Page 84 – LIFE

‘Wow, Quel Babes!’: American Teenagers in Paris in the 1950s

November 24, 2020January 29, 2015 by

LIFE proclaimed it “one of the world’s foremost colonies of displaced persons.” Its denizens, the magazine said, were a peculiar people who loved adventure, yet preferred “their own way of life.” They spoke their mother tongue among themselves, but sometimes fractured the local language with such abandon that natives risked being “startled by a bilingual ‘Wow, quel babe!'” In fact, locals thought this boisterous clan was “a little crazy,” in large part because they drank “so many Cokes.” The mad colonists were members of that most exotic of tribes: American teenagers. Numbering about 150, they had been transported to France mostly thanks to their fathers” jobs.

When LIFE dispatched Gordon Parks, a rising star among its staff photographers, to document the tribe’s rites and rituals in the early 1950s, teenagers were still a new and somewhat puzzling phenomenon. Earlier generations of human beings had not, of course, skipped the ages between 12 and 20. But few societies had recognized an intermediate step between childhood and adulthood. “Teenage” was an idea that emerged slowly in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as child labor declined, schooling lengthened and marriage came later and later. The very word entered common speech only in the 1940s. In 1952, when LIFE ran its story on the young Yanks of Paris, it was still spelling “teen-ager” with a hyphen.

Parks’ photographs captured the sports, gossiping and parties that made up a large part of the teenagers’ daily lives. Many captured them in the Paris of the American imagination on a streetcar in front of the Arc de Triomphe, at a sidewalk café on the Champs-Élysées and in the jazz club that occupied the “shadowy cellar” of the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier.

The portraits that Parks made of the youth were miniature character studies. In all of the photographs, Parks’ presence is undetectable. It was as if his pictures made themselves. Readers could easily believe that they were privy to the teenagers’ most private moments.

LIFE’s sly, knowing text (the reporter was not named) pretended to reassure readers that Paris had not corrupted the teenagers by turning them into young Frenchmen and -women:

Neither boys nor girls think much of frogs’ legs, but they know every place in Paris that makes hamburgers and hot dogs and, while having a snack at a sidewalk café, are inclined to dream of the corner drugstore.

Among many cliques in Paris teen-age society, the best known is a group of girls, 15 to 18 years old, who named themselves the ‘Horrible Six’ when they got together early in the 1950 school term. They have a strict code of dress … Sloppy shoes are not tolerated, bobby sox are taboo. Girls must diet if dumpy, and chipped nail polish is forbidden.

By every girl’s admission, the goal is to keep the dates coming in Paris, build charm for college years in the U.S. and ultimately lead to a nice, home-grown marriage to the right man. Right now the girls don’t think that he’ll be a Frenchman.

Parks went on to become one of LIFE’s most celebrated photographers. His claim to greatness as a photographer rests on the many photo essays that he produced on the pressing issues of poverty and injustice. But Parks, like the magazine he worked for, had many sides. He loved the trappings of success the travel, the nearly unlimited expense account and the salary that catapulted him into the upper middle class. Like all of LIFE’s photographers, he could produce compelling pictures of hard news in the morning, and light-hearted frivolities in the afternoon.

The years that Parks spent in Paris were a turning point in his life. He was one of many African-Americans, from writers and musicians to cabbies and cooks, who experienced a freedom in the city that they had never found in the United States. He described this critical period in his 1990 memoir, Voices in the Mirror:

I needed Paris. It was a feast, a grand carnival of imagery, and immediately everything good there seemed to offer sublimation to those inner desires that had for so long been hampered by racism back in America. For the first time in my life I was relaxing from tension and pressure. My thoughts, continually rampaging against racial conditions, were suddenly becoming as peaceful as snowflakes. Slowly a curtain was dropping between me and those soiled years.

“I was moving through centuries of history, and not unaware of the possibility of its help in shaping my future. Being a part of it was like feeling at once young and old.”

Liz Ronk edited this photo gallery.

American teens in Paris 1952

Gordon Parks The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

44 First Lady Fashion Looks from Eleanor Roosevelt to Michelle Obama

January 14, 2022January 16, 2015 by

Michelle Obama probably has a long list of things she’d like to be remembered for like her initiatives to combat childhood obesity and promote higher education before she’s remembered for her sense of style. But with great responsibility comes great clothing, and the First Lady will certainly go down as the most fashionable woman in the White House since Jacqueline Kennedy.

