Astonishing Vintage Photos That Challenge The Narrative

In 1983 Madonna was a struggling actress and singer with a couple of dance hits on the charts. Most prominently her single “Everybody” was becoming a club mainstay, but it would be the songs “Holiday” and “Lucky Star” that propelled her into the mainstream. In that nebulous period between wanting to be famous and actually getting there she met photographer Richard Corman’s mother while auditioning for The Last Temptation of Christ. Corman’s mother sent him to Madonna’s Lower East Side apartment where he snapped this photo.

Richard Corman recalled:

I walked into the corridor and I heard her yelling from above. She leaned over and I just saw those eyes looking at me. Those cat eyes. I knew right then that this was somebody who just had something special.

James Dean sure was a scamp, wasn’t he? With East of Eden out in theaters and his calling card Rebel Without A Cause yet to be released, Dean was so hot that he was able to steal 19-year-old Swedish femme fatale Ursula Andress away from none other than Marlon Brando.

Dean and Andress were only together for a few weeks, and this is the only real proof that they were hooking up. About a month after this photo was taken Dean passed away after he smashed his Porsche Spyder 500 head on into another car while flying down route 466 toward Paso Robles. After Dean’s death Andress went onto appear as Honey Ryder in Dr. No. 

Get back! These fine and freaky automobiles could only belong to the guys who turned the world of rock music on its head with the British Invasion before getting weird in India with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. While Lennon’s approach to painting his Rolls Royce Phantom V in all manner of psychedelia was somewhat of a dig at the English upper crust, Harrison was all about peace and love when it came to designing his 1966 Mini Cooper S. 

The designs on his car were culled straight from Tantra Art: Its Philosophy and Physics, and he apparently thought the designs were pretty goofy. After all, this is the guy who once said, “I’m the biggest lunatic around. I’m completely comical, you know? I like craziness. I had to in order to be in the Beatles.”

Isn’t Arnie supposed to be um… big? Or something? Did someone shrink him down? Or did a witch cast a spell on him? Okay so neither of those things happened, he just happens to be standing in between Wilt Chamberlain and Andre the Giant, easily two of the biggest mother effers to ever grace the silver screen. This photo was taken while filming Conan the Destroyer, the not so great 1984 follow up to Conan the Barbarian. You may remember this as the movie where a mirror wizard turns into a giant bird and captures a princess. Or maybe you’re like the rest of America and you didn’t see it.

You know why Wilt Chamberlain was on set, he co-stars in the film as Bombaata, but why was Andre the Giant on set? At the end of the movie Conan fights a horned demon named Dagoth and Andre was the only person big enough to fit the suit!

Ah, Christmas in California. The sun is shining, the palm trees are shifting in the breeze, and Santa is sweating like a hooker in church. After being abandoned by his father, Tarantino moved to California with his mother at the age of four where he began diving into his love of film. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. At this point in time young Tarantino was busy watching movies that were definitely over his head while his mother dealt with Hodgkins lymphoma.

Little did anyone know that this smiling young man would go on to describe in detail the backstory of Madonna’s “Like A Virgin.”

Doesn’t every housewife dream of chopping off her husband’s head and shoving it in the refrigerator? If you’re married to Alfred Hitchcock then you’ve definitely got a macabre sense of humor, so it’s no wonder that his wife, Alma Reville, kept a bust of her beau’s noggin hanging around. 

This shot is likely based on the episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, “The Jar,” where a man kills his wife and stuffs her head in - you guessed it - a jar. Or maybe this was Alma’s way of keeping her portly husband in check. Either way, these two were made for each other. 

Before she was stuck on an island with Gilligan, the Skipper, and the rest of the gang, Dawn Wells was a beauty queen who represented Nevada in the 1960 Miss America Pageant. Wells didn’t win the title of Miss America, but who needs a crown and a sash when you’re going to spend the rest of your life making residuals off of one of the most beloved television shows of the ‘60s?

It only took a few years after her Miss Nevada win for Wells to start working on television. In 1961 alone she appeared on shows like Wagon Train, Maverick, and Surfside 6. In 1964 she began her 98 episode run on Gilligan's Island. 

Poor little Mick Jagger, what do you think he did to get in so much trouble? Steal Keith’s heroin? Hide Ronnie Wood’s telecaster? Mick was truly up to no good throughout the Stones’ run at the top in the ‘60s and ‘70s, but judging by the hair this was taken in 1967, just around when Mick was arrested on a narcotics charge. Specifically, he was hanging out at Keith’s place when the bobbies busted in to nab the immortal guitarist.

