60 Years Ago Today, February 25, 1964: Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay) Shocked the World

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Forthcoming exhibition: 1964

April 19 - June 23, 2024

The most pivotal year of the 1960s, arguably, is 1964. That’s the year American culture fractured and eventually split along ideological lines — old vs. young; hip vs. square; poor vs. rich; liberal vs. conservative — establishing the poles of societal debate that are still raging today.

Never before exhibited photographs of Muhammed Ali on display in Austin: Features Gallery Photographer Bob Gomel

 

Never before exhibited photographs of Muhammed Ali on display in Austin

Via CBS Austin

December 9, 2021

The Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at The University of Texas at Austin and the LBJ Presidential Library presents the exhibition “One Night in Miami”: From Photo to Film.

#TBT: Never before exhibited photographs of Muhammed Ali on display in Austin

Located in the LBJ Library’s Great Hall, the exhibit showcases iconic photos from the Briscoe Center’s collections that inspired key moments in the 2020 film.

It features a selection of images from Bob Gomel and Flip Schulke, famed photojournalists whose archives are housed at the Briscoe Center. The photos, many of which have never before been exhibited, depict a young Muhammed Ali (then known by his birth name, Cassius Clay) during the early years of his boxing career.

After his victory over Sonny Liston for the heavyweight championship in Feb. 1964, Ali celebrated with friends and supporters at the Hampton House, a motel in Miami that served as a gathering place for Black entertainers and celebrities.

There, Ali was joined by his friends Malcolm X, singer Sam Cooke, and football player Jim Brown, among others. The gathering inspired Kemp Powers’s 2013 play, “One Night in Miami,” which was adapted into Regina King’s award-winning 2020 movie.

Malcolm X photographs Muhammad Ali at the victory party after Ali’s defeat of Sonny Liston, February 25, 1964. Photograph by Bob Gomel, Bob Gomel Photographic Archive.

A key scene in the movie recreates Gomel’s photograph of Malcolm X and Ali in the Hampton House diner.

One of the opening scenes of the film was inspired by Flip Schulke’s famous photos of Ali taken in a Miami swimming pool in 1961. The shoot offered Schulke the opportunity to test out his experimental underwater camera setup.

In addition to a selection of rare photos from Gomel and Schulke, the exhibit features equipment from both photographers and related ephemera.

"One Night in Miami”: From Photo to Film runs until May 8, 2022. For more details on the exhibit, please go to: https://briscoecenter.org/exhibitions/one-night-in-miami/

The LBJ Library is open to the public. Admission tickets must be bought online in advance. For details, please go to: https://www.lbjlibrary.org/visit.

“One Night in Miami”: From Photo to Film Exhibit Features Gallery Photographer Bob Gomel

Via The Briscoe Center for American History 

December 9, 2021 – May 8, 2022

LBJ Presidential  Library and Museum, Austin, Texas 

Great Hall

The LBJ Library is open to the public. Admission tickets must be bought online in advance. For details, please go to https://www.lbjlibrary.org/visit.

“One Night in Miami”: From Photo to Film showcases iconic photos from the Briscoe Center’s collections that inspired key moments in the 2020 film. It features a selection of images from Bob Gomel and Flip Schulke, famed photojournalists whose archives are housed at the Briscoe Center. The photos, many of which have never before been exhibited, depict a young Muhammed Ali (then known by his birth name, Cassius Clay) during the early years of his boxing career.

After his victory over Sonny Liston for the heavyweight championship in Feb. 1964, Ali celebrated with friends and supporters at the Hampton House, a motel in Miami that served as a gathering place for Black entertainers and celebrities. There, Ali was joined by his friends Malcolm X, singer Sam Cooke and football player Jim Brown, among others. The gathering inspired Kemp Powers’s 2013 play, “One Night in Miami,” which was adapted into Regina King’s award-winning 2020 movie. A key scene in the movie recreates Gomel’s photograph of Malcolm X and Ali in the Hampton House diner.

Malcolm X photographs Muhammad Ali at the victory party after Ali’s defeat of Sonny Liston, February 25, 1964. Photograph by Bob Gomel, Bob Gomel Photographic Archive.

One of the opening scenes of the film was inspired by Flip Schulke’s famous photos of Ali taken in a Miami swimming pool in 1961. The shoot offered Schulke the opportunity to test out his experimental underwater camera setup.

