January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968

Martin Luther King, Jr. was born on January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia.  He was the son of Reverend Martin Luther King Sr. and Alberta Williams King.  He had an older sister (Willie Christine) and a younger brother (Alfred Daniel).

Dr. King married Coretta Scott on June 18, 1953.  The wedding was held on the lawn of Coretta’s parents with the ceremony performed by Dr. King’s father.

The Kings had four children:

Yolanda Denise (b.1955),  Martin Luther III (b.1957),  

Dexter Scott (b. 1961),  Bernice Albertine (b. 1963)

All four children followed in their parents footsteps and became civil rights activists.

Martin Luther King was one of the main leaders of the American civil rights movement.  A Baptist minister by training, King became a civil rights activist early in his career leading the Montgomery Bus Boycott (Rosa Parks) and helping to found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.  His efforts led to the 1963 March on Washington where King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech, raising public consciousness of the civil rights movement and establishing King as one of the greatest orators in American history.  In 1964, King became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end segregation and racial discrimination through civil disobedience and other non-violent means.

 In late March 1968, King went to Memphis, Tennessee in support of the black sanitary public works employees, who had been on strike since March 12 for higher wages and better treatment.  On April 3, King returned to Memphis and addressed a rally, delivering his “I’ve been to the Mountaintop” address at Mason Temple (Church of God in Christ, Inc. – World Headquarters). King’s flight to Memphis had been delayed by a bomb threat against his plane.  In the close his last speech, in reference to the bomb threat, King said the following:

“And then I got to Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?  Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

On April 4, 1968, while standing on the 2^nd floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Dr. King was assassinated.  The assassination led to a nationwide wave of riots in more than 60 cities.  Escaped convict James Earl Ray was captured two months later and charged with King’s death.

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Excerpts from Wikipedia.com and LIFE Magazine Issues

LIFE Magazine captured the 1960s as they happened.  Boom!, by Tom Brokaw is an epic portrait of the tumultuous Sixties, a fault line in American history. The voices and stories of both famous people and ordinary citizens come together as Brokaw takes us on a memorable journey through a remarkable time, exploring how individual lives and the national mindset were affected by a controversial era and showing how the aftershocks of the Sixties continue to resound in our lives today. In the reflections of a generation, Brokaw also discovers lessons that might guide us in the years ahead.Boom! One minute it was Ike and the man in the grey flannel suit, and the next minute it was time to “turn on, tune in, drop out.” While Americans were walking on the moon, Americans were dying in Vietnam. Nothing was beyond question, and there were far fewer answers than before.Published as the fortieth anniversary of 1968 approaches, Boom! gives us what Brokaw sees as a virtual reunion of some members of “the class of ’68,” offering wise and moving reflections and frank personal remembrances about people’s lives during a time of high ideals and profound social, political, and individual change. What were the gains, what were the losses? Who were the winners, who were the losers? As they look back decades later, what do members of the Sixties generation think really mattered in that tumultuous time, and what will have meaning going forward? Race, war, politics, feminism, popular culture, and music are all explored here, and we learn from a wide range of people about their lives. Tom Brokaw explores how members of this generation have gone on to bring activism and a Sixties mindset into individual entrepreneurship today. We hear stories of how this formative decade has led to a recalibrated perspective–on business, the environment, politics, family, our national existence.Remarkable in its insights, profoundly moving, wonderfully written and reported, this revealing portrait of a generation and of an era, and of the impact of the 1960s on our lives today, lets us be present at this reunion ourselves, and join in these frank conversations about America then, now, and tomorrow.

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War

JAPAN LAUNCHES RECKLESS ATTACK ON U. S IN A DESPERATE GAMBLE ON VICTORY OR SUICIDE, IT STRIKES FIRST BLOW AT HAWAII

This was the headline for the article that appeared on December 15, 1941 in LIFE magazine. As we approach the 66^th anniversary of what was called by President Roose­velt a “Date that will live in infamy” we feel compelled to remind people of this event and to bring a renewed sense of what this country has been through in the past and what it is facing today in the constant battle for freedom.

