Kirk Douglas: Principles of a Hollywood legend-rare photos

Kirk Douglas (b. Issur Danielovitch in 1916) has existed for so long and for many decades was so Hollywood a force majeure, which sometimes is easy to forget that as all other actors of history, once was a virtual unknown. Today even a truncated list of films most famous reads like the curriculum at a seminar on the cinema of mid-20th century: ACE in the hole, 20,000 Leagues under the sea, lust for life, paths of glory, Spartacus, the masterpiece of noir out of the Past, are only the brave, seven days in May and many others.

There is a reason that was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Oscar for"50 years as a creative and moral force in the film community"; one reason has won similar awards from the American Film Institute, National Board of Review, the Festival of cinema of Berlin and others; a reason, at 97 years old, remains without a doubt the greatest living legend of Hollywood. And the reason, of course, is that Douglas won everything (while more than a memoir best seller in the road closure).

But in 1949, son of Jewish immigrants from Belarus was just another actor, talented, handsome, waiting for a great opportunity. He had some notable roles under his belt, in strong films as a letter to three wives and the aforementioned from the past; But it was in the main role of the disturbing 1949's drama, the boxing champion, Douglas became a star. He played a completely unpleasant fighter named Midge Kelly in the movie--a risky move that paid large when it was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor for his performance in scorching. (He lost to Broderick Crawford in all the King's men).

The rest, as the saying goes, is history. Douglas was a draw main box office throughout the 1950s and 1960s, in addition to making a mark as a socially conscious artist. For example, as producer and star of the 1960 epic, Spartacus, Douglas insisted that screenwriter of the movie, the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo - Communist long - get credit for his screenplay. This Act of consciousness, at a time when such positions were almost unknown, is often cited as the beginning of the end for Era harmful of the Hollywood blacklist.

Here, in recognition of the life of the man long, full and his stellar career, LIFE.com pays tribute to Kirk Douglas with a series of photos - none of which ran in LIFE magazine - when he was on the cusp of stardom.

Indeed, a champion.

-Ben Cosgrove is the Editor of LIFE.com
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Tasty: Classic cuisine from John Dominis photography

The art and craft of photographing food is now a large part of our visual landscape - in magazines, on billboards and subway posters, web sites and elsewhere, it is easy to imagine that creative food photography has existed since the dawn of the medium. In fact, for a long time, the vast majority of pictures of food was a kind of... blah. Appetizers, main dishes, desserts and drinks - a cake, a roast beef, a salad, a martini - were arranged directly on a table or a kitchen counter, exactly as the kitchen would be found in real life.

Fifty years ago, however, in his January 31, 1964, Edition, LIFE magazine launched its famous (among lovers of food, anyway) series "Gala dinner" and helped to re-imagine what photography of food could be. "Dinners are festive," wrote the editors of the life of foods that would be presented in the series, and still easy to cook. Because no party is created entirely in the kitchen, it will offer stories - along with recipes, tips on how to prepare, store efficiently, serve with style. A full menu is assigned to every meal."

Throughout the long and popular career of the monthly series, some of the most celebrated photographers of life contributed to large dinners, with a name in particular, John Dominis, appearing again and again, in Edition after Edition. Throughout his career, Dominis uniformly excellent work through issues very disparate listed as one of the most versatile talents of life - and your food photos without a doubt contributed to that reputation. As LIFE.com wrote in a Dominis photographer Spotlight:

[John Dominis] traveled the world, working in Southeast Asia and the Southwest United States, Africa and Europe, Mexico, and New York. He covered six Olympic Games, including the 1968 Summer Games in the city of Mexico, where he made his famous painting of American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos on the podium, his gloved fists raised in a black power salute. He was one of the first photographers of life report of Viet Nam. It covered Woodstock. He created what many consider the definitive photographic essays on icons such as Frank Sinatra and Steve McQueen. He photographed big cats (Lions, leopards, cheetahs) in Africa and photographed the three brothers Kennedy, John, Robert and Edward, by separate, early in their careers.

His photograph of 1965 Mickey Mantle by throwing his helmet in disgust after a terrible at-bat is one of the most eloquent pictures ever of a great athlete in decline and also made some of the most memorable images of food in the pages of the life of grace.

LIFE.com presented here, a photography exhibition of food de Dominis - photos that were published of course man, in a sense, as he loved to cook. (His father was owner of a chef and restaurant in Los Angeles).

"We have decided to shoot large plans that look good to eat the food," Dominis wrote about big dinner pictures, "instead of the popular style [when], adorned with flowers and candles.

