Page 79 – LIFE

LIFE with Steve McQueen: Rare Photos of the King of Cool, 1963

December 8, 2019November 5, 2014 by

In the spring of 1963, popular from his big-screen breakout as one of The Magnificent Seven and just a couple months from entering the Badass Hall of Fame with the release of The Great Escape, Steve McQueen was on the brink of superstardom.

Intrigued by his dramatic backstory and his off-screen exploits—McQueen was a reformed delinquent who got his thrills racing cars and motorcycles—LIFE sent photographer John Dominis to California to hang out with the 33-year-old actor and, in effect, see what he could get, photo-wise.

Three weeks and more than 40 rolls of film later, Dominis had captured some astonishing images—photos hard to imagine in today’s restricted-access celebrity universe. Here, LIFE.com presents a series of pictures many of which never ran in LIFE, along with insights from Dominis about the time he spent with the man who would soon don the mantle, “the King of Cool.”

Trailing Steve McQueen was Dominis’ first Hollywood gig. “I liked the movies, but I didn’t know who the stars were; I was not a movie buff,” Dominis, who died in 2013, recalled. But he got the assignment because he and McQueen shared one vital passion: car racing.

“When I was living in Hong Kong I had a sports car and I raced it,” Dominis said. “And I knew that Steve McQueen had a racing car. I rented one, anticipating that we might do something with them. He was in a motorcycle race out in the desert, so I went out there in my car and met him, and I asked him, ‘You wanna try my car?'”

Later the two men zipped around Los Angeles together. “We went pretty fast as fast as you can safely go without getting arrested and we’d ride and then stop and trade cars. He liked that, and I knew he liked it. I guess that was the first thing that softened him.”

From early morning until late at night, Dominis followed McQueen through his action-packed days: camping with his buddies, racing his various vehicles, playing with his family, tooling around Hollywood. Even back then, Dominis recalled, he had to be mindful that his constant presence did not become irritating.

“Movie stars, they weren’t used to giving up a lot of time,” he said. “But I sort of relaxed in the beginning and didn’t bother them every time they turned around, and they began to get used to me being there.

In 1963 McQueen had been married to Neile Adams for seven years (they had two young children) but the spark between them was still very much alive. “They were always necking!” said Dominis, who also remarked upon their childlike way with each other in notes he filed for LIFE’s editors back in ’63: “They chase each other around,” he wrote, “as though it were going out of style.”

“With strangers, I can’t breathe,” McQueen told LIFE. “But I dig my old lady.”

“I was very surprised” when Steve and Neile divorced in 1972, Dominis said. “But I lived in New York, and I never saw them [after the shoot was over]. We weren’t real friends, but we were friendly. They had a silver mug made: ‘To John Dominis, for work beyond the call of duty.’ I’ve still got it today.”

At the beginning of the LIFE shoot, McQueen participated in a 500-mile, two-day dirt bike race across the Mojave Desert.

“These people are not the wild motorcycle bums who go roaring through town a la Brando [in The Wild One],” wrote Dominis in his notes. “Rather they comprise doctors, lawyers, businessmen, mechanics, and others who enjoy the competition and the open country.”

Not only was he one of the few competitors to complete the race, LIFE reported, but he also led his amateur class for most of the way, until his bike broke down three miles from the finish.

“He liked camping, he liked rugged things, he liked firing a gun,” said Dominis. (“I’d rather wake up in the middle of nowhere than in any city on earth,” he told LIFE.)

He also very much liked his cigarettes: Like many Hollywood stars of the time, McQueen was an unapologetically heavy smoker, and did not break the habit until he became sick in the late ’70s.

Seventeen years after Dominis made these photos, the actor died at 50 years old, suffering a heart attack following a risky operation to remove the cancerous tumors laying waste to his body. Though Dominis never saw or spoke with McQueen after 1963, he continued to follow his movies, and cherished those three weeks they got to know each other.

“He was very open and playful,” recalled Dominis, “and just doing the things that he loved to do.”

Liz Ronk edited this gallery for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LizabethRonk.

At his bungalow in Palm Springs, Steve McQueen practiced his aim before heading out for a shooting session in the desert, 1963.

John Dominis; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Steve McQueen driving on Sunset Strip, 1963.

John Dominis; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Steve McQueen and Neile Adams, his first wife, target-practiced with their pistols in the California desert, 1963.

