Posted 5:44 PM by Gene

There is one (and only one) good thing about the dying newspaper tabloid Life's Web site: the cover search. It's a pity that the really remarkable part of the rag is off limits -- the insides; for the old Life (that is, its first inception, as a slick weekly, from 1936 to 1972) perhaps captured the spirit of the news more than any other magazine, at least during its first twenty years, until the pictures became bigger and the layout dumber. But its covers, let there be no doubt, were often outstanding. We looked up some names (we don't count the imposters from after '72 here), and as soon becomes quite obvious the cover subjects were, at best, a quirky choice: FDR made it only five times (six counting Mrs. R., seven counting Ralph Bellamy); Truman seven times, Ike eighteen; the Kennedys forty-six times (including Lee Harvey Oswald); LBJ thirteen, Nixon twelve. Churchill made it ten times (eleven counting a non-photo cover selling his memoirs); Hitler NEVER. Mussolini once. Khrushchev five times, three more than Stalin. Castro three times in four years. Mao once, in '72, a year after Zhou Enlai. Charles de Gaulle, three times. George C. Marshall and Dean Acheson each made it once. (Surprisingly, Lucian favorite John Foster Dulles never did; maybe he was too scary.) Lots of generals, mostly during WWII; Gen. MacArthur made it six times. Mrs. King made it twice, or once more than her slain husband (and that posthumously). Spiro Agnew made it three times(!), George McGovern twice in three weeks before his campaign broke down. Einstein, Sam Rayburn, Lindbergh -- none made the cover of Life. Not photogenic enough? (Nelson Rockefeller did -- four times.)

Of course Life's chief fame was as a show-biz publicity rag, in the days that wasn't objectionable; and never was it better than with the femmes. (We must not forget cheesecake was surely behind much of Life's popularity, and Henry Luce served it straight.) So we get Audrey Hepburn five times (Kate three), Sophia Loren seven times, MM nine times, Liz Taylor twelve times (the cover plugging Giant called her "lovely", and lovely she was, and a little more -- as in this sensational cover by Roddy McDowall). Bogie -- NEVER. (Well, once -- in a cover plug for Woodster the Perv.) Elvis -- NEVER. (Well, Ricky Nelson made it once.) With both, four times less than Bob Hope -- and two less than Gary Crosby?!?!? (His dad only made it thrice, usually in someone's company -- as did Ol' Blue Eyes, past his prime.) Quite a few baseball and football covers too, in the days before SI. Hemingway was in three times. And, it goes without saying, thirty-two covers of astronauts.

Television, the Web, economics -- they all made Life expendable. They could never make it forgettable.

P. S. on 6/29/2008 at 8:25 p. m.: The TWXSTERS had said they were going to open a NEW! IMPROVED! Life Web site after shutting down the supplement, but so far it's merely a placeholder. (All the links above are thus no good.) There is too much superb photography, and too much of a promise of unfettered access, for that.