As the article goes on to say “Out of the Pacific skies last week World War II came with startling suddenness to America. It was 7:35 a.m. on a Sunday morning the aggressors’ favorite day—when two Japanese planes, wearing on their wings the Rising Sun of Japan, flew out of the western sky over the Hawaiian island of Oahu. Japan had seized the initiative and was making the most of the aggressor’s privilege to strike the first blow. With reckless daring Japan aimed this blow at the citadel of American power in the Pacific, the great naval fortress of Pearl Harbor. Close observers of Japan have said for years that if that country ever found itself in a hopeless corner it was capable of committing national hara-kiri by flinging itself at the throat of its mightiest enemy. Japan has found itself in just such a corner. It could not retreat without losing all and it could not ad­vance another step without war”.

This could just as well be an article in today’s papers by substituting Al-Qaeda for Japan, New York for Hawaii or terrorism for other words. It seems all together fitting that we should review the past, as George Santayana stated “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.  The article goes on “It took the desperate plunge and told its enemies in effect: “If this be hara-kiri, make the most of it.” Japan’s daring was matched only by its barefaced duplicity. There was no warning—not even such an ultimatum as Hitler is inclined to send while his legions pour across some new border. At the very moment the first bombs fell on Pearl Harbor Japan’s two en­voys in Washington were in Secretary Hull’s office at the State Department, making their blandest protes­tations of peaceful intent. Ambassador Nomura and Envoy Kurusu had come with the answer to Hull’s note. He read it through and then, for t he first t line in many long, patient years, the soft-spoken Secretary lost his temper. Into the teeth of the two Japanese, who for once did not grin, he flung these words: “In all my 50 years of public service I have never seen a document that was more crowded with infamous false­hoods and distortions—on a scale so huge that I never imagined until today that any government on this plan­et was capable of uttering them.” The two Japanese scurried out of his office and home to their Embassy. Even as Hull spoke, America sprang to arms. Wherever it was in the wide ocean, the U. S. Fleet went into action and all over the Pacific U. S. gar­risons stood ready to defend the island outposts of American power.

In Washington President Roose­velt dictated his war message to Congress. From Army and Navy headquarters the prearranged orders went out which transformed the U. S. into a nation at war. In the face of an attack so clear that no man could argue it, the nation stood abso­lutely united. Senator Wheeler, the leader of Isolationists, spoke for all when he said: “The only thing now is to do our best to lick hell out of them.” Mow much or how long it would take to lick Japan, no man could say. The U. S. Navy has al­ways been supremely confident of its ability to sink the Japanese Fleet in open battle or, if the enemy ships refused battle, to strangle the island empire by blockade. In recent months the vulnerable Phil­ippine station has been strengthened by squadrons of heavy bombers. With new British warships at Singapore, plus the combined land-air strength of the British, Dutch and Australian forces, America has a long-range superiority over Japan. It may be, indeed, that America’s greatest danger is overcon­fidence. There will surely be more naval losses and more strong attacks on American islands because Japan has a strategic and tactical advantage at the outset of the war. It will take not only all-out U. S. military might lint great persistence and great cour­age to hurl back attack and to win the final victory.

This is just the beginning of this fantastic article, one of many that would in the years to come take forefront in many issues of LIFE magazine as this mainstay of American publications continues to cover the war.

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Excerpts of this article are from LIFE and Wikipedia.com

May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born at 83 Beals Street in Brookline, Massachusetts on Tuesday, May 29, 1917, at 3:00 p.m., the second son of Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., and Rose Fitzgerald.