Dominis also find creative ways to make dishes especially attractive. For example, photo of a rolled roast, photographed in a container of roast is cut by half (slide above #5), seems to have been pulled moments before an oven. But cigarette smoking, not a salty steam, drain the pot - smoke burned there, Dominis pointed out then, "to make it look delicious."
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Death from above: planes collide over New York, December 1960

On December 16, 1960, two planes collided over New York City, falling debris, loading and bodies in the neighborhoods of Brooklyn and Staten Island. More than five decades later, the devastation of that day - captured by photographers from life in the hours after the disaster, still shocks.

[More: read about the mystery of Malaysia Airlines flight 370.]

Hail and fog limited visibility in the sky over New York when Trans World Airlines flight 266, with 44 people aboard United flight 826, a plane Douglas DC-8 carrying 84 people, they crossed and clashed. The wreckage of the TWA plane landed in the isolated Miller Army Airfield on Staten Island. The destroyed plane United proved much more catastrophic, hitting Brooklyn densely populated neighborhood of Park Slope. Fallen debris killed six people on the ground, including two men selling Christmas trees. A jet stream sparked a fire seven, destroying 10 buildings.

All told, 134 people were killed: 128 passengers and crew of the aircraft and six in Brooklyn.

While that certainly air there have been disasters resulting in more deaths than the "Park Slope Plane Crash", as it came to be called, in the years since December 1960, caused destruction that the mid-air collision was devastating. He also served as a sad omen of worse horrors associated with airline, with rapid global growth of air transport, they were virtually guaranteed to come.
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Liza Minnelli in 19: rare pictures of a legend in the world of the spectacle as a teenager

In March 1965, when photographer of life Bill Eppridge spent some time in a mission with enormously talented daughter of Judy Garland, Liza Minnelli was only turning 19 and launching what would prove to be a monumental own career. In fact, was about to debut on Broadway in the Flora of the red menace, a role that she would do at the time, the youngest woman in history to win a Tony Award for leading actress. (Also in the creative team of the show: composer John Kander and Fred Ebb, lyricist collaborated for the first time on Flora.) I would do in the future in classics as Cabaret Broadway team - later turned into a film starring Minnelli, of course, in his role as an Oscar as Sally Bowles - and Chicago winner.)

Liza Flora allowed Eppridge in his spirit trials and he even invited him to her birthday party 19 in New York, but in the end life published one photo of Eppridge. Here, on his birthday (born March 12, 1946, in Hollywood) and tribute to Minnelli and enduring career, LIFE.com presents a series of images - most of whom never ran in the life - a legend in the making.

Liza, of course, was not unknown to the world of the spectacle: Judy Garland was his mother, his father was Vincente Minnelli, had performed with her mother at the London Palladium and off-Broadway - had a little work done, but Flora the red menace would be his most high-profile role to date, the concert that pushed you completely out of the shadow of her famous parents and in another care facility.

Performance of premiere of Minnelli in Flora, life wrote: "would she acted and danced with a clumsy, captivating charm, cast seems to ' what-am - do-here?', he sang with a voice that quivered gently thanks to the boom of the seat belt, and occasionally they are uncontrolled - which only added to his sympathy..." She certainly seemed his mother makes several Rainbow. When he sang, also had echoes of Judy - the old catch and wavers and beats that you made a song it sounds as if what was happening by a nervous breakdown. But soon faded image of Judy and Liza came into focus.

In the decades since Eppridge made these intimate photos of the budding star, Liza has performed in famous concert halls of the world, accumulated numerous awards for his singing and acting happy to new generations of fans with appearances of thief in touchstones of pop culture and contemporary as Arrested Development. But his early years were really something special. As she herself Liza said life in 1965: "eighteen is great, but 19 is the best of all." It is when they are going to open in his first show on Broadway. "
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Charles Manson en juicio: locura Visible

Charles Manson has been in prison for more than four decades. In 1971, he and several of his followers - Tex Watson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Louise Van Houten - were found guilty in the definition of time murders that horrified not only Los Angeles, where the murders took place in the summer of 1969, but the entire nation. (Manson was sentenced, in essence, as a "conspirator", as he was not present at the killings, but ordered that they be held.)

The ferocity of the killings; the apparent randomness of the violence; and the Manson cult incidida rarity - the chilling rarity, bottomless - an awful, indelible black mark in the 1960's.

But it was during sworn testimony and the trial of Manson and his followers - with the trial itself that serves as a sort of grim circus that lasted nine months, starting from the summer of 1970 to the spring of 1971 - that the nation was capable of measuring how deeply upset "the family" was truly.

Size x on their foreheads. No problem. Do shave their heads to show solidarity with their leader? Fact. Blocking entrances to the courthouse, singing, singing, try the trial - and, by extension, the murders-a trip to the amusement park? For the Manson clan, were all grist for his cheerful psychopathy, death-worshipping.