Obama is known for choosing the patterned dress over the more subdued pantsuit, for baring her toned arms and perish the thought even wearing shorts. And there are some who argue that the choices she makes transcend personal expression and petty analysis and carry a certain amount of cultural significance.

“For some reason in this country there’s this false notion that style and substance have to occupy two separate worlds,” said fashion journalist Kate Betts in an interview with CNN, “and I think she’s proving that that’s wrong.”

According to Betts, author of Everyday Icon: Michelle Obama and the Power of Style, Obama’s style choices convey comfort (the occasional flats), confidence (feminine florals) and relatability (she shops at J. Crew). Her effortless looks, Betts wrote in the New York Times, make it “hard to imagine that there had ever been any dress code for her position.”

As these photos by LIFE photographers show, there hasn’t exactly been a dress code, though styles have historically erred on the conservative side (in terms of hem lines, not party lines). The first ladies’ fashions have both evolved with popular trends and helped to inspire them. Furs, seen on Eleanor Roosevelt, Bess Truman, Mamie Eisenhower and Lady Bird Johnson, have fallen out of favor in recent decades. Hats, from Truman’s rather vertical design to Kennedy’s pillbox style, are infrequently sported by recent first ladies. Leather, with the exception of Nancy Reagan, shown in 1968 before her First Lady days, has been far from a staple, whereas the simple pearl necklace continues to be a timeless, nonpartisan classic.

While Kennedy’s style was described by LIFE in 1961 as having “an almost deliberate plainness,” Obama does not shy away from a hint of flourish here and there. But she’s certainly not the first to indulge in a bit of flair. When working with a designer on her dress for the inauguration in 1953, Mamie Eisenhower had a few extra requests. “She specified pink and asked for some additional glitter.” Because even the White House no, especially the White House can use a little sparkle now and then.

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

Eleanor Roosevelt, 1937

Pictures Inc. The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Eleanor Roosevelt, 1937

Thomas D. McAvoy The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Eleanor Roosevelt, 1942

David E. Scherman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bess Truman, 1946

Marie Hansen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bess Truman, 1946

George Skadding The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bess Truman, 1949

Francis Miller The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mamie Eisenhower, 1948

Francis Miller The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mamie Eisenhower, 1953

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mamie Eisenhower, 1958

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Pat Nixon, Mamie Eisenhower, Lady Bird Johnson, Jackie Kennedy – 1961

George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jackie Kennedy, 1960

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jackie Kennedy, 1962

Art Rickerby The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Lady Bird Johnson, 1961

Hank Walker The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Lady Bird Johnson, 1964

Stan Wayman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Lady Bird Johnson, 1964

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Pat Nixon, 1952

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Pat Nixon, 1958

Hank Walker The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Pat Nixon, 1968

Arthur Schatz The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Pat Nixon, 1972

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Betty Ford, 1973

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Rosalynn Carter, 1971

Stan Wayman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Nancy Reagan, 1966

Bill Ray The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Nancy Reagan, 1967

Fred Lyon The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Nancy Reagan, 1968

Arthur Schatz The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Barbara Bush, 1971

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Hillary Clinton, 1969

Lee Balterman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

19 Hollywood Stars Who Never Won an Oscar

February 8, 2022January 15, 2015 by

When Oscar nominations are announced every year, the conversation turns quickly from who got nominated to who got snubbed. And people tend to react with more indignation over who’s missing than in celebration of who’s been recognized.

But the snub has been around since long before the age of Internet outrage, when gossip was relegated to soda fountains and opinions took days to make it from type-written notes to a Letters to the Editor page. And although we tend to associate Hollywood’s biggest stars with that bald, naked mini-man of gold, many of history’s most remembered actors and actresses never got their hands on a statuette.

On the actresses’ side, Marlene Dietrich, Ava Gardner and Dorothy Dandridge had to settle for nominations alone. Perhaps Natalie Wood and Jayne Mansfield would have been recognized eventually, had their lives not been cut so tragically short. Some actresses gave up a great deal for the roles that would leave them empty-handed. Janet Leigh, who was nominated for Psycho but didn’t win, spent the rest of her life afraid of the shower.

Among their male counterparts, things weren’t all bad. Richard Burton, nominated seven times for films including Becket (1964) and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966), was one of the highest-paid actors in the world at his peak. Peter Sellers, born in England, could take comfort in his two wins at the BAFTAs, Oscar’s cousin across the pond. And Steve McQueen could wipe his tears of dejection on that clean white t-shirt, though many, to be sure, preferred him without one at all.

