Dec. 7. 1936 is the third issue of LIFE and the magazine is taking note of a new sport in America, skiing. Europe is 20 years ahead of the U.S., and the pictures in this edition are mostly taken at the half-a-dozen resorts in the high Alps like St. Moritz and Davos. Photographers discover that skiing makes beautiful pictures and that even the clumsiest person looks like an expert when standing still on a pair of long boards in the midst of the French Alps. Movie stars soon capitalize on this revelation.
Hitler is featured in LIFE for the first time as he is “being hailed by the Fatherland’s press as the Revivalist who will awaken all Europe and save the world from Communism.” “Today, more than any other man alive, Adolf Hitler is the fulcrum on which peace or war for Europe teeters,” says LIFE. The magazine is inspired to include an aerial picture of London and show where the Germans might bomb the city if war comes, as indeed they did almost four years later. We see young German boys, members of the Nazi Colonial League, studying Germany’s “lost colonies.” The Treaty of Versailles made Germany surrender 1,760,000 square miles of territory after WWI. The Colonial League had their own uniforms and became part of Nazi pageantry. The organization was disbanded in 1943.
The striking and penetrating color photograph by Edward Steichen is of Sergei Rachmaninoff, Pianist and Composer. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the best pianists of his time and among the last great Russian composers. The 1917 Russian Revolution caused the Rachmaninoff family to flee to the U.S. where he immediately embarked on a concert tour that continued until his death in 1943. LIFE describes him as having “steel strong hands,” as he begins his 1937 concert tour to play forty two times in forty two U.S. cities.
Edward Steichen is the best known and highest paid photographer in the world at this time. He works for Vogue and Vanity Fair as well as the major advertising agencies. He served in the U.S. Army in WWI and the U.S. Navy in WWII commanding military photography units. After WWII Steichen served as Director of Photography at New York’s Museum of Modern Art until his retirement in 1962. Steichen’s sister, Lillian, married Carl Sandburg in 1907. Carl and Edward remained lifelong friends, and Lillian went on to become a household name in the world of dairy goats.
In the early years of LIFE the magazine includes two-three page spreads titled, “LIFE on the American Newsfront.” The “National Enquirer” and “People” magazine come to mind based on the content of this section. We see a picture of Filipinos Simplicio and Lucio Godina, the only set of adult male Siamese twins. They were joined at the hip by a band of muscle and fiber eight inches in diameter. In spite of this, they were excellent dancers and roller skaters. In 1928 they married identical twin sisters in an extravagant public wedding in Manila. On Nov. 24, 1936 Lucio died from rheumatic fever and within the hour a New York surgeon separated them. LIFE reports the freed Simplicio is in “favorable condition.” Sadly, he died 12 days later, from meningitis. An interesting legal matter had arisen several years earlier when Lucio was arrested for drunken driving. He was sentenced to five days in jail, but dodged the sentence on the grounds that innocent Simplicio would also be imprisoned.