Jagger didn't exactly go on the straight and narrow after his arrest, but he notably stopped palling around with a geezer like Richards as the decades wore on. 

Holy star power Batman!  This is  a behind the scenes photo from the set of 1966’s Batman series starring Adam West. While Lewis would have been a huge get to play the Joker, he actually just pops up for a gag in the episode “The Bookworm Turns.”

In the episode, Batman and Robin are walking up the side of a building when Lewis pops his head out a window to say hello to the Dark Knight and his pal Robin - whom Lewis seems to know from a previous engagement. This just goes to show that you never know who’s going to show in Gotham City.  

For all the good that hippies did throughout the 1960s, people really hated them. It wasn’t just that they were anti-war and pro peace, it was that they had long hair, wild clothes, and they listened to music that old timers just couldn’t get behind. 

During the Vietnam War, anti-war protests brought the fight for freedom and the pursuit of happiness to major cities and college campuses across the nation, but it was only a matter of time before squares began their counter protests. Eventually the war came to an end, but the generational rift remained.  

Phillips Petit was only 24 years old when he walked on a tight rope shackled between the Twin Towers, at that age most people are still figuring out what they want to do with their lives but he was making history. Petit’s balancing act would have been impressive no matter where he was, but at 1,300 feet in the air this death defying is absolutely stunning.

At the time of his walk Petit said that he didn’t have a specific reason to walk between the two towers, but that it was more of a compulsion. He told the press, “There is no why, just because when I see a place to put my wire I cannot resist.” 

There are for sure more well known guitar players - Hendrix, Clapton, Plant - but Eddie Cochran’s raucous songwriting informed generations of country, rockabilly, and pop artists in ways that you can still hear when you listen to the radio. His down and dirty style of roots rock is audible in artists like The Cramps, Kurt Vile, and even San Fransisco’s Dead Kennedys.

Unfortunately, Cochran’s life was cut short in 1960 while he was on a UK tour with fellow rocker Gene Vincent. While riding back to his hotel on the A4, the car transporting Cochran lost control near Chippenham and careened into a lamp post. Cochran was sent through the roof and after smashing into the concrete the star never regained consciousness. He passed away at St. Martin’s hospital later that day. 

I don't know who's prettier in this photo, David Lee Roth or Joan Jett. By 1978 The Runaways were just about the disband and had just released their final album “And Now… The Runaways.” The very same year Van Halen released their debut, self titled album. While Van Halen’s virtuosic, shred heavy sound may be at odds with the four chords and the truth attitude of The Runaways, Roth was a tireless promoter who did everything he could to get the word out about his new band.

With both groups being from the Los Angeles area it makes sense that Roth would end up on a radio show with the four rockin’ babes from The Runaways.

The Golden Age of Air Travel is named as such because it’s when people were still so enamored with the idea of mass chartered flights that they still dressed in their Sunday best before boarding a jumbo jet. It’s also a time when airline attendants looked effortlessly cool. This style - the high necked babydoll dresses, the cocked hats, the perfectly quaffed hair - was an unofficial symbol of companies like Pan Am. The look said, “live the high life,” literally.

The outfits weren’t the only thing that was different with air travel in the ’60s. The cost of flying was significantly more expensive than it is now. Adjusting for inflation, round trips could cost at least a thousand dollars. If only there was a way to go back to the effortless cool of flight attendants without the insane costs. 

After spending his early years in Syracuse, New York, Tom Cruise and his family moved to Beacon Hill, Ottawa in 1971. At the time his father was working as a defense consultant with the Canadian Armed Forces. This was when Cruise first got a taste for acting, and he began treading the boards in elementary school. Cruise did his best to scratch his itch for acting whenever he could, but because of his father’s work with the military the family was constantly on the move.

When this photo was taken Cruise was dealing with dyslexia and abuse at home. It’s a wonder to believe that he made it out of his downtrodden life to become one of the most famous people on the planet. 

Wendy’s has the taste. This ad from 1980 was an all singing, all dancing plethora of talent that let the audience know that they were in for something special when they paid a visit to the place with the square hamburgers. In just over 30 seconds a group of blue and white striped employees cavorted through a restaurant while diners ate, tossing off facts about their food. Most importantly that their burgers are fresh, and never frozen.

The wildest thing about this ad isn’t the over the top promotion, but rather the idea that someone would want to eat a triple patty, all beef burger. How did our arteries make it out of the ‘80s?

While most music neophytes are aware of Bob Marley and The Wailers legacy from the ‘70s, a version of the band was kicking around Jamaica from the early ‘60s. The initial iteration of the band featured Marley on guitar, Tosh on keyboards, and Bunny Wailer on drums with a series of different luminaries of the early rocksteady and reggae scene.

