CHRONICLES OF OUR GENERATION

CHRONICLES OF OUR GENERATION
chronicles of our generation

Sunday, May 30, 2021

 

The battle that history forgot:Battle of Poitiers



Edward the Black Prince - Leeds City Square



The effigy and tomb of The Black Prince, Canterbury, England


 

photo

Nouaille Maupertuis, Abbey

The abbey that was there at the time of the Battle of Poitiers, 1356, is the group of buildings in the foreground which was subsequently fortified with a wall and towers and a moat.

 

The battle that history forgot: Sharpe creator Bernard Cornwell says the little-known victory at the Battle of Poitiers more than 600 years ago was one of the greatest military triumphs in British historySavage: A 14th century illustration shows the Battle of Poitiers, between the French and the English in 1356

The Battle of Poitiers was a major battle of the Hundred Years' War between England and France. The battle occurred on 19 September 1356 near Poitiers, France. Preceded by the Battle of Crécy in 1346, and followed by the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, it was the second of the three great English victories of the war.

 

Edward, Prince of Wales (now better known as the Black Prince), the eldest son of King Edward III of England, began a great chevauchée on 8 August 1356. He conducted many scorched earth raids[3] northwards from the English base in Aquitaine, in an effort to bolster his troops in central France, as well as to raid and ravage the countryside. His forces met little resistance, burning numerous towns to the ground and living off the land, until they reached the Loire River at Tours. They were unable to take the castle or burn the town due to a heavy downpour. This delay allowed John II, King of France, to attempt to catch Edward's army. The King, who had been besieging Breteuil in Normandy arranged the bulk of his army at Chartres to the north of the besieged Tours, dismissing approximately 15,000–20,000 of his lower-quality infantry to increase the speed of his forces.Negotiations prior to the Battle of Poitiers

There were negotiations before the battle of Poitiers that are recorded in the writings of the life of Sir John Chandos. He records the final moments of a meeting of both sides in an effort to avoid the bloody conflict at Poitiers. The extraordinary narrative occurred just before that battle and reads as follows:

... The conference attended by the King of France, Sir John Chandos, and many other prominent people of the period, The King (of France), to prolong the matter and to put off the battle, assembled and brought together all the barons of both sides. Of speech there he (the King) made no stint. There came the Count of Tancarville, and, as the list says, the Archbishop of Sens (Guillaume de Melun) was there, he of Taurus, of great discretion, Charny, Bouciquaut, and Clermont; all these went there for the council of the King of France. On the other side there came gladly the Earl of Warwick, the hoary-headed (white or grey headed) Earl of Suffolk was there, and Bartholomew de Burghersh, most privy to the Prince, and Audeley and Chandos, who at that time were of great repute. There they held their parliament, and each one spoke his mind. But their counsel I cannot relate, yet I know well, in very truth, as I hear in my record, that they could not be agreed, wherefore each one of them began to depart. Then said the prophetic words of Geoffroi de Charny: 'Lords,' quoth he, 'since so it is that this treaty pleases you no more, I make offer that we fight you, a hundred against a hundred, choosing each one from his own side; and know well, whichever hundred be discomfited, all the others, know for sure, shall quit this field and let the quarrel be. I think that it will be best so, and that God will be gracious to us if the battle be avoided in which so many valiant men will be slain.[5]

photoNobles and men-at-arms who fought with the Black Prince

Jean Froissart states as follows:

Now will I name some of the principal lords and knights (men-at-arms) that were there with the prince: the earl of Warwick, the earl of Suffolk, the earl of Salisbury, the earl of Oxford, the lord Raynold Cobham, the lord Spencer, the lord James Audley, the lord Peter his brother, the lord Berkeley, the lord Basset, the lord Warin, the lord Delaware, the lord Manne, the lord Willoughby, the lord Bartholomew de Burghersh, the lord of Felton, the lord Richard of Pembroke, the lord Stephen of Cosington, the lord Bradetane and other Englishmen; and of Gascon there was the lord of Pommiers, the lord of Languiran, the captal of Buch, the lord John of Caumont, the lord de Lesparre, the lord of Rauzan, the lord of Condon, the lord of Montferrand, the lord of Landiras, the lord Soudic of Latrau and other (men-at-arms) that I cannot name; and of Hainowes the lord Eustace d'Aubrecicourt, the lord John of Ghistelles, and two other strangers, the lord Daniel Pasele and the lord Denis of Amposta, a fortress in Catalonia.[6]

Edward le Despencer, 1st Baron le Despencer also fought at Poitiers under The Black Prince.[7] Sir Thomas Felton fought not only at Poitiers but also at the Battle of Crécy.[8]

One of the chief commanders at both Crécy and Poitiers was John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, mentioned above.[9]

Another account states that John of Ghistelles perished at the Battle of Crécy.

[edit]Nobles and men-at-arms who fought with King Jean II at, or just prior to, the battle

Froissart describes, with less specificity in this passage, some of the nobles that were assembled at, or just prior to the Battle:

... the Englishmen were coasted by certain expert knights of France, who always made report to the king what the Englishmen did. Then the king came to the Haye in Touraine and his men had passed the river of Loire, some at the bridge of Orléans and some at Meung, at Saumur, at Blois, and at Tours and whereas they might: they were in number a twenty thousand men of arms beside other; there were a twenty-six dukes and earls (Counts) and more than sixscore banners, and the four sons of the king, who were but young, the duke Charles of Normandy, the lord Louis, that was from thenceforth duke of Anjou, and the lord John duke of Berry, and the lord Philip, who was after duke of Burgoyne.[10]

The French army also included a contingent of Scots commanded by Sir William Douglas.[11] Douglas fought in the King's own Battle, but when the fight seemed over Douglas was dragged by his men from the melee. Froissart states that "... the Earl Douglas of Scotland, who fought a season valiantly, but when he saw the discomfiture he departed and saved himself; for in no wise would he be taken by the Englishmen, he would rather there be slain".[12]

Others who were either killed or captured at the actual Battle were as follows: King Jean II; Prince Philip (youngest son and progenitor of the House of Valois-Burgundy), Geoffroi de Charny, carrier of theOriflamme, Peter I, Duke of Bourbon, Walter VI, Count of Brienne and Constable of France, Jean de Clermont, Marshal of France, Arnoul d'Audrehem, the Count of Eu, the Count of Marche and Ponthieu Jacques de Bourbon taken prisoner at the Battle and died 1361, the Count of Étampes, the Count of Tancarville, the Count of Dammartin, the Count of Joinville, Guillaume de Melun, Archbishop of Sens.






The Battle of Poitiers

At the beginning of the battle, the English removed their baggage train leading the French to think they were about to retreat which provoked a hasty charge by the French knights against the archers.[15] According to Froissart, the English attacked the enemy, especially the horses, with a shower of arrows. Froissart also writes that the French armour was invulnerable to the English arrows, that the arrowheads either skidded off the armour or shattered on impact. English history of the battle disputes this, as some claim that the narrow bodkin point arrows they used have been proven capable of penetrating most plate armour of that time. While tests have been done to support this with fixed pieces of flat metal, the result is inconclusive with respect to the curved armour of the period.[citation needed] Given the following actions of the archers, it seems likely Froissart was correct. The armour on the horses was weaker on the sides and back, so the archers moved to the sides of the cavalry and shot the horses in the flanks. This was a popular method of stopping a cavalry charge, as a falling horse often destroyed the cohesion of the enemy's line. The results were devastating.[16][17] The Dauphin attacked Salisbury and pressed his advance in spite of heavy shot by the English archers and complications of running into the retreatingvanguard of Clermont's force. Green suggests that the Dauphin had thousands of troops with him in this phase of the attack. He advanced to the English lines but ultimately fell back. The French were unable to penetrate the protective hedge the English were using. This phase of the attack lasted about two hours.[18]

This cavalry attack was followed by infantry attack. The Dauphin's infantry engaged in heavy fighting, but withdrew to regroup. The next wave of infantry under Orléans, seeing that the Dauphin's men were not attacking, turned back and panicked. This stranded the forces led by the King himself. This was a formidable fighting force, and the English archers were running very low on arrows; the archers joined the infantry in the fight and some of both groups mounted horses to form an improvised cavalry.

At about this time, King John sent two sons from the battlefield. His youngest son, Philip, stayed with him and fought at his side in the final phase of the battle. When the Dauphin and other sons withdrew, the duke of Orléans also withdrew. Combat was hard, but the Black Prince still had a mobile reserve hidden in the woods, which was able to circle around and attack the French in the flank and rear. The French were fearful of encirclement and attempted to flee. King John was captured with his immediate entourage only after a memorable resistance.[19]

Amongst the notable captured or killed according to Froissart were:

Pre-battle manoeuvres

Map of the Battle

File:Maneuvers prior to the battle of Poitiers 1356 map-en.svg

File:Battle of Poitiers 1356 map-en.svg

[edit]The capture of the French king

Froissart again gives us a vivid description of the capture of King Jean II and his youngest son in this passage:

" ... So many Englishmen and Gascons came to that part, that perforce they opened the king's battle, so that the Frenchmen were so mingled among their enemies that sometime there was five men upon one gentleman. There was taken the lord of Pompadour and the lord Bartholomew de Burghersh, and there was slain sir Geoffrey of Charny with the king's banner in his hands: also the lord Raynold Cobham slew the earl of Dammartin. Then there was a great press to take the king, and such as knew him cried, ' Sir, yield you, or else ye are but dead.' There was a knight of Saint Omer's, retained in wages with the king of England, called sir Denis Morbeke, who had served the Englishmen five year before, because in his youth he had forfeited the realm of France for a murder that he did at Saint-Omer's. It happened so well for him, that he was next to the king when they were about to take him: he stept forth into the press, and by strength of his body and arms he came to the French king and said in good French, 'Sir, yield you.' The king beheld the knight and said: 'To whom shall I yield me? Where is my cousin the prince of Wales? If I might see him, I would speak with him.' Denis answered and said: 'Sir, he is not here; but yield you to me and I shall bring you to him.' 'Who be you?' quoth the king. 'Sir,' quoth he, 'I am Denis of Morbeke, a knight of Artois; but I serve the king of England because I am banished from the realm of France and I have forfeited all that I had there.' Then the king gave him his right gauntlet, saying, 'I yield me to you.'"




 

Jean II, the Good, being captured.

As Edward, the Black Prince, wrote shortly afterward in a letter to the people of London:

"It was agreed that we should take our way, flanking them, in such a manner that if they wished for battle or to draw towards us, in a place not very much to our disadvantage, we should be the first ... the enemy was discomfited, and the king was taken, and his son; and a great number of other great people were both taken and slain[.]"[21]

See also Ransom of King John II of France.

[edit]Aftermath in France

Jean de Venette, a Carmelite friar and medieval chronicler vividly describes the chaos in France which he states he himself witnessed, after the time of this Battle.[22] He states:

...From that time on all went wrong with the Kingdom and the state was undone. Thieves and robbers rose up everywhere in the land. The nobles despised and hated all others and took no thought for the mutual usefulness and profit of lord and men. They subjected and despoiled the peasants and the men of the villages. In no wise did they defend their country from enemies. Rather did they trample it underfoot, robbing and pillaging the peasants' goods.At dawn on September 19, 1356, an English army found itself trapped and facing battle outside the city of Poitiers in central France. The soldiers were so short of water they had given their horses wine to drink just to keep the beasts alive. Even drunken horses were better than dead ones.

There was a river close by, but it was impossible to carry enough water for 6,000 men and thousands of horses up the steep hill to the position where the English were trapped. The enemy, the army of France, was almost twice as strong. But that would not stop the English force from fighting its way to one of the greatest victories in our military history.

It has always seemed strange to me that we remember the Battle of Crecy and we celebrate the Battle of Agincourt, but most people seem to have forgotten Poitiers — the other great victory in the Hundred Years War — yet it was just as remarkable a triumph. In some ways, even more so.

Savage: A 14th century illustration shows the Battle of Poitiers, between the French and the English in 1356

Savage: A 14th century illustration shows the Battle of Poitiers, between the French and the English in 1356

At Agincourt, the English were outnumbered at least five to one, but the fighting at Poitiers was much harder. For the French nobles were desperate to drive their hated foe from the land and back across the Channel after years of bloody conquest.

Their king, Jean II, was a little more circumspect, for he could remember the crushing defeat the English had inflicted at Crecy in northern France ten years earlier. On that occasion, a 16-year-old Edward of Woodstock, the Prince of Wales — son of Edward III — had made a name for himself.

 

Since then, the French had tended to avoid battle because they feared the deadly accuracy of the English longbowmen. So they shut themselves behind stone walls in castles and fortified towns. The English response was to mount raids known as chevauchees.

The army advanced slowly across the countryside; killing, pillaging, raping. In 1355, the prince had led one such assault across southern France, from the English base at Bordeaux to the Mediterranean and back. They had captured castles and towns, burned villages, and taken vast amounts of plunder in a relentless expedition.

Highlighting: We ought to remember Poitiers, says Bernard Cornwell, creator of Captain Richard Sharpe

Such a chevauchee achieved three things: it enriched the invaders, it weakened the enemy’s economy and so reduced the amount he could tax his subjects, and finally, it might, just might, tempt the enemy to come out of their castles and face the English in open battle.

That is what happened in 1356 when the Prince of Wales, by then an accomplished commander in his mid-20s, struck north out of Gascony, which was English territory, and aimed his rapacious army at the heartland of France, a dagger thrust towards Paris.

The plan was to join up with another English army coming out of Normandy, but that plan failed when violent weather forced the prince to retreat back to Gascony. The French king assembled his army and followed.

The English were travel-weary, the French were fresh. The English were weighed down by wagonloads of plunder, and so King Jean II’s army slowly overtook the prince’s army until, on September 17, the two armies were so close that a battle seemed unavoidable.

The prince, knowing the French were close, had taken refuge on a high, wooded ridge close to the village of Nouaille. It was a strong position.

An enemy wanting to attack him would need to come uphill through tangling vineyards and, more importantly, the English had massed behind a thick hedge, which represented a fearsome obstacle for any attacker.

The prince — who came to be known long after his death as the Black Prince — may have taken up a strong position, but the evidence still suggests he would have preferred to avoid battle because of his inferior numbers.

But the French were also wary of those devastating English longbows that unleashed ash-shafted, steel-tipped arrows with fearsome accuracy.

The French crossbowmen were no match.

At Crecy, the French had attacked on horseback and the English arrows had ripped into the stallions, causing dreadful pain, death and horror. So at Poitiers, the French resolved to fight largely on foot, because a man’s armour would be more likely to stop the arrows.

And it was on the morning of September 19 that the French king overcame his doubts and ordered an attack.

Seeking to protect his plunder, the Prince had ordered part of his army and his baggage train to cross the river and march away southwards. But the river crossing went wrong, the planned English retreat was stalled and the French soon saw the commotion in the valley. They sent horsemen to attack the English left wing, and ordered an uphill advance on the main position.

The Battle of Poitiers had begun. The Chandos Herald, the poem written about the life of the Black Prince, describes it thus: ‘Then began the shouting, and noise and clamour raised and the armies began to draw near. Then on both sides they began to shoot; there were many a creature who that day was brought to his end.’

The first French attacks were by cavalry mounted on thundering warhorses that would have made the ground shake as they thundered across the field — a terrifying sight for the line of Englishmen waiting to receive them.

The French had collected their most heavily armoured stallions, ridden by plate-armoured men, who made their charges with the intention of shattering the archers on the English wings.

For a time, it worked. The horses were hung with leather and mail, their faces guarded by plate armour, but only the fronts of the beasts were so protected.

As soon as the archers realised the animals’ flanks and rears were unarmoured, they moved to the side and shot the attackers into bloody ruin — as scores of horses collapsed under their masters in floundering terror.

English men-at-arms moved into the chaos and slaughtered fallen riders. And it was a gruesome business. Death came through horrific injuries inflicted by lead-weighted maces and battle-axes, hammers, spikes, poles and knives.

But this was no more than a setback for the French, whose main attack did not depend on the horsemen.

It was made by armoured men advancing on foot, and we know that this attack reached the prince’s line, and that there was savage hand-to-hand fighting that lasted some hours while exhausted men slashed, stabbed and wrestled for their lives.

That French attack on foot was led by the dauphin — the king’s heir — but it failed to break the disciplined English line. Eventually the king, seeing that his eldest son’s attack had not broken the enemy, ordered the dauphin to retreat to nearby Poitiers, where he would be safe from capture.

But King Jean himself was in no mood to abandon the struggle. He marched his men up the slope and through gaps in the thick hedge, where they flung themselves on to the exhausted English line.

The close fighting began again, but the English prince was a master strategist, and chose this moment to unleash a surprise attack that would turn the tide decisively in his favour. He sent about 200 horsemen around the rear of the French army — led by a Gascon lord but including some English archers. They managed to reach the enemy’s rear without being detected, and then they charged. When they slammed into the back of the king’s force of infantry, the French panicked and fled.

Hundreds of English soldiers then mounted their horses and followed, and in a nearby field — called the Champ d’Alexandre — the flower of French chivalry was cut down. It was a slaughteryard, and at its end 2,500 were dead, and half the great lords of France were among the 3,000 prisoners taken by the English, as was King Jean himself.

He was forcibly taken to London and paraded through the streets before being thrown in the Tower, to show what Englishmen had achieved near Poitiers on that September day in 1356.

The tale of the Black Prince’s victory is a magnificent story, unfairly forgotten, but worth remembering. Because there was a battle, long ago, and great deeds were done.

 

Knight of the Hundred Years War

The closest interpretation of a mid-to-late fourteenth century knight.

