Page 81 – LIFE

Behind the Music of Country’s Founding Family

March 29, 2023April 17, 2015 by

If there can be only one father of country music, it would be A.P. Carter. And if there’s only one founding family of the genre, it’s the Carter family.

Alvin Pleasant Carter was marked by a ring of fire—though not the one his niece June would later write a song about. His mother Mollie, eight months pregnant with him, stood next to a tree that got struck by lightning and touched her belly as electricity coursed through the ground. A.P. was born with a tremor that would later touch his singing voice with an unmistakably special quality.

The Carter family became a family when A.P. married Sara Dougherty, whom he fell in love with after hearing the sound of her voice as she played the autoharp. Sara’s cousin Maybelle later married A.P.’s brother Ezra, or “Eck,” and among them they had a brood of six, three children per couple.

A.P. was a masterful songwriter, carrying a yellow pad of paper wherever he went in case inspiration struck, which it often did. But his songs were a blend of original tunes and the melodies and lyrics he picked up in the Virginia mountains as he traveled from house to house selling fruit trees. Much of the country music canon originated from the Carters” transformation of traditional folk songs into popular recorded music, replete with simple yet poignant harmonies.

Sara was known for her deep lead voice, and Maybelle for the original style of guitar picking so influential it now bears the family’s name. When Maybelle’s young daughter Anita sang a song before producers one day about a “purdy liddle kitty cat” they were so impressed that they asked if there were more like her at home. And there were: her sisters Helen and June, the latter of whom would later marry Johnny Cash.

The photos Eric Schaal took of the family in 1941 were bumped by bigger news the week they were meant to run in LIFE: the bombing of Pearl Harbor. But the family’s legacy has endured, with generations of musicians citing them as a major influence. And not just country musicians, either. Jerry Garcia perhaps captured it best when he said, “Whenever I write a song, there’s a little piece of the Carter Family in there.”

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

Considered the father of country music, A. P. Carter, singing and playing guitar as he sits at home.

Eric Schaal The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Carter sisters (L-R) Anita, June and Helen.

Eric Schaal The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

June Carter performing a hand stand in the living room of her family’s home.

Eric Schaal The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

June Carter performing a cart wheel in the living room of her family’s home.

Eric Schaal The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

June Carter performing a back bend in the living room of her family’s home.

Eric Schaal The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Portrait of the legendary Carter family (R-L) A. P. Carter, his sister-in-law Maybelle (playing guitar), her sister Sara (A.P.’s wife) playing autoharp and; Maybelle’s young daughters Helen, June and; Anita; singing together home.

Eric Schaal The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Carter Family, 1941

Eric Schaal The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A. P. Carter singing w. wife Sara while she plays autoharp and sings with her sister Maybelle.

Eric Schaal The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Carter Family, 1941

Eric Schaal The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Hands of Sara Carter, playing the autoharp.

Eric Schaal The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Carter family (L-R) A.P., Ezra, Maybelle, Anita, June, Helen, Sara, Flo Millard (A.P. and Sara’s granddaughter), Gladys Carter Millard, Margaret Addington (Maybelle’s mother), and Joe.

Eric Schaal The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

See Photos From a Secret Service Fitness Test in the 1960s

December 10, 2020April 14, 2015 by

In what may be one of the biggest coincidences in presidential history, Abraham Lincoln signed legislation creating the Secret Service on April 14, 1865, just hours before he was assassinated. But the agency he created wouldn’t have done much to save him had they been around sooner. The original purpose of the United States Secret Service was to tackle the country’s burgeoning counterfeit money problem.

By the time LIFE covered the Secret Service more than a century later, it had taken on a dual mission–protecting the country’s currency and protecting the President, other high-ranking officials and their families from bodily harm.

In 1968, five years after the assassination of President Kennedy, and in the month after Martin Luther King’s death and before Robert Kennedy’s, LIFE dispatched photographer Stan Wayman to shoot the men as they practiced their shooting. In this monthly qualification test, which agents had to pass in addition to biannual physical exams, agents were tested in marksmanship, motorcade etiquette, defensive combat and life-saving techniques.

Agents practiced shooting at the National Arboretum, which was, according to notes accompanying the photographs, “one of the few places in the District isolated enough to shoot guns without passers-by thinking another riot is taking place.” “Another” here refers to the six days of protest that took place in Washington after King’s death the previous month. But everything that took place on this spring day was just a drill, and the few tourists who did spot the agents “were sadly disappointed to find out the president wasn’t along for the work out.”

