Page 74 – LIFE

19 Spirited Vintage Photos of Cheerleaders in Action

November 2, 2020November 2, 2015 by

“Rah, Rah, Rah! Ski-U-Mah! Hoo-Rah! Hoo-Rah! Varsity! Varsity! Minn-e-so-tah!” So went the very first organized cheer at an intercollegiate football game, a rallying cry meant to break the University of Minnesota squad’s losing streak. Though college football had begun in 1869, and all-male pep clubs had long sung fight songs to inspire their teams to victory, it wasn’t until the turn of the century on this day, Nov. 2, in 1898 that a fan named Johnny Campbell led the cheer that would earn him the title of America’s first cheerleader.

Like Campbell, the majority of early cheerleaders were men in large part because squads did not begin opening their ranks to women until the 1920s. The gender balance shifted further during World War II, when an increasing number of women filled positions vacated by men who had been drafted to fight in the war. By the 1960s, the sport became dominated by women, as National Football League teams began to organize professional squads.

LIFE magazine covered cheerleading in abundance, from the magazine’s inception in the late 1930s until it ceased publication in 1972. Cheerleading’s mid-air splits and synchronized pom-pom shakes were a win-win subject for a magazine that traded in stimulating visuals and glimpses into everyday American pastimes. Here, in celebration of the sport’s 122th anniversary, are LIFE’s greatest images of America’s purveyors of pep.

Liz Ronk edited this gallery. Follow her on Twitter @lizabethronk.

Cheerleaders 1939

Alfred Eisenstaedt / The LIFE Picture Collection

Cheerleader 1946

Alfred Eisenstaedt / The LIFE Picture Collection

Cheerleaders 1947

Ralph Crane / The LIFE Images Collection

Cheerleader 1950

Loomis Dean / The LIFE Picture Collection

Cheerleaders 1952

Robert W. Kelley / The LIFE Picture Collection

Cheerleaders 1952

Mark Kauffman / The LIFE Picture Collection

Cheerleaders 1953

Francis Miller / The LIFE Picture Collection

Cheerleaders 1953

Nat Farbman / The LIFE Picture Collection

Cheerleaders 1954

Lisa Larsen / The LIFE Picture Collection

Cheerleaders 1954

J.R. Eyerman / The LIFE Picture Collection

Cheerleaders 1958

Gordon Parks / The LIFE Picture Collection

Cheerleaders 1958

Stan Wayman / The LIFE Picture Collection

Cheerleaders 1958

Paul Schutzer / The LIFE Picture Collection

Cheerleaders, 1960.

Robert W. Kelley / The LIFE Picture Collection

Cheerleaders, 1960.

Francis Miller / The LIFE Picture Collection

Cheerleaders, 1964

Larry Burrows / The LIFE Picture Collection

Cheerleaders 1965

Lynn Pelham / The LIFE Picture Collection

Cheerleaders 1966

Bob Gomel / The LIFE Picture Collection

Cheerleaders, 1971

Grey Villet / The LIFE Picture Collection

James Dean on the Cusp of Stardom

December 28, 2020October 20, 2015 by

Few photographer-subject relationships are fruitful enough to yield a compelling examination of a rising star let alone one of the most iconic photographs of the 20th century and a meaningful friendship to boot. The partnership between Dennis Stock and James Dean did all of these things, and in just a few days’ time.

Stock was a young photographer working for the Magnum agency when he met Dean in the winter of 1954-55, at a party thrown by director Nicholas Ray at the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood. Dean, at the time, was still a relative unknown. East of Eden, the first of the three films he would make before his untimely death, was about to be released. When Stock attended a sneak preview as Dean’s guest, he knew he was witnessing the debut of a legendary actor.

Over breakfast the next morning, as Stock listened to Dean speak with nostalgia about his upbringing in Fairmount, Ind., Stock became determined to capture a portrait of a young man suspended between two worlds: that of the family farm where his aunt and uncle raised him after his mother’s death, and that of the Hollywood into which he would soon be embraced. Stock pitched a photo essay to LIFE magazine and though it was not an easy sell, given Dean’s anonymity, he got the green light to move forward.

The photos Stock made of Dean in Fairmount, New York and Hollywood—which were also the subject of a book, DENNIS STOCK: JAMES DEAN—paint a picture of a young man still more comfortable in his old farm clothes, playing his bongo drum to cows, than he was on a red carpet. In Fairmount, Stock captured Dean’s brotherly relationship with his young cousin Markie and Dean’s fondness for the Hoosier poet James Whitcomb Riley. In a series of eerie photographs that seem to foretell his death in a car accident just eight months later, Dean hops in and out of caskets at a local furniture store, beseeching Stock to take his picture.

