Muhammad Ali Photo Archives - LIFE

The Glamour of Vintage Miami

Bill Syken — Fri, 17 Nov 2023 16:40:05 +0000

Miami was for LIFE, like it was for many American vacationers, a place to return to again and again.

Sometimes LIFE photographers went to Miami because they were following the stars. It was a place to catch Frank Sinatra goofing around with this pals, or the Beatles on tour, or Muhammad Ali celebrating with Malcolm X after winning the heavyweight title from Sonny Liston.

In one case Miami was even a backdrop to history, when the U.S Army was using the famed beach as a training camp.

But more often LIFE photographers went to Miami to showcase Americans enjoying a certain kind of leisure—the kind with fancy hotels and swimsuits and glitzy shows.

Many of the images in this collection come from a 1940 shoot by legendary LIFE photographer Alfred Eisenstadt that chronicled the beginning of boom times for Miami. Here’s what LIFE had to say in its March 4, 1940 issue about Miami becoming a magnet for the leisure class:

In 1912 Miami was a sleepy town of 7,500 people and Miami Beach, three and a half miles away across a tidal lagoon, was an untidy sand bar populated primarily by crabs and mosquitos. In that year an enterprising young Indiana automobile millionaire named Carl Fischer descended on the town and, with the assistance of two elephants, Nero and Rosie, began turning it into a winter resort. Miami and Miami Beach have been booming ever since. Currently Miami has a population of about 140,000 and Miami Beach of 20,000. The two are easily the No. 1 playground of the world’s most playful nation.

Of course Miami and Miami Beach had even more growth ahead, as captured in the photos LIFE took in succeeding years. Today the populations for Miami and Miami Beach have ballooned to around 439,000 and 80,000. And that mirrors the growth of Florida as a whole. In 1940 Florida was only the 27th most populous state in America, coming in right behind West Virginia and South Carolina. Today Florida ranks 3rd in the country in population, trailing only Florida and Texas.

Many forces contributed to that population growth, including immigration, but the promise of the kind of life that Eisenstaedt captured in his photos was surely was a psychological magnet to the retirees who came to Miami and to the rest of the state to spend their retirement years among the palm trees.

Miami Beach, Florida, 1940.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

A doorman and a row of bellhops at the entrance of Surf Club in Miami, 1940.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A Miami resort, 1940.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Miami Beach fashions, 1940.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Kayakers in a resort pool, Miami Beach, 1940.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

People sightseeing in Miami Beach, Florida, 1940.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Miami Beach, Florida, 1940.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Miami Beach fashions, 1940.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Miami juice stand, 1940.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Miami Beach, 1940.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Miami Beach during a cold spell, 1940.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jai alai, Miami, 1940.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Recruits trained for war in Miami Beach, 1942.

Myron Davis/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Soliders in training took an ocean swim, Miami Beach, 1942.

William C. Shrout/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Miami, 1944.

Eliot Elisofon/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, on vacation in Miami Beach, 1955.

Robert W. Kelley/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A Miami nightclub, 1959.

Robert W. Kelley/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A Miami nightlub dancer in her off time, 1959.

Robert W. Kelley/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A Miami nightclub dancer at home, 1959.

Robert W. Kelley/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Miami, 1959.

Hank Walker/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A windjamming tour from Miami, 1961.

Michael Rougier/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Muhammad Ali (right) posed at a soda fountain for Malcolm X (left, with camera) in Miami after winning the heavyweight title from Sonny Liston, 1964.

(c) Bob Gomel / Courtesy of Bob Gomel

The Beatles running on the beach in Miami, February 1964.

©Bob Gomel

Tony Bennett was out with Frank Sinatra after a performance in Miami, 1965.

John Dominis/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

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Ali, Frazier and the ‘Fight of the Century’

Fri, 10 Oct 2014 11:54:08 +0000

After refusing to register for the draft in 1967 — at the very height of his career — 25-year-old Muhammad Ali was stripped of his heavyweight championship title and endured a forced layoff from the ring for three years. In 1971, after winning the appeal of his conviction and five-year prison sentence before the U.S. Supreme Court, the former champ returned to boxing, fighting a few bouts against lesser (albeit ranked) rivals before facing the title-holder, Philadelphia’s “Smokin’ Joe” Frazier.

Long before the first bell sounded at their March 1971 fight, that bout had been billed as “The Fight of the Century” and, amazingly, it lived up to the hype. That night, a star-studded crowd watched two of the greatest boxers who ever lived battle for supremacy in the world’s premier sports arena.

Frazier had earned the heavyweight belt a year earlier. “I often felt bad for Joe,” photographer John Shearer, who died in 2017, once said, recalling the weeks and months he spent with both fighters before the bout at New York’s Madison Square Garden. “He was completely miscast as the bad guy in the fight. In so many of the pictures I made of him that winter, when he’s with friends and relaxed, there’s something genuinely charming there but something in his face suggests that if you scratched the surface, you’d find a world of other feelings.”

“The pictures I made of Ali training in Chris Dundee’s Miami Beach gym, meanwhile, are incredibly revealing in another way,” Shearer said, “not least because you can see that Ali had a belly. And this is not all that long before the fight. He just wasn’t in the kind of shape he needed to be in to battle a warrior like Joe Frazier.”

Many of Shearer’s photos of Frazier, including several in this gallery, make the clear case that Frazier simply wanted the title more than Ali. He was fighting, scratching and clawing for it long before the two men stepped into the ring.