In addition to a selection of rare photos from Gomel and Schulke, the exhibit features equipment from both photographers and related ephemera.

Bob Gomel's work endures from Life magazine to ‘One Night in Miami’

Malcolm X takes a photograph of Cassius Clay -- who was about to announce his conversion to Islam and his new name, Muhammad Ali -- on February 25, 1964 in Miami. Malcolm X was staying at The Hampton House Motel, where he spoke with Ali, singer Sam Cooke and football star Jim Brown. The photo was captured for LIFE magazine by Bob Gomel.

Photo: photo by Bob Gomel used with permission

 Via The Houston Chronicle

By Andrew Dansby

February 1, 2021

Near the end of the film “One Night in Miami,” Cassius Clay — hours after defeating Sonny Liston and declaring himself king of the world … and so pretty — holds shop in a small diner at the Hampton House Motel over a bowl of ice cream.

“I want a picture with Malcolm!” he says, referring to Malcolm X, who had advocated for the boxer’s conversion to Islam, which yielded a new name: Muhammad Ali.

The film follows Malcolm X for a meditative moment. A dangerous power struggle was in place amid the Nation of Islam, and he had only one year to live. But Clay, in that moment, got his photo.

Life magazine photographer Bob Gomel — the only member of the media inside the diner — caught the champ at the counter, a look of feigned surprise with Malcolm X leaning on his shoulder seemingly enjoying the moment of celebration.

Gomel captured several enduring images from the fight and its aftermath. One included Malcolm X behind the counter taking a photo of a tuxedo-clad Ali. That iconic photo has been acquired by the Library of Congress. Both the photo and the evening have taken on significant cultural weight. The fight and the meetings that followed were caught on film by Gomel and have been written about in biographies of Ali, Malcolm X and Cooke. That one night has become almost mythical, as it saw the rise of a cultural icon in Ali, lending itself to a play that would become a film.

As for Gomel, he’d made a fleeting moment permanent, something he’d done before and would do many times later as a storied and celebrated photojournalist whose work covered presidents and presidential funerals, Olympians in action and the Beatles on a beach.

“I’d suggest the challenge is to do something better than had been done before,” Gomel says, “That was something instilled in me early in my career. When I was just starting my career, I had an editor at Life. I came back and said some event didn’t happen. And he said he didn’t ever want to hear that. After that, I never batted an eye about doing what it took to get a photograph.”

Film on film

David Scarbrough, a professional photographer, met Gomel through mutual friends and colleagues. He’s been in Houston for more than 20 years; Gomel moved here in 1977.

Any time the two would meet, Gomel would share his stories about working at Life from 1959 to 1969. Gomel resisted the idea of putting down those stories as text to accompany the photos in a coffee-table book. So Scarbrough pitched the idea of a film.

“I convinced him to do a proof of concept, and if he didn’t like it, we’d drop it,” Scarbrough says.

Using two iPhones and a makeshift sound studio behind his house, Scarbrough got Gomel to tell the tales behind some of his most famous photos.

Those interviews became the basis of “Bob Gomel: Eyewitness,” available to stream on Amazon, in which the photographer narrates his career, a mix of his photographs and his on-camera commentary. Occasionally, Scarbrough throws in an outside image, as from the first Ali/Liston fight. When Scarbrough called up the fight on YouTube, he thought he saw a familiar face in the bedlam that followed Ali’s win.

“I blew it up, and it was grainy, but there’s Bob on the other side of the ring, climbing the ropes to get the shot. I had to work that in.”

That shot becomes part of a theme throughout the film. Gomel discusses his terror shooting Olympic bobsledders from a bobsled. He is photographed in a wetsuit immersed in a pool to capture a swimmer doing the butterfly. Gomel’s photo presents the swimmer as a human wavelength, her body contorted in a way both beautiful and grotesque.

One of the most fascinating passages includes two presidential funerals. From an elevated space, Gomel photographed President John F. Kennedy’s casket in the Capitol rotunda in 1963. His image is haunting for the light beaming across the rotunda. Gomel that day made a mental note that a direct overhead photograph in the rotunda could be striking. When President Dwight D. Eisenhower died six years later, Gomel rigged a camera directly overhead.

“Everybody knows that photo,” Scarbrough says. “It was a significant moment captured by a well-executed photograph. But people don’t know the preparation to get the picture. The hours and hours of testing. This was before our digital age. You had to string the camera out, bring it back, test lenses. The prep work was incredible.”

