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Exerpt from August 27, 1956 Life Magazine

"Bus Stop" brings back more Adroit Actress.

Bus Stop is Marilyn Monroe's first movie since her year-long strike for artistic freedom, a year she spent seriously studying arting, reading good books, talking about playing in The Brothers Karamazov and getting to know her Pulitzer prize-winning playwright. But as soon as she steps through the headed curtain of a Phoenix honky-tonk in 2011 Century-Fox's Bus Stop, it becomes evident that all this intellectual activity has done Marilyn absolutely no harm whatsoever. She dances in daring costumes, wiggles in and out of tight dresses, lolls lusciously and uses a baby voice to set off an unbabylike figure. Under direction of Joshua Logan, whose sly ways with a camera get a lot of lawdy, brawling fun out of the movie, she shows that she has learned a great deal about her trade, developing a sure satiric touch as a comedienne. Maybe she isn't ready for The Brothers Karamazov. It doesn’t seem very important.

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Excerpt from June 28, 1948 Life Magazine.

The business-minded star of singing Westerns has parlayed a horse, a guitar and an agreeable voice into a multimillion-dollar empire.

This little news item is the sort of thing that occasionally brings a shadow of annoyance to the otherwise ruddy cheeks of Gene Autry, the singing cowboy of screen and radio. For Autry, currently billed as "Public Cowboy No.1,”or alternately as "America's Singin’est Cowboy.” does not like to see indications of his income, in whole or in part, publicly displayed. That kind of publicity he figures, is not good for a guy who for 15 years has been establishing himself in America's ears and eyes as just a simple cowhand with a voice. What is not good publicity is not good business, and of the latter Autry is clearly an expert judge. In the last three years he has been proving by concrete accomplishment that he is a businessman of action and acumen in the old American way. Autry is a chunky, slim-hipped, smiling man who rates so high in the minds of singing western fans that a lot of them become impassioned when they try to talk about him. "Four nights ago," wrote one in a recent issue of Autry's Aces, the publication of the Autry fan club, "Gene became the topic of conversation in, of all places, the cocktail lounge of the Athletic Club here in Omaha.

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Exerpt from May 14, 1956 Life magazine

Long Trek into the Chasm finds scenes of grandeur that few men have ever seen.

The poetically beautiful cataract on the opposite page is only a few miles from one of the most visited scenic spots in the U.S. Yet it’s dancing waters are seldom seen-except by "the people of the blue-green water."the Havasupai Indians who live nearby. The Havasu Falls are 50 miles from Grand Canyon Village on the south rim of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River, where nearly a million tourists go each year to view the titanic chasm. Most of them look, gasp admiringly and then depart. Some take the time to ride muleback to the canyon bottom and on to Phantom Ranch. Few ever wander into the great sunken wilderness that spreads through some 1.300 square miles of northwestern Arizona. While some people, mostly Indians, spend their lives in the mauve shadows of Grand Canyon, no one has ever explored all its myriad recesses or fathomed all its mysteries. In its entirety the Grand Canyon is quite beyond knowing, Some of the wonders of the canyon, like Havasu Falls, can be reached on muleback without too much difficulty. Others can be reached only by boat through the treacherous rapids of the Colorado River or by perilous climbs that tax the skill of mountain experts, Though the rangers at Grand Canyon National Park discourage exploration by the novice, there are dedicated adventurers who find canyon prowling an eternal challenge.

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The Fire and Fate Have Left Eight Widows

In the late afternoon of Jan. 27. 1967, a tall young woman in a white uniform got into her blue Mustang in a parking lot at the Manned Spacecraft Center, 22 miles from Houston, Texas. She was Dee O'Hara, personal nurse to the national space program astronauts, and she was happy. She had left work on time for a change; her car was new and it was a joy to drive. Then she snapped on the car radio. --- Four miles away on Pine Shadows Drive, in the seulement of Timber Cove where John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Scott Carpenter and Wally Schirra had built homes only a holler from each other, redhaired Adelin Hammack picked up her phone to hear the familiar voice of her husband Jerome, chief of flight operations landing and recovery division. Jerry told Adelin to go across the street to the Grissoms house and stay there until he got home, Adelin assumed that what Jerry really meant was that he'd be so late at the office that they couldn't play Poker that night. She walked across the street and said, “Hi, I guess the poker game is off? “Is it?" said Betty. "Well then, let's you and I have a drink." Before they had taken a sip, Wally Schirra's wife Jo from next door walked into the house. In Nassau Bay village Martha Chaffee was picking up dishes after having fed her two children their favorite hot dogs for supper when, unexpectedly, the wives of Astronauts AI Веan nпd Joе Кеrwin rang her doorbell. Pat White was late returning home to prepare supper because on Fridays she had to drive her daughter Bonnie to and from piano lessons in Dickinson. When Pat turned into her driveway she found her neighbor Jan Armstrong, wife of Astronaut Neil Armstrong, waiting silently in the carport.