Many repeated oversights were corrected, if not fully, with honorary Academy Awards doled out to stars in their golden years, although none of the actors and actresses pictured above even received one of those. For them, alas, money, fame, and a place in the annals of history would just have to suffice.

Natalie Wood, who received three nominations. Pictured at the Cannes FIlm Festival, 1962.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Steve McQueen, who was nominated once. Pictured here during motorcycle racing across the Mojave Desert, 1963.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Rita Hayworth, 1945.

Bob Landry (The LIFE Picture Collection)

Jayne Mansfield, who was never nominated, though she once played violin in an orchestra performance at the Oscars. Pictured here posing with shapely hot water bottle likenesses floating around her in her pool, 1957.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Richard Burton, who was nominated seven times. Pictured relaxing with a book in Cantina while on location filming The Night of the Iguana, 1963.

Gjon Mili The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Erroll Flynn, who was never nominated. Pictured aboard his yacht Sirocco, 1941.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Lena Horne, shown here in Paris in 1947, was never nominated for an Oscar, though she was honored with a tribute at the 2011 Academy Awards.

Yale Joel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Kim Novak, who was never nominated, though she presented at the 2014 awards. Pictured in the movie Jeanne Eagels, 1957.

J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Tony Curtis, who was nominated once. Pictured with his Rolls Royce, 1961.

Ralph Crane The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Montgomery Clift, who was nominated four times. Pictired in Red River, 1948.

J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Lana Turner, who was nominated once. Pictured here with John Garfield on Laguna Beach in a scene from The Postman Always Rings Twice, 1945.

Walter Sanders The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dorothy Dandridge, who was nominated once, becoming the first African-American to be nominated for a leading role (1955). Pictured posing in costume for Tarzan’s Peril, 1951.

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Douglas Fairbanks Jr., who was never nominated. Pictured in Sinbad, 1946.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Peter Sellers, played the piano at home with his wife, Britt Ekland, in Beverly Hills, 1964.

Allan Grant The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

Marlene Dietrich, who was nominated once. Pictured in evening dress and hat during Pierre Ball, 1928.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Ava Gardner, who was nominated once. Pictured in One Touch of Venus, 1948.

J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Janet Leigh, who was nominated once. Pictured posing in costume for Jet Pilot, 1950.

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Robert Walker, who was never nominated. Pictured riding a tricycle with his two sons, 1943.

John Florea The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Van Johnson, who was never nominated. Pictured duck hunting in a scene from the movie Early to Bed, 1945.

Martha Holmes The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sinatra at His Home Bar, and More: Intimate Photos Of a Legend

March 14, 2025December 8, 2014 by

Of all the superstars who helped shape and define popular culture in the 20th century, few lasted as long in the spotlight and even fewer were as enigmatic as Francis Albert Sinatra.

Across seven decades, the skinny, big-eared kid from Jersey who grew up to be the Chairman of the Board influenced generations of singers, musicians and fedora-topped hepcats; triumphed on stage, in the movies (winning an Oscar for his performance in From Here to Eternity) and on TV; and crafted a public persona so indelible that, even today, the image of a figure in a tux, alone on stage, drink in one hand, mic in the other, smoke swirling in the spotlight that image likely evokes for millions of fans the man known, simply, as The Voice.

In 1965, the year Sinatra turned 50, LIFE photographer John Dominis and editor Thomas Thompson were, as the magazine put it, “permitted” to spend time with the singer and his crew friends, family, cohorts, fellow performers for a cover story the magazine hoped to run. The result was a remarkable window into the man’s closely and famously guarded private world, as well as Sinatra’s own take on his celebrity and his music. Here, LIFE.com presents photos by Dominis that ran in that cover story, as well as many others that were not published in LIFE. One such unpublished photo, of Sinatra at his home mixing himself a drink at his home bar, has become one of the best-sellers in the LIFE print store.

In the introduction to the huge, 16-page feature in its April 23, 1965 issue, “The Private World and Thoughts of Frank Sinatra,” LIFE took pains to make clear that the man, 25 years into his career as a performer, was as volatile and as deeply, weirdly inscrutable as he’d ever been:

The kid with the high-pitched voice that came out of the throat wrapped in the floppy bow tie is going to be 50 this year and Frank Sinatra remains the most controversial, powerful and surprising entertainer around. He is a man who will angrily throw an over-cooked hamburger at his valet or an ashtray at an inept assistant and yet never fires anyone from his huge staff of aides and hangers-on. He will spend 10 minutes of his nightclub act attacking a woman columnist so venomously that the audience gasps and will send $100,000 to a Los Angeles college with the strict instructions that the gift not be made public. He sneers “Charley brown shoes” at people he thinks are squares and always says “thank you” when someone asks for his autograph. He is the legendary ladies’ man and he says he has flunked out with women. He cannot read music, yet he has taken popular singing and made of it an art. He is the finest living singer of popular songs, an astonishingly good actor, an ambitious director, a shrewd businessman. . . .

