Birthdays are always a time of reflection, a chance to look back at what you did well and what you didn’t quite successfully pull off.
Life Magazine is celebrating its 75th birthday. In its heyday, the magazine was a fixture in so many American homes. In the decades before the internet and cable and satellite television, the outstanding photographic journalism in the publication brought the reader right into the world beyond their doorstep. Whether it was covering wars, political movements like the fall of the Berlin Wall or celebrities, Life provided stimulating visuals to accompany the story. Iconic images were the magazine’s trademark. Think about the photo of the sailor and nurse kissing in Times Square to celebrate the end of World War II.
Editors at Life have taken this benchmark anniversary as a chance to note not only their achievements, but also their failures among the 2,200 covers they produced. They’ve put together their 20 worst Life covers ever. Among them is a giant image of a white leghorn rooster.
I have no clue what that rooster did to earn a spot on the cover. Maybe it was the great-great grandpa to the rooster that killed a man or the bird that sounds out a morning death metal cock-a-doodle-do.
Despite what you might think by looking at that giant real-life Foghorn Leghorn, that one’s not the freakiest among the images Life has tabbed.