In 1948 LIFE wrote about one such stunt, taken on by Virginia Taylor of Pasadena. She went a week without talking in order to win $1,000. While that sounds manageable enough—these days people pay good money to go on silent retreats and not speak for that long—the show that ran the contest, People Are Funny, escalated the drama with another condition. Taylor would be monitored for the week by a young actress who would be living in the Taylor home—one who could talk to her husband when she could not.

And the actress sounded like she was ready to have fun with it. Here is how LIFE’s described the contest in its Jan. 17, 1949 issue:

The week of Dec. 14 to 21 was a grueling one for Mrs. Charles R. Taylor of Pasadena, California. Radio’s give-away craze, so desperate that recently everything from Adolphe Menjou to $1,000 worth of books has been pressed on winners, made her the victim of its most frantic stunt to date. If Mrs. Taylor could refrain from talking for the entire week, the program People Are Funny would pay her $1,000. But if so much as one word passed her lips, the $1,000 would go to a very attractive movie bit player, Maralyn Peterson, whom the program had sent not only to keep tabs on Mrs. Taylor but also to entertain Mr. Taylor. “This’ll be a snap,” said Maralyn beforehand, “and besides I’ve brought along a black silk neglige.”

Yes, that’s right, she was bringing a black negligee. One can imagine how that detail sparked the imaginations of listeners to this popular show—a slinky temptress gads about while the housewife must hold her tongue!

LIFE staff photographer Peter Stackpole was there to document the week, and while negligee was nowhere to be seen, he did capture a couple photos of the actress chatting up the husband while Virginia Taylor say by looking helpless. Stackpole’s photos from Taylor’s week of silence also showed her being teased by family members, communicating with a chalkboard, and, strangely enough, taking the stage with her church choir but keeping silent all the while. LIFE said “her narrowest escape was when she almost began singing in church.”

For her week of silenece was rewarded with “two crisp $500 bills,” LIFE wrote. Peterson earned $150 for playing the apple in the garden of Eden. Stackpole’s photos showed the two women “burying the hatchet” afterward and celebrating their bounty.

Taylor’s first words after winning: “I can’t think of a thing to say.”

Virginia Taylor wore tape on her mouth (which she would later take off) during the first day of a challenge in which she stayed silent for a week to win $1000 from Art Linkletter’s radio program People Are Funny, 1948.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock948.

Marilyn Peterson (right) lived in the home of Virginia Taylor to see if Mrs. Taylor could keep silent for one week and win $1000 from Art Linkletter’s radio program People Are Funny, 1948.

Peter Stackpole/Life PIcture Collection/Shutterstock

Virginia Taylor (left) sat quietly in a beauty shop while attempting to keep silent for one week and win $1000 from Art Linkletter’s radio program People Are Funny, 1948.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Virginia Taylor (right), who was trying to keep silent for a week to win $1000 from a radio show, sat by while her husband got to know Maralyn Peterson, the actress that the radio show People Are Funny had assigned to shadow the Taylors and monitor Virginia’s silence, 1948.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Virginia Taylor (left) wrote messages for Marilyn Peterson to relay on phone; Mrs. Taylor was attempting to keep silent for one week and win $1000 from Art Linkletter’s radio program People Are Funny, while Peterson was her monitor,1948.

Peter Stackpole/Life PIcture Collection/Shutterstock

Virginia Taylor (right) communicated with a door-to-door saleswoman using a slate and chalk during her attempt to keep silent for one week and win $1000 from Art Linkletter’s radio program People Are Funny, 1948.

Peter Stackpole/Life PIcture Collection/Shutterstock

Virginia Taylor (center) read the newspaper sulkily in the background while husband Charles chatted with Marilyn Peterson, an actress who was living with the couple to make sure Mrs. Taylor remained silent for one week while attempting to win $1000 from Art Linkletter’s radio program People Are Funny, 1948.

Peter Stackpole/Life PIcture Collection/Shutterstock

Virginia Taylor (right) resisted the temptation to talk to fellow church members during her efforts to keep silent for one week and win $1000 from Art Linkletter’s radio program People Are Funny, 1948.

