Page 73 – LIFE

The World of a 13-year-old in New York City, 1972

December 15, 2019June 28, 2016 by

In 1972 LIFE and photographer Bill Ray zoomed in on the life of a New York City 13-year-old named Brian Sullivan.

“If you’re not one, being a city kid can sound like an awful drag,” the magazine noted. “You haven’t got a backyard to fool around in, and since you live in an apartment house the neighbors are likely to complain about any noise you make. A gang may swoop down and steal the city boy’s bike, or grab his bus pass while he’s at the penny arcade, or beat him up while he’s just waiting at the corner for a friend.”

But Ray discovered that Brian had plenty to do.

The story shows how New York City was in many ways rougher than it is today: Brian had been mugged once, and though his parents let him take the subway alone, they told him to avoid certain streets. But the city was in certain ways also more carefree. Brian’s hobbies included shooting off homemade rockets in Central Park, and playing in a junk yard with his friends. (Not everything was innocent: Brian also threw things off the roof of his building.) Brian and his pals roamed the city, unencumbered by social media or cell phones, and in the evenings he played cards with his family.

There was certainly a level of danger for a kid in the city then, and a level of fun and possibility, too.

“Playing round in the city is fun,” Brian Sullivan told LIFE assistant editor Anne Holister, “and scary sometimes too. One of us hides in these rocks in Central Park and the others find him. Then we slide down the slope. Some kids fell off it 20 years ago and got killed.”

Bill Ray The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Brian Sullivan in the park with friends.

Bill Ray The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sullivan described the moment: “I launched the rocket and it went out of sight. Then it blew up. The body tube and the fins were floating down, and i climbed up on the fence to see where they would land, but I lost them. I was a little upset. The rocket cost me $1.50. One thing I don’t like about shooting off rockets in the park is that everybody comes round to watch, steps on your foot.”

Bill Ray The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

“Joann, John, Robert, Dad and I play rummy every night after dinner,” Sullivan said. “It’s better than TV. Dad usually wins.”

Bill Ray The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Brian Sullivan on the streets of New York City.

Bill Ray The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Brian Sullivan learned to type at school.

Bill Ray The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Brian Sullivan with his Siamese cat at home in the kitchen.

Bill Ray The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

“My brother John and I—he’s 25—take a lot of walks. This one was down 42nd Street. I can’t go there by myself, and don’t want to,” Sullivan said.

Bill Ray The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

“This guy was right out front of the Metropolitan Museum, spouting things from the Bible,” Sullivan said. “He’s been around for years. We kept saying `What are you doing, what’s all this, what are you, a nut or something?’ and he didn’t even care.”

Bill Ray The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

“I call this the knight room,” Sullivan said. “It’s at the Metropolitan. All the armor, the weapons, it’s really fascinating. My friend Trevor Johnston and I had a pretend sword fight with a couple of pieces of paper. Some day I’ll take up fencing.”

Bill Ray The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Brian Sullivan at the Museum of Modern Art.

Bill Ray The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

“Dad took me to the firehouse where he used to be chief,” Sullivan said. “I talked with the men and they let me use the hose. I almost broke a car window with the spray. I think you’d go right up in the air if you held that hose alone.”

Bill Ray The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Brian at the firehouse.

Bill Ray The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Brian Sullivan in New York City.

Bill Ray The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

“We go on top of our building and throw pebbles down onto the grass,” Sullivan said. “We get chased a lot. Water bombs are better than pebbles because they make a nice big splash.”

Bill Ray The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

“I love hockey, there’s so much action,” Sullivan said. “Here we’re playing on skates in the playground. I was goalie, guarding a park bench goal. I’m second from right in this picture.”

Bill Ray The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Brian Sullivan rode bikes with friends in Central Park.

Bill Ray The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Brian Sullivan with his friends in Central Park.

Bill Ray The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Yoga’s 20th-Century Evolution, in Classic Photographs

October 29, 2020June 21, 2016 by

A comprehensive survey by Yoga Journal and Yoga Alliance found that more than 36 million Americans practice yoga, with those people spending a combined $16 billion a year on accessories, classes and other yoga expenses. In addition, 80 million people who had never done yoga said they thought chances were good that they’d give it a shot.

That means things have changed considerably since the early 20th century, when the practice first began to move into the American spiritual and athletic mainstream. But, from LIFE Magazine’s very first years in the 1930s, the publication and its photographers were chronicling that growth.