These days spent together by Dean and Stock were the subject of a 2015 movie, Life, starring Robert Pattinson as Stock and Dane DeHaan as Dean. Director Anton Corbijn, a photographer himself, has explained that as much as the film was inspired by Dean’s iconic status and Stock’s ability to capture the truth behind it, the story at the core is a simple one, of “two males that bond to create a friendship.”

For Stock, who died in 2010, the power of the images was in the transition they depict, the crossing of a bridge that can never be traversed in reverse. “For Jimmy it was going home,” he wrote in the introduction to DENNIS STOCK: JAMES DEAN. “But it was also the realization that the meteoric rise to fame that had already begun that night in Santa Monica had cut him off forever from his small-town Midwestern origins, and that he could never really go home again.”

James Dean by Dennis Stock

©Dennis Stock / Magnum Photos

James Dean by Dennis Stock

Courtesy Thames & Hudson

See Photos From the Day Arthur Miller Married Marilyn Monroe

August 2, 2022October 15, 2015 by

Arthur Miller is best remembered as the Pulitzer Prize-winning scribe of dozens of plays, the holder of the pen that birthed Death of a Salesman“s tragic Willy Loman and The Crucible“s morally tormented John Proctor. But, even after the critical accolades he received and the dissertations he inspired, he’s also remembered for a more personal aspect of his biography: his marriage to Marilyn Monroe.

Miller met Monroe in 1951, while he was married to his first wife and she was in between her first and second marriages. After a brief affair, they kept up a correspondence throughout Monroe’s brief marriage to Joe DiMaggio and Miller’s separation from his wife. On June 29, 1956, the pair married at the Westchester County Court House in a civil ceremony with exactly two witnesses and zero photojournalists.

But shortly after the wedding—which was followed two days later by an intimate Jewish ceremony—LIFE’s Paul Schutzer photographed the couple as they drove with a friend to Connecticut, where Miller lived. Schutzer’s photographs capture a carefree affection that would soon give way to darker times, the happy beginning to a five-year marriage that would end just 19 months before Monroe’s death.

The union would come to be plagued by an assortment of strains, which perhaps began when Monroe discovered a notebook in which Miller had scribbled his misgivings about having married her. Tormented by repeated miscarriages and the many inner demons to which she would ultimately succumb, Monroe turned to barbiturates. And Miller turned to another woman, photographer Inge Morath, whom he met on the set of The Misfits—a film he had written to offer Monroe her first dramatic role and whom he would marry in 1962, shortly after divorcing Monroe.

Miller, who remained mum on the subject of Monroe for many years, would later say that their differences, at least in the beginning, drew them closer. “The very inappropriateness of our being together was to me the sign that it was appropriate,” he said in a 1987 interview, “that we were two parts, however remote, of this society, of this life.”

Liz Ronk, who edited this gallery, is the Photo Editor for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter @lizabethronk.

Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller 1956

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

29 Halloween Costume Ideas Inspired by Vintage Celebrities

October 15, 2020October 15, 2015 by

For the historically inclined, LIFE magazine’s archives offer a treasure trove of Halloween inspiration. Music lover? There’s Little Richard’s signature look and Elvis Presley’s smart army get-up. For coordinated couples, there’s Hollywood’s onetime leading couple (Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton) playing one of history’s leading couples (Cleopatra and Antony). And for those with a “quarantine beard” to work with, Donald Sutherland displays a daring feat of facial topiary.

Project Mercury Astronauts

Ralph Morse / (c)The LIFE Picture Collection

Elvis Presley

Al Fenn / (c) The LIFE Picture Collection

Marilyn Monroe

Ed Clark / (c) The LIFE Picture Collection

Hillary Rodham Clinton

Lee Balterman / (c) The LIFE Picture Collection

The Beatles

John Dominis / (c) The LIFE Picture Collection

The Addams Family

(c) Don Cravens Estate / The LIFE Images Collection

Jayne Mansfield

Allan Grant / (c) The LIFE Picture Collection

Queen Elizabeth

Cornell Capa / (c) The LIFE Picture Collection

The Jackson Five and their parents in 1970: (clockwise L-R): Jackie, parents Joe and Katherine, Marlon, Tito, Jermaine and Michael in their backyard.

John Olson /The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

The Three Stooges

Michael Rougier / (c) The LIFE Picture Collection

Jane Fonda as Barbarella.