Peter Stackpole/Life PIcture Collection/Shutterstock

Virginia Taylor (second from left) in church while attempting to keep silent for one week and win $1000 from Art Linkletter’s radio program People Are Funny, 1948.

Peter Stackpole/Life PIcture Collection/Shutterstock

Virginia Taylor (right) was teased by relatives during her efforts to keep silent for one week and win $1000 from Art Linkletter’s radio program People Are Funny, 1948.

Peter Stackpole/Life PIcture Collection/Shutterstock

Virginia Taylor tried to deal with her nephew without talking while she was trying to keep silent for one week and win $1000 from Art Linkletter’s radio program People Are Funny, 1948.

Peter Stackpole/Life PIcture Collection/Shutterstock

Virginia Taylor (left) communicated with her husband, a plumbing salesman, using sign language during her attempt to keep silent for one week and win $1000 from Art Linkletter’s radio program People Are Funny, 1948.

Peter Stackpole/Life PIcture Collection/Shutterstock

Art Linkletter (center) with Virginia Taylor (right) during his radio program People Are Funny, for which he challenged her to stay silent for a week in order to win $1,000 in 1948.

Peter Stackpole/Life PIcture Collection/Shutterstock

Virginia Taylor (center), her husband (right) and Marilyn Peterson celebrated after Mrs. Taylor won $1000 from Art Linkletter’s radio program People Are Funny for keeping silent for one week, 1948. LIFE described this scene as Taylor and Peterson “burying the hatchet.”

Peter Stackpole/Life PIcture Collection/Shutterstock

The post Reality Radio Challenge: Keeping Your Mouth Shut For $1000 appeared first on LIFE.

The actress, born Bettyjane Greer, had actually been in LIFE magazine twice before that ’47 cover. In 1942 she appeared, unnamed, as one of three women modeling the uniforms of the W.A.A.C.s, the new all-female military unit that came into being during World War II. She got the modeling job because her mother worked in the War Department. The very businesslike picture, included in this story, is not the sort of photograph that you would necessarily expect to draw attention to a young woman—but it hit the radar of singer Rudy Vallee. According to the magazine, Vallee “tried unsuccessfully to worm Miss Greer’s address out of LIFE.” He did connect with Greer eventually when she came to Hollywood, resulting in a brief marriage between the two. She and Vallee separated after three months. The uniform modeling job, which also made it to newsreels, had led to a screen test with David O. Selznick, reported LIFE. But “Miss Greer signed up elsewhere, however—with Howard Hughes.”

In its 1947 story LIFE described her audition for Hughes:

She prepared for her first interview with Mr. Hughes by carefully learning the script with which she had heard he tested all aspiring stars. It was a comedy, The Awful Truth, and, because Howard Hughes is a little deaf, Miss Greer read it at the top of her lungs.

Hughes was charmed. And this is when the noir aspects of Greer’s story really took hold. Greer not only signed with Hughes but for time was in a relationship with the eccentric billionaire. She eventually bought her way out of Hughes’ contract and caught on with RKO. LIFE wrote about Greer again for a story about starlets in training, and that studio soon gave Greer the female lead in Out of the Past. By that time she was also married to attorney Edward Lasker, and seemingly set up for superstardom.

But then who should come out of Greer’s past but Howard Hughes, now feeling jealous toward Greer. He bought RKO, which meant that Hughes now controlled her contract. “He said to me, while you are under contract to me, you will never work,” Greer recounted in an interview decades later. “And I said, `But that will be the end of my career.’ And he said, “I guess it will, won’t it?”

Hughes didn’t completely end her career, but he put a damper on it at a time she should have been reaching new heights. Eventually Greer got herself out of her RKO contract and returned to regular work, including multiple appearances in the 1950s on The Ford Television Theatre. And she enjoyed a late-career revival in the 1980s, including an appearance in Against All Odds, the 1984 remake of Out of the Past that starred Jeff Bridges and featured Greer as the mother of the movie’s female lead, played by Rachel Ward. Greer also had a six-episode run on the prime-time soap opera Falcon Crest, and appeared in three episodes of the David Lynch television show Twin Peaks.

