Photographing American History - LIFE

A Battered Town Welcomes A Savior

Bill Syken — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 15:56:36 +0000

Americans who are not all that well versed in history may only know Charles de Gaulle as a man with an airport in Paris named after him.

But if you want to know why that airport is named for him, take a look at the photograph of a group of young girls assembled in the square of a bombed-out French town. Look at the hope they have, despite the rubble surrounding them.

The photo was taken was June 14, 1944. That is eight days after the D-Day invasion began the process of liberating Western Europe, and six days after a June 8 attack that devastated Isigny, destroying about sixty percent of the French town.

They girls assembled because people in Isigny had been told, with only a half-hour’s notice, that Charles de Gaulle was coming. De Gaulle was the leader of Free France, which formed after Paris fell to the Nazis in 1940. He had been directing a government-in-exile from Great Britain for the four years since then, but his arrival in Isigny was part of his return to his home country to establish a new French government.

When he arrived De Gaulle told residents of the war-ravaged town, “I am very happy to see the dear and bruised population of our town of Isigny gathered here, I know what suffered Isigny. It is the sufferings that each parcel of France will have to pass before reaching liberation. But I know, like you, that this test will not be useless. It is because of this ordeal that we will make the unity and the greatness of France. I want you, with me, to have a feeling of hope in your heart, and to sing the Marseillaise “

In its July 3, 1944 issue LIFE covered De Gaulle’s return to France and his visit to isigny with photos by staff photographer Frank Scherschel that showed both the leader of the resistance and the hope that his presence inspired.

The magazine’s story duscussed the political aspects of the moment, because de Gaulle’s actions were more welcome locally than they were among France’s allies, who felt it was too soon to establish a new French government. But while U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt was irked, the people of France were overjoyed. LIFE’s ended with a quote from a French playwright, Henri Bernstein, saying of De Gaulle, “Let me tell you, this is not going to make him unpopular among the French.”

De Gaulle not only served as head of France’s provisional government for three years, but would also come back to serve as President of France from 1959 to 1969, before his death in 1970.

The people of Isigny hastily gathered to welcome Charles de Gaulle after the recently bombed town learned that the leader of Free France was on his way for a visit, June 14, 1944.

Frank Scherschel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

People gathered to welcome the return of Charles de Gaulle to France during World War II, June 14, 1944.

Isigny & De Gaulle – Photographs of Italian civilians during WWII

People in Isigny, France, gathered on short notice for the arrival of Charles de Gaulle as he re-established the government of France during World War II, June 14, 1944.

Frank Scherschel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Charles de Gaulle arrived in Isigny as he re-established the French government in the days following the D-Day invasion, June 14, 1944.

Frank Scherschel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Charles de Gaulle, leader of Free France, spoke to people in the recently bombed town of Isigny, 1944.

Frank Scherschel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

People gathered to welcome the return of Charles de Gaulle during World War II, June 1944.

Frank Scherschel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

People salvaged furniture from their houses at Isigny during World War II, Italy, June 1944.

Frank Scherschel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

World War II, June 1944.

Frank Scherschel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

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LIFE’s Favorite Photos of America’s Harvesters

Bill Syken — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 13:44:29 +0000

America has a lot going for it, and the ability to feed itself would be at the top of the list. The country is rich in arable farmland.

This important truth is one that suffuses this collection of harvest-time photos taken during LIFE’s original run from 1936 to 1972. The crops being harvested in these photos include corn, wheat, potatoes, tomatoes, onions, celery, grapes, peaches, squash and watermelon. It’s a veritable cornucopia.

(The photographers at work here are a bumper crop too, including LIFE staffers Margaret Bourke-White, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Joe Scherschel, Wallace Kirkland and many others).

It’s worth noting that much has changed about America’s farms since these photos were taken, with the family farm giving way to large-scale agribusiness. According to data from the U.S Department of Agriculture, the number of farms in the United States reached their peak in 1935, at around 7 million. Then came a period of rapid decline, with the total hitting 2 million by the 1970s before leveling off some. The total acreage of farmland didn’t change that much, though, because while the number of farms decreased, their size multiplied.

