Behind the Scenes Photographs From a 1950s Casting Call for a Long-Haired Model

In 1959 Dallas photographer William Langley had a problem: he needed a long-haired model for a shoot—the woman’s hair needed to blow in the breeze. But no local agency had a model who could do the job. Their hair was all too short.

But then the Dallas Morning-Herald ran a story on Langley’s situation—a story which called long hair “as out of date as a raccoon coat.” So what happened? Regular women with long locks swarmed Langley’s studio, all ready to let their hair down.

LIFE photographer Thomas McAvoy dropped in to Langley’s studio to document the festivities for a story in LIFE’s June 15, 1959 issue titled “Baldy and the Long Hairs.” The headline conveys the general tenor of the coverage.

“Amid the great cascade of handsome hair falling down the backs of 30 attractive young girls, a lone and barren bald spot shone out,” LIFE wrote. “The owner of the bald spot, Dallas Photographer William Langley, was happily surrounding himself with a feminine commodity he had recently despaired of ever finding.”

In the 1950s female beauty icons had short-to-medium length hair, as befitting a neater and more contained era. Think about Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe, and especially Doris Day, whose “helmted” look was influential, and anything but unruly.

Then everything changed in the 1960s, as hippies let their freak flags fly and societal norms were turned on their heads, so to speak. The term “long hairs” that appeared jokingly in the 1959 LIFE headline would become synonymous with the counterculture of the 1960s. In short, Langley’s problem was very much of its day. In 1969 the photographer would have had a much easier time finding a model whose hair was meant to be blowin’ in the wind.

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The Makeup of Fred Gwynne’s Herman Munster in ‘The Munsters’ in the 1960s

The Munsters is an American sitcom depicting the home life of a family of benign monsters. The series starred Fred Gwynne as Frankenstein’s monster and head-of-the-household Herman Munster; Yvonne De Carlo as his wife Lily Munster; Al Lewis as Lily’s father, Grandpa, the somewhat over-the-hill vampire Count Dracula who longs for the “good old days” in Transylvania; Beverley Owen (later replaced by Pat Priest) as their teenage niece Marilyn Munster, who was attractive by conventional standards but the “ugly duckling” of the family; and Butch Patrick as their werewolfish son Eddie Munster.

The Munsters was extraordinarily hard for Fred to do. He was already 6-foot-5-and-a-half inches and they put him in buildup shoes to bring him up to about 7 feet, and Herman’s padded outfit weighed about 50 pounds.

And, of course, makeup that took hours to put on every day. Because of this, Gwynne’s costume was hot, heavy, and clumpy. They used to have to cool him down with a fan between takes just so that he didn’t faint!

In 1978, Fred Gwynne related to The New York Times that while he didn’t get rich from the show, he did make money from it.

“I was working for Universal under what they called a minimum residual deal,” he said. “That means I got paid for the first years of reruns, but that’s all. I didn’t make money from residuals, but I invested a lot in Xerox while I was doing the show and I got out of the market at the right time, after several stock splits. So in that way The Munsters made me enough money to survive on, which made it an interesting ballgame. The money let me pursue what I wanted.”

30 Amazing Photos of Tom Hanks From 1994’s Movie ‘Forrest Gump’

In 1994 a certain film was born starring Tom Hanks that has stuck with audiences for decades. With pinches of romance, historical themes, controversy, and action, Forrest Gump has something for every avid movie watcher.

When Tom Hanks signed up to star in the movie he opted out of receiving a salary, and instead wanted a portion of the film’s earnings. It turned out to be a fantastic move on his part, seeing as the film made more than $677 million. It is estimated by some reports that he earned over $60 million in the end. Hank’s performance in the film also won him an Academy Award, making him the second actor to win the Best Actor Award two years in a row. He won the award the year before for his role in Philadelphia.

One of the many things that Forrest Gump finds he’s amazing at during the course of the movie is ping pong. He starts playing it to pass the time as he recovers in a veterans’ hospital and then goes on to become a world-class ping pong player. As it turns out, Tom Hanks didn’t actually master the art of ping pong. He just vigorously swung the paddle around and the ping pong balls were digitally added in post-production. With the perfectly placed sound effects and seamless motion blur, you’d never be able to tell, even by today’s impressive CGI standards.

When a movie is being filmed, many takes are often required to capture certain shots. This can become a problem when the scene in question requires the actors to do a lot of running, because it quickly tires them out. In Forrest Gump, the title character runs across America at one point. Since Tom Hanks would’ve been exhausted by filming so many running scenes in quick succession, his younger brother Jim Hanks stood in for him. Jim Hanks isn’t identical to his brother, so he couldn’t fill in for him in the closeups, but he looked enough like him that the audience couldn’t tell the difference in the wide shots.

