Page 87 – LIFE

Scary Movie? 152 Black Cats at an Audition

December 5, 2019March 13, 2015 by

When it comes to four-legged thespians, canines have generally achieved a greater level of fame than their feline rivals. We remember Lassie, Benji and Toto, and more recently Marley and Skip. But cats seem to face a steeper path to Hollywood stardom. Blame it on the lack of good roles.

One role, however—the title character in Edgar Allen Poe’s 1843 short story The Black Cat—offered theatrically inclined kitties a chance to break through. In the story, the cat’s owner plasters him into a wall, along with his murdered wife. Eventually, the animal’s mewing from beyond the grave leads investigators to the woman’s body. The film adaptation, which would appear in the 1962 horror compilation Tales of Terror, adjusted the storyline by weaving in elements of another Poe tale.

Exactly 152 cats showed up for the audition, all of them “considerably less nervous than their owners.” Several were disqualified thanks to white paws or noses, but even for those left in the running, the day left dreams largely dashed. The lead role, it turned out, had already been filled by “a well-known professional cat.” Seven lucky extras, selected on account of having the meanest looking faces, were chosen as understudies.

Their owners, whose ambitions for their pets might just have exceeded those of the pets themselves, couldn’t help but let superstition get the best of them. Although they acted naturally around their own cats, “many took pains not to let any strange black cats cross their paths.”

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

Black Cat Audition, 1961

Ralph Crane The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Julie Andrews as Cinderella, 1957

December 13, 2019March 12, 2015 by

More than 100 million viewers (in more than 60% of U.S. households) tuned in to CBS on the evening of March 31, 1957 to watch Julie Andrews played the title role in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s TV adaptation of Cinderella—the only musical the pair ever wrote for television.

Most saw the show in black and white; only a small percentage of viewers had color receivers. Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella served as a vehicle for Andrews, who was just coming off a stint on Broadway in My Fair Lady. Though TV musicals were common during the 1950s, they were mostly adapted from stage musicals. Cinderella, on the contrary, skipped the stage and went straight to TV.

The 90-minute program, LIFE wrote soon afterward, told “the story of a slightly sophisticated, uncindery Cinderella whose evil stepfolk are clowns and whose magical life is filled with music.” A review in TIME praised Andrews’ performance (she “fitted the heroine’s role as if it were a glass slipper”) and Rodgers’ music (“the hero of the evening”) but panned Hammerstein’s script (“which kept shifting uneasily between the sentimental and the sophisticated, and making each seem lamer than the other”).

Andrews received an Emmy nomination for her performance and continued to star onstage and on the small screen until 1964’s Mary Poppins launched her film career. Andrews saw a similarity in Cinderella and in her earlier turn as Eliza Dolittle. My Fair Lady, Andrews said in an interview, is “the best Cinderella story, really.”

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

Julie Andrews as Cinderella, 1957.

Gordon Parks The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Julie Andrews and Jon Cypher rehearsed music for the TV production of Cinderella.

Gordon Parks The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dancers waited to perform a grand waltz while a technician listened for the cue to start.

Gordon Parks The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Watching the star: Members of the cast gathered around a monitor as Julie Andrews sang A Lovely Night, a musical recapitulation of the royal ball.

Gordon Parks The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The 1957 TV adaptation of Cinderella, starring Julie Andrews.

Gordon Parks The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Authors Oscar Hammerstein II (left) and Richard Rodgers watched the show.

Gordon Parks The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The 1957 TV adaptation of Cinderella, starring Julie Andrews.

Gordon Parks The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

After the show Julie Andrews toasted to the rest of the cast and drank from her glass slipper.

Gordon Parks The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A Vintage View of Fun in the Sun

May 18, 2022March 10, 2015 by

Fun in the sun is one of the constants in American life. The impulses don’t change, even if the fashions do.

In 1947, when LIFE accompanied 10,000 young men and women to Balboa Beach in Southern California for a seaside romp. This day of surf and sand took place during spring break, and was marked by dancing, boat races, beauty pageants and sunbathing. The evening hours found students aglow in the warmth of bonfires as portable radios churned out the tunes of the day. (Top hits that year included “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” and “Chi-Baba, Chi-Baba (My Bambino Go to Sleep).“)

The fashion looks tell you that you are in another era. But not much else does, really. The pleasures of the beach remain more alike than not, regardless of the age that you are in—or the age of the beachgoers, for that matter. By the seaside, people become kids again, and that’s part of the fun of being there.

