One of my favorite pastimes on a lazy afternoon is to leaf through old magazines in various online archives. The big Life magazine archive is a particular joy to me, and many’s the afternoon I’ve lost myself in it, same as I would lose myself in the big bound volumes in backroom storage at my high school way back when.
Yesterday I had the urge to go back in time, and a URL in my browser’s history popped up and took me to the Sept. 23, 1957 issue. It has an amazing picture of Suzy Parker on the cover:
Suzy Parker was a top model of the day, her name immortalized in a Beatles tune. I first became aware of her because she modeled for Revlon and sometimes appeared in the live commercials on The $64,000 Question. Later she was married to Bradford Dillman, who I remember most for playing Dirty Harry’s officious superior in two movies.
I mean, look at her. Wow.
This week in September 1957 brought more than just a look into Suzy Parker’s world. There was a neat feature in which a photographer took modern-day photos with one of Mathew Brady’s cameras. I was especially interested that the famously grumpy John Foster Dulles was an agreeable sitter, for a comparison with Robert Seward’s portrait.
There’s a big feature about the American court system, featuring portraits of prominent jurists.
If you’re into duck hunting, there’s a photo feature on favored hunting sites:
Robert Frost went to England:
…and quiz show champion Charles Van Doren reflects on his experiences as a winner on Twenty One and whether the quiz show craze helps or hinders education. Two years later he would testify before Congress about how the whole thing had been rigged. It’s interesting to read this piece, knowing what was to come and knowing how his life was going to change after his confession.
As another sign of the quiz show craze, here’s this ad that fulminates against the federal electric utilities. (This post goes into the campaigns of America’s Independent Electric Light and Power Companies, and features some really strident ads that imply that government utilities are but the vanguard of creeping socialism that will take away your freedoms, your Bible, etc.)
In consumer goods, Columbia was promoting its big new stereophonic systems under the “Listening in Depth” campaign. I mean, look at that glorious monster spread over two pages. Columbia Records backed this campaign with a really awesome LP that featured samples from various stereophonic albums, but also had some bespoke tracks. (The special version of Duke Ellington’s “Track 360” started with the sound of a train traveling from the left channel to the right channel. If you’re wearing headphones, the train travels through your head. It’s fun!)
Not to be outdone, RCA is not only promoting its own sound systems…
…but is also promoting the washer-dryer systems it’s producing through its partnership with Whirlpool.
And let’s not forget Philco. Otherwise, they might make various threats. (As they did when they complained NBC’s Today program being broadcast from the RCA Exhibition Hall was unfair competition; as they did when Philips tried to do business in the United States, which prompted the birth of the “Norelco” brand name. Although many, many years later Philips bought what was left of Philco, and that’s why you see “Philips” more and seldom see “Norelco.” So there.)
Schlitz urges you to go bowling! Enjoy a Schlitzframe! Have some Schlitzfreshment! Be a Schlitzer! Get Schlitzfaced!
Colgate reminds you that the real reason you’re striking out on the romantic scene isn’t your personality, your clothes or any other cause except your HORRIBLE BREATH:
Mutual of New York can not only set you up with affordable insurance, but also with inspiration for song titles!
Conn – the same folks who brought you Mr. B Natural (and all the important debates pertaining thereunto) – promises that you’ll be playing music the very first day! (But Conn very carefully doesn’t promise how well you’ll play.)
Chrysler Corporation is promoting The Forward Look, although it conveniently elides any commentary on what will happen if your car ends up being possessed. Or any guarantees about its durability should it be stored in a below-ground time capsule for 50 years.
While these guys are eyeballing each other’s cars, Sputnik is only a couple weeks or so from being sent into orbit. (And to add to the quiz show craze, that same comparison is the opening scene to the movie Quiz Show. Which – as if that’s not enough – prominently featured another Chrysler product!)
If you need an outboard motor, throw renowned all-around lovable guy Carl Kiekhaefer some business:
All this, however, means I’m burying the lede. The big story is Little Rock, the integration of Central High School, and the role of Gov. Orval Faubus. Life sent a photographer down, has this lengthy up-close piece about Faubus, talks to his family.
Meanwhile, real people are suffering. The Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth was beaten with fists and a chain; Dorothy Counts was threatened and gave up her attempt to attend a Charlotte school; a bomb exploded in the library of a Nashville school because a young Black student had been enrolled there.
Life‘s editorial page examines the events of the week. The second piece got my attention, and it’s why I’m writing about this today. And it’s not because of the legal aspects of it. It’s because the last two grafs touch on the role of the human heart.
It’s interesting to reflect on this same passage 67 years later. For the past few weeks, we have been sorting through the aftermath of the 2024 election. There are those who feel vindicated. There are those who feel distressed. As nauseated as I am by what modern political discourse has devolved into, I’m in neither camp. Instead, historian that I am both by inclination and training, to me it’s the cycle repeating itself. It’s nothing new. Yes, the methods and the media have changed, but the fundamentals haven’t.
Something else that hasn’t changed: the fact that it comes down to what’s in the heart and the conscience of each of us. No election, no referendum, no regime can alter the reality that each of us must answer to ourselves – can we live with the person we see in the mirror? – and we also have to answer to an authority higher than any governor or president or king or overlord, and someday we’ll have to answer for how we treated one another in this life. We have to answer to that voice in our heads that keeps us from being able to sleep if we’ve wronged somebody else. Some folks will be able to meet that test. Other times, though, I’ve felt like the traveler in this song, unable to believe the inhumanity humans willingly visit upon other humans:
We hear a lot about the horrible things that happen. News, as I teach my students, isn’t when the river remains within its banks. But what we don’t see anywhere as often are the little acts of kindness, charity and goodness that take place when nobody’s looking. Yes, the people who say horrible things and do cruel acts and scream the loudest are going to get the attention, and to some extent they’ll set whatever the perception is. But what we don’t see are the everyday acts of goodness: the extended hand, the kind word when it’s needed, the gentle moments of human connection that remind us we’re all occupants of this same life and this same little marble that’s drifting somewhere in the great vastness of space.
I don’t get to choose my students. I have to take who comes my way, no matter their race, creed, color, background, politics, identity…you name the variation and I’ve encountered it in my classroom in some way, shape or form. I’m obligated to set all that aside and treat every one of them the best I know how. That’s not only as a professional, but also as a human being. I have to be able to look back on my day and not regret what I said or what I did. That, and I have never discounted the possibility that God sent someone my way because there was something I needed to learn from them.
Anybody who thinks they know how the next four years, let alone the next decade, will go is fooling themselves. Nobody knows. Some of it will involve things that are in our hands, but so much of it won’t be in our hands. What is always within our hands, though, is how we treat one another. I’d hope that underneath all the loudness and tumult that hearts haven’t hardened, that there’s still a fifth column of decency that remains at work, even if we seldom hear about it.
Or, as a couple of more recent observers would remind us: be excellent to each other.
