Some moments are beautiful because they are quiet, like the glimpses of Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn before they went on stage together at the Oscars. Or the photo of Sammy Davis Jr. eating spaghetti and watching the news on television. Or burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee sitting at a typewriter while in costume before she performs one of her strip-teases.

Or consider the photo of the cast of The Honeymooners all sitting and waiting, Jackie Gleason with his ankle on ice. It’s funny to see the cast of this all-time great sitcom together without a smile on their faces, or any expression at all, really. Each of these photos their own way feels like a glimpse of reality.

Some photos offer curious juxtapositions, such as Johnny Cash, dressed in his trademark black, coming backstage at production of the musical Annie. Same with Frank Zappa and his family posing with the cast of Broadway show Cats. You can also find unexpected couplings, such as Lucille Ball visiting with Shirley Maclaine in her dressing room, or James Dean helping actress Geraldine Page with her hair.

Also intriguing are the images of stars just before they go onstage. This gallery includes shots of Alec Guinness and Albert Finney before they have leapt into character, and singer Paul Anka stretched out across two beds, They are about to cross the bridge from private person to public performer, and give their audiences the performances they came for.

Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly backstage at the RKO Pantages Theatre during the 28th Annual Academy Awards, 1956.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Award presenters Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly waiting backstage at the RKO Pantages Theatre during the 28th Annual Academy Awards, 1956.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sammy Davis Jr. ate spaghetti in his backstage dressing room while watching The Huntley-Brinkley Report news show in 1964. “My only contact with reality,” he told LIFE. “Whatever I’m doing, I stop to watch these guys.” Reflected in the mirror: LIFE photographer Leonard McCombe.

Leonard McCombe/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Paul Anka, backstage at the Copacabana, 1960.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Albert Finney backstage during a production of the play Luther, 1963.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Elvis Presley tenderly kissing the cheek of a female admirer backstage before his concert, 1956.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Ray Charles backstage talking with Eric Burdon and the Animals, 1966.

Bill Ray/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Shirley MacLaine preparing to perform the TV show “Shower of Stars” in 1955.

Loomis Dean The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Shirley MacLaine and Lucille Ball backstage during a benefit show for victims of the devastating Isewan typhoon, 1959.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Marcia Diamond (right) watched as her husband Neil clipped their son Jessie’s nails in a dressing room at the Winter Garden Theatre, 1972.

MICHAEL MAUNEY/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee writes in her dressing room in Memphis, Tenn., 1949.

George Skadding/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Bobby Darin in his dressing room, 1959.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Dustin Hoffman in his dressing room for the play (which he also directed), Jimmy Shine, New York City, 1969.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mae West backstage at the Hotel Sahara with one of the co-stars of her Las Vegas show, 1954.

Loomis Dean/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

James Dean with the great Geraldine Page in her dressing room, New York City, 1955.

Dennis Stock—Magnum

Betty Grable, in her dressing room at 20th Century-Fox studios, pulled on black mesh stockings for a scene that would feature her famous legs, 1943.

Walter Sanders The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Josephine Baker’s four-foot chignon is wound up into three tiers of buns in her dressing room, 1951.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Honeymooners cast—Jackie Gleason, Art Carney, Audrey Meadows and Joyce Andrews—in 1954.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

Chorus girls watching the Ed Sullivan television show at the Roxy Movie Theater dressing room, 1958.

Peter Stackpole/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Alec Guinness put on theatrical makeup at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario, Canada, 1953.

Peter Stackpole/LIFE Pictures/Shutterstock

Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy relaxing in dressing room, waiting for show to begin, 1942.

John Florea/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Movie director Vincent Sherman (right) with actor Paul Newman in dressing room reviewing lines for the legal drama The Young Philadelphians, 1958.

Leonard McCombe/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Johnny Cash, with stepson John (right), posed with Annie star Alison Smith and Sandy at a Broadway production of musical, 1981.

