Page 8 – LIFE

Winnie the Pooh, On Friendship

July 2, 2026October 23, 2025 by Bill Syken

The following is from Kostya Kennedy’s essay in LIFE’s new special issue on Winnie-the-Pooh, at 100, available at newsstands and online:

Winnie-the-Pooh’s inner circle includes friends of various appearances, sizes, tendencies, temperaments, species. An easily frightened little pig, a rambunctious tiger, a practical rabbit, a semi-literate owl, a gloomy ass—even a single mother and her infant. When Kanga and Baby Roo first arrive on the scene, Pooh and Rabbit are visiting at Piglet’s house. It’s morning in the Hundred Acre Wood and Rabbit expresses displeasure at having woken up to find a “Strange Animal among us… An animal who carries her family about with her in her pocket!” Still more unnerving is the abruptness of their arrival. Says Rabbit: “Here we are—you, Pooh, and you, Piglet, and Me—and suddenly—”
“And Eeyore,” said Pooh.
“And Eeyore—and then suddenly—”
“And Owl,” said Pooh.
Rabbit pauses, and then: “Here—we—are,” said Rabbit very slowly and carefully, “all—of—us…”
Pooh, we understand from early on, is not the sort of bear to leave anyone out.

Kanga and Roo assimilate seamlessly into Christopher Robin’s open-hearted clique, and not long after, during an outing in the Wood, Roo slips into a stream and gets swept along by the current. “Roo’s fallen in!” Rabbit yells, and at that Pooh and the posse spring to action. Owl offers critical direction to Roo, explaining that “in a case of Sudden and Temporary Immersion the Important Thing was to Keep the Head Above Water.” Eeyore turns and drops his tail into the water that Roo might catch onto it and pull himself out, while Rabbit urges someone to “get something across the stream lower down.” It’s Pooh who discovers in the Wood a long pole and, with Kanga’s help, lays it across the stream. Roo soon drifts up against the pole and climbs safely to the shore.

The basic tenets of friendship in the Pooh stories are that friends look out for one another, and that you can count on them. They’re game and they’re useful. When Pooh gets stuck for a week in the hole in the hillside that serves as Rabbit’s front door—a predicament that leaves Pooh with his North End peering out into the Wood while his South End wriggles in Rabbit’s lair—Rabbit thinks nothing of using Pooh’s legs as a towel rack.

Empathy is not necessarily first to mind, nor easy to act upon. These are young animals, after all, with a drive for self-preservation. That’s why Piglet is quite happy to peel off from a walk in the Wood and leave Pooh to confront a Woozle on his own. And it’s also why whenTigger and Roo get stranded on a high tree branch and can’t get down, Pooh takes the opportunity to eat their picnic sandwiches.

Yet empathy, finally, is the essence of it all. Eeyore’s self-pitying laments play to such effect because his audience is soft and vulnerable. When Eeyore bemoans that everyone has forgotten his birthday, Pooh and Piglet scramble to deliver him gifts. And then Eeyore, in an act of magnanimity that rises above his dour nature, contrives to take pleasure in them. Another time, on a fierce winter day, Pooh and Piglet realize that Eeyore is cold and without shelter in the snowy forest. So they build him a house at Pooh Corner.

Piglet and Pooh are especially close. “It’s always more Friendly with two,” Piglet thinks to himself when he’s looking for Pooh. And the pair have become the saccharine heroes of so many memes (“We’ll be Friends Forever, won’t we, Pooh?” asked Piglet. “Even longer,” Pooh answered.) The BFF treacle sells T-shirts, but it’s the group’s collaborative nature, the comfort of togetherness, that sticks with the reader (or readee). By and by they’re all friends in the Wood. Kanga spends a day teaching Pooh to jump. Rabbit and Roo scheme up activities together.
Pooh sits on the ground and goes back-to-back with Christopher Robin, providing a brace so that Christopher Robin can more easily pull on his boots. Forty-some years before Bill Withers set the notion to lyrics, the inhabitants of the Hundred Acre Wood knew they needed someone to lean on.
Or several someones. When the newly arrived Tigger needs breakfast and doesn’t know what to eat, Pooh surrenders a few pawfuls of honey. Then Piglet pushes over some of his haycorns. Then Eeyore leads Tigger to graze at a special patch of thistles. At last Tigger finds his flavor at Kanga’s house, slurping up some of Roo’s Strengthening Medicine—much to Roo’s delight.