She died in 2001 of complications from cancer, just shy of her 77th birthday.

Jane Greer modeled the uniforms for the new WAAC units in LIFE, 1942.

Charles Steinheimer/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

This montage was the opening photo of a LIFE story on actress Jane Greer in a 1947 issue of LIFE; the caption said that she was “dreaming that she is pursued by the men she has been bumping off all day on the movie set.”

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Actress Jane Greer, 1947.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Actress Jane Greer, 1947.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Actress Jane Greer (C) performing in scene from the 1947 movie Out of the Past with actors Steve Brodie (left) and Robert Mitchum.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Actress Jane Greer, 1947.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Actress Jane Greer, 1947.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Actress Jane Greer acting like drunken type, 1947.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jane Greer on set of The Company She Keeps, 1950.

Loomis Dean/Life Picture CollectionShutterstock

Jane Greer (left), with Jeff Bridges and Swoosie Kurtz, costars in the 1984 film Against All Odds, which was a remake of Greer’s 1947 classic Out of the Past.

DMI

The post Jane Greer: The Actress Whose Career Howard Hughes Tried to Quash appeared first on LIFE.

But in 1947, when the women of a California chapter of the WCTU tried to make a statement by invading bars in Pasadena, the organization was already on its way to becoming a historical novelty. LIFE magazine opened its story on the bar invasion with the comment “These marching grandmothers will seem strange to many younger Americans. But to older people, who can recall the violent days of hatchet-wielding, saloon-smashing Carry Nation, they will seem like nothing more than a wisp out of the past.”

Here’s how LIFE, in its issue of May 19, 1947, described what happened when this era of WCTU women decided to infiltrate the Pasadena bar scene:

They urged barkeepers to seek “more honorable” jobs. They pointed out possible law violations to proprietors. They pleaded with customers to sign no-drink pledges. At one bar they found a mother with her daughter, embraced the mother and prayed for her. Later the mother joined them in singing Onward Christian Soldiers.

While the women of the WCTU found some success that day, the photographs by LIFE staff photographer Peter Stackpole capture reactions from the bar denizens that range from annoyance to indifference. The LIFE story concluded by recounting a scene from a story by American humorist Finley Peter Dunne, in which one character praises a man who drinks moderately, and another responds “What’s his name? What novel is he in?”

Today the WCTU still carries on, though it’s national membership has dwindled to around 5,000. Alcoholics Anonymous, meanwhile, counts a membership of around 2 million.

Women’s Christian Temperance Union members singing “Dry, Clean California,” 1947.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A scene from a meeting of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union in southern California, 1947.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Members of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union in California, 1947.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Women’s Christian Temperance Union members brought their message of alcohol abstinence to bars in Pasadena, Calif., 1947.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Women’s Christian Temperance Union displayed a wrecked car to advocate against the dangers of drinking, 1947.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Women’s Christian Temperance Union members brought their message of alcohol abstinence to bars in Pasadena, Calif., 1947.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Women’s Christian Temperance Union members brought their message of alcohol abstinence to bars in Pasadena, Calif., 1947.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Women’s Christian Temperance Union members invaded a bar in Pasadena, Calif., while customers remain indifferent, 1947.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A Women’s Christian Temperance Union member tried to get a bar partron to sign non-drinking pledge, Pasadena, Calif., 1947.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A bar patron downed his drink while Women’s Christian Temperance Union members looked for converts at a bar in Pasadena, Calif., 1947.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Members of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union brought their message of alcohol abstinence to bars in Pasadena, Calif., 1947.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The post For Some, Dry January Was Never Enough appeared first on LIFE.

The USC chapter of Delta Delta Delta sorority staged an annual Tri-Delt Pansy Breakfast, a tradition that began in 1923. The defining moment of the breakfast, as documented LIFE in its issue of July 23, 1945, was when seniors who had become engaged during the school year stepped through a giant ring of pansies. The significance of the pansy is that it was the official flower of the sorority.