After all, if Manson, Krenwinkel and the rest were to be tried and convicted (obviously) murder en masse by the "establishment" and "pigs" despised, less their brothers and sisters in the family could do was show the world that in the universe who inhabited, the murderers were not really criminals at all, but instead were revered iconoclastic. Rebels. Heroes.

Here, LIFE.com presents pictures from the end of 1969, when Manson and co-defendants were finally processed and charged with the murders.

All these years later, Manson and his acolytes dead eyes view is still surprising. But while photos like these bear witness, people whose lives were taken - Sharon Tate; Jay Sebring; Wojciech Frykowski; Abigail Folger; Steven Parent; Leno and Rosemary LaBianca - will remain in view, and those who killed them to be remembered not (as some would have) as misguided, deceived, children or as victims, but as men and women who entered the homes of strangers and in a spasm of savagery ended life after life after life.
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Lost city: portraits of New York before 9/11 changed everything

Of all the cities of the world, could well be the most photographed in New York. The Brooklyn Bridge; Times Square; Central Park; Coney Island; Harlem; the Lower East Side; wonderful public library Lions; the 59th Street Bridge; buildings Chrysler, Woolworth, Empire State; and it continues. Sometimes it seems as if we've seen all possible views of the city, in each of the New York countless, countless forms - taken from all imaginable angles and that there is no way of experiencing again a familiar place.

And then, suddenly, we have a new way to see the world's largest city - and remember, once again, how variegated, and what beautiful is New York.

In the 1990s, at the insistence of his friends for a long time and gallerists, Phyllis Wrynn and Mitch Freidlin, a photographer born in Bronx called George Forss began photographing New York rooftops, towers-location - private balconies - to which very few people had access. In the next decade, Forss created a remarkable Chronicle of a New York invisible - a new New York - captured from a unique point of view. The resulting images, collectively known as "The Access project," offered unexpected glimpses of monuments that we thought we knew, while rethinking and, in a sense, revitalize the most emblematic urban landscape of the world.

[This gallery has 15 photos of "acceso". Find more here.]

Finally, it should be noted that Forss took its last "project access" photos of the year before the attack against the twin towers 2001. Not only New York physically transformed in the Decade and a half since Forss stopped the unique search and caches, since the shoot, but the entire atmosphere in the country has changed. There is simply no way, for example, it would allow to Forss shooting from the JFK airport air traffic control tower simply because an acquaintance who worked for the port authority invited him up to check out the view.

In more than one, New York and America as a whole is less free for 15 years. Seen in that light, photographs of George Forss are a celebration of and an elegy for a lost world.

George Forss (b. 1941) lives and works in Cambridge, New York. Visit him online at ForssBlog or in the Ginofor Gallery and see and buy his work in excellent Park Slope Gallery Brooklyn.
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Obesity in the United States: photos from the first days of a national health Crisis

"The most serious health problem in the United States today is obesity." Sounds familiar, doesn't it? In fact, that very common claim that one might be forgiven for what is the most recent statement of centers for the Disease Control and prevention, or the American Medical Association or the Academy of Pediatrics or, perhaps, Maria Kang. Moreover, the Declaration is undoubtedly true, as the medical, financial and social consequences of the epidemic of obesity in the United States grow ever clearer - and more frightening.

But that pronouncement about the primacy of the obesity in the hierarchy of national health problems is not new. In fact, it is line of opening for a notable article in LIFE magazine for 60 years. Here, as the national dialogue by the crisis of obesity in the United States grows more urgent, LIFE.com presents images - many of whom never ran in the magazine - made by the photographer Martha Holmes to illustrate an article of March 1954 entitled (something offensively to the modern ear), "The scourge of overweight".

"Some 5 million Americans", wrote life, "medically considered to 'obese', they weigh at least 20% more than normal and, consequently, have a mortality rate one-and-a half times greater than its neighbours..." Another 20 million Americans are classified as overweight (10% above normal) by doctors and insurance men and are dramatically prone to diabetes, gallstones, hernia, renal deficiencies and bladder and complications during pregnancy and surgery."

[More: see all coverage of obesity of TIME.com.]

The figures given for life – numbers, is noteworthy, that they were the result of significantly different research cited in reports and revised papers today - they have grown rapidly to proportions even more atrocious: according to a report by the CDC 2013, "more than one third of adult Americans (35.7%) and approximately 17% (or 12.5 million) of children and adolescents aged 2 to 19 years are obese".

But perhaps more surprising and troubling statistics on obesity in the United States is related to the speed with which has strengthened this affliction: for example, in 2010 (again according to the CDC), "there were 12 States with a prevalence of obesity of 30%. In the year 2000, States had a prevalence of obesity of 30% or more."