 Kennedy married Jacqueline Lee Bouvier on September 12, 1953 in Newport. Rhode Island.  One guest said “It was just like the coronation.”John F. Kennedy had 2 children that survived infancy. Caroline was born in 1957 and John Jr. was born in 1960, just a few weeks after his father was elected.  John died in 1999. Caroline is currently the only surviving member of JFK’s immediate family.After Kennedy’s leadership as commander of the USS PT-109 during World War II in the South Pacific, his aspirations turned political. Kennedy represented the state of Massachusetts in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1947 to 1953 as a Democrat, and in the U.S. Senate from 1953 until 1961. Kennedy defeated former Vice President and Republican candidate Richard Nixon in the 1960 U.S. presidential election, one of the closest in American history. To date, he is the only practicing Roman Catholic to be elected President and the only President to have won a Pulitzer Prize.  His administration witnessed the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the building of the Berlin Wall, the Space Race, the American Civil Rights Movement and early events of the Vietnam War.   John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the thirty-fifth President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. 

Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas. Lee Harvey Oswald was charged with the crime, but was murdered two days later by Jack Ruby before he could be put on trial. The Warren Commission concluded that Oswald had acted alone in killing the president; however, the House Select Committee on Assassinations declared in 1979 that there may have been a conspiracy. The entire subject remains controversial, with multiple theories about the assassination still being debated. The event proved to be a poignant moment in U.S. history due to its impact on the nation and the ensuing political fallout. Many regard President Kennedy as an icon of American hopes and aspirations; he continues to rank highly in public opinion ratings of former U.S. presidents.

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Excerpts from Wikipedia.com and LIFE Magazine Issues

November 12, 1929 – September 14, 1982

  America’s very own Princess, Grace Patricia Kelly was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she grew up in the East Falls section, the third of four children to John Brendan Kelly, Sr., also known as Jack Kelly, and Margaret Katherine Majer Kelly.

Grace, having appeared on the cover of LIFE magazine a total of four times from 1954 – 1961, she first appeared on April 26, 1954 being listed as Hollywood’s Brightest and Busiest new star. LIFE continued to cover her from starlet to Princess as she moved from actress to the wife of Prince Rainer of Monaco.

Grace Kelly’s choice of career was reflected in her childhood experiences. While attending the prestigious Ravenhill Academy, Grace modeled fashions at local social events with her mother and sisters. She gained her first acting experience at the age of 12, when she played a lead role in Don’t Feed the Animals, a play produced by the Old Academy Players in East Falls. During high school, she acted and danced, graduating from Stevens School, a small private school in a mansion on Walnut Lane in Germantown, Philadelphia, in May 1947. 

Grace decided to pursue her dreams of a career in the theater, using a scene from her uncle’s play, Torchbearers, for an audition into the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. Although the school had already selected its quota for the semester, Grace wangled an interview with Emile Diestel, the school’s admission officer. Notable talents including Katharine Hepburn, Lauren Bacall, Gene Tierney, and Spencer Tracy had all studied there. Living in Manhattan’s Barbizon Hotel for Women, a prestigious establishment which barred men from entering after 10 p.m., and working as a model to support her studies, Grace began her first term the following October. A diligent student, she would use a recorder to practice and perfect her speech. Her early acting pursuits led her to the stage, most notably a Broadway debut in Strindberg’s The Father alongside Raymond Massey. At 19, her graduation performance was in The Philadelphia Story, a role with which she would also end her film career.

“Movies with soon be full of Grace Kelly” the head lines for the first of many articles written by LIFE magazine referring to what will become a roller coaster ride though this special persons life. An excerpt from this article shows the writers belief in what will become a fairy tale story for many years to come. “In Hollywood, 1954 is likely to be known as this year of Grace. The reason is the serious looking girl, portrayed by 24 year-old Grace Kelly, who has suddenly become the most valuable acting property in the movies. With four recently completed top-budget films to be released this year and a fifth already begun, Miss Kelly’s cool beauty and her unquestionably fine acting ability will soon be movieland bywords. What will not be so publicly evident, however, is the determination, what one convinced producer called Miss Kelly’s “stainless steel inside” that has brought all this about.

LIFE magazine continued to follow Grace through her many movies and television shows including her Oscar and countless other awards on April 9, 1956 the cover was of a beautiful and yet elegant Grace in a wedding dress while filming for the movie “The Swan” which becomes a parallel to her real life, in only 10 days she will marry Prince Rainer of Monaco, a wedding covered extensively in the April 30, 1956 issue of LIFE.