The surcoat shortened progressively through the second quarter of the fourteenth century to the short jupon. This style of garment was just coming into vogue at the Battle of Crecy (1346) and Poitiers (1356).

 

This is transition armor, showing the progression from mail to plate defense. To be completely accurate THEY should be wearing some type of rudimentary brigandine or coat of plates over the mail haubergon.

The articulating arm and leg armor evolved sometime by the end of the 1350s. From about 1320 to 1350 seperately attached plates continued to be added over the sleeve of the mail hauberk which shortened to a three-quarter length. It appears that in the decade between 1350 to 1360 these seperate vambraces, elbow cops, and rear-guards became rivetted together on closely articulating lames that flexed at the elbow. Leg armor followed a similar evolution.

Only rich knights would have such highly developed armor by the 1360s and it was usually forged in Italy. The older style of seperately attached plates probably predominated well into the 1370s to 1380s and remained the style in German kingdoms.

 

Combatants: An army of English and Gascons against the French and their allies.

Generals: The Black Prince against King John I of France.

Size of the armies: The Black Prince’s army numbered some 7,000 knights, men-at-arms and archers.

Numbers in the French army are uncertain but were probably around 35,000, although Froissart gives the size of the French army as 60,000. The French army comprised a contingent of Scots commanded by Sir William Douglas.
Uniforms, arms and equipment: Depending upon wealth and rank a mounted knight of the period wore jointed steel plate armour incorporating back and breast plates, a visored bascinet helmet and steel plated gauntlets with spikes on the back, the legs and feet protected by steel greaves and boots, called jambs. Weapons carried were a lance, shield, sword and dagger. Over the armour a knight wore a jupon or surcoat emblazoned with his arms and an ornate girdle.

The weapon of the English and Welsh archers was a six foot yew bow discharging a feathered arrow of a cloth metre. The rate of fire was up to an arrow every 5 seconds. For close quarter fighting the archers used hammers or daggers.

Winner: The English and Gascons decisively won the battle.

The Battle of Poitiers from a contemporary account
The Battle of Poitiers from a contemporary account

Account: Edward III, King of England, began the Hundred Years War, claiming the throne of France on the death of King Philip IV in 1337. The war finally ended in the middle of the 15th Century with the eviction of the English from France, other than Calais, and the formal abandonment by the English monarchs of their claims to French territory.

The war began well for Edward III with the decisive English victories at Sluys in 1340 and Creçy in 1346 and the capture of Calais in 1347. In the late 1340s the plague epidemic, called the Black Death, decimated the populations of France and England, bringing military operations to a halt; one of the plague’s victims being the French king Philip VI.

Battle of Poitiers
Battle of Poitiers

In 1355 King Edward III again planned for an invasion of France. His son, Edward the Black Prince, now an experienced soldier 26 years of age, landed at Bordeaux in Western France and led his army on a march through Southern France to Carcassonne. Unable to take the walled city, the Black Prince returned to Bordeaux. In early 1356 the Duke of Lancaster landed with a second force in Normandy and began to advance south. Edward III was engaged in fighting in Scotland.

King John of France
King John of France surrendering himself at the Battle of Poitiers

The new king of France, John I, led an army against Lancaster forcing him to withdraw towards the coast. King John then turned to attack the Black Prince, who was advancing north east towards the Loire pillaging the countryside as he went.

In early September 1356 King John reached the Loire with his large army, just as the Black Prince turned back towards Bordeaux. The French army marched hard and overtook the unsuspecting English force at Poitiers on Sunday 18th September 1356.

The local prelate, Cardinal Talleyrand de Périgord, attempted to broker terms of settlement between the two armies; but the Black Prince’s offer of handing over all the booty he had taken on his “chevauchée” and maintaining a truce for 7 years was unacceptable to King John who considered the English would have little chance against his overwhelming army, and the French demand that the Black Prince surrender himself and his army was unacceptable to the English. The two armies prepared for battle.

The English army was an experienced force; many of the archers veterans of Creçy, ten years before, and the Gascon men-at-arms commanded by Sir John Chandos, Sir James Audley and Captal de Buche, all old soldiers.

The Black Prince arranged his force in a defensive position among the hedges and orchards of the area, his front line of archers disposed behind a particularly prominent thick hedge through which the road ran at right angles.

photo

The effigy and tomb of The Black Prince, Canterbury, England

Edward, the Black Prince, commander of the English army at the Battle of Poitiers

King John was advised by his Scottish commander, Sir William Douglas, that the French attack should be delivered on foot, horses being particularly vulnerable to English archery, the arrows fired with a high trajectory falling on the unprotected necks and backs of the mounts. King John took this advice, his army in the main leaving its horses with the baggage and forming up on foot.

The French attack began in the early morning of Monday 19th September 1356 with a mounted charge by a forlorn hope of 300 German knights commanded by two Marshals of France; Barons Clermont and Audrehem. The force reached a gallop, closing in to charge down the road into the centre of the English position. The attack was a disaster, with those knights not shot down by the English archers dragged from their horses and killed or secured as prisoners for later ransom.

The rest of the French army now began its ponderous advance on foot, in accordance with Douglas’ advice, arrayed in three divisions; the first led by the Dauphin Charles (the son of the King), the second by the Duc D’Orleans and the third, the largest, by the King himself.

The first division reached the English line exhausted by its long march in heavy equipment, much harassed by the arrow fire of the English archers. The Black Prince’s soldiers, Gascon men-at-arms and English and Welsh archers, rushed forward to engage the French, pushing through the hedgerow and spilling round the flanks to attack the French in the rear.

After a short savage fight the Dauphin’s division broke and retreated, blundering into the division of the Duc D’Orleans marching up behind, both divisions falling back in confusion.

The Battle of Poitiers
The Battle of Poitiers
For more details on a picture and how to buy it, click on the image.

The final division of the French army, commanded by the king himself, was the strongest and best controlled. The three divisions coalesced and resumed the advance against the English, a formidable mass of walking knights and men-at-arms.

Thinking that the retreat of the first two divisions marked the end of the battle, the Black Prince had ordered a force of knights commanded by the Gascon, Captal de Buche, to mount and pursue the French. Chandos urged the Prince to launch this mounted force on the main body of the French army. The Black Prince seized on Chandos’ idea and ordered all the knights and men-at-arms to mount for the charge. The horses were ordered up from the rear; in the meantime Captal de Buch’s men, already mounted, were ordered to advance around the French flank to the right.

As the French army toiled up to the hedgerow the English force broke through the hedge and struck the French like a thunderbolt, the impetus of the charge taking the mounted knights and men-at-arms right into the French line. Simultaneously Captal de Buch’s Gascons charged in on the French flank. The English and Welsh archers left their bows and ran forward to join the fight, brandishing their daggers and fighting hammers.

The French army broke up, many leaving the field, while the more stalwart knights fought hard in isolated groups. A mass of fugitives made for Poitiers pursued by the mounted Gascons to be slaughtered outside the closed city gates.

King John found himself alone with his 14 years old younger son Philip fighting an overwhelming force of Gascons and English. Eventually the king agreed to surrender.

The battle won, the English army gave itself up to pillaging the vanquished French knights and the lavish French camp.

Casualties: In his dispatch to King Edward III, his father, the Black Prince stated that the French dead amounted to 3,000 while only 40 of his troops had been killed. It is likely that the English casualties were higher. Among the French prisoners were King John, his son Philip, 17 great lords, 13 counts, 5 viscounts and a hundred other knights of significance.

Follow-up: On the night of the battle the Black Prince entertained the King of France and his son to dinner and the next day the English army resumed its march to Bordeaux.

The effect of the defeat on France and the loss of the King to captivity was devastating, leaving the country in the hands of the Dauphin Charles, escaped from the ruins of his division at Poitiers. Charles faced immediate revolts across the kingdom as he attempted to raise money to continue the war and ransom his father.

The release of King John proved difficult to negotiate as Edward III sought to extract more and more onerous terms from the French. Meanwhile the war continued to the misery of the wretched inhabitants of France.

King John was released in November 1361 against other hostages. Due to the default of one of those hostages John returned to London and died there in 1364.

Regimental anecdotes and traditions:

  • King John actually surrendered to a French knight, Sir Denis de Morbeque, who took him to the Prince of Wales with the Earl of Warwick.
  • Poitiers was the second great battle won by the English yew bow, although in this case it was the threat of the arrow barrage that caused the French to launch the ill-judged advance on foot thereby exposing them to the English/Gascon mounted charge that won the battle.

photo

Edward Plantagenet: The Black Prince

Edward, Prince of Wales (15 June 1330 – 8 June 1376) was called Edward of Woodstock in his early life, after his birthplace, and has, more recently, been popularly known as The Black Prince. He was the eldest son of King Edward III of England and Philippa of Hainault, and father to King Richard II of England. Edward, an exceptional military leader and popular during his life, died one year before his father and thus never ruled as king (becoming the first English Prince of Wales to suffer that fate). The throne passed instead to his son Richard, a minor, upon the death of Edward III.
Early life

Edward was born on 15 June 1330 at Woodstock Palace in Oxfordshire. Edward was created Earl of Chester in 1333, Duke of Cornwall in 1337 (the first creation of an English duke) and finally invested as Prince of Wales in 1343. In England Edward served as a symbolic regent for periods in 1339, 1340, and 1342 while Edward III was on campaign. He was expected to attend all council meetings, and he performed the negotiations with the papacy about the war in 1337.
Edward had been raised with his cousin Joan, "The Fair Maid of Kent."[1] Edward gained Innocent VI's papal permission and absolution for this marriage to a blood-relative (as had Edward III when marrying Philippa of Hainaut, being her second cousin) and married Joan in 10 October 1361 at Windsor Castle, prompting some controversy, mainly because of Joan's chequered marital history and the fact that marriage to an Englishwoman wasted an opportunity to form an alliance with a foreign power.
When in England, Edward's chief residence was at Wallingford Castle in Berkshire (now Oxfordshire).
He served as the king's representative in Aquitaine, where he and Joan kept a court which was considered among the most brilliant of the time. It was the resort of exiled kings, like James of Mallorca and Pedro of Castile.
Pedro, thrust from his throne by his illegitimate brother, Henry of Trastámara, offered Edward the lordship of Biscay in 1367, in return for the Black Prince's aid in recovering his throne. Edward was successful in the Battle of Nájera in which he soundly defeated the combined French and Spanish forces led by Bertrand du Guesclin.
During this period, he fathered two sons: Edward (27 January 1365 – 1372), who died at the age of 6; and Richard, born in 1367 and often called Richard of Bordeaux for his place of birth, who would later rule as Richard II of England. He had at least two illegitimate sons, both born before his marriage: Sir Roger Clarendon and Sir John Sounder.[2]
The Black Prince returned to England in January 1371 and died a few years later after a long wasting illness that may have been cancer.
Edward lived in a century of decline for the knightly ideal of chivalry. The formation of the Order of the Garter, an English royal order of which Edward was a founding member, signified a shift towards patriotism and away from the crusader mentality that characterized England in the previous two centuries. Edward's stance in this evolution is seemingly somewhat divided. Edward displayed obedience to typical chivalric obligations through his pious contributions to Canterbury Cathedral throughout his life.
On one hand, after capturing John the Good, king of France, and his youngest son at Poitiers, he treated them with great respect, at one point giving John leave to return home, and reportedly praying with John at Canterbury Cathedral. Notably, he also allowed a day for preparations before the Battle of Poitiers so that the two sides could discuss the coming battle with one another, and so that the Cardinal of Perigord could plead for peace. Though not agreeing with knightly charges on the battlefield, he also was devoted to tournament jousting.
On the other hand, his chivalric tendencies were overridden by pragmatism on many occasions. The Black Prince's repeated use of the chevauchée strategy (burning and pillaging towns and farms) was not in keeping with contemporary notions of chivalry, but it was quite effective in accomplishing the goals of his campaigns and weakening the unity and economy of France. On the battlefield, pragmatism over chivalry is also demonstrated via the massed use of infantry strongholds, dismounted men at arms, longbowmen, and flank attacks (a revolutionary practice in such a chivalric age). Moreover, he was exceptionally harsh toward and contemptuous of lower classes in society, as indicated by the heavy taxes he levied as Prince of Aquitaine and by the massacres he perpetrated at Limoges and Caen. Edward's behaviour was typical of an increasing number of English knights and nobles during the late Middle Ages who paid less and less attention to the high ideal of chivalry, which would soon influence other countries.
The 1345 Flanders Campaign on the Northern Front, which was of little significance and ended after three weeks when one of Edward's allies was murdered.
The Crécy Campaign on the Northern Front, which crippled the French army for 10 years, allowing the siege of Calais to occur with little conventional resistance before the plague set in. Even when France's army did recover, the forces they deployed were about a quarter of that deployed at Crecy (as shown at Poitiers). Normandy came virtually under English control, but a decision was made to focus on northern France, leaving Normandy under the control of England's vassal allies instead.
The Siege of Calais on the Northern Front, during which the inhabitants suffered worst and were reduced to eating dogs and rats.[3] The siege gave the English personal and vassal control over northern France before the temporary peace due to the Black Death.
The Calais counter-offensive on the Northern Front, after which Calais remained in English hands.
Les Espagnols sur Mer or the Battle of Winchelsea on the English Channel Front, which was a Pyrrhic victory of little significance beyond preventing Spanish raids on Essex.
The Great Raid of 1355 on the Aquitaine–Languedoc Front, which crippled southern France economically, and provoked resentment of the French throne among French peasantry. The raid also 'cushioned' the area for conquest, opened up alliances with neighbours in Aquitaine of which that with Charles the Bad of Navarre is most notable, and caused many regions to move towards autonomy from France, as France was not as united as England.
The Aquitaine Conquests on the Aquitaine Front, which brought much firmer control in Aquitaine, much land for resources and many people to fight for Edward.







The Poitiers Campaign on the Aquitaine-Loire Front, which crippled the French Army for the next 13 years, causing the anarchy and chaos which would inevitably cause the Treaty of Bretigney to be signed in 1360. Following this campaign, there was no French Army leader, there were challenges towards Charles the Wise, and more aristocrats were killed at Crécy and Poitiers than those lost to the Black Death.
The Reims Campaign, following which peace was finally achieved with the Treaty of Bretigny. But, on the same terms, England was left with about a third of France rather than a little under half which they would have received through the Treaty of London. This is due to the failure to take Reims which led to the need for a safe passage out of France. As a result, a lesser treaty was agreed to and Edward III was obliged to drop his claims to the French throne. France was still forced to pay a huge ransom of around four times France's gross annual domestic product for John the Good. The ransom paid was, however, a little short of that demanded by the English, and John the Good was not returned to the French. Thus, this campaign yielded mixed results, but was mostly positive for Edward. One must also remember Edward III never actually dropped his claim to the throne, and that about half of France was controlled by the English anyway through many vassals.
The Najera Campaign on the Castilian Front, during which Pedro the Cruel was temporarily saved from a coup, thus confirming Castilian Spanish dedication to the Prince's cause. Later, however, Pedro was murdered. As a result of Pedro's murder, the money the prince put into the war effort became pointless, and Edward was effectively bankrupt. This forced heavy taxes to be levied in Aquitaine to relieve Edward's financial troubles, leading to a vicious cycle of resentment in Aquitaine and vicious repression of this resentment by Edward. Charles the Wise, king of France, was able to take advantage of the resentment against Edward in Aquitaine. However, the prince temporarily became the Lord of Biscay.










The Siege of Limoges in 1370 on the Aquitaine Front, after which the Black Prince was obliged to leave his post for his sickness and financial issues, but also because of the cruelty of the siege, which saw the massacre of some 3,000 residents according to the chronicler Froissart. Without the Prince, the English war effort against Charles the Wise and Bertrand Du Guesclin was doomed. The Prince's brother John of Gaunt was not interested with the war in France, being more interested in the war of succession in Spain.
King Edward III and the prince sail from Sandwich with 400 ships, carrying 4,000 men at arms and 10,000 archers for France, but after six weeks of bad weather and being blown off course they are driven back to England.
He requested to be buried in the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral rather than next to the shrine, and a chapel was prepared there as a chantry for him and his wife Joan (this is now the French Protestant Chapel, and contains ceiling bosses of her face and of their coats of arms). However, this was overruled after his death and he was buried on the south side of the shrine of Thomas Becket behind the quire. His tomb consists of a bronze effigy beneath a tester depicting the Holy Trinity, with his heraldic achievements hung over the tester. The achievements have now been replaced by replicas, though the originals can still be seen nearby, and the tester was restored in 2006.
Although Edward is almost always now called the "Black Prince", there is no record of this name being used during his lifetime. He was instead known as Edward of Woodstock, after his place of birth. The "Black Prince" sobriquet "is first found in writing in Richard Grafton's "Chronicle of England" (1568). [4] Its origin is uncertain; it is usually considered to be derived from an ornate black cuirass presented to the young prince by Edward III at the Battle of Crécy.
In fact, this nickname comes more than probably from his "shield of peace", his coat of arms used during tournaments, which is represented around his effigy at Canterbury. This coat of arms is black with three white ostrich feathers.
It is possible that the name was first coined by French chroniclers in reference to the ruinous military defeats he had inflicted on France or his cruelty in these. Also possible is the idea that Edward garnered the nickname from his explosive temper; the legendary Angevin temper being associated with his family's line since Geoffrey d'Anjou.





