vintage everyday

The Day Martin Luther King Died - Unpublished Photos

2012-02-10T07:07:00.000-08:00

On April 4, 1968, LIFE photographer Henry Groskinsky and writer Mike Silva, on assignment in Alabama, learned that Martin Luther King, Jr., had been shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. The two men jumped into their car, raced the 200 miles to the scene of the crime, and there — to their astonishment — found that they had unfettered access to the hotel’s grounds; to the abandoned buildings from which the rifle shot likely came; to Dr. King’s room; and to the bleak, blood-stained balcony where the civil rights leader had fallen, mortally wounded by an assassin’s bullet, mere hours earlier.

For reasons lost in the intervening decades, the photographs that Groskinsky took that night in Memphis — at the very site of one of the signal events of the 1960s — were never published, and the story behind them was never told. Until now...

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., photographed for LIFE in 1961.

The Lorraine Motel, Memphis, April 4, 1968.

The Balcony at the Lorraine Motel - Colleagues gather on the balcony outside room 306, just a few feet from where Dr. King was shot.

In Dr. King's Room - Stunned, silent members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Dr. King's room, including Andrew Young (far left, under table lamp) and the civil rights leader and King's colleague, Reverend Ralph Abernathy, seated in the middle on the far bed.

Consoling - Ralph Abernathy and Will D. Campbell, a long-time friend and civil rights activist, embrace in Dr. King's room.

The Day Albert Einstein Died Photos by Ralph Morse

2012-02-10T06:21:00.000-08:00

Albert Einstein, whose theories exploded and reshaped our ideas of how the universe works, died on April 18, 1955, of heart failure. He was 76. His funeral and cremation were intensely private affairs, and only one photographer managed to capture the events of that extraordinary day: LIFE magazine’s Ralph Morse.

Armed with his camera and a case of scotch — to open doors and loosen tongues — Morse compiled a quietly intense record of a 20th-century icon’s passing. But aside from one now-famous image — of Einstein’s office, exactly how he left it, taken hours after his death — the pictures Morse took that day were never published. At the request of Einstein’s son, who asked that the family’s privacy be respected while they mourned, LIFE’s editors chose not to run the full story, and for more than five decades Morse’s photographs lay in the magazine’s archives, unseen and forgotten.

Now LIFE presents a selection of Morse’s photographs from that day, as well as Morse’s own memories of what it felt like 57 years ago, on a spring morning in Northern New Jersey, when he found himself racing around an Ivy League town trying to find out what became of the late, great scientist...

Ralph Morse's famous photograph of Albert Einstein's office -- just as the Nobel Prize-winning physicist left it -- taken mere hours after Einstein died, Princeton, New Jersey, April 1955.

Einstein's papers, pipe, ashtray, and other personal belongings in his Princeton office, April 18, 1955. After getting a call that morning from a LIFE editor telling him Einstein had died, Ralph Morse grabbed his cameras and drove the ninety miles from his house in northern New Jersey to Princeton.

Early in the afternoon, Einstein's body was moved for a short time from the hospital to a funeral home in Princeton. The simple casket containing the corpse, post-autopsy, only stayed at the funeral home for an hour or so. Morse made his way there, and soon saw two men loading a casket into a hearse. For all Morse knew, Einstein's burial was imminent. Hoping to scope out a spot near the grave, he quickly drove to the Princeton Cemetery.

Pictured, from left: Unidentified woman; Einstein's son, Hans Albert (in light suit); unidentified woman; Einstein's longtime secretary, Helen Dukas (in light coat); and friend Dr. Gustav Bucky (partially hidden behind Dukas) arrive at the Ewing Crematorium in Trenton on the afternoon of April 18, 1955.

Mourners walk into the service for Einstein, passing the parked hearse that carried his body from Princeton.

Vintage Valentine Cards with Funny Messages

2012-02-10T05:55:00.001-08:00

At Home With Stars in Hollywood’s Golden Age

2012-02-09T08:46:00.000-08:00

Vivien Leigh takes home her Gone With the Wind Oscar

Years before he became a salad dressing mogul, Paul Newman's own Hollywood kitchen saw him cooking eggs for good pal Anthony Perkins in 1958. (Newman's wife Joanne Woodward removes sweet rolls from the oven.)

Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman, whose marriage would last 50 years (until his death in 2008), share a laugh as they get dressed in their Hollywood home in 1959.

The Irish-born actress Maureen O'Hara relaxes at home in Los Angeles in 1946. Who doesn't dress like this when they're lying in bed, sewing?