The title of each of the 20 stories that comprise the volumes Winnie the Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner begin with a two-word lead-in. “In Which Pooh Goes Visiting and Gets Into a Tight Place,” for example. Or “In Which Rabbit Has a Busy Day and We Learn What
Christopher Robin Does in the Mornings.”
About 70 years after those books first appeared, another enormously popular series of stories burst across the entertainment culture, a series that also featured a cast of individual characters comically intermingling as they got into adventures and misadventures of their own
making. Those stories formed a long-running television show and they followed a two-word title lead-in that echoed the Pooh collection’s. “The One With the Chicken Pox,” a Season 2 episode was called. Or, in Season 3, “The One Where No One’s Ready.”
That TV show was Friends. ▪

Here are a selection of images that touch on the rich narrative celebrated in LIFE’s new issue Winnie-the-Pooh: The World’s Most Wonderful Bear, available at retail and HERE.

Cover images: TGlyn Jones/Alamy; (inset) © Ernest H. Shepard/BuyEnlarge/ZUMA Press; (stock) Toru Kimura/Getty Images; enjoynz/Getty Images

A.A. Milne with his son, Christopher Robin, and the stuffed bear Christopher Robin originally called Edward. The early Winnie-the-Pooh short stories were based on tales Milne made up to entertain Christopher Robin.

Getty Images

E. H. Shepard, here in 1976, was a prolific painter before he turned to illustration. He modeled his drawing of Winnie-the-Pooh after his own son’s bear, called Growler.

Getty Images

Christopher Robin and Pooh had each other’s back in this illustration from A.A. Milne’s first Winnie-the-Pooh book, which came out in 1926.

© Ernest H. Shepard/BuyEnlarge via ZUMA Press Wire

Pooh, Piglet and Christopher Robin from A.A. Milne’s 1926 “Winnie-the-Pooh,” the first illustrated book with these characters.

ZUMAPRESS.com

Pooh met Tigger in Milne’s second collection of Winnie-the-Pooh stories. The illustration is by E.H. Sheppard.

ZUMAPRESS.com

Pooh and Piglet in A.A. Milne’s 1926 collection The House on Pooh Corner.

ZUMAPRESS.com

Ernest Shepard in 1969 (opposite). In addition to the Pooh books, he illustrated children’s classics such as The Wind in the Wilows and The Secret Garden.

David Montgomery/Getty Images

This 2009 novel picked up where the Milne stories left off.

AFP via Getty Images

This rare Winnie-the-Pooh book featured an inscription from author A.A. Milne asking for artist E.H. Shephard to decorate his tomb.

Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

Shoes That Really Match the Outfit

October 9, 2025 by Bill Syken

Choosing shoes that go with your outfit is the subject of many online tutorials. In 1946, some clothes makers experimented with a novel approach to simplify the challenge. They sold shoes and dresses that were literally cut from the same cloth.

Here’s how LIFE explained it in an Oct. 1946 issue:

The newest looking shoes this year are made of bright fabrics. For shoemakers this is a risky innovation because gay shoes make a girl’s feet look bigger than they are, and the American girls’ feet are big enough already (most sold size, 7 1/2). But using fabrics makes it possible to turn out novel shoes which match other parts of an outfit. Besides, as shoemakers realize, bold shoes are a fine device for attracting attention to pretty legs.

The trend didn’t last, but it did serve as the inspiration for some eye-catching photos from LIFE staff photographer Nina Leen, an expert on making fashions jump off the page.