 

File:Chato porte des champs.jpg

CASTLE OF CAEN

   

Thursday, May 27, 2021

 

 

 

 

 

THE EXCITING SIXTIES: CAMELOT AND THE MISSILES OF OCTOBER




THE EXCITING 60s

 

 

 Through the centuries, whether combatants have fought with spears, bows and arrows, muzzle-loading rifles, naval cannons, long-range bombers, nuclear weapons or cutting-edge drones, one aspect of warfare has never changed: innocents die. In the 20th century alone millions tens of millions of civilians were killed and continue to be killed and maimed in global, regional and civil wars.

Most of these victims are “collateral damage”: men, women and children caught in urban warfare; families obliterated by grenades and mortars; entire cities laid waste by bombers dropping tons of ordnance from miles above. But countless civilians slaughtered in warfare don’t die by accident or as the result of military errors; they’re killed by design. They are, in other words, murdered often after being raped or tortured. It happened in the Peloponnesian War, it happened in the Napoleonic Wars, it happened in the Filipino American War, American Civil War and World War I and the Spanish Civil War and World War II and the Korean War and Vietnam and Kosovo and Iraq and it’s happening today in Syria and the Congo and other places where the paths of warriors and civilians inevitably cross.

For Americans of a certain age, meanwhile, one particular atrocity not only remains a grisly emblem of other war crimes that have been committed by some of “our boys” through the years, but in a very real sense marked the end of a certain willful American innocence about the fluid, shadowy line that separates good and evil in war zones.

Two simple syllables, My Lai (pronounced “me lie”), are today a reminder of what America lost in the jungles of Vietnam: namely, any claim to moral high ground in a war often defined by those back home as a battle between right and wrong. For the Vietnamese, meanwhile, the March 1968 massacre in the tiny village of My Lai is just one among numerous instances of rape, torture and murder committed by troops Americans, South Vietnamese, Viet Cong and others in the course of that long, divisive war.

That said, just because it was not the only atrocity committed by American troops in Vietnam hardly mitigates its horror; on the contrary, the fact that this one act of collective barbarity has received so much attention, while other equally appalling acts have for decades gone virtually unnoticed, should terrify and shame us all the more.

The chilling facts about My Lai itself are widely known, but on the 45th anniversary of the massacre, some details bear repeating. On March 16, 1968, hundreds (various estimates range between 347 and 504) of elderly people, women, children and infants were murdered by more than 20 members of “Charlie” Company, United States’ 1st Battalion 20th Infantry Regiment. Some of the women were raped before being killed. After this mass slaughter, only one man, Second Lt. William Calley, was convicted of any crime. (He was found guilty in March 1971 of the premeditated murder of 22 Vietnamese civilians, but served just three-and-a-half years under house arrest at Fort Benning, Georgia.)

Incredibly, the world at large might have never learned about the death and torture visited by American troops upon the villagers at My Lai had it not been for an Army photographer named Ron Haeberle. Following Charlie Company’s 3rd platoon into the tiny hamlet, and expecting to document a battle between American and Viet Cong fighters, Haeberle instead ended up chronicling (with his own camera, not his Army-issue camera) a scene of unspeakable carnage.

More than a year later, when he returned to his hometown of Cleveland, Ohio, he shared some of the pictures from the massacre with the city’s newspaper, the Plain-Dealer, which published them in late November, 1969. A few weeks later, in its Dec. 5, 1969, issue

 





 

Legendary photographer Joel Meyerowitz would walk the streets of New York City as much as possible. This steamy scene outside Gucci dates from 1975







By early 1963, the number of American military personnel in Vietnam had grown from several hundred to more than 10,000 in a few short years. The ramifications of the United States’ direct involvement in a conflict halfway around the globe — less than a decade after the ceasefire in another brutal war in Korea — were certainly part of the national conversation, but in ’63 America’s growing role in Vietnam was not even close to the all-encompassing, divisive issue it would become by the middle of the decade.

Vietnam was on people’s radar, of course, but not as a constant, alarming blip. Military families were learning first-hand (before everyone else, as they always do) that this was no “police action; but for millions of Americans, Vietnam was a mystery, a riddle that no doubt would be resolved and forgotten in time: a little place far away where inscrutable strangers were fighting over … something.

 

All the more remarkable that in January of 1963, LIFE magazine published the powerful cover article, “We Wade Deeper Into Jungle War,” and illustrated it with not one or two photos but with a dozen pictures — most of them in color — by the great photojournalist, Larry Burrows.

Burrows, seen at left in Vietnam in 1963, worked steadily — although not exclusively — in Southeast Asia from 1962 until his death in 1971. His work is often cited as the most searing and the most consistently, jaw-droppingly excellent photography from the war, and several of his pictures (“Reaching Out,” for example, featuring a wounded Marine desperately trying to comfort a stricken comrade after a fierce 1966 firefight) and photo essays (like 1965′s magisterial “One Ride With Yankee Papa 13″) both encompassed and defined the long, polarizing catastrophe in Vietnam.

He and three fellow photojournalists died when their helicopter was shot down during operations in Laos. Burrows was 44.

The pictures here, meanwhile, are striking not only for the clarity with which they document a scary, widening conflict, but for how graphic they are. To American eyes, long accustomed to having their news sanitized by the major media, the notion that these and similarly gruesome pictures routinely ran in a popular weekly magazine five decades ago will likely come as something of a shock. Today, a photograph of blood stains and broken glass on a street after a car bombing is about the extent of what most Americans will ever see on the nightly news, on bale shows or in their newspapers. (Raggedly severed limbs, torched corpses and viscera-covered walls evidently being deemed too upsetting to the fragile American sensibility.)

[MORE: See all of TIME.com's coverage of the Vietnam War.]

But it’s worth recalling — or reminding those who weren’t alive at the time — that, starting even before the January 25, 1963, issue in which the photos in this gallery appeared, and throughout the war in Vietnam, LIFE and other major, mainstream American news outlets, in print and on TV, regularly published and broadcast what today would be considered graphic, unsettling content.

That LIFE considered this a significant, indeed a groundbreaking article is evidenced by the highly unusual treatment it received on the magazine’s cover. The first slide in this gallery illustrates this perfectly: rather than the customary horizontal, one-sheet image found on literally thousands of other LIFE covers, the January 25, 1963, issue featured an exceedingly rare fold-out, giving full play to Burrows’ powerful portrait.

Finally: A note on slide #14 in this gallery. In the decades since 1972, when LIFE ceased publishing as a weekly, and in subsequent years when thousands upon thousands of the magazine’s photographs were physically, carefully archived and stored away, very occasionally things have gone awry. Pictures went missing. Negatives went walkabout. Prints have gone off to wherever it is that prints go to hide. In short, some of LIFE’s photographs (very few of them, thankfully, but still enough to cause concern and dismay), both published and unpublished, only exist today in old issues of the magazine itself, or in digital scans made of the pages on which the pictures ran.

The originals, as the vernacular has it, are “lost in circulation.” Maybe someone pulled a strip of negatives from the archive 20 years ago for a research project only to have it fall, unnoticed, behind a desk, or under a radiator. Perhaps someone mistakenly mailed the only remaining original, photographer-sanctioned print of a picture to another publication, and it was never returned. Maybe the prints and the contact sheets from an assignment were destroyed in a fire, or mold destroyed a small set of poorly stored negatives.

The point here is that the image in slide #14 in this gallery was scanned from an old issue of LIFE, because the original is “lost in circulation.” It’s gone. And no one knows where it is.

 










"Vietnamese pile out of H-21 helicopter near Rach Gia. They flushed out 15 Viet Congs."

"In large-scale probe of the Mekong Delta, Vietnamese soldiers wade into a canal to put their equipment aboard boats. The amphibious operation was designed to ferret out small parties of Communist guerillas hiding out in the nearby flooded paddies."

"In a hostile village Vietnamese infantrymen warily move past hut they set ablaze after they found it held Communist literature."



AMERICA IN VIETNAM, 1963: DEEPER INTO WAR

 




The deployment of scientific experiments by Astronaut Edwin Aldrin Jr. is photographed by Astronaut Neil Armstrong. Man's first landing on the Moon occurred July 20, 1969 as Lunar Module "Eagle" touched down gently on the Sea of Tranquility on the east side of the Moon.(Photo by NASA/NewsmakThis incredible image of the Earth rise was taken during lunar orbit by the Apollo 11 mission crew in July of 1969. (NASA) In this July 1969 file photo, Astronaut Edwin Aldrin walks by the footpad of the Apollo 11 Lunar Module. (AP/Photo, NASA, file) #In this July 20, 1969 file photo, a footprint left by one of the astronauts of the Apollo 11 mission shows in the soft, powder surface of the moon. (AP Photo/NASA, file) #Captured Blog: Moon LandingAstronaut Buzz Aldrin, lunar module pilot, walks on the surface of the Moon near the leg of the Lunar Module (LM) "Eagle" during the Apollo 11 exravehicular activity (EVA). Astronaut Neil A. Armstrong, commander, took this photograph with a 70mm lunar surface camera. While astronauts Armstrong and Aldrin descended in the Lunar Module (LM) "Eagle" to explore the Sea of Tranquility region of the Moon, astronaut Michael Collins, command module pilot, remained with the Command and Service Modules (CSM) "Columbia" in lunar orbit. (NASA) #Captured Blog: Moon LandingCaptured Blog: Moon Landing

A dramatization of President Kennedy's administration's struggle to contain the Cuban Missile Crisis in October of 1962

Theirs is an imperfect, unairbrushed and largely unformulaic beauty.

From the dark tans and healthy smiles of girls frolicking on a beach to the come-hither flirtation of Liz Taylor, LIFE magazine's sexiest shots all have a natural realness about them.

Celebrating 75 years of LIFE, the photos are part of a collection of defining images from the news magazine's formidable history.

Lean to: Actress Elizabeth Taylor posing in bathing suit on location during filming of motion picture The Night of the Iguana in Mexico

Lean to: Actress Elizabeth Taylor posing in bathing suit on location during filming of motion picture The Night of the Iguana in Mexico. Liz Taylor, lounging against a tree in Mexico flirts playfully - as ever - with the camera. Visiting her husband at the time, Richard Burton, on the set of Night of the Iguana in 1963, the screen megastar relaxes in a summery beach suit and flip flops. By the time the photo was taken, says LIFE, the star had already won her first Oscar and was Hollywood's highest-paid actress.

Legs eleven: Betty Grable models a shirt of her own design while showing off her famous pins in the process

Legs eleven: Betty Grable models a shirt of her own design while showing off her famous pins in the process

The stunning beauty found herself at the subject of several scandals in the years leading up to the shot, though her beauty was never in dispute.

In another, Steve McQueen drapes a languidly protective arm around his wife, Neile Adams, as she envelops The Great Escape star in an embrace.

Shot by John Dominis, the image, also from 1963, is taken in the actor's home after the photographer developed a close working relationship with McQueen. LIFE writes that the handsome star would often walk around his home and garden in the nude - here, swimmers protect his modesty.

Splashin around: Girls play in the ocean in California, the photo was taken as part of a Co Rentmeester essay on the state's beach life

Splashin around: Girls play in the ocean in California, the photo was taken as part of a Co Rentmeester essay on the state's beach life

California dreamin: Another shot from Co Rentmeester's essay on California beach life shows a splashing girl in the sun

California dreamin: Another shot from Co Rentmeester's essay on California beach life shows a splashing woman in the sun

Doll-like: Actress and sex symbol Jayne Mansfield lounges on an inflatable raft in a swimming pool surrounded by bottles shaped like bikini-clad versions of herself, Los Angeles, 1957

Doll-like: Actress and sex symbol Jayne Mansfield lounges on an inflatable raft in a swimming pool surrounded by bottles shaped like bikini-clad versions of herself, Los Angeles, 1957

A colour photo from the Fifties shows Jayne Mansfield and her perfect physique on a pool lilo, surrounded by plastic dolls. The dolls are hot water bottles modelled on the pin-up's figure.

On to another pin-up, and Betty Grable is caught, arms aloft, showing off the military-style jacket she decorated herself. The coat paid homage to the troops, writes LIFE, who had made the siren a star, her famous and much lusted-after legs on show, as ever.

Revealing: Actor Steve McQueen is photographed at home with wife Neile Adams in 1963

Revealing: Actor Steve McQueen is photographed at home with wife Neile Adams in 1963

Balls aloft: US water polo team, circa 1966, L-R, Rick McNair, Alex Rousseau, Chris Humbert and Chris Duplanty

Balls aloft: US water polo team, circa 1966, L-R, Rick McNair, Alex Rousseau, Chris Humbert and Chris Duplanty

Soap suds: Actress Jeanne Crain balancing a huge soap bubble on her index finger as she luxuriates in a bubble bath in scene from the movie Margie

Soap suds: Actress Jeanne Crain balancing a huge soap bubble on her index finger as she luxuriates in a bubble bath in scene from the movie Margie

In a ruffle: Taken in 1954 by Gordon Parks, this image captures garters in their everyday glory, before they had become a true staple of the x-rated wardrobe

In a ruffle: Taken in 1954 by Gordon Parks, this image captures garters in their everyday glory, before they had become a true staple of the x-rated wardrobe

Fresh as a daisy: Brigitte Bardot during filming of the movie En Effeuillant la Marguerite, or 'Plucking the Petals from the Daisy'

Fresh as a daisy: Brigitte Bardot during filming of the movie En Effeuillant la Marguerite, or 'Plucking the Petals from the Daisy' Other photos from the collection continue to record stolen moments of the past for posterity - with Life photographers often capturing unplanned, serendipitous and often fleeting moments.

A group of girls splash and laugh together on a California beach, their long hair and tanned bodies shot by Co Rentmeester as part of a 1970 photo essay of beach life in the sun-soaked state.

Smoking hot: Brigitte Bardot on set during filming of Lady and the Puppet

Smoking hot: Brigitte Bardot on set during filming of Lady and the Puppet

New York fashion, 1969: While many of her peers sported Woodstock style, this young lady strides up a city street looking sleek and sophisticated

New York fashion, 1969: While many of her peers sported Woodstock style, this young lady strides up a city street looking sleek and sophisticated

Other images include the US water polo team. Toned, dark and wide-grinned, the naked men - who became immensely popular with ladies - hold water polo to protect their modesty as they laugh together.

Another sees Jane Fonda, anachronistic and faintly comical in full Barbarella get up, staring wilfully at the camera. In one, an unnamed girl of the swinging Sixties strides up a New York street, her sleek fashion at odds with her Woodstock-loving peers.

Beaten and bruised: Actor Clint Eastwood is bare-chested and bandaged after a brutal beating scene from Dirty Harry, 1971

Beaten and bruised: Actor Clint Eastwood is bare-chested and bandaged after a brutal beating scene from Dirty Harry, 1971

Roller girl: Actress Raquel Welch in roller derby uniform during filming of The Kansas City Bomber, 1972

Roller girl: Actress Raquel Welch in roller derby uniform during filming of The Kansas City Bomber, 1972

Unearthly woman: Jane Fonda in full Barbarella get-up, 1967, is a plastic-encased, gun-toting force to be reckoned with

Unearthly woman: Jane Fonda in full Barbarella get-up, 1967, is a plastic-encased, gun-toting force to be reckoned with

Boudoir: Texan model Suzy Parker lounges in her California apartment for photographer Allan Grant in 1957

Boudoir: Texan model Suzy Parker lounges in her California apartment for photographer Allan Grant in 1957

Oscar winner: Faye Dunaway takes in her Oscar win over breakfast and papers at the Beverley Hills Hotel in 1977

Oscar winner: Faye Dunaway takes in her Oscar win over breakfast and papers at the Beverley Hills Hotel in 1977

A beaten, bruised and bandaged Clint Eastwood appears to shake off his injuries with a smile in a 1971 shot from the filming of Dirty Harry. The macho man played policeman Harry Callahan, propelling the actor to the top of the pile of Hollywood action heroes.

'It's easy to be beautiful - just be born that way,' once said model Suzy Parker, according to the magazine. A photo of the red-head in a summer dress lying in her California home, proves that that the Texan was blessed with more than her fair share of natural beauty.

As ever, Marilyn Monroe shows how to do it best, looking directly at the lens, not showing an ounce of flesh and simply giving the camera a look that could melt a million men.

Satin sheets: Actress Rita Hayworth looks stunning - wearing her trademark charming, nonchalant look - in a nightgown in 1941

Satin sheets: Actress Rita Hayworth looks stunning - wearing her trademark charming, nonchalant look - in a nightgown in 1941

Saving the best for last: Inimitably sexy Marilyn Monroe outside her home, shot by Alfred Eisenstaedt

Saving the best for last: Inimitably sexy Marilyn Monroe outside her home, shot by Alfred Eisenstaedt. As ever, time has only accentuated the sexiness of many of LIFE's best shots. Faye Dunaway, shot in 1941 on satin sheets and casually throwing a coy look that became dubbed the 'Mona Lisa of pinups,' hit superstardom shortly after the photo was taken. The screen siren, natural-looking, voluptuous and every bit the pin-up star, encapsulated a style that is firmly lodged in a bygone era.

Her ensuing fame makes the innocence of the shot yet more endearing.

   


 

 

Los Alamos: Since first picking up a camera in 1957, Eggleston's work is said to find 'beauty in the everyday'

'V Shape on Ground'(1971-1974): Since first picking up a camera in 1957, Eggleston's work is said to find 'beauty in the everyday'

His influence on contemporary photography and photographers is far-reaching and has inspired the likes of Martin Parr, Sofia Coppola, Andreas Gurksy and Juergen Teller.

Talking about the award Eggleston comments: 'The world is in color. To paraphrase my friend John Szarkowski, my attempt has been to see simultaneously, both the blue and the sky as one thing.'

