The post When It Was “Swimsuit or Jail” at Myrtle Beach appeared first on LIFE.
]]>But in 1952, as a resort destination on the rise, Myrtle Beach was looking for attention-getting ways to open up its beach season. Before that year the town had kicked off festivities with a beauty pageant. Then in ’52 Myrtle Beach decided to stage “Bathing Suit Day,” and the rules were simple: Wear a bathing suit, or go to jail.
Although the word “jail” is being used loosely—no one was actually doing hard time, as the photos from LIFE staff photographer Robert W. Kelley attest. And while the town had officially moved on from a beauty pageant, the event still managed to include a batallion of young women in swimsuits.
Here’s how LIFE described the workings of Bathing Suit Day in its June 23, 1952 issue:
“Everyone in town and every visitor would have to wear beach attire from 6 a.m. until noon under pain of fine or imprisonment in an impromptu stockade. Three businessmen served as judges, 32 town ladies acted as attire inspectors, and convict suits were borrowed from the superintendent of county prisoners—who himself was thrown in jail and made to wear one when he came to Myrtle Beach in ordinary garb to see whether the suits have arrived.”
The day went well, and the weekend also included a parade and contests on the beach. LIFE reported that $650 in fines were levied to those not in swimwear, with the proceeds going toward the construction of a new hospital, and that the 1952 vacation season at Myrtle Beach “had opened with the biggest attendance ever.”
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]]>The post Hey, Wanna Hot Dog? appeared first on LIFE.
]]>And yet all these decades later, even as Americans have only grown more health- and diet-conscious, hot dogs remain a favorite. In 2023 the cookout staples were an $8 billion market, according to the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council.
The numbers reflect a basic truth, which that health is not always at the forefront of consumer’s minds, and that is especially true when they are heating up the grill or enjoying an afternoon at the ballpark. Those are the situations for which the concept of the cheat day was invented. For every person who finds a hot dog revolting—that same LIFE story quoted New York consumer affairs commissioner Bess Myerson as saying “After I found what was in hot dogs, I stopped eating them”—there are others who gravitate to its simple pleasures.
During the original run of LIFE magazine, hot dogs frequently popped up in settings both surprising and expected. Frank Sinatra was seen munching on one in his tuxedo after performing in Miami. Hall of Fame baseball executive Bill Veeck was photographed enjoying one in the stands. Perhaps the most humorous photo in this collection features actress Buff Cobb, who would go on to marry TV journalist Mike Wallace. Cobb and LIFE staff photographer Martha Holmes collaborated on a 1946 photo shoot that was a parody of a Hollywood puff piece. In one photo Cobb was on the beach, being attended by a butler as she roasted a hot dog over an open fire. The caption mentioned how Cobb loved to rough it and cook from “old family recipes.”
In that instance the hot dog was the punch line to a culinary joke. But if you substitute “old family recipe” with “old family favorite,” that caption would be a perfect description of the hot dog’s place in the American diet.
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]]>The post The Dawn of Rock: America Finds Its Thrill appeared first on LIFE.
]]>In its April 18, 1955 issue LIFE magazine reported on—with a fair amount of concern—the onset of the defining evolution of popular music in the 20th century. The story was titled “Rock ‘N Roll: A Frenzied Teenage Music Craze Kicks Up a Big Fuss.“
Here’s how LIFE described what the “big fuss” was all about:
The nation’s teenagers are dancing their way into an enlarging controversy over rock ‘n roll. In New Haven, Connecticut the police chief has put a damper on rock ‘n roll parties and other towns are following suit. Radio networks are worried over questionable lyrics in rock ‘n roll. And some American parents, without quite knowing what it is their kids are up to, are worried that it’s something they shouldn’t be.
But like it or not, rock and roll was here to stay. Standing in the heart of the moment, LIFE saw dancing as a big part of the new music’s appeal. The magazine, grasping to connect this revolutionary moment to the recent past, described rock and roll dancing as “a combination of “the Lindy and the Charleston, and almost anything else.” The story, shot by staff photographers Walter Sanders and Loomis Dean, had more pictures of kids dancing than of musicians performing. One of the shoots took place at the dance studio of Arthur Murray, where kids demonstrated their new moves.
LIFE acknowledged the roots of this new music, saying “The heavy-beat and honking-melody tunes of today’s rock ‘n roll have a clearly defined ancestry in U.S. jazz going back to Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith of 30 years ago.” The broader market was now turning to a style of music that first became popular in the Black community because record companies had been focussing on “mambos and ballads,” and as a result “the country’s teenagers found themselves without snappy dance tunes to their taste.”