John Dominis; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Steve McQueen and Neile Adams, his first wife, in the California desert, 1963.

John Dominis; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

McQueen worked out at the gym at Paramount Pictures while making the movie Love With the Proper Stranger opposite Natalie Wood, 1963.

John Dominis; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Steve McQueen lifting weights, 1963.

John Dominis; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

McQueen in the living room of his eclectic home in Hollywood, 1963.

John Dominis; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Steve McQueen and his wife Neile Adams by the pool at their Palm Springs bungalow, 1963.

John Dominis; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Steve McQueen, Palm Springs, 1963.

John Dominis; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

At his Palm Springs bungalow, Steve McQueen put on a record, with LPs by Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins and Frank Sinatra scattered at his feet, 1963.

John Dominis; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Steve McQueen with his wife, Neile, 1963.

John Dominis; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Steve McQueen taking a lunch break during a motorcycle race with Bud Ekins, his friend and stuntman for The Great Escape, 1963.

John Dominis; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

McQueen at a grocery store in Pearblossom, Calif., getting treatment for race-bloodied hands, 1963.

John Dominis; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

McQueen taking a deep swig of a tall, cool drink, 1963.

John Dominis; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Steve McQueen on a camping trip, 1963.

John Dominis; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Steve McQueen in his sleeping bag on a camping trip, 1963. “This is it, man,” he told LIFE. “I’d rather wake up in the middle of nowhere than in any city on earth.”

John Dominis; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Steve McQueen, 1963.

John Dominis; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

With his dog, a Malamute named Mike, by his side, Steve McQueen in California, 1963.

John Dominis; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

JFK’s Funeral: Photos From a Day of Shock and Grief

January 16, 2020November 4, 2014 by

Many decades after the grisly fact, the assassination of John F. Kennedy remains one of the few unmistakably signal events from the second half of the 20th century. Other moments some thrilling (the moon landing, the fall of the Berlin Wall), others horrifying (the killings of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, the Challenger explosion) have secured their places in the history books and in the memories of those who witnessed them. But nothing in the latter part of “the American century” defined an era as profoundly as the rifle shots that split the warm Dallas air on Nov. 22, 1963, and the sudden death of the 46-year-old president.

Here, LIFE.com features photographs (some never published in LIFE magazine) from the funeral held three days after John F. Kennedy was killed: Nov. 25, 1963, which was also his son John Jr.’s third birthday.

Buy the LIFE book, The Day Kennedy Died

“A woman knelt and gently kissed the flag,” LIFE magazine reported of the scene as JFK’s casket lay in state for two days after his assassination. “A little girl’s hand tenderly fumbled under the flag to reach closer. Thus, in a privacy open to all the world, John F. Kennedy’s wife and daughter touched at a barrier that no mortal ever can pass again.”

The next day, Kennedy’s body was taken “from the proudly impassive care of his honor guard” and was carried from the Capitol rotunda to Arlington National Cemetery.

“By a tradition that is as old as Genghis Khan,” LIFE noted, “a riderless horse followed” the flag-draped casket, “carrying empty boots reversed in the stirrups in token that the warrior would not mount again. . . . Through all this mournful splendor Jacqueline Kennedy marched enfolded in courage and a regal dignity. Then at midnight she came back again, in loneliness, to lay some flowers on her husband’s grave.”

Liz Ronk edited this gallery for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LizabethRonk.

John F. Kennedy’s flag-draped casket lay in state in Washington, D.C., November 1963.

Stan Wayman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

John F. Kennedy’s flag-draped casket, Washington, D.C., November 1963.

Stan Wayman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Wife. Mother. Niece. Three generations waited outside St. Matthew’s for the procession to the cemetery. Behind Mrs. Kennedy stood the President’s mother. Sydney Lawford, daughter of Kennedy’s sister Pat, was at rear.

Stan Wayman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

John F. Kennedy’s cortege left the White House, November 1963.

John Loengard The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Young Kennedys prepared to leave the White House for John F. Kennedy’s funeral, November 25, 1963.

John Loengard The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The horse-drawn caisson carried the body of Pres. John F. Kennedy across the Memorial Bridge into Arlington Cemetery.

