Life Smiles Back PDF
Preview Life Smiles Back
SMUSBAGK Morethan 200 Classic Photosfromthe FamousBackPage ofAmerica'sFavoriteMagazine by Philip B. Kunhardt, Jr. F SMILES BACK by _ _ Kunhardt, Philip B. Jr. A FIRESIDE BOOK & Published by Simon Schuster Inc. New York London Toronto Sydney Tokyo Fireside F Simon&SchusterBuilding RockefellerCenter 1230Avenueofthe Americas New York, New York 10020 Copyright© 1987 byTime Inc. All rights reserved including the rightofreproduction in wholeorinpart inanyform FirstFireside Edition, 1988 LIFEisaregisteredtrademarkofTime Inc. Usedwithpermission. FIRESIDEandcolophonareregisteredtrademarks ofSimon & SchusterInc. Designedby Irving Perkins Associates Manufacturedin the UnitedStatesofAmerica 9876543 10 98765432 10 Pbk. LibraryofCongressCataloginginPublicationData LIFEsmiles back. I. Photography, Humorous. I. Kunhardt, PhilipB. II. Life(Chicago, 111.) TR679.5.L54 1987 779'.09'04 87-12876 ISBN 0-671-64399-1 ISBN0-671-67222-3 Pbk. Gedeon 'deMargitay waspicturecoordinatorfor thisbook. GretchenWesselswas inchargeof picture research. 1 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 6 CHAPTER 1 IS all about TAKING IT EASY 13 CHAPTER 2 concerns CLOSE ENCOUNTERS 28 CHAPTER 3 displays some arresting SIGNS OF THE TIMES 46 CHAPTER 4 offers some scenes NOT FAR FROM HOME 58 CHAPTER 5 plays a game o/ HEADS OR TAILS 76 CHAPTER 6 explores some themes found in A DAY'S WORK 98 CHAPTER 7 FOR THE BIRDS 114 25 CHAPTER 8 celebrates BOYS AND GIRLS 128 CHAPTER 9 ALL WET 142 is SMALL TALK CHAPTER 10 repeats a few examples o/ 158 CHAPTER 1 takes pleasure in THE SPORTING LOOK 178 CHAPTER 12 is a miscellaneous collection of LAST LAUGHS 194 5 — These two views ofa hippo named Lotus ran on back-to-back pages in 1937 and began LIFE's love affair with animal humor. INTRODUCTION FOR many years LIFE magazine signed offeach an animal caught in a human predicament, a week's issue with a final page designed to leave human trapped by the unexpected, a trick ofthe the reader smiling, or at least feeling pretty good lenswherebya perfectlyordinaryeventrecorded about the world. The title of the page was Mis- on film atjust the right angle becomes ridiculous cellany. By definition, a miscellany is "a mixture and thereby laughs out loud at all of us." ofvarious things." In this case the "things" were children gal—ore, often up to no good, or animals I was hired by LIFE in 1950. The staff of the by the score especially dogs, cats, monkeys, and fourteen-year-old magazine was rapidly expand- — elephants or people in awkward or unusual or ing back then and the people at the helm usually amazing positions, or sights that belied the truth, wanted to have a few rookie reporters waiting in frequently pictorial puzzles that made you blink, the wings so that if a job in one of the many look twice, and shake your smiling head. Most of departments suddenly opened up, there would the time it was a page of sheer delight, a single be a body available to fill it at a moment's notice. black-and-white picture with an immediate mes- Most often twenty-two-year-olds like me would sage that warmed the heart or tickled the funny do their waiting in the Production Department, — bone or both. run errands, go get prints across the street where In a note from the editor in 1966 the magazine the lab was, learn the names of the hundreds of tried to define the page for its readers. "We con- people who worked in the New York office, keep sider humor the prime ingredient," the editor the layouts in order, and drag "the packet" down said. "The picture is usually a very simple one to Penn Station each evening and make sure it got on the overnight express to Chicago where consideredcoldand hostileand therewereplenty the magazine was printed. "The packet" was a of people like me around to write personalized huge, red canvas satchel with hooks and leather replies. So I would study each picture carefully straps and a padlock, which contained all the and then type out a note that showed that the pictures and layouts that had been selected for submission had been appreciated and given se- next week's issue. I wanted desperately to get rious thought and, in fact, had almost made the into the thick of things and drag the packet, but grade. The note could not be overly nice or the no such luck. Instead I was assigned to the con- same picture would come right back in the next tributions editor. mail with a new letter pleading the picture's case Ruth Lester was (and still is) a charming, soft- all over again and demanding a new trial. spoken person who sat unperturbed in a loud Even though LIFE was, and still is, best known bullp—en filled with people doing things with pic- for its picture stories in which a number of in- tures logging them in, stamping their backs, tertwining photographs illustrate the people, the checking their credits, paying their owners. Ruth