In 1937, the magazine followed the news that a Yale scholar from India had examined the science behind yoga, which was explained to readers as a mystic Hindu practice that let the expert, through muscular control, detach from mind and body to allow the “higher world-soul” to join with him. “Whatever the religious result of yogic exercises may be,” the magazine reported, “they undoubtedly have therapeutic value, help general bodily health.” A few years later, in the article from which the first slide above is drawn, the magazine profiled the “lithe young devotees of an ancient and honorable religion” whom photographer Wallace Kirkland had met on a trip to India. In the decades that followed, with the help of celebrities such as violinist Yehudi Menuhin and participants in the truth-seeking of the 1960s and ’70s, the magazine stopped having to explain what yoga meant to readers.

As for the reason behind the practice’s popularity, perhaps it came down to the explanation offered by Tom Law, the “yoga guerrilla” profiled by LIFE in 1970: “Yoga gets me reconnected,” he said. “As soon as I get into the position it begins to happen for me. The center of the earth becomes located in my stomach, my head is in the stars, and yet I am here too. Yoga really works, which is why I think it will be popular.”

Boy twisting himself into a yoga position, 1940.

Wallace Kirkland The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

Folk singer John Jacob Niles performing elbow-standing exercise, adapted from yoga, to relax. 1943.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Hindu man practicing yoga, 1949.

Eliot Elisofon The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Ballet dancer and actress Ricki Soma arching backward as her father Tony Soma and other family members take various Yoga positions, 1947.

Lisa Larsen The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

Sir Paul Duke on the BBC TV show, “Laughter and Life” showing yoga exercises, 1949.

William Sumits The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Violinist Yehudi Menuhin observing Yogi Vithaldas, 1953.

Wallace Kirkland The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A Hindu swami performing yoga on a Ganges riverbank, 1953.

James Burke The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Teenagers practicing yoga, 1953.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Douglas Madsen, sometime sculptor, clothes and jewelry designer, teaching yoga to neighbors in Big Sur, 1959.

J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Practicing yoga in Central Park, 1961.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

American women at Rancho La Puerta learning yoga exercises, 1962.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Entertainer Mitzi Gaynor performing yoga, 1962.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Women practicing yoga at the Every Woman’s Village, 1966.

Ralph Crane The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Tom Law, during his yoga meditations in desert, 1969.

Michael Mauney The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

Yoga psychedelic trip, 1970.

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

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Actress Eva Longoria in a yoga pose on the January 21, 2005 cover of LIFE Magazine. (Photo by Andrew Southam/LIFE Picture Collection)

World War II: A Photographer at the Battle of Saipan

December 15, 2019June 15, 2016 by

When U.S. forces came to Saipan on June 15, 1944, the island’s strategic significance was clear: at just about 1,500 miles from Tokyo, it could serve as a staging ground for a full-on American attack on Japan. As LIFE pointed out in its coverage of the battle, American warships in the Pacific had to return to Hawaii—nearly 4,000 miles away—each time they needed supplies. A victory in Saipan would mean those long trips would no longer be necessary.

The problem with Saipan, for American forces, was not that victory there seemed doubtful. The problem was that it would come at a high cost. The terrain offered Japanese forces the advantage of numerous hiding places, and the ongoing fighting—the battle lasted nearly a month, by most counts, though some holdouts continued to fight much longer—concluded in suicide attacks by Japanese forces, as well as mass suicides among the civilian population.

Photographer W. Eugene Smith, sent by LIFE to capture the battle, described what he saw in a note that accompanied his photos as “some of the worst terrain that Yanks have ever been called upon to dislodge an enemy from.” Those notes were adapted into captions but not published in the magazine. They have been maintained in the decades since in the LIFE archives.

One of the most famous photographs Smith took on this assignment was an image of American troops rescuing a baby who had been found in a cave full of dead bodies. As Smith described the discovery in his notes, it came amidst a two-day mission during which troops searched for a cave in which scores of people were rumored to be hiding. Hours spent scouring the region produced only cave after cave of dead bodies. “The stench was vile and the flies and maggots were there by the millions,” Smith noted. “The heat was intense.”

The first living person the Americans found was the baby, “a ‘living-dead’ tiny infant” as Smith put it.