The initial version of the band disbanded in ’1974 over a disagreement about what kind of venues they wanted to play and while that put the first version of the band to bed, each member would go on to find fame under their own names. 

In 1967 there was nowhere cooler to be than the Haight Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco. It was the epicenter of the hippie counterculture and kids from all over the world flocked to the city so they could get in on the weirdness. The draw of the Haight was so strong that it pulled in George Harrison and his then wife Pattie Boyd.

As much as Harrison was all about peace and love, he was a little freaked out by the sheer number of people hanging around the Haight. He discussed his trepidations about the area in later interview, saying that he thought it would be more like “something like King’s Road only more. Somehow I expected them to all own their own little shops. I expected them all to be nice and clean and friendly and happy.” Unfortunately he found the hippies of the Haight to be “hideous, spotty little teenagers.”

Was there ever anyone as cool as Elvis in the ‘50s? He didn’t just sing about the counter culture greaser style that drove girls wild and enraged parents, he lived it. In 1955 Elvis bought a Harley-Davidson ST 165 in order to get his bearings on the bike, and a year later he splurged on a 1956 Model KH.

Elvis was such a faithful biker that he appeared on the cover of The Enthusiast, a magazine published by Harley that was all about chrome and the feeling of the wind in your hair. in fact, Elvis was such a fan of Harley that he allowed the magazine to run with the news that he’d stopped working with Sam Phillips of Sun Records and was moving onto RCA. 

In the ‘70s one thing became apparent, people need to take care of the planet. Pollution was piling up quickly and we needed to do something about it. In order to get the word out Harold Bell came up with the character of Woodsy The Owl, a monstrous woodland creature who sort of dressed like Robin Hood. Armed with the phrase, “Give a Hoot — Don’t Pollute,” Woodsy stalked suburbia in search of polluters.

When it came to creating Woodsy, Bell turned to Rudy Wendelin to help with the design. Why Wendelin? He had cred with the cartoon animal PSA folks due to the fact that he designed anti-fire creature Smokey the Bear.

If there’s one couple that truly defines Hollywood in the 1970s it’s Jack Nicholson and Anjelica Huston. Huston was the daughter of director John Huston, and by the time she met Nicholson in 1973 she’d already been a model and had her sights set on the film industry. She met Nicholson at a party he was hosting and for the next decade the two were embroiled in a tumultuous on again, off again relationship.

In Huston’s memoir, Watch Me, she writes that Nicholson was incredibly possessive of her while throwing his lax attitude about monogamy directly in her face. In spite of their ups and downs the two of them stayed together for 17 years until he broke it off to have a baby with Rebecca Broussard - a woman 11 years her junior. 

Nicole Kidman’s really made a run for superstardom since her humble beginnings in Australia. Before she was the queen of HBO Kidman made a series of low budget, maybe best not seen films like BMX Bandits and Watch the Shadows Dance. However in 1988 she appeared in Emerald City, a film where two Australian screenwriters clash over their differing beliefs about their country’s film industry. 

After Emerald City Kidman went on to appear major American motion pictures, but as lauded as her career would become she never received an award for having easily the most bodacious hair of the ‘80s. 

Even without the mustache Alex Trebek looks like a high school principal. Long before his tenure on Jeopardy began, Trebek hosted a Canadian music series called Music Hop! The series format was essentially like Top of the Pops in England. An artist would come to the show and discuss their newest single with the host and then teens would dance to groovy music. Trebek only hosted for one season before he was replaced.

Don’t feel too bad for Trebek. He bounced around the game show circuit for 20 years, but in 1984 his pilot for Jeopardy sold and he’s never been let out of that studio since. 

Forming in 1981, the Beastie Boys began as a bratty trio of New York City upstarts with punk rock in their veins and rhymes on their tongues. Their first album, Licensed to Ill is full of sophomoric songs that spewed out of a speaker as if they were concocted in a lab specifically to rile up parents across America.

In hindsight it’s hard to know whether the group were goofing on frat boys cliche’s in their lyrics or if they were truly the dum-dums they were pretending to be. What is clear is that the group was musically ahead of the curve. They spent time in the studio reversing beats and working with members of Run DMC to craft a sound that was more complex than any hip hop album of the time. 

In Bandolero! Dean Martin plays the charismatic criminal Dee Wallace, who’s about to be hanged with his entire gang. After escaping the public execution thanks to the fact that his brother is the hangman (what luck) Dee kidnaps a woman and his gang take off for the badlands. There’s only one problem with their plan - bandoleros are afoot and they hate gringos. Also Sheriff July Johnson is hot on their trail. So make that two problems.