Forrest Gump was released in the United States on July 6, 1994 and received acclaim for Zemeckis’s direction, performances, visual effects, music, and screenplay. The film won six Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor for Tom Hanks, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Visual Effects, and Best Film Editing. It received many award nominations, including Golden Globes, British Academy Film Awards and Screen Actors Guild Awards.

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Saratoga (1937): The Last Movie of Jean Harlow

Saratoga is a 1937 American romantic comedy film written by Anita Loos and directed by Jack Conway. The film stars Clark Gable and Jean Harlow in their sixth and final film collaboration and features Lionel Barrymore, Frank Morgan, Walter Pidgeon, Hattie McDaniel and Margaret Hamilton.

When filming of Saratoga was 90% completed, Harlow collapsed on the set during a scene with Walter Pidgeon and died about a week later, of kidney failure. She had suffered from sun poisoning some months before, combined with the problems with her wisdom teeth, which contributed to her critical condition.

MGM wanted to reshoot the film with Virginia Bruce or Jean Arthur, but Harlow’s fans complained, so the remaining scenes were filmed with Mary Dees, shot from behind or with costumes that obscured her face, playing Harlow’s part for the camera, and Paula Winslowe supplying Harlow’s voice.

Saratoga was released on July 23, 1937, not quite seven weeks after Harlow’s death, and the crowds of her fans that turned out to see the film pushed it into being one of the year’s largest monetary successes. According to MGM records the film earned $2,432,000 in the US and Canada and $820,000 elsewhere, resulting in a profit of $1,146,000 to make it became the most successful film of 1937 and the highest-grossing film of Harlow’s career.

These romantic photos captured portraits of Jean Harlow and Clark Gable together during the filming of Saratoga in 1937.

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The Story Behind the Photo Session of Marilyn Monroe Taken by Douglas Kirkland for Look Magazine, 1961

Douglas Kirkland has been passionate about images since he was a child. Coming from Canada he started working for a small photo studio in Virginia. A few years later he met the photographer of whom he was an admirer and went to New York for the position of Irving Penn’s assistant. Despite the prominent position he obtained, Douglas Kirkland needed better salary to live, but Irving Penn refused to increase it. He then gave himself some time to make himself known, later he joined Look Magazine for which he got a first photo session with Elizabeth Taylor. This photo session was the origin of his reputation as a star portraitist. It is 1961 and it is also the year in which he photographed Marilyn Monroe.

“The first time I met Marilyn to talk about the shoot, my colleagues and I went to her home on Doheny Drive – right on the edge where Beverly Hills and Hollywood connect. She was very disarming because she didn’t seem like a big superstar; she seemed more like the girl next door. I wanted to get some hot pictures of her, but in my shy Canadian way, I didn’t know how to say that. In the end Marilyn was the one to take charge. She said, ‘I know what we need. We need a bed, and we need white silk sheets – they must be silk. Frank Sinatra records, and Dom Pérignon champagne.’ She totally pre-empted what I wanted to go for on the shoot, and I was so relieved. We scheduled it to be done about three days later, at 7.30pm on a Friday evening.”

“The day came and I arrived promptly at the studio, which we’d we rented in Hollywood. I waited and waited, and 9.30pm came and she had not yet appeared. I said to myself, ‘If Marilyn doesn’t show up, it’s going to be a disaster. I’m still new at the publication, I’ve been sent to California, and if I don’t take back pictures it will be very difficult to explain.’ Just at that moment, at the other side of the studio, I heard the door open and in came Marilyn, with a lady carrying some clothes – ultimately she didn’t use them very much. She came in a completely different person to the girl I’d met last time – I saw the real Marilyn, the Marilyn we all think of. She seemed to move in slow motion to me; she had a luminescence about her and she didn’t step, she almost floated. That’s my memory of it, that’s the impression she left me with.”

The artist suggested to Marilyn to show how she wanted to be remembered 25 years later. It was a very delicate, sensual and joyful series that emerges. The photographer managed to produce and capture a very intimate moment between him and the star.

The most famous photos in this series are images of Marilyn taken vertically from a balcony in the photo studio. The decor is entirely white. Out of time and space, Marylin is plunged naked into a cloud of sheets. The star plays with the fabric and the cushion, with a seductive look. She rolls in the sheets, smiles and has fun, she seems happy and fulfilled. The atmosphere is bright, fresh, Marilyn’s blond hair, her fair skin and the white of the bedding, everything is immaculate and pure. Douglas Kirkland used a very special grain here.