LIFE was very much aware of this change as it was happening, and worried that it was bad for the country. The magazine fretted in 1948 that the decline of the family farm might also signal the decline of the American family, as families stopped focussing on joint enterprises and its members pursued their individual interests instead. Some of the warmest and most nostalgic images in this collection are those of community, showing people working in unison or taking a break to enjoy a communal meal—with members of a found family, if not an actual one.

Not much is known about the particular farms or farmers in most of these images, though some of the photos, by Michael Rougier, were taken for a story about migrant workers. In all cases, through, there is a connection to the land, and reminder of what it takes for Americans to get their fruits and vegetables.

Harvesters hitchhiked to a wheat harvesting, Oklahoma, 1942.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Farm workers harvested onions, Burbank, California, 1952.

Margaret Bourke-White/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Wheat harvest, Texas, 1949.

Joe Scherschel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Scene from a New Hampshire apple harvest, 1963.

Leonard McCombe/Life Picture Collection/Shiutterstock

An Illinois watermelon harvest, 1946.

Wallace Kirkland/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Nebraska corn harvesters, 1944.

Photo by Wallace Kirkland

Child playing with corn on the farm, Nebraska, 1944.

Wallace Kirkland/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Nebraska corn harvest, 1944.

Wallace Kirkland/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Migrant workers harvesting potatoes, 1959.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Migrant farm workers harvested celery in California, 1959.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Workers harvesting watermelons in the Imperial Valley, California, 1947.

Loomis Dean/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Migrant workers harvesting watermelons in the Imperial Valley, California, 1947.

Loomis Dean/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Celery harvesting in Florida, 1951.

Howard Sochurek/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Peach harvest, 1946.

Wallace Kirkland/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A view of a man unloading bushels of freshly-harvested tomatoes at a produce market in Michigan, 1946

Wallace Kirkland/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Harvesting Boston marrow squash at Seabrook Farms in New Jersey, 1954.

Yale Joel/Life Picture Collectioh/Shutterstock

Women inspecting and checking beans at the Seabrook Farms in New Jersey, 1954.

Yale Joel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Seabrook Farms in New Jersey, 1954.

Yale Joel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Harvest farm hands ate lunch served by their wives in kitchen of a farmhouse, Wichita, Kansas, 1954.

Photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Farmers had lunch brought and served by their wives as they paused briefly during harvest of Springer wheat, Minnesota, 1943

Gordon Coster/Life PIcture Collection/Shutterstock

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The Mona Lisa’s One and Only Visit to America

Bill Syken — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 13:31:18 +0000

For a few weeks in 1963, Americans could see the Mona Lisa without having to go to the Louvre.

That’s because the Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece crossed the Atlantic ocean by boat for a one-of-a-kind visit to the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. This was the only time the painting came to the Americas, and likely the only time it ever will. The only other occasions on which the Mona Lisa has left France were in 1911, when it was stolen by an Italian museum worker and briefly taken to Italy, and in 1974, when the painting traveled for exhibitions in Japan and Russia.

How did the U.S. visit even come about? Credit First Lady (and LIFE magazine favorite) Jacqueline Kennedy, who spoke French fluently and made the request in person to Andre Malraux, the French minister of cultural affairs, during a dinner at the White House. According to Margaret Leslie Davis’s book Mona Lisa in Camelot, Jackie Kennedy wanted the painting to come to America because she “saw the exhibition as an unmatched opportunity to burnish the American image at home and abroad, and [as] a convincing emblem of friendship between France and the U.S. It was a well-chosen gesture of amity, goodwill, and fervent diplomacy.”

The plan to send the Mona Lisa to America was not popular in France, with art experts calling the idea “insane” and “deadly.” They worried that harm would come to this famous and fragile work of art, which was painted in 1503, either because of accidental damage or an act of terror.

French officials did everything they could to make sure Mona Lisa’s journey was a safe one. Here’s how LIFE described the painting’s journey from Paris to Washington in December 1962.

Surrounded by grandeur that would have done credit to Charles de Gaulle, she had travelled on the S.S. France in a deluxe suite that would have cost an ordinary passenger $2,000. Day and night four guards and three museum officials hovered around to check her temperature and see that her wraps didn’t slip off….She was spirited into an air-conditioned van on a New York dock and whisked to the National Gallery in Washington.

