Life’s files make good Friday ladies

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Life Magazine started life (no pun intended) on November 23, 1936, which is 81 years and 1 day today. Although it does not exist anymore, the publisher partnered up with Google in 2008 to use its photographic archive online. Many of the over 6 million images from the files had never been published in the magazine and the majority of them is now available through Google Cultural Institute. And so we stumbled upon the picture seen here. And more here, here and here.

That’s actress Debbie Reynolds in the 1955 Lincoln Futura show car. One of the shots actually made it to the cover of Life in March 1959 after the movie ‘It started with a Kiss’ had just gone in premiere (trailer here with the Lincoln well visible). Originally the Continental Mk2 based show car had been pearlescent white, but was resprayed in red for the movie as the white did not photograph very well. The car scenes were shot in Spain and the Life photographs were taken there, too.

And it wasn’t the car’s only appearance on the silver screen. The Futura became really famous after the concept car was sold to kar kustomizer George Barris some years later. Barris took it over from the Ford Motor Company for a dollar (the original price to build it had supposedly been $250,000). This ‘as the car was never titled and was therefore uninsurable'. Barris parked it behind his workshop and only took it out when he was asked to design a car for a new television series in 1966: Batman.

(Words editor, pictures Life magazine)

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