Astrid Merget, Creative Director of the World Photography Organisation comments: 'William Eggleston is a without a doubt, one of the great pioneers of our time.  His influence on colour photography and subsequently on many of today's most revered working photographers, is one to be admired, respected and awarded. 

'We are honoured to have the opportunity to present the Outstanding Contribution to Photography award to William this year.'

'Minnows sign': The majority of the prints are from his iconic Los Alamos and Dust Bells series

'Minnows Sign' (1971-1974): The majority of the prints are from his iconic Los Alamos and Dust Bells series

'Louisiana' (1970-1974): Eggleston's images capture the ordinary world around him, creating interest through sharp observation, dynamic composition and great wit

'Louisiana' (1970-1974): Eggleston's images capture the ordinary world around him, creating interest through sharp observation, dynamic composition and great wit

'Election Eve' (1976): Eggleston's influence on contemporary photography and photographers is far-reaching and has inspired the likes of Martin Parr, Sofia Coppola, Andreas Gurksy and Juergen Teller

'Election Eve' (1976): Eggleston's influence on contemporary photography and photographers is far-reaching and has inspired the likes of Martin Parr, Sofia Coppola, Andreas Gurksy and Juergen Teller

Four Freedom Riders are flanked by newsmen on arrival at airport in New Orleans, Saturday, May 27, 1961, after posting bond in Jackson, MS., where they were arrested with 23 others at an interstate bus station. They are, from left, David Dennis, Doris Jean Castle, Julia Aaron and Jerome Smith. All live or attend school in New Orleans and walked quickly through the airport without incident to a limousine.





Lucretia Collins, 21, Freedom Rider from Fairbanks, Alaska, walks to a plane in Jackson, May 27, 1961, after being freed from the county jail on $500 bond. (AP Photo) # Captured: 50th Anniversary of the Freedom Rides

 

The highly influential American photographer Joel Meyerowitz has produced Taking My Time, a retrospective monograph giving an unprecedented insight into his mind and work. 

Meyerowitz, 74, is a street photographer who began photographing in color in 1962. He was an early advocate of using color photography at a time when it wasn't regarded as serious art.

In an interview where he recalls his early life as a photographer, Meyerowitz describes how he spent as much time on the New York streets as possible.

He would walk all day, seeing himself and his friends as 'fishermen in the stream of Fifth Avenue' who were 'sifting all the human information that flows on the streets.'

Meyerowitz photographed all over the U.S. and the globe. The images below include photographs from New York, Massachusetts and Florida in the 1960s, 70s and 80s.

Joel Meyerowitz: Taking My Time, with an introduction by Francesco Zanot, is available from Phaidon for $750.

Legendary photographer Joel Meyerowitz would walk the streets of New York City as much as possible. This steamy scene outside Gucci dates from 1975

'Florida, 1965' Joel Meyerowitz was an early advocate of color photography at a time when it wasn't taken seriously

'Florida, 1965' Joel Meyerowitz was an early advocate of color photography at a time when it wasn't taken seriously

A tired friend gets a lift in New York, 1965

A tired friend gets a lift in New York, 1965

'New York City, 1963' Joel Meyerowitz saw himself 'sifting all the human information he found on the streets'

'New York City, 1963' Joel Meyerowitz saw himself 'sifting all the human information he found on the streets'

'Doorway to the Sea, Provincetown, Massachusetts, 1982' Meyerowitz photographed across the U.S. and the globe

'Doorway to the Sea, Provincetown, Massachusetts, 1982' Meyerowitz photographed across the U.S. and the globe

A social engagement in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, 1977

A social engagement in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, 1977

Going to the movies in New York City, 1963

Going to the movies in New York City, 1963

An awkward scene in New York City, 1963

An awkward scene in New York City, 1963

An appealing Florida pool in 1978

An appealing Florida pool in 1978

Ballston Beach, Truro, Massachusetts, in 1977

Ballston Beach, Truro, Massachusetts, in 1977


Captured: 50th Anniversary of the Freedom Rides

(L-R) Freedom Riders Julia Aaron & David Dennis sitting on board an interstate bus as they & 25 others (bkgrd. & unseen) are escorted by 2 Mississippi National Guardsmen holding bayonets, on their way from Montgomery, Alabama to Jackson, Mississippi. (Photo by Paul Schutzer//Time Life Pictures/Getty Images) #

Captured: 50th Anniversary of the Freedom Rides

The Alabama state troopers and National Guardsmen escorted the bus to the Mississippi state line and then departed. Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett warns the Freedom Riders to "obey the laws of Mississippi." On May 24, 1961, as the buses arrived at the Jackson, Mississippi bus station, the Riders debarked and entered the White Waiting Room. Jackson Police Captain, Capt. Ray, was waiting for the Riders and asked them to leave the white waiting room. When the group failed to heed the order they were arrested and taken to the city jail. (AP Photo) #

Captured: 50th Anniversary of the Freedom Rides

Fifteen Freedom Riders that arrived on a second bus in Jackson, Miss., are loaded into a paddy wagon at the bus station, May 24, 1961. They entered the "whites only" waiting room and were arrested for being in violation of state laws. (AP Photo/Horace Cort) #

Captured: 50th Anniversary of the Freedom Rides

A Freedom Rider is shown the way to the paddy wagon in Jackson, May 24, 1961, as a second bus load of the integration supporters arrived. Fifteen in second bus were arrested when they entered the white waiting room of the bus station. After the arrests, Gov. Ross Barnett decides to send the Riders to the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman, Mississippi to teach the Riders a lesson. (AP Photo) #

Captured: 50th Anniversary of the Freedom Rides

A view of Parchman Prison's maximum security unit in Parchman, Mississippi is seen Jan. 9, 1962. After their arrival at the prison, the Freedom Riders were subject to strip searches, beating, and hard labor. More Freedom Riders from across the country vow to fill Parchman Prison before giving up the Freedom Rides. (AP Photo) #

Captured: 50th Anniversary of the Freedom Rides

Jack Young, attorney for the 27 Freedom Riders tells newsmen in Jackson, May 26, 1961, that his clients have elected to remain in jail "at least for the present." Additional Freedom Riders from across the country vow to take the place of the jailed original Freedom Riders. (AP Photo/Fred Kaufman) #

Captured Blog: Kennedy

In this Nov. 11, 1958 file photo, Edward M. Kennedy, and Joan Bennett, kneel on the altar and receive communion from Francis Cardinal Spellman, Archbishop of New York at the nuptial mass at St. Joesph's Roman Catholic Church in Bronxville, N.Y.

Captured Blog: Kennedy

Robert F. Kennedy, left, Counsel for the Senate Rackets Committee, confers with his brothers Edward Kennedy, center, and Sen. John F. Kennedy during a committee hearing in Washington, D.C., in 1959. (AP Photo) #

Captured Blog: Kennedy

Sen. Edward Kennedy, center, flanked by his brothers, President John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert Kennedy, at the White House in August, 1963. (JFK Presidential Library via The New York Times) #

Captured Blog: Kennedy

Sen. Edward Kennedy, third from left, walks with his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, and sister-in-law Jacqueline Kennedy, during the funeral procession for his slain brother, President John F. Kennedy, outside the White House in Washington, Nov. 25, 1963. (Abbie Rowe/National Park Service/JFK Library via The New York Times)

 

 

LOVE SUPREME: AN INTERRACIAL ROMANCE TRIUMPHS IN 1960S VIRGINIA

Richard Loving kisses his wife Mildred as he arrives home from work, King and Queen County, Virginia, April 1965.

Mildred Loving greets her husband Richard on their front porch, King and Queen County, Virginia, April 1965.

 

The Beatles wave to fans as they arrive at the Los Angeles airport for a press conference in August 1964.

 

 

 



 

THE BEATLES: FIRST VISIT TO AMERICA, 1964

At press dates, like this one in August 1964 at the start of their U.S. tour, the Beatles offer typically wry remarks. John Lennon quips that he's writing a book called "Snore Wife and the Seven Dwarfs."

 

THE BEATLES: FIRST VISIT TO AMERICA, 1964

Police hold back a crowd of fans at the Los Angeles airport in August 1964, where the Beatles are landing for a brief layover and a press conference before the start of their U.S. tour.

 

 

WOODSTOCK GENERATION

 

LIFE TRIPS THE LIGHT FANTASTIC: LSD-INSPIRED ART

Original caption in LIFE magazine: "Fluctuating lights enflame a hypnotic plastic 'eye.'"

 

Original caption in LIFE: "At USCO's audio-visual show, viewers stare at paintings whose lights, shown in double exposure, slowly pulsate." (This image is best viewed in "full screen" mode. See button at right.)

Bill Eppridge—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

LIFE AT WOODSTOCK, 1969

 

 

 

 

 

A 1912 Rolls-Royce Speedster, Montreal meet of the Rolls-Royce Owners Club in August 1958.

 

A 1912 Rolls-Royce Speedster, detail, Montreal meet of the Rolls-Royce Owners Club in August 1958.

A 1914 Silver Ghost Tourer, Montreal meet of the Rolls-Royce Owners Club in August 1958.

 

A 1914 Silver Ghost at the Montreal meet of the Rolls-Royce Owners Club in August 1958.

A vintage Rolls at the Montreal meet of the Rolls-Royce Owners Club in August 1958.

On the 44TH anniversary of the legendary Woodstock music festival, held in Bethel, New York, a series of remarkable photographs taken at the time offer a window on the landmark event celebrating music and peace.

Woodstock Music & Art Fair was staged at Max Yasgur's 600-acre dairy farm in the Catskill mountains near the hamlet of White Lake from August 15 to August 18, 1969.

The festival featured a total of 32 acts, including such icons as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Joe Cocker, Santana, and The Who, making it one of the most outstanding concert lineups in history.

Peaceful masses: Overall image of the huge crowd, looking towards the large yellow tents, during the Woodstock Music & Art Fair

Peaceful masses: Overall image of the huge crowd, looking towards the large yellow tents, during the Woodstock Music & Art Fair

Living arrangements: Concert-goer sleeping on two cars at Woodstock in Bethel, New York, on August 1, 1969

Living arrangements: Concert-goer sleeping on two cars at Woodstock in Bethel, New York, on August 1, 1969

Wet and wild: The rain did little to deter hundreds of thousands of young people from sticking around at the festival

Wet and wild: The rain did little to deter hundreds of thousands of young people from sticking around at the festival

Despite the rain which had turned the grounds of the farm into a giant mud bath, the festival drew an audience of some 500,000 people, many of whom camped out in tents and vans for the duration of the weekend.

Hendrix was the last act to perform at the festival, but due to the bad weather, only about 35,000 people got to hear his psychedelic rendition of the U.S national anthem in what was to become one of the defining moments of the 1960s.

The community of Bethel was not prepared for the great influx of young people from all over the country, and by August 14, much of the area had become an enormous traffic jam.

Robin Hallock stands leaning against a pipe wearing many different beaded necklaces

Hippie man at Woodstock

Flower children: The festival proved especially popular among members of the hippie counterculture who believed in nonviolence and coined the phrase, 'Make love, not war'

Signs of times: The event drew hundreds of thousands of young hippies and was marked by widespread drug use

Signs of times: The event drew hundreds of thousands of young hippies and was marked by widespread drug use

While some locals were less than welcoming to the flower-adorned, bell-bottomed, mud-splattered  hippies flooding the area, others embraced the visitors, supplying them with free food and water when it became apparent that Food For Love, the festival concessionaire, was not prepared to feed the massive crowd.

Beside amazing musical acts, the weekend of peace was marked by widespread use of drugs, and the organizers of the event even established a ‘freak-out tent’ for those suffering from bad ‘trips,’ according to the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts.

Woman dancing in crowd at Woodstock   Chuck Morgan (L) sitting in the mud and water with a friend

 

 

Slip and slide: Despite the rain which had turned the grounds of the farm into a giant, filthy mud bath, the festival drew an audience of some 500,000 young music fans from across the country

Groovy invasion: The community of Bethel was not prepared for the great influx of people, and much of the area had become an enormous traffic jam

Groovy invasion: The community of Bethel was not prepared for the great influx of people, and much of the area had become an enormous traffic jam

While some concert-goers remembered the unique historic festival as an adventure that changed their lives, others found it nothing but a messy, filthy, poorly organized fiasco.

Epic: Jimi Hendrix was the last act to perform at the festival, but due to the bad weather, only about 35,000 people got to hear his psychedelic rendition of the U.S national anthem

Epic: Jimi Hendrix was the last act to perform at the festival, but due to the bad weather, only about 35,000 people got to hear his psychedelic rendition of the U.S national anthem

For his part, one of the LIFE photographers on scene during the festival, John Dominis, summed up his own recollections of Woodstock this way:

‘I really had a great time,’ Dominis told LIFE.com, decades after the fact. ‘I was much older than those kids, but I felt like I was their age. They smiled at me, offered me pot … You didn’t expect to see a bunch of kids so nice; you’d think they’d be uninviting to an older person. But no — they were just great!

 

The festival was the brainchild of Michael Lang, John Roberts, Joel Rosenman, and Artie Kornfeld, who initially designed it as a profit-making venture. In the end, it turned into a free concert of epic proportions when it became apparent that the event was drawing hundreds of thousands more people than the organizers had prepared for.

Historic lineup: Young people from across the country flooded Max Yasgur's 600-acre dairy farm to catch such great acts as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and The Who

Historic lineup: Young people from across the country flooded Max Yasgur's 600-acre dairy farm to catch such great acts as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and The Who

Faces in crowd during rainy spell at Woodstock Concert-goers slipping in a hammock  

 

 

Different takes: While some concert-goers remembered the historic festival as a life-changing adventure, others found it nothing but a messy, filthy, poorly organized debacle

 

LIFE AT WOODSTOCK, 1969

Not originally published in LIFE. Robin Hallock attends the Woodstock Music & Art Fair, August 1969.

 

American dream: The couple relax in Massachusetts fishing village Hyannis Port with first child Caroline

RFK'S ASSASSINATION, 1968

Caption from LIFE. "Rigid, semiconscious, his face an ashen mask, Senator Kennedy lies in a pool of his own blood on the concrete floor, a bullet deep in his brain and another in his neck. Juan Romero, a busboy whose hand Kennedy had shaken before the shots, tried to comfort him."

 

BEHIND THE PICTURE: RFK'S ASSASSINATION, 1968

Not published in LIFE. Supporters of presidential candidate Robert Kennedy watch their candidate on

 

Not published in LIFE. A less-famous image of Sen. Robert Kennedy and Ambassador Hotel employee Juan Romero moments after RFK was shot by Sirhan Sirhan, June 1968.

 

 

1967: PICTURES FROM A PIVOTAL YEAR

An astronaut descends the ladder of a life-sized, model lunar module during a simulation of a moon landing, 1967.

 

1967: PICTURES FROM A PIVOTAL YEAR

Unpublished. Vietnam protesters at Kezar Stadium in San Francisco during one of many rallies around the country as part of the April 1967 "Spring Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam."

 

Boston's Carl Yastrzemski displays the intensity that won him the 1967 American League MVP award, the Triple Crown (.326 average, 44 home runs, 121 RBIs — the last time any player led either league in all three categories), and ultimately helped him carry the Sox to the AL pennant. They would, however, lose the Series to the Cardinals in seven games — three of which were won by the great, and even more intense, St. Louis pitcher, Bob Gibson.

 

The Shah of Iran, Mohammad Shah Pahlavi, poses with his son, Prince Reza, and wife, Farah, following his coronation in 1967.

New York City, summer 1969.

 

A couple on the street in New York, summer 1969.

 

Surrounded by hippies collapsed in a sea of mud, a young couple hug each other while wrapped in a bedraggled blanket. Nick and Bobbi Ercoline didn't know it, but they were about to become an iconic symbol of the Woodstock rock festival. It is now exactly 44 years since the couple joined a crowd estimated at 500,000 for the four-day event. But their relationship is still going strong. They married two years after Woodstock, have two sons and still live not far from the concert site at Bethel in upstate New York.

Iconic: This image of Bobbi and Nick Ercoline, wrapped in a muddy blanket, became one of the most well-known photographs of Woodstock

Iconic: This image of Bobbi and Nick Ercoline, wrapped in a muddy blanket, became one of the most well-known photographs of Woodstock

Phenomenal: Bobbi and Nick outside their New York home in May, 2009

Phenomenal: Bobbi and Nick outside their New York home in May, 2009

Yesterday the Ercolines, both 60, returned to their field of dreams for an anniversary event which starts today. 'Who'd have thought that our 15 minutes of fame would last 44 years?' said Nick, who now works for his county's housing department. He and Bobbi, a school nurse, never intended to go to the original concert. But as the couple sat listening to the radio that weekend, the crowd swelled, police closed the roads and broadcast appeals for people to stay away. This made them determined to join in the fun. They grabbed a gallon jug of red wine, some bags of crisps, and headed for Woodstock, abandoning the car six miles from the concert and walking the rest of the way.

The couple were pictured by a wandering photographer and the shot made it on to the cover of the Woodstock triple album featuring, among others, Jimi Hendrix and The Who. Nick recalls that he and Bobbi were listening to it at a friend's house when he picked up the sleeve. 'I said, "Hey that's our blanket." Then I said, "Hey, that's us!"'