The trip from New York to Washington apparently included the van making a stop at a roadside filling station—probably the nearest the Mona Lisa has ever been to a five-cent hot dog. The photo of the van at the filling station is one of many shot by LIFE’s John Loengard, who documented the van journey and of a press viewing in Washington D.C. The painting was exhibited in Washington for three weeks in January 1963, when it was seen by more than a half-million visitors, who waited up to two hours in line for their glimpse of it. Then the painting returned back up to New York, where LIFE’s Ralph Morse took some more photos of the masterpiece on its way to the Met.

After nearly a month in New York, the Mona Lisa returned to France looking no worse for wear.

A French security guard with the crated ‘Mona Lisa’ painting in the state room of a French liner enroute to the US for an exhibit. 1962.

Ralph Morse/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Mona Lisa was transported by van from New York to Washington D.C. during its U.S. visit in 1962.

John Loengard/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

During a visit to New York and Washington D.C.. in 1963, the Mona Lisa made the trip by van, 1962.

John Loengard/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Mona Lisa (inside its transport crate) came to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., 1962.

John Loengard/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Mona Lisa at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., 1963.

John Loengard/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The press at the visit of the Mona Lisa to Washington D.C., 1963.

John Loengard/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A security guard kept its eye on the Mona Lisa during its visit to the National Gallery of Art, 1963.

John Loengard/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Mona Lisa at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., 1963.

John Loengard/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Mona Lisa, on a goodwill trip from France, arrived in New York City in a protective box, 1963.

Ralph Morse/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Mona Lisa, on loan from France, hung in a vault at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., 1963.

John Leongard/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

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Proper Teenagers in a Post-War World

Bill Syken — Wed, 10 Sep 2025 19:18:04 +0000

After the hard lockdowns of the COVID-19 pandemic finally loosened up, many people—and especially teenagers who had their school years interrupted—talked about wanting to make up for lost time. The phrase “hot girl summer” may have originated in 2019 with a song by Megan Thee Stallion, but it came up again frequently when vaccines became available and public spaces opened back up again.

That more recent history something to keep in mind when considering a 1947 photo essay by staff photographer Nina Leen about teenagers in the years immediately after World War II. As described by LIFE, those teenagers were pretty much the opposite of the COVID kids.

The 1947 photo essay by Leen centered on a pair 17-year-old identical twins named Betty and Barbara Bounds. The point of choosing identical twins as the main subject may have been to add an element of symmetry to a story about how young people had become fastidious about their appearance.

According to LIFE’s story, headlined “Tulsa Twins: They Show How Much the Teenage World Has Changed,” young people after World War II aspired to be being dignified and proper:

In 1944 when Betty and Barbara Bounds, who are identical twins, entered Will Rogers High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma, their clothes were sloppy; hot music was the rage and the general behavior of the world was somewhat footloose….Today the teenage world of Betty and Barbara is entirely different. Their clothes are feminine and fastidious; sweet music has replaced hot licks and the general tone of the teenage life is more decorous. The reason for this may be all tied up with the U.S. transition to peace or merely an adolescent desire for something new.

Going with the idea that the teenage trends were a reaction to the war, the motivation behind it underlines the key difference between the pandemic lockdowns and the deprivations of World War II on the domestic front. The pandemic restrictions robbed young people of social opportunities. Whereas the World War II and the rationing of goods meant that teenagers at home were limited less by where they could go than what they could have.

Leen used the mood of the day to create these idealized images of youth. The photo of the Bounds sisters at a dance is as dreamy a picture of teenage life as you will find anywhere.

Teenagers at a party in 1947 in Tulsa, Oklahoma; LIFE reported that these kids “munch doughnuts and sip cokes whenever they are not dancing with serious faces to sentimental music.”

Nina Leen/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Tulsa twins Betty and Barbara Bounds, 1947.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock images

Tulsa twins Betty and Barbara Bounds with their parents, 1947.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock images

Tulsa twins Betty and Barbara Bounds, 1947.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock images

Tulsa twins Betty and Barbara Bounds at ballet class, 1947. A LIFE photo essay highlighted the twins as examples of the decorous lifestyle choices being made by teenagers in the days after World War II.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock images

Tulsa twins Betty and Barbara Bounds, 1947.

Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Tulsa twins Betty and Barbara Bounds spoke with a friend, 1947.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock images

Barbara Bounds, 17, and friend work on the mixture for a fudge cake, Tulsa, 1947.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock images

Tulsa twins Betty and Barbara Bounds, 1947.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock images

Teenage life in Tulsa, 1947.

Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A teenage girl in Tulsa, Oklahoma used nail polish to decorate her sunglass frames, 1947.

Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Betty Bounds, with real gardenias in her hair, wore a full-skirted evening dress embellished with an artificial gardenia while waiting at door for her date, Tulsa, 1947.

Nina Leen/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

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Pushing the Right Buttons: Inside Charm School for Elevator Girls

Bill Syken — Fri, 22 Aug 2025 12:13:17 +0000

In the 1940s the job of stewardess became increasingly glamorized as commercial airline travel became more and popular. That trend may have reached its peak—or nadir, depending on how you look at it—when the now-defunct National Airlines ran an ad featuring stewardesses and slogans like “I’m Cheryl. Fly Me.” Many women were not amused, and before too long the people who worked on airplanes were being referred to with the more professional and gender-neutral term “flight attendants.”

But it’s worth remembering that bygone mentality when considering a 1947 story that ran in LIFE magazine headlined “Store Pretties Up Its Elevator Girls.” The Chicago department store Marshall Field and Co. wanted to give its elevator operators the same kind of glamorous profile as the stewardesses of the time.

To achieve that goal, the store began to give its elevator operators special training, and it was about more than pressing buttons. Here’s how LIFE described it:

Twice a week a small group of operators leave their high-powered lifts and are sent to be kneaded, pummeled and painted in a flossy charm school in the Loop. During the eight-week course the girls not only learn where and how to take off unflattering bulges and how to blend a powder base into the hairline but also how to walk, sit and operate the elevator car decorously. They are also taught how to enunciate clearly merchandise items like “lingerie, bric-a-brac and budget millinery.”

LIFE photographer George Skadding was given a behind the scenes look at the training and the makeovers these operators received. His photo of women in their uniforms stationed outside elevator doors almost has the feel of a chorus line. The story noted that at least one former Marshall Field elevator operator had become a star of screen and stage—her name was Dorothy Lamour.

But for the vast majority who didn’t, their humble role attained, for a time, a touch of glamour. And the efforts did not go unnoticed.

In January 2025 on a Facebook page dedicated to Marshall Field & Co., one poster talked about her fond memories of being an operator. A fan responded “You were one of the most wonderful, talented, perfect women in the world. Oh, how, when I was 5, I wanted to grow up to be one of you . . . and I still wish it had been possible.”

In the 1960s the store replaced its elevators with more modern models and operators were phased out.

The elevator girls at the Marshall Fields department store in Chicago, 1947.

George Skadding/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Elevator girls at the Marshall Fields department store in Chicago went through a training program which included lessons in makeup and other beauty skills, 1947.

George Skadding/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Elevator girls at the Marshall Fields department store in Chicago went through a training and beauty program; here operator Ann Vratarich received a new hairdo, 1947.

George Skadding/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Elevator girls at the Marshall Fields department store in Chicago went through a training program; this photo demonstrated the wrong postures (too breezy, bent, leg in air) for an operator, 1947.

George Skadding/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Elevator girls at the Marshall Fields department store in Chicago went through a training program, with this photo demonstrating the proper posture (straight and modest), 1947.

George Skadding/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The elevator girls at the Marshall Fields department store in Chicago worked on “reducing exercises” as part of their training program, 1947.

George Skadding/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Elevator girls at the Marshall Fields department store in Chicago, 1947.

George Skadding/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

An elevator operator from the Marshall Fields department store in Chicago, 1947.

George Skadding/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Elevator girls at the Marshall Fields department store in Chicago went through a special training program, 1947.

George Skadding/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Elevator girls from Marshall Fields department store in Chicago showed off their look after attending charm school, 1947.