“When I see the pictures I made of Joe running by himself, for example,” Shearer says, “the one thing that strikes me, maybe even more now than when I was making the photos, is his discipline. He was training, training, training. He was driven. And in many ways, he was a man alone.”

“That fight was the last time Ali took Joe for granted,” Shearer says. “I wonder if, deep down, he hit a point in Miami where he looked for that fire, that drive, and it just wasn’t there. You know you want to fight, you want to hold that title belt again, but you can’t make yourself run those extra few miles at five in the morning, or spar for twenty more minutes every single day.”

Another aspect of Frazier that Shearer captured before the title belt was his creative self. Frazier was a singer and a performer, with his own band and with his own backup singers, the Knockouts. The truth is, he wasn’t bad.

“The two places Frazier communicates best,” wrote LIFE’s Thomas Thompson in a March 1971 cover story for the magazine, “are in the ring, when a cloak of menace and fury drops over him, and on a nightclub stage, where he sings with strength and sincerity.”

“The image of Frazier remained, unfairly and for the longest time, that he was just another fighter,” says Shearer. “That he was just another guy with his nose pushed off to the side of his face. But he felt, strongly, that he was every bit as articulate as Ali and, as importantly, perhaps, that he was every bit the showman that Ali was.”

As for the bout itself, one of the key factors that ratcheted up the rhetoric was the record purse offered both fighters. As LIFE observed in its March 5, 1971 issue: “[Ali] and Frazier are both going to get $2.5 million the morning after the fight whether anybody comes or not. A flat $2.5 million. Guaranteed. The most money ever paid to any man for a maximum 45 minutes’ work.”

“It was electric in the Garden the night of the fight,” Shearer remembers. “It was the night of the great showdown between the era’s two gladiators, and there was a sense that the unprecedented hype for the fight might actually fall short of the reality. And, remember, without a doubt it was a very, very pro-Ali crowd. They all came to see him win, to see him destroy Joe Frazier.”

That’s not the way it worked out. The relentless, punishing Frazier stalked and pummeled Ali all night, and in the 15th and final round floored him, for only the third time in Ali’s career, with an absolutely titanic left hook. Ali got back on his feet quickly, but the damage, literally and figuratively, had been done. Frazier won by unanimous decision, and held on to the crown until losing it in spectacular fashion to George Foreman two years later, in 1973.

“Frazier didn’t fight by going for the head, the way a lot of other boxers did against Ali,” Shearer remembers. “He went after Ali’s body the whole fight, pounding away, taking terrible blows to the head himself. You know, you keep whacking at the base of the tree, and the tree is going to come down. And that’s what happened. That’s really the story of that first, unforgettable fight between those two great champions.”

—gallery by Liz Ronk

Muhammad Ali with the press during a pre-fight weigh-in at Madison Square Garden in March 1971.

John Shearer/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Muhammad Ali, Miami Beach, Florida, 1971.

John Shearer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Joe Frazier during a break in training before his March 1971 title bout against Muhammad Ali.

John Shearer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Muhammad Ali in 1971.

John Shearer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Muhammad Ali, Miami Beach, Florida, 1971.

John Shearer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Muhammad Ali took a break during training in Miami Beach in 1971.

John Shearer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Muhammad Ali (rear), Miami Beach, Florida, 1971.

John Shearer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Muhammad Ali, Miami Beach, Florida, 1971.

John Shearer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Muhammad Ali, along with light heavyweight José Torres (in suit) and others, watched the action at boxing promoter Chris Dundee’s gym in Miami Beach in February 1971.

John Shearer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Muhammad Ali taunted rival Joe Frazier at Frazier’s training camp in Philadelphia, 1971.

John Shearer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Fans at Joe Frazier’s training headquarters in Philadelphia in 1971.

John Shearer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Joe Frazier in training, 1971.

John Shearer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Joe Frazier in 1971.

John Shearer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Joe Frazier, rear, trained for the title fight versus Ali.

John Shearer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Joe Frazier in rural Pennsylvania in the winter of 1971.

John Shearer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Muhammad Ali clowned in his new Cadillac limo in Miami, February 1971.

John Shearer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Muhammad Ali with fans in Miami Beach, February 1971.

John Shearer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Muhammad Ali drew a crowd when he playfully sparred with an unidentified man in the parking lot of a grocery store in Miami Beach in 1971.

John Shearer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A sign advertised a concert by Joe Frazier’s R&B act, Joe Frazier and His Knockouts.

John Shearer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Joe Frazier and the Knockouts performed in January 1971.

John Shearer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

At 214 pounds three weeks before the fight, Frazier began drinking only orange juice for breakfast and skipping lunch to peel off five more pounds.

John Shearer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Joe Frazier backstage before an appearance with the Knockouts in 1971.

John Shearer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Joe Frazier in the recording studio, 1971.

John Shearer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Joe Frazier tested out a band member’s trumpet on the set of NBC’s “Kraft Music Hall” variety show in 1971.

John Shearer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Joe Frazier in the recording studio in 1971.

John Shearer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A ticket window at Madison Square Garden, the site of the March 8, 1971, heavyweight title bout.

John Shearer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A Muhammad Ali fan waited for the title bout to begin at Madison Square Garden in New York on March 8, 1971.

John Shearer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Jazz great Miles Davis (right) at Madison Square Garden, March 8, 1971.

John Shearer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Future heavyweight champ George Foreman gazed into John Shearer’s camera at Madison Square Garden on March 8, 1971.

John Shearer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Muhammad Ali with assistant trainer and corner man Bundini Brown, 1971.