In 1945 LIFE’s Peter Stackpole was there to capture this photogenic moment— which doesn’t seem to have actually been photographed all that often. All these years later, Stackpole’s pictures of women stepping through the pansy ring are among the few that crop up if you search for images of the breakfast online.

The ceremony is a throwback to a time when the average age of marriage for women was a shade under 22. The average actually dipped even lower in the immediate post-World War II years before climbing steadily to its current level, which is just above 28 years old. LIFE reported that at the 1945 Tri-Delt breakfast, a remarkable 48 girls passed through the ring. “Several had already been married but, romantically, did not want to miss the ceremony,” LIFE said.

The Tri-Delt tradition continued for some time—this photo from 1965 shows a ceremony that looks exactly what Stackpole captured. Today the pansy remains the official Tri-Delt flower and the celebration carries on in name, except it now honors graduating seniors, rather than just young women with rings on their fingers. But on the Instagram feed for the USC Tri-Delts, while there are plenty of pictures of sorority sisters enjoying their lives, it seems that the giant ring of pansies did not make it to the age of social media.

Sorority sisters picked pansies at the Los Angeles Country Club the day before USC’s Tri-Delt Pansy breakfast, 1945.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Tri-Delt Pansy Breakfast at USC, 1945.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Tri-Delt Pansy Breakfast at USC, 1945.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Virginia Erickson, engaged to Clair Fledderjohn, walked through a ring of pansies at the Tri-Delt Pansy Breakfast at USC, 1945.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Eileen Nilsson, engaged to Davis de Aryan, walked through a ring of flowers at the Tri-Delt Pansy Breakfast at USC, 1945.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Betty Hildreth, who married a naval ensign that March, walked through a ring of pansies at the Tri-Delt Pansy Breakfast at USC, 1945.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Marilyn Faris, engaged to Lt. Bill Osborn, walked through a ring of pansies at the Tri-Delt Pansy Breakfast at USC, 1945.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dora Meredith, engaged to Captain C.B. Hopkins, walked through a ring of pansies at the Tri-Delt Pansy Breakfast at USC, 1945.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Phyllis Dixon, engaged to Davis Lavelle, walked through a ring of pansies at the Tri-Delt Pansy Breakfast at USC, 1945.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Virginia Luff, engaged to Lt. Elwood Laine, walked through a ring of pansies at the Tri-Delt Pansy Breakfast at USC, 1945.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Helen Taylor, engaged to Lt. Bob Fogwell, walked through a ring of pansies at the Tri-Delt Pansy Breakfast at USC, 1945.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

An engaged or married senior sorority sister walked through a ring of pansies at the Tri-Delt Pansy Breakfast at USC, 1945.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Clair Eder, engaged to Clifford Barnes, walked through a ring of flowers at the Tri-Delt Pansy Breakfast at USC, 1945.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

USC student Ethel Stevens took a pansy bath during the Tri-Delt Pansy Breakfast weekend, 1945.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The post An Instagram Moment, Pre-Instagram: The Tri-Delt Pansy Breakfast appeared first on LIFE.

The stars of the 1948 film Bill and Coo were birds. That’s not to say these these birds stole the show by upstaging their human costars—the birds were the show. The movie’s running time is just over an hour, and except for a two-minute introduction featuring humans, the story is acted out entirely by trained birds on a set of miniatures.

Here’s how LIFE described the production in its July 28, 1947 issue:

The pictures on these pages from Republic’s new movie Bill and Coo are tokens of the gloomy contention of the producer, that movie stars belonging to the species homo sapiens are washed up and the birds are ready to take over….No newcomer to strange breeds of actors, Vaudevillian Ken Murray for the last five years has been packing Hollywood’s El Capital Theater with a raucous oldtime variety show called Blackouts…When a bird trainer named brought his lovebird act around, Murray was so impressed that he dreamed up a starring vehicle for it, had miniature sets built and a lovebird story written.

