Enjoying a slice of Life from 1936

My husband came home from an antique store the other day with a great find.

He paid $5 for an issue of Life magazine that originally cost 10 cents in the United States — equivalent to about $2.50 today. But it felt like a steal when I realized that it’s not just any old back issue of Life, but the very first issue to roll off the press as a magazine devoted to sharing news of the world through photography, on Nov. 23, 1936.

An earlier iteration of Life as a humour magazine had folded during the Great Depression, but this new publication was spearheaded by Time magazine publisher Henry Luce.

Reading it today is like delving into a time capsule. Its pages reflect the state of the world as it was, revealing an enthusiasm for travel, discovery and pushing boundaries, as well as rampant racism and sexism. These were the dark days of Hitler’s rise and the Spanish Civil War, but also a time of technical innovation and the economic and social reforms of Roosevelt’s New Deal.

Cars were becoming mainstream, and an ad for a 1937 Plymouth boasts of its “New Safety Interior” and “New Airplane-type Shock-Absorbers” — your “Entire body Pillowed on Live Rubber.” A good thing, as seatbelts wouldn’t be adopted for another decade and did not become mandatory in American automobiles until 1968.

In the kitchen, if Life’s advertisements are anything to go by, boastful home cooks were passing off Heinz products as their own creations.

“Listen with tongue in cheek to that tall tale of the recipe brought from Montparnasse, where onion soup is a rite. Like as not your host served Heinz!” one arch advertisement confides.

Meanwhile, the Gilbert Kitchen-Kit “electric food fixer” was promising to save wives “200 hours of hard work a year.”

The modern marvel with its multiple attachments purportedly could grind meat, slice vegetables, shell peas, crack ice, open cans, extract fruit juices, sift flour and beat in milk — “all at the same time.”

As a (patronizing) wink to women the Life ads says, “To wives: to enjoy Life more — slip this ad in your husband’s pocket.”

A section of the magazine called “Life on the American Newsfront” is a series of news briefs, some accompanied by photographs that are still graphic by today’s publication standards.

In one item from Philadelphia, a notorious ex-con is shown slumped in a police car after being shot in the leg during a holdup. The reportage makes no bones about the range of force used to subdue the man: “In the police car Bandit La Normandia clutches his left shoe while police apply a tourniquet to his leg,” the caption reads. “Dazed by blackjack blows, he is driven to a hospital.”

In another item from Alma, Wis., the horribly mangled wreckage of a car is shown on the side of the tracks after it was attempting a shortcut and was hit by an express train. The driver, Dr. Joseph Graham Mayo, 34, and his hunting dog, Floosie, were killed. Two days later, Life reports, his father, surgeon Charles Mayo — son of the co-founder of the famed Mayo Clinic — “buried his son and Floosie in the same casket.”

Other content hints at the burgeoning appetite for long-haul travel and exploration, with a five-page feature on Brazil (whose people Life describes as “charming” but “incurably lazy”) and ads for United Air Lines, trips along the “‘Big 3’ Sunshine Route” on the Panama Pacific Line or a 104-day world cruise on Dollar Steamship Lines (“New Thrills Every Mile” for just US$1,033).

Once you were home from all that sightseeing, Life ads encouraged you to kick back with a good meal and … a pack of cigarettes.

“Enjoy Camels — every mealtime — between courses and after eating — and you can lean back in your chair feeling on top of the world … Enjoy Camels all you wish — all through the day.”

Smoking was not seen as being bad for your health but rather was celebrated as a digestive aid and as prevention against throat irritation (“So, for your throat’s sake, smoke Luckies.”)

The benefits of drinking were similarly touted (“Have you noticed? How those who stick with Johnnie Walker … have a familiar brisk stride in the morning!”)

But even venerable Life magazine could not live forever. Much like video killed the radio star, television killed Life, which died a few small deaths before finally ceasing publication in 2007. Photographs were seen as no match for moving pictures.

Still, the mint condition of the inaugural copy I am holding in my hand is a testament to the value of print publications. Somehow, their ability to deliver a tangible snapshot of the world makes them something worth treasuring in a way that the digital format may never equal.

Pam Frampton lives in St. John’s.

Email pamelajframpton@gmail.com | X: @Pam_Frampton | Bluesky: @pamframpton.bsky.social