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

Balboa Beach Party

Glendale college students partying on a beach in Balboa, Newport Beach, California, April 1947

Spring Break 1947

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

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Glendale College students at Balboa Beach Party in California, in April of 1947; Possibly for Spring Break.

Spring Break 1947

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Here is Every Single One of Barbie’s Outfits From 1963

July 16, 2023March 9, 2015 by

In honor of Barbie’s fifth birthday in 1963, LIFE photographer Allan Grant photographed each of her 64 outfits, from evening gowns to beachwear to a pitifully limited array of career options. If little girls were basing their future career aspirations on those attained by their 11.5-inch plastic counterparts, they could set their sights on being a business executive, stewardess, ballerina, nurse or babysitter. Oh, and they had to be white.

In the five years since she hit the market, Barbie had become a national sensation. She received 500 letters each week and had a national fan club. Fashion writers wrote about her wardrobe. She was also, LIFE noted, “the despair of nine million fathers who now find that Barbie has to be clothed just like wives and daughters.”

The entire wardrobe could be purchased for $136, equivalent to just over $1,000 in today’s dollars. Barbie’s most expensive outfit (red velvet coat and taffeta ball gown) rang in at $5, two dollars more than it cost to buy the doll herself.

In the following years, Mattel steadily increased Barbie’s career options, adding student teacher and astronaut in the 1960s, surgeon in the ’70s, and everything from McDonald’s cashier to presidential candidate since then. Barbies of other races were also introduced to the line, although early dolls were criticized for using white head molds and changing skin color, but not other features.

And in 2023 it became time for Barbie to hit the big screen.

Barbie may only be a toy, but the messages children pick up from playing with her can stay with them long after they put her to sleep in her Barbie Dream House. Now if only something could be done about those proportions.

LIFE Magazine, August 23, 1963

LIFE Magazine

How LIFE Magazine Covered the Selma Marches in 1965

November 2, 2020March 6, 2015 by

The marches that took place in Selma never would have happened without Martin Luther King, John Lewis, Hosea Williams and the cadre of civil rights leaders who organized the charge. They might not have happened if not for the tragic death of Jimmie Lee Jackson, and they certainly couldn’t have made the splash they did without the thousands of people who showed up to put feet to the pavement and march some at the cost of bodily harm, and two at the cost of their lives.

And their courageous actions would have gone unseen if not for the photojournalists on the ground to document the brutality they faced for the world to see. The images they created of Alabama state troopers rushing peaceful protestors like a monolithic mob, wielding weapons and riot gear that conjure war photography helped fuel the public outrage to which the Johnson administration had no choice but to respond.

LIFE’s coverage of the marches began in its March 19, 1965 issue, the cover of which shows a line of solemn marchers, two by two, disappearing over the horizon as helmeted troopers look on. By the time the issue was published, the protesters had made two attempts to march.

The first, on March 7, later referred to as “Bloody Sunday,” ended with troopers attacking the marchers in a scene that was nothing if not savage, sending 17 to the hospital with injuries. The second, two days later, ended in peaceful prayer, with King ordering the marchers to halt so as not to defy a pending restraining order. This day would come to be known as “Turnaround Tuesday.”

The March to Montgomery began on March 21, two days after the issue was published, and ended on March 25 at the Alabama State Capitol Building. As LIFE described the convergence of nuns, students and Americans of all races the following week in Selma, “In all the turbulent history of civil rights, never had there been such a widespread reaction to the doctrine of white supremacy.”

The photographs, by Charles Moore, Flip Schulke and Frank Dandridge, offered the magazine’s 7 million readers no equivocation as to what it meant to be black in America in 1965. And the images of violence, solidarity, prayer and resilience achieved the greatest results a photograph can hope to achieve: empathy, understanding and above all, social change.

‘Selma Starts the Savage Season,’ LIFE, March 19, 1965

LIFE Magazine

‘Selma Starts the Savage Season,’ LIFE, March 19, 1965

How One Woman Built an Empire on Lipstick and Lotion

March 6, 2023March 4, 2015 by

You might say Helena Rubinstein’s story began at 16, when her father renounced her for refusing an arranged marriage in the Jewish district of Krakow where she grew up. You might say it began when she ventured to Australia and, bombarded with questions from sunburned ladies about how she maintained her fair complexion, smelled a profit.