George Skadding/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Elevator operators at the Marshall Fields department store, 1947

George Skadding/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

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A “Rough Country Boy” Fights the College Freshman Blues

Bill Syken — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 13:54:21 +0000

In the fall of 1964 LIFE photographer Bill Eppridge spent a semester on campus at Yale, following a first-year student as he faced the considerable challenges of college life.

Freshman year can be tough, especially for those living away from home for the first time. The transition was particularly daunting for Eppridge’s subject, a young man named Timothy Thompson. He came to Yale from Ashland, Oregon, which back then had a population of 9,100. Yale’s admission file summed up Thompson as “A rough country boy with lots of tools and desire.”

Thompson had graduated No. 2 in his high school class of 176 and had been president of the honor society. But Yale was thick with honor students, many of whom had come from fancier backgrounds. While working to fit in socially, Thompson, who had been known as a “brain” in high school, also struggled academically for the first time in his life.

Here’s how LIFE described Thompson’ grade shock in its story titled “The Freshman Blues.”

Reality came crashing down on Tim when he sat in his counselor’s room and got his midterm grades. He almost failed chemistry and math, managed an overall average of 72, well below the class figure of 78. The pain deep on his face, he explained he did not know how to study for tests….”When I think about not making it at Yale,” Tim says, “I know I would be so ashamed. I guess that’s what makes me so scared.”

Fear of failure was not the only pressure Thompson faced. He also struggled to fit in to the Ivy League world. Thompson had been raised in a religious household and was on scholarship, so he needed to find his footing at a campus where many classmates came from a more moneyed background and had different kinds of social experiences.

Eppridge’s photographs document the highs and lows of Thompson’s first months at school, whether he is enjoying games of touch football, buying new clothes in an attempt to raise his sartorial game, or giving major side-eye to a guy chugging from a wineskin. LIFE observed that Thompson, despite all the pressures swirling, had something very important going for him: he seemed to be secure in his identity. “I want to be myself,” he said. “I don’t want to be classified as a sophisticate, a playboy, a screwball, or anything.”

Thompson did make it through Yale, graduating with his class in 1968. From there he spent three years with U.S. Army intelligence, including two years of service in Vietnam. In 1979 he earned an MBA from another Ivy League school, Penn, and built a career as an investment advisor, making his home in Scarsdale, N.Y., before dying of lung cancer at the age of 58.

Thompson’s Yale experiences stayed close to his heart. His obituary included a request that donations be made to either a cancer hospital or to the Yale Alumni Fund.

Yale freshman Timothy Thompson (second row, second from left) at welcoming ceremony for the freshmen, 1964. Back then Yale was all-male, and the school only began to admit women in 1969.

Bill Eppridge/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Yale freshmen, 1964.

Bill Eppridge/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Yale freshman Timothy Thompson, a scholarship student from a small town, needed to wash and iron his own clothes; when he returned from a dime store with purchases that included a dust mop, a more well-off dorm mate asked, “What’s that?”

Bill Eppridge/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Yale freshman Timothy Thompson, 1964.

Bill Eppridge/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Yale freshman Timothy Thompson (right), and roommate Richard Loomis shook out a second-hand rug they bought for their dorm room; Thomspon, a scholarship student from a small town, sweated the rug’s $13 cost.

Bill Eppridge/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Yale freshman Timothy Thompson, 1964.

Bill Eppridge/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Yale freshman Timothy Thompson studying, 1964.

Bill Eppridge/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Yale freshman Timothy Thompson (background, right), who was raised by a Baptist family that did not drink, looked askance as a fellow student took a swig a wine skin at a football game, 1964.

Bill Eppridge/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Yale freshman Timothy Thompson at a football game, 1964.

Bill Eppridge/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Yale freshman Timothy Thompson arrived at school with a suit and two sports jackets but soon found that he needed to add to his wardrobe to keep up with his classmates, 1964.

Bill Eppridge/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Yale freshman Timothy Thompson, 1964.

Bill Eppridge/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Yale freshman Timothy Thompson, who had been a varsity athlete the small Oregon town where he grew up, only had time for pickup games at Yale, 1964.

Bill Eppridge/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Yale freshman Timothy Thompson graduated second in his class in his small-town Oregon high school but averaged only a 72 in his first semester in New Haven, 1964.

Bill Eppridge/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

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