(There have been some glimmers of hope in this sad litany. Display, a February 2014 by the CDC report found that the rate of obesity in children 2 to 5 fell 40 percent during a period of eight years, about 14 percent in 2004 to about 8 percent in 2012.)

Try to imagine the toll that obesity on the health of men, women and children and in the economy of the nation as a whole. The more we will pay for insurance each year because of this epidemic? How much economic productivity will be lost because of illness, injury, emergency room visits, hospitalizations and other collateral damage of the immediate damage and long-term obesity?

Article of life, meanwhile, focused at least in part a woman, Dorothy Bradley, whose struggles with eating & body image issues were familiar, and still familiar, countless American men and women.

"When he finished high school in Tyner, Tennessee, in 1940," life said that its readers, "5 feet 5 inch Dorothy Bradley weighed 205 pounds and fit snugly into a graduation size 44 matronly dress. "She had overeaten since the moment she began to mature, possibly because of unconscious emotional turmoil".

The article chronicled the efforts of Dorothy to lose weight; your desire to work in medicine; its successes (lose 60 pounds) and its decline (gaining all back and then some); and ultimately, something of a happy ending, as it has lost and, after the publication of the article, had kept out of about 70 pounds and got a job as a nurse at a hospital in Kentucky.

-Ben Cosgrove is the Editor of LIFE.com
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LIFE Behind the Picture: ‘Skull on a Tank,’ Guadalcanal, 1942

AppId is over the quota

En febrero de 1943, la revista LIFE publicó una serie de fotografías de Guadalcanal — el más grande de las Islas Salomón y el sitio de la ofensiva primero, fundamental de los aliados en el Pacífico durante la II guerra mundial.

Una de esas fotos, hechas por un fotógrafo de la vida de 25 años de edad llamado a Ralph Morse, instantáneamente tocado una fibra sensible con millones de la revista de los lectores. Siete décadas después, sigue siendo una de las imágenes más inquietantes a surgir de cualquier guerra. Foto de Morse (el primero en esta galería) de la cabeza de un soldado japonés cortada empalada en un tanque de captura más gráficamente e inmediatamente que los volúmenes de palabras podrían la barbarie de la guerra implacable y a menudo casual.

Aquí, siete décadas después del final de esa campaña crítica, LIFE.com presenta no sólo recuerdos de Morse hizo esa fotografía sino también otros cuadros de Guadalcanal, fotos que encontré en la vida y muchos más (por Morse y otros dos empleados, los hermanos Joe y Frank Scherschel) que nunca fueron publicados en la revista.

Leer la leyenda que acompaña la foto inquietante de Morse en el número 01 de febrero de 1943, de la vida, "cráneo de un soldado japonés está sostenido por un tanque Jap [sic] quemado por las tropas estadounidenses. Incendio destruyó el resto del cadáver".

Morse, sin embargo, todavía muy ágil en 96 — recuerda un poco diferente. Como sabe todo aquel con incluso un conocimiento del fallecimiento de la II guerra mundial, las tropas de Estados Unidos (y tropas de todos los demás países que lucharon en el conflicto largo y brutal) a veces participan en la clase de horrible comportamiento mostrado en fotografía de Morse. Pero en recuerdos del fotógrafo de ese día, parecía más probable que los japoneses fueron los que colocaron el cráneo quemado ese tanque ruinas como una trampa atroz para los estadounidenses curiosos.

[Más: ver todas las características relacionadas con WWII de TIME.com.]

"El ejército había asumido el control de los Marines," dice Morse LIFE.com, configuración de la escena en Guadalcanal a finales de 1942, "y estaba viajando con un grupo de soldados patrullando. En los bosques de las islas, tenías que caminar en una sola línea. El pincel era tan muy espeso que si no cumpliste tu ojo en los zapatos del hombre delante de ti, que estabas perdido. Creo que fue tres o cuatro días de caminata sólido, pero estábamos bien." Una pausa. Luego, "Éramos muy jóvenes", dice, casi maravilladas.

Por su parte, la vida describe terreno de Guadalcanal de esta manera: "la selva es una pared sólida de crecimiento vegetal, a cien metros de altura. Hay hojas de oreja de elefante del taro, helechos y dentadas hojas de los árboles de plátano, hojas de palma grandes todo enredado en una web fantástica. Cerca de la tierra hay miles de tipos de insectos, Mantis, hormigas y arañas... En un clima caliente y húmedo mosquitos viven lujuriante. A veces ellos se colocar tan profundamente en la carne de los soldados, tienen que ser cortado.

