So I got bored and decided to check out Life Magazine for my birthday - luckily it actually is dated for my birthday so I didn’t have to approximate
Wow - an ad for the International Scout, though mine was a 1979, it was one of my favorite vehicles ever. A tough workhorse, an ugly spud of a vehicle with a 345 V8 that wouldn’t die. In a very short time I put almost a quarter million miles on mine. It took mrAru sliding on black ice through a stacked stone fence, between 2 massive maple trees close enough to scrape off the passenger side mirror and ripple the frame, and over a number of sizable saplings wiping out the oil pan and parts of the undercarriage and making it home being driven 3 miles on basically no oil and shall we say highly reduced hydraulic fluid in the brake system and a very frazzled driver.
The rumblings in Vietnam - rich fertile countryside farms, happy people in a comfortable city going about their business, and then the war rumblings. Vietnam didn’t happen to my father until 1965. We went home to the US and he went away until 1969.
An ad for a 5 cent packet of kool-aid. I think it was 5 cents until into the 70s, when the price went up to 15 cents!
Pillsbury frozen cookie dough - coconut, chocolate mint chunk, flavors no longer offered and the new Polaroid compact Land camera, same one I remember my dad using for years! [and the stinky developer stop stick!] Cigarette, pipe and booze advertising!
Kruschev and young second generation actors including Haley Mills and Jane Fonda before she became the Vietnam eras evil traitor.
Google Books has them all online for free. For Oct. 26, 1953, we’ve got an actress I never heard of on the cover, something from Winston Churchill (no surprise there), and a bunch of old Halloween ads.
Looking at an issue from the week I was born in 1956, I’m struck mainly by the sheer volume of advertising. The magazine must be at least 75% ads. How did they ever get away with that?
1956 - radio is still big, TV’s just coming on the scene. People want pictures, and Life did that better than anyone. BUT pictures (and color) were expensive, so they needed the ads to cover the costs and make a profit.
An interview with Marilyn Munroe 3 days before she died. (ETA: Make that 2 days. She died 3 days after my birth.)
The launch of telstar 1 satellite with Arthur C. Clarke predicting:
Completely mobile person-to-person telephone facilities.
An orbital post office handling transocean correspondence by instantaneous facsimile, and orbital newspapers dialed onto a high-definition screen in your home.
An electronic library - just in time.
A complete breakdown of censorship, since communications satellites can reach every living room on earth. Despite the possibilities for scatter-shot sadism and pornography.
Mmm, a smokin’ hot Catherine Deneuve on the cover (1/24/69). Also an lengthy article about “The Great Broadway Joe Namath” (according to one caption his evenings included “gay parties like this one in Miami”). A profile of some of Nixon’s top advisors (the administration had just been sworn a few days before the issue date). And lots of cigarette ads.
An article on Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man
An editorial ridiculing the Senate campaign of John F. Kennedy.
A submarine rescuing a disabled blimp
A reunion of the last of Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders
Photos of a memorial for Evita Peron (no sign of Che Guevara)
Back to college women’s fashions
Gary Cooper in High Noon
A feature on Alexander Calder and his new form of “mobile” sculpture.
An in-depth look at the coup that overthrew Egypt’s King Farouk.
An ad announcing they’ll be publishing Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea in their next issue.
Lots of ads for cigarettes and beer and tires.
I was actually named for Marilyn Monroe - my parents disagreed, and wanted to saddle me with both my grandmothers names, which would have made me an obscure German first name beginning with ‘M’ and Isabel in some combination … neither of which would have been good for making up decent sounding nicknames at the time. My mother did not like her mother’s name, nor my paternal grandmothers name, and really put her foot down and they decided to go with Marilyn because Marilyn Monroe had been in the news a fair amount around that time.
I find it refreshing to see a weekly magazine reporting stuff that isn’t all the democrats are the evil, or the republicans are the suck. I can deal with the communists are the evil Not to mention there are actually articles about things that are well thought out, and not all who is screwing whom in Hollywood - there is a great one about the making of Lawrence of Arabia. There is a short story by Ray Bradbury in a different issue - an homage to <shudder> Hemmingway. There is an article about Picasso inyet another article.
And looking at the ads, they had some killer appliances - google Frigidaire Flair! I want one, fully restored!
I’d never heard of Vikki Dougan either, but Google Search revealed that she was a pinup girl born in 1929 (and apparently is still alive) but she does not have a Wiki page.
LBJ on the cover, hugging a kid in some flowers.
A big article on the Berrigan Brothers. I didn’t know anything about them, but then again they were arrested when I was a baby.
A special report on phosphates
A bomb called “Cheeseburger”
Ryan O’Neil
Wow there was a lot of ads but it is very interesting to see them.
September 4, 1964, three days after I was born. From a website selling them:
Atlantic City and a memory. LBJ’s convention in color. Bob Kennedy’s senate bid. 31-mile logjam in Sweden, millions of anchovies and other fish dead in “red tide” off California coast. Half page “Only you can prevent forest fires” ad with nice B&W graphic illustration by unidentified artist. Department of Defense head Robert McNamara calls off attempt to scale Matterhorn at 13,000 feet because of bad weather. Elegant juvenile look of Paris fall fashions, model Christine Eustratiades, designers Castillo, Dior, Chanel, more. Scary pageant in Peking. America’s Cup, Constellation and American Eagle, Rod Stephens, Bob Bavier, Eric Ridder, more. Four Navy men keep house at 32 fathoms for nine days off coast of Bermuda- SeaLab I, Dr. R.E. Thompson, Robert Barth, Sanders Manning, Lester Anderson are aquanauts. Flying Shaggy Olive tree - great picture. Two page Royal Crown Cola ad, mother and children blowing bubbles in a field of flowers, little note to enter the “Favorite President” contest.
Life issue dated July 13, 1953: Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reach the summit of Mt. Everest. This was by our standards old news; they had reached the summit on 29 May local time.
“Negro Revolt: The Flames Spread” - complete with a picture of a soldier (not sure if it’s National Guard or US Army) silhouetted in front of a burning city scene.
What an uplifting image to have associated with one’s birthday…
On a brighter note, the new Tareyton 100’s were introduced
“Us Tareyton smokers would rather fight than switch! And now us Tareyton smokers have even more to fight for!”
Note that the issue of Life that was on newstands on your birthday had a date that was after your birthday – the dates of the issues are the dates they’re removed and returned.
Cover story is a preview of the newly released **Sound of Music **with an accompanying article about the problems Hollywood has with musicals in the overseas market.
Vietnam figures prominently in this edition.
Interesting editorial on immigration reform. In this case, it concerned replacing the racist and discriminatory 1924 Immigration Act.
Article about Bobby Vinton (the best selling singer of 1964) which asks, “Who the hell is Bobby Vinton?”
I spend a decade in Vinton’s hometown of Canonsburg, PA one year, a dinky nothing of a hellhole if ever there was one. I was going to mention Vinton wasn’t even the most famous singer hailing from the prolapsed ass of Pittsburgh, that Perry Como was also from Canonsburg. I checked the wiki, and it appears a rapper famous enough for me to have heard of him (and I’m NOT his target audience), Wiz Khalifa, is also from there.
So I guess good things do sprout from manure piles.
Seriously, do not go to [DEL]Ravenholm[/DEL] Canonsburg.