“She had a robe on, and she took that robe off and got in under the white silk sheets. I just want to tell you, I was 27, but I was mentally 17. As I say, I’d had a very small town background and here, the superstar of all superstars was five feet away from me; I could reach out and touch her, and as she slipped into the bed I saw parts of her body that I couldn’t believe I’d ever see.

“Marilyn was so sexual, very sensual. At one point she suggested that we should do something more than just talk, in other words, embrace each other. This is where my small town boy came in, I acted like I didn’t understand, I was embarrassed. I looked down into my camera and just kept shooting pictures, over and over, as quickly as I could. I think that’s why the pictures are so strong, because that sexual desire was channeled into the camera instead of into action.

“I got overhead so I could shoot directly down on her. I started to take pictures, but I didn’t need to direct her – I just talked with her. It was like flirting, both ways, it became very hot, the charge in the air. I had one assistant, and she had her woman who worked with her. We took a break, and then she said, ‘I want to be alone with this boy, I find it usually works better that way’. So everybody left the room, I heard the door close, and I realised I was alone with Marilyn. Then I came down from up above, and she said, ‘why don’t you come down and do some close-ups down here’. I came down from the stairs that I was up on, and I was a little over one metre away from her.”

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Photos of Marlon Brando During the Filming of ‘Guys and Dolls’ (1955)

Guys and Dolls is a musical with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser and book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows. It is based on “The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown” (1933) and “Blood Pressure”, which are two short stories by Damon Runyon, and also borrows characters and plot elements from other Runyon stories, such as “Pick the Winner”.

The show premiered on Broadway in 1950, where it ran for 1,200 performances and won the Tony Award for Best Musical. The musical has had several Broadway and London revivals, as well as a 1955 film adaptation starring Marlon Brando, Jean Simmons, Frank Sinatra and Vivian Blaine.

Guys and Dolls was selected as the winner of the 1950 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. However, because of writer Abe Burrows’ communist sympathies as exposed by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), the Trustees of Columbia University vetoed the selection, and no Pulitzer for Drama was awarded that year.

In 1998, Vivian Blaine, Sam Levene, Robert Alda and Isabel Bigley, along with the original Broadway cast of the 1950 Decca cast album, were posthumously inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

These vintage photos captured portrait of Marlon Brando during the filming of Guys and Dolls in 1955.

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Behind the Scenes Photos of Jessica Lange in Kong’s Animatronic Hand, 1976

Critics of 1976 King Kong frequently harped on the robot Kong as proof of the project’s “failure”, special effects wise. Because the robot ultimately failed to live up to its billing (whether intentionally or not), and barely appeared in a few brief in the final film, critics contended that the film was not the special effects triumph which its fans claim. But in their emphasis on the robot, those critics seemed strangely blind to the movie's true special effects accomplishments. Along with the animatronic masks worn by Rick Baker, 1976 King Kong boasted the creation of a pair of Kong-size hands that were alone a triumph of mechanical engineering.

While a full-sized Kong hand had been used in the original 1933 King Kong, it was little more than an inanimate prop. The fingers had to be man-handled into position around Fay Wray’s body by stage hands, and it could not move during the actual shot.

For his 1976 remake, Dino De Laurentiis wanted more –– a lot more. He wanted the hand (which was about twice as big as the one in the original) to convey emotion and character, to be tender one minute, then terrifying the next, to be capable of being submerged in a pool or slammed into the earth in a fit of simian rage. And perhaps most amazingly, he wanted it to gently undress the heroine in one classic scene, all without breaking her neck!

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Vintage Photos Captured Intimate Moments of Elvis Presley and Nancy Sinatra During the Filming of ‘Speedway’ (1968)

Elvis Presley and Nancy Sinatra were two major icons in the 1960s, so it only made sense that they made a movie together. During the making of Speedway, the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll tried to spend some time alone with Sinatra.

Speedway was a 1968 MGM production directed by Norman Taurog. In the film, Elvis plays a race car driver. Considering he drove a race car in one of his most famous movies, Viva Las Vegas, Speedway feels at least a little derivative.

According to Nancy, the couple spent a great deal of time together on the Speedway set. “We used to ride a bicycle built for two around the studio, the MGM lot,” she said. “Speedway was Elvis at his peak, in his prime. He was beautiful. This movie and his ‘comeback’ special were his zenith. I mean, how gorgeous was he then? Wow!”

Nancy also said she and Elvis “flirted” but it was “platonic” flirting.

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Marilyn Monroe Being Moody for Photographer Ben Ross in 1953

When we think of Marilyn photographers, the name Ben Ross is one that does not often come up, at least not immediately. However, when looking at his photographs they are some of the most beautiful ever taken of Marilyn Monroe. Ross was to photograph Marilyn three times over her lifetime with the most famous of his photographs being the ‘Emotions’ session.

