Living in the YouTube era, it’s no longer entirely surprising to see a 5-year-old piano prodigy or a breakdancing toddler go viral. Half a century ago, those baby Einsteins got their 15 minutes of fame in a more old-fashioned medium: the back pages of LIFE magazine.
Fifteen-month-old Jean Anne Evans was one such child. The Texan toddler was born into a family of ranchers and horseback riders, and first straddled a saddle (with her mother in tow) at the tender age of one month. When LIFE photographer Alan Grant visited her family’s farm near Fort Davis, he found the girl holding her own atop her 25-year-old horse, Toy Boy.
Despite her prowess, LIFE wrote, she occasionally “betrays her years by dropping off to sleep suddenly in mid-roundup.” Thankfully, her mother’s saddle made for just the place to take a nap.
Liz Ronk edited this gallery for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter @lizabethronk.
The Youngest Cowgirl in 1955
Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The Youngest Cowgirl in 1955
Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The Youngest Cowgirl in 1955
Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The Youngest Cowgirl in 1955
Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The Youngest Cowgirl in 1955
Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The Youngest Cowgirl in 1955
Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The Youngest Cowgirl in 1955
Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The Youngest Cowgirl in 1955
Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
The Youngest Cowgirl in 1955
Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
“These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, on my wife or on my sons,” President Franklin D. Roosevelt told an audience at a campaign dinner on Sept. 23, 1944. “Not content with that, they now include my little dog Fala.” Roosevelt was referring to a Republican attack on his reelection campaign, which claimed the president had left his Scottish Terrier behind on a visit to the Aleutian Islands, and spent millions in taxpayer dollars to send a destroyer to recover him.
Not only was the story completely fabricated, Roosevelt explained, but Fala was offended. “Now of course I don’t resent attacks, and my family don’t resent attacks,” he told his supporters, “but Fala does resent it.”
It was not surprising that the president rushed to his dog’s defense. Political analysts would say he was simply deflating the negative publicity of the attack with humor. But this was not merely political theater Roosevelt’s affection for the terrier was well documented.
Fala appeared in LIFE magazine almost as frequently as his master. The dog had been given to Roosevelt as a gift from his cousin in 1940, and subsequently accompanied the president in the Oval Office, on official state visits and on overseas trips to meet dignitaries as esteemed as Winston Churchill. When they were at home, Roosevelt had the White House kitchen place a bone on his daily breakfast tray for the dog.
Fala quickly became accustomed to the spotlight. “When cameramen visit the White House to photograph the President or visiting dignitaries,” LIFE wrote of him, “he often insinuates himself into the foreground and poses like any publicity-seeking ham.” He barked during meetings, starred in a short MGM movie, made ample use of the presidential pool and “traveled the world to be present when history was being made.”
The controversy, of course, blew over, and Roosevelt would go on to defeat Republican Thomas Dewey with 432 electoral votes to Dewey’s 99. Roosevelt died the following spring, and Fala, seven years later, would be buried near his human at the family’s Hyde Park estate.
Watch footage of FDR defending his loyal pet below:
Liz Ronk edited this gallery for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter @lizabethronk.
Fala at the White House, 1941.
Thomas D. McAvoy The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Fala at the White House, 1941.
Thomas D. McAvoy The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Fala at the White House, 1941.
Thomas D. McAvoy The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Fala at the White House, 1941.
Thomas D. McAvoy The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Fala in Quebec, 1943
Ed Clark The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock
Fala in Quebec, 1943
Ed Clark The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock
Fala listening to FDR’s Acceptance Speech, 1944.
George Skadding The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Fala listening to FDR’s Acceptance Speech, 1944.
George Skadding The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Fala and FDR in Hyde Park, 1944
George Skadding The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s dog Fala during the funeral procession for the President. April 1945.
Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s dog Fala during the funeral procession for the President. April 1945.
The pristine wildlife of the Galapagos Islands, which are located nearly 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador, has long appealed to tourists with an eye for nature. In recent years, the number of such visitors has steadily increased: there were 200,000 of them in 2013, compared to fewer than 12,000 in 1979. But the attraction of the islands is far from new. That same wildlife also attracted a young naturalist to the islands in 1835, and his findings there would inform one of the most important scientific theories ever posited.
Charles Darwin had been sailing for three years on the H.M.S. Beagle, helmed by captain Robert FitzRoy, before arriving at the Galapagos. During the voyage’s five weeks at the islands, he observed giant tortoises and marine iguanas, mockingbirds and finches. His observations of the variations between species on different islands sparked the idea that would lead to his theories of evolution and natural selection, published more than two decades later in On the Origin of Species.