The entire movie can be viewed online, and the photos taken by Peter Stackpole capture both the charm and peculiarity of the enterprise. The film is set in “Chirpendale U.S.A.,” and the location is one of the movie’s many bird-themed puns. The story is narrated by an off-screen human, but you see birds doing things like walking in and out of buildings, pushing little baby carriages and dropping letters in mailboxes. The plot revolves Bill and Coo, who love each other despite their class differences (Bill has a taxi service, Coo comes from a wealthy family), and they must fight off a malicious crow who threatens life in Chirpendale.

(Perhaps the most surprising detail about the production is that it was the only movie directed by former child actor Dean Riesner, who decades later would leave his mark on Hollywood history as one of the writers of the decidedly un-precious movie Dirty Harry. Yes, the man who directed Bill and Coo also gave us the line “Do you feel lucky? Well, do you punk?“)

On the one hand, no one is going to mistake Bill and Coo for Citizen Kane. On the other hand, it did win an honorary Academy Award, for creating a film “In which artistry and patience blended in a novel and entertaining use of the medium of motion pictures.”

It was novel indeed. In fact, when you look at the movie’s IMDB page and scroll to the heading “More Like This,” what you get are not more live-action movies but rather animated films such as Bambi. Which is another way of saying, there really are no movies like this.

Bill and Coo, the titular stars of the movie, stood on top of a trolley on the film’s set.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Ken Murray first encountered the birds in his vaudeville show and helped dream up the idea for featuring them in the movie that become Bill and Coo.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Trainer George Burton works with alligators who also played a role in the movie Bill and Coo, 1947.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

From the set of the bird-centric movie Bill and Coo, 1947.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The “wrong brothers” are celebrated in one of the many bird-related puns in the movie Bill and Coo.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A fire-bird slides down a pole the set of the all-bird movie Bill and Coo, 1947.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

From the set of the bird-centric live action movie Bill and Coo, 1947.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

From the set of the bird-centric movie Bill and Coo, 1947.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A crow played the villain in the bird-centric movie Bill and Coo, 1947.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Owls on the set of the bird-centric movie Bill and Coo, 1947.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

At the end of the movie Bill and Coo, the titular birds head off on their honeymoon in a puppy-drawn carriage, 1947.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The post The Oscar-Winning Movie Where the Stars Were All Birds appeared first on LIFE.

Even though the event was supposed to be the indoor championships, it was held outside due to the heat. And the 200 or so girls and young women of the AAU wore the same modest one-piece bathing suits that can be seen in many poolside photos from the 1950s, not the sleek and modern suit today’s divers wear. Finally, perhaps unsurprisingly for 1959, much of the attention they garnered at least in the pages of LIFE magazine focused a great deal on the looks of the “pretty plungers,” rather than their skill. The burnt cork that they applied below their eyes, to minimize the glare off the water, was compared to eyeshadow.

They could not, LIFE noted dismissively, “disguise the fact that they were athletes second, girls first.”

The pictures that ran alongside the story were black and white, and provided no information about who won or what the events even were. But the photographer, Peter Stackpole, also captured these vivid color images of the divers in action. And, seeing them now, it’s clear that LIFE’s unnamed writer didn’t quite get the point. Decades later, we can’t know how central athleticism was to any of these women’s identities, but they were athletes, no hedging required. Though Stackpole did not record who among his subjects proved victorious, his photos provide evidence that a gravity-defying dive could be as impressive then as it is today.

Women’s diving champions in Florida, 1959.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Women’s diving champions in Florida, 1959.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Women’s diving champions in Florida, 1959.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Women’s diving champions in Florida, 1959.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Women’s diving champions in Florida, 1959.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Women’s diving champions in Florida, 1959.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Women’s diving champions in Florida, 1959.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Women’s diving champions in Florida, 1959.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Women’s diving champions in Florida, 1959.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Women’s diving champions in Florida, 1959.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Women’s diving champions in Florida, 1959.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Women’s diving champions in Florida, 1959.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Women’s diving champions in Florida, 1959.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Women’s diving champions in Florida, 1959.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Women’s diving champions in Florida, 1959.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Women’s diving champions in Florida, 1959.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The post When Champions of Women’s Diving Were Called ‘Athletes Second, Girls First’ appeared first on LIFE.