beach Photo Archives - LIFE

When It Was “Swimsuit or Jail” at Myrtle Beach

Bill Syken — Tue, 02 Jul 2024 18:43:23 +0000

Myrtle Beach is one of the great tourist beach towns that dot the East Coast, and it has only become more popular since it was written about in LIFE magazine in 1952. Back then the magazine estimated the local population to be about 6,000 people, whereas today it can seem as if Myrtle Beach has nearly that many holes of golf available for play.

But in 1952, as a resort destination on the rise, Myrtle Beach was looking for attention-getting ways to open up its beach season. Before that year the town had kicked off festivities with a beauty pageant. Then in ’52 Myrtle Beach decided to stage “Bathing Suit Day,” and the rules were simple: Wear a bathing suit, or go to jail.

Although the word “jail” is being used loosely—no one was actually doing hard time, as the photos from LIFE staff photographer Robert W. Kelley attest. And while the town had officially moved on from a beauty pageant, the event still managed to include a batallion of young women in swimsuits.

Here’s how LIFE described the workings of Bathing Suit Day in its June 23, 1952 issue:

“Everyone in town and every visitor would have to wear beach attire from 6 a.m. until noon under pain of fine or imprisonment in an impromptu stockade. Three businessmen served as judges, 32 town ladies acted as attire inspectors, and convict suits were borrowed from the superintendent of county prisoners—who himself was thrown in jail and made to wear one when he came to Myrtle Beach in ordinary garb to see whether the suits have arrived.”

The day went well, and the weekend also included a parade and contests on the beach. LIFE reported that $650 in fines were levied to those not in swimwear, with the proceeds going toward the construction of a new hospital, and that the 1952 vacation season at Myrtle Beach “had opened with the biggest attendance ever.”

Bathing Suit Day in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, June 1952.

Robert W. KelleyLife Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bathing Suit Day’ in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, June 1952.

Robert W. KelleyLife Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Patrolman Charles Edmonson on duty during ‘bathing suit day’ at Myrtle Beach, 1952.

Robert W. KelleyLife Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bathing Suit Day in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, June 1952.

Robert W. KelleyLife Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A violator of the “must wear a swimsuit” rules and a law-abiding dog left the impromptu jail set up during Bathing Suit Day in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, 1952.

Robert W. KelleyLife Picture Collection/Shutterstock

One of the enforcement offices for Bathing Suit Day in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, June 1952.

Robert W. KelleyLife Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Men buried women in sand for a contest held on Bathing Suit Day in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, 1952.

Robert W. KelleyLife Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bathing suit day in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, June 1952.

Robert W. KelleyLife Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bathing Suit Day in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, June 1952.

Robert W. KelleyLife Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bathing suit day in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, June 1952.

Robert W. KelleyLife Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Bathing Suit Day in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, June 1952.

Robert W. KelleyLife Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The post When It Was “Swimsuit or Jail” at Myrtle Beach appeared first on LIFE.

A Vintage View of Fun in the Sun

Tue, 10 Mar 2015 08:00:28 +0000

Fun in the sun is one of the constants in American life. The impulses don’t change, even if the fashions do.

In 1947, when LIFE accompanied 10,000 young men and women to Balboa Beach in Southern California for a seaside romp. This day of surf and sand took place during spring break, and was marked by dancing, boat races, beauty pageants and sunbathing. The evening hours found students aglow in the warmth of bonfires as portable radios churned out the tunes of the day. (Top hits that year included “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” and “Chi-Baba, Chi-Baba (My Bambino Go to Sleep).“)

The fashion looks tell you that you are in another era. But not much else does, really. The pleasures of the beach remain more alike than not, regardless of the age that you are in—or the age of the beachgoers, for that matter. By the seaside, people become kids again, and that’s part of the fun of being there.

Liz Ronk, who edited this gallery, is the Photo Editor for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LizabethRonk.

Balboa Beach Party

Glendale college students partying on a beach in Balboa, Newport Beach, California, April 1947

Spring Break 1947

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

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Glendale College students at Balboa Beach Party in California, in April of 1947; Possibly for Spring Break.

Spring Break 1947

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

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The Magic of the Off-Screen Trampoline: A Young Man Soars Above The Beach

Sun, 01 Jun 2014 16:03:38 +0000

With most pictures—and certainly with most pictures made by professional photographers—we can grasp what’s happening inside the frame the moment we lay eyes on it. If the photograph is in focus, and if the action or subject of the picture is remotely discernible, it takes the eye a mere instant to tell the brain what’s going on.

That’s a couple kissing. There’s a sunset. That’s a baseball player sliding into home.

But some photos capture scenes so unfamiliar so outside the realm of what we usually see, or expect that it can take a while to wrap our minds around what’s depicted. Case in point: This Loomis Dean picture, made on the beach in Santa Monica in 1948. We know, when we first encounter it, that the photograph depicts a beach scene. We know that the central figure in the composition is a human being. But many of us, for a good while, are unable to understand, to really grasp, what’s happening.

The caption “A man flies off of a trampoline” explains how that fellow ended up there, soaring effortlessly (it would seem) through the air. But some of us will see this picture for the first time and, for a fleeting moment, before it all becomes clear, we might think we’re seeing . . . what? A misguided diver about to face-plant in the sand? Icarus falling from the sky?

What do you see? And why?

A man flew off a trampoline, Santa Monica, 1948.

Loomis Dean/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

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Two-Piece Be With You: In Praise of the Bikini

Sun, 18 May 2014 19:11:09 +0000

On July 5, 1946, less than a week after the United States detonated an atomic bomb above tiny Bikini Atoll in the South Pacific, a Frenchman named Louis Réard an automobile engineer moonlighting as a fashion designer introduced to the sunbathing public what was billed as the world’s smallest swimsuit. Réard called his creation the bikini a name inspired, he later said, by the sight of women rolling up their bathing suits in order to acquire a more complete tan.

Two-piece swimsuits had, of course, been around for a long, long time before Réard came along. Greek urns and mosaics created more than 3,000 years ago depict women athletes wearing two-piece outfits. But Réard’s genius was to devise a garment, out of as little fabric as possible, that one could still legally wear in public.

He marketed his new fashion brilliantly, as well—pronouncing, for example, that a bathing suit wasn’t a true bikini unless both pieces could be pulled through a wedding ring.

Here, LIFE.com offers a celebration of a bathing staple that, through the years, has enjoyed and endured a dizzying array of permutations while always remaining, unmistakably, itself.

Some of the early photos in this gallery depict two-piece bathing suits that might, at first glance, look like bona fide bikinis—but, in Réard’s eyes, would not fit the bill. After all, can be wearing a genuine bikini if, say, one’s bellybutton is covered by a swath of nylon, no matter how elegant or tasteful that swath might be.

Bikinis are not for everyone. There are, thankfully, as many styles of bathing suit as there are human body types and temperaments. That said, it remains incontestably true that few sights can evoke thoughts of summer’s delights with quite the same visceral punch as the unmistakable silhouette of Monsieur Réard’s ingeniously simple, timeless design.

Model June Pickney, 1960.

Stan Wayman/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Actress Linda Christian in 1945.

Bob Landry/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Sunbathing in France, 1945.

Ralph Morse/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Actress Dona Drake playfully took aim with a rifle on the balcony of her Los Angeles home, 1942.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Model Lynn Jones, 1955.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

French actress Barbara Lange in a makeshift two-piece bathing suit she cut from one yard of cloth, 1945.

Nina Leen/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Santa Monica, Calif., 1940.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

This sun bather had creative tattoos, 1941.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Rita Hayworth at home in Los Angeles, 1945.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Florida, 1945.

Nina Leen/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Sunbathing in France, 1945.

Ralph Morse/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Beauty pageant winner Jackie Lee Barnes posed poolside in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1949.

Ed Clark/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Model in a bikini, 1950.

Ed Clark/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

French fashion model Christiane Richard wore a bikini while drinking her morning coffee, 1950.

Nat Farbman/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Jayne Mansfield posed with hot-water bottle likenesses floating around her, 1957.

Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Jayne Mansfield and unidentified man, 1961.

Stan Wayman/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Skin diving in Israel, 1960.

Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Sunbathing, 1961.

Allan Grant/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Actress Philomene Toulouse, cradling a pet fox, vied for attention at the Cannes film festival, 1962.

Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Cannes, France, 1962.

Paul Schutzer/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Atlantic City, New Jersey, 1964.

Art Rickerby/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Hungarian model, 1965.

Walter Sanders/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Model Naty Abascal showed off designs on her chest and stomach, Bahamas, 1968.

Bill Eppridge/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Near Malibu, California, 1970.

Co Rentmeester/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Southern California, 1970.

Co Rentmeester/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

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Surf, Sand and Sun: LIFE’s Ode to Beach Bums, 1950

Fri, 30 Aug 2013 12:23:47 +0000

In February 1950, LIFE published a feature on what the magazine called “the gold-bricking existence” of ski bums at Sun Valley, Idaho. Eight months later, in its August 28 issue, LIFE published a follow-up piece with the wonderful title, “LIFE Revisits the Ski Bums (and Finds That They Are Now Beach Bums).”

“Photographer Loomis Dean,” LIFE told its readers, “looked up his cold-weather friends and found them still leading a bum’s life.”

Now, however, they are beach bums, spending the summer at San Onofre, Calif., 70 miles south of Los Angeles, where they take as much delight in surfboarding on rolling waves as they did in winter schussing down snowy slopes.

In May, as soon as the snow gets soft at Sun Valley, the bums begin to migrate. They head first for their parents’ homes where they drop off their skis and pick up their brightly colored, 15-foot-long surfboards. Then they make for the beach. . . . On the beach the bums spend every minute they can surfboarding, sunning, guzzling beer, making friends with people who come down to be weekend beach bums. By taking jobs nearby as packers, lifeguards, bartenders, they earn just enough to fill their cups and stomachs and gas tanks of the trucks in which they live and sleep. If war does not catch up with them one way or another, the bums expect to be back at Sun Valley by November.

Here, in tribute to that rare individual self-assured enough to scoff at societal expectations and embrace his or her inner bum, LIFE.com remembers the few, the proud, the charmingly, unrepentantly feckless.

San Onofre, Calif., 1950.

Loomis Dean/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Caption from LIFE. Tossing crutches up on the beach, [surfer] hobbles over to his surfboard and waits for receding wave to wash him out where swells have broken." caption="Loomis Dean/Life Pictures/Shutterstock" title="After tossing his crutches up on the beach, a surfer hobbled over to his surfboard and waited for a receding wave to carry him away from the shore." src="https://static.life.com/wp-content/uploads/migrated/2013/08/04_1153804.jpg" alt="Tossing crutches up on the beach, [surfer] hobbles over to his surfboard and waits for receding wave to wash him out where swells have broken." />

After tossing his crutches up on the beach, a surfer hobbled over to his surfboard and waited for a receding wave to carry him away from the shore.

Loomis Dean/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Surfers, San Onofre, Calif., 1950.

Loomis Dean/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

San Onofre, Calif., 1950.

Loomis Dean/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

“Hammerhead” Gravage dozed inside of a blanket after surfing all day, San Onofre, Calif., 1950.

Loomis Dean/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

San Onofre, Calif., 1950.

Loomis Dean/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Caption from LIFE. Sloppy bartender, "Hammerhead" Gravage, pours cold beer for "Burrhead" Grever." caption="Loomis Dean/Life Pictures/Shutterstock" title=""Hammerhead" Gravage poured a cold beer for "Burrhead" Grever." src="https://static.life.com/wp-content/uploads/migrated/2013/08/16_00723190.jpg" alt="San Onofre, Calif., 1950." />

“Hammerhead” Gravage poured a cold beer for “Burrhead” Grever.

Loomis Dean/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Caption from LIFE. Haircutter to all the beach bums is Myra Roche, mother of three children. She helps friend Warren Miller make ends meet by shearing his hair free." caption="Loomis Dean/Life Pictures/Shutterstock" title="Haircutter to all the beach bums was Myra Roche, mother of three children. She helped friend Warren Miller make ends meet by shearing his hair for free." src="https://static.life.com/wp-content/uploads/migrated/2013/08/17_00723188.jpg" alt="Haircutter to all the beach bums is Myra Roche, mother of three children. She helps friend Warren Miller make ends meet by shearing his hair free." />

Haircutter to all the beach bums was Myra Roche, mother of three children. She helped friend Warren Miller make ends meet by shearing his hair for free.

Loomis Dean/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

San Onofre, Calif., 1950.

Loomis Dean/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

San Onofre, Calif., 1950.

Loomis Dean Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

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