"Hemos venido a una abertura grande en la playa", dijo Morse, y había un tanque con una calavera, cerca de la torreta. El sargento llevando la patrulla lo mira y dice: 'Muchachos, ese cráneo ha sido puesto ahí por una razón, y los japoneses probablemente tienen granadas de mortero dirigidos en este lugar'. Una escena repugnante como siempre que dibujará personas, y la idea, por supuesto, era que cualquier tropas americanas que vino obviamente quisiera parar y echar un vistazo.

' "Permanezcan lejos de allí", dice el Sargento, luego se volvió hacia mí. '' Dice: 'toma tu foto si a, entonces salir rápido.' Así que me acerqué, tengo mis fotos y corriendo hacia donde había dejado la patrulla.

Preguntó cuando era capaz de ver las fotos que hizo en Guadalcanal, o en cualquiera de los otros lugares le disparó durante la guerra, en el Pacífico y en toda Europa, Morse se ríe y dice: "no hasta que llegó un ejemplar de la revista, meses más tarde, a veces — o hasta que después volvimos a los Estados."

Espontáneamente, ofrece una visión reveladora en la logística de fotografiar en una zona de guerra en los años 40 tempranos, y el creativo medidas fotógrafos inventados para hacer el trabajo.

"Antes de volar a las Islas Salomón, donde los combates era, fuiste al PX en Honolulu," explica Morse — la tienda PX (o intercambio de correos), siendo el minorista que opera en bases militares en todo el mundo — y compró una caja de condones. Cuando estabas en la selva o en las playas, escribió sus leyendas y cayeron en un condón con tu película sin revelar, atado en un nudo y disecado en un envolvente y esperaba que todo quedaría seco.

"Luego, cuando llegó a un lugar donde había un barco o un avión saliendo, enviarías la película a los Estados Unidos. Siempre iría directamente a los censores en Washington, y luego lo que estaba bien sería enviado la revista o periódico o donde sea. Pero porque no vimos la película desarrollada por semanas o meses, a veces no sabíamos si estaban trabajando nuestras cámaras! Podrían estar rotos y no sabríamos. Nosotros seguimos disparando. Creo que primero vi la foto del cráneo después tengo la malaria y el ejército me envió de vuelta a casa. Finalmente vi la foto en las oficinas de la vida en Nueva York".

Un último punto vale la pena subrayar: Ralph Morse fue suerte incluso de estar vivo a finales de 1942, cuando hizo esa foto del cráneo. Unos meses antes, había estado a bordo del crucero USS Vincennes cuando fue hundido por torpedos japoneses durante la batalla de la isla de Savo, no lejos de Guadalcanal. En libro de 1998 de John Loengard, fotógrafos de vida: lo que vieron, Morse describe la acción sobre el Vincennes:

De Guadalcanal en 1942, a la 1 de la mañana... suenan cuartel general. Salir de la cama y ponerme mi ropa, salir corriendo y subir a cubierta porque nosotros estamos siendo golpeados.

Es el azabache, pero estamos lanzando bengalas para arriba, y barcos están volando. Era como un set de película.... Pedazos del barco seguía recibiendo pasmado y usted no obtener rayado, pero eres con las personas ya no existen. Comenzamos en la lista, la cubierta estaba tan resbaladiza con sangre que era como una pista de patinaje sobre hielo. El capitán ordenó a recoger a los heridos en el agua. Bueno, en ese momento no están tomando fotografías. Estás tirando heridos. Estás cubierto de sangre. Chicos gritando.... Pero termina, y la batalla, la luz se hundió.

Las órdenes vinieron a abandonar la nave. Me fui por la borda con uno de los fotógrafos de la nave, y estábamos corto un salvavidas. Teníamos cinco personas y cuatro chalecos salvavidas. Así que nosotros seguimos pasando uno alrededor. Podría flotar sobre la espalda durante un tiempo, y luego, mientras flotábamos, nos conocimos a más y más grupos. Solíamos jugar al bridge, y dos de mis compañeros de puente flotaban, así que pasamos el resto de la noche flotando por la gente preguntando si jugaron puente — para impedir que preocuparse acerca de los tiburones. Tuvimos mucha suerte esa noche porque había tanta sangre en el agua, pero con todas las cargas de profundidad siendo lanzadas creo que cada tiburón en su sano juicio hubiera salido de allí. Nos recogimos unas seis horas más tarde por destructores.

Morse se mantuvo con vida, cubriendo todo tipo imaginable de historia — de la carrera espacial a los deportes (hizo la foto más famosa de Jackie Robinson) a Broadway — para los próximos 30 años, hasta que la revista finalmente doblado como un semanario en 1972.

