Photographs of Elvis Presley at His Friend’s Wedding on December 5, 1970

On December 5, 1970, Elvis Presley served as the best man at the wedding of his lifelong friend and Memphis radio DJ, George Klein, who married Barbara Little. The ceremony took place inside Elvis’s private Imperial Suite at the International Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Elvis and Klein first met in the eighth grade at Humes High School and remained extremely close confidants until Elvis’s passing. Priscilla Presley attended alongside Elvis, and country music star Glen Campbell was also a guest. True to his eccentric gift-giving style, Elvis reportedly presented Klein with a gold-plated derringer handgun as a wedding gift.

Photos show Elvis sporting his iconic 1970s style, carrying an elongated police flashlight, wearing a flashy gold belt from his Las Vegas residency:

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Before Becoming a Hollywood Legend, Bette Davis Was Ogunquit, Maine’s First Female Lifeguard

Did you know that before she became a famous Hollywood actress, Bette Davis was the state of Maine’s first female lifeguard? In 1926, she completed Red Cross training and joined the Ogunquit Ocean Rescue team.

In her memoirs, Davis recounted that passing the grueling Red Cross test and earning her lifeguard emblem was a major confidence booster and a true turning point in her youth.

During the mid-1920s, Davis’s mother, Ruth, worked as a portrait photographer, and the family frequented the burgeoning art colony of Ogunquit, Maine. To earn money before fully pursuing her dream of acting, the future star took on two local jobs. By day, she worked the watch towers as a lifeguard on Ogunquit’s beautiful, but often treacherous, dynamic Atlantic shoreline. By night, she earned tips as a waitress at a local spot called The Crooked Pine.

Her training as a lifeguard actually came in handy much later in her career. While filming the classic 1942 melodrama Now, Voyager on location at Lake Arrowhead, her young co-star Janis Wilson got into serious trouble in the water. Drawing on her teenage training, Davis jumped in and rescued her from drowning.

Maine remained close to Davis’s heart throughout her entire life. In the 1950s, at the height of her fame, she returned to the state with her husband Gary Merrill, buying a historic estate on the coast of Cape Elizabeth where they raised their children.

Outtakes of Maria Hanson and Jerry Hall From Vogue’s 1977 Star Wars Shoot by Eisuke Ishimuro

The November 1977 issue of US Vogue featured one of the most delightfully bizarre, high-camp crossovers in fashion history: “The Force of Fur,” photographed by Eisuke Ishimuro and styled by Jade Hobson.

Just months after Star Wars became a global phenomenon, George Lucas agreed to let Lucasfilm characters including Darth Vader, C-3PO, Stormtroopers, Jawas, and Snaggletooth pose alongside rising supermodel Jerry Hall and Maria Hanson to showcase the winter season’s most luxurious, over-the-top fur coats and fine jewelry.

Ishimuro deliberately moved away from traditional, atmospheric editorial lighting to match the graphic, sci-fi origins of the film. As he later reflected on his approach: “Since Star Wars heavily relied on visual effects, we thought the photographs should be simple and direct. I lit them to look two-dimensional and almost comic strip–like.”

The result was an 8-page layout featuring sharp, saturated, high-contrast images where the iconic characters functioned essentially as surreal, otherworldly accessories.

While the published spread featured polished frames of Jerry Hall modeling massive chinchilla and fox furs next to a rigid C-3PO or a towering Darth Vader, the behind-the-scenes outtakes and candid moments reveal a much looser, more playful energy on set.

The shoot took place over several days in Los Angeles. In those days, said Hobson, “editors carried the shoot with them. I don’t know how many trunks were on this shoot, but you can imagine, and my plane was met by some Brink’s people who kept [them] and would deliver them to the studio each day.”

Who was the most high-maintenance member of the crew? It wasn’t the glamorous Hall, whom Hobson describes as someone who “just loved clothes and dressing up and did her best to show the clothes.” Rather, it was that C-3PO. But not because he was throwing ’tude. It took hours to harness him into his costume, which could be worn only for a short time because, Hobson said, “it just got too hot.”

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Brenda Marshall: Elegant Star of 1940s Hollywood

Brenda Marshall (1915–1992) was an elegant American actress best known for her striking beauty and poised performances in Hollywood films of the 1940s.

Born Ardis Ankerson in the Philippines to a Norwegian-American family, Marshall rose to prominence with memorable roles in classic adventure films such as The Sea Hawk (1940) opposite Errol Flynn and Captains of the Clouds (1942). With her dark hair, refined features, and sophisticated screen presence, she often played strong, glamorous leading ladies in swashbucklers and dramas. She was married to actor William Holden from 1941 to 1971, one of Hollywood’s most high-profile unions at the time.

Although her acting career was relatively short, Marshall left a lasting impression as one of the era’s most graceful and underrated stars of the Golden Age. These vintage photos perfectly showcase Brenda Marshall’s enduring charm and sophisticated allure.