Nine months and four days after the wedding, Princess Grace gave birth to the royal couple’s first child, Princess Caroline. 21 guns announced the event, a national holiday was called, gambling ceased, and free champagne flowed throughout the principality. A little over a year later, 101 guns announced the birth of their second child, Prince Albert. Prince Rainier and Princess Grace had three children:

• Hereditary Princess Caroline Louise Marguerite, born January 23, 1957, and now heiress presumptive to the throne of Monaco
• Albert II, Prince of Monaco, born March 14, 1958, current ruler of the Principality of Monaco
• Princess Stephanie Marie Elisabeth, born February 1, 1965.

On September 13, 1982, while driving with her daughter Stephanie to Monaco from their country home, Princess Grace, then 52, suffered a stroke, causing her Rover P6 to plunge 100 feet down a mountainside. Princess Grace died the next day without regaining consciousness. Princess Grace was buried in the Grimaldi family vault on September 18, 1982, after a requiem mass in Saint Nicholas Cathedral, Monaco. Prince Rainier, who never remarried after Kelly’s death, was buried alongside her following his death in 2005.

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Excerpts from Wikipedia.com and LIFE Magazine Issues

May 29, 1903 – July 27, 2003

   ”The publics “Stooge”.  Stand still for only a moment and someone comes up with a wise crack, Bob Hope explains in and article that appeared in LIFE Magazine October 27, 1941. Young boys ask for my autograph while explaining that they want to trade them for better ones. Men tell him they want them for weak-minded relatives.  This article is just the beginning of an affair between Bob Hope, LIFE magazine and the public. Just like LIFE, Bob became an icon to the American people and eventually the world. Articles recounting his life appeared in no less than 12 issues including 4 covers.

            Born Leslie Townes Hope in Eltham, England on May 29, 1903, in 1907, Leslie’s father brought the family to Cleveland, Ohio. In 1920, by virtue of his father’s naturalization, ‘Bob’ — the name by which the world would later know him — and his brothers became US citizens. (Bob joked, “I left England at the age of four when I found out I couldn’t be king.”)

            As a youth in Cleveland he earned spending money selling newspapers and as a constant entrant in amateur shows. During his years at East High School he worked as a delivery boy in his Uncle Fred’s meat market. He was also a soda jerk, a shoe salesman, and a pool hustler.

            After high school, Bob took dancing lessons from entertainer King Rastus Brown and from vaudeville hoofer Johnny Root. A natural, he took over some classes for his teachers. Bob also worked briefly as a newspaper reporter and tried amateur boxing under the name of Packy East. Bob gave up boxing when he ” was not only being carried out of the ring, but into the ring.” At 18, Bob persuaded his girlfriend, Mildred Rosequist, to become his dance partner. Appearing at nearby vaudeville houses they worked their way to the princely wage of $8 a night and were ready to take their show on tour. However, the curtain fell abruptly on Hope and Rosequist when Mildred’s mother finally saw the act.

            Bob Hope’s life became an iconic symbol to all corners and people of the world. His work spanned the spectrum from street performances to Vaudeville, Broadway, Radio, Movies, Television and his most memorable and highly praised work of entertaining the troops in all theaters of war from WW II through the Iraq war of 1991 continuing until his death on July 27, 2003 at the age of 100. The United States Navy in 1997 christened the USNS Bob Hope (AKR 300) a new class of ships named after Bob. One month later the United States Air Force dedicated a new C-17 calling it the ‘Spirit of Bob Hope’

            He has been honored by the United States Congress no less than 5 times, an honor, that to this day has not been achieved by anyone else.  The culmination of his life work peaked when in October 1997 Congress passed Resolution 75 Making Bob Hope an “Honorary Veteran” the first individual so honored in the history of the United States.