Even though Martin was filming during his birthday, getting to play cowboy with your friends sounds like a heck of a way to turn 50.

By 1978 Journey had actually been playing together for five years and they had three albums under the belt. However their sales were poor and people just weren’t digging them. Their label, Columbia Records, stepped in and told them that if they didn’t enlist a singer and write some hits then they could pack their bags look for employment elsewhere.

Not wanting to become a group of also-rans the band hired Robert Fleischman before going out on tour. In this brief version of the band they wrote the hit “Wheel in the Sky,” but Fleischman was quickly fired after the band’s manager felt that he was being “tough to deal with.” According to Journey legend, future vocalist Steve Perry was brought into shadow Fleishchman under the auspices of being the “Portuguese cousin” of a member of their management. Before long, Fleischman was out and Perry was in. 

Before the 1960s everyone thought of Natalie Wood as strictly a child actress. She appeared in The Searchers and Majorie Morningstar, but in the 1960s her career really went into the stratosphere. She worked on huge films like West Side Story, Splendor in the Grass, and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, a film that not only still resonates with audiences but that continues to inform romantic dramas.

During this time Wood proved to be both a profitable actress and someone who didn’t take themselves too seriously. In 1966 she received the Harvard Lampoon’s Worst Actress of the Year Award and turned up in person to accept it. The Harvard Crimson wrote she was "quite a good sport.” 

UFO, the cult British science fiction series that premiered in 1970, may have only lasted for a scant 26 episodes but they’re some of the most interesting and conspiratorial shows that have ever been produced. Taking place in 1980, the series follows a secret government agency that’s trying to figure out whether or not aliens who’ve come to Earth are planning a full scale invasion or if they’re just abducting a few people.

Anglophiles and science fiction fans should do themselves a favor to check out this series, which influenced many of the shows you definitely love. 

The original line up of Black Sabbath got together in 1968 under a few different names, but after seeing the words “Black Sabbath” on a local Birmingham theater marquee (it was showing the classic Boris Karloff film) the band adopted that as their moniker and never looked back. Around the same time the band began to work on darker material which not only fit their new name but also jived with their doom and gloom world view.

In 1970 the band recorded their first album in two days, one of which was blocked off for mixing. So rather than hem and haw about their bad luck the band jammed themselves into a studio and banged every song on the album out on the same day - with Ozzy singing live. According to guitarist Tony Iommi the band never had a second chance to record most of the songs. 

By the time Dolly Parton got together with Emmy Lou Harris and Linda Ronstadt to record “Trio,” these women were already musical icons. Even though they were all friends they’d never been able to actually get together and record a proper album together. They tried a decade earlier but the sessions didn’t work out and that was that - or so they thought. When these women finally came together they knocked out a country pop record for the ages.

Each gal takes lead on at least two songs, and while they each have writing credits on the record they also brought in some big songwriting guns to help out. Porter Wagner, Phil Spector and Johnny Russell all lent their talents to this album that would go on to bring Parton and company to a new generation of fans.  

By 1979 REO Speedwagon were gearing up to release their eighth album, “Nine Live.” This is the last heavy album that the band released before setting their sights on the Billboard charts with more pop oriented releases like “Hi Infidelity” and “Wheels Are Turnin’.”

It’s likely that the band leaned into their pop sensibilities when “Nine Lives” severely underperformed on the charts. Their previous album, “You Can Tune a Piano, but You Can't Tuna Fish” went double platinum, but their 1979 effort only achieved gold status when it sold 500,000 copies.  

Filmed in front of a live studio audience, The Bob Newhart Show followed Newhart he inhabited the character of “Bob Hartley” as he played analyst to his patients, friends, and co-workers while trying to find some space for himself. Not only was the show wildly popular, but it ran for 142 episodes, and spawned a drinking game called “Hi, Bob” where you have to drink every time someone walks into Newhart’s office and says “Hi, Bob.”

Please keep in mind that if you play this game to the hilt you will get alcohol poisoning, so it’s best to take it easy. 

Pyrex bowls are magical. Or maybe they were invented by a wizard. Whatever the case, these bowls have been a way of life in America for generations. Initially Pyrex bowls were constructed as a way for Corning Glass Works to make money off of their incredibly thick pieces of glass. At the time they were manufacturing railroad lanterns - something that doesn’t have much of a market.

In 1915 they released their first set of bowls but they couldn’t move units because no one believed that the bowls could be put in the oven without shattering. It took a lot of demonstrations over the next four years for the bowls to catch on, but by 1919 CGW had sold over 4 million Pyrex products. Fast forward a hundred years and any kitchen worth its salt has at least one Pyrex bowl that sees regular use. 