places, and the events of the times, single pic- made the decisions on the pictures submitted to tures that stand on their own have always been the magazine by unknown outsiders. If one of important too, especially funny ones. The grim — these picture takers, either amateur or profes- ones the news pictures of disasters, accidents, — sional, was any good, he or she wasn't unknown wars always seemed easy to find. They arrived to Ruth for very long. Ruth would send helpful in droves over the wire-service machine or they critiques, urge the picture taker on, and build up were carried to the magazine daily by the New a long-distance friendship. York representatives of the world's photo agen- Of course, the majority of the contributors cies. Because of the literal nature of photogra- were hopeless. So many camera owners assumed phy, the funny ones were much harder to find. that all you had to do to get a picture published Whenever Ruth turned one up, it was usually in LIFE was to make your baby grin or put a published in a Pictures to the Editors section. funny hat on your pet. On each ofthe envelopes Sometimes it made Speaking of Pictures. Or ifit submitted by these contributors Ruth wrote "Re- was really special, it could even get picked as ject" with a brief comment telling why. My job Picture of the Week, which ran each issue in the was to write her rejection letters. place of honor opposite the editorial page. It wasn't a matter of merely smacking the re- jected picture into a new envelope and sticking LIFE published funny pictures right from its in a form letter. In those days form letters were start in 1936. A courtroom photo in its third issue marked the beginning. It showed a man without pants standingbeforeajudge. Thejudge can't see that the man is pantless, but we can. We laugh at the man's predicament, we laugh atwhat the judge doesn't seem to know, and we laugh with relief that it isn't one of us standing cross- legged and pantless before the bar. In a February 1937 issue LIFE had its first real fun with animals. Filling a full right-hand page was a head-on view of a massive hippopotamus named Lotus. On the backing page in exactly the same position was Lotus's rear end. "Lotus fore and Lotus aft" read the wicked headline. Two . . . This was LIFE's veryfirst humorous picture. It ran in the magazine's third issue, back in December of 1936. Slapstick snapshots ofpeople and animals together helped give the maga- CarltonCroat, 45:i7 zine its early reputationfor being something less than serious. months later, with the publication of a snapshot "Some people might notfind it unusual—the dog of a mule sitting down to lunch with a cowboy, looks rather bored; he is merely climbing the LIFE hadjoined man and beast in one silly pic- fence, notjumping it. Furthermore he is not car- ture and had sown the seed for hundreds more rying a suitcase and has forgotten his hat. ." to come. Mrs. Wilsey received $200 for the use of .h.er If one picture can be singled out as the inspi- picture and when Miscellany got going awhile ration behind the Miscellany page, it is a shot of later, it was said around the magazine that the a dog climbing a fence. Edward K. Thompson page rate for it was the best money LIFE spent (Ed to us), who would soon become LIFE's man- each week. aging editor (and its greatest one), was traveling The creation of the Miscellany page by through Minnesota when he spotted the picture Thompson gave the magazine a lighthearted, al- in the Sunday rotogravure section of the Minne- ways expected, yet completely unpredictable way apolis Tribune. An Elaine Wilsey had read that the to end each week. The Speaking of Pictures sec- paper would pay $5 for whatever "highly un- tion, also breezy in character, had always started usual picture of any upper Midwest subject" it off each issue. Now there were two bright book- deemed worth publishing. Elaine Wilsey's offer- ends to surround the week's news and give the ing of a pointer scaling a wire fence in a most reader a sense of continuity and familiarity. human manner struck Ed and many others as Speaking of Pictures and Life Goes to a Party being a remarkable and mirthful sight. He or- had long been the readers' favorite sections but dered the picture up and ran it in LIFE as a now Miscellany surpassed them. It was not long Picture of the Week along with these words: before a hoard of humor addicts, particularly teenagers, began starting each issue from the back. Surprisingly, there were skeptics on the LIFE staffwho believed that photographs could not be funny, and that if occasionally they were it was by mistake, and that there certainly weren't fifty- two mistakes around each year. These faithless souls had not reckoned on Ruth Lester and how, The picture that inspired the editors to invent the Miscellany page.
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