When LIFE sent photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt to photograph the islands in 1957, his camera found many of the same species Darwin had written about. In a lengthy essay accompanying Eisenstaedt’s photographs, LIFE summarized Darwin’s amazement upon finally embarking on the most anticipated leg of his journey:
The Beagle arrived on Sept. 15, and Darwin gazed with awe at the forbidding scene black basaltic mountains, pitted, cratered, blistered, seamed with lava flows, littered with slag heaps, strewn with cinders, parched and prostrate beneath a smoldering, sullen sky. To his eyes the landscape suggested “what we might imagine the cultivated parts of the Infernal regions to be.”
Liz Ronk edited this gallery for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter @lizabethronk.
Original caption: ” A giant tortoise, sensing danger, draws in its head with a hiss of alarm. It weighs 500 pounds, measures 51 inches down the back.”
Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Galapagos Islands 1957
Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Sea iguana, Galapagos Islands, 1957.
Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Seals, Galapagos Islands, 1957.
Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Original caption: “Galapagos hawk surveys a terrain in which it knows no fear, even of man.”
Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Original caption: “Brown pelican, kin to the U.S. pelican, feeds by scooping small fish into its pouch.”
Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Original caption: “Lava cliff on Indefatigable Island, mounting above cool, turquoise waters, shows aridity of the Galapagos climate by its crown of cactus trees.”
Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Original caption: “Young fur seal suns itself on lava rocks of James Island. At three months, it has been weaned and has learned to swim and forage for itself.”
Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Original caption: “Lava lizard dines on a smaller member of his tribe, an unusual meal since lizards normally eat insects. Most abundant of local reptiles, lava lizards are found everywhere on the islands, including the homes of men. When angry they blow themselves up with air and spit their displeasure.”
Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Original caption: “Scarlet rock crab squirts water in a moment of fright. Hosts of these crabs search for food, seldom entering the sea though always moistened by spray. Surprisingly nimble, they skitter swiftly into crannies before the winged shadows of their enemies, the predatory birds.”
Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Original caption: “Prickly pear cacti reach tree size in the Galapagos, rearing their oval pads to heights of more than 30 feet. Flourishing across the arid lowlands, they provide both food and water to tortoises, iguanas and other animals who consume them spines and all with no apparent ill effects.”
Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Original caption: “Coastal pool on James Island is roiled by sportive splashing of a sea lion enjoying a dip. Playful and tame, Galapagos sea lions have held their own against man’s depredations, dwelling in herds on the rocks. Males often acquire harems of about 20 females which they guard jealously.”
Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
A bird perches on a rock, Galapagos Islands, 1957.
Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Galapagos Islands 1957
Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Galapagos Islands 1957
Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Original caption: “1957 expedition was led by Dr. I. Eibl-Eibesfeldt of West Germany and Dr. Robert Bowman of U.S. Behind them: LIFE’s Photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt and Artist Rudolf Freund who illustrated the article.”
Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Raquel Welch became famous as the star of such movies as Fantastic Voyage (1966) and One Million Years B.C. (also 1966). When LIFE Magazine profiled Raquel Welch in 1972, she was donning roller skates for a new role. According to LIFE, the actress, who died on February 15, 2023 at age 82, was the “hottest thing on wheels,” throwing elbows and sustaining multiple injuries while filming the roller derby flick Kansas City Bomber.
The film, in which Welch plays a hardened derby star and single mother to a young Jodi Foster, may not have been a critical success, but Welch still believes it had something important to say. In a 2012 interview with GQ, when the Film Society of Lincoln Center was celebrating her body of work, Welch reflected on Kansas City Bomber“s depiction of gender relations in the early 1970s. “You have all those women out there, but the men in the front office are really running it,” she said of the roller derby world depicted in the film. “Which I thought was a really nice metaphor for the way a lot of women felt about their lives at that time.”
In her later years Welch stepped back from acting to focus on charity work and family time. She also cautioned against the superficiality of the sex symbol status she held, and the assumptions people tend to make. “I felt like people had me on a pedestal, and they didn’t know there was this other person,” she told the AARP, talking about the image that helped make her a star, of her in a bikini in the poster for the 1966 movie One Million Years B.C.. “They saw the poster but they didn’t really know the story behind it.”
Liz Ronk, who edited this gallery, is the Photo Editor for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter @lizabethronk.