John Shearer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Joe Frazier (left) and Muhammad Ali at Madison Square Garden during the “Fight of the Century” on March 8, 1971.

John Shearer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Joe Frazier lunged at Muhammad Ali during the fight.

John Shearer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier rested in their corners between rounds at Madison Square Garden on March 8, 1971.

John Shearer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Heavyweight champ Joe Frazier celebrated his title bout victory over Muhammad Ali at Madison Square Garden, March 8, 1971.

John Shearer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Joe Frazier, pictured in his dressing room after defeating Muhammad Ali on March 8, 1971.

John Shearer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Joe Frazier savored his heavyweight title bout victory over Muhammad Ali on March 8, 1971, in New York City.

John Shearer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

LIFE magazine, March 5, 1971.

John Shearer—LIFE Magazine

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Ali vs. Liston II: The ‘Phantom Punch’ Title Bout, May 25, 1965

Sun, 10 Aug 2014 11:05:52 +0000

When Muhammad Ali floored Sonny Liston in their title-bout rematch in Lewiston, Maine, on May 25, 1965, a legend was born. Or, perhaps more accurately, a legendary boxing controversy was born. Ali (the former Cassius Clay, who had taken his now-famous Muslim name after defeating Liston in their first title bout in 1964) knocked out Liston with a first-round right hand to the head that, all these years later, is still known as the “phantom punch.”

In fact, an awful lot of people who were at the fight never saw, or later claimed they never saw, the punch that floored Liston. Others, including Sports Illustrated‘s Tex Maule, were adamant that the punch was hardly a phantom, but instead was a perfectly timed blow that legitimately rocked the former champ.

In the years after the fight, various theories have been floated in order to explain what some fight fans simply can’t or don’t want to accept namely, that Ali beat Liston, period.

But Liston was in debt to the Mafia and threw the fight to pay it off, some have said, among other theories. All fascinating enough. Yet sportswriters such as Maule, Lou Eisen and others are just as sure that the punch in question was enough to rattle the older and out-of-shape Liston.

In his cover story in the June 7, 1965, issue of SI, Maule wrote that “the knockout punch itself was thrown with the amazing speed that differentiates Clay [as he was still called then by most in the media] from any other heavyweight. He leaned away from one of Liston’s ponderous, pawing left jabs, planted his left foot solidly and whipped his right hand over Liston’s left arm and into the side of Liston’s jaw. The blow had so much force it lifted Liston’s left foot, upon which most of his weight was resting, well off the canvas.”

“He knocked out big Sonny Liston,” the magazine asserted elsewhere in the same issue, “with a punch so marvelously fast that almost no one believed in it but it was hard and true.”

Maule also noted that “about 30 seconds before the end, [Ali] hit Liston with another strong right that may have started Sonny’s downfall.” A picture of that earlier punch was the cover photo for the June 7 issue of Sports Illustrated. George Silk took that photo. The rest of the pictures in this gallery, none of which ran in LIFE magazine, are by Silk’s colleague, John Dominis. In Silk’s picture, Dominis (wearing a dark blue shirt) can be seen resting his own camera on the canvas, just to the right of the ring post.

Not published in LIFE. Muhammad Ali gestures before his fight with Sonny Liston, Lewiston, Maine, May 25, 1965." caption="John Dominis; Life Pictures/Shutterstock" title="Muhammad Ali, before his fight with Sonny Liston, Lewiston, Maine, May 25, 1965." src="https://static.life.com/wp-content/uploads/migrated/2013/05/1182060-1024x944.jpg" alt="Muhammad Ali gestures before his fight with Sonny Liston, Lewiston, Maine, May 25, 1965." />

Muhammad Ali, before his fight with Sonny Liston, Lewiston, Maine, May 25, 1965.

John Dominis; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Not published in LIFE. Muhammad Ali (left) and Sonny Liston, Lewiston, Maine, May 25, 1965." caption="John Dominis; Life Pictures/Shutterstock" title="Ali vs. Liston, 1965" src="https://static.life.com/wp-content/uploads/migrated/2013/05/01262880-1024x855.jpg" alt="Muhammad Ali (left) and Sonny Liston, Lewiston, Maine, May 25, 1965." />

Ali vs. Liston, 1965

John Dominis; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Not published in LIFE. Muhammad Ali dodges a Sonny Liston left jab, Lewiston, Maine, May 25, 1965. " caption="John Dominis; Life Pictures/Shutterstock" title="Ali dodging a left jab from Liston." src="https://static.life.com/wp-content/uploads/migrated/2013/05/01262882-1024x681.jpg" alt="Muhammad Ali dodges a Sonny Liston left jab, Lewiston, Maine, May 25, 1965." />

Ali dodging a left jab from Liston.

John Dominis; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Not published in LIFE. Muhammad Ali rocks Sonny Liston with a right cross, Lewiston, Maine, May 25, 1965." caption="George Silk; Life Pictures/Shutterstock" title="Ali landing a right cross on Liston." src="https://static.life.com/wp-content/uploads/migrated/2013/05/1181878-1024x770.jpg" alt="Muhammad Ali rocks Sonny Liston with a right cross, Lewiston, Maine, May 25, 1965." />

Ali landing a right cross on Liston.