— Ben Cosgrove es el Editor de LIFE.com
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The war at home: rare portraits of black soldiers from World War II training

In August 1943, at the height of the second world war, LIFE magazine published an extensive article titled, "Division of black". Racial tensions that inexorably shaped American history and, to a large extent, defines American culture rarely have been more urgent or widespread they were in that moment, when U.S. troops were "fighting for freedom" overseas encoded time prejudice and inequality legislation remained in force in the United States. In fact, few months until the article appeared in life, a massive riot tore through Detroit, leaving several dead, hundreds injured and thousands - mostly African-American - low arrest.

"Black Division" of the life article, meanwhile, chronic and (somewhat mutely) celebrated the growing number of black troops in U.S., focusing primarily on a single unit combat units: the famous 93rd infantry division, its 16,000 soldiers and their thousand officers--half of whom were African-Americans - training at Fort Huachuca in Arizona.

Here, as another black history month it becomes an appearance of LIFE.com, at a crucial moment in American history, when many thousands of citizens, men and women, were otherwise and training to fight to defend a country that long had resisted the notion of "freedom and justice" for all. There is more heroism in that kind of effort; seen in a certain point of view, there is a kind of radical optimism that, in the end, defines the imperfect, bold American experiment as well as something you have.

-Ben Cosgrove is the Editor of LIFE.com
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Clay vs Liston in Miami Beach: the night was born 'the best'

It was Cassius Marcellus Clay, then, of course, an Olympic gold medalist, the undefeated challenger for the heavyweight Crown in the world and the most charismatic (and, for some, the most controversial) athlete of the era. It was February 1964, and clay's 22-year-old, whose career was a stunning 19-0, was scheduled to fight Sonny Liston for the title of heavyweight in Miami Beach. Almost no one in the world of boxing - and certainly very, very few in boxing media very United and deeply conservative - gave the extremely self-confident Kentuckian the slightest chance of beating the hard-punching "big bear."

And although no one gave him many chances, and nobody could possibly ignore a fighter who recited his own comic poetry, Self-profit who would listen. (A gem before the fight: "people not dreamed when they put the money / that will see a total eclipse of the Sonny".)

But on the night of 25 February 1964, Clay took Liston Crown with a seventh-round technical knockout in a performance that marked the arrival of a unequivocally formidable boxing talent. Clay - soon to call Muhammad Ali - possessed one without previous skill set, including ballet steps, lightning hand speed and glued to a overwhelming. When the referee told Liston in the ring in Miami Beach, it was clear that the boxing world and the universe of sport in general, would never be the same.

As the New York Times great journalist Robert Lipsyte wrote in the fight night:

Incredibly, the Screamer bragging, insulting young had been telling the truth all the time. Cassius Clay won the world heavyweight title tonight when Sonny Liston, injured left shoulder, bleeding was unable to answer the Bell for the seventh round.

As soon as it had been announced as the new champion of the world, Clay shouted to journalists covering the fight: "Eat their words". Only three 46 sports writers covering the fight needed to win.

But the child had not lied. All those interminable choruses of "float like a butterfly, stings like a bee," had been more silly songs. The child was floating. Leaned jabs and hooks, resting on the ropes, then turn out and away from Liston. Moved to the clockwise around Liston, causing that terrible left hook, his hands is still low.

And then the crowd was cheering and booing, which is something like laughing and crying because it was more crazy than ever they had seen. It makes no sense. For weeks, Clay had played the fool, and they have marked at will by unworthy sparring partners. This morning, weighing, which had acted bizarre and disturbed.

Until the second round, officials had the fight a draw... But points don't matter after all. Poetry and youth and joy had triumphed over the odds of 8-1. And until it had happened (and perhaps can even search it) people laughed at the thought that he could spend a night like this.

[More: see photos of the second Ali-Liston fight in May 1965 – the fight legendary "Phantom Punch" in Lewiston, Maine.]

Cover credit: Bob Gomel - LIFE magazine
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Teenage boys in 45: against the war, acting seriously playful

"The most important fact in the life of the American teen boys," LIFE magazine informed its readers in an article on cover of June 1945, "is that they have to go to fight against Japan. They have responded to this perspective Stern behaving exactly as they have always behaved, engaged in very important details related to the full enjoyment of play, eat and sleep, doubtful enjoy exploring the world of men and women."

Article this topic long life - titled, simply, "Teen-Age Boys" - submitted photographs of the incomparable Nina read and came half a year after the first foray into the strange universe of adolescents in the magazine: an article of December 1944, "the teenage girls: live in a wonderful world of its own." (LIFE.com to see "the invention of adolescents: life and the triumph of the youth culture.")

That feature was killed by the same photographer who captured so neatly teens - offers more evidence that, among enormously talented and versatile photographers of the life of the 1940s, perhaps none was as adept at capturing liquid, emotionally-charged life of adolescents with quite the same fresh sensibility as the read born in Russia.