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1963 Studebaker Avanti R2: A Bold American Design Icon

The 1963 Studebaker Avanti R2 was one of the most daring and innovative American cars of its era. Designed by Raymond Loewy’s team, the Avanti stunned the automotive world with its sleek, aerodynamic fiberglass body, sharply raked windshield, and futuristic styling that looked years ahead of its time.

Powered by a supercharged 289 cubic-inch V8 engine producing 335 horsepower, the R2 version delivered impressive performance for a grand tourer, capable of reaching 0–60 mph in under 7 seconds. Featuring advanced engineering such as front disc brakes and an aircraft-inspired cockpit, the Avanti R2 combined high style with genuine speed.

These stunning photos beautifully capture the timeless elegance and bold character of the 1963 Studebaker Avanti R2.

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38 Amazing Photographs From the Set of “Citizen Kane” (1941)

Production on Orson Welles’ masterpiece Citizen Kane (1941) was a hotbed of cinematic rebellion. Welles, a 25-year-old Hollywood outsider given absolute creative freedom by RKO Pictures, used his lack of filmmaking experience to his advantage by ignoring established rules and relying heavily on the technical brilliance of cinematographer Gregg Toland.

Before Citizen Kane, Hollywood sets rarely featured ceilings because they blocked the massive overhead studio lights. Welles wanted dramatic low angles to make Charles Foster Kane look imposing. To achieve this, the crew built enclosed sets with ceilings made of tightly stretched muslin cloth. The studio lights were rigged above the cloth to diffuse light down into the scene, allowing the camera to tilt upwards from the floor without exposing the empty studio rafters.

Welles and Toland wanted to place the camera even lower than standard tripods allowed. On several occasions, Welles ordered the carpentry crew to literally chop holes directly into the concrete or wooden studio floors so the heavy Mitchell camera could be dropped below ground level. This yielded the iconic low-angle perspectives seen during the political rally speech and the tense arguments in the newspaper office.

Toland experimented extensively with deep focus, a technique where everything in the frame, from objects mere inches from the lens to backgrounds dozens of feet away, remains perfectly sharp. On set, this required using newly invented coated lenses that reduced glare and allowed more light to enter; flooding the sets with immense, blinding amounts of light so they could close the lens aperture down tightly; utilizing in-camera optical composites, where one half of a scene would be filmed while the other half was masked in darkness, and then the film was rewound to shoot the second half in perfect focus.

Welles was a famously hands-on director, but during the filming of the dramatic staircase sequence, he fell and chipped his ankle. Refusing to let production stall, he spent two weeks navigating the RKO stages directing from a wheelchair, frequently using a massive megaphone to call out adjustments to the crew and cast across the echoing, cavernous sets.

Citizen Kane is frequently cited as the greatest film ever made. For 40 years, it stood at number one in the British Film Institute’s Sight and Sound decennial poll, and it topped the American Film Institute’s 100 Years ... 100 Movies list in 1998, as well as its 2007 update. The Library of Congress selected Citizen Kane as an inductee of the 1989 inaugural group of 25 films for preservation in the United States National Film Registry for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”

The film was nominated for Academy Awards in nine categories and it won for Best Writing (Original Screenplay) by Mankiewicz and Welles. Citizen Kane is praised for Gregg Toland’s cinematography, Robert Wise’s editing, Bernard Herrmann’s score and its narrative structure, all of which have been considered innovative and precedent-setting.

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Marilyn Monroe for TIME Magazine, an “Icon for the Ages” (1954)

Marilyn Monroe was selected by TIME Magazine as one of its “100 Women of the Year” to represent the year 1954, cementing her legacy as an “Icon for the Ages.” This historic retrospective project redesigns covers from TIME’s past to recognize influential women who were often overlooked for the traditional “Man of the Year” title during the 20th century.

While she didn’t actually appear on the cover of TIME in 1954, her standalone cover story didn’t happen until May 14, 1956, the year 1954 was a monumental, career-defining turning point for her. Coming directly off the massive success of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire in late 1953, she entered 1954 as Hollywood’s top-billed star. In late 1954, she filmed the iconic subway grate scene for The Seven Year Itch. The image of her billowing white dress became one of the most famous visual moments in cinema history.

The TIME “100 Women of the Year Profile” honors Monroe not just as a comedic genius and sex symbol, but as a sharp professional who fought a studio system heavily rigged against women. By late 1954, she boldly walked away from her 20th Century Fox contract to co-found her own independent production company.

In February 1954, she took a famous detour from her honeymoon with baseball star Joe DiMaggio to perform for over 100,000 U.S. troops in South Korea, an experience she later stated made her feel genuinely respected as a performer for the first time.

Her inclusion in the project highlights how Monroe shifted from a Hollywood starlet into a timeless, global symbol of beauty, subversion, and enduring star power.