. His collections are managed by his son Devik, himself retired from a four-decade career working in lighting for film and television shows in Los Angeles.

Many of the stories about Leigh Wiener reflect a dedication to getting the picture right. Take the photo he shot of Simone Signoret at the 1960 Academy Awards, the moment before her name was announced as the winner of the Oscar for Lead Actress for her performance in Room at the Top. Photographers were not supposed to be in the auditorium at all, but Wiener had bribed his way into a light stand location with three bottles of Scotch. As he told the story on an episode of his television show, he snapped his photo at the moment the presenter was saying “And the winner is….” After the photo ran in LIFE, Wiener received a letter from Signoret, saying, “I think your photograph just goes to prove the old adage, that in moments of crisis, we reach for those things we treasure the most.”

Some photos here show how Wiener used his technical prowess to achieve artistic results. For instance, his dark, moody photo of John F. Kennedy was taken at 3:30 a.m. in April 1960, when the then-presidential candidate was on an airplane reviewing a speech, and they had just been served a late dinner of fish stew. The portrait captures the particular grind and loneliness of the quest for higher office. “How can you take a picture of me in this light with no lights or flash?” Kennedy asked. Wiener told Kennedy, “It’s the oysters.”

The actual explanation involved exposure time and a steady hand. Devik tells a story about a time his father was shooting in low light, and the subject was Miles Davis. They were in a dark club and Wiener wasn’t using a flash. The legendary jazz man questioned whether the pictures were going to come out. Wiener joked to Davis, “When you blow your horn, does anything come out?”

Wiener considered building a rapport with his subjects as important as knowing the technical aspects of his camera. Devik relates that when his father photographed art collector Norton Simon, he educated himself on Simon’s favorite painters, turning what was supposed to be a forty-minute photo session into one that lasted hours.

Wiener’s ability to find the best picture in any situation even extended to baby photos of Devik. Leigh Wiener recounted the story of the photo of Devik that appears below and in How Do You Photograph People? : “At four weeks old, I photographed him on a print-covered couch. I made a 16 x 20 enlargement of the print and, a month later, photographed Devik again, sitting on the couch in front of the first picture. Again, I made a 16 x 20 blow-up, and four weeks later he was back on the couch in front of this second picture. I repeated the procedure every month until I had a single photograph showing Devik from four to thirty weeks old……What started as a joke and changed into a challenge evolved into an idea that resulted in two pages in LIFE magazine.”

The story calls to mind what Leigh Weiner once identified in an interview as a guiding principle: it’s not the camera equipment or the situation that makes a defining picture. It’s the photographer.

French actress Simone Signoret sat in audience, hands at her breasts, at the 1960 Academy Awards as the presenter was about to announce that she had won the Oscar for Lead Actress for her performance in Room at the Top.

© Leigh Wiener

Lyndon Johnson as a presidential candidate, 1960. Photographer Leigh Weiner had prompted the pose by yelling, “Senator, I’m from LIFE. Look this way and pretend you’re president!”

Courtesy of the Leigh Wiener estate, © Leigh Wiener

John F. Kennedy reviewed a speech at 3:30 a.m. on an airplane flight during his presidential campaign in 1960.

Courtesy of the Leigh Wiener estate, © Leigh Wiener

Miles Davis, 1961.

Courtesy of the Leigh Wiener estate, © Leigh Wiener

Paul Newman, 1961.

Courtesy of the Leigh Wiener estate, © Leigh Wiener

Duke Ellington, 1961.

Courtesy of the Leigh Wiener estate, © Leigh Wiener

Alcratraz on its last day as a working prison, 1963.

Courtesy of the Leigh Wiener estate, © Leigh Wiener

Actress Marilyn Monroe’s body being taken from her Los Angeles home after her death in 1962.

© Leigh Wiener

The body of actress Marilyn Monroe covered in a shroud in the back of a car being taken to the morgue, 1962.

© Leigh Wiener

A broker using binoculars to check the board for a phone client in the Hollywood offices of Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner and Smith in 1960.

© Leigh Wiener

Actor Lorne Greene (left) talking with his broker in the Hollywood offices of Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner and Smith in 1960.

© Leigh Wiener

Leigh Wiener made this picture by photographing his son Devik on a sofa at four weeks and then photographing him four weeks later with the previous photo, and repeating the process until Devik was 30 weeks old.