Carlo Bavagnoli / (c) The LIFE Picture Collection

Winston Churchill

Alfred Eisenstaedt / (c) The LIFE Picture Collection

Jim Morrison

Yale Joel / (c) The LIFE Picture Collection

Sophia Loren

Alfred Eisenstaedt / (c) The LIFE Picture Collection

2001: A Space Odyssey

Dmitri Kessel / (c) The LIFE Picture Collection

John F. Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy

Paul Schutzer / (c) The LIFE Picture Collection

Pablo Picasso as The Minotaur

Gjon Mili / (c) The LIFE Picture Collection

Albert Einstein

Alfred Eisenstaedt / (c) The LIFE Picture Collection

Raquel Welch

Bill Eppridge / (c) The LIFE Picture Collection

Jackie Robinson

Allan Grant / (c) The LIFE Picture Collection

Johnny Cash

Michael Rougier / (c) The LIFE Picture Collection

Dorothy Dandridge

Ed Clark / (c) The LIFE Picture Collection

Donald Sutherland

Co Rentmeester / (c) The LIFE Picture Collection

Julie Andrews as Cinderella

Gordon Parks / (c) The LIFE Picture Collection

Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor

Paul Schutzer / (c) The LIFE Picture Collection

Mia Farrow

Bill Eppridge / (c) The LIFE Picture Collection

Fred Astaire

Bob Landry / (c) The LIFE Picture Collection

Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz

Leonard McCombe / (c) The LIFE Picture Collection

Little Richard

Ralph Morse / (c) The LIFE Picture Collection

See the Best Fashions of the 1930s

August 20, 2021October 13, 2015 by

Henry Luce’s goal for LIFE Magazine was, according to its tagline, as much to cover news of lasting consequence (“to eyewitness great events”) as to marvel at cultural curiosities (“to see and be amazed; to see and be instructed”). As one of those curiosities, the world of fashion enjoyed extensive coverage across the five decades the weekly magazine witnessed.

Though LIFE only caught the tail end of the 1930s, its first issue was published in November 1936 the remaining years of that decade saw the confluence of a host of influences on fashion. The Depression years had seen a shift to more conservative hemlines than those of the looser 1920s. At the same time, the fashions favored in Hollywood were increasingly reflected in the everyday streetwear of the masses. And as the decade drew to a close, the shadow of war began to reach all the way into the wardrobe.

LIFE’s fashion covers of the 1930s, many by Alfred Eisenstaedt, capture a variety of trends, from the saddle shoes of schoolchildren to the continental influence on college students to the formal details that completed a gentleman’s look. And if the occasional strong brow or high-waisted swimsuit looks familiar well, as the saying goes, everything old is new again.

October 18, 1937 cover of LIFE magazine.

Alfred Eisenstaedt LIFE Magazine

June 7, 1937 cover of LIFE magazine.

Alfred Eisenstaedt LIFE Magazine

June 28, 1937 cover of LIFE magazine.

Herbert Matter LIFE Magazine

July 12, 1937 cover of LIFE magazine.

Alfred Eisenstaedt LIFE Magazine

April 11, 1938 cover of LIFE magazine.

Alfred Eisenstaedt LIFE Magazine

May 9, 1938 cover of LIFE magazine.

Alfred Eisenstaedt LIFE Magazine

July 18, 1938 cover of LIFE magazine.

Dmitri Kessel LIFE Magazine

September 5, 1938 cover of LIFE magazine.

Herbert Gehr LIFE Magazine

January 2, 1939 cover of LIFE magazine.

Alfred Eisenstaedt LIFE Magazine

January 16, 1939 cover of LIFE magazine.

Rex Hardy Jr. LIFE Magazine

March 27, 1939 cover of LIFE magazine.

Alfred Eisenstaedt LIFE Magazine

May 8, 1939 cover of LIFE magazine.

Alfred Eisenstaedt LIFE Magazine

June 26, 1939 cover of LIFE magazine.

Walter Sanders LIFE Magazine

July 3, 1939 cover of LIFE magazine.

George Strock LIFE Magazine

October 23, 1939 cover of LIFE magazine.

Fritz Henle LIFE Magazine

Vintage Tips on Mustache Maintenance from the London Handlebar Club

November 1, 2020October 2, 2015 by

Since the early-2000s establishment of Movember—an annual fundraising competition to raise money for men’s health issues—November has come to be associated with the sprouting of mustaches where once there were none.

But for serious growers of facial hair, October is the month that matters. At the annual World Beard and Moustache Championships, cancelled this year due to Covid, slender Dali’s compete with bushy Imperials for the title of greatest ‘stache.

In celebration of these feats of facial hair, LIFE revisits the London Handlebar Club, which in the 1940s offered a safe space for those who sported exuberant whiskers. At meetings, members shared tips for preventing an upsweep (clip-on weights!) and dealing with a mustache misshapen from sleep (sleep on your back, not your face). One particularly troublesome ailment was the “Boozer’s Droop,” a side effect of “too much immersion in alcohol during the mustache’s early development.” The cure? “Stop drinking. Short of that, shave.”

Liz Ronk edited this gallery.