Ben Ross was born in 1916 in New York, his birth name was Benjamin Rosenblatt. He had a natural gift for photography and so it was no surprise when he took up a post with Parade magazine where his brother Sid also worked as a journalist.

He had a style of photography which was unusual for the time, he did not liked staged shots and preferred to capture his subjects in candid poses. He himself remarked that this was not the accepted way of photographing the famous, “I never did that. I basically photographed during interviews, or, you know, just as they were.”

In 1951 during a visit to Hollywood he was asked if he would photograph a starlet named Marilyn Monroe. From his description of their first meeting it seems that Marilyn’s problems with lateness did not start when she was an established star, she appears to have had difficulties in readying herself for the camera and was troubled by her appearance right from the start of her career.

“I got Marilyn Monroe walking down the street the first time I photographed her. She kept me waiting for an hour and a half. I didn’t know who she was, she was just a bit player who did a thing in The Asphalt Jungle, and was a mistress of a guy – a little part, and got a lot of mail. I photographed a lot of starlets in those days. Most of them didn’t work out. They said “photograph her”. I was with my brother then. We were saying, “who the hell is she?” We were going to leave, but somehow we stayed. That was a nice day. We were waiting outside her house and finally a woman comes out. She said she doesn’t think she’s beautiful enough, she keeps putting on her make up and taking it off. Finally, she came out in a sweater and she looked great. She walked down the street and I photographed her. I did some others. I did her in a book store. The only charge account she had was two charge accounts to bookstores. She wanted really desperately to be admired intellectually. I asked her to pick a book to read, so she picks out an Arthur Miller book – six years before they were married. It wasn’t a coincidence. She had met him at a studio, one of those studio things, she admired him. So, you know, I got a few pictures. She was very charming, once she got there – a person with heart, not the usual Hollywood person. She was probably the only Hollywood star that you could relate to. When she came to New York, she called Sid, my brother – I was away on a job  –  and they went out to Coney Island.”

Unfortunately Ross and Marilyn would never share another photographic sitting. In 2001 Ross began to reproduce some of his Marilyn portraits and in 2008 a set of thirteen of these sold at Christies for $35,000.

Ross was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award by Photographic Administrators Incorporated in 2002. He died in 2004.

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Bettie Page and the Iconic Cheetah Pinups: Here’s the Story Behind the Famous Photos Taken by Bunny Yeager in 1954

In 1954, during one of her annual pilgrimages to Miami, Florida, Bettie Page met photographers Jan Caldwell, H. W. Hannau and Bunny Yeager. At that time, Page was the top pin-up model in New York. Yeager, a former model and aspiring photographer, signed Page for a photo session at the now-closed wildlife park Africa USA in Boca Raton, Florida.

The photographs from this photo shoot are among her most celebrated. They include nude shots with a pair of cheetahs named Mojah and Mbili. The leopard skin patterned Jungle Girl outfit she wore was made, along with much of her lingerie, by Page herself.

The night before the shoot, Bettie finished sewing the leopard-print one-piece that she wore in the photographs. It had an off-the-shoulder Tarzan look, a triangle front flap, and five thin ties up the side. She examined the fit of the suit in the mirror and then took it off to practice modeling naked.

Bettie heard a scratching sound at the window. At first she thought it was the wind, then she recognized the sound of the screen latches unhooking. She grabbed her robe and turned out the light. “I’ll give you two seconds to get away from this window or I’ll blow your brains out!” Shouted Bettie.

Fortunately, the intruder fled. She called a night watchman who came over, replaced the screens and sat on her porch all night. Despite this, Bettie couldn’t sleep. She called Bunny the next morning to cancel the shoot. “I look like I’ve been on a big drunk,” Bettie warned. “I have big bags under my eyes.”

Bunny insisted that she had already arranged for the location and picked Bettie up at 7:30 the next morning. At the Safari Park, Bettie posed hanging from the trees, near a waterfall, and with animals, including zebras, ostriches, camels and a chimpanzee.

If you look closely at several of the images from the photo shoot, the eyes on both of the cheetahs look glassy. The trainer introduced Bettie to the pair, named Moja and Mbili, (meaning one and two in Swahili.) He told her to be sure and hang onto their chains because they would be hard to catch. He also said that the cheetahs were ill and had been up most of the night.

“The cheetahs didn’t look well either. I felt a little uneasy; I thought they might take it out on me. But I think the worst thing that happened was that they licked me,” recalled Bettie.

Bettie and the cheetahs came through and Bunny Yeager took some of her most fabulous images of Page that day.

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