The White House detail taking their monthly qualification tests, May 1968.

The White House detail taking their monthly qualification tests, May 1968. Pictured (Left to Right): Dave Grant (running), Art Godfrey, Ron Pontius, John Paul Jones. (Stan Wayman / The LIFE Picture Collection)

The White House detail taking their monthly qualification tests, May 1968.

The White House detail works on marksmanship, May 1968. Pictured: Clint Hill (shooting), Ron Pontius (standing), P. Hamilton “Ham” Brown (driving). (Stan Wayman / The LIFE Picture Collection)

The White House detail taking their monthly qualification tests, May 1968.

The White House detail at the shooting range, May 1968. The first three agents (left to right) are Art Godfrey, Clint Hill and Mike Howard. (Stan Wayman / The LIFE Picture Collection)

The White House detail taking their monthly qualification tests, May 1968.

Members of White House detail Art Godfrey, Clint Hill, Mike Howard, Dave Grant, P. Hamilton “Ham” Brown, Chuck Zboril and Ron Pontius practice using 4-inch .357 Magnum revolvers. (Stan Wayman / The LIFE Picture Collection)

The White House detail taking their monthly qualification tests, May 1968.

The White House detail taking their monthly qualification tests, May 1968. Pictured (from rear): P. Hamilton Brown, Dave Grant, Mike Howard and Clint Hill. (Stan Wayman / The LIFE Picture Collection)

The White House detail taking their monthly qualification tests, May 1968.

Secret Service agents trained on both rifles and shot guns. (Stan Wayman / The LIFE Picture Collection)

The White House detail taking their monthly qualification tests, May 1968.

Instructor and Art Godfrey examine silhouette at shooting practice. (Stan Wayman / The LIFE Picture Collection)

The White House detail taking their monthly qualification tests, May 1968.

Ned Hall and Chuck Zboril practice hand-to-hand combat and disarming a suspect. (Stan Wayman / The LIFE Picture Collection)

The White House detail taking their monthly qualification tests, May 1968.

Another view of Ned Hall and Chuck Zboril practicing hand-to-hand combat. (Stan Wayman / The LIFE Picture Collection)

The White House detail taking their monthly qualification tests, May 1968.

All agents were excellent marksmen. Most were in the “expert marksmanship” category. Here, Art Godfrey (foreground) takes aim. (Stan Wayman / The LIFE Picture Collection)

The White House detail taking their monthly qualification tests, May 1968.

Shooting was considered the most important part of any agent’s training. Here, (left to right) Mike Howard, Dave Grant, Ham Brown and Chuck Zboril at Remington 12-gauge shotgun practice. (Stan Wayman / The LIFE Picture Collection)

The White House detail taking their monthly qualification tests, May 1968.

The White House detail practiced shooting at the National Arboretum, the only spot isolated enough not to alarm passers-by. Pictured (left to right in suits): Mike Howard, Dave Grant, Ham Brown and Chuck Zboril. (Stan Wayman / The LIFE Picture Collection)

The White House detail taking their monthly qualification tests, May 1968.

When the agents were not on the road or guarding the White House, they were training, attending lectures and learning new techniques. Pictured: Art Godfrey (left) and Chuck Zboril. (Stan Wayman / The LIFE Picture Collection)

The White House detail taking their monthly qualification tests, May 1968.

Cars in the presidential motorcade were specially outfitted with handles for agents, bulletproof tires and electronic communications. The car at rear is a newer model to replace the vintage 1950s Cadillac follow-up cars. (Stan Wayman / The LIFE Picture Collection)

Portrait of a Working Mother in the 1950s

March 8, 2022April 13, 2015 by

In 1956, just 16% of women with children under 6 worked outside the home, but twenty-seven-year-old Jennie Magill of Hammond, Ind., was one of them. When LIFE Magazine published a special double issue on “The American Woman: Her Achievements and Her Troubles,” the editors selected Magill for its cover. Smiling lovingly at her child, who smiles adoringly back, Magill was introduced to America as the face of that rare specimen, the “Working Mother.”