Courtesy of the Leigh Wiener estate, © Leigh Wiener

Leigh Weiner teaching his class at UCLA Extension in March 1983.

Courtesy of the Leigh Wiener estate, © Leigh Wiener

Ginger on an Earlier “Fateful Trip”: Tina Louise’s Debutante Ball

June 29, 2022June 29, 2022 by Bill Syken

Tina Louise will forever be remembered for playing the movie star Ginger Grant on Gilligan’s Island. The comedy about a desert island castaways ran for three seasons from 1964 to 1967 but became even more popular in the 1970s and 1980s as a syndicated sitcom that ran in the afternoons, when kids had just come home from school.

More than a decade before setting out on that “fateful trip” on the S.S. Minnow, as the show’s theme song put it, an 18–year-old Tina Louise appeared in LIFE, and undoubtedly Ginger would have approved of the photo display. The magazine presented Louise as a young woman of glamor and talent who drew outsized attention from the boys.

In its Feb. 2, 1953 issue legendary LIFE photographer Nina Leen chronicled a big night for Louise, who at the time was a budding actress known as Tina Myers, in the hardly-deserted isle of Manhattan. At the beginning of the night Leen photographed Louise backstage at the Broadway musical revue in which she was performing. Later that night Leen captured Louise as she made her society debut in a ball at the Waldorf Astoria.

Here’s how LIFE described the young woman’s big night:

Tina Myers started out the evening as one of the 15 chorus girls in the Bette Davis Broadway Show, Two’s Company. She got through her sketch in which she speaks two lines and then, being excused from the last two numbers, ran to her dressing room to don a white, wide-skirted gown and go off to a cotillion. For Tina, 18, and the daughter of a wealthy New York manufacturer, was about to make her debut in society one week after her debut in the professional theater. There were 111 debutantes coming out with Tina at the Waldorf Astoria. They were all greeted with polite applause as they curtsied. But when Tina appeared she was met by a storm of gasps and wolf whistles.

After being featured in the magazine, Louise continued to act in stage shows for several years, before moving onto the movies and television. In 1958 she won the Golden Globe for New Star of the Year for her movie debut in the drama God’s Little Acre. (Other notable winners of that particular Golden Globe award, which was handed out from 1947 to ’82, include Jane Fonda, Jayne Mansfield and Natalie Wood.)

On Giligan’s Island, Louise’s performance as Ginger played off glamorous qualities that attracted Leen’s camera back in 1952. In one episode Louise performed the song “I Want to Be Loved By You”, and that clip captures both the fun of her character, and of the show in general. These seven castaways have supposedly been stuck on this island for ages, but there goes Ginger, with her glitzy gown and full makeup and perfectly done hair, performing a song that Marilyn Monroe had also sung in the movie Some Like it Hot. In that movie Monroe performed with a big band; on Gilligan’s Island, Louise sings to the accompaniment of a phonograph rigged up by a professor and operated by a millionaire in a blue blazer.

No one will mistake Gilligan’s Island for Lord of the Flies—or any of the more gritty shows about castaways such as The Wilds or Yellowjackets that focus on the struggle for survival. But it was unmistakable fun, and a reason why that former debutante and the rest of her co-stars remain so warmly remembered.

Debutante-actress Tina Louise, nee Meyer, changed clothes backstage in her Broadway dressing room before headed to her debutante ball, 1952.

Nina Leen/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Debutante-actress Tina Louise, nee Meyer, putting on false eyelashes in her Broadway dressing room before the night of her society debut, 1952.

Nina Leen/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Debutante-actress Tina Louise, nee Meyer, getting help with her dress backstage at her Broadway show before heading off to her society bedut, 1952..

Nina Leen/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Actress Tina Louise, getting ready for formal debut at Waldorf Astoria, 1952.

Nina Leen/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Debutante-actress Tina Louise, nee Meyer, getting help with her dress on the night of her society debut, 1952. A card that came with flowers which had been sent to her read, “This is your night. Make the most of it.”

Nina Leen/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Actress Tina Louise at age 18, getting ready for her formal debut at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City, New York, December 1952.

Nina Leen/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Debutante-actress Tina Louise, nee Meyer, being escorted to the Waldorf on the night of her society debut, 1952

Nina Leen/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Debutante-actress Tina Louise, center, attending a party on the night of her society debut at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City, 1952.