            Hope, like other stage performers, made his first films in New York. Educational Pictures hired him in 1934 for a short-subject comedy, Going Spanish. Unfortunately for Hope, he sealed his own fate with Educational when a newspaper columnist asked him about his new movie. Hope cracked, “When they catch John Dillinger, they’re going to make him sit through it twice.” Educational fired him, but he was soon back before the cameras at New York’s Vitaphone studio, where he starred in 20-minute comedies and musicals.

            Paramount Pictures signed Hope for the 1938 film The Big Broadcast of 1938. During a duet with Shirley Ross, Hope introduced the bittersweet song later to become his trademark, “Thanks for the Memory“, which became a major hit and was praised by critics. The sentimental and fluid nature of the music allowed Hope’s writers (whom he is said to have depended upon heavily throughout his career) to later invent endless variations of the song to fit specific circumstances, such as bidding farewell to troops while on tour.

            According to Hope, early in his film career a director advised him that movie acting was done mostly with the eyes, resulting in the exaggerated and rolling eye movements which characterized many of Hope’s onscreen performances.

            Hope became one of Paramount’s biggest stars, and would remain with the studio through the 1950s. Hope’s regular appearances in Hollywood films and radio made him one of the best known entertainers in North America, and at the height of his career he was also making a large income from live concert performances. During an eight-week tour in 1940, he reportedly generated $100,000 in receipts, a record at the time. (This is the equivalent of $1.4 million dollars in 2006 money.)

            As a movie star, he was best known for My Favorite Brunette and the highly profitable “Road” movies in which he starred with Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour, (whom he had first seen performing as a nightclub singer in New York and subsequently invited to work with him on his USO tours). Lamour is said to have shown up for filming fully prepared with her lines, only to be baffled by completely new material which had been written by Hope’s own staff of writers without the studio’s permission.

            Hope and Lamour were lifelong friends, and she is the actress most associated with his film career. Other female co-stars included Paulette Goddard, Lucille Ball, Jane Russell, and Hedy Lamarr.

            Hope was host of the Academy Awards ceremony 18 times between 1939 and 1977. His alleged lust for an Oscar became part of his performing shtick, perhaps most memorably in a scene from Road to Morocco in which he suddenly erupted in a crazed frenzy, shouting about his imminent death from starvation and heat. Bing Crosby reminds him that rescue is just minutes away, and a disappointed Hope complains that Crosby has spoiled his best scene in the picture, and thus, his chance for an Academy Award.

             Although Hope never did win a Oscar for his performances (nor a nomination), the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences honored him with four honorary awards, and in 1960, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. While introducing the 1968 telecast, he famously quipped, “Welcome to the Academy Awards, or, as it’s known at my house, Passover.”

            Bob Hope remained vibrant as an entertainer through his television specials during the 1980s, hardly losing a step despite his advancing age. However, as the decade ended, with Hope nearing his 90s, his trademark and seemingly invincible sharp delivery had finally begun to noticeably decline. Although still witty and true to his style, his appearances grew less frequent and dramatically less Hope-centric through the final decade of the century.

Excerpts from Bob Hope.com      Excerpts from Wikipedia.com

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One of Life’s most enduring Actors

            Jimmy Stewart is undoubtedly one of the most famous names in film from both yesterday and today. Known for both his ability to take a role and turn it into a real person before our very eyes and his genuine personality both on screen and off. The reviews of just one of his many films pays homage to what may well be One of Life’s most enduring Actors.

MOVIE OF THE WEEK

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

October 16, 1939 LIFE Magazine

 

      Hollywood stages an amazing reproduction of the Senate in making pictures of Washington, politically timid Hollywood long confined its efforts to the eras preceding President Lincoln’s assassination. Its few glances at the contemporary capital have been imaginative rather than reportorial, and unconvinc­ing to anyone familiar with its scene. Now in Frank Capra’s new picture, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, the architecture, artifacts and anthropological cur­iosities of that city are recreated with almost fan­atical authenticity.