Peace and love: An aerial view of the concert grounds, where nearly half a million people crammed into the muddy fields for a weekend to create music history

Peace and love: An aerial view of the concert grounds, where nearly half a million people crammed into the muddy fields for a weekend to create music history

Many of the crowd at the original festival were shirtless for most of the weekend

Many of the crowd at the original festival were shirtless for most of the weekend

A 'Hippies Always Welcome' sign sits in a window in the town of Woodstock, New York as the 40th anniversary of the festival approached

A 'Hippies Always Welcome' sign sits in a window in the town of Woodstock, New York as the 40th anniversary of the festival approached. When the novelist Martin Amis said recently that it was the sexual revolution of the Sixties and Seventies that destroyed his 'pathologically promiscuous' sister Sally, an alcoholic who died in 2000 aged 46, he provoked a wave of controversy. His views were ridiculed by his critics, who claimed that his sister 'was out of control. It was her doing, not the culture.' Well, I was part of that culture too. As a university student between 1966 and 1969, I experienced first-hand the impact of the sexual revolution, and the sweeping changes it wrought between men and women. To suggest any individual was immune from that tidal wave of change, or from the pressures that came with it, for women in particular, is frankly wrong.

WOODSTOCK

Free love: The sexual pressure has gone from liberation to degradation. Yet Amis has hit a nerve, with liberals in particular, who rightly read his comments as a criticism of everything they believed in and fought for through the massive social upheavals of those decades. It was not 'the free love culture' which caused her death, they insist, but her own self-indulgence. After all, we all have choices, don't we? To me, this is one of the most fascinating issues of our time - raising so many questions about freewill, and cause and effect. I'm always amazed at the way the liberal Left (a broad church, with which I'd have once identified) is eager to make excuses for any dubious results of their progressive ideas. Yet the damaging consequences of that Sixties revolution are obvious in the society we now live in - ranging from the utter mess made of education in this country (directly attributable to the overturning of traditional ideas in the Seventies, an orthodoxy which still prevails), to the dangerous 'anything goes' attitude which challenges any idea of restraint in speech or behaviour.

I happen to believe Martin Amis makes an interesting case. Who is to say he isn't right and that in a less 'liberal' society his sister might have behaved differently, or might have been safer?

ladette

2009: Ladette behaviour  is a direct result of the freedom women fought for

Of course any individual is a unique, complex, multi-faceted creation - shaped by family, by personal reactions to events, and by the random nature of sex and love.

Nevertheless it's absurd to suggest that we exist in isolation, that we are not shaped by the culture we inhabit.

The zeitgeist is the defining mood or spirit of a particular period in history and shaped by the ideas and beliefs of the time. Nobody can escape it.

So Amis asks us to pose this question: what were the pressures on a particular girl - his sister - who turned 20 in 1974? And, equally important; what is the ongoing effect on the society of today?

Oh yes, they were heady days, out of which many good things came. But at university I could see close-up the impact of the sexual revolution and the 'new' pressure to sleep around. It was expected; nobody wanted to be called 'uncool' or 'uptight'.

People have always had sex before (and illicit sex within) marriage. You only have to think of the excesses of the first sexual revolution - the 'roaring' Twenties. But our sexual revolution was more sweeping and long-lasting.

'Health centres handed out the Pill like sweeties'

The university Student Health Centre handed out the Pill like sweeties. So you wouldn't get pregnant - good. But at the same time you had no reason to be careful - bad. Most of us embraced the hippie-esque idea that sexual freedom was a beautiful thing to be celebrated. 'Seize the day,' we shouted, and threw old notions like fidelity out of the window.

But beneath all those naive and high-sounding ideals, the sexism of supposedly radical and free-thinking men on the left could be summed up with: 'A woman's place is underneath.'

As the writer and feminist pioneer Rosie Boycott has said: 'What was insidious about the underground was that it pretended to be alternative. But it wasn't providing an alternative for women. It was providing an alternative for men in that there were no problems about screwing around.'

The artist Nicola Lane, another young woman of the age, adds: 'It was paradise for men - all these willing girls. But the problem with the willing girls was that a lot of the time they were willing not because they particularly fancied the people concerned but because they felt they ought to. There was a lot of misery.'

Cosmo

Sex mad: A mock up of a Cosmopolitan  magazine  cover, showing cover lines from recent editions

An acceptance of casual sex was central to the spirit of the age, and it was not easy for a young woman to escape that influence, whether it made her uncomfortable or not.

One cultural historian of the Seventies, Howard Sounes, writes: 'The after-effects of the great social and cultural changes of the Sixties, like waves created by rocks tossed in water, rippled out through society.'

Today, those of us who express doubts about the long-term effects of such cultural changes are dismissed as prudes suffering from a permanent moral panic-attack. The denial of the liberals is ongoing: a blinkered refusal to admit the causes and effects of history.

But this is what the distinguished historian Eric Hobsbawm writes about the shift in standards in his authoritative book, Age Of Extremes: 'The crisis of the family was linked with quite dramatic changes in public standards governing sexual behaviour, partnership and procreation... and the major change is datable and coincides with the Sixties and Seventies.'

No wonder the Seventies saw an unprecedented explosion in writing about sex. The air-brushed innocence of Sixties Playboy gave way to the gynaecological explicitness of Penthouse and a host of imitators.

Sex, which in previous eras was private (even taboo), became public, with the result that women were expected - in their love lives - to demonstrate the expertise of prostitutes. Except these 'liberated' women gave it away for free.

Alex Comfort's The Joy of Sex: A Gourmet Guide To Lovemaking, came out in 1972, and that same year the first issue of British Cosmopolitan changed women's magazines for ever.

'To be a nice girl was to be looked on as a freak'

I was working on a glossy magazine at the time and we all looked askance at this brash newcomer with its philosophy that women should do anything to be sexy and get a man. (By the mid-Seventies, I was writing for it - although the Cosmo of those days was relatively innocent compared with now, when the magazine is often covered up in American stores because of the explicitness of its cover lines.) Books such as Cosmo's Steamy Sex Games: All Sorts Of Naughty Ways To Have Fun With Your Lover' (and countless others) carried the message that if you don't want to do this stuff, well, there's something wrong with you. To be a 'nice girl' was to be looked on as a freak. The truth was, however, the new permissiveness gave men permission to exploit you. These are the pressures which, according to Martin Amis, contributed to his sister's ruin.

It may be cruel to say it, but today's young girls primping and un-dressing for Saturday night, when they will get drunk and get laid (and feel doubly bad in the morning) are the inheritors of her destiny.

Bleakly, Amis commented: 'It's astonishingly difficult to find a decent deal between men and women and we haven't found it yet.'

I suggest it is impossible to find that 'deal' when we are living with the worst aspects of the sexual revolution - which has not encouraged mutual love and respect between the sexes but instead has given us the trashy 'pornogrification' of our society.

Suri Cruise

Dangerous: When Tom Cruise is stupid enough to permit his three-year-old to totter out in high heels, what hope is there for fans who see him as a role-model?

As the young American writer Ariel Leve has said: 'Even though this new world of beer and babes feels foreign to Sixties revolutionaries, it is actually... a repercussion of the very forces they put into motion.'

She's right. We did start it - and those who followed paid the price, and are paying it still.

In her book, Bodies, psychotherapist Susie Orbach writes: 'Girls as young as four have been made bodily self- conscious and are striking sexy poses in their mirrors which are more chilling than charming.'

The question we must all ask ourselves is - what made them so bodily self-conscious?

I'm afraid we know the answer. When Tom Cruise and his wife are stupid enough to permit their three-year-old daughter to totter out in silver high heels, what hope is there for those millions of fans who see them as heroic role-models?

Nowadays, parents (the ' grandchildren' of the sexual revolution) have no compunction about dressing their little girls as minihookers and taking them along to see sexually explicit acts like the Pussycat Dolls, where dancers mimic sex on stage.

Those girls grow up to post pictures of themselves posing like porn stars on the internet. Indeed, a third of teenage girls, we learnt this week, text sexually explicit pictures of themselves, too. And so it goes on.

'We were conned into abandoning self-respect'

Is it any wonder that the phenomenon of young teenage boys expecting their girlfriends to provide sexual gratification at any time (on a school bus, for example, according to Susie Orbach) leaves girls feeling abused and full of hate for their bodies - the very bodies so cynically exploited for commercial gains throughout a sexualised media?

There is sexual pressure on women as never before and no matter how much women achieve in the boardroom or as helicopter pilots, it makes a nonsense of equality.

In 2007, the American Psychological Association issued a report citing innumerable contributing causes to the sexualising of young girls, including music videos, TV and advertising. Are they to be accused of 'moral panic'?

When a magazine like Zoo can run a competition in which men send in pictures of their girlfriends' breasts along with a picture of the celebrity breasts they most admire, and the prize is a remodelling of the girlfriend's to match the ideal breasts - then something is very, very wrong.

The ongoing sexual 'revolution' is, in truth, as selfish and reactionary as those groovy Seventies men were, when Martin Amis's sister was young. She, like so many others, was conned by the talk of freedom into abandoning all self-respect.

The sad thing is young women today are still being conned - victims of the pervasive sex industry which uses 'liberation' as a mask for degradation.

 

Not originally published in LIFE. Woodstock Music & Art Fair, August 1969. "I like this shot of a handsome young hippie couple," photographer John Dominis told LIFE.com four decades after making the picture. "They seem so comfortable with each other. A very endearing image, I think."

Not originally published in LIFE. Woodstock Music & Art Fair, August 1969.

 

 

New York City, 1969.

 

SUMMER IN THE CITY: REVISITING THE ULTRA-COOL 'NEW YORK LOOK' OF 1969

Young couple on the Staten Island Ferry, 1969.

Young people at Bethesda Fountain in Central Park, 1969.

A couple embracing, New York, summer 1969.

LIFE Magazine, August 22, 1969

 

CITY OF FEAR: PHOTOS FROM THE BOSTON STRANGLER ERA, 1963

Scene during wave of stranglings in Boston area in 1963.

Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

THE BEATLES: FIRST VISIT TO AMERICA, 1964

Beatles concerts, like this American show in 1964, are noisy affairs where screaming crowds drown out the band. Even with their amplifiers, Lennon marvels after a show, "we still couldn't beat 'em."

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Sixties

Let's get going: Day one of the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival kicks off with some exotic dancing in the Sahara Tent

coachellaFlower power: A trio of fans brighten up the proceedings in Indio, California

Flower power:

Crowd surfing: A woman is gets lifted up during the Strokes's performance

Wet and wild: Fans get hosed down as the party front row

Bright on: Shiny wigs, tiny tops and peace signs - the spirit of Coachella

 

 

Cool down, boys: The crowd get hosed by revelers on the final day of the red hot festival

 

coachella

The sun goes down, the temperatures stay up: At least that's what the expression on the face of the guy with the girl on his shoulders seems to be saying

Miles of smiles: The temperature warm up as the festival wore on, but even on day two things were getting pretty steamy

Government releases complete Pentagon Papers for first time today... after 40 years of secrecy about the Vietnam War era

Hero: Daniel Ellsberg, seen in file photo, was a government analyst when he leaked the Pentagon Papers 40 years ago

Hero: Daniel Ellsberg, in file photo, was a government analyst when he leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971

Forty years after the explosive leak of the Pentagon Papers, a secret government study chronicling deception and misadventure in U.S. conduct of the Vietnam War, the report is released in its entirety.

The 7,000-page report was the WikiLeaks disclosure of its time, a sensational breach of government confidentiality that shook Richard Nixon's presidency and prompted a Supreme Court fight that advanced press freedom.

Prepared near the end of Lyndon Johnson's term by Defense Department and private foreign policy analysts, the report was leaked primarily by one of them, Daniel Ellsberg, in a brash act of defiance that stands as one of the most dramatic episodes of whistleblowing in U.S. history.

The National Archives and presidential libraries released the report in full Monday, long after most of its secrets had spilled.

The release is timed 40 years to the day after The New York Times published the first in its series of stories about the findings, on June 13, 1971.

The papers showed that the Johnson, Kennedy and prior administrations had been escalating the conflict in Vietnam while misleading Congress, the public and allies.

As scholars pore over the 47-volume report, Mr Ellsberg says the chance of them finding great new revelations is dim.

Most of it has come out in congressional forums and by other means, and Mr Ellsberg plucked out the best when he painstakingly photocopied pages that he spirited from a safe night after night, and returned in the mornings.

He told The Associated Press the value in Monday's release was in having the entire study finally brought together and put online, giving today's generations ready access to it.

Press freedom: Katharine Graham led The Washington Post through the Pentagon Papers era, when the paper and The New York Times published material the government wanted suppressed. She is shown with Bobby Kennedy in 1968

Press freedom: Katharine Graham (with Bobby Kennedy in 1968) led The Washington Post through the Pentagon Papers era

At the time, Mr Nixon was delighted that people were reading about bumbling and lies by his predecessor, which he thought would take some anti-war heat off him.

But if he loved the substance of the leak, he hated the leaker.

He called the leak an act of treachery and vowed that the people behind it 'have to be put to the torch'.

He feared that Mr Ellsberg represented a left-wing cabal that would undermine his own administration with damaging disclosures if the government did not crush him and make him an example for all others with loose lips.

It was his belief in such a conspiracy, and his willingness to combat it by illegal means, that put him on the path to the Watergate scandal that destroyed his presidency.

Mr Nixon's attempt to avenge the Pentagon Papers leak failed. First the Supreme Court backed the Times, The Washington Post and others in the press and allowed them to continue publishing stories on the study in a landmark case for the First Amendment.

Then the government's espionage and conspiracy prosecution of Mr Ellsberg and his colleague Anthony J. Russo Jr. fell apart, a mistrial declared because of government misconduct.

The judge threw out the case after agents of the White House broke into the office of Mr Ellsberg's psychiatrist to steal records in hopes of discrediting him, and after it surfaced that Mr Ellsberg's phone had been tapped illegally.

Battled: President Richard Nixon at first supported release of the Pentagon Papers, then decided to aggressively stop the leak

Battled: President Richard Nixon at first supported release of the Pentagon Papers, then decided to aggressively stop the leak

That September 1971 break-in was tied to the Plumbers, a shady White House operation formed after the Pentagon Papers disclosures to stop leaks, smear Mr Nixon's opponents and serve his political ends.

The next year, the Plumbers were implicated in the break-in at the Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate building.

Mr Ellsberg remains convinced the report - a thick, often turgid read - would have had much less impact if Mr Nixon had not temporarily suppressed publication with a lower court order and had not prolonged the headlines even more by going after him so hard.

Mr Ellsberg said, 'Very few are going to read the whole thing. That's why it was good to have the great drama of the injunction'.

The declassified report includes 2,384 pages missing from what was regarded as the most complete version of the Pentagon Papers, published in 1971 by Democratic Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska.

But some of the material absent from that version appeared - with redactions - in a report of the House Armed Services Committee, also in 1971.

In addition, at the time, Mr Ellsberg did not disclose a section on peace negotiations with Hanoi, in fear of complicating the talks, but that part was declassified separately years later.

Mr Ellsberg served with the Marines in Vietnam and came back disillusioned.

False war: The Pentagon Papers revealed a history of deceit by the U.S. government in its justification for the Vietnam War

False war: The Pentagon Papers revealed a history of deceit by the U.S. government in its justification for the Vietnam War

A protege of Nixon adviser Henry Kissinger, who called the young man his most brilliant student, Mr Ellsberg served the administration as an analyst, tied to the Rand Corporation.

The report was by a team of analysts, some in favour of the war, some against it, some ambivalent, but joined in a no-holds-barred appraisal of U.S. policy and the fraught history of the region.

To this day, Mr Ellsberg regrets staying mum for as long as he did.

'I was part, on a middle level, of what is best described as a conspiracy by the government to get us into war," he said.

Mr Johnson publicly vowed that he sought no wider war, Mr Ellsberg recalled, a message that played out in the 1964 presidential campaign as LBJ portrayed himself as the peacemaker against the hawkish Republican Barry Goldwater.

Meantime, his administration manipulated South Vietnam into asking for U.S. combat troops and responded to phantom provocations from North Vietnam with stepped-up force.

'It couldn't have been a more dramatic fraud', Mr Ellsberg said. 'Everything the president said was false during the campaign'.

His message to whistleblowers now: Speak up sooner. 'Don't do what I did. Don't wait until the bombs start falling'.

36

President Lyndon Johnson speaks during a televised address from the White House, Jan. 31, 1966, announcing the resumption of bombing of targets in North Vietnam. The president, who was photographed from a television screen at the New York studios of NBC-TV, said he was requesting Amb. Arthur Goldberg to call for an immediate meeting of the U.N. Security Council. (AP Photo/Marty Lederhandler)

The bloody morass that is Iraq has increasingly grim parallels with the bloody morass that was Vietnam.

There, the Americans found that fantastic firepower was not enough against a simply armed and determined foe.

In Iraq, the Coalition is finding that the most modern military equipment in the world is of no value when confronting suicide bombers.

In Iraq, the Americans are bewildered by the hostility of the people they are trying to help. In Vietnam there was 'ingratitude' too - though given the sometimes wild and brutal behaviour of U.S. troops there, this was not so surprising. Both Iraq and Vietnam have been victims of Western ignorance and incomprehension.

The Americans could never understand that the Vietnamese were not longing for Western-style democracy.

The Coalition attitude is summed by Tony Blair's insistence that 'democracy', Western-style, is what the 'vast majority' of Iraqis long for.

Do they? There are few more risky assumptions in foreign policy than the conceited belief that the rest of the world longs to copy us.

In his penitent memoirs about Vietnam, former U.S. Defence Secretary Robert McNamara wrote: 'We do not have the God-given right to shape every nation in our own image or as we choose.' Another lesson was: 'Our misjudgments of friend and foe alike reflected our profound ignorance of the history, culture and politics of the people in the area and the personalities and habits of their leaders.' It was well said. And as he also pointed out in his book, published in 1995, the U.S. was continuing then to make the same errors - as it does now.