The baby had somehow become stuck, face-down on the ground, with its head behind a rock. Because the ground and the rock were not smooth, however, enough air circulated for the baby to be able to breathe. The search troops heard the baby crying, writhing on the ground struggling to free himself. “It took 5 minutes of careful removal of the dirt to free the head. [The baby] was passed down from hand-to-hand until it reached ground level,” Smith wrote. “Then it was rushed to a hospital by Jeep and we continued our search. No adults who were alive had been found.”

It was the following day that the long-sought cave was located. The American forces used smoke to flush out 122 civilians. The small number of soldiers who remained in the cave were said to have killed themselves rather than surrender.

As for the civilians, they were given water and medical attention, Smith reported. The scene, coming as it did after a grisly run of days, clearly left him with a feeling of hope that was rare in that time. “The soldiers who had lost so many comrades due to the same caves now showered them (especially the kids) with candy or anything else they had,” he wrote. “It was a magnificent example of fair play and lack of a blinding hatred such as can overcome decency and reason. This was real Americanism.”

Marines followed tanks against the last Japanese defenders with machine gunners providing cover. Three men alongside the photographer were hit just before he took the picture.

W. Eugene Smith The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A U.S. Marine rested behind a cart on a rubble-strewn street during the battle to take Saipan from occupying Japanese forces.

W. Eugene Smith The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Battle of Saipan, 1944.

W. Eugene Smith The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A medic tended to a wounded soldier during a fierce battle to take Saipan from occupying Japanese forces.

W. Eugene Smith The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The one living person among the hundreds of corpses in one cave was this fly-covered baby who almost smothered before soldiers found him and rushed him to hospital.

W. Eugene Smith The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A contact sheet with scenes from the Battle of Saipan.

W. Eugene Smith The LIFE Picture Collection

Some civilians found safety from bombs and shells in the island’s many caves.

W. Eugene Smith The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dust from a nearby explosion caused this mother and son to scamper from a cave. Many believed Japanese propaganda which told them that they would be killed if captured.

W. Eugene Smith The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

An exhausted Marianas Island father with a wounded child after his capture by (or surrender to) Americans during battle between U.S. and Japanese forces for control of Saipan.

W. Eugene Smith The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Native civilians fled ruins of a village during the fighting between Japanese and American forces for control of Saipan.

W. Eugene Smith The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Contact sheet with scenes from Battle of Saipan.

W. Eugene Smith The LIFE Picture Collection

An American soldier pointed a rifle into a bunker during fighting in the final days of the invasion.

W. Eugene Smith The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Weary Marines filled canteens with water while the fighting raged on during the battle to wrest control of Saipan.

W. Eugene Smith The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

U.S. Marines tended to wounded comrades while the fighting raged on during the battle to take Saipan.

W. Eugene Smith The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Battle of Saipan, 1944.

W. Eugene Smith The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

As a jeep carried away a wounded American solider for treatment, a bulldozer scooped a grave.

W. Eugene Smith The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Fashion Covers of the 1960s and ’70s

November 18, 2019June 6, 2016 by

The clothing of the 1960s and 1970s made their indelible mark on the way American dresses, from big-picture changes (the general move toward more casual dress, for example) to the smallest details (monokinis, which are still a thing).

But, as these covers show, the fashions of the ’60s and ’70s were hardly monolithic. From mod maxi dresses and matching trouser suits to minidresses and 1950s nostalgia, the look of LIFE was ever-changing.

September 26, 1960 cover of LIFE magazine.

Milton H. Greene LIFE Magazine

December 1, 1961 cover of LIFE magazine.

Mark Kauffman LIFE Magazine

August 30, 1963 cover of LIFE magazine.

Carlo Bavagnoli LIFE Magazine

September 2, 1966 cover of LIFE magazine.

Jean-Claude Sauer LIFE Magazine

January 27, 1967 cover of LIFE magazine.

Howell Conant LIFE Magazine

August 18, 1967 cover of LIFE magazine.

Franco Rubartelli LIFE Magazine

September 27, 1968 cover of LIFE magazine.

Norman Parkinson LIFE Magazine

January 12, 1968 cover of LIFE magazine.

Greene-Eula LIFE Magazine

August 22, 1969 cover of LIFE magazine.

Vernon Merritt III LIFE Magazine

October 17, 1969 cover of LIFE magazine.

Yale Joel LIFE Magazine

March 13, 1970 cover of LIFE magazine.