Gomel had another concern. “I prayed my lights didn’t start flashing before the event.

“I always draw a distinction. I say you can take a picture or you can make a picture. My objective was always to make pictures. To have some idea of what you’re trying to achieve and then figure out the best way to do that.”

Life behind the camera

Gomel grew up in the Bronx, where his interest in photography began when he was still in grade school. He delivered groceries to make money for his first camera and set up a darkroom in his parents’ home. He earned a journalism degree from New York University before spending three years stationed in Japan as an aviator in the Navy. He says landing planes on an aircraft carrier created a certain fearlessness.

“I’ve never considered safe spaces when I’m working,” he says. “I’d stand on the struts of a helicopter and make sure my wide angle lens cleared the blades. But it never occurred to me to be concerned. A safety strap to the cockpit wall was all I needed.”

He was hired by Life magazine in 1959, “a childhood dream,” he says in the film.

Life at the time had a sterling reputation for its photojournalism. Gomel shot heads of state, athletes and celebrities.

The rush of images that passes in “Bob Gomel: Eyewitness” is astounding for both the richness of the individual photographs and the breadth of Gomel’s work. The photographs clearly stand alone, but the narratives that accompany them offer enrichment through context. A bust of a session with President Richard M. Nixon was salvaged a day later when Gomel returned with some brighter neckties. He also discusses his paintinglike photograph of Manhattan at night during a 1965 blackout, thought to be the first double-exposure image published as a news photo.

In the 1970s, Gomel began doing commercial photography, which led him to Houston. He’d worked closely with an advertising executive at Ogilvy who set up an office in Houston in the early 1970s when Shell relocated from New York.

“I came on a lark, and I liked what I saw,” he says.

He has made Houston his home ever since, working here and sometimes dispensing tough love to students. Long ago he hired now famed photographer Mark Seliger — who at the time was about to graduate from the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts — as an assistant.

“A month or two later, I fired him,” Gomel says. “He was too good. I told him to leave Houston and go where the big action was taking place. Fortunately, he took my advice.”

Back to Miami

Seliger is the sort of photographer who might typically appear in a documentary about an old master like Gomel. But Scarbrough had only completed the interviews with his subject when the pandemic shut down his work. So he let Gomel’s stories and his photographs tell the story, which he distributed through Amazon Video Direct.

After a short introduction, the film moves to February 1964, when Life sent Gomel to Miami and assigned him to Clay before he became Ali. Liston was favored 7-1, but Life wanted a Clay cover photo ready should he provide an upset.

Days before the fight, Gomel caught a sweat-soaked Clay smiling. The fight took place Saturday. By Monday, Gomel had a magazine cover.

But the aftermath of the fight proved interesting, too. Because he was assigned to Clay, Gomel traveled with the boxer’s entourage — which included Clay’s brother and Malcolm X — to the Hampton House in Brownsville because no South Beach hotel would accept Black guests.

Playwright Kemp Powers debuted “One Night in Miami” seven years ago. Powers was drawn to a meeting that took place after the fight, when Malcolm X, Clay, singer Sam Cooke and football star Jim Brown gathered in a room at the Hampton. His story, an imagined account of their conversation, springs from four prominent Black men at personal, vocational, cultural and spiritual crossroads. Clay would soon announce his new name and faith; Brown would leave the NFL for film; Malcolm X and Cooke would both become victims of violence.

Late last year, actor and filmmaker Regina King presented a filmed version through Amazon. The film plays with the timeline, flipping the sequence of the diner and the hotel room meeting. It also re-creates that scene from Gomel’s photo: Malcolm X behind the counter, camera in hand.

Gomel expresses frustration that nobody involved with the film reached out to him for licensing or even a credit. He resisted Life’s offers of insurance and equipment allowances to have rights to his photos revert back to him.

Re-creation of photographic moments isn’t unique to “One Night in Miami”; Netflix’s “The Crown” — to name just one TV show — is teeming with shots based on photographs.

Gomel has dealt with the issue before. He’s found the image on T-shirts, throw pillows and earrings.

“It’s new dealing with organizations that don’t do the right thing and contact you,” he says. Gomel recalls the estate of golfer Arnold Palmer securing a photo Gomel took for Palmer’s clothing line.

“That’s the way it was for 50 years,” he says. “People respecting traditions.”

So “Eyewitness” provides the story behind the photo behind the film.