Is there anyone more badass than Frank Serpico? This 1973 move detailed the true exploits of an undercover cop who discovered a wealth of corruption at the NYPD and flushed it out. The film was a major undertaking, with the production going through two directors before finally landing in the hands of Sidney Lumet.

Serpico is one of the rare movies that filmed in New York City rather than trying to make Los Angeles or Toronto look New Yorkish, and because of that the production filmed across every Burroughs except Staten Island. Pacino's turn as Frank Serpico would earn him his first Golden Globe at the 1974 ceremony.  

In 1968 Bob Gibson became the most feared pitcher in the National League. While pitching for the St. Louis Cardinals he threw 13 shutouts and he had the low low ERA (earned run average) of 1.12, that’s absolutely nuts. Gibson’s wildly successful year is so unprecedented that people have been trying to figure out exactly what he did ever since.

Armchair baseball scholars believe that there were a series of factors that lead to Gibson’s reign over 1968, including a higher pitching mound and a larger strike zone, but to say those reasons are why he was so dominant is to ignore the fact that the guy was truly a pitching beast. 

Would you look at this murderer’s row of Saturday morning entertainment? How is anyone supposed to sleep in when Scooby Doo is on at 8:30 in the morning. Sure, you can miss the Tom & Jerry Grape Ape Mumbly Show, but do you really want to take a chance on missing out on whatever mystery Jabberjaw and The Neptunes are going to solve?

The craziest thing about this lineup is the harsh sea change from Scooby Doo to The Kraft Supershow, one of the most psychedelic live action television shows ever created. And people wonder why kids from the ‘70s are a little twisted. 

Sophia Loren is absolutely one of the most stunning creatures to ever grace planet Earth. Her majestic eyes are such a sought after look that the internet is littered with walkthroughs on how to get her look, but the one thing they’re all missing is the fact that she was born with those sultry emeralds.

Speaking of makeup, Loren often claimed that she put her own face on in her films, and who are we to argue with a beauty like this? Regardless of whether or not her beauty was man made or not, this photo is hypnotic and it's enough to make you want to make out with your own computer monitor. 

If Vincent Price isn’t our generation’s finest actors then he’s at least our biggest ham. Price made at least a hundred film and television appearances, and in most of them he leaned heavily into his persona as everyone’s favorite goth uncle. However in Witchfinder General Price isn’t winking at the camera. In fact, in his role as Matthew Hopkins he takes part in some of the most gruesome torture scenes that had been portrayed on film at that time.

Filmed in Suffolk, England, it’s likely that many of the people that Price bumped into on his way to get a snack didn’t even notice that he was in costume.

Was there any couple more austere and chaste than June and Ward Beaver? These two high school sweethearts do their best to keep their two rambunctious children on the path of the straight and narrow. Played by Barbara Billingsley and Hugh Beaumont, the characters were essentially just heightened versions of the actors. 

Beaumont was a licensed Methodist preacher and Billingsley was a mother to two children and she gave up acting for nearly 20 years before returning to Hollywood in the ‘80s to pop up in everything from Airplane! to Mork & Mindy. If you were inspired by this power couple, you're probably doing alright. 

Before going on to become a character actor who steals scenes in films like There’s Something About Mary and Beautiful Girls, Matt Dillon was a straight up teen heart throb. Coming out of New Rochelle, New York, Dillon began acting in middle school when he appeared in Over the Edge, a movie about a group of teens who stage a violent uprising in a small planned community in Colorado.

Dillon says that he’s proud of his first role, and feels that it still resonates. He told Vice: 

I didn’t think of myself as a kid when it was all happening. I just believed in that film and in my role from the beginning. Maybe I was naïve or whatever, but I always thought there was something great in the movie. It really resonated. I wasn’t a child actor—I didn’t come up that way. If I had gone in and auditioned for a Disney family movie, I wouldn’t have connected with that in any way, shape, or form. But this role came very naturally for me.

It really took until 1987’s The Princess Bride for people to figure out that Andre the Giant was great at playing lovable tough guys. Prior to that film he tended to be cast as monsters, madmen, and you guessed it, Bigfoot. In what has to be the most bananas episode of The Six Million Dollar Man, Steve Rogers meets Bigfoot, gets into a fist fight with him, and then meets the group of aliens that built Bigfoot. That’s right, Bigfoot isn’t a creature, it’s a robot built by aliens to protect them.

The episode is pure madness and you should do you best to seek it out right now. Maybe someone you know has it saved on an old VHS somewhere.