For historical context, this was seven years before the Equal Pay Act prohibited sex-based wage discrimination and The Feminine Mystique exposed the plight of the joyless housewife. It was more than a decade before the Equal Rights Amendment and long before the idea of equal pay for equal work became a rallying cry. People back then were more likely to be talking about whether women should work at all.

For many of LIFE’s readers, Magill would have been something of an introduction to the working mom. But despite the prevalent stigma back then against mothers who worked outside the home, LIFE portrayed Magill in an overwhelmingly positive light.

Magill worked in the bridal service at a local department store, and her husband Jim as a junior executive at a steel company. Her job afforded her a social life with coworkers. It brought the family more disposable income. It provided time for her and Jim, on their drive home together, to talk without the distractions of a hectic household. And both parents” time away from home meant that when they were with their children, they were entirely focused on enjoying time as a family.

Despite its unequivocally laudatory attitude toward the two-working-parent household, the magazine omitted one thing: the voice of Jennie Magill. As implied by the headline, “My Wife Works and I Like It,” the attitudes expressed in the photo essay, progressive and egalitarian as they were, belonged to Jim. Jennie was the pretty face, and Jim the confident voice, an editorial choice that may have reflected an effort to make the story more palatable to stalwarts of the old guard.

Perhaps the most telling aside in the essay is that Magill, who by all appearances had what we might today call “it all,” could not do what she did alone. Not only was she “blessed with a loyal, experienced housekeeper,” but Jim “enthusiastically approves of the idea” of her working outside the home. And while both partners worked outside the home, they also both worked inside of it. “We all live here,” said Jim, “so why shouldn’t we all help out?”

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

Jennie Magill with her family in the background.

Grey Villet The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Working mother Jennie Magill shopping with her children.

Grey Villet The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jennie and Jim Magill in the kitchen.

Grey Villet The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jennie Magill and family in the kitchen.

Grey Villet The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

LIFE’s original caption read, “Wifely kiss is Jim’s reward for helping with the dishes.”

Grey Villet The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jennie Magill at work.

Grey Villet The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: ” Companionable lunch with the girls from store is lots better, says Jennie, than a sandwich in solitude at home. `Through Jennie’s friends at work,’ says Jim, `I’ve met a lot of people I wouldn’t have met otherwise.'”

Grey Villet The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: “Her work is a source of pride to Jim. `She has done a terrific job. And when I tell her about my work she doesn’t brush it off.'”

Grey Villet The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: “Going home, Jim always picks Jennie up at Carson Pirie Scott branch. The ride home is a chance to talk without domestic distractions.”

Grey Villet The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jennie and Jim Magill coming home from work.

Grey Villet The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: ” Taking over the family reins when she gets home, Jennie holds Jackie, 2, who tests cake which he `helped’ housekeeper Sophia Flewelling (left) to bake. Sophie runs household smoothly while parents are gone.”

Grey Villet The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jennie Magill and family.

Grey Villet The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jennie Magill ironing with her daughter.

Grey Villet The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jennie Magill with her children.

Grey Villet The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jennie Magill comforting her crying daughter.

Grey Villet The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jennie Magill with her children.

Grey Villet The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jennie Magill reading a story to her children; the image is from a 1956 LIFE story on working mothers.

Grey Villet The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: “Bill-paying is disagreeable, but it reminds them of how well they live because Jennie works. `It’s nice not to have that lost feeling,’ says Jim. `Now when we see a piece of furniture we want, we buy it.”

Grey Villet The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jennie Magill kisses her children goodbye.

Grey Villet The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Hollywood’s Most Famous Sibling Rivalry

March 10, 2023April 10, 2015 by

For three quarters of a century, the supposed feud between sisters Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine was the stuff of tabloid dreams. Only 15 months apart, the sisters pursued the same career, competed for the same Oscars and even cozied up to some of the same men. As LIFE put it in a 1942 profile titled “Sister Act”: “There is no danger that sisterly affection, breaking suddenly upon them, will dampen their rivalry and the girls” careers.”

It’s no surprise, then, that when Bob Landry photographed them for that LIFE story, they appeared in only seven photographs together out of the more than hundred he shot of them. In a story that was about their relationship. They might as well have been posing for two separate articles.

