Free Republic

It was just a chance encounter with a little piece of history.      LIFE Magazine, the Aug. 21, 1964, edition, just waiting to be snatched up at the Boston Public Library book sale.      Ah, the summer of '64! I would have called it an idyllic one - days at the beach (in pre-casino Atlantic City), nights listening to the Philadelphia Orchestra under the stars at Robin Hood Dell. The future filled with possibilities.      The pages of LIFE chronicled the fact that ``The Munsters'' was the TV hit of the year, the widowed Jackie Kennedy was vacationing in Europe and Chesterfields were...

We are in a cabin deep down below decks on a Navy ship jam-packed with troops that’s pitching and creaking its way across the Atlantic in a winter gale. There is a man in every bunk. There’s a man wedged into every corner. There’s a man in every chair. The air is dense with cigarette smoke and with the staleness of packed troops and sour wool. “Don’t think I’m sticking up for the Germans,” puts in the lanky young captain in the upper berth, “but…” “To hell with the Germans,” says the broad-shouldered dark lieutenant. “It’s what our boys...

MONTEREY, Calif. (AP) - Rex Simpson Hardy, one of Life magazine's first photographers and later a naval pilot during World War II, has died. He was 88. Hardy died of cancer on April 7 in Monterey, Calif., according to his son, Tom. One of a handful of photographers hired by Life magazine in 1936 for its first year of publication, Hardy gained attention for an Aug. 22, 1938 cover photo of Ginger Rogers dancing with Fred Astaire. He went on to photograph many Hollywood stars, including Harpo Marx, James Stewart, Robert Taylor, Gary Cooper, Joan Crawford and Clark Gable. Some...

Americans Are Losing the Victory in EuropeDesitute nations feel the U.S. has failed them By John Dos Passos Novelist John Dos Passos spent three months in Europe as a correspondent for Life, which recently printed his report on the Nurnberg Trials. Just back in the U.S., Author Dos Passos here sums up his impressions of the Continent. We are in a cabin deep down below decks on a Navy ship jam-packed with troops that’s pitching and creaking its way across the Atlantic in a winter gale. There is a man in every bunk. There’s a man wedged into every corner....

We are in a cabin deep down below decks on a Navy ship jam-packed with troops that’s pitching and creaking its way across the Atlantic in a winter gale. There is a man in every bunk. There’s a man wedged into every corner. There’s a man in every chair. The air is dense with cigarette smoke and with the staleness of packed troops and sour wool. “Don’t think I’m sticking up for the Germans,” puts in the lanky young captain in the upper berth, “but…” “To hell with the Germans,” says the broad-shouldered dark lieutenant. “It’s what our boys have...