Stan Wayman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

With the sound of creaking wheels and clattering hoofs breaking the silence, the President’s caisson entered Arlington Cemetery, passed the graves of American war heroes and headed toward the burial spot on a grassy hill which looked over the Potomac.

John Loengard The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

John F. Kennedy’s funeral, Arlington Cemetery, November 25, 1963.

Stan Wayman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Robert Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy and Edward Kennedy at John F. Kennedy’s funeral, Arlington Cemetery, November 25, 1963.

Stan Wayman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Pausing for a moment after the graveside service with Robert Kennedy, who was ever at her side, Jacqueline Kennedy had a word of thanks for Bishop Philip Hannan (left), who spoke at the funeral, and other Catholic prelates who had taken part in the services.

Stan Wayman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

As taps sounded, [French] President de Gaulle and [Ethiopian] Emperor Haile Selassie saluted the grave.

Stan Wayman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jacqueline Kennedy and Robert Kennedy at John F. Kennedy’s funeral, Arlington Cemetery, November 25, 1963.

Stan Wayman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

John F. Kennedy’s funeral, Arlington Cemetery, November 25, 1963.

Stan Wayman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jacqueline Kennedy and Robert Kennedy at John F. Kennedy’s funeral, Arlington Cemetery, November 25, 1963.

Stan Wayman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The POW Who Lived: Joe Demler, WWII’s ‘Human Skeleton’

November 11, 2020November 4, 2014 by

Few pictures published during the Second World War remain as striking, all these years later, as John Florea’s 1945 portrait of an American prisoner of war named Joe Demler. Photographed at a Nazi prison camp in Limburg, Germany, the figure in the photo is so emaciated that Demler was quickly dubbed “the human skeleton” when the photo ran in LIFE and other publications in the spring of that year.

For his part, in a 1993 interview with John Loengard, Florea said of the photographs he made of Demler and other prisoners during the liberation of the notorious Stalag 12-A camp: “You don’t know how many times I see those pictures in my mind. I wanted to show how the Nazi bastards what they did to our guys. It was terrible.”

When Florea and troops from the First Army’s Ninth Armored Division came upon Stalag12-A in late March 1945, 19-year-old Pvt. Joseph Demler weighed about 70 pounds. “Skin and bones” is a generous way of describing his physique. His chances of surviving, everyone agreed, were far from good. (An indication of how close to death Demler and the other POWs in the camp’s makeshift hospital were: a soldier in a bunk next to Demler’s was alive when 12-A was liberated but died before he could get a bite to eat.)

Against steep odds, Joe Demler did survive. Today, he lives in a small town in Wisconsin, north of Milwaukee, on the western shore of Lake Michigan. He’s retired now, of course, but for 37 years he worked for the United States Post Office. He’s been married to his wife, Loretta, for 63 years. They have two sons and a daughter, and three grandchildren. He’s 88 years old, and will turn 89 on Dec. 7: Pearl Harbor Day.

In the years since the war, he’s led a quiet life. A peaceful life. Which is far more than the 19-year-old Joe Demler, who saw action and was captured during the Battle of the Bulge, could have dreamed of.

“When I left Kennedy General Hospital in Memphis, where I went for treatment after leaving Germany,” Demler recently told LIFE.com, “one doctor said to me, ‘Son, you can go home now. You were born again. You can go back and live a normal life.’ And you know, that’s what I’ve tried to do, for all these years.”

It hasn’t been easy “You can never completely forget something that awful,” Demler says of his time in the war but the fact that he came through when so many of his buddies, and countless others he never even knew, perished left him with a certainty that he had to give something back. And he has.

For a while now, Demler has been involved with a nonprofit called Honor Flight, which was created (according to its website) “solely to honor America’s veterans for all their sacrifices. We transport our heroes to Washington, D.C. to visit and reflect at their memorials. Top priority is given to the senior veterans World War II survivors, along with those other veterans who may be terminally ill.”

Discussing an Honor Flight event from just a few weeks ago, Demler says that “when you have 80- and 90-year-old men crying as they tell you that this was one of the greatest days of their life, taking part in Honor Flight well, it makes all the effort that you put into something like this worth it, and then some.”

One regret that he does have: never seeing John Florea again after their one brief, fateful encounter in 1945. “I wish I could have shaken his hand,” Demler says, “and thanked him.”

