Music DJ Official

In the spring of 1963, Steve McQueen was on the brink of superstardom, already popular from his big-screen breakout as one of The Magnificent Seven and just a couple months away from entering the Badass Hall of Fame with the release of The Great Escape. Intrigued by his dramatic backstory and his off-screen exploits — McQueen was a reformed delinquent who got his thrills racing cars and motorcycles — LIFE sent the great photographer John Dominis to California to hang out with the 33-year-old actor and, in effect, see what he could get. Three weeks and more than 40 rolls of film later, Dominis had captured some astonishingly intimate and now-iconic images — photos impossible to imagine in today’s utterly restricted-access celebrity universe. Only a handful of those photos were ever published. Here is a series of previously unpublished gems from what Dominis would look back on as one of his favorite assignments, along with insights about the time he spent with the man who would soon do...

On May Day, just after leaving her fiancé, 23-year-old Evelyn McHale wrote a note. ‘He is much better off without me … I wouldn’t make a good wife for anybody,’ … Then she crossed it out. She went to the observation platform of the Empire State Building. Through the mist she gazed at the street, 86 floors below. Then she jumped. In her desperate determination she leaped clear of the setbacks and hit a United Nations limousine parked at the curb. Across the street photography student Robert Wiles heard an explosive crash. Just four minutes after Evelyn McHale’s death Wiles got this picture of death’s violence and its composure. The serenity of McHale’s body amidst the crumpled wreckage it caused is astounding. Years later, Andy Warhol appropriated Wiles’ photography for a print called Suicide (Fallen Body). Evelyn McHale  |  ‘The Most Beautiful Suicide’ (Life Magazine, 1947) P hoto by Robert C. Wiles Evelyn, still clutching a pearl necklace, looks disarmingly placid and compose...