Whichever origin story you favor, it’s safe to say that where the story ends multimillionaire magnate of a four-continent cosmetics empire that redefined beauty for generations of women may surprise those whose memory goes only as far back as Sheryl Sandberg and Marissa Mayer.

Today there are more female CEOs than ever, but the number of offices they fill in the C-suite remains few. In Rubinstein’s time she established her business in 1903, opened her first New York salon in 1915 and amassed $25 million by the time LIFE profiled her in 1941 they were as rare as a sunburn on Madame’s face.

An exhibit at the Jewish Museum in New York City, “Helena Rubinstein: Beauty Is Power,” is the first to explore the influence and artifacts of Rubinstein’s life. (The exhibit, which ends on March 22, will travel to the Boca Raton Museum of Art, where it will be on view beginning on April 21). Rubinstein’s legacy is less about the fact that her brand existed than it is about the message it conveyed, says Jewish Museum curator Mason Klein. Her flavor of beauty for the masses “served not only to level the snobbish aesthetic taste that was upheld by others” like her longtime rival Elizabeth Arden “but, more importantly, to expand the notion of who and what could be considered beautiful.”

It might raise some eyebrows to suggest that the mass marketing of skin creams and mascara would positively influence women’s feelings of self-worth. But Rubinstein’s mission was not just to change how women look. It was to give women the ability to define their interior lives too. “She didn’t really want her clientele to think of going to a salon and being made over like you paper a room or reupholster a piece of furniture,” Klein says.

During a day at the Rubinstein salon (which could be found in more than a dozen cities worldwide), a woman could expect to be “stretched, exercised, rubbed, scrubbed, wrapped in hot blankets, bathed in infra-red rays, massaged dry and massaged under water, and bathed in milk all before lunch.”

But when the milk baths were over, the salon Rubinstein conceived of shared more than a name with the literary salons she frequented in Paris. With the fortune she amassed, Rubinstein had become both a patron of the arts and a discerning collector, boasting one of the first extensive collections of Latin American art and one of the most important early collections of African and Oceanic art. For her, there was no line between commercial beauty and modern art and if there was, she was trying to blur it.

A patron of Helena Rubinstein’s salons which operated at a loss but helped evangelize her line of 629 products learned about art, design and color, developed her own personal taste and incorporated it into the way she presented herself to the world. According to Klein, with “her encouragement of women to trust their own instincts and her advocacy of exceptionality at a time when non-conformism was taboo, she offered women this ideal of self-invention, and that’s a fundamental principle of modernity.”

Getting to international magnate status requires an ingredient many women are told is unbecoming: self-promotion. LIFE wrote that despite Rubinstein’s genius for marketing she was, among other things, an early adopter of the white lab coat uniform “Rubinstein’s greatest promotion … is undoubtedly herself.” She commissioned portraits by artists from Warhol to Picasso, and featured prominently in her own ads. A couple of inches shy of five feet tall, before an important meeting she often placed a cushion under her seat to increase her stature, letting her legs dangle behind her desk.

Success on this level also requires a shrewd business savvy, and Rubenstein was nothing if not conservative with the company coffers. “If somebody offered Rubinstein a package of gum for a nickel she would say “too much,”” one associate told LIFE, “in the hope that it was the only package of gum in the world that could be bought for four cents.” And she sniffed out new markets with the same discerning nose she used to nix or approve perfume scents. “Ever on the lookout for new sales openings,” LIFE wrote in 1941, “she has lately been turning over in her mind the idea that perhaps the beauty business has exploited only half its potential market.” As she put it herself: “Men could be a lot more beautiful.”

Rubinstein made a bold decision, too, in keeping her name at a time when anti-Semitism kept her flagship storefront relegated to 5^th Avenue side streets for two decades. (Money, of course, was a powerful tool in the face of discrimination. When she tried to upgrade from one posh Park Avenue apartment to another with a bigger balcony, she was told that the owner didn’t rent to Jews. She promptly told her accountant to buy the whole building.) Emblazoning her name on products and advertisements not only affirmed her identity (even as a non-practicing Jew), but appealed to the masses of immigrant women pouring into the country, going to work and seeking to define their identities in America.

When Helena Rubinstein equated beauty with power, her aim was not only profit, but empowerment. Reflecting on her life in 1964 at an age she called “older than you think,” she told LIFE she squeezed 300 years of work into a single lifetime. “Shrugging like a Jewish grandmother she claims, “I did it not for money but because I love work. I will never retire.””

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