Milton H. Greene LIFE Magazine

July 10, 1970 cover of LIFE magazine.

Co Rentmeester LIFE Magazine

August 21, 1970 cover of LIFE magazine.

John Dominis LIFE Magazine

December 10, 1971 cover of LIFE magazine.

Berry Berenson LIFE Magazine

June 2, 1972 cover of LIFE magazine.

Bill Eppridge LIFE Magazine

June 18, 1972 cover of LIFE magazine.

Bill Ray LIFE Magazine

July 28, 1972 cover of LIFE magazine.

Douglas Kirkland LIFE Magazine

Memorial Day Traffic Has Been No Fun For a Long Time

May 23, 2023May 27, 2016 by

Memorial Day weekend is a chance to get out of town, have an adventure, see friends and family—with the inevitable result that many, many people will get stuck in traffic at some point over the next couple of days.

But, if it’s any consolation, that’s nothing new. In 1949, LIFE magazine captured the huge numbers of cars that swarmed American roads during the holiday. In New York City and Boston, photographers Cornell Capa, Yale Joel and Tony Linck found that it was bumper-to-bumper. These photographs were never published in the pages of LIFE, but they are as relevant now as they ever were. The makes and models of the cars may have changed but the aggravating bother of holiday weekend traffic remains ever the same.

A traffic jam in New York City on Memorial Day Weekend, 1949.

Cornell Capa The LIFE Picture Collecion/Shutterstock

Cars approached the George Washington Bridge in the evening during Memorial Day traffic, 1949.

Cornell Capa The LIFE Picture Collecion/Shutterstock

Cars approached the George Washington Bridge in the evening during Memorial Day weekend, 1949.

Cornell Capa The LIFE Picture Collecion/Shutterstock

Cars exited the George Washington Bridge in the afternoon during Memorial Day traffic, 1949.

Cornell Capa The LIFE Picture Collecion/Shutterstock

Cars exited the George Washington Bridge in the afternoon during Memorial Day, 1949.

Cornell Capa The LIFE Picture Collecion/Shutterstock

Cars drove in bumper-to-bumper traffic on Memorial Day in Boston, 1949.

Yale Joel The LIFE Picture Collecion/Shutterstock

Cars drove slowly through the Sumner tunnel during Memorial Day traffic, Boston, 1949.

Yale Joel The LIFE Picture Collecion/Shutterstock

Cars filled the parking lots on Memorial Day. Boston, 1949.

Tony Linck The LIFE Picture Collecion/Shutterstock

How Lyndon B. Johnson Spent Election Day 1964

November 3, 2020May 20, 2016 by

Lyndon B. Johnson’s first year as president was one for the history books: it began with President Kennedy’s assassination on Nov. 22, 1963, and ended almost exactly a year later with Johnson’s reelection to the White House, in a major victory over Republican candidate Barry Goldwater.

LIFE Magazine was tracking the presidential race as it was happening; that reelection was the subject of a Nov. 13, 1964 cover story about the “Mighty Landslide.” And, though the published issue would only include a couple of shots of the President and his family at their Texas ranch, LIFE’s photographer John Dominis captured the whole run-up to Johnson’s learning that he had won handily and how he celebrated.

Despite the eventual results and Johnson’s well-founded confidence, it was clear that the President wouldn’t consider the victory his until the results were official. And even then, one of American history’s biggest landslides wasn’t entirely satisfying.

“He wants,” a friend told LIFE before the results came in, “to make it unanimous.”

Lyndon B. Johnson 1964

John Dominis / The LIFE Picture Collection

Lyndon B.Johnson 1964

John Dominis / The LIFE Picture Collection

Lyndon B. Johnson 1964

John Dominis / The LIFE Picture Collection

Lyndon B.Johnson 1964

John Dominis / The LIFE Picture Collection

Lyndon B. Johnson 1964

John Dominis / The LIFE Picture Collection

Crowd on election night

John Dominis / The LIFE Picture Collection

Lyndon B. Johnson 1964

John Dominis / The LIFE Picture Collection

Lyndon B.Johnson 1964

John Dominis / The LIFE Picture Collection

Lyndon B.Johnson 1964

President Lyndon Johnson and VP Hubert Humphrey the morning after winning election, 1964 (John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection)

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Memorial Day Traffic Has Been No Fun For a Long Time

How Lyndon B. Johnson Spent Election Day 1964

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