Sisters and frequent rivals Joan Fontaine and Olivia de Havilland share a family moment as they look out over Beverly Hills from Fontaine's home in 1942.

Funny Vintage Valentine Cards: Meat and Weapons

2012-02-09T08:25:00.000-08:00

Rare Photos of The Rat Pack

2012-02-09T07:30:00.000-08:00

The Rat Pack was a group of actors originally centered on Humphrey Bogart. In the mid-1960s it was the name used by the press and the general public to refer to a later variation of the group, after Bogart's death, that called itself "the summit" or "the clan," featuring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Peter Lawford, and finally, Joey Bishop, who appeared together on stage and in films in the early-1960s, including the movie Ocean's 11. Sinatra, Martin and Davis were regarded as the group's lead members.

Rare Images of the Battle of the Bulge - WWII

2012-02-09T06:46:00.000-08:00

From December 16, 1944 to January 25, 1945, American, British, Canadian, Belgian, and French forces fought to stop the final major German offensive of World War II, launched in the heavily forested Ardennes Mountains of Belgium. While Allied forces ultimately triumphed, it was a hard victory, leaving tens of thousands dead on both sides. Today, the conflict is known as the Battle of the Bulge.

Here, LIFE presents rare photos, as well as many images that were never published in the magazine, from one of the most brutal and pivotal battles of the Second World War.

American infrantry from the 290th Regiment crouch in snowy woods near Amonines, Belgium, January 1945.

American GIs help fleeing local residents to load themselves and their belongings onto a truck during a lull in the fighting during the last days of the Battle of the Bulge.

1st Army GIs search for German paratroopers during the Battle of the Bulge, December 1944.

Perhaps the defining moment for all Allied forces fighting in the Battle of the Bulge came when the Germans demanded the surrender of American troops surrounded in the town of Bastogne.

Tending to the wounded in the Ardennes.

Color Photos Taken in London During The World War II

2012-02-08T08:26:00.000-08:00

The air raids by German Luftwaffe planes on English cities and towns in 1940 and 1941 — attacks known collectively and famously as The Blitz — were terrifying, but they failed in their key aims: namely, to demoralize the British people, and to destroy the UK’s war economy. London, not surprisingly, suffered the brunt of the Blitz: More than a million London houses were ruined or badly damaged, and more than 20,000 civilians were killed in the city alone. (Roughly 40,000 civilians were killed in the whole of England.)

Here, LIFE.com presents color photos taken in London during the war, in tribute to the spirit of Britons who would not be cowed.

A view of London in 1940, with damage from German bombing raids.

Workers clear debris from the lot where a home once stood, London, 1940. "These were the times," Churchill wrote in his war memoirs (also serialized in LIFE magazine in 1949), "when the English, and particularly the Londoners, who had the place of honor, were seen at their best. Grim and gay, dogged and serviceable, with the confidence of an unconquered people in their bones, they adapted themselves to this strange new life [of the Blitz], with all its terrors, with all its jolts and jars."

Damage in London during The Blitz, 1940. "Away across the Atlantic," Churchill wrote in his memoirs, "the prolonged bombardment of London, and later of other cities and sea-ports, aroused a wave of sympathy in the United States, stronger than any ever felt before or since in the English-speaking world. Passion flamed in American hearts, and in none more than in the heart of President Roosevelt. I could feel the glow of millions of men and women eager to share the suffering, burning to strike a blow. As many Americans as could get passage came, bringing whatever gifts they could, and their respect, reverence, deep love and comradeship were very inspiring. However, this was only September, and we had many months before us of this curious existence."

Britons work a "victory garden" in the midst of World War II, 1940. Countless numbers of these gardens sprang up in England, the U.S., Canada and elsewhere -- even Germany -- on private land and in public parks, as civilians pitched in to try and help the war effort by whatever means, no matter how seemingly small, available to them.

A london bus rests in a massive crater left by a German bomb, 1940. "I felt," Churchill recalled, "with a spasm of mental pain, a deep sense of the strain and suffering that was being borne throughout the world's largest capital city. How long would it go on? How much more would they have to bear? What were the limits of their vitality? What effects would their exhaustion have upon our productive war-making power?"