“Just about everybody else in that context is long gone,” Gomel says. “I’m one of very few eye witnesses who was actually there.”

Bob Gomel : Eyewitness - When history was made, he was there

Via Bob Gomel Eyewitness

Bob Gomel and David Scarbrough share a love of storytelling through photography.

During the past decade, the two men and their spouses, Sandy Gomel and Mary Scarbrough, became friends. Bob’s shot of The Beatles in poolside lounge chairs hangs in the Scarbroughs’ home. It was Mary’s birthday gift to David for his 60th birthday.

David said, “The history Bob witnessed is important. So are the effort and creativity necessary to make extraordinary images of these historic moments. Many of the images are made even more powerful by Bob’s perspective on how they were created.”

David convinced Bob to reflect on his work for LIFE magazine in the 1960s and his subsequent career. Over dinner one evening, the Scarbroughs proposed making a documentary of Bob’s career. Bob said, “David offered a compelling idea to consider. After a few days, I said, ‘Let’s do it.’”

The documentary project came together quickly. A small studio was set up in Scarbrough’s retail computer electronics shop in Houston. Sessions were shot on Sundays when the shop was closed and outside noise was minimal. As many filmmakers do now, David chose to record the videos in 4K on two iPhones in a two-shot setup. A MacBook Pro and Adobe Premier Pro would be used to edit the video.

The recordings began with a discussion of the Cassius Clay and Sonny Liston fights. The project quickly gained momentum, as David executed his vision for the project, and the stories of more of the epic photos came to life.

“The challenge was to balance Bob’s unique ability to talk about the images and history, and to ensure the viewer remained immersed in the image itself,” David said. “I hope the viewer can briefly live in the moment of the images.”

Bob said, “The decade of the 1960s was historically powerful. We witnessed so much — from the terrific to the terrible. I’m grateful that David remains interested in the history of the 1960s and that his documentary helped share my perspective on the extraordinary events of the decade and on my life as a photographer.”

Ray Macland, the LIFE Picture Editor in 1960, hired a group of young photographers he dubbed “The Young Lions”. There were 5 of us - 

Farrell Grehan, Ken Hyman, Bill Ray, John Loengard & myself.

"With John Loengard's passing on May 24, 2020, that leaves just me."

Bob Gomel : Eyewitness is now available on Amazon Prime

New book from Steve Schapiro: ALI

Via PDN News

In June, 1963, on assignment for Sports Illustrated, photographer Steve Schapiro traveled to Louisville, Kentucky to spend time with the young Olympic champion boxer Cassius Clay, and accompany him on a road trip to New York City. At 21 years old, Clay was yet to adopt the mantle of Muhammad Ali, but his boastful persona, intelligence, black pride, and sharp tongue were already fully formed.

Over the course of their five days together, Schapiro revealed both sides of the young Ali: the one side posing and preening for the camera, ever conscious of his image; the other, unguarded and unselfconscious, in candid images of the young fighter at home with his family and immersed in his community and neighborhood.

Ali collects the best of Schapiro’s images of the late fighter; many in print for the very first time. They offer a glimpse of a star on the rise. “It is an indelible portrait of the early life of one of the most talented, graceful, controversial, athletic, and influential American figures of the 20th century,” writes the publisher, powerHouse Books, in the press release.

Steve Schapiro is a distinguished photographer whose pictures have graced the covers of Vanity Fair, Time, Sports Illustrated, Life, Look, Paris Match, and People, and are found in many museum collections. He has published seven books of his work: American Edge, Schapiro’s Heroes, The Godfather Family Album, Taxi Driver, Then and Now, Bliss, Bowie, and The Fire Next Time

Muhammad Ali, Titan of Boxing and the 20th Century, Dies at 74

Bob Gomel: Cassius Clay, Miami, 1964

The New York Times:  Muhammad Ali, Titan of Boxing and the 20th Century, Dies at 74

Neil Leifer:  Muhammad Ali Knocks Out Sonny Liston, Lewiston, Maine, May 25, 1965                                

A look back at selected Muhammad Ali posts from our blog:

Sonny Liston landed on canvas below Muhammad Ali’s feet on May 25, 1965, and Neil Leifer snapped a photo

On Friday, March 6, 1964, Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali

Cassius Clay couldn’t sleep in Miami Beach after beating Sonny Liston there in the legendary 1964 bout

March 8: Today In History: 'The Fight Of The Century'

Steve Schapiro: Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay - Monopoly), Louisville, Kentucky, 1963

Visit our Pop-Up Tribute exhibition now on view in the gallery.
Neil Leifer will be signing copies of his new book Relentless: The Stories behind the Photographs 

 in the gallery July 29, 2016
Pre-orders available

Bob Gomel's Photograph on the cover of the new book "Blood Brothers"

Bob Gomel's photograph of Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) and Malcolm X is on the cover of the new book, "Blood Brothers".