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"ALEX" Wins Westminster Show

Last week Madison Square Garden in New York City literally howled with dogs. More than 2,500 of them. from dachshunds to barkless Basenjis, jammed into the Garden to compete in the 69th annual Westminster Dog Show. After two days of posing dogs, looking at their teeth and feeling their chests the judges finally picked a short-coupled, bushy-browed Scottie named Shieling's Signature as the best of them all.

Nicknamed "Alex," he will be 3 years old next May 10 and is the first of his breed to win the coveted Westminster Best in Show Award since 1911 when it was won by a Scottie named Champion Tickle Em Jock. Alex won because of his broad, deep chest, his magnificent head and his harsh, weather-resistant coat, important points in a Scottie.

Another reason was Alex's showmanship. He demonstrated that, contrary to a common conception that they are dour animals.animals, Scotties can be very happy dogs. Only two days before Alex had lost in the Scottish Terrier Show and his Westminster victory was a surprise. His personality made the difference this time. Said a judge, “He kept asking for it every minute."

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Last week the quiz show craze spread over the TV channels like the prize money showering on the shows' contestants. In seven days nearly $500,000 was paid out, or pledged against re-appearances, to an assortment of men, women, children and dogs as advertiser tried to outbid advertiser for an audience. As a result it has become difficult to get out of quiz show range at any hour of the day. Not counting the innumerable local shows there are now 21 question-and-answer contests on the three big networks - and seven of them are in action five days a week. On NBC, for instance, commencing at 11a.m. four one-half-hour quizzes follow one another. On Tuesday night there is only one hour in the period between 7:30 and 11 p.m. when the viewer need he out of sight or hearing of someone asking or answering a question -and being paid amply for doing so. In contrast to the impressive erudition of Columbia University Instructor Charles Van Doren and 11-year-old stock market statistician Leonard Ross, TV added a lucrative contest for talking dogs. The canines which could get out bi-syllabic words intelligibly on the early morning dog-talent search won $500 a word, with a $20,000 limit on canine loquacity. The 4-year-old terrier was the week's big winner there as he convinced the show's board of human judges that he was really speaking.

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For Dwight D. Eisenhower-walking around his Gettysburg farm the severing stroke of retirement should be more-shattering than for most men who are cut off from a consuming life's work. No longer are Ike's days filled with the awesome power and decisions of a General of the Army or a U.S. President–nor is his way smoothed by a retinue of aides. To see how he is doing, an old friend from white House days, Life photographer Edward Clark, went to visit the Eisenhower farm and produced the warm document shown on these pages. The still busy general, Clark found bristle with energy. He keeps a weather eye on his 190 acre farm a big operation with nine men and a herd of more than 30 purebred Aberdeen Angus. Ike is very proud of the farm, and his august guests—including the recent ones. General Alfred Gruenther, ex-AEC head Lewis Strauss. Clement Attlee get guided tours. In his Gettysburg office the former President spends eight hours-a-day, writing his memoirs, answering mail, seeing visitors. The letters come 200 a day--requests from former top aides for opinions (which he gives); invitations to speak at dedications, conventions (which he usually declines); demands (which he never sees) that he march on Washington and throw Kennedy out of the White House before it's too late. 

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 The Dual Lives of Dinah

There are, really, two Dinah Shores: the Basie Dinah and the Adaptable Dinah. They add up to America's most successful TV actress, seen by 32 million viewers of NBC's Chevy Show. The show, with its stylish snap and homey warmth, reflects perfectly the Total Dinah, The Basic Dinah was brought up in Nashville, with nice southern manners-which she has kept. She has a good husband-whom she has also kept. Her natural verve made her a cheerleader in high school and college, and her voice won her New York radio job with another unknown named Frank Sinatra, who was so awed by her ladylike ways that he once socked a man for saying a dirty word in front of her. In the TV studio-and at home, where she is the same sunny girl TV loves—the Basic Dinah has a female sense of the fitness of things. She has kept many of the same staff around her for years. She is not at war with others because she is not at war with herself.

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Everyone chips in. 

Last week an era in U.S. history came to an end in a factory in Pontiac, Mich. 25 miles north of Detroit. At exactly 1:31 p.m. on Feb. 2, the last pleasure car that will be made until the war is won rolled off the assembly line in Pontiac's Plant A. Other famous maker – Ford, Plymouth. Studebaker and the rest—had already ended production. Now the $4,000,000,000-a-year auto industry had only one customer and only one boss - the U.S. Government-at-war.

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Four Screaming Mopheads  (From the January 31, 1964 LIFE magazine).

First England fell, victim of a million girlish screams. Then, last week, Paris surrendered. Now the U.S. must brace itself. The Beatles are coming and already teen-age Americans are as keyed up as the days, only a dim decade ago, when Elvis first came twisting on. The Beatles? They are the four shrewdly goofy-looking lads. Fifteen months ago they were singing their songs in a smoky Liverpool jazz cellar. A talent scout took them and their haircuts to London. Today their records have sold five million copics in England and they are a national institution, seemingly as solid as Big Ben and a lot louder. Their musical style embellished standard rock 'n' roll with a jackhammer beat and high screams that would do a steam calliope proud...Read the rest of this article.