Dogs in Retro Photos

2012-02-08T08:08:00.000-08:00

Dog cart in Belgium, 1917

Woman and her dog in Harlem, New York

A woman bandaging a dog's leg at the Bide-A-Wee home for animals in New York, 1907

Woman with dog at Fake Beach, 1913

Dogs watching over woman, 1903

Touching and Beautiful Retro Photos

2012-02-08T08:06:00.000-08:00

80s Punk Bands You've Never Heard Of

2012-02-08T05:17:00.000-08:00

Rock Stars with Their Parents

2012-02-07T10:40:00.000-08:00

Frank Zappa in his eclectic Los Angeles home with his cat, his dad Francis, and his mom Rosemarie, 1970

LIFE photographer John Olson sets up to shoot the Jackson Five in their back yard, 1970

Rose Clapp shows off her tea service and the rock-guitarist grandson she raised in the home he bought for her and her late husband in Surrey, England, 1970

The Jefferson Airplane’s Grace Slick poses with her mother, Virginia Wing, in the living room of the home where she grew up in Palo Alto, California, 1970

Life under the Soviets by Sergey Chilikov

2012-02-07T04:54:00.000-08:00

Unpublished JFK’s 1960 Run for the White House Photos

2012-02-06T11:15:00.000-08:00

On November 8, 1960, John F. Kennedy was elected president of the United States, defeating Richard Nixon in one of the closest national elections of the 20th century. At 43, Kennedy was (and remains) the youngest person elected to the office, and it was largely this quality in the man and his family — an engaging, youthful dynamism — that so captured the imagination of millions across the country and, ultimately, across the world.

As Kennedy and his team ran a heady, propulsive campaign unlike any America had seen, LIFE’s best photographers (Paul Schutzer, Alfred Eisenstaedt, George Silk, et al.) were there, chronicling the grind of never-ending public appearances and the quieter moments JFK spent with advisers, with Jackie, and — rarest of all — alone, with his own thoughts.

Early 20th Century in Color Photos

2012-02-06T10:00:00.000-08:00

Titanic Survivors, 1912

2012-02-06T09:53:00.000-08:00

Paris Ladies of the Night Circa the ‘50s And '60s

2012-02-06T06:53:00.000-08:00

GOP Women Party Hard, 1941

2012-02-05T07:50:00.000-08:00

“On the evening of May 20,” begins an article in the June 16, 1941, issue of LIFE magazine, “members of the Young Women’s Republican Club of Milford, Conn., explored the pleasures of tobacco, poker, the strip tease and such other masculine enjoyments as had frequently cost them the evening companionship of husbands, sons and brothers.”

Nina Leen chronicled the shenanigans that erupted when a group of GOP women got together for an old-fashioned “smoker.”

Early Unpublished Photos of Marilyn Monroe

2012-02-05T07:05:00.000-08:00

Few Hollywood stars of the 1950s and 1960s were so compelling, so utterly unique, that they actually came to define the era in which they worked and played. Marilyn Monroe was one of those stars.

From her earliest days as an actress until late in her career — when she had, against her will, been cast in the public eye as the century’s ultimate Sex Goddess — Marilyn posed for LIFE magazine’s photographers. Many of those pictures never ran in the magazine — and, in fact, were never published anywhere. This gallery changes all that.

Elvis returning from the Army, March 1960

2012-02-05T06:57:00.000-08:00

The Heart of Detroit, 1907

2012-02-04T06:44:00.000-08:00

Detroit circa 1907. "The Campus Martius." Landmarks include the Detroit Opera House, Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument, Cadillac Square, Wayne County Building and Hotel Pontchartrain. View full size.

By The Lamp

2012-02-04T06:12:00.000-08:00

Catherine Deneuve

Loretta Young

Alida Valli

Gene Tierney

Ginger Rogers

Freaky Retro Photos

2012-02-04T05:57:00.000-08:00

Marilyn Monroe Wardrobe Tests for "Niagara"

2012-02-03T05:57:00.000-08:00

Niagara is a 1953 thriller-film noir, released Twentieth Century-Fox, directed by Henry Hathaway, and starring Joseph Cotten, Jean Peters, Max Showalter, and introducing Marilyn Monroe, in her first major film appearance. Unlike other film noirs of time, Niagara was filmed in Technicolor and CinemaScope, and was one of Fox's biggest box-office hits of the year. (Wikipedia)

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Beautiful Hildegard Knef's Eyes

2012-02-03T05:44:00.000-08:00

Hildegard Knef (December 28, 1925 – February 1, 2002) was a German actress, singer and writer. She was billed in some English language films as Hildegard Neff or Hildegarde Neff.

Hildegard Knef was born in Ulm. She began studying acting in 1940, aged 14. She appeared in several films even before the fall of the Third Reich, but most were not released until after World War II.