LA Times Review
When Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali's friendship changed history: The new book 'Blood Brothers' explains

Cassius Clay couldn’t sleep in Miami Beach after beating Sonny Liston there in the legendary 1964 bout

Until recently, Bob Gomel remembered his photograph of Malcolm X and Cassius and Cassius  Clay as " It was February 26, 1964 in a Miami restaurant after Clay won the heavyweight championship from Sonny Liston. Howard Bingham, Ali's personal photographer is seen at the far right above Ali. Clay's brother Rahaman is seated to Cassius's left (only a fist is visible in the famous frame.) The name and exact location of the restaurant are paled into insignificance.” But now the location has been identified.

Via Miami Herald
May 8, 2015


When the rescue of Hampton House began six years ago, vagrants and drug addicts slept in the motel where Malcolm X once stayed. A tree grew out of the swimming pool where Martin Luther King Jr. swam. The walls were crumbling around the courtyard where Ebony magazine had photographed Muhammad Ali and his new wife and baby.

Amid the ruin, there was no hint of Hampton House’s heyday in the 1960s as the premier getaway for black Americans visiting segregated Miami, where beachfront icons like the Fontainebleau were off limits even to celebrities of color.

On Friday, the decay of Hampton House officially lifted as local leaders celebrated a $6 million rehab of the historic 1953 motel — a largely county-funded effort that’s been in the works for about 15 years.

“We got it done,” Miami-Dade Commissioner Audrey Edmonson told a crowd gathered for the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the motel at the corner of Northwest 27th Avenue and 42nd Street.

Facing demolition in 2000, the Hampton House is being relaunched as a community hub, with a museum, space for a restaurant and motel rooms being converted into office space for community groups, recording studios and rehearsal space for musicians.

Organizers hope to revive the Hampton House’s legacy of live entertainment, too. Its jazz club once drew evening crowds from throughout Miami, making Hampton a night-life hub for local African Americans. Traveling celebrities gave it star power.

Segregation meant Miami’s famous crop of luxury oceanfront hotels weren’t available for black people, so Cassius Clay couldn’t sleep in Miami Beach after beating Sonny Liston there in the legendary 1964 bout. The boxer went back to the Hampton House for a bowl of ice cream, and to celebrate with Malcolm X. A month later, Clay changed his name to Muhammad Ali.

“This was an oasis in a sea of racism,” Khalilah Camacho Ali said from the Hampton House’s new event space, an open-ceiling hall created out of the old jazz club and some motel rooms above.
On the wall hangs a photo of her leaning over Muhammad Ali as he cradles their infant daughter on a Hampton House pool chair. Ebony took the photo, and included it in a 1969 cover spread featuring the couple.

King stayed at the Hampton House often enough that one ground-floor room came to be known as his suite. A photographer snapped King in swim trunks from the pool. And he is said to have delivered an early version of his “I Have a Dream” speech during an event at Hampton House before it made history on the National Mall in 1963.

Historic Hampton House Motel reopens in Miami

The historic Hampton House Motel in Miami reopened Friday, May 8, 2015, with a ceremony to mark the occasion. The motel was frequented by black celebrities and civil rights activists such as Cassius Clay, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. in the middle part of the last century.

A white Jewish couple presided over the Hampton House’s golden years. Harry and Florence Markowitz owned land and apartment buildings in Miami’s Brownsville neighborhood, including what would later become the Hampton House location. In 1954, they leased the land to the Booker Terrace Motel and Apartments.
 

That venture floundered, and the Markowitzes decided to make it a more upscale destination and renamed it the Hampton House after a neigborhood naming contest. They brought in the jazz club to the 50-room motel, started a popular restaurant with late-night fare, and began pursuing black conventions and church groups to boost business. Baseball great Jackie Robinson used Hampton House for a golf tournament he held each year in the Miami area, and the two-story motel marketed itself as the “Social Center of the South.”