Nina Leen/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Debutante-actress Tina Louise, nee Meyer, giving a curtsy upon entering the room with her escort, 1952.

Nina Leen/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Actress Tina Louise, 18, on the night of her formal debut at Waldorf Astoria, 1952.

Nina Leen/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Climb, Baby, Climb: Neil Diamond On the Rise, 1972

June 28, 2022June 28, 2022 by Bill Syken

Neil Diamond is slated to have his name up in lights on Broadway in the November 2022 when “A Beautiful Noise, the Neil Diamond Musical” makes its New York debut. The show will open 50 years after LIFE featured Diamond during another stint on Broadway. In 1972 he was playing a series of 20 sold-out shows at the Winter Garden Theatre, best known as the home of such long-running productions as Cats and Mamma Mia.

“He is the first solo performer to headline the vast Winter Garden Theatre since Al Jolson in the 1930s,” wrote LIFE is its Oct. 20, 1972 issue, in a story headlined “Diamond in the Smooth.”

(The reference to Al Jolson was prescient, as in 1980 Diamond would star in a remake of The Jazz Singer, which was originally a Jolson vehicle).

The LIFE story captured the popularity and talent of Diamond, but as so often happens with this particular singer, the writer also felt obliged to cataloging the extent to which Neil Diamond is not cool:

The bedrock rock fans tend to snort disdainfully at his music as lightweight and—the cardinal sin—commercial. So it is—his audience is middle-of-the-road unbaggable—kids and little old ladies, young marrieds and balding mortgage-loan men, plus a lot of insecure medium-cool freaks who prudently hide their Neil DIamond records in old Rolling Stones jackets. He has performed in equal success in Carnegie Hall and before a hall full of Minnesota farmers.

However uncool he may have been, he is certainly distinctive. For some of his LIFE photos he posed in fencing gear—taken because Diamond had competed in fencing in college, at NYU. Other photos place a strong emphasis on family, including not just his wife, child, and parents, but an uncle who had flown in from Florida for the shows.

Diamond is also wildly successful. He has sold 130 million albums, and his music has shown great staying power. His song Sweet Caroline is a staple at sports stadiums, and especially at Fenway Park in Boston. Diamond, who was born on Jan. 21, 1941, officially retired from performing in 2018 due to Parkinson’s disease. But in June 2022 he made an appearance at a Red Sox game and led fans in a singalong to Sweet Caroline. Standing next Diamond was Will Swenson, who will be playing the lead in the Neil Diamond musical; the show is in previews in Boston before moving to New York in the fall.

Neil Diamond in New York City, 1972.

MICHAEL MAUNEY/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Marcia Diamond (right) watched as her husband Neil clipped their son Jessie’s nails in a dressing room at the Winter Garden Theatre, 1972.

MICHAEL MAUNEY/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Neil Diamond putting on makeup before a performance at the Winter Garden Theatre in New York City, 1972.

MICHAEL MAUNEY/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Neil Diamond and Ethel Kennedy backstage after the first in his series of shows at the Winter Garden Theatre, 1972; Diamond had made that opening show a benefit for the Robert Kennedy Foundation.

MICHAEL MAUNEY/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Neil Diamond was surrounded by family—including his parents at his right and his brother and sister-in-law behind him—as the first reviews of his New York performance were read aloud, 1972.

MICHAEL MAUNEY/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Neil Diamond with his uncle Jules Rapaport, who flew in from Florida for his nephew’s concert at the Winter Garden Theatre, 1972.

MICHAEL MAUNEY/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Neil Diiamond practiced fencing, 1972; the singer had attended NYU on a fencing scholarship.

MICHAEL MAUNEY/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Neil Diamond, who attended NYU on a fencing scholarship, practiced in 1972.

MICHAEL MAUNEY/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Neil Diamond in concert at the Winter Garden Theatre in New York, 1972.

MICHAEL MAUNEY/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A multiple=exposure photo of Neil Diamond performing at the Winter Garden Theatre in New York, 1972.

MICHAEL MAUNEY/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

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Ginger on an Earlier “Fateful Trip”: Tina Louise’s Debutante Ball

Climb, Baby, Climb: Neil Diamond On the Rise, 1972

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