LIFE noted that manufacturers had been forced to make fabric shoes during World War II because of rationing that limited the supplies of leather (and also rubber). But during those war years manufacturers used dark-colored cloth so as not to draw attention to it. In 1946 some manufacturers switched gears and decided to the highlight the presence of cloth by using bright patterned fabric. LIFE said that this approach gave outfits a “startling footnote.”

P.S Speaking of footnotes, the 1946 story’s comment about the size of women’s feet is not only odd but also outdated. These days women’s feet are actually much bigger, with the average size now up to 8 1/2. The most likely explanation: changes in the American diet.

From a 1946 story on shoes and outfits made from the same fabric.

Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dmitri Kessel’s Images of Italy, 1948

December 26, 2025October 7, 2025 by Bill Syken

The assignment for Dmitri Kessel was a straightforward one: capture images of Italy getting back to normal after World War II. His photos were part of a larger package showing how the Marshall Plan was helping to rebuild Europe.

LIFE wrote in its 1948 report that, after the brutal war years, Europe was seeing a revival:

From the tip of Italy north to Scapa Flow, American travelers are discovering a surprising new look on the war-scarred face of Western Europe. Buildings are going up, the railroads are running, there is more food and the trade is brisk. In many small Italian villages newly painted homes gleam amidst the old colors of yellow terra cotta…. To Americans, who for a decade have only heard reports of European misery, all this comes as a pleasant shock.

To document this moment of change, Kessel took photos of people enjoying a beach that had been previously unusable because it had been planted with land mines. He showed men working at an Alfa Romeo factory in Milan that had been bombed in 1944, but was nearing its old production levels. Kessel also showed tourists from India and the United States visiting attractions that draw people the world over.

Kessel was not the first LIFE photographer to undertake an assignment like this. The year before, in 1947, Alfred Eisenstaedt had also gone to Italy to survey the country’s post-war progress and come home withhis own collection of amazing images.

While the scars of World War II were still fresh—one of Kessel’s photos shows workers rebuilding a bridge that had been taken out during the fighting—the country remained photogenic. It’s why LIFE photographers—and tourists (including 60 million in 2024)—keep making Italy one of the most visited countries in the world.

Scenes around Italy from a story about the country starting to bounce back from World War II, 1948.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

This Italian beach, which had been planted with landmines during World War II, was now safe for public use, 1948.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

People danced on the terrace of an Italian beach as the country began to bounce back from World War II, 1948.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A man and woman conversed at an Italian beach, 1948.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Scenes around Italy from a story about the country starting to bounce back from World War II, 1948.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

People in Rome sunbathed and swawm at the Tiber boathouse, 1948.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Men played checkers by the water in Italy, 1948.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Scenes around Italy from a story about the country starting to bounce back from World War II, 1948.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Children played cards on the street in Italy, 1948.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Scenes around Italy from a story about the country starting to bounce back from World War II, 1948.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

People harvested grain in Italy, 1948.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A team of four oxen pulled a harvester over an oat field in Italy, 1948.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Factory workers in Italy, 1948.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Alfa Romeo plant in Milan, Italy, 1948.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Two newly assembled Alfa Romeos were checked over at the company factory in Milan, Italy, 1948.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Scenes around Italy from a story about the country starting to bounce back from World War II, 1948.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

American sightseers at St. Peter’s in Rome, 1948.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Tourists posed at the Colosseum in Rome, 1948.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Scenes around Italy from a story about the country starting to bounce back from World War II, 1948.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Workers reconstructed a bridge over the Po River as Italy began to bounce back from World War II, 1948.

Dmitri Kessel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

LIFE’s Favorite Photos of America’s Harvesters

September 30, 2025 by Bill Syken

America has a lot going for it, and the ability to feed itself would be at the top of the list. The country is rich in arable farmland.

This important truth is one that suffuses this collection of harvest-time photos taken during LIFE’s original run from 1936 to 1972. The crops being harvested in these photos include corn, wheat, potatoes, tomatoes, onions, celery, grapes, peaches, squash and watermelon. It’s a veritable cornucopia.