The motel closed in the 1970s, and the Markowitzes sold it before the building slipped into disrepair through the 1980s and ’90s. Sons Bob, 74, and Jerry, 66, attended Friday’s ceremony. Bob was asked how his parents would have reacted to seeing Hampton House restored. “I’m getting choked up to even say it,” he replied. “They would be overwhelmed.”

Integration is mostly blamed for the motel’s decline: With black residents and visitors able to frequent beach hotels, the Hampton House lost its edge.



Hampton House had thrived as a gathering spot for local African Americans in the 1960s. At the time, Overtown was fading as the heart of black Miami’s middle class, with more families moving into the new Liberty Square housing complex that sits about 35 blocks from Hampton House.

 

Edmonson, the county commissioner whose district includes the motel, recalls her mother and friends gathering at Hampton House for their regular tea parties. A young Edmonson was occasionally called on for the afternoon’s entertainment, and she was too nervous to look at anyone but her mother while reciting the poem Trees before the ladies decked out in white gloves.

“I remember the Hampton House,” Edmonson told Friday’s crowd assembled on folding chairs in the motel’s parking lot. “I am so proud to say I grew up in this community.”

The Hampton House’s neighborhood in Brownsville now includes some of the poorest stretches of Miami. Miami-Dade wants to raze and rebuild the Liberty Square complex in an effort to root out crime there and revitalize the neighborhood. Census figures from 2010 show Brownsville’s population growing for the first time in 40 years. About 15,000 people live there.

Hampton House organizers hope there will be enough interest in the area that they can generate revenue by renting out the old coffee shop as a restaurant. It’s been restored with a new version of the original mural from somewhere in the Caribbean, and yellow-vinyl stools along the lunch counter. It was the site of perhaps the most famous photo ever taken at Hampton House: Malcolm X, having gotten himself behind the counter, snapping his own photo of Clay after his victory against Liston.

For Enid Pinkney, founding president of the Historic Hampton House Community Trust and long-time champion of the restoration effort, the building’s return offers another chance to link prosperity with Hampton House.

“We’ll have a place in Miami,” she said in a trust video released last year, “where we can go and be proud of the effort that went into bringing that back as an economic engine in the community.”

This article was updated to correct the distance between the Liberty Square housing complex and Hampton House.

 

On Friday, March 6, 1964, Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali

© Bob Gomel

“Black MuslimLeader Malcolm X Photographing Cassius Clay Surrounded by Fans After He BeatSonny Liston for the Heavy Weight Championship, Miami, February, 1964”

 

Day later, bolstered by his mentor Malcom X, Clay stepped in front of a room of journalists to declare his conversion to the Nation of Islam. After fielding hostile questions, he voiced the words that would become his lifelong anthem and would forever change the world of sports: “I don’t have to be what you want me to be.”

Recently, Bob recalled: It was February 26, 1964 in a Miami restaurant after Clay won the heavyweight championship from Sonny Liston. Howard Bingham, Ali's personal photographer is seen at the far right above Ali.  Clay's brother Rahaman is seated to Cassius's left (only a fist is visible in the famous frame.) The name and exact location of the restaurant are paled into insignificance.”

Related: Ali vs. Liston in Miami Beach: The Night ‘the Greatest’ Was Born

              YouTube: March 6, 1964: Cassius Clay becomes Muhammad Ali

Bob Gomel's 80th Birthday Photo Montage

 

A video that took 80 years to make. The LIFE and times of my father, Photographer BOB GOMEL. If he is not in the photo, he took the photo.

My dad was born (1933) and raised in New York City. After serving in the Navy, he began working for LIFE in 1959, producing many memorable images. When LIFE ceased being a weekly in the early 1970s, he began taking photographs for other major magazines. Also in the 1970s, he branched out into advertising photography.
--Cory Gomel

Related:

'One Night In Miami', More Than Clay Beats Liston

Acclaimed LIFE photographer Bob Gomel looks back

BOB GOMEL: LIFE IN THE 1960'S

Unpublished JFK Photos: Houston Remembers President Kennedy's 1962        "Moon Speech" At Rice Stadium

Bob Gomel: “Photography is all about having something to say before you pick the camera up to your eye and push the button”

'One Night In Miami', More Than Clay Beats Liston

Bob Gomel: Black Muslim leader Malcolm X photographing Cassius Clay, Miami, 1964    

This morning National Public Radio did a piece on a new play, "One Night in Miami",  the premise of which is that no one knows where Malcolm X and Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) went after the February, 1964 fight in Miami

WE DO!