Sinatra contributed memorable insights about his singing technique, the peers he loves (and those he doesn’t like so much) and more to the centerpiece of the feature a long article, titled “Me and My Music” that, LIFE told its readers, “Sinatra himself wrote.” Among the gems in the piece:

It was my idea [in my mid-20s] to make my voice work in the same way as a trombone or a violin not sounding like them, but “playing” like those instruments. The first thing I needed was extraordinary breath control, which I didn’t have. I began swimming every chance I got in public pools taking laps under water and thinking song lyrics to myself as I swam, holding my breath.

One thing that was tremendously important was learning the use of a microphone. Many singers never learned to use one. They never understood, and still don’t, that a microphone is their instrument…. [Instead] of playing a saxophone, they’re playing a microphone.

I don’t read a note of music. I learn songs by having them played for me a couple of times while I read the lyrics. I can pick up the melody very quickly. I learn the lyrics by writing them out in long hand. When I get a new song, I look for continuity of melody that in itself will tell a musical story. It must go somewhere. I don’t like it to ramble. And then, by the same token, I like almost the same thing more, as a matter of fact in the lyrics. They must tell you a complete story, from “once upon a time” to “the end.”

For my money, Tony Bennett is the best singer in the business, the best exponent of a song. He excites me when I watch him he moves me. Vic Damone has better pipes than anybody, but he lacks the know-how or whatever you want to call it. Take Lena Horne, for example, a beautiful lady but really a mechanical singer. She gimmicks up a song, makes it too pat. . . .

And on he goes, following his thoughts to conclusions that feel right, allowing him to say all he wanted to say just as, countless times in his career, he found new, unexpected ways to phrase utterly familiar lyrics from the Great American Songbook.

Sinatra died in May 1998, but music critic David Hadju spoke for untold numbers of fans when he wrote, “To hell with the calendar. The day Frank Sinatra dies, the 20th century is over.” Strong words. But in some elemental ways, the further we get from the Chairman’s death, the more apt and prophetic they feel.

The most controversial, powerful and surprising entertainer around.

All these years later, that still sounds about right.

[Buy the LIFE book, The Rat Pack: The Original Bad Boys]

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

Frank Sinatra mixed drinks at the bar in his home, Palm Springs, California, 1965.

John Dominis/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Frank Sinatra and his dog, Ringo, at Sinatra’s home in Palm Springs, California, in 1965.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Frank Sinatra and his parents in Las Vegas in 1965

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Frank Sinatra shaving, 1965.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Frank Sinatra and an associate leave Sinatra’s offices on the grounds of Warner Bros. Studios, 1965.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Frank Sinatra, 1965

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Frank Sinatra watches his son on television, 1965

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Frank Sinatra and Count Basie, 1965

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Frank Sinatra rehearsing, 1965.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Frank Sinatra and Count Basie, 1965.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

In Miami, where he appeared with Joe E. Lewis for two weeks this year, Frank Sinatra tells his bodyguard, Ed Pucci, that he will clear the table by yanking the cloth off without disturbing the china.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

In Miami in 1965, Frank Sinatra tosses a tablecloth after yanking it from a cluttered tabletop.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

In a Miami hotel room Frank Sinatra fell off his chair howling at a joke told by his opening act and longtime friend, comedian Joe E. Lewis, 1965.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Frank Sinatra backstage with Sammy Davis Jr. and Natalie Wood during Davis’ run on Broadway in the play, Golden Boy, New York, 1965.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Frank Sinatra backstage, 1965.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Frank Sinatra in rehearsal, 1965.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Frank Sinatra LIFE cover, April 23, 1965

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

LIFE Magazine April 23, 1965

LIFE Magazine

Gorgeous Early Polaroids: A LIFE Photographer Plays With the SX-70

January 15, 2020December 7, 2014 by

Instant photography is now, with smartphones, the law of the land and a defining aspect of our digital age. But the phenomenon has pre-digital roots. Polaroid co-founder Edwin H. Land introduced his first “Land Camera” way back in 1947.