For Blair, seriously dismayed despite his outward calm, the big question is, er, what do we do next?

He apparently thinks we must continue to slug it out over the next two years - the period we are now told that our forces need to remain.

The Americans also took a similar line in Vietnam throughout the 1960s, despite evidence they were losing the struggle.

While we stay in Iraq, our forces will be sitting ducks. We should face the fact that a dignified exit strategy for the Coalition forces is not possible.

When President Nixon set about extricating the U.S. from Vietnam, he suggested (it was election time) that achieving 'peace with honour' might be only a matter of months.

But it took him four years of alternately bombing the North - and neighbouring Cambodia - and proffering Hanoi peace terms to reach a settlement which he could pretend, if briefly, was 'honourable'.

In reality it amounted to cut and run.

The parallels are not precise, but the lessons are there. The Government has got stuck in an armed intervention in a country whose problems we failed to anticipate - ready as old Middle East hands were to give warnings.

Iraq is not a natural political unit but a highly artificial country with, to us, incomprehensible ethnic and religious divisions. Even the wisdom of Solomon could not hold it together in tranquillity.

If and when there are elections, Sunnis will vote for Sunnis, Shias for Shias and Kurds for Kurds. And each group will try to fight - probably literally - to disadvantage the others. Yet the answer to the morass, as the Coalition sees it, is to push in even deeper.

Meanwhile, the issue of the Attorney General's advice on the war's legality refuses to go away. He should be pressed in Parliament to say if his view at the time about weapons of mass destruction was the same as the Prime Minister's - the erroneous belief that this applied to strategic and not just battlefield systems.

Cabinet Secretary Sir Andrew Turnbull, the man trying to put the frighteners on Clare Short, has spent his career in the Treasury and the Department of Education.

Happily, he spent no time at the Foreign Office, where his diplomatic skills - or lack of them - may well have offended foreign governments.

His warning to Short that her revelations were incompatible with her position as a former minister and as a Privy Counsellor began with the magisterial rebuke: 'I am extremely disappointed with your behaviour.' If he wanted to wind up Clare Short, this would seem to be a good way of doing it.

The correct approach would be for him to say that he was obliged to draw her attention to the Official Secrets Act and the Privy Council oath.

It is not necessary or indeed proper for him to air his personal 'disappointment', like a boss rebuking an underling, least of all in a letter which he sent on his own initiative. He may be our top civil servant, but he is only that - a civil servant.

As such he is less important than the most minor and obscure MP.

And he had better not forget it.

Short is now threatened with stern party discipline for her many disloyal remarks. You might think the fact that Blair tricked Labour MPs into supporting the war with a series of falsehoods was an infinitely graver matter for the party.

But that would be to deploy common sense, which has no place in our affairs at the moment.

John Lennon

Bed and bard: John Lennon and Yoko Ono lie-in for peace in 1969

Where the pessimists see an era when the sniggering of satirists and the misguided reforms of liberalism loosened the fabric of morals and social cohesion, optimists see the very same changes and interpret them as the beginning of liberation.

For them, however childish the behaviour of rioting students or iconoclastic playwrights, this was the period when Britain grew up - when people no longer looked to the Lord Chamberlain to decide what they could see on the stage, nor to the Home Secretary and the police and the judiciary to tell consenting adults how to comport themselves in their intimate sexual lives.

 coachella

 

'WEST SIDE STORY': PHOTOS FROM THE SET OF A HOLLYWOOD CLASSIC

"Sharks, bedeviled by the tormenting of the Jets, cook up some dirty tricks. Here they pour yellow paint down on a quartet of dejected Jets. Both gangs are itching for a fight

Private party on the balcony of a New York City apartment building, summer 1969.

Hare Krishna devotees wear traditional saffron robes and chant in a New York park, summer 1969.

Kids rowing in Central Park's lake, 1969.

Aug. 22, 1969. Best viewed in "Full Screen" mode; see button at right.

 

 

 

NATALIE WOOD: RARE PHOTOS OF THE LIFELONG MOVIE STAR. Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty, 1961.

Splendour in the Grass by William Wordsworth

What though the radiance
which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass,
of glory in the flower,
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.
File:Splendor Sheet A.jpg

 

Glamor: John F. Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy at Hyannis Port, Massachusetts in the 1960s

Glamor: John F. Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy at Hyannis Port, Massachusetts in the 1960s

On October 15, 1962, a group of CIA analysts assigned to review aerial photographs of Cuba identified several newly established Soviet medium-range ballistic missile installations -- bases within 100 miles of the United States. The State Department was notified that night, and President John F. Kennedy was briefed the next morning, setting in motion a crisis that brought the world frighteningly close to nuclear war. The U.S. considered options, deployed troops and weapons to Florida, confronted the Soviets at the UN, and shortly set up a naval blockade of Cuba. For 13 tense days, the crisis deepened and people around the world feared the very real possibility of a new, horrific worldwide conflict. On October 27, the U.S. and Soviets reached a secret agreement, where Kennedy would order the removal of missiles in southern Italy and Turkey, and Khrushchev would remove all missiles in Cuba. Over the following weeks, U.S. forces monitored the departure of 42 missiles aboard eight Soviet ships, and the crisis was averted. Gathered here are a few glimpses from those tense Cold War days, as the world approached, then retreated from, the brink of destruction.

U.S. President John F. Kennedy speaks before reporters during a televised speech to the nation about the strategic blockade of Cuba, and his warning to the Soviet Union about missile sanctions, during the Cuban missile crisis, on October 24, 1962 in Washington, DC. (Getty Images)

2

A spy photo of a medium range ballistic missile base in San Cristobal, Cuba, with labels detailing various parts of the base, displayed October of 1962. (Getty Images) #

3

Evidence presented by the U.S. Department of Defense, of Soviet missiles in Cuba. This low level photo, made October 23, 1962, of the medium range ballistic missile site under construction at Cuba's San Cristobal area. A line of oxidizer trailers is at center. Added since October 14, the site was earlier photographed, are fuel trailers, a missile shelter tent, and equipment. The missile erector now lies under canvas cover. Evident also are extensive vehicle tracks and the construction of cable lines to control areas. (AP Photo/DOD) #

4

President John F. Kennedy meets with Air Force Maj. Richard Heyser, left, and Air Force Chief of Staff, Gen. Curtis LeMay, center, at the White House in Washington to discuss U-2 spy plane flights over Cuba. (AP Photo/Richard Heyser private collection) #

5

A map of Cuba annotated by former U.S. President John F. Kennedy, displayed for the first time at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, Massachusetts, on July 13, 2005. Former President Kennedy wrote "Missile Sites" on the map and marked them with an X when he was first briefed by the CIA on the Cuban Missile Crisis on October 16, 1962. (Reuters/Brian Snyder) #

6

A photograph of a ballistic missile base in Cuba, used as evidence with which U.S. President John F. Kennedy ordered a naval blockade of Cuba during the Cuban missile crisis, on October 24, 1962. (Getty Images) #

7

President John F. Kennedy tells the American people that the U.S. is setting up a naval blockade against Cuba, during a television and radio address, on October 22, 1962, from the White House. The president also said the U.S. would wreak "a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union" if any nuclear missile is fired on any nation in this hemisphere." (AP Photo/Bill Allen) #

8

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Adlai Stevenson, second from right, confronts Soviet delegate Valerian Zorin, first on left, with a display of reconnaissance photographs during emergency session of the U.N. Security Council at the United Nations headquarters in New York, on October 25, 1962. (AP Photo) #

9

A composite image of three photograph taken on October 23, 1962, during a United Nations Security Council meeting on the Cuban Missile Crisis. From left, Soviet foreign deputy minister Valerian A. Zorin; Cuba's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Mario Garcia-Inchaustegui; and U.S. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson. (Library of Congress) #

10

Cuban President Fidel Castro replies to President Kennedy's naval blockade via Cuban radio and television, on October 23, 1962.(AP Photo/file) #

11

President John F. Kennedy signs a proclamation enacting the U.S. arms quarantine against Cuba, on October 23, 1962.(Library of Congress) #

12

Picketers representing an organization known as Women Strike for Peace carry placards outside the United Nations headquarters in New York City, where the U.N. Security Council considers the Cuban missile crisis in a special meeting, on October 23, 1962. (AP Photo) #

13

Two soldiers sit in a sandy dugout beside a machine gun hold position on a beach on Key West, Florida, on October 27, 1962.(AP Photo/Harold Valentine) #

14

New Yorkers eager for news of the Cuban missile crisis line up to buy newspapers in October of 1962. (Library of Congress) #

15

U.S. Navy surveillance of the first Soviet F-class submarine to surface near the Cuban quarantine line on October 25, 1962.(U.S. Navy) #

16

Members of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) march during a protest against the U.S. action over the Cuban missile crisis, on October 28, 1962 in London, England. (Getty Images) #

17

U.S. Army anti-aircraft rockets, mounted on launchers and pointed out over the Florida Straits in Key West, Florida, on October 27, 1962.(AP photo) #

18

A low-level photograph taken November 1, 1962, of a Medium Range Ballistic Missile Site at Sagua La Grande, Cuba.(AP Photo/U.S. Defense Department) #

President John Kennedy reports personally to the nation on the status of the Cuban crisis, telling the American people that Soviet missile bases in Cuba are "being destroyed", on on November 2, 1962. He said U.S. air surveillance will continue until effective international inspection is arranged. (AP Photo/Henery Griffin) #

Soviet personnel and six missile transporters loaded onto a Soviet ship in Cuba's Casilda port, on November 6, 1962. Note shadow at lower right of the RF-101 reconnaissance jet taking the photograph. (Department of Defense) #

A P2V Neptune U.S. patrol plane flies over a Soviet freighter during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. (Getty Images)


At 12:30 pm, just seconds after President John F. Kennedy and Texas Governor John Connally were shot in Dallas, Texas, the limousine carrying mortally wounded president races toward the hospital, on November 22, 1963. With secret service agent Clinton Hill riding on the back of the car, Mrs. John Connally, wife of the Texas governor, bends over her wounded husband, and Mrs. Kennedy leans over the president.(AP Photo/Justin Newman) #

 

Lee Harvey Oswald sits in police custody shortly after being arrested for the assassination President John F. Kennedy, and the murder of Dallas police officer J. D. Tippit, in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. (AP Photo)

Flanked by Jacqueline Kennedy (right) and his wife Lady Bird Johnson (2nd left), U.S Vice President Lyndon Johnson is administered the oath of office by Federal Judge Sarah Hughes, as he assumed the presidency of the United States, on November 22, 1963, following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas (Cecil Stoughton/AFP/Getty Images)

Lee Harvey Oswald, accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy, is placed on a stretcher after moments after being shot in the stomach in Dallas, Texas, on November 24, 1963. Nightclub owner Jack Ruby shot and killed Oswald as the prisoner was being transferred through the underground garage of Dallas police headquarters. (AP Photo)

 

Jackie Kennedy kisses the casket of her late husband, President John F. Kennedy while her daughter Caroline touches it in rotunda of U.S> Capitol, on November 24, 1963. (AP Photo)

 

With the illuminated U.S. Capitol in the background, mourners form an endless line which lasted through the night, to pay their respects to the slain President John F. Kennedy, in Washington, D.C., on November 24, 1963. (AP Photo)

Three-year-old John F. Kennedy Jr. salutes his father's casket in Washington in this November 25, 1963 photo, three days after the president was assassinated in Dallas. Widow Jacqueline Kennedy, center, and daughter Caroline Kennedy are accompanied by the late president's brothers Senator Edward Kennedy, left, and Attorney General Robert Kennedy. (AP Photo) #

 

Captured Blog: Past Inaugurations

“The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices – to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own for the children and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to . . . The Twilight Zone.” — Rod Serling, 1960


The Death of Joe Jr.

Golden couple: Jacqueline Kennedy told the photographer later that this picture of herself and her husband in Washington in 1961 was her favorite because it was so affectionate

Golden couple: Jacqueline Kennedy told the photographer later that this picture of herself and her husband in Washington in 1961 was her favorite because it was so affectionate

Time out: JFK plays with his son John before boarding a flight on Marine One flanked by members of the Secret Service

Time out: JFK plays with his son John before boarding a flight on Marine One flanked by members of the Secret Service

One picture, taken in an open-top car during a Tunisian state visit to Washington in 1961, shows JFK affectionately brushing hair from his wife Jacqueline's eyes.

Only two years after theses images were taken, President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963.

Capturing Camelot, by renowned biographer Kitty Kelley, uses the work of late photographer and her mentor Stanley Tretick, who left the valuable shots to her after his death in 1999.

After following Kennedy throughout his presidential campaign, Tretick was given more access to the White House, allowing him to capture the family shots.

The photographer's pictures of JFK playing with his children became some of best known of the Kennedy era.

In mourning: Jacqueline Kennedy, backed by Nantucket Sound in 1964, following her husband's assassination

In mourning: Jacqueline Kennedy, backed by Nantucket Sound in 1964, following her husband's assassination

All the president's men: JFK takes the Kennedy, Shriver, Smith and Lawford children for a ride on his golf cart at the family's compound in Hyannis Port

All the president's men: JFK takes the Kennedy, Shriver, Smith and Lawford children for a ride on his golf cart at the family's compound in Hyannis Port

Iconic: JFK and his son John Jr stroll along the White House portico shortly after he was inaugurated as President

Iconic: JFK and his son John Jr stroll along the White House portico shortly after he was inaugurated as President

Fateful day JFK was assassinated as seen by bystanders

When President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, the event and its aftermath were broadcast to a stunned nation through photography and television.

Reporters used dramatic on-the-spot news photographs by professional photojournalists as well as snapshots by unsuspecting witnesses to explain the events: the shooting of the President, the hunt for the assassin, the swearing in of the new President, the widow's grief, the funeral, the shooting of Oswald.

Viewers interpreted these photographs in various ways: to comprehend the shocking news, to negotiate their grief, to attempt to solve the crime.

The combination of personal photographs assuming public significance and subjective interpretations of news images disrupted conventional views of photography as fact or evidence.

A new exhibition at the International Center of Photography in New York, JFK November 22, 1963: A Bystander's View of History, examines the imaginative reception of these iconic photographs.

Fateful day: Unidentified Photographer, Governor John Connally, Nellie Connally, President John F. Kennedy, and Jacqueline Kennedy in presidential limousine, Dallas, November 22, 1963

Fateful day: Unidentified Photographer, Governor John Connally, Nellie Connally, President John F. Kennedy, and Jacqueline Kennedy in presidential limousine, Dallas, November 22, 1963

Shown to a stunned nation: Unidentified Photographer, [John F. Kennedy], ca. 1963. International Center of Photography, Museum Purchase, 2013

Shown to a stunned nation: Unidentified Photographer, [John F. Kennedy], ca. 1963. International Center of Photography, Museum Purchase, 2013

In the blink of an eye: Picture by Mary Moorman, [Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Dallas], November 22, 1963. International Center of Photography, Museum Purchase, 2013

In the blink of an eye: Picture by Mary Moorman, [Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Dallas], November 22, 1963. International Center of Photography, Museum Purchase, 2013

 

Snapshot: Unidentified Photographer, [John F. Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy, John Connally, and Nellie Connally in presidential limousine, Dallas], November 22, 1963. International Center of Photography, Museum Purchase, 2005.

On the stump: Cornell Capa, [John F. Kennedy reaching into a crowd of supporters, North Hollywood, California], 1960. International Center of Photography

On the stump: Cornell Capa, [John F. Kennedy reaching into a crowd of supporters, North Hollywood, California], 1960. International Center of Photography

Caught: Unidentified Photographer, [Lee Harvey Oswald, Dallas], November 22 or 23, 1963. International Center of Photography, Museum Purchase, 2013

Caught: Unidentified Photographer, [Lee Harvey Oswald, Dallas], November 22 or 23, 1963. International Center of Photography, Museum Purchase, 2013 This image must not be cropped, bled, overprinted with text, or altered in any manner. Whether received electronically or in print, it may not be copied or stored other than is needed for one-time reproduction in conjunction with exhibition press. If used electronically, an image must be reproduced at a resolution of no larger than 700 pixels on the long side. The conditions for publication listed above are required for the use of enclosed/attached reproduction materials. Failure to fully document these images may constitute an infringement of copyright. Please send ICP a tear sheet, copy of your publication, or a PDF when any of the images and/or an article/review/listing appears. Thank you.