At that time, de Havilland was 25 and Fontaine, 24. At that year’s Academy Awards, they had gone head to head in the race for Best Actress, the first pair of siblings to compete for an Oscar. (Only one pair of siblings, Lynn and Vanessa Redgrave, has joined them in that category in the intervening years.) De Havilland was nominated for Hold Back the Dawn and Fontaine for Suspicion. The older sister, who famously played Melanie Hamilton in Gone With the Wind, was known for playing “pretty and charming, naïve,” and the younger for roles that were “moody, intuitive and emotional.” LIFE’s Oliver O. Jensen described the tense moment before the envelope was opened:

It was the climactic moment in their own private battle of ambitions and, knowing their bitter rivalry, the Hollywood banqueters waited hopefully for the losing sister to burst into tears or stamp her little foot in rage when the announcement was made. But when the Oscar went to Joan, Olivia only seized her sister’s hand and crowed, “We’ve got it!”

Long before the sisters went head to head in Hollywood, they competed for attention as children. Fontaine who took her stepfather’s name when she decided, as she told the Hollywood Reporter“s Scott Feinberg, “Two de Havillands on the marquee would be too many” had been a sickly child. Her “bouncy and pretty” older sister was favored, scored leading roles in local plays and enjoyed picking on her, taunting, “I can but Joan can’t!”

Though she was younger, Fontaine won an Oscar first and married first, famously quipping, “If I die first, she’ll undoubtedly be livid because I beat her to it!” Her first husband, Brian Aherne, had been romantically involved with de Havilland before Fontaine, Jensen wrote, “met and seized” him for herself.

De Havilland, now 98, rarely spoke about the alleged feud, save for a 1957 interview in which she attributed her distance with her sister to a cutting remark Fontaine once made about her first husband. Fontaine wrote in her 1978 autobiography that her older sister rebuffed her when she tried to congratulate de Havilland for her first Oscar, which came in 1947. In an interview after the book’s release, she also spoke about differences of opinion in how to care for their ailing mother and how to memorialize their mother after her death. Fontaine said she heard about their mother’s death not from her sister but through the grapevine.

When Feinberg interviewed both sisters in 2013, before Fontaine’s death in December of that year, Fontaine brushed off the rivalry that by then was so ingrained in Hollywood legend it might as well have been engraved on the Walk of Fame. “Let me just say, Olivia and I have never had a quarrel,” she told Feinberg. “We have never had any dissatisfaction. We have never had hard words.”

Whether the feud was fact or fiction or, more likely, something in between, the sisters were talented, ambitious people who achieved success without relying on nepotism, and really in spite of it. Perhaps the same drive that propelled them up the Hollywood ladder wedged a small but enduring gulf between them. As Fontaine once put it, “We are not passive people in any way.”

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

Joan Fontaine and Olivia De Havilland, 1942

Bob Landry The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Joan Fontaine, 1942

Bob Landry The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Olivia De Havilland, 1942

Bob Landry The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Joan Fontaine, 1942

Bob Landry The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Brian Aherne, Joan Fontaine and Olivia De Havilland, 1942

Bob Landry The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Joan Fontaine, 1942

Bob Landry The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Olivia De Havilland, 1942

Bob Landry The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Joan Fontaine with her husband Brian Aherne and her dog, 1942.

Bob Landry The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Joan Fontaine, 1942

Bob Landry The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Olivia De Havilland, 1942

Bob Landry The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Joan Fontaine, 1942

Bob Landry The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Meet the Award-Winning Seeing-Eye Cat

December 11, 2019April 7, 2015 by

We can only imagine the reasons why Carolyn Swanson forewent the traditional seeing-eye dog in favor of a Persian cat named Baby. Perhaps she was allergic, or afraid, or simply too attached to Baby to consider a canine replacement. Whatever the reason, LIFE Magazine dispatched a photographer to capture their special relationship in 1947, creating a series of photographs that never appeared in the magazine’s pages.

Swanson kept the white cat on a tight leash, lest a squirrel send him running. Baby, in turn, guided her over thresholds and across streets. And his service did not go unrecognized. A clipping from a local newspaper announced that Baby was awarded a medal “for faithful devotion to his blind mistress.” Though the cat posed stoically with his medallion, he seemed to favor a more humble reward: a heaping plate of cat food.

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

Baby the seeing-eye cat, 1947.

Loran F. Smith The LIFE Picture Collection

Baby poses with his medal of honor, 1947.