George Silk; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Not published in LIFE. With Sonny Liston lying dazed -- or, as some would have it, pretending to be dazed -- on the canvas, Muhammad Ali exults, May 25, 1965. (Referee is Jersey Joe Walcott.)" caption="John Dominis; Life Pictures/Shutterstock" title="Ali vs. Liston, 1965" src="https://static.life.com/wp-content/uploads/migrated/2013/05/1153174-1024x747.jpg" alt="With Sonny Liston lying dazed -- or, as some would have it, pretending to be dazed -- on the canvas, Muhammad Ali exults, May 25, 1965. (Referee is Jersey Joe Walcott.)" />

Ali vs. Liston, 1965

John Dominis; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Not published in LIFE. Muhammad Ali leaves the ring after defeating Sonny Liston, Lewiston, Maine, May 25, 1965." caption="John Dominis; Life Pictures/Shutterstock" title="Muhammad Ali, after the fight, Lewiston, Maine, May 25, 1965." src="https://static.life.com/wp-content/uploads/migrated/2013/05/112259423-1024x892.jpg" alt="Muhammad Ali leaves the ring after defeating Sonny Liston, Lewiston, Maine, May 25, 1965." />

Muhammad Ali, after the fight, Lewiston, Maine, May 25, 1965.

John Dominis; Life Pictures/Shutterstock

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Manly Men: Classic American Tough Guys, Seen Through LIFE’s Lens

Tue, 28 Jan 2014 17:33:57 +0000

Once again, football season is upon us, and once again, the occasion brings with it all the marketing mayhem, fan frenzy and trash-talking that sports are so often heir to. Pro football is unique among American sports due to its sheer, outsized spectacle. It’s louder than baseball, brasher than basketball, and more routinely violent than the phenomenally physical sport of NHL hockey and the high-speed lunacy of NASCAR. In fact, of all the major sports in North America, football is arguably the one that brings out whatever vestiges of machismo might be lurking in even the most seemingly mild of fans.

Football, after all, is for manly men. But there are many types of toughness. Mental toughness (Jackie Robinson); quiet toughness (Gregory Peck, Gary Cooper); gritty toughness (a weary, determined American Marine); crazy, spasmodic toughness (Cagney’s sociopath, Cody Jarrett, in White Heat); run-right-over-you toughness (Jim Brown); and on and on.

Here, LIFE.com offers a look back at some of the iconic faces and personalities that, in their own time and in their own chosen pursuit, were tough enough to answer that age-old question: Who’s the man?

They Made Me a Criminal." caption="Alfred Eisenstaedt Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock" title="John Garfield 1938" src="https://static.life.com/wp-content/uploads/migrated/2014/01/140127-1938-john-garfield.jpg" alt="Actor John Garfield smokes and studies the script for the movie, 'They Made Me a Criminal.'" />

John Garfield 1938

Alfred Eisenstaedt Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Marine on Saipan 1944

W. Eugene Smith Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Jimmy Stewart 1945

Peter Stackpole Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Kirk Douglas 1949

Allan Grant Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

C.H. Long 1949

Leonard McCombe Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Gary Cooper 1949

Peter Stackpole Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

White Heat." caption="Allan Grant Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock" title="James Cagney 1949" src="https://static.life.com/wp-content/uploads/migrated/2014/01/140127-1949-james-cagney.jpg" alt="James Cagney in the iconic, climactic scene scene from 'White Heat.'" />

James Cagney 1949

Allan Grant Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Marlon Brando 1949

Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Jackie Robinson 1950

J.R. Eyerman Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Gregory Peck 1950

W. Eugene Smith Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Humphrey Bogart 1951

Eliot Elisofon Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Rocky Marciano 1951

Eliot Elisofon Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Ernest Hemingway 1952

Alfred Eisenstaedt Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Spencer Tracy 1955

J.R. Eyerman Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mickey Mantle 1956

Ralph Morse Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mercury Astronauts 1959

Ralph Morse Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Burt Lancaster 1959

Grey Villet Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Frank Sinatra 1961

Leonard McCombe Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Steve McQueen 1963

John Dominis Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Muhammad Ali 1966

Bob Gomel Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

John Wayne 1969

John Dominis Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Jim Brown 1969

Henry Groskinsky Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Johnny Cash 1969

MIchael Rougier Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Jack Nicholson relaxing at home in Los Angeles, 1969.

Arthur Schatz/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Clint Eastwood 1971

Bill Eppridge Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

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Photographer Spotlight: John Dominis

Fri, 20 Dec 2013 14:05:53 +0000

Some photographers become known for their mastery of a specialized topic, but John Dominis had the enviable ability to see and to capture anything.

Born in Los Angeles in 1921, Dominis was majoring in cinematography at USC when he left school in 1943 to enlist in the Air Force. After the war, he freelanced as a photographer for a number of national publications, including LIFE, and was put on staff in 1950 when he volunteered to cover the Korean War.

His 1965 photograph of Mickey Mantle tossing his helmet in disgust after a terrible at-bat is one of the most eloquent pictures ever made of a great athlete in decline and just to keep everyone guessing John Dominis also made some of the most memorable images of food ever to grace the pages of LIFE.

“The great thing about working with LIFE,” Dominis once said, “was that I was given all the support and money and time, whatever was required, to do almost any kind of work I wanted to do, anywhere in the world. It was like having a grant, a Guggenheim grant, but permanently.”

Dominis was remarkably candid about his work, and no more so than when discussing how he managed to make one of the most famous, and controversial, shots of his career: the bristling-with-energy picture of a leopard and a baboon facing off in what one immediately imagines rightly, as it turns out is a fight to the death.