I solemnly do swear: JFK Television image of Lyndon B. Johnson's swearing in ceremony aboard Air Force One. Unidentified Photographer, November 22, 1963. International Center of Photography, Museum Purchase, 2013

I solemnly do swear: JFK Television image of Lyndon B. Johnson's swearing in ceremony aboard Air Force One. Unidentified Photographer, November 22, 1963. International Center of Photography, Museum Purchase, 2013

Grief of a nation: JFK Television image of Jacqueline Kennedy and Caroline Kennedy during John F. Kennedy's funeral proceedings. Unidentified Photographer, November 24, 1963. International Center of Photography, Museum Purchase, 2013

Grief of a nation: JFK Television image of Jacqueline Kennedy and Caroline Kennedy during John F. Kennedy's funeral proceedings. Unidentified Photographer, November 24, 1963. International Center of Photography, Museum Purchase, 2013

20

President Kennedy appears in a motorcade in Cork, Ireland on June 28th, 1963. (Robert Knudsen, White House / John F. Kennedy Library) #

21

November 22nd, 1963 - President Kennedy reaches out to the crowd gathered at the Hotel Texas Parking Lot Rally in Fort Worth, Texas. (Cecil Stoughton, White House / John F. Kennedy Library) #

22

Moments after he was shot, the limousine carrying mortally wounded President John F. Kennedy races toward the hospital in Dallas, Texas on November 22nd, 1963. Secret service agent Clinton Hill rides on the back of the car, Mrs. John Connally, wife of the Texas governor, bends over her wounded husband, and Mrs. Kennedy leans over the president. (AP Photo/Justin Newman) #

23

President Kennedy's casket is loaded onto Air Force One at Love Field in Dallas, Texas on November 22nd, 1963. Onlookers include Lawrence "Larry" O'Brien, Jacqueline Kennedy, and Dave Powers. (Cecil Stoughton, White House / John F. Kennedy Library) #

2

2

 

 

THE EXCITING SIXTIES

A half-century ago, much of the world was in a broad state of change: We were moving out of the post-World War II era, and into both the Cold War and the Space Age, with broadening civil rights movements and anti-nuclear protests in the U.S. In 1961, John F. Kennedy was inaugurated as the 35th president of the United States, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to fly in space, Freedom Riders took buses into the South to bravely challenge segregation, and East Germany began construction of the Berlin Wall. That year, Kennedy gave the okay to the disastrous Bay of Pigs Invasion into Cuba and committed the U.S. to "landing a man on the Moon" with NASA's Apollo program. JFK also oversaw the early buildup of a U.S. military presence in Vietnam: by the end of 1961, some 2,000 troops were deployed there. Let me take you 50 years into the past now, for a look at the world as it was in the exciting sixties.Woodstock

Berkeley-Oakland City, Calif. demonstraters march against the war in Vietnam. Calif. (AP Photo). For me, San Francisco was a magical place that I heard of only through rumor. Friends, or friends of friends, would return to our small, conservative Fort Bonifacio enclave with their stories about the happening and from my cousins, who lived in the hills of Marin County, of the Haight-Ashbury, flower children. Immigrating to San Francisco, was first in my mind and it could offer a chance for a new beginning, to be completely independent, and an opportunity to witness firsthand the peace and love movement that was sweeping America.  When youth counterculture rose into the mainstream and popular music expanded into previously unimagined realms in the latter half of the 60s, San Francisco was undeniably one of the most important epicenters of change. The city's history with the Renaissance poets, the Beats, and a vibrant folk scene left it in a good position to serve as a cultural engine, and the ignition of the San Francisco Sound came from dozens of sources, from Bob Dylan, Paul Butterfield, and the British Invasion to UC-Berkeley's 1964 Free Speech Movement, the evolution of freeform FM radio, and the proliferation of hallucinogenic drugs. By 1967, San Francisco was the most psychedelic city in America, if not the world.

We have uncertainties about the future, the world was unstable enough, and to live life to the fullest, I have to start a family. In addition to the Vietnam War the United States was being rocked by the Civil Rights Movement and riots in the streets. Western Europe was experiencing a wave of domestic terrorist groups. The Middle East was in turmoil over the Six Day War. Czechoslovakia had tried to liberalize their Communist government and been invaded by Russia. This was the height of the Cold War and the United States and theSoviet Union were nose to nose armed to the teeth withnuclear weapons. There was a lot going on in addition to theCultural Revolution and Vietnam War.

1960: The picture is indeed Jones bridge going down to what was then Rosario St and is now Paredes St.  When you go down the bridge, you reach the first picture.  I still  remember this place because the RCA building which you can still see in the picture, is where my granduncle used to work.  Across this building was what used to be La Estrella del Norte (the jewelry story on the corner of Escolta) and is now Savory Restaurant...Sheila

Graduation from College and time to reflect the next path, of life Top Hits of 1966 The Hippie GenerationVietnam War Protest Quest for Advanced Studies US Mao’s Last Campaign Cars of our times Six Day War Jerusalem VictoriousMiddle Eastern Conflict War Video

The decade saw the Vietnam War, the gradual relaxation in the social structures governing morals, took a step further as millions of woman tossed out their bras. The hippies sought to depart from materialism by creating what came to be known as the anti-fashion and counter culture movement. The Sixties was a decade of Liberation and Revolution, a time of personal journeys and fiery protests. It transcended all national borders and changed the world. People, young and old, united in opposition to the existing dictates of society. Poignant was the death of JFK. The Beatles were a pick up happy energy then. Finishing ChE and dreams to go to America made a big difference of what I want to be later on. Against that was the temptations of an open society, unlike that of the country I left behind. With all these temptations meant to disorient, I survived this decade remained focused on studies, work and the family. After looking back I have but one wish now, just send me back to the sixties, where I made my future.

The lasting impact of the "hippies" was related to their political involvement, their demand for equal treatment of all races, their embracing of the feminist movement, their compassion for the indiginous and downtrodden people of the world, their early acceptance of homosexuality, their rejection of consumer culture, and their demand for a deeper understanding of man's place in the world. These hippies did not drop out. They changed american society in lasting and substantial ways.  To falsely associate Leary and his idiotic catchphrase with the entire 60s' movement is at best a false dichotomy and at worst the result of a carefully crafted mainstream media propaganda campaign.

The era like the 60s, can never be repeated again. I miss the adventure and attempts to capture the anticipation of something great to happen. I appreciate the people in my life that made it special in those days. Around me, an inner peace exist with the hippies, there was something special to live without the constraints of time. To wake up each day and decide what would be the most fun to do that day or just find out as it went along. They go with the flow, follow the bliss, be here now. This was in complete opposition to the culture from which I came. They wanted new ways to value one another, rather than by wealth, status, looks, achievements, machismo, as our culture of origin had taught us, and continues to teach us through the media. They wanted to value one another for being lovable and real. Also a spirituality that actually caused you to grow as a person, not one in which people attended religious gatherings for social status and to be guided by their own Inner Spirits, rather than by priests.

Final Glimpse of Manila. Mapua extreme upper right. UP Prep High, bottom right. A City Hall  the dominant motif (remember that the pre-war City Hall was almost razed to the ground)…this tower-like building will command views of Manila Bay, the Botanical Gardens, the surrounding districts of Manila, including the mountains of Cavite, Corregidor, Mariveles and Bataan, Banahaw, and Makiling.” The air in Manila back then must have really been pollution-free for these views to be possible.

 

Astronaut Alan Shepard, at left, receives a medal from President John F. Kennedy, with fellow astronauts and Vice President Lyndon Johnson looking on in Washington, D.C. in 1961. (AP photo) #

 
   
 

John F. Kennedy speaks for the first time as President of the United States in front of the Capitol in Washington, D.C., on January 20, 1961, during the inaugural ceremonies.

A thoroughly documented criminal indictment establishing beyond a reasonable doubt the guilt of George HW Bush as a supervisor in the conspiracy to assassinate John Kennedy. The evidence relies primarily on governement documents and public records. The center piece of the evidence is a memo entitled “Assassination of President John F. Kennedy”, signed by J Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI, 5 days after the assassination, which names Bush as a supervisor of CIA-trained assassins. Another FBI memo establishes Bush’s presence in the Dallas area at the time of the assassination.

 

The 10 years metamorphosis
The decade that shaped our lives: I started the 1960’s as a junior at the University of the Philippines. There, I became aware of my family's heritage and began preparation for entry at Fort Del Pilar (PMA), a military academy located in Bagiuo named after my granduncle. That was a period in my teen years in High School that I remember fondly. Those youthful days, a young lad of 14, very impressionable and eager to follow the footsteps of my ancestors. I remember the hectic times, dashing thru the corridors catching my schedule of classes at Rizal Hall, my bag loaded with books, eager, wide eyed, and quick to learn the tenets of math, and the sciences. After UP Prep’s high standard curriculum, passing the entrance exam to the academy was a breeze. If everything else pushed into fruition, there is a backup plan B. Temporary enrollment at MIT and then appointment to the cadet corps at the academy was the plan. However, my 20/30 eyesight failed the standards.

I remember my tepid dedication to my new course in Chemical Engineering, passing was enough. I recall the loves, my only solace for past failures, the friends and stormy situations that most teenagers weathered through. As in life surviving the cards you are dealt with, the unspoken pecking order among bigger classmates and the so called in crowd was the rule. That lone wolf streak that kept me apart, which peers seemed to see as a weakness was a measure of my family's heritage and that set me off from the teenage precepts of the times. It did form that certain pioneer spirit, and later when of age, after grad school, having ever spurred curiosity, like my forefathers, aspired a life of adventure and Public Service….

Early 1960: Intramuros to your left,  Post Office in distance, Manila City Hall on the right.


I would be remiss if I do not mention my favorite swimming hole in Tanay, Daranak Falls. Remembering fondly, cherishing memories of early summer vacations spent at this place. This 14-meter high falls is truly a refreshing site. A short walk over the top of Daranak are smaller, cascading streams known as Batlag Falls. It is located at Bgy. Tandang Kutyo in the town of Tanay. The place has been transformed into a public park/resort operated by the government.



Muse APO DELTA 1966

 

Sept. 1966: The Brothers Alpha Phi Omega (APO) Fraternity of the Delta Chapter Philippines circa 1966, from L # 3 - kneeling, me, my back Cesar Frias ChE68, 4-kneeling, Warlito Boquiren ChE66, his back, Jose Catibog ChE66, Advisor Prof. Sevilla and daughter. Standing on the far left the brother of Rosalina Corbett. More than 350,000 members havejoined Alpha Phi Omega National Service Fraternity since it's founding, at 366 college campuses here in the US alone, not counting other countries. Our mission is to prepare campus and community leaders through service. Our purpose is to develop leadership, to promote friendship and to provide service to humanity.......

Dewey Blvd: The jetty potruding to the Manila Bay is the future Cultural Center, on the other side of Dewey is the Manila Naval Station (MNS) where we lived from 1965 to 1966. the headquarters of the Philippine Navy was relegated to a small block of land south of the Manila Yacht Club. The original plan was to reclaim the site of the cultural center(CC) to replace the location of the MNS by the Central Bank. Imelda Marcos, saw this valuable real state and confiscated the plan for her project the now CC. The yacht club remained, the Navy base (MNS) was transferred to Fort Bonifacio.

Looking up Powell St. from Market St. The canteen at Woolworth on your right, served me well at lunch. During my job search, the hills of San Francisco was a hindrance. I think my overdeveloped legs were the outcome of the constant walking in SF. The Filipino community has grown remarkably since World War II and has spread to all areas of the city, especially the South of Market area. The affluent Castro district (technically Eureka Valley near Twin Peaks) has attracted gays and lesbians from throughout the country, becoming perhaps the most famous gay neighbourhood in the world. Its streets are adorned with elegantly restored Victorian homes and landmarks highlighting significant dates in the struggle for gay rights. It is said that no local politician can win an election without the gay community's vote.

Dropping down California St. Fabled hills, were the scourge of the handicap, nowhere in any city but San Francisco, where wheel chairs are absent...my own observation. I remember there were so many people coming in for the Peace March, we wondered around listening to the sounds of the bands warming up at the Union Square. The guitars faded in and out like the morning fog that drifted in and out on the breeze off the bay. Again, there was the thick smell of incense and marijuana, but there was something else in the atmosphere as well: the air was glowing electric with excitement and anticipation. Everyone felt that we were about to be part of something really big.

 

The girls of St. Theresa, the innocence of the young ladies above, untouched by the sixties youth revolution remained in my mind.  Why someday, one of them will be my partner in life.


We wanted to see life without violence. We wanted media that contained truth. Some of us risked our lives to find out what the government was doing and let the underground press know. We wanted to talk about things in print that we were not allowed to discuss in our culture of origin. We wanted to live without stupid, arbitrary rules, either for ourselves or for our children. Some of our children, as adults today, say they wish we had been more protective of them, or offered more structure.It was a moment in history when a mushroom explosion of consciousness began altering the life force. Through that explosion, we broke down the prison walls of "intellect as the ultimate".  We focused on the heart, and by doing so, reopened our cookie jar of possibilities·politically, socially, sexually and spiritually. The effects of that explosion have permeated our culture. We, as a generation, have a responsibility to see that the 60's are remembered in the context in which they unfolded."

"That sense of freedom had a place and I don't think you can blame the Sixties for what we are like nowadays. "I think that is an excuse for the way things are now and you can't make excuses."Some things may have got out of hand, but it was a time when people became more liberated."It is not true to say it was a time of hedonism. It is not excessive to say that."We were involved where the next generation is headed and we had some patriotic people leading us and we had ideas how to stop government excesses. The Sixties had a lot to offer."

File:SF From Marin Highlands3.jpg 

photo    

 

Golden Gate Bridge from Marshall Beach. San Francisco is one of the few truly unique cities in the United States. It could not possibly be mistaken for another city, and its position on the West Coast at the dramatic mouth of a bay gives it an aura unlike any other place I've been. Its hilly topography alone sets it apart, but from its roots as a Spanish mission to the boom of the Gold Rush, right through the mid-20th century San Francisco Renaissance and 1967's Summer of Love, the city has attracted a mix of people that's kept alive a certain frontier spirit that persisted long after it became one of the country's largest urban centers.

Destination San Francisco. "If you're going to San Francisco,be sure to wear some flowers in your hair...If you're going to San Francisco, Summertime will be a love-in there" I remember my first walk/day here in the US.  I came over in the late sixties, and was somewhat aware of the scenes, mostly was involved in search of a job. Funny, when we look back, we think, we squandered the times of our life when our hormones were in tune with our desires. I was single then, going to school in San Francisco and also at the California State University in Sacramento, during those days really experienced the happening, although a little bit subdued due to work in the day time. That song forever imprinted in my mind "San Francisco" it became an instant hit  and quickly transcended its original purpose by popularizing an idealized image of San Francisco. As the memories flicker down the memory lane, I wish to live back in the sixties with the images of the hills over the bay frozen in time....ASC

A Jackson Police Department file booking photograph of Freedom Rider Joan Trumpauer provided by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, taken on June 8, 1961. 19-year-old Duke University student and part-time secretary in the Washington office of Senator Clair Engle of California, Trumpauer arrived in Jackson, Mississippi to take part in the June 4, 1961 Mississippi Freedom Ride. She and eight others were promptly arrested and refused bail. Trumpauer served three months in jail, later enrolling in traditionally black Tougaloo college, which had just started accepting white students. (AP Photo/Mississippi Department of Archives and History, City of Jackson, File)

By the 1960s middle-class families had been sending their daughters to college for decades. By 1970 close to half (41.9 percent) of all college students were women; close to a quarter (23.5 percent) of all women aged eighteen to twenty-four were in college. As the late historian of education Barbara Solomon observed, it was in the years from 1870 to 1920 that "the denigration of college as an option for women evaporated, and its desirability became established."

This is not to suggest that by 1920 women were expected to pursue careers, just like men: for many years most were expected to become educated mothers. But higher education for women had been normalized long before Hillary and her friends entered Wellesley, and by the time they graduated, careerism was becoming normalized as well. Naturally, some parents enthusiastically supported their daughters' decisions to pursue professions, and some did not. (The ones I've known have all taken pride in their daughters' accomplishments.) There was at least a general expectation that female students would graduate from college: in 1969 at a Seven Sisters school an unintended pregnancy or a decision to drop out and marry had considerably more shock value than a determination to attend law school.

Throughout this period, it relies on oppositional images of the 1950s and 1960s that are only partly accurate. In portraying the class of '69 as rebellious, freedom-seeking proto-feminists,  a monolithic view of their mothers as victims of the feminine mystique, oppressed by femininity, "frustrated and suffocated." Again,  apparently relying on the unexamined recollections of those women who consented to be interviewed. All conclude that women who graduated from Wellesley in 1969 were "the daughters of martyrs."

That is melodrama, not social history. It is no defense of the 1950s to point out that many intelligent, educated women successfully adapted to the decade's restrictions and led at least satisfactory lives, not devoid of pleasure. Some found outlets for their energy and talents in local politics, community work, the arts, or family life. Some held wage-paying jobs.

These are reasonable but unremarkable observations that could probably have been made about women who graduated from Vassar or the University of Wisconsin in 1969. . If one goal of feminism was to dismantle stereotypes of femininity, for the sake of individualizing and humanizing women, then the erection of female icons is a sign of its failures.

Rebels without a clue: A scathing verdict on the liberal icons of the Sixties

Pessimists tend to look back on the Sixties as the time when Everything came Unstuck, when Britain undid itself.

Liberal bishops destroyed the faith and Lady Chatterley the morals of the British. Libertarian libertine Woy Jenkins unleashed sexual depravity and pornography on an unwilling world.

That is one picture. A different one is presented by the optimists, often those who were young at the time and think they spent the decade with flowers in their hair, protesting against the Vietnam War, smoking pot and playing Beatles LPs. Perhaps they did so.

 

In the heart of San Francisco, situated perfectly between Orpheum Theatre and Yerba Buena Gardens and Civic Center?s  Updated features of these San Francisco apartments include your own washer and dryer, stainless steel appliances, granite countertops and Pergo flooring. Great San Francisco apartments, great service and the amenities you deserve.  Walking distance to Civic Center & Union Square Walking distance to MUNI & public transportation

   

1966 Fox Plaza, it stands on the site of the former Fox Theatre, demolished in 1963. I remember  walking thru Van Ness and Market St. the strong winds of San Francisco magnified like a wind tunnel. It Acts like a sail, that many times my hat blew away. My recollection about this building were all positive, all the five years of my stay in Highway design and Urban Planning. The first twelve floors contain office space. Unlike many buildings, Fox Plaza has a 13th floor actually labeled "13", although this floor is the service floor and is not rented out. The 14th floor contains a gymnasium and laundry facilities as well as apartments, while floors 15 through 29 are exclusively rental apartments. The main attraction during coffee break was the fashion show atmosphere of beautiful young ladies well chosen by private companies at Fox Plaza to the delight of bachelors like us.