Raquel Welch 1972
Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Raquel Welch 1972
Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Raquel Welch 1972
Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Raquel Welch 1972
Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Raquel Welch 1972
Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Raquel Welch 1972
Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
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Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Raquel Welch 1972
Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Raquel Welch 1972
Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Raquel Welch 1972
Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Raquel Welch 1972
Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Raquel Welch 1972
Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Raquel Welch 1972
Bill Eppridge The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Vikki Dougan didn’t quite stick to the pop culture firmament in the manner of Marilyn Monroe and other beauty icons of the1950s, but she did have her moment: an appearance at the 1957 Golden Globes in a backless gown that was the talk of the ceremony. And it appears the model and actress known as “The Back” is having a moment again. In its April 22, 2021 Style section the New York Times trumpeted Dougan’s recent revival in popularity in a story titled “Flashing Back to `The Back.'” The cause: Instagram accounts which celebrate vintage Hollywood. Search on the hashtag #VikkiDougan and you’ll find images with tens of thousands of likes—most of which are drawn from a photoshoot that the starlet did with LIFE’s Ralph Crane in 1957.
“I don’t know, maybe I’m having a resurgence,” she told the Times, talking about her autograph requests. “I’m amazed at these people who write to me, they’ve seen everything I’ve done.”
If characterizing a woman by a notable body part seems reductive and objectifying—well, it is. That was also a not-uncommon publicity practice in a day in which Betty Grable was celebrated for her legs and Jane Russell was sometimes referred to as “The Bust.”
Dougan had actually been modeling and acting for years before her back became the center of attention after that Golden Globes presentation in ’57. But that aspect of her anatomy became such an object of curiosity—years into her career—that Crane conducted the rare photo shoot in which the subject was mostly photographed from behind.
Of particular interest are the images in which Crane had Dougan walk around Los Angeles in a backless dress. Crane’s images of male heads on a swivel play like an early draft of today’s popular “distracted boyfriend” internet meme.
Years before she became “The Back,” Dougan had actually appeared in LIFE magazine on two occasions. The first story, in the July 28, 1952 issue, was a short piece about how Dougan—born Edith Tooker in Brooklyn on Jan. 1, 1929—used different-colored wigs to earn extra bookings as a model. The following year she made on the cover of LIFE’s October 23, 1953 issue with the headline ‘Vikki Dougan: Actress, Model and Mother.’ The story talked about how the divorced 21-year-old balanced her various careers and motherhood. Six photos ran with the story, and in each of them Dougan was facing forward.
In that 1953 article LIFE described how Dougan’s career was going well: “…she earns $100 a week by looking pretty on Jackie Gleason’s TV show, and $250 a week from modeling.” The story also mentioned that she was taking acting classes.
But as the years went on Dougan’s acting career never entirely took sail, and her screen history is defined by small parts in forgettable movies. In the Times story she described a Hollywood experience defined by predatory men and poor management, and also a choice she regretted: turning down a contract from Paramount that did not pay as well as her modeling work, but which might have landed her in more quality films.
About being known as The Back, she said, “It is not symbolic about who I am. It wasn’t really me. I was playing a part. I didn’t even think there was anything even sexy about showing a back. It just didn’t occur to me.”
Model and actress Vikki Dougan wore a backless dress while walking in Los Angeles, 1957.
One of the coolest dogs to appear in the pages of LIFE has to be Bellybutton. The 3-year-old German shorthaired pointer made an impression in 1966 with his underwater agility.
Bellybutton was unique not for his swimming abilities, but for his willingness to dive to retrieve an object. Most dogs retrieve sticks and balls from the water’s surface, but Bellybutton would go as deep as 20 feet and remain submerged for up to 15 seconds. He even practiced his skill on his own one day, LIFE reported, “he dived unbidden into a lake and fetched his master a 10-inch catfish.”
Liz Ronk edited this gallery for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter @lizabethronk.
Bellybutton would swim underwater for distances up to 20 feet.
Ralph Crane The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
German pointer Bellybutton dove for a rubber bone.
Ralph Crane The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Bellybutton reached the pool’s bottom to retrieve the bone.
Ralph Crane The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Bellybutton neared the rubber bone.
Ralph Crane The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Bellybutton returned to the surface.
Ralph Crane The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Bellybutton raced against a human swimmer to capture the bone.
Ralph Crane The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Bellybutton exited the pool via the stairs.
Ralph Crane The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Bellybutton carried his rubber bone.
Ralph Crane The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Bellybutton shook himself dry.
Ralph Crane The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Bellybutton received a post-pool rubdown.
Ralph Crane The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Bellybutton after a swim.
Ralph Crane The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