In John Loengard’s terrific 1998 book, LIFE Photographers: What They Saw, Dominis says of that photo:

I certainly wasn’t a cat expert, but I could hire people who knew things. They’d lined up a hunter in Botswana, who was a hunter for zoos. He had caught a leopard, and he put the leopard in the back of the truck, and we went out into the desert. He would release the leopard, and most of the time the leopard would chase the baboons and they would run off and climb trees. I had photographed all this. But for some reason one baboon . . . turned and faced the leopard, and the leopard killed it. We didn’t know that this was going to happen. I just turned on the camera motor, and I got this terrific shot of this confrontation.

There was a different feeling about that in the 1960s. We were always setting up pictures. . . . But now there are many, many more competent photographers doing this stuff over long periods of time four or five years if a scientist is on a big study. . . . No one was working that way then. I felt that my job was to get the pictures. . . . We shot a gazelle and put it in a tree and waited for a cat to come. I didn’t feel bad about it at all. It sounds terrible now, I know, and maybe my attitude would be different now. . . . I’ve been criticized a lot. But to me, I had to do what I did.

His encounters with humans were (usually) less fraught, but always involved the same degree of preparation. Of his remarkable series of photos of Steve McQueen, and how he got the notoriously private and solitary actor to relax with a photographer around, Dominis told LIFE.com:

When I was living in Hong Kong I had a sports car and I raced it. And I knew that McQueen had a racing car. I rented one anticipating that we might do something with them. He was in a motorcycle race out in the desert, so I went out there in my car and met him, and I say, ‘You wanna try my car?’ We went pretty fast I mean, as fast as you can safely go without getting arrested and we’d ride and then stop and trade cars. He liked that, and I knew he liked it. I guess that was the first thing that softened him.

Then there’s Woodstock, an event that opened the eyes of a man who’d seen everything:

“I really had a great time,” Dominis told LIFE.com, decades after the fact. “I was much older than those kids, but I felt like I was their age. They smiled at me, offered me pot. . . . You didn’t expect to see a bunch of kids so nice; you’d think they’d be uninviting to an older person. But no they were just great!

“I worked at LIFE for 25 years, and worked everywhere and saw everything, and I’ve told people every year since the Woodstock festival that it was one of the greatest events I ever covered.”

Dominis became photo editor of People magazine in the mid-1970s and was an editor at Sports Illustrated for a few years, as well (1978 – 1982). But it was his work for LIFE in the 1950s, ’60s and into the early ’70s that not only defined his peripatetic career, but produced some of the most memorable and moving images of the 20th century. He died on Dec. 30, 2013, at his home in New York City, at the age of 92.

Liz Ronk edited this gallery for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LizabethRonk.

A Southern Pacific locomotive used a plow to clear snow from tracks in Donner Pass, five miles west of Soda Springs, Calif., 1949.

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

An Army unit patrolled at night in Korea, 1951.

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A rifleman dashed uphill to take cover from enemy fire, Korea, 1951.

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

New York Giants star Willie Mays, 1954.

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mothers grieved for their sons killed during a student demonstration, South Korea, 1960.

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A boat girl rowed a sampan across the Perfume River, Vietnam, 1961.

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mountain tribal village, Vietnam, 1961.

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Navy air operations on the aircraft carrier Independence, 1961.

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Dancer Jacques D’Amboise played with his children near his home in Washington state, 1962.

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Robert Kennedy shook hands from a train window, Japan, 1962.

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

President John F. Kennedy in the midst of a ticker tape parade during a state visit to Mexico, 1962.

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Robert F. Kennedy with Japanese children, 1962.

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Sen. Edward Kennedy (right) with an old friend, Jack Dixon, in his office during his first year in the Senate, 1963.

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Steve McQueen took a break during a motorcycle race across the Mojave Desert, 1963.

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Steve McQueen with his wife Neile at home in California, 1963.

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Steve McQueen at home, 1963.

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A trout “flew” out of a bed of almonds in preparation for Trout Amandine, 1964.

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The Beatles, 1964.

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mickey Mantle tossed his helmet in disgust after a terrible at-bat, New York, 1965.

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Frank Sinatra in rehearsal, Las Vegas, 1965.

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Outside the presidential suite at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas in 1965, Frank Sinatra said goodbye to his mother, Dolly (left), and his father, Martin (center). They visited from New Jersey during the winter months.

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Muhammad Ali after his title defense against Sonny Liston (the “Phantom Punch” bout), Lewiston, Maine, 1965.

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Argentinian matambre, a slice of beef rolled with vegetables and chilies, 1966.

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A pair of lions in the wild in Africa, 1966.

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A leopard about to kill a baboon, 1966.

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

American sprinters Tommie Smith (center) and John Carlos (right), after winning gold and bronze Olympic medals in the 200 meters, respectively, raised their fists in a Black Power salute, Mexico, 1968. Australian silver medalist Peter Norman is at left.

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Dustin Hoffman kissed his wife, Anne Byrne, in the back of a taxi, New York, 1969.

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Woodstock Music and Art Fair, 1969.

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

John Wayne during a break in the filming of The Undefeated, 1969.

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

John Wayne during filming of The Undefeated, 1969.

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Robert Redford exercised one of his eight saddle horses on his ranch in Utah, 1970.

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The 90-meter ski jump at the 1972 Olympics in Japan.

John Dominis/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The post Photographer Spotlight: John Dominis appeared first on LIFE.

LIFE Photographers Look Back On Their Favorite Assignments

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 04:54:57 +0000

Over the course of its extraordinary run as the preeminent photography magazine of its time, LIFE sent its photographers all over the globe to cover the most famous, shocking, thrilling, controversial newsmakers and events of the 20th century. Marilyn Monroe. Steve McQueen. JFK. The Hells Angels. Woodstock. Muhammad Ali. If something or someone was on the minds of LIFE’s millions of readers, or was central at that moment to the great national conversation, LIFE’s photographers were there.