(White) male adolescent girl read photographed in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1945, life continued ironically to observe that the boys, among "still you can admire the old skills--"

The ability to swim well, to memorize names of soccer heroes, have a joke fast for the day of all small events, popular. The old weaknesses still pursue - task is done in ten minutes, mother is considered to be a lovable servant, home is only to eat and sleep. His greatest talent is endless happy skylarking. Their talk of girls, their cautious smoking, great security promised their arguments still continues.

The war that all these pictures in the shade, for the readers of life and for the children in the photographs themselves - lasted two months until U.S. aircraft dropped bombs on two Japanese cities which is suspected, few residents of 1945 Des Moines, Iowa, had heard of: Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

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Intolerance in the USA: photos of a Ku Klux Klan initiation

According to a recent report by a group of civil rights based in Alabama, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the number of extremist groups and anti-Government "Patriot" in the United States decreased to around 2,000 in 2013, after reaching an all-time high of nearly 2,400 in 2012. However, instead of a positive development, the SPLC points out that the lower number of hate groups could well be the result of the incorporation of the ideas of the extreme right in State law in the United States

But even if the number fluctuates by a few hundred years per year, the fact remains the Neo-Nazis, cults "Christian identity", white-supremacist militias and other anti-Semitic groups, against the nativist aliens exist in all 50 States.

When it comes to extremists in the United States, of course, the longest-lived and most easily identifiable remains the Ku Klux Klan, which has been operating in varying degrees of influence and strength for about 150 years. Hundreds of Klan actively working groups and recruitment in the United States, with more than two dozen in Texas only. The KKK as a political and cultural force fortunes waxed and waned over the decades, with members of the Klan peak in the Decade of 1920, during the time of the "second Klan". (The first Klan, in the South of war Civil War, lasted from 1865 to 1874; the second Klan from 1915 until approximately 1944; and the third from approximately the end of the war until today.)

The Klan said literally millions of members at the height of the era of the second Klan; Today, the Klan observers estimated that number to be less than 10,000. The good news is that it is a precipitous decline, to say the least, in the number of people officially associated with the Ku Klux Klan; the bad news is that many thousands of Americans who have perhaps joined the Klan in the past have aligned instead with a large number of groups extremists, militias and other organizations, making the extreme fringe right so dangerous as it has ever been.

In May 1946, LIFE magazine ran a series of remarkable images of an initiation of the Klan in Georgia, in the beginning of the era of the third Klan. Under the title "Ku Klux Klan tries a comeback", said the article which started the KKK pledged "in" a mystical contest in Georgia Stone Mountain. Photos of the language that accompanied by photographer Ed Clark, meanwhile, made it clear that, as newsworthy as it might have been the story of this particular initiation, editors of life considered the figures in their white robes and hoods to be rather laughable - if his rhetoric and arcane, pseudo mystical antics were so disturbing.

On the afternoon of May 9 at 20 a mob of adult men marched solemnly to a broad plateau of stone mountain outside Atlanta, Georgia, and fell on his knees on the ground before 100 Atlanta covered white and hooded. In the eerie light of Crescent and a cross of fire that stumbled in parallel up to a large altar stone and knelt there on the ground while the "great dragon" went through the trickery of instituting proceedings in the Ku Klux Klan. Then a new Member was selected from the mafia and ceremoniously "gentleman" in the Organization on behalf of the rest of their intolerant classmates.

This was the first public initiation in the Klan since the end of World War II. It was carefully set a time calculated. The tops of the anti-black, anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic, against the aliens anti-democratic Ku Klux Klan was leaving hidden at the very moment when the CIO and the A.F. of l. began simultaneous campaigns to organize the South during the war... But it is doubtful that the Klan can become so terribly strong as it was in 1919. An indication of the powerlessness of the Klan was its lack of effect on blacks, who were previously intimidated by members of toga white and frightened. More than 24,000 Blacks have already registered for the primaries next month of July in the vicinity of Atlanta only, where took place the ritual of stone mountain.

As mentioned in one of the legends in the Gallery overhead, the ceremony of the stone of the mountain was postponed several times during the previous year due to the shortage of the sheet during the war. Or at least that's what informed the life at the time.

The magazine also made a point to characterize the garb and actions of members in the Klan meetings (slides #10 to 15) as creepy and pathetic. "Childhood ritual and secrecy", the magazine noted, "they have always been the great attractions for the kind of people who make good Klansmen."

The more things change...