Some adults fretted over lyrics that seemed to be laden with innuendo and double meanings. But even as the LIFE article adopted the tone of a worried parent, the pictures in the magazine told another story. The photos showed exuberance and joy. And by today’s standards, everything looks extremely proper. The main concert photos feature the great Fats Domino, who is wearing a suit and playing a grand piano. The young fans are dressed as if they were going to a formal occasion, without any jeans or T-shirts in sight.
It’s mind-boggling to think that a mere 14 years from when this story ran, rock fans would be mucking around in the mud at Woodstock. But there was no stopping it at this point. The revolution was on, and it was coming fast.
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]]>The post Heartland Cool: Teenage Boys in Iowa, 1945 appeared first on LIFE.
]]>What did that mean, exactly? It meant that these teenage boys, much like their counterparts in more peaceful periods of 20th century America, were chiefly concerned with playing, eating, sleeping, and dating. This was true despite the reality that “The most important fact in the lives of American teenage boys is that they may have to go and fight Japan.”
LIFE elaborated further on what was on the minds of these youngsters:
The old skills are still admired—the ability to swim well, to memorize the names of football heroes, to have a quick wisecrack for the day’s every small event, to be popular. The ancient foibles are still pursued—homework is done in ten minutes. Mother is looked upon as a lovable servant, home is only for eating and sleeping. The greatest talent is an asset for endlessly happy skylarking.
The main way that the war impacted these young men was gas rationing, because it put a crimp in their fascination with cars, although they found ways to get around that. LIFE wrote, “In an almost gasless society, U.S. boys still have their old jalopies. They have found that a half-hour’s fast talking will usually net them an A coupon from dad and that their motors can often be made to run on a kerosene mixture.” The story put forth that the boys clung to their old cars because it helped with another chief interest of teenage boys is Des Moines, which was dating teenage girls in Des Moines.
Three months after this story ran, Japan surrendered, bringing an end to World War II. This meant that these boys were not only staying home but would have plenty of gas in those cars before too long.
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]]>The post LIFE Said This Invention Would “Annihilate Time and Space” appeared first on LIFE.
]]>However odd it seems today to speak of television as a “great development in radio,” LIFE was dead-on in assessing how big a deal the combination of sound and moving pictures would be:
Within the first postwar decade television will be firmly planted as a billion-dollar U.S. industry. Its impact on U.S. civilization is beyond present prediction. Television is more than the addition to sight to the sound of radio. It has a power to annihilate time and space that will unite everyone everywhere in the immediate experience of events in contemporary life and history.
After getting readers excited about the new technology, the story then went on to detail its mechanics. The photos by Andreas Feininger are beautiful and fascinating in the way they contrast the machinery of the tubes and plates with the resulting image they produce of a female model whose presence is a kind of siren song. All that glass and metal, dear reader, will magically bring this woman into your living room.
At the time this LIFE story ran, very few Americans owned television sets. In 1946, the first year the government has data for television ownership, the total number of sets in American households was 8,000. By 1951, though, the number had ballooned to more than 10 million.
The LIFE story correctly predicted that TV would give Americans the new power to witness history live, and that was transformative. Part of the immense power of the signature moments of the original run of LIFE magazine—whether it be triumphs such as the moon landing or tragedies like the assassination of John F. Kennedy—was that Americans experienced those moments together, huddled around their televisions, seeing the same things at the same time.
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]]>The post A Boat with “Live Ballast” Required appeared first on LIFE.
]]>In its Aug. 9, 1954 issue, LIFE magazine wrote about a temperamental and demanding form of watercraft that was popular in the Chesapeake Bay area. The magazine described the log canoe as ‘fast, easily flipped, and tricky to handle.”
Tricky sounds like an understatement. In a log canoe the crew members had to place their body weight on boards that were propped up in the boat and extended out over the water. They did this in order to keep the boat from tipping. What’s worse was that if the winds shifted, the crew would have to dismount and move the boards to the other side of the boat and then mount them again, all without capsizing the boat in the process.
Here’s how LIFE put it:
It requires a crew of nimble-footed gymnasts whose chores are as precarious as a tightrope walker’s. Because the slightest breeze will capsize it unless the towering masts and a 1,000-square-foot expanse of sail are counterbalanced by human ballast, the crew extends boards out from the windward side and scrambles out on them to maintain the delicate equilibrium. When the wind shifts or the easily tipped craft comes about on a different tack, the boards must be shifted from one side to the other in maneuvers that require precise teamwork and add an exhilarating touch to the ancient art of sailing.
The log canoe may have required expertise to sail, but it was also picturesque, as evidenced by the photos taken by LIFE staff photographer George Skadding. And as impractical as these boats may seem, they continue to be part of the local flavor in the Chesapeake area today, with log canoe regattas running through the summer.
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