The result? A gallery in which several LIFE photographers recall favorite assignments and the people and places that—captured through their lenses—helped define both the era and their own stellar careers.

In 1965, LIFE’s Bill Ray spent several weeks with a gang that, to this day, serves as a living, brawling embodiment of the American outlaw: the Hells Angels. “I got along with the Angels,” Ray (above, with camera) recalls. “I got to like some of them very much, and I think they liked me. I accepted them as they were, and they accepted me. You know, by their standards I looked pretty funny. Just look at this picture — that’s some kind of a plaid shirt I’ve got on,” he says, incredulity mixing with amusement. “But that was the best I could do to try to fit in!”

Bill Ray Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

“This was a new breed of rebel,” Ray remembers today. “They, of course, didn’t have jobs. They despised everything that most Americans pursue — stability, security. They rode their bikes, hung out in bars for days at a time, fought with anyone who messed with them. They were self-contained, with their own set of rules, their own code of behavior. It was extraordinary.”

Bill Ray Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

In a beautifully lit, uncharacteristically quiet portrait, bikers (including the gang’s leader, Sonny, left, with a bandage covering a wound sustained during a bike wreck) and their “old ladies” sit around a table strewn with empty beer mugs and bottles. But, Ray remembers, things could go from placid to edge-of-violence tense in a heartbeat whenever the Angels were involved. “The Berdoo Angels could scare the shit out of anybody. That’s just the way they were. Whenever they walked into a place, they didn’t have to say a word — other groups, other tough-guy bikers, made way for them.”

Bill Ray Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Two of the women riding with the Angels hang out at a bar. Ray has a real liking for this particular photograph. “This is one of my favorites from the whole shoot. There’s something kind of sad and at the same time defiant about the atmosphere. Ruthie (kneeling) is probably playing the same 45 over and over and over again. A real music lover, she was.”

Bill Ray Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A nighttime photograph made by Bill Ray outside the Blackboard Cafe looks like it could be a still from a film noir classic. In fact, Ray says that one of the reasons he likes this picture so much is because “it feels like [the great American cinematographer] James Wong Howe could have lit it. But that’s the art and craft of the work: photographing on the fly, taking advantage of the available light — especially when there’s very little of it — and knowing how to capture it.”

Bill Ray Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

In the spring of 1963, LIFE sent photographer John Dominis to California to hang out with 33-year-old rising star Steve McQueen and see what sort of photos he could get. Three weeks and more than 40 rolls of film later, Dominis had captured some astonishingly intimate and iconic images of the legend-in-the-making — photos impossible to imagine in today’s restricted-access celebrity world.”Movie stars, they weren’t used to giving up a lot of time,” Dominis, now 90, recalls. “In fact, they didn’t like to give up hardly time. But I sort of relaxed in the beginning and didn’t bother [McQueen and his wife] every time they turned around, and they began to get used to me being there. If they were doing something, they would definitely just not notice me anymore.” Above: McQueen and his wife, Neile Adams, enjoy some fast, loud time together.

John Dominis Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

How was Dominis able to warm up McQueen? “When I was living in Hong Kong,” Dominis remembers, “I had a sports car and I raced it. And I knew that McQueen had a racing car. I rented one anticipating that we might do something with them. He was in a motorcycle race out in the desert, so I went out there in my car and met him, and I say, ‘You wanna try my car?’ We went pretty fast — I mean, as fast as you can safely go without getting arrested — and we’d ride and then stop and trade cars. He liked that, and I knew he liked it. I guess that was the first thing that softened him.”

John Dominis Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

“We’re sitting around the swimming pool,” Dominis recalls, “and Steve goes away and he comes back without any clothes on! He just enjoyed being out in the desert, looking at the sun. . . . He was just so natural about everything. There was no time to feel embarrassed, so I shot all the pictures that I needed to shoot. I shot some pictures specially of his backside so we could use them in the magazine, because in most of them he was just [full-on] nude. He wasn’t hiding anything.”

John Dominis Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

When Albert Einstein died on April 18, 1955, 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. “I grabbed my cameras and drove the 90 miles to Princeton from my home in northern New Jersey,” Morse remembers 55 years later. “Einstein died at the Princeton Hospital, so I headed there first. But it was chaos — so many journalists, photographers, onlookers milling around outside what, back then, was a really small hospital. ‘Forget this,’ I said, and headed over to the building where Einstein’s office was.” Above: Ralph Morse’s photograph of Einstein’s office in Princeton, taken hours after Einstein’s death and captured exactly as the Nobel Prize-winner left it.

Ralph Morse Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

“On the way to Einstein’s office,” Morse says, “I stopped and bought a case of scotch. I knew people might be reluctant to talk to me, and I knew that most people were happy to accept a bottle of scotch instead of money if you offered it in exchange for their help. So, I get to the building and nobody’s there. I find the building’s super, give him a fifth of scotch, and he opens up Einstein’s office so I can take some photos.”

Ralph Morse Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

“I drove out to the cemetery to tried to find out where Einstein was going to be buried,” Morse remembers. “But there must have been two dozen graves being dug that day! I see a group of guys digging a grave, offer them a bottle, ask them if they know anything. One of them says, ‘He ain’t gettin’ buried. He’s being cremated in about twenty minutes. In Trenton!’ That’s about twenty miles south of Princeton, so I give those guys the rest of the case of scotch, hop in my car, and get to Trenton and the crematorium just before Einstein’s friends and family show up.” Above, 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.