(The photographers at work here are a bumper crop too, including LIFE staffers Margaret Bourke-White, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Joe Scherschel, Wallace Kirkland and many others).

It’s worth noting that much has changed about America’s farms since these photos were taken, with the family farm giving way to large-scale agribusiness. According to data from the U.S Department of Agriculture, the number of farms in the United States reached their peak in 1935, at around 7 million. Then came a period of rapid decline, with the total hitting 2 million by the 1970s before leveling off some. The total acreage of farmland didn’t change that much, though, because while the number of farms decreased, their size multiplied.

LIFE was very much aware of this change as it was happening, and worried that it was bad for the country. The magazine fretted in 1948 that the decline of the family farm might also signal the decline of the American family, as families stopped focussing on joint enterprises and its members pursued their individual interests instead. Some of the warmest and most nostalgic images in this collection are those of community, showing people working in unison or taking a break to enjoy a communal meal—with members of a found family, if not an actual one.

Not much is known about the particular farms or farmers in most of these images, though some of the photos, by Michael Rougier, were taken for a story about migrant workers. In all cases, through, there is a connection to the land, and reminder of what it takes for Americans to get their fruits and vegetables.

Harvesters hitchhiked to a wheat harvesting, Oklahoma, 1942.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Farm workers harvested onions, Burbank, California, 1952.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Wheat harvest, Texas, 1949.

Joe Scherschel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Scene from a New Hampshire apple harvest, 1963.

Leonard McCombe/Life Picture Collection/Shiutterstock

An Illinois watermelon harvest, 1946.

Wallace Kirkland/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Nebraska corn harvesters, 1944.

Photo by Wallace Kirkland

Child playing with corn on the farm, Nebraska, 1944.

Wallace Kirkland/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Nebraska corn harvest, 1944.

Wallace Kirkland/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Migrant workers harvesting potatoes, 1959.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Migrant farm workers harvested celery in California, 1959.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

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

Loomis Dean/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

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

Loomis Dean/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Celery harvesting in Florida, 1951.

Howard Sochurek/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Peach harvest, 1946.

Wallace Kirkland/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A view of a man unloading bushels of freshly-harvested tomatoes at a produce market in Michigan, 1946

Wallace Kirkland/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Harvesting Boston marrow squash at Seabrook Farms in New Jersey, 1954.

Yale Joel/Life Picture Collectioh/Shutterstock

Women inspecting and checking beans at the Seabrook Farms in New Jersey, 1954.

Yale Joel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Seabrook Farms in New Jersey, 1954.

Yale Joel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Harvest farm hands ate lunch served by their wives in kitchen of a farmhouse, Wichita, Kansas, 1954.

Photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Farmers had lunch brought and served by their wives as they paused briefly during harvest of Springer wheat, Minnesota, 1943

Gordon Coster/Life PIcture Collection/Shutterstock

The Mona Lisa’s One and Only Visit to America

September 24, 2025 by Bill Syken

For a few weeks in 1963, Americans could see the Mona Lisa without having to go to the Louvre.

That’s because the Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece crossed the Atlantic ocean by boat for a one-of-a-kind visit to the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. This was the only time the painting came to the Americas, and likely the only time it ever will. The only other occasions on which the Mona Lisa has left France were in 1911, when it was stolen by an Italian museum worker and briefly taken to Italy, and in 1974, when the painting traveled for exhibitions in Japan and Russia.

How did the U.S. visit even come about? Credit First Lady (and LIFE magazine favorite) Jacqueline Kennedy, who spoke French fluently and made the request in person to Andre Malraux, the French minister of cultural affairs, during a dinner at the White House. According to Margaret Leslie Davis’s book Mona Lisa in Camelot, Jackie Kennedy wanted the painting to come to America because she “saw the exhibition as an unmatched opportunity to burnish the American image at home and abroad, and [as] a convincing emblem of friendship between France and the U.S. It was a well-chosen gesture of amity, goodwill, and fervent diplomacy.”

