Page 81 – LIFE

Ring in Summer with These 1950s Beach Fashions

May 27, 2025May 22, 2015 by

On Memorial Day, swimming pools and beaches open for the season. It’s an occasion for sun-worshipers to assess their beachwear, digging it out from the depths of dresser drawers. That desire to make a style splash at the shore is nothing new. To celebrate the arrival of summer, and beach season in 1950, LIFE’s Nina Leen photographed that season’s trends for women: strapless and halter-top swimsuits, “pirate pants” drawn from fashions of the French Riviera and island-inspired straw hats. Thighs were in and midriffs were out, as simple suits allowed accessories the spotlight. As for the age-old one-piece versus two-piece debate? LIFE had the scoop: “The two-piece suit in general is running a poor second this summer.”

1950s Beach Fashion

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

See Photos From Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall’s Wedding Day

August 11, 2021May 21, 2015 by

Humphrey Bogart met Lauren Bacall while filming To Have and Have Not, a 1944 film loosely adapted from the eponymous Ernest Hemingway novel. The two began an affair; Bogart was still married to Mayo Methot, his third wife, at the time. By February of 1945, Bogart had called off his marriage and was preparing to wed Bacall which he did just a few months later, on May 21, 1945. Following the fête, LIFE announced their union as follows:

Actress Lauren Bacall (“The Look”), born 20 years ago as Betty Joan Perske, was married last week to Actor Humphrey Bogart (“The Leer”), 46, in the hallway of Novelist Louis Bromfield’s 20-room farmhouse near Mansfield, Ohio. It was her first marriage, Bogart’s fourth. The ceremony was performed by Municipal Judge H.H. Shettler who read a service which he said contained a little of everything. Before taking the vows, Bogart drank a Martini, muttered, “Oh, baby,” to his bride. After the ceremony he kissed his bride and she gasped, “Oh, goody!” Deeply sun-tanned, she was wearing a doeskin beige dress. Seven sheriffs kept the crowds away.

“Oh, baby” and “oh, goody” would remain married until his death from cancer in 1957.

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

Newlywed actors Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall attending wedding reception at the home of novelist Louis Bromfield.

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Lauren Bacall fed wedding cake to her groom, Humphrey Bogart, after their marriage ceremony in Ohio, 1945.

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bacall tosses her bouquet to an eager crowd.

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bogart gives his bride a kiss on the cheek.

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Newlywed actors Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall share a sneaky moment on their wedding day.

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Newlyweds smile for the camera.

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Novelist Louis Bromfield (L) with Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall and their guests at their wedding.

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

See Photos of a Young Joan Baez as She Began a Life of Music and Activism

April 21, 2023May 21, 2015 by

Joan Baez is an icon of folk music activism.

From her performance at the landmark civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965 to her advocacy for migrant farm workers and gay rights to her denunciation of torture and the death penalty, Baez has championed human rights both on- and offstage. Like two of her major influences, Pete Seeger and Marian Anderson, Baez demonstrated how fame can be used as a platform for activism.

These portraits of Baez by LIFE photographer Ralph Crane were taken in 1962, when she was a mere 20 years old, near her home in Carmel, Calif. “Standing on the shore,” the description in LIFE read, “she evokes the same wistful intensity that goes into her rare but luminous recordings of sweet laments.” Some of them were sweet laments, to be sure, but half a century later it’s clear that her music has been so much more.

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

Joan Baez 1962

Ralph Crane The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Celebrate Nurses With a LIFE Cover Story on Nursing in the 1930s

January 31, 2022May 6, 2015 by

National Nurses Week, which begins May 6, recognizes the millions of nurses who make up the backbone of the American healthcare system. And the annual shout-out is more than warranted: A 2014 survey of more than 3,000 nurses found respondents to be stressed out, underslept and — at least in their own estimation — underpaid.

When LIFE featured the profession on its cover in 1938, the career was in a moment of transition. “Once almost any girl could be a nurse,” LIFE explained, “But now, with many state laws to protect the patient, nursing has become an exacting profession.” A candidate needed not only a background in science, but also a combination of “patience, devotion, tact and the reassuring charm that comes only from a fine balance of physical health and adjusted personality.”

Nurses also needed, as they still do, stamina. A typical day in the life of a Roosevelt Hospital School of Nursing student who had been capped — meaning she had successfully completed the probationary period — was described as follows:

Her day begins early. She rises at 6, breakfasts at 6:30, reports to duty at 6:55, has lunch sometime between 12 and 1:30. The rest of the day is consumed with ward duty, two hours of classes, three hours of rest or study. At 7 p.m. she is free to go out on parties, read in the library, dance in the reception room with her fellow nurses or make herself a late supper in the nurses” kitchen.

The photo essay, shot by Alfred Eisenstaedt, was an earnest nod to a group of people responsible not only for the well-being of individual patients, but also the public health of a city and a nation. Their duty, after all, was “to secure the health of future generations.”