Ralph Morse Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mourners walk into the service for Einstein, passing the parked hearse that carried his body from Princeton. “I didn’t have to tell anyone where I was from,” Morse says of his time spent photographing the events of the day. “I was the only photographer there, and it was sort of a given that if there was one photographer on the scene, he had to be from LIFE.” At one point during the day, Einstein’s son Hans asked Morse for his name — a seemingly insignificant, friendly inquiry that would prove, within a few hours, to have significant ramifications. When Morse got to LIFE’s offices later in the day with his film, he learned that Hans had called the magazine’s managing editor and asked that LIFE not run the photos. The story was, indeed, killed and Morse’s pictures never ran in LIFE.

Ralph Morse Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Dr. Thomas Harvey (1912 – 2007) was the pathologist who conducted the autopsy on Einstein at Princeton Hospital in 1955. The stranger-than-fiction tale of Einstein’s brain — which Harvey controversially removed during the autopsy, carefully sliced into sections, and then kept for years for research purposes — and the intrigues long-associated with the famous organ, are far too convoluted to go into here. However: On the day that Einstein died, Ralph Morse was able to take a few quick photographs of Dr. Harvey at the hospital. Morse says he’s certain that that is Einstein’s brain under Dr. Harvey’s knife. Then, after a pause, he qualifies that certainty: “You know, it fifty-five years ago. Honestly, I don’t remember every single detail of the day. So whatever he’s cutting there …” Morse’s words hang in the air. Then, mischievously, he laughs.

Ralph Morse Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

For a few days in August 1969, on a dairy farm in upstate New York, a half-million young people got together to hang out, dance, and listen to music at what became one of the defining events of the ’60s. For LIFE photographer John Dominis, covering the festival became one of the most moving adventures of an amazing 25-year career. “I was much more interested in the people who were there than the musicians,” he recalls. “I liked the music okay, but I liked the kids, and what they were doing, and how they felt about it all.”

John Dominis Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A man sits with two young boys in front of Ken Kesey’s legendary Merry Prankster bus, Further. (See the sign above the windshield.) “I got a nice picture of that painted hippie bus, with a couple of kids and what I think might be their father,” Dominis says. “Whoever painted that thing really did a beautiful job!”

John Dominis Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

“I’ll tell you, I really had a great time,” Dominis recalls. “I was much older than those kids, but I felt like I was their age. They smiled at me, and offered me pot … You didn’t expect to see a bunch of kids so nice; you’d think they’d be uninviting to an older person. But no. They were just great!”

John Dominis Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

“I’m quite fond of this photo,” Dominis says of one of his most famous images from Woodstock — group of people balancing a plywood board on their heads as shelter from the rain. “You’ll never be able to plan that sort of photo. This is one moment during those three days where they aren’t giggling, or laughing. They are about being uncomfortable. And that somehow makes it work.”

John Dominis Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

In 1947, LIFE’s Ralph Morse went to the Dordogne region of southwest France and, over the course of a few weeks, became the first professional photographer to document the astonishing, vibrant, 18,000-year-old Paleolithic cave paintings there. “The first sight of those paintings was simply unbelievable,” Morse, now 94 and sharp as ever, recalls today. “I was amazed at how the colors held up after thousands and thousands of years — like they were just painted the day before!”

Ralph Morse Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Ralph Morse and his wife, Ruth, stand outside the entrance to Lascaux with some of the photography and lighting equipment that was eventually hauled down into the cave. “We were the first people to light up the paintings so that we could see those beautiful colors on the wall,” Morse remembers. “Some people, not many, had been down there before us, of course — but with flashlights, at best. We were the first to haul in professional gear and bring those spectacular paintings to life. This little French town simply didn’t have the money, the equipment, the capability to do anything like this after the war. So we did it—and they helped out, because they were as excited as we were to really see what was down there.”

Ralph Morse Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

“Most people don’t realize how huge some of the paintings are. There are pictures of animals there that are ten, fifteen feet long, and more.” Above: A Ralph Morse photograph of what he described, in his notes on the assignment, as a “very important horse” that may well be “the first example anywhere of drawing in modern perspective.”

Ralph Morse Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

“We were there, in the village of Montignac, for at least a week, maybe two” Morse says, chuckling at the memory of his time in the Dordogne more than 60 years ago. “There we were, living in this little French town, heading down into the ground to go to work everyday. It was a challenging project — getting the generator, running wires down into the cave, lowering all the camera equipment down on ropes. But once the lights were turned on … wow!”

Ralph Morse Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

They had fame, reams of money, and fans willing to do wild, unmentionable things just to breathe the same air — but in 1971, LIFE set out to illustrate a different side of rock stars. Assigned to take portraits of the artists with their sweetly square folks, photographer John Olson traveled from the suburbs of London to the San Francisco Bay Area to show that, like most other mortals, these celebrities came from humble backgrounds, with moms and dads who bragged and worried about them every day. “As I remember,” Olson told LIFE.com of his time with the Jackson 5 (above), “they followed my requests to a T, and were incredibly polite.” And what about notorious patriarch Joseph Jackson? “The dad,” Olson admits, “was pretty stern.”