[Honor Flight, a documentary film by Dan Hayes, in which Joe Demler plays a central role, was released in 2012.]

Joe Demler, ‘Human Skeleton,’ 1945

John Florea The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

US POW, Stalag 12-A, Limburg, Germany, 1945

John Florea The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

WWII veteran Joseph Demler in 2013

Ben Gabbe/Shutterstock

Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Photos From the Ruins

August 9, 2021November 3, 2014 by

One scene shared by all of the 20th century’s bloodiest conflicts might have been lifted straight from The Road Warrior, or a Beckett play: spectral landscape; buildings obliterated; blasted trees; lifeless wasteland. The photographs in this gallery, for instance—pictures that starkly reference every bleak, war-battered panorama from Gettysburg to Verdun to Stalingrad to Chosin Reservoir to Pork Chop Hill—were made in September, 1945, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.

But far from chronicling the aftermath of a sustained, slogging campaign, these pictures—none of which were published in LIFE magazine—depict the devastation produced in a few historically violent seconds. Here, LIFE.com presents pictures from both cities taken in the weeks and months following the bombings that killed a combined 120,000 people outright, and tens of thousands more through injury and radiation sickness. Included, as well, are scans of typed memos from photographer Bernard Hoffman—quietly revelatory notes like the one he wrote on September 3, 1945, to LIFE’s long-time picture editor, Wilson Hicks:

We saw Hiroshima today or what little is left of it. We were so shocked with what we saw that most of us felt like weeping; not out of sympathy for the Japs but because we were revolted by this new and terrible form of destruction. Compared to Hiroshima, Berlin, Hamburg and Cologne are practically untouched . . . The sickly sweet smell of death is everywhere.

Below are excerpts from various issues of LIFE published after the war that convey the powerful, discordant reactions—relief, horror, pride, fear—that the bombings, and the long-sought victory over Japan, unleashed. Today, when America and Japan are, for the most part, staunch allies, trading partners and avid fans of one another’s goods, foods and popular culture, the words and sentiments below are a vivid reminder that the Second World War is a bloody and complicated piece of history.

“In the following waves [after the initial blast] people’s bodies were terribly squeezed, then their internal organs ruptured. Then the blast blew the broken bodies at 500 to 1,000 miles per hour through the flaming, rubble-filled air. Practically everybody within a radius of 6,500 feet was killed or seriously injured and all buildings crushed or disemboweled.” From the article “Atom Bomb Effects,” LIFE magazine, 3/11/1946

“Japan’s premier, Prince Higashi-Kuni . . . on September 5 paid despairing tribute to the atomic bomb: ‘This terrific weapon was likely to result in the obliteration of the Japanese people.’ The atomic bomb, he indicated, was the immediate inducement to surrender. . . .” From “What Ended the War,” LIFE magazine, 9/17/1945

“A crewman met us at the door, a big smile on his face. ‘The strike report is in,’ he said. ‘They dropped it on Nagasaki.’ The colonel was surprised. ‘That was the third target,’ he said. Inside the hut everybody was cheerful. The men felt Sweeney [Major Charles W. Sweeney, who commanded the B-29 bomber, Bockscar] would reach Okinawa from Nagasaki, or at least ditch in the sea near there and get picked up by a Navy rescue plane. We heard later that Sweeney reached Okinawa with ‘enough gas to fill a cigarette lighter.'” From “The Week the War Ended,” LIFE magazine, 7/17/1950, by reporter Robert Schwartz

“Japanese doctors said that those who had been killed by the blast itself died instantly. But presently, according to these doctors, those who had suffered only small burns found their appetite failing, their hair falling out, their gums bleeding. They developed temperatures of 104, vomited blood, and died. It was discovered that they had lost 86 percent of their white blood corpuscles. Last week the Japanese announced that the count of Hiroshima’s dead had risen to 125,000.” From the article “What Ended the War,” LIFE magazine, 9/17/1945

“I never heard an enlisted man in the 509th use the words ‘atom bomb’ or ‘atomic bomb’ or ‘A-bomb.’ Everyone in the squadron called it ‘The Gimmick.’ During the months of their secret work they had to have a name for the vague something that they were supposed to be working on, and when somebody referred to it as ‘The Gimmick’ that name stuck.” From the article, “The Week the War Ended,” LIFE magazine, 7/17/1950