-Ben Cosgrove is the Editor of LIFE.com
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Behind the image: Portrait of a young man with a camera

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Brutal beauty of Antarctica: Portrait of the bottom of the world

Photographer Michael Rougier accompanied an expedition to the bottom of the world, where investigators planned to retrace steps of Antarctic expedition of the World War I the time legendary (and ill-fated) in 1964, Sir Ernest Shackleton. When LIFE magazine published its photos in May 1965, the focus of the story had been reduced considerably - i.e., photos of Rougier appeared in an article on the United States and Russia to scientists studying the exploits navigation of Adelie penguins. Along the way, made countless photos of the lovely creatures and their cousins, emperor penguins, for example - in their natural habitat, brutal, beautiful. Not incidentally, it also nearly lost his life.

Another task for a photographer whose talent was matched only by its versatility.

Born in England in June 1925, Rougier fired to life for a quarter of a century, covering the war in Korea, the Boy Scouts, Japanese teens addicted to drugs, the Hungarian revolution of 1956, horse racing and myriad other topics. Photos made in Antarctica in 1964, meantime, remain among his most impressive: it is difficult to think of another photographer, in black and white, so perfectly could capture both the breathtaking beauty of the great continent of the South and the endearing quirkiness of its most famous residents.

At some point during the mission, however, things were terribly wrong by Rougier, as he lost balance and was sliding - for about a kilometre, out of control - down beside a glacier. As his daughter Karen recently said LIFE.com, which his father managed to save himself. Just.

"As a last sigh," Karen Rougier said, "cast collection by ice, and that's what prevented him from sliding on the edge of the glacier.

ROUGIER was seriously injured in the accident, but after recovering came to complete many missions more, by life and other publications. Michael Rougier died just two years ago, in January of 2102. A small peak close to where he almost lost his life, East LaPrade Valley of Antarctica, was named Rougier Hill in tribute to him.

Michael Rougier - the life photo collection/Getty Images

Michael Rougier, Antarctica, 1964.

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Crimea: Photograph of war was where he was born

With the great historical crossroads Crimea suddenly very much back in the news - as Russian troops tighten his hold on the peninsula of Ukraine, and the United States and its allies threaten to "isolate" Russia on the growing crisis - LIFE.com have a look back long time, another conflict in the region through a unique lens: namelythat of the first war photography.

[More: "4 reasons Putin is already losing Ukraine".]

The 1850s Crimean War, you could say that after all, it was where was born the genre, with British photographers such as Roger Fenton (1819-1869) and James Robertson (1813-1888) and Britain's Italian Felice Beato (1832-1909) by doing what many historians consider the first photographs of one major military conflict. Your photos could lack the drama frequently brutal of modern war photography, but however serve as compelling documentation of the gaze and, in a sense, the logistics of the mid-19th century war. Within a few years, Mathew Brady, Alexander Gardner and others would document the American Civil war most thoroughly and graphically that Fenton, Robertson, Beato, or any other managed in the Crimea - a clear indication of how quickly photography took root as a critical method of story.

Indeed, some readers will recall epic three parts Opinionator column Errol Morris of the New York Times several years ago, when the filmmaker and essayist delved into two Roger Fenton photographs individuals of the Crimean War. If you are not familiar with it, read the whole thing. It is amazing. This is one of the photos of Fenton Morris examined - with his normally obsessive, ironic and deeply intelligent eye.

SSPL/Getty Images

The Valley of the shadow of death, the war of Crimea (1853-1856), photographed by Roger Fenton.

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Life at the Oscars: classic photos of Hollywood's biggest night

Audrey Hepburn. Marlon Brando. Elizabeth Taylor. Kirk Douglas. Grace Kelly. Bogart and Bacall... you have the image. And during the golden age of Hollywood, when it came to the awards of the Academy, picture, also - again and again.

In fact, from the red carpet to the stage for the parties back (where tuxedos and dresses were de rigueur) there was some outstanding moments of Oscar who lost his life. Here, in honor of Hollywood, actors, actresses and the magic of the cinema in general - we are fans, after all - LIFE.com offers a selection of Oscar photos that not only the family brilliance and glamour of capture procedures, but those moments much more rare when a superstar drops his guard and, for a moment, we see someone that seems extraordinarily - although most handsomemore rich, with more charisma that most of us could call in life to treat.

[More: see which film time readers chose as the best winner best film ever.]

(Trivia Note: there are several, stories compete around the origin of the name "Oscar" as a designation for the coveted statuette.) Some historians believe that Bette Davis, of all people, coined the term because it resembled the statue - the story - her first husband, bandleader Harmon Oscar Nelson. Another creation myth is that a Secretary to the great head of study of the golden age of Mayer saw the first Oscar statuette and uttered a ringer died to King Oscar II of Norway. No one, however, has always definitely nailed first that he gave the name of Oscar on the Academy Awards. And part of us expected that no one does).

-Ben Cosgrove is the Editor of LIFE.com
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