   

 

1947 Lincoln Continental Image

My first car, that I bought from my parents. I called her “Black Beauty”. She fulfilled my love for cars and girls. The Lincoln Continental was introduced in 1940, just prior to the onset of World War II. The Lincoln marque had weathered The Great Depression and the Continental signaled to the world that they were serious about their desires to compete in the luxury carsegment. The design was modern, elegant, and slightly European with a long front bonnet that gracefully concealed a potent V12 engine.

Alert icon

FORD MOTOR ANNOUNCED IN MARCH OF '46 THAT NO '47 MODEL YEAR WOULD BE OFFERED IN THE LINCOLN LINE. BUT BY FEBRUARY '47 THAT DECISION WAS CHANGED AND A NEW MODEL OF LINCOLN WAS OFFERED. BASE '46 - '48 LINCOLNS WERE WARMED OVER DESIGNS BASICALLY '42 LINCOLN ZEPHYRS. HOWEVER, THE FORTY SEVENS HAD A MINOR FACELIFT WITH SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT TRIM. THIS MODEL 76H WAS THE LOWER MODEL WITH THE CONTINENTAL MODEL ABOVE. 21,460 INCLUDING 1,569 CONTINENTALS FORTY SEVENS WERE PRODUCED THIS YEAR. COMPARE THAT NUMBER WITH OVER 49,000 CADILLACS OF ALL MODELS PRODUCED THIS YEAR. SO, LINCOLN AS A POPULAR LUXURY CAR STILL STRUGGLED. AH, BUT THE CADDY DIDN'T HAVE A 12 CYLINDER ENGINE LIKE THE LINCOLN. THIS V-12 IS A 292 CID, 125 HP POWERPLANT. THINGS TO LOOK FOR IN THIS VIDEO INCLUDE THE DUAL HORNS ATTACHED TO THE UNDERSIDE OF THE HOOD, SUICIDE DOORS, HUGE FENDER SKIRTS, THE V-12 ENGINE, AND A LARGE " L " ON THE TRUNK EMBLEM. LOVE THOSE HUGE WHITE WALLS. THANKS VERY MUCH FOR VIEWING THIS WARMED OVER POST-WAR LINCOLN

On the inside, they were lavishly appointed and with amenities being offered as standard equipment. Exteriorly, there was little trim or chrome which was done to keep the car simple, relying on the beauty of its design rather than trying to attract based on eye catching bright pieces. The rear fenders were covered with skirts over the wheels. This was stretched to match the rear trunk.

MY SECOND CAR IN THE EARLY SIXTIES A WHITE 1957 BUICK SPECIAL

 

MEANWHILE THE NEWS AROUND THE WORLD IN THIS ERA

 

2

Singer Bobby Darin stands beside a hand-made automobile called the "Bobby Darin Dream Car," unveiled on March 31, 1961, in Hollywood, California. Owner Andrew Di Dia, who designed and built the $150,000 car, will take it on a nationwide tour. (AP Photo) #

Canon John Collins of St. Paul's Cathedral, a leading figure in the campaign for nuclear disarmament which organized the two ban-the-bomb marches over the Easter holiday, addresses a mass protest rally in London's Trafalgar Square on April 3, 1961, after the marchers had converged on central London.

Anti-war demonstrators gather opposite the Lincoln Memorial in Washington , D.C.  In the background is the Reflecting Pool, the base of the Washington Monument, and barely visible through the haze is the Capitol Building.  (AP Photo) For me, San Francisco was a magical place that I heard of only through rumor. Friends, or friends of friends, would return to our small, conservative Fort Bonifacio enclave with their stories about the happening and from my cousins, who lived in the hills of Marin County, of the Haight-Ashbury, flower children. Immigrating to San Francisco, was first in my mind and it could offer a chance for a new beginning, to be completely independent, and an opportunity to witness firsthand the peace and love movement that was sweeping America.

4

Kennith Gelpey wears protective clothing as he emerges from a fallout shelter in Medford, Massachusetts, on October 23, 1961, with a geiger counter in hand to "test for radiation". Gelpey and his family spent the weekend in the shelter to test their equipment. (AP Photo) #

5

A tightly clutched Madonna and eyes filled with tears tell the story as an African-American girl is whisked away from the University of Georgia campus in a state patrol car, on January 12, 1961. Charlayne Hunter, 18, who started classes at the school on Tuesday under federal order, was withdrawn last night for her own protection when students staged an uprising against the integration. (AP Photo/Horace Cort) #

6

Soviet cosmonaut Major Yuri Gagarin (right), shakes hand with Leonid Ilich Brezhnev, the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, after the Soviet statesman awarded Gagarin the Order of Lenin and a Gold Star medal of the Hero of the Soviet Union for his achievements in becoming the first man in history to travel in space. (AFP/Getty Images) #

7

Mike Hailwood, 21, of Oxford, is shown at speed on his Norton motorcycle in the 226-mile Senior International Tourist Trophy Race on the mountain course in the Isle of Man, United Kingdom, on June 16, 1961. He won the six-lap race at an average speed of 100.6 miles an hour, making T.T. history by winning three races in a week. (AP Photo) #

Police and secret service struggle in vain to free President elect John F. Kennedy (center) from a surging mass of Harvard students in Harvard yard in Cambridge, on January 9, 1961. Kennedy, normally a fast mover, was halted in his tracks when students broke through police barrier. He had to take refuge in a dormitory until police could bring a car to get him out. (AP Photo)

Not a car is visible on Malecon Drive in Havana, Cuba, a street well-known to American tourists in former days, as Fidel Castro's forces take over, using it for defense purposes. A single rifle-toting militiaman walks along the drive in Havana, on January 6, 1961, from which all normal traffic was diverted. (AP Photo)#

Fidel Castro sits in a tank during the Bay of Pigs Invasion in April of 1961. Some 1,300 Cuban exiles, backed by the U.S. Government, invaded the island nation of Cuba, attempting to overthrow the government of the Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. The invasion failed disastrously, with 90 of the invaders killed, and the rest captured within 3 days. (OAH/AFP/Getty Images)

11

Hangars which had been darkened during a strike by airline flight engineers are lighted at Chicago's Midway airport on February 23, 1961, as TWA planes are wheeled out to be prepared for resumption of service. The end of a wildcat walkout against seven airlines was announced in Washington, D.C. by President Kennedy. (AP Photo/EM) #

12

A giant electrified model of the human brain's control system is demonstrated by Dr. A.G. Macleod, at the meeting of the American Medical Association in New York, on June 26, 1961. The maze of twisting tubes and blinking lights traces the way the brain receives information and turns it into thought and then action. (AP Photo) #

13

An unidentified student demonstrator is choked by two policemen in Tokyo, Japan, on June 8, 1961, during a clash when police tried to disperse student demonstrators protesting against a controversial anti-political violence bill near the parliament building. Over 10,000 unionists and students took part in the massive demonstration marked by the screaming, rock-throwing and club-swinging clash between the students and policemen. (AP Photo) #

14

Jean Lloyd, of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, lost control of her Stanguellini sports car and rolled over in first lap of a 20-lap formula junior race at the Sebring Airport on March 24, 1961 in Sebring. She was not hurt seriously and walked away from the accident. (AP Photo) #

15

Freedom riders stand at ticket counter of the bus station in Montgomery, Alabama, on May 24, 1961, as they purchase tickets to continue their ride through the south. At center is integration leader Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. (AP Photo) #

16

One of the Freedom Riders being arrested 1961. (AP Photo) #

17

A Freedom Rider bus goes up in flames after a firebomb was tossed through a window near Anniston, Alabama, in May of 1961. (AP Photo/File) #

A policeman orders his dog to attack an African-American who was too slow in obeying his order to move away from in front of police court, shortly before nine African-American college students went on trial for sitting-in at a white city library, on March 29, 1961, in Jackson, Mississippi. (AP Photo/Jackson Clarion-Ledger) #

19

George Lincoln Rockwell, center, self-styled leader of the American Nazi Party, and his "hate bus" with several young men wearing swastika arm bands, stops for gas in Montgomery, Alabama, on May 23, 1961, en route to Mobile, Alabama. (AP Photo) #

20

Moments before photographer Tommy Langston was attacked on May 14, 1961, he shot this single photo of Klansmen attacking a Freedom Rider at the Trailways Bus Station in Birmingham, Alabama. The photo helped identify Klansmen involved in the assault. (AP Photo/Birmingham Post-Herald, Tommy Langston) #

21

National Guard troops enforcing martial law work out with bayonets and gas masks as they go through training maneuvers at Fort Dixie Graves in Montgomery, Alabama, on May 3, 1961. (AP Photo/Horace Cort) #

22

A Jackson Police Department file booking photograph of Freedom Rider Joan Trumpauer provided by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, taken on June 8, 1961. 19-year-old Duke University student and part-time secretary in the Washington office of Senator Clair Engle of California, Trumpauer arrived in Jackson, Mississippi to take part in the June 4, 1961 Mississippi Freedom Ride. She and eight others were promptly arrested and refused bail. Trumpauer served three months in jail, later enrolling in traditionally black Tougaloo college, which had just started accepting white students. (AP Photo/Mississippi Department of Archives and History, City of Jackson, File) #

23

New York Yankees' centerfielder Mickey Mantle completes his swing as he hits his 49th homer of the season in the first inning against the Detroit Tigers at Yankee Stadium, New York, September 3, 1961. (AP Photo/stf) #

Caption from 1961: TV viewers of the 1970s will see their programs on sets quite different from today's, if designs now being worked out are developed. At the Home Furnishings Market in Chicago, Illinois, on June 21, 1961, a thin TV screen is a feature of this design model. Another feature is an automatic timing device which would record TV programs during the viewers' absence to be played back later. The 32x22-inch color screen is four inches thick.

25

In Seattle, Washington, the Space Needle is under construction in 1961, as the city prepares for the upcoming 1962 World's Fair. (CC-BY Seattle Municipal Archives) #

26

Argentinean Alex Mitoff reels under from an attack by Cassius Clay in the sixth round of a televised boxing match from Louisville, Kentucky, on October 7, 1961. Mitoff was unable to continue the fight and a technical knockout was called one minute 45 seconds in the sixth round. (AP Photo/H.B. Littell) #

27

Space suit worn by Astronaut Alan B. Shepard, Jr., is given final testing in Cape Canaveral, on May 5, 1961 before Shepard donned it for America's first manned rocket flight. (AP Photo) #

28

Ham the chimp in his capsule during his space flight from Cape Canaveral, Florida in early 1961. Ham was the first chimpanzee launched into outer space in the American space program. Ham's capsule splashed down safely in the Atlantic Ocean, after a flight of 16 minutes and 39 seconds. (AP Photo) #

29

NASA's Project LOLA or Lunar Orbit and Landing Approach was a simulator built at Langley to study problems related to landing on the lunar surface. It was a complex project that cost nearly $2 million dollars. This simulator was designed to provide a pilot with a detailed visual encounter with the lunar surface; the machine consisted primarily of a cockpit, a closed-circuit TV system, and four large murals or scale models representing portions of the lunar surface as seen from various altitudes. The pilot in the cockpit moved along a track past these murals which would accustom him to the visual cues for controlling a spacecraft in the vicinity of the moon. (NASA) #

30

Ocean rescue, as a helicopter lifts NASA astronaut Alan Shepard from the water in May of 1961. (AP Photo) #

Adolf Eichmann stands in his glass cage, flanked by guards, in the Jerusalem courtroom where he was tried in 1961 for war crimes committed during World War II. After his kidnapping by Israeli Mossad agents in Argentina, Eichmann was tried and convicted of all 15 charges against him including crimes against humanity, and was executed on May 31, 1962. (AP Photo)

32

A mob surrounds flaming auto belonging to the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt on February 15, 1961, after setting it on fire during protest of death of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo. Lumumba was a Congolese independence leader and the first legally elected Prime Minister of the Republic of the Congo. After a power struggle and a military coup, Lumumba was killed by firing squad -- an act many believe was committed with the assistance of the government of the United States and for which the Belgian government officially apologized in 2002. (AP Photo) #

The Japanese ultra-nationalists held their "Patriotic Day" in Tokyo on May 1, 1961, while a record 1,560,000 workers observed the annual May Day celebration throughout the country. Rightists held a rally at Hibiya Park, demonstrating with swastika banner and calling for the dissolution of the Socialist Party. (AP Photo/Mitsunori Chigita/Nobuyuki Masaki)

The fellows at Homan Hall, Fresno State College's men's dormitory, claim a world record for stacking 73 people on a dormitory bed, on May 17,1961 in Fresno, California, This photo was taken prior to topping the pile with five girls to break the record. (AP Photo)

35

An American Apache Indian kneels down to kiss the hand of Pope John XXIII (Angelo Guiseppe Roncalli) during an audience of the Apache delegation at the Vatican in Rome, Italy, May 16, 1961. (AP Photo) #

Actress Marilyn Monroe, as captured by photographer Len Steckler in December of 1961. (AP PhotoPRNewsFoto/Eagle National Mint) #

A dog sits in the middle of an empty Times Square during 10-minute civil defense test air raid alert in New York, on April 28, 1961. Besides the dog, only police are visible in the usually bustling area. (AP Photo/Bob Goldberg) #

U.S. President John F. Kennedy points to a map of Laos during a press conference in Washington, on March 1961, as he states that the communist threat to Laos is "difficult and potentially dangerous". (STF/AFP/Getty Images) #

In this May 1961 dated photo from North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency, distributed by Korea News Service, leader Kim Il Sung is seen together with orphans. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP Images) #

American soldiers of the United Nations Command and North Korean communist guards mix it up following a meeting of the joint Military Armistice commission at Panmunjom, Korea on April 23, 1961. A brief fistfight broke out after one of the North Koreans slapped the face of Pfc. John Clark of Jacksonville, Florida, At extreme left is Capt. William Lyons, of Lubbock, Texas, who joined the fight. (AP Photo) #

41

An East German worker lays some of the first stone blocks of the Berlin Wall in August of 1961, shortly after the border between East and West Berlin was sealed. (AP Photo) #

East German workers assemble a wall of concrete blocks in the French sector of East Berlin, on August 15, 1961. An East German soldier at the border between East and West Berliners on duty at right. Signs indicate end of the French zone in the city. (AP Photo/Worth) #

43

A refugee from the German Democratic Republic (DDR) is seen during his attempt to escape from the East German part of Berlin to West Berlin by climbing over the Berlin Wall on October 16, 1961. (AP Photo) #

44

A U.S. tank takes position at Zimmerstrasse at the sector border in Berlin, Germany in 1961, pointing towards Soviet tanks across the border in East Berlin. (AP Photo) #

First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, wife of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, at work in 1961. (AFP/Getty Images)

Astronaut Alan Shepard, at left, receives a medal from President John F. Kennedy, with fellow astronauts and Vice President Lyndon Johnson looking on in Washington, D.C. in 1961. (AP photo) #

Captured: John Lennon

Despite a constant din of screaming teenagers, the Beatles successfully opened their U.S. tour in San Francisco on August 20, 1964. From left to right are Paul McCartney, George Harrison and John Lennon. Ringo Starr cannot be seen. (AP Photo) #

Captured: John Lennon

With some of their fans in the background, The Beatles board a plane for England at New York Airport, NY, Sept. 21, 1964. From bottom of ladder, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, John Lennon and George Harrison. (AP Photo) #

Captured: John Lennon

Beatle John Lennon is shown in this 1965 photo at an unknown location. (AP Photo) #

Captured: John Lennon

Beatles John Lennon continues to play the guitar as he evades a young fan who wants Lennon's yachting-style cap as a souvenir during the Beatles concert in Rome, Italy, June 28, 1965. (AP Photo) #

Captured: John Lennon

British rock and roll singer John Lennon of the Beatles arrives in an armored car before a concert in Houston, Tex., on Aug. 19, 1965. Screaming fans surrounded the group from the moment their plane arrived in Houston for radio station KILT's "Back to School Show" at Sam Houston Coliseum. (AP Photo/Ferd Kaufman) #

Captured: Vietnam and the 35th Anniversary of the Fall of Saigon

47

Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong, atop a camel, enchants the ancient sphinx and pyramids at Giza, near Cairo, Egypt, on January 28, 1961. His wife Lucille, lower left, records the scene on film. The Armstrongs are on a U.S. State Department-sponsored Goodwill Tour of Africa and the Middle East. (AP Photo) #

48

Billy Stanley, 8-year-old third-grader, the only white pupil at St. Philip the Apostle's school in Albany, New York, studies with African-American friends. Billy says he likes school, and that the other pupils "treat me good." Photo taken on September 19, 1961. (AP Photo) #

49

Wilma Rudolph of Clarksville, Tennessee, holds flowers and medals presented to her after two victories in the U.S.-Russia track and field meet in Moscow, Russia on July 15, 1961. Rudolph equaled the world record of 0:11.3 in winning the women's 100-meter dash and then anchored the women's 400-meter relay team as it set a new world record of 0:44.3. (AP Photo) #

50

Light machine gun crew and riflemen, members of the Republic of Vietnam Marine Corps, secure their position somewhere in Vietnam, on January 20, 1961. Charged with fighting guerrilla bands in the Vietnam countryside, the marines are similar to their American counterparts. They use American weapons and their training methods developed by the U.S. Marines. Many Vietnamese Marine officers have trained at the U.S. Marine corps camp at Quantico, Virginia. (AP Photo) #