DMI/Shutterstock

(Center, left-to-right) Musician Frank Zappa and children Moon Unit and Dweezil visited backstage at the Broadway musical Cats in 1983; the cast included actress Betty Buckley (center, bottom).

David Mcgough/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The post Insider’s View: LIFE Goes Backstage with the Stars appeared first on LIFE.

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?

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

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

The post Manly Men: Classic American Tough Guys, Seen Through LIFE’s Lens appeared first on LIFE.

[Buy the LIFE book, Johnny Cash: An Illustrated Biography]

But Johnny Cash was not merely a great songwriter and singularly engaging singer. He was a cultural force. When he sang with a young Bob Dylan on Dylan’s gorgeous “Girl From the North Country” in 1969, the pairing was a quiet revolution, reconciling Dylan’s New Folk counterculture blues with Cash’s old-school, hillbilly honky-tonk.

When he recorded Peter LaFarge’s “Ballad of Ira Hayes” in 1964 and took it to No. 3 on the Billboard country charts, he brought the terrible tale of how one of the men who raised the flag on Iwo Jima died, drunk and alone, to far more people than had ever heard the song or the story before.

Here, in tribute to the one and only Johnny Cash, LIFE.com presents a selection of photos made for a November 1969 feature in the magazine titled “Hard-Times King of Song.”

Some of these photos will be of particular interest to fans of the outstanding 2005 biopic Walk The Line. The pictures of Johnny Cash on his tractor or fishing with his father on the pier by his house call to mind key moments from that film, which received five Oscar nominations.

Cash, LIFE told its readers, was a man who had lived hard, had come through and, by all measures, showed no sign of letting the limelight alter the essentials of who he was and what he believed.

His face looks ruined, his lean body whipped out. He sings, off-key, of bygone days that many of his listeners can’t even remember: railroads, hobos on the open road, Depression, hard times he knew growing up poor in an Arkansas cotton patch. These are curiously old-fashioned themes, but the homely lyrics and rough-cut personality of Johnny Cash make them fresh.

Cash, 37, has been singing and writing country ballads for 15 years. He has recorded more than 300 songs and written twice that many, most of them an unpromising mixture of folklore, sentiment and pure corn that until recently appealed mainly to fans of the Grand Ole Opry. Now the young like him because he has the ring of authenticity and supports social causes, such as prison reform. . . . Only two years ago Cash was down and out himself. Before he kicked the habit, he became so addicted to pep pills that he woke up in a Georgia jail unable to remember how he got there.

Cash appeals to Americans who are increasingly fed up with the pressure and confusions of city life and yearn to get back to the land. “Last year it was soul,” says a friend. “This year everybody is scratching in the soil. That’s why Johnny works. He’s got soil.”

The image of Johnny Cash that appeared on the cover of the November 21, 1969, issue of LIFE.

Michael Rougier/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Johnny Cash in Tennessee, 1969.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Johnny Cash in Tennessee, 1969.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Johnny Cash in Tennessee, 1969.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Johnny Cash with friends and family at his home in Tennessee, 1969.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Johnny Cash and Glen Campbell, 1969.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Johnny Cash in Tennessee, 1969.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Johnny Cash and Glen Campbell, 1969.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Johnny Cash in Tennessee, 1969.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Johnny Cash and Jack Palance, 1969.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Roy Orbison played for guests at Johnny Cash’s house, Tennessee, 1969.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Johnny Cash in Tennessee, 1969.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Johnny Cash during a recording session at Columbia Studio B, Nashville, Tennessee.

Michael Rougier/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Johnny Cash in Tennessee, 1969.

Michael Rougier The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Johnny Cash fished with his father outside his Tennessee home, 1969.

Michael Rougier/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Johnny Cash fished in a lake near his Tennessee home, 1969.

Michael Rougier/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Johnny Cash drove a tractor on his estate, 1969.

Michael Rougier/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Johnny Cash with wife June Carter at home.

Michael Rougier/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

The post Johnny Cash: A National Treasure appeared first on LIFE.