His real advance came in 1972, when Polaroid unveiled a marvelous (in every sense of the word) device called the SX-70. That version of the instant camera fully captured the imagination and the attention of photography buffs, industrial design aficionados and pop culture commentators alike. Far from a mere consumer product, the SX-70 quickly became associated with, and in a sense helped to define, the early Seventies.

Self-described gadget-nerd Harry McCracken put the camera’s significance in perspective in a tremendous piece on Land and the SX-70 a few years back. Citing the writer and scientist Arthur C. Clarke’s “law” that advanced technology is, at its best, indistinguishable from magic, McCracken wrote that he could not think “of a greater gadget than the SX-70 Land Camera. . . . The sheer magnitude of its ambition and innovation dwarfs the Walkman, iPod, and nearly every other consumer-electronics product you can name.”

Here, LIFE.com pays tribute to Land’s vision and his determination to, as he once put it, “provide an opportunity for creativity that other photography doesn’t allow.”

In the gallery above are pictures made with the first-generation SX-70 by LIFE photographer Co Rentmeester, who experimented with the camera—before it went on sale to the general public—while shooting the cover story on Land for the October 27, 1972, issue of the magazine.

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

A study in motion featuring two dancers from the Joffrey Ballet, made with a Polaroid SX-70 camera, 1972.

Co Rentmeester The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Portrait of a fashion model, made with a Polaroid SX-70 camera, 1972.

Co Rentmeester The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Nude photographed with a Polaroid SX-70 camera, 1972.

Co Rentmeester The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Wood and flower, photographed with a Polaroid SX-70 camera, 1972.

Co Rentmeester The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A farm in Pennsylvania photographed with a Polaroid SX-70 camera, 1972.

Co Rentmeester The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dancers photographed from above with a Polaroid SX-70 camera, 1972.

Co Rentmeester The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Children at a school in Lancaster County, Penn., photographed with a Polaroid SX-70 camera, 1972.

Co Rentmeester The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dancers photographed from above with a Polaroid SX-70 camera, 1972.

Co Rentmeester The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Portrait of a child, made with a Polaroid SX-70 camera, 1972.

Co Rentmeester The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Edwin H. Land used one of his own creations, a Polaroid Land Camera, in 1972.

Co Rentmeester The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The October 27, 1972 cover of LIFE magazine, featuring Edwin Land.

Co Rentmeester The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Hipsterless Brooklyn: Photos From a Vanished World

February 24, 2020December 7, 2014 by

Brooklyn is big. If it were its own city, and not part of Gotham, its 2.5 million residents would make up the fourth largest metropolis in the United States. Brooklyn covers almost a hundred square miles of intensely varied terrain, from the beaches of Coney Island and Sea Gate to the brownstones of Park Slope and the thronging sidewalks of Williamsburg—a neighborhood filled with stoop-shouldered young men who, evidently, can afford fedoras but have difficulty finding socks, or pants that fit.

There’s cobblestoned Dumbo; the mean streets of East New York; the mansions of Brooklyn Heights; the tree-lined avenues (and, miracle of miracles, driveways) of Ditmas Park; the glories of Prospect Park; the soaring container cranes of Red Hook; the unnameable, party-colored, aromatic ooze of the Gowanus Canal.

The borough boasts countless ethnicities, creeds and religions. It’s somehow wildly bustling and unselfconsciously low-key at the same time. It has given the world memorable phrases (fuhgeddaboudit) and immortal delicacies (the egg cream with no egg and no cream). Brooklyn is cool.

These photos of Brooklyn, made by LIFE’s Ed Clark right after World War II, show something that’s long been elemental to the borough’s enduring appeal: a free-wheeling and unpretentious self-confidence.

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

View of the Manhattan Bridge, connecting Brooklyn with that island across the East River, 1946.

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Trolley tracks on the corner of Flushing Ave., Graham and Broadway. The last trolleys in Brooklyn stopped running in 1956.

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Brooklyn, New York 1946

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Corner of Middagh and Hicks, Brooklyn Heights, 1946.

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jumping rope on Siegel Street near Humboldt, Brooklyn, 1946.

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

City veterans housing project, Canarsie, Brooklyn, 1946.

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Brooklyn, New York 1946

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Listening to a Dodgers-Giants ballgame on the radio, Brooklyn, 1946.

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Ebbets Field, Brooklyn, 1946.

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dodgers ballgame, Ebbets Field, Brooklyn, 1946.

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dodgers fans, Ebbets Field, Brooklyn, 1946.

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jack Kaufman outside his barber shop on Rogers Avenue in Brooklyn in 1946, holding a signed baseball that once beaned future Hall of Famer Joe Medwick.

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock