You can still visit many of the sites that both Irving and Leen walked to this day. Below are images retracing the steps of Nina Leen, as she did of Irving over half a century ago.

Waterfalls in the Catskills Mountains, 1944 (left) & 2022 (right)

(Photo on the left by Nina Leen/The LIFE Picture Collection © Dotdash Meredith Corporation) (Photo on the right by Alexa Jade Frankelis, 2022)

Irving’s first voyage up the Hudson from Manhattan to Albany was in 1800. On his journey he passed many sites pertaining to Dutch folklore and Indigenous tales that were haunted by sailors and shipwrecks. A combination of these stories fueled his tale called, Rip Van Winkle, who was a man that had slept for twenty-years in the Catskills due to the deception of mischievous Dutchmen, and awoke to an unknown world.

View of Hudson River from Dunderberg Mountain, once described by author Washington Irving, 1944.

(Photo by Nina Leen/The LIFE Picture Collection © Dotdash Meredith Corporation)

View of Bear Mountain State park, which Dunderberg Mountain is a part of today, 2021.

(Photo by Alexa Jade Frankelis, 2021)

In The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, many of Washington’s characters were inspired by locals now interred in the Old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow’s burial ground. Only a little up the hill from the burial ground where Irving would spend his days, begins Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, his final place of rest.

Rows of tombstones in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, New York, 1944.

(Photo by Nina Leen/The LIFE Picture Collection © Dotdash Meredith Corporation)

A draped urn, symbolizing life into death in Victorian mourning grave symbology.

(Photo by Alexa Jade Frankelis, 2020)

Gravesite of author Washington Irving, Sleepy Hollow, New York, 1944.

(Photo by Nina Leen/The LIFE Picture Collection © Dotdash Meredith Corporation)

The post Sleepy Hollow: Then & Now appeared first on LIFE.

Whichever origin story you favor, it’s safe to say that where the story ends multimillionaire magnate of a four-continent cosmetics empire that redefined beauty for generations of women may surprise those whose memory goes only as far back as Sheryl Sandberg and Marissa Mayer.

Today there are more female CEOs than ever, but the number of offices they fill in the C-suite remains few. In Rubinstein’s time she established her business in 1903, opened her first New York salon in 1915 and amassed $25 million by the time LIFE profiled her in 1941 they were as rare as a sunburn on Madame’s face.

An exhibit at the Jewish Museum in New York City, “Helena Rubinstein: Beauty Is Power,” is the first to explore the influence and artifacts of Rubinstein’s life. (The exhibit, which ends on March 22, will travel to the Boca Raton Museum of Art, where it will be on view beginning on April 21). Rubinstein’s legacy is less about the fact that her brand existed than it is about the message it conveyed, says Jewish Museum curator Mason Klein. Her flavor of beauty for the masses “served not only to level the snobbish aesthetic taste that was upheld by others” like her longtime rival Elizabeth Arden “but, more importantly, to expand the notion of who and what could be considered beautiful.”

It might raise some eyebrows to suggest that the mass marketing of skin creams and mascara would positively influence women’s feelings of self-worth. But Rubinstein’s mission was not just to change how women look. It was to give women the ability to define their interior lives too. “She didn’t really want her clientele to think of going to a salon and being made over like you paper a room or reupholster a piece of furniture,” Klein says.

During a day at the Rubinstein salon (which could be found in more than a dozen cities worldwide), a woman could expect to be “stretched, exercised, rubbed, scrubbed, wrapped in hot blankets, bathed in infra-red rays, massaged dry and massaged under water, and bathed in milk all before lunch.”

But when the milk baths were over, the salon Rubinstein conceived of shared more than a name with the literary salons she frequented in Paris. With the fortune she amassed, Rubinstein had become both a patron of the arts and a discerning collector, boasting one of the first extensive collections of Latin American art and one of the most important early collections of African and Oceanic art. For her, there was no line between commercial beauty and modern art and if there was, she was trying to blur it.

A patron of Helena Rubinstein’s salons which operated at a loss but helped evangelize her line of 629 products learned about art, design and color, developed her own personal taste and incorporated it into the way she presented herself to the world. According to Klein, with “her encouragement of women to trust their own instincts and her advocacy of exceptionality at a time when non-conformism was taboo, she offered women this ideal of self-invention, and that’s a fundamental principle of modernity.”

Getting to international magnate status requires an ingredient many women are told is unbecoming: self-promotion. LIFE wrote that despite Rubinstein’s genius for marketing she was, among other things, an early adopter of the white lab coat uniform “Rubinstein’s greatest promotion … is undoubtedly herself.” She commissioned portraits by artists from Warhol to Picasso, and featured prominently in her own ads. A couple of inches shy of five feet tall, before an important meeting she often placed a cushion under her seat to increase her stature, letting her legs dangle behind her desk.

Success on this level also requires a shrewd business savvy, and Rubenstein was nothing if not conservative with the company coffers. “If somebody offered Rubinstein a package of gum for a nickel she would say “too much,”” one associate told LIFE, “in the hope that it was the only package of gum in the world that could be bought for four cents.” And she sniffed out new markets with the same discerning nose she used to nix or approve perfume scents. “Ever on the lookout for new sales openings,” LIFE wrote in 1941, “she has lately been turning over in her mind the idea that perhaps the beauty business has exploited only half its potential market.” As she put it herself: “Men could be a lot more beautiful.”

Rubinstein made a bold decision, too, in keeping her name at a time when anti-Semitism kept her flagship storefront relegated to 5^th Avenue side streets for two decades. (Money, of course, was a powerful tool in the face of discrimination. When she tried to upgrade from one posh Park Avenue apartment to another with a bigger balcony, she was told that the owner didn’t rent to Jews. She promptly told her accountant to buy the whole building.) Emblazoning her name on products and advertisements not only affirmed her identity (even as a non-practicing Jew), but appealed to the masses of immigrant women pouring into the country, going to work and seeking to define their identities in America.

When Helena Rubinstein equated beauty with power, her aim was not only profit, but empowerment. Reflecting on her life in 1964 at an age she called “older than you think,” she told LIFE she squeezed 300 years of work into a single lifetime. “Shrugging like a Jewish grandmother she claims, “I did it not for money but because I love work. I will never retire.””

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

Helena Rubinstein, 1941

Herbert Gehr The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

Helena Rubinstein, 1941

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Helena Rubinstein, 1941

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Helena Rubinstein Salon, 1937.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Helena Rubinstein Salon, 1937.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Helena Rubinstein Salon, 1937.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Helena Rubinstein Salon, 1937.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Helena Rubinstein Salon, 1937.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Helena Rubinstein, 1941

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Helena Rubinstein, 1941

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Helena Rubinstein, 1941

Herbert Gehr The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

Helena Rubinstein products, 1941

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The post How One Woman Built an Empire on Lipstick and Lotion appeared first on LIFE.

The Crimean War of the 1850s, after all, was arguably where the genre was born, with British photographers like Roger Fenton (1819 – 1869) and James Robertson (1813 – 1888), the Italian-British Felice Beato (1832 – 1909) and the Austro-Hungarian Carol Szathmari (1812 – 1887) making what most historians consider the very first photographs of a major military conflict. Their pictures might lack the often-brutal drama of modern war photography, but they nevertheless serve as compelling documentation of the look and, in a sense, the logistics of mid-19th century warfare. Within a few years, Mathew Brady, Alexander Gardner and others would document the American Civil War more thoroughly and graphically than Fenton, Robertson, Beato or any others managed in Crimea — a clear indication of how rapidly photography took hold as a critical method of reportage.

Incidentally, some readers might recall Errol Morris’ epic three-part Opinionator column in the New York Times several years ago, when the filmmaker and essayist delved deep into two particular Roger Fenton photos from the Crimean War. If you’re not familiar with it, read the whole thing. It’s astonishing. Here’s one of the Fenton photos Morris examined — with his customarily obsessive, wry and deeply intelligent eye.

Crimean War c. 1855

Mansell Collection The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Crimean War c. 1855

Mansell Collection The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Crimean War c. 1855

Mansell Collection The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Crimean War c. 1855

Mansell Collection The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Crimean War c. 1855

Mansell Collection The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Crimean War c. 1855

Mansell Collection The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Crimean War c. 1855

Mansell Collection The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Crimean War c. 1855

Mansell Collection The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Crimean War c. 1855

Mansell Collection The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The post Crimea: Where War Photography Was Born appeared first on LIFE.

A year after the flames were put out and the smoke cleared from the southern California sky, LIFE revisited the scene of the devastation for a “special section” in its July 15, 1966, issue that the magazine called “Watts: Still Seething.” A good part of that special section featured a series of color photos made by Bill Ray on the streets of Watts: pictures of stylish, even dapper, young men making and hurling Molotov cocktails; of children at play in torched streets and rubble-strewn lots; of wary police and warier residents; of a community struggling to save itself from drugs, gangs, guns, idleness and an enduring, corrosive despair.

In that July 1966 issue, LIFE introduced Ray’s photographs, and Watts itself, in a tone that left no doubt that, whatever else might have happened in the months since the streets were on fire, the future of the district was hardly certain, and the rage that fueled the conflagration had hardly abated:

Before last August the rest of Los Angeles had never heard of Watts. Today, a rock thrown through a Los Angeles store window brings the fearful question: “Is this the start of the next one?” It brings the three armed camps in Los Angeles the police, white civilians, the Negroes face to face for a tense flickering moment. . . .
Whites still rush to gun stores each time a new incident hits the papers. A Beverly Hills sporting goods shop has been sold out of 9mm automatics for months, and the waiting list for pistols runs several pages.
Last week a Negro showed a reporter a .45 caliber submachine gun. “There were 99 more in this shipment,” he said, “and they’re spread around to 99 guys with cars.”
“We know it don’t do no good to burn Watts again,” a young Negro says. “Maybe next time we go up to Beverly Hills.”
Watts seethes with resentments. There is anger toward the paternalism of many job programs and the neglect of Watts needs. There is no public hospital within eight miles and last month Los Angeles voters rejected a proposed $12.3 million bond issue to construct one. When a 6-month-old baby died not long ago because of inadequate medical facilities, the mother’s grief was echoed by a crowd’s outrage. “If it was your baby,” said a Negro confronting a white, “you’d have an ambulance in five minutes.”
Unemployment and public assistance figures invite disbelief in prosperous California. In Watts 24% of the residents were on some form of relief a year ago and that percentage still stands. In Los Angeles the figure is 5%.
[It] takes longer to build a society than to burn one, and fear will be a companion along the way to improvements. “I had started to say it is a beautiful day,” Police Inspector John Powers said, looking out a window, “but beautiful days bring people out and that makes me wish we had rain and winter year-round.”

For his part, Bill Ray, a staff photographer for LIFE from the mid-1960s until the magazine’s demise in the early 1970s, recalled the Watts assignment clearly, and fondly:

“In the mid-nineteen-sixties [Ray told LIFE.com], I shot two major assignments for LIFE in southern California, one after the other, that involved working with young men who were volatile and dangerous. One group was the Hells Angels of San Bernardino the early, hard-core San Berdoo chapter of the gang and the other were the young men who had taken part in the Watts riots the year before.
I did not try to dress like them, act like them or pretend to be tough. I showed great interest in them, and treated them with respect. The main thing was to convince them that I had no connection with the police. The thing that surprised me the most was that, in both cases, as I spent more time with them and got to know them better, I got to like and respect many of them quite a lot. There was a humanity there that we all have inside us. Meeting and photographing different kinds of people has always been the most exciting part of my job. I still love it.
Two big differences in the assignments, though, was that I shot the Hells Angels in black and white which was perfect for their gritty world and “Watts: A Year Later” was in color. Also perfect, because Watts had a lot of color, on the walls, the graffiti, the way people dressed and, of course, my group of bombers who liked to practice making and throwing Molotov cocktails [see slides 17, 18 and 19 in gallery].
Those two assignments documented two utterly marginalized worlds that few people ever get to see up close. There was no job on earth as good as being a LIFE photographer.”

The words painted on the grocery store alerted rioters that the stored was African-American owned.

Bill Ray/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Watts, Los Angeles, 1966.

Bill Ray/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Young men hung out near Simon Rodia’s Watts Towers, 1966.

Bill Ray/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Watts, Los Angeles, 1966.

Bill Ray/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Young men near Simon Rodia’s Watts Towers, 1966.

Bill Ray/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Watts, Los Angeles, 1966.

Bill Ray/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

William Solomon (right, in his home in Watts) commanded a big Watts street gang, which he openly admitted took an active part in the riot. A champion hurdler in high school, he had no job and was on probation for assault. With two followers shown with him, he later helped at a neighborhood association and used his influence to keep order there and, by his interest, give its program a certain prestige in the streets.”

Bill Ray/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Watts, Los Angeles, 1966.

Bill Ray/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The Fire Last Time: Life in Watts, 1966

Bill Ray/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Watts, Los Angeles, 1966.

Bill Ray/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Watts, Los Angeles, 1966.

Bill Ray/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Watts, Los Angeles, 1966.

Bill Ray/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Watts, Los Angeles, 1966.

Bill Ray/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Watts, Los Angeles, 1966.

Bill Ray/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Booker Griffin (yellow shirt) moved in on an argument between students and police who found the youths carrying heavy boards and suspected a gang fight. He calmed both sides.

Bill Ray/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Making Molotov cocktails, Watts, 1966.

Bill Ray/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Molotov cocktails in Watts, 1966.

Bill Ray/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Molotov cocktails in Watts, 1966.

Bill Ray/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Molotov cocktails in Watts, 1966.

Bill Ray/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

LaRoi Drew Ali refused to join any group, but viewed Christianity as a device to keep African-Americans down. “Even if somebody did rise up on Easter,” he said, “it would just be another white man to kick us.”

Bill Ray/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Watts, Los Angeles, 1966.

Bill Ray/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Watts, Los Angeles, 1966.

Bill Ray/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The Fire Last Time: Life in Watts, 1966

Bill Ray/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Watts, Los Angeles, 1966.

Bill Ray/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Watts, Los Angeles, 1966.

Bill Ray/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Watts, Los Angeles, 1966.

Bill Ray/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Watts, Los Angeles, 1966.

Bill Ray/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The post The Fire Last Time: LIFE in Watts, 1966 appeared first on LIFE.

The details of the debates have been recounted innumerable times in the subsequent decades. The stories, meanwhile, of how Nixon showed up to the very first debate looking pale and glistening with sweat beneath the glare of the studio lights, while JFK looked (literally) tanned and rested, haven’t lost any of their power simply because they’re true.

The photos here back up those stories: Nixon did look like death warmed over; Kennedy did look like a movie star. And while pundits and armchair historians like to assert that Kennedy’s media savvy won him the election while Nixon won the debates, no data exists anywhere that positively proves either point.

The fact is, both men were formidable candidates. Each had a strong grasp of the major issues facing the country—the Space Race with the Soviets; America’s role in an increasingly complex global economy; the Civil Right Movement—and each man had very little trouble articulating his and his party’s position on them. But it’s remarkable now, however, to recall that Nixon was just four years older than Kennedy. By the look of the two men in these photographs by Paul Schutzer, they might as well have been from different generations.

Presidential candidate Richard M. Nixon (right) spoke during a televised debate while opponent John F. Kennedy watches, 1960.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Kennedy-Nixon debates, 1960.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The candidates chatted prior to the first of their four televised debates, 1960.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Richard Nixon, 1960.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

John Kennedy and Richard Nixon stood at lecterns as moderator Howard K. Smith presided at their first debate, 1960.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Richard Nixon during the Kennedy-Nixon debates, 1960.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Kennedy-Nixon debates, 1960.

Francis Miller The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

John F. Kennedy during the Kennedy-Nixon debates, 1960.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jackie Kennedy watched from the wings as her husband debated Richard Nixon, 1960.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Richard Nixon during the Kennedy-Nixon debates, 1960.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

John F. Kennedy gripped his lectern during the debate, 1960.

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

John F. Kennedy gestured during the Kennedy-Nixon debates, 1960.

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Richard Nixon’s hands during the Kennedy-Nixon debates, 1960.

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Kennedy-Nixon debates, 1960.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Two images made during the Kennedy-Nixon debates, 1960.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The candidates here are seen as they appeared on television, 1960.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

John F. Kennedy during the Kennedy-Nixon debates, 1960.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Richard Nixon during the Kennedy-Nixon debates, 1960.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The Kennedy-Nixon debates, 1960.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

John F. Kennedy during the Kennedy-Nixon debates, 1960.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Richard Nixon during the Kennedy-Nixon debates, 1960.

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

John Kennedy and Richard Nixon after the second Kennedy-Nixon debate, 1960.

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

John Kennedy and Richard Nixon after the second Kennedy-Nixon debate, 1960.

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Richard Nixon at the time of the Kennedy-Nixon debates, 1960.

Ed Clark The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Richard Nixon during one of the Kennedy-Nixon debates, 1960.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The post The Kennedy-Nixon Debates: When TV Changed the Game appeared first on LIFE.

But for all of their emotional and historical heft, Morse’s pictures also present a question: How the hell did he do that?

In 2014 Morse, who died later that year at the age of 97, spoke with LIFE.com, and briefly described how the sequence came about.

“You have to realize,” he said, “that the rocket had to go through the camera, in a sense. It had to go through the camera’s field of view. It took me two years to get NASA to agree to let me make this shot. Now, RCA had the camera contract at Cape Canaveral at that time, and they had a steel box with optical glass attached to the launch platform. We negotiated a deal with them and I was able to put a Nikon, with maybe 30 or 40 feet of film, inside the box, looking out through the glass. The camera was wired into the launch countdown, and at around minus-four seconds the camera started shooting something like ten frames per second.

“It was probably less than an hour after liftoff when we rode the elevator back up the launch tower and retrieved the camera and film from inside that steel box.”

In addition to the launch sequence this gallery also includes a photo of Neil Armstrong’s wife, Jan, with sons Erik and Mark, watching the launch of Apollo 11 from the deck of a boat rented for them by LIFE magazine. The scene, as captured by LIFE’s Vernon Merritt III, is a quiet reminder that the mission to the moon was not only an epic public spectacle. It was also a human adventure, shared by the astronauts and those closest to them.

The gantry retracted while Saturn V boosters lifted the Apollo 11 astronauts toward the moon, July 16, 1969.

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jan Armstrong, wife of Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong, and her sons watched the rocket’s liftoff.

Vernon Merritt III The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The post Apollo 11: What Liftoff Looked Like appeared first on LIFE.