Life Magazine

Y’all may have noticed our sudden interest in Life Magazine. (Well, a previous post anyway)

I Found this old issue recently.

Life magazine July 13 1942,

That’s 23 year-old Corporal Alexander Le Gerda of the 853rd Ordnance Company on the cover. His job was the maintenance of machine guns, such as the .30 cal. Browning that he’s holding in the pic, as well as issuing ammunitions to student aerial gunners. He played softball for the post team, and the t-shirt he’s wearing was part of their equipment. Alex was born in Topton, Pa. and spent $30 out of his last pay telephoning his girl back in Allentown.

Found a few more images from that photo shoot that didn’t make the magazine, but were in the Time/Life archives.

In 1942, t-shirts weren’t considered “proper street attire”; but this cover made them extremely popular, especially with young men. The Air Corps Gunnery School T-Shirt is still available today.

I found them here for 20 bucks.

Think I may have to get one…….although I don’t expect to look anything like Corporal Le Gerda does in his.

Life magazine did a lot of coverage of World War 2. I know that my brother the vet will back me up in saying that World War 2, and the men fighting it, drastically shaped our country. For the first time, women and minorities entered the work force in huge droves; pulling the country out of the Great Depression. After the boys came home, the U.S. solidly establishing itself as a leading world military leader, Americans moved to the suburbs and started having babies. Lots of babies.

Wasn’t sure what to do with this issue…….so I just slipped it into an Ikea frame.

(That’s my solution for everything)

I think it looks pretty good,

OOOOhhh, that 10 cent magazine cost me a dollar,

That’s really not bad inflation over 70 years.

In the latest Ben Stiller movie, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, one of the central components of the film are the enormous Life magazine covers scattered throughout the office where Walter works.

Some beautiful cover images, most emblazoned in our American memories already.

But, here’s the thing….they’re all fake.

Completely.

The production designers, working closely with the archivists of the great American institution, Time Life, created the magazine covers just for the film.

Production designer Jeff Mann said. “We worked really, really hard to select photos that were novel, naïve — in the best possible way — and that featured significant twentieth-century people, places and events.”

Sure, some of these images were in Life magazine once, but none of them were lucky enough to have graced the cover.

Until now.

Enjoy