Student nurses 1938

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Vivid Images of Mexico in 1968

May 5, 2022May 5, 2015 by

In 1968, in advance of the Olympic Games which would take place that summer in Mexico City and draw many international travelers, LIFE dispatched photographer John Dominis to craft a portrait of Mexico. The photographs celebrated the country’s diverse ethnic makeup, its fiestas and its food, as well as its modernizing urban centers. The images were, for many of LIFE’s readers, a first intimate glimpse into life south of the border, and one that presented the richness of the country’s culture.

A fiesta in Guanajuato.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Park dancers in Mexico City.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Plaza singers in Vera Cruz.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Morelia, Mexico, 1968.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Performers in Mexico.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mexico, 1968.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A mariachi band, Mexico.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Incense bearer in Chiapas.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mexico, 1968.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Market, Mexico City.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Market children, San Miguel de Allende.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Lily seller, San Cristóbal de las Casas.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Fruit stand, Mexico City.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Hammock seller, Oaxaca.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Man with balloons, Mexico, 1968.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Pinwheel display, Mexico City.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Hatful of onions, Vera Cruz.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Chamula women participated in a bead and ribbon ceremony called cambio de mayordomo (changing office), Mexico, 1968.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Unloading fowl, Oaxaca.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A woman shelled corn in wicker hampers at a local market.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Lunch on the Paseo de la Reforma.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A couple in Chapultepec Park, Mexico City.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

How LIFE Magazine Covered the Kent State Shootings

January 15, 2020May 4, 2015 by

The bullets National Guardsmen fired into a group of student demonstrators at Kent State University on May 4, 1970, were meant to de-escalate a situation spiraling out of control. Instead, they inspired a host of demonstrations on campuses across the U.S., and left four students dead, one permanently paralyzed and another eight wounded.

The events on that spring day were several days in the making several years, really, taking into account the growing discontent among American students about the war in Vietnam. The week before the confrontation, President Nixon had announced that U.S. combat forces were launching a campaign in eastern Cambodia, to the dismay of many students who opposed the war.

On May 1, several hundred Kent State students attended a peaceful protest during the day, but by nighttime anger had devolved into vandalism and destruction. Over the next several days, rumors circulated that a group of radicals was out to destroy the town. The ROTC headquarters burned, to the cheers of droves of students.

On May 2, fearful that the tensions could not be contained, the mayor asked the governor to call in the National Guard. Despite the Guardsmen’s presence, students held a rally Sunday night and another at noon on Monday. The Guardsmen ordered the crowd to disperse, but it did not. The students threw stones and empty tear gas canisters at the Guardsmen, and the Guardsmen returned fire.

LIFE dedicated its cover to the shooting on May 15, with an image of a wounded student looking skyward. Correspondents interviewed the parents of the dead, two of whom had been protesting and two of whom were passersby caught in the crossfire. Said the father of Allison Krause, who belonged to the former category, “Is this dissent a crime? Is this a reason for killing her?”

An entire spread detailed the final hours of Bill Schroeder, a student who had gone to observe the rally. Schroeder was on an ROTC scholarship, a good student who wrote poetry and hoped to pursue psychology. That night, a statement was issued on the university’s news service: “Schroeder, Wm. K., 19, sophomore, DEAD.”

The words LIFE used to describe the event didn’t equivocate—they condemned:

The upheaval in Kent seemed at its outset to be merely another of the scores of student demonstrations that have rocked U.S. campuses. But before it ended, in senseless and brutal murder at point-blank range, Kent State had become a symbol of the fearful hazards latent in dissent, and in the policies that cause it.

The LIFE Magazine cover depicting Kent State shootings in May 1970.

“Minutes before firing the fatal volleys, embattled Guardsmen knelt and tried to bluff the students into submission by aiming their rifles at them. Then, as students taunted them with jeers and banners and hurled back tear gas cans at them, the troops yielded to regroup–and aim again.”

LIFE Magazine

“Retreating to a knoll, the Guardsmen leveled their guns and aimed and fired into the crowd of students. At the fore was a soldier with a .45-caliber service automatic. Witnesses said the shooting stopped when a man in a fatigue cap (under umbrella at rear) ran out and yelled, ‘Cease fire!’ The Guard’s commanding officer estimated that, in all, about 36 shots were fired by his men.”

LIFE Magazine

Pictures across the top depict three of the students killed in the shooting (left to right): Jeffrey Glenn Miller, Sandra Lee Scheuer and Allison Krause. Photo at left is of Miller’s father. Photos at bottom depict Mary Ann Vecchio, a 14-year-old runaway, crying over Miller’s body.

LIFE Magazine

This spread was devoed to Bill Schroeder, one of the four students who killed in the shooting. Schroeder’s friend told LIFE, “Make sure you say one thing if nothing else. Say that Bill was not throwing rocks or shouting at the Guardsmen. It would never have crossed his mind to do that. He was there watching it and making up his own mind about it and they shot him.”

LIFE Magazine

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How LIFE Magazine Covered the Kent State Shootings

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