            Under the exacting critical eye of Mr. Capra’s technical adviser (see p. 74), craftsmen built a full- scale reproduction of the Senate Chamber, complete to the last acanthus leaf and arabesque. Inkwells, desks, pencils, even the legislators themselves were painstakingly duplicated. No effort was made to find doubles for individual Senators, but with academ­ic conscience Columbia’s casting office calculated the proportions of the “average Senator” and filled its chamber with actors-each about .5′2 years old„5 ft. 11 in. tall, 174 lb. in weight, with graying hair.

            Against this impressive background is spun the story of young Mr. Jefferson Smith (James Stew­art), who, appointed to a vacant seat by State pol­iticians in need of a stooge, exposes grafters at home, successfully combats treachery and emerges from his difficulties a national hero. No great his­toric issues are involved. Graft is the villain, and the scenarists carefully avoid indicating either the grafters’ home State (Montana in the original story) or the party to which they belong. The climax of the picture, during which Senator Smith faints on the floor and another Senator tries suicide, is probably as exciting as any single day’s session of Congress since the British invaded ‘Washington in 1814.

            Mr. Capra is at his best with stories of nice but seemingly helpless young men braving the hazards of a cynical world (Mr. Deeds Goes to Town). In this, perhaps his last picture for Columbia, he has joined melodrama and background, Hollywood and Wash­ington, fiction and fact, with spectacular success

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Excerpt from LIFE Magazine October 16, 1939

Like a lot of things that have been around for a few generations, it’s hard to imagine a time when LIFE didn’t exist. But before its inception, there was simply nothing like it in America . Up to then, published photos had been posed and static. But in the early thirties a marvelously portable 35mm camera was developed that could take pictures of almost anything under the sun, and Henry R. Luce and his colleagues at Time Inc. made plans to use it for an entirely new publishing venture. Their project, shrouded in secrecy, emerged full-blown in November 1936, and journalism was forever changed.

A weekly until December 1972, then in semiannual special reports, and since 1978 as a monthly, LIFE has been the publication that has chronicled and provoked America ’s passions, the publication said to bear the magazine world’s most world-famous logo.

Though the weekly LIFE’s life span covered only 37 years, it is impossible to think of any other magazine that had such an extraordinary impact. The weekly LIFE brought the world home to readers in a way they had never seen or experienced before. “Experienced” is the crucial word. A great picture is not merely seen, it demands an emotional response. LIFE created such responses countless times for millions of readers–and continues to do so to this day.

Most magazines are built around editors and writers, but LIFE has historically been built around photographers. Being a LIFE photographer is one of the most glamorous jobs in the profession, and it attracts the best in the world. To support the photographers, LIFE has always assembled a conglomeration of special talents and trained them to meet the magazine’s many special needs: reporters who work with photographers to line up a story, writers who can cram the necessary information into text blocks and short captions, picture editors, designers, art directors and department editors. All of them with one aim: pictures, pictures, pictures. But LIFE of course does more than present discrete photographic moments. The magazine was also a pioneer when it came to telling stories in still images. LIFE, in effect, created the photo-essay.  

Although LIFE ceased publication as a magazine in 2000, that did not mark the end of one of America ’s most beloved institutions. In 2001 LIFE began publishing again in the form of LIFE books, soft and hardcover books on topics ranging from the tragic events of September 11, 2001 , to the history of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. All the books are filled with the great photography and meaningful writing that made LIFE magazine an American institution.

For decades, LIFE and its readers have shared a truly interactive relationship. As you interact with this Web site, consider the words of LIFE’s founding editor, Henry Luce. His description of the magazine’s mission, written in 1936, resonates more than half a century later:

To see life; to see the world; to eyewitness great events; to watch the faces of the poor and the gestures of the proud; to see strange things — machines, armies, multitudes, shadows in the jungle and on the moon; to see man’s work — his paintings, towers and discoveries; to see things thousands of miles away, things hidden behind walls and within rooms, things dangerous to come to; the women men love and many children; to see and to take pleasure in seeing; to see and be amazed; to see and be instructed….

(Excerpt from www.life.com,  Time Inc., 2002)