John Olson Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

“I got a lot of the drug stories, a lot of the rock and roll stories, and a lot of the anti-war stories,” Olson told LIFE.com of his assignments as a young LIFE photographer. “So when this story came up, I guess I got it because of my age. In hindsight, it was a most unusual time in my life.” Of the stars he photographed for this assignment Olson notes: “I had worked with Ginger Baker (above, with his mom) before, I had worked with Joe Cocker, Grace Slick—and some of these people, the first go-round had been really difficult. Even nasty. But when they were with their parents, they were totally different people. Ginger Baker, who had been terribly obnoxious before, acted like a grown-up. I don’t think it had anything to do with respect for me, so it must have been the parents.”

John Olson Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

“They had a parrot in a cage,” Olson remembers of the shoot at Clapton’s grandmother’s home. “Eric’s grandmother, Rose Clapp, left the room, and the parrot talked. It said F—you! I couldn’t believe it. So Mrs. Clapp comes back and I say, ‘The parrot talks.’ And she says, ‘Yes, he says gobble gobble .’ So Eric and I are talking and I ask, ‘Hey, what’s that parrot say?’ and he looks at me like I’m crazy. He says, ‘The parrot says F—you.’ There was a group then called Delaney & Bonnie, and Eric said they stayed there for a couple of weeks and taught the parrot how to say it.”

John Olson/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

On May 19, 1962, screen goddess Marilyn Monroe — literally sewn into a sparkling, jaw-droppingly sheer dress — sauntered onto the stage of New York’s Madison Square Garden and forever linked sex and politics in the American consciousness when she famously, breathily sang “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” to JFK before a crowd of 15,000 — including LIFE’s Bill Ray. “Everybody was in front in the beginning,” Ray recalls of the setup that night inside the Garden, “but it was another one of these events where security says, ‘Hey, we’re really glad you came. Take a few pictures—now get your ass out!’ The Secret Service goons really started clearing everybody out after a few shots. I was afraid of being held in a cattle pen, which is one of the reasons I got out of the group and started moving around on my own.” Pictured: The President arriving at the Garden.

Bill Ray

The chatter about an affair between the president and Monroe was getting louder around the time of the birthday salute, Ray recalls. “People in Washington were always saying there was something going on,” Ray says, “that there was even a Polaroid of Marilyn and Jack in the bathtub performing interesting acts, that Peter Lawford was kind of a go-between, and so on. Nobody really knew. But I knew for sure I was trying to get a picture of the two of them together that night.” Above: President Kennedy and the elites in their box, on the first level facing center stage.

Bill Ray Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Trying to get an angle where he might be able to get both Marilyn and JFK in the frame, Ray moved higher up in the Garden . . . and suddenly the moment arrived. “It had been a noisy place, everybody all ‘rah rah rah,'” Ray recalls. “Then boom, on comes this light. There was no sound—no sound. It was like outer space.” Marilyn was on the stage, taking off her white fur to reveal that scandalous dress underneath. “It was skin-colored and it was really tight. She didn’t wear anything underneath it, it was all sewn on, and those Swarovski crystals were sparkling. And she used this long pause…. Then finally, she comes out with ‘Happy Biiiiirthday’—she starts the whole breathy thing— and everybody just went into a swoon. I was praying [that I could get the shot] because I had to guess at the exposure. It was a very long lens, which I had no tripod for, so I had to rest it on a pipe railing and try not to breathe.” Above: Bill Ray’s most iconic photograph, and one of the most famous pictures ever taken of Marilyn Monroe, as she serenades JFK at the Garden.

Bill Ray Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

In 1971, LIFE’s John Shearer spent months photographing the heavyweight champ, Joe Frazier, and Muhammad Ali in the run-up to their March 1971 title bout—a fight billed as The Fight of the Century. “In 1971,” Shearer told LIFE.com, explaining a large part of the fight’s enormous hype, “despite not having held the heavyweight title for years, Muhammad Ali was still arguably the most famous person on the planet.” Above: The challenger commands a press conference at the pre-fight weigh-in.

John Shearer Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

“I often felt bad for Joe,” Shearer says, remembering how the 27-year-old world heavyweight champ had few fans in his corner for the 1971 fight with Ali. “In the eyes of so many, he was miscast as the bad guy in the fight. I like this picture of him. It’s a charming moment—but something in his face suggests that if you scratched the surface, you’d find a world of other feelings beneath the surface.”

John Shearer Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

“The fight in ’71 was the last time Ali took Joe for granted,” Shearer says. “He simply had not done the hard, hard work required to beat a man like Joe Frazier. Of course, he proved later on—in those battles against George Foreman and Ken Norton and the epic rematches against Frazier—that he was a great, tough champion. But I wonder if, deep down, he hit a point [while training in Miami] where he looked for that fire, that drive, and it just wasn’t there. Above: Ali clowns with an aide-de-camp in the back seat of his new Cadillac limo, Miami, February 1971.

John Shearer Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Frazier—who had an R&B band for years called Joe Frazier and His Knockouts—tests out a band member’s trumpet on the set of NBC’s long-running Kraft Music Hall variety show. “Frazier felt that he was every bit as articulate as Ali,” John Shearer says, “and every bit the showman that Ali was.”

John Shearer Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

His face swollen and bruised after his battle with Ali at Madison Square Garden, heavyweight champion Joe Frazier—stoic even in victory over his nemesis—makes himself presentable. “Frazier didn’t fight by going for the head, which a lot of other boxers did,” Shearer says. “He went after Ali’s body the whole fight, pounding away, taking terrible blows to the head. You know, you keep whacking at the base of the tree, and the tree is going to come down. And that was the story of their first fight.”

John Shearer Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The post LIFE Photographers Look Back On Their Favorite Assignments appeared first on LIFE.