“When the [Nagasaki] bomb went off, a flier on another mission 250 miles away saw a huge ball of fiery yellow erupt. Others, nearer at hand, saw a big mushroom of dust and smoke billow darkly up to 20,000 feet, and then the same detached floating head as at Hiroshima. Twelve hours later Nagasaki was a mass of flame, palled by acrid smoke, its pyre still visible to pilots 200 miles away. The bombers reported that black smoke had shot up like a tremendous, ugly waterspout. With grim satisfaction, [physicists] declared that the ‘improved’ second atomic bomb had already made the first one obsolete.” From the article, “War’s Ending,” LIFE magazine, 8/20/1945

Liz Ronk edited this gallery for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LizabethRonk.

Urakami Cathedral (Roman Catholic), Nagasaki, September, 1945.

Bernard Hoffman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Nagasaki, September, 1945.

Bernard Hoffman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Hiroshima streetcar, September, 1945.

J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Nagasaki, Japan, September 1945.

Bernard Hoffman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A photo album, pieces of pottery, a pair of scissors – shards of life strewn on the ground in Nagasaki, 1945.

Bernard Hoffman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

From notes by LIFE’s Bernard Hoffman to the magazine’s long-time picture editor, Wilson Hicks, in New York, September 1945.

Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Hiroshima, 1945.

Bernard Hoffman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Nagasaki, 1945, a few months after an American B-29 dropped an atomic bomb, codenamed “Fat Man,” on the city.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The landscape around Urakami Cathedral, Nagasaki, September, 1945.

Bernard Hoffman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

From notes by LIFE’s Bernard Hoffman to the magazine’s long-time picture editor, Wilson Hicks, in New York, September 1945.

Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A neighborhood reduced to rubble by an atomic bomb blast, Hiroshima, 1945.

Bernard Hoffman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A bust in front of a destroyed cathedral two miles from the atomic bomb detonation site, Nagasaki, Japan, 1945.

Bernard Hoffman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Hiroshima, 1945, two months after the August 6 bombing.

Bernard Hoffman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Nagasaki, 1945.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Two women paid respects at a ruined cemetery, Nagasaki, 1945.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Hiroshima, September, 1945.

J.R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Manson Family’s California Hovels: Scenes From the Bottomless Pit

January 24, 2022November 2, 2014 by

The Manson Family murders have assumed a near-mythic quality in the 45 years since Tex Watson, Susan Atkins, Leslie Van Houten and others slaughtered seven people — Sharon Tate; Jay Sebring; Wojciech Frykowski; Abigail Folger; Steven Parent; Leno and Rosemary LaBianca — in the summer of 1969. The sickening, vicious nature of the killings terrified and riveted a nation already convulsed by the violence and cultural upheaval of the late Sixites, while the seemingly random nature of the crimes spoke to a near-primal, universal fear: marauders invading one’s home and wreaking mortal havoc.

Manson himself, convicted of murder via conspiracy (although it was never proved in court that he, personally, killed any of the victims), remains locked up in a California prison, a creature who crawled out from the dark underbelly of the 1960s, unleashed hell, was finally brought to justice and will die behind bars.

But before Manson’s “brood of nubile flower children,” as LIFE magazine put it, set out on their appalling rampage, they plotted, dreamed and — in their own bestial way — lived their lives in places of desolate squalor, soaking up their leader’s toxic fantasy of racial holy war. In Manson’s vision, the Family would rule over a post-apocalyptic America — after riding out the apocalypse itself in a secret city, “the bottomless pit,” beneath Death Valley.

In his own insular, mad vernacular, the killing spree that Manson hoped would be blamed on black militants — sparking the race war that he himself had long prophesied — was known as “Helter Skelter.”

Here, 45 years after the August 1969 murders of Sharon Tate (director Roman Polanski’s wife, who was eight months pregnant); celebrity hairdresser Jay Sebring; actor and writer Wojciech Frykowski: coffee heiress Abigail Folger; 18-year-old Steven Parent; and the LaBiancas — LIFE.com presents pictures of the two ranches where the Family spent its final months before and after its campaign of terror.