Loran F. Smith The LIFE Picture Collection

Baby guided his owner down the street, 1947.

Loran F. Smith The LIFE Picture Collection

Carolyn Swanson and Baby stopped to talk to a neighbor, 1947.

Loran F. Smith The LIFE Picture Collection

Baby the seeing-eye cat led his owner in her home, 1947.

Loran F. Smith The LIFE Picture Collection

Baby ate a meal, 1947.

Loran F. Smith The LIFE Picture Collection

Carolyn Swanson and her seeing-eye cat, 1947.

Loran F. Smith The LIFE Picture Collection

Baby the seeing-eye cat, 1947.

Loran F. Smith The LIFE Picture Collection

A Deep Dive Into Scotland’s Ancient Traditions

January 15, 2020April 6, 2015 by

Scotland—what a country, and what a history! In 1947 LIFE profiled its landscape, economy and traditions, touting Scotland’s most celebrated exports—among them whiskey, golf, tweed, herring, ships and bagpipes. LIFE added, “Another major export has been men.” Andrew Carnegie, James Gordon Bennett and Alexander Graham Bell, to name just a few, “left their needy land to win high fame elsewhere.”

Hans Wild’s photos for LIFE, and the hundreds of outtakes never printed, capture the intricate detail of Scottish culture down to the shearing of a wooly sheep and the fingering on a traditional bagpipe melody. Pride, in both national heritage and familial lineage, courses through the images. It was, after all, a matter of serious and legal business, as the magazine laid out clearly: “A person who wears the crest of a clan of which he is not a member may be fined £8 6s 8d.”

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

Competitors for the world championship danced the Reel of Tulloch, Scotland 1947.

Hans Wild The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Ancient Castle Rock and its fortifications (upper right) have looked down on Edinburgh for centuries. The royal residence of Scottish kings beginning in 1004, it was also the scene of witch burnings. The “Royal Mile,” a mile of streets connecting castle and Holyrood Palace, began beyond the castle at the extreme right. Essayist Thomas De Quincey was buried in the cemetery of St. Cuthbert’s Church (lower left).

Hans Wild The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Eilean Donan Castle guarded Loch Duich in the western Highlands near Dornie. Under the low cloud (right) lay the Isle of Skye, to which Prince Charlie once fled, disguised as the serving maid of Scottish Heroine Flora Macdonald. The castle was wrecked by British gunfire in 1719 when it was a headquarters for Spanish and Scottish leaders in one of the endless revolts against the English crown.

Hans Wild The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The key to the Highlands was once this old bridge over the Forth Stirling. For centuries it was the only escape route for clansmen fleeing north.

Hans Wild The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Lord Lyon King of Arms, Thomas Innes of Learney, was supreme judge of all Scottish genealogies and determined precedence and succession of clan chiefs. His full accouterments included an appliquéd tabard, chain of office, Grand Cross of Royal Victorian Order and Baton.

Hans Wild The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

In full dress, a piper of the famed Black Watch regiment piped a pibroch at Perth Barracks.

Hans Wild The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

In Stewart Tartan an Aberdeen lass competed in a championship Highland dancing contest held each year at the Cowal gathering at Dunoon. Other events included piping and the fling.

Hans Wild The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Scotland, 1947.

Hans Wild The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A four-year-old boy branded the newly sheared sheep with tar, Scotland 1947.

Hans Wild The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A champion steer stood in a pasture, Scotland 1947.

Hans Wild The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A newly released prisoner of war brought carcasses (shot the night before) up to shore, Scotland 1947.

Hans Wild The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

St. Giles Church was where Knox preached. Near it, in a now-vanished yard, he may be buried. Nearby also stood Tollbooth Prison (Scott’s Heart of Midlothian).

Hans Wild The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Scotland, 1947.

Hans Wild The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Glamis Castle, first built in the 11th century, where Macbeth supposedly murdered Duncan, at the time of this photo housed the 23rd Baron Glamis.

Hans Wild The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Highland farms like these near Spittal were islets amid bare hills. Spittal (hospital) meant the place where travelers were offered shelter.

Hans Wild The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Scotland, 1947.

Hans Wild The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A man threw an eight pound weight, Scotland 1947.

Hans Wild The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Scotland, 1947.

Hans Wild The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

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A Deep Dive Into Scotland’s Ancient Traditions

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