The plan to send the Mona Lisa to America was not popular in France, with art experts calling the idea “insane” and “deadly.” They worried that harm would come to this famous and fragile work of art, which was painted in 1503, either because of accidental damage or an act of terror.

French officials did everything they could to make sure Mona Lisa’s journey was a safe one. Here’s how LIFE described the painting’s journey from Paris to Washington in December 1962.

Surrounded by grandeur that would have done credit to Charles de Gaulle, she had travelled on the S.S. France in a deluxe suite that would have cost an ordinary passenger $2,000. Day and night four guards and three museum officials hovered around to check her temperature and see that her wraps didn’t slip off….She was spirited into an air-conditioned van on a New York dock and whisked to the National Gallery in Washington.

The trip from New York to Washington apparently included the van making a stop at a roadside filling station—probably the nearest the Mona Lisa has ever been to a five-cent hot dog. The photo of the van at the filling station is one of many shot by LIFE’s John Loengard, who documented the van journey and of a press viewing in Washington D.C. The painting was exhibited in Washington for three weeks in January 1963, when it was seen by more than a half-million visitors, who waited up to two hours in line for their glimpse of it. Then the painting returned back up to New York, where LIFE’s Ralph Morse took some more photos of the masterpiece on its way to the Met.

After nearly a month in New York, the Mona Lisa returned to France looking no worse for wear.

A French security guard with the crated ‘Mona Lisa’ painting in the state room of a French liner enroute to the US for an exhibit. 1962.

Ralph Morse/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Mona Lisa was transported by van from New York to Washington D.C. during its U.S. visit in 1962.

John Loengard/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

During a visit to New York and Washington D.C.. in 1963, the Mona Lisa made the trip by van, 1962.

John Loengard/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Mona Lisa (inside its transport crate) came to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., 1962.

John Loengard/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Mona Lisa at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., 1963.

John Loengard/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The press at the visit of the Mona Lisa to Washington D.C., 1963.

John Loengard/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A security guard kept its eye on the Mona Lisa during its visit to the National Gallery of Art, 1963.

John Loengard/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Mona Lisa at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., 1963.

John Loengard/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Mona Lisa, on a goodwill trip from France, arrived in New York City in a protective box, 1963.

Ralph Morse/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Mona Lisa, on loan from France, hung in a vault at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., 1963.

John Leongard/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Meet Three-Time LIFE Cover Model Elsa Martinelli

September 22, 2025 by Bill Syken

Elsa Martinelli had three things going for her. That was the analysis of LIFE magazine when she was introduced to readers on the cover of a 1957 issue as “a triple-threat Italian beauty.”

One of her chief assets was her was looks, wrote LIFE. Another was her flair for fashion. The third was her acting ability. And indeed in 1957 Martinelli was at the beginning of a long screen career in which she would play the female lead in the relatively minor works of some major movie stars, including Robert Mitchum, John Wayne and Kirk Douglas.

After her 1957 debut Martinelli was back on the cover in 1962 modeling “a toga to shed before going to bed,” and again in 1963 for a report on new fashions from Paris.

She also spent some time in front of a LIFE camera for a story that never ran in the magazine but produced some charming images. In 1964 photographer Carlo Bavagnoli followed Martinelli as she rode around Paris on a motorbike—it looks like a Honda CZ100, the first minibike sold to consumers. In her day Martinelli was often talked about as Italy’s answer to Audrey Hepburn, and the resemblance is prominent as she scoots about the City of Lights in a manner that calls to mind the playful spirit that Hepburn showed when she gadded about a different European capital in the cinema classic Roman Holiday.

Martinelli is of course smartly dressed in these photos and they also benefit from the flavor of Paris, especially when the Champs Elysées looms in the background.

Also included in this gallery are several shots of Martinelli by another LIFE photographer, Ralph Crane. These give a glimpse of what this cover model looked like in living color.