The Spahn and Barker ranches, isolated dots on the map east of L.A., served as base camps for the Family; and it was at Barker that Manson was finally found and caught by authorities (on suspicion of auto theft, of all things) in October 1969 — inside a 12 x 16-inch cupboard beneath a sink where he had stuffed himself in an attempt to hide. Not long after, as cops began pulling the threads of evidence together, connecting Family members and Manson himself with the murders that cast a bleak light on the worst excesses of the Sixties, the cheap, sordid Manson myth was born.

Charles Manson, Barker Ranch

Vernon Merritt III Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Spahn Ranch, 1969

Ralph Crane Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Barker Ranch

Vernon Merritt III Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Spahn Ranch

Ralph Crane Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

George Spahn, Manson Family, 1969

Ralph Crane Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Spahn Ranch, Manson Family

Ralph Crane Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Spahn Ranch

Ralph Crane Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Barker Ranch

Vernon Merritt III Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Bus on Barker Ranch, 1969

Vernon Merritt III Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Barker Ranch

Vernon Merritt III Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Barker Ranch 1969

Vernon Merritt III Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Barker Ranch, Charles Manson’s hiding place

Vernon Merritt III Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Barker Ranch 1969

Vernon Merritt III Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Manson Family, Spahn Ranch, 1969

Ralph Crane Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

LIFE Goes to a School For Kid Geniuses, 1948

January 16, 2020November 1, 2014 by

Americans are on a never-ending quest for the best way to educate their children, trying different approaches to teaching, and sometimes different kinds of schools. Seven decades ago, LIFE visited what might be called a genius school at Hunter College—a school filled 450 apparently well-adjusted, engaged kids from ages three to 11, who just happened to enjoy IQs averaging around 150. (Post-graduate students, by comparison, generally fall in the 120-130 range.)

As LIFE noted in a March 1948 feature on the school:

The school they go to is P.S. 600, part of New York’s public-school system and the only institution in the U.S. devoted entirely to the teaching and study of gifted children. It is held in a wing of the college’s main building, in whose long corridors the bright little kids from 3 to 11 years old like to stop off for between-class chats.
Offhand, young geniuses would seem to present no immediate problems because they are usually bigger, healthier and even happier than average children. However, an educational problem exists simply because they are too bright for their age. If they are promoted rapidly through school on the basis of their studies they will end up as social misfits, unable to enjoy the society of children their own age. On the other hand, if they are held back with their own age group, their quick minds are apt to stagnate.
Hunter children know they are smart, but they are more humble than cocky about their intelligence. . . . Although their interest are advanced, their plans for the future have a refreshing normality. There is a 9-year-old who wants to be a fur trapper, an 8-year-old who wants to be a babysitter and a 7-year-old who wants to be president of the Coca-Cola Company.

Here, LIFE.com presents photos from the feature in the magazine, as well as pictures that never ran in LIFE.

Liz Ronk edited this gallery for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LizabethRonk.

Sandy, 7, lectured the science club on the behavior of neutrons in uranium. The diagram was left by the previous lecturer, a chemist.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A public “genius school” for 3-to-11-year-olds at New York’s Hunter College, 1948.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Genius school, 1948.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A study of time was made by 6-year-olds. Addressing the class, Lucy (standing, left) told what she found out in the library about old-fashioned candle clocks, and her remarks were copied on the blackboard with other students’ observations. The students were critical of each other’s work.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Building with blocks, instead of aimlessly stacking them, four-year-olds worked together to construct an apartment building with doormen, tenants and a garage.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Genius school, 1948.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Roy spun a yarn for his friends.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Roy spun a yarn for friends.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Playing chess, David (wearing glasses) moved a piece for Lennie. Both are seven and a half. David learned the game from his father, then he taught Lennie how to play.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Directing the orchestra, a 10-year-old girl received a lesson in conducting from the teacher. Students also had a choral society. Three-year-olds had rhythm bands.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Genius school, 1948.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Ralph, 11, planned to become a doctor.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

In a class in practical conversation in French for nine-year-olds, a waiter asked gentleman to approve the wine, as the lady consulted the French menu.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

This hairdo was designed by two five-year-olds, Joan (left) and Florence. They also liked to make candy and cookies in the school’s miniature kitchen.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Genius school, 1948.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Five-year-old Johnny, who taught himself to read, took from the library The Ring of the Nibelung. The library also included simpler books like the Bobbsey Twins.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

In a hallway of New York’s Hunter College, two three-year-olds stopped to talk. The little girl carried a poster inviting students to see the latest block exhibit.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

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