"The following day, bolstered by his mentor Malcom X, Clay stepped in front of a room of journalists to declare his conversion to the Nation of Islam. After fielding hostile questions, he voiced the words that would become his lifelong anthem and would forever change the world of sports: “I don’t have to be what you want me to be.”

 

Recently, Bob Gomel recalled: It was February 26, 1964 in a Miami restaurant after Clay won the heavyweight championship from Sonny Liston. Howard Bingham, Ali's personal photographer is seen at the far right above Ali.  Clay's brother Rahaman is seated to Cassius's left (only a fist is visible in the famous frame.) The name and exact location of the restaurant are paled into insignificance.”

 

BOB GOMEL: LIFE IN THE 1960'S

Black Muslim leader Malcolm X photographing Cassius Clay after he defeated Sonny Liston for the Heavy Weight Championship, Miami, February, 1964

Santa Fe--Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar, is pleased to announce an extensive exhibition of photographs from the 1960's by LIFE magazine photographer Bob Gomel. The exhibition opens with a reception for the photographer on Friday, October 5, from 5 to 7 PM. The exhibition will continue through November 18. (Listen here to Art Beat, radio interview about Monroe Gallery and Bob Gomel.)

 

The triumphs and tragedies of the 1960s provided photographer Bob Gomel and his LIFE magazine colleagues extraordinary opportunities to advance American photojournalism. "LIFE was the world's best forum for photojournalists. We were encouraged to push creative and technical boundaries. There was no better place to work in that extraordinary decade." The exhibition includes images of presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon, the 1963 Freedom March in Washington, The Beatles, Marilyn Monroe and other entertainers; Malcolm X, and sports figures such as boxer Muhammad Ali, baseball legend Nolan Ryan, and golfer Arnold Palmer. Several unpublished images - including one of 90 heads of state gathered around the catafalque at the Kennedy funeral and another of John F. Kennedyemerging from America's first space capsule at the Johnson Space Center in Houston - are in the exhibition. (September 12, 2012 marked the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's "We choose to go to the moon ..." speech at Rice University, which Bob Gomel photographed for LIFE magazine.)

 Also featured is Gomel's perhaps most known photograph: of then 8 - year old John F. Kennedy Jr. standing solemnly at the funeral of hisuncle, Robert Kennedy, in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. This photograph appeared in a two-page spread in the June 1968 “Special Kennedy Issue” of LIFE magazine.

Bob Gomel was born (1933) and raised in New York City. After serving four years in the U.S. Navy, he was promptly offered a job at the Associated Press. But by then, he had changed his mind about what he wanted to do. “I just felt one picture wasn’t sufficient to

tell a story,” he explains. “I was interested in exploring something in depth. And, of course, the mecca was Life magazine.”He turned down the offer from AP, and began working for LIFE in 1959, producing many memorable images. When LIFE ceased being a weekly in the early 1970s, he began making photographs for other major magazines. Also in the 1970s, he branched out into advertising photography. Among other accounts, he helped introduce Merrill Lynch’s Bullish on America campaign.

Bob says, “Each time I raised a camera to my eye I wondered how to make a viewer say, “wow.” What followed were the use of double exposures to tell a more complete story; placing remote cameras where no human being could be; adapting equipment to reveal what could not ordinarily be captured on film. My goal with people was to penetrate the veneer, to reveal the true personality or character. The ideal was sometimes mitigated by circumstances, a lack of time or access. But more often than not what the mind conceived could be translated into successful photographic images. Life Magazine in the 60s sold 8,000,000 copies a week. It was a great honor to be a part of that information highway.”

 

 

HAPPY 70th BIRTHDAY: MUHAMMAD ALI

Steve Schapiro: Cassius Clay, Lexington, Kentucky, 1963

Via Life.com:
Muhammad Ali: The Greatest Pictures
Via TIME Light Box:
Happy Birthday, Muhammad Ali: 70 Iconic Images for 70 Years
Via ArtDaily.org:
Muhammad Ali is coming home to Louisville to celebrate another milestone — his 70th birthday:
Muhammad Ali returning to Kentucky for 70th birthday- fundraiser for center and museum organized

Via MSNBC:
Muhammad Ali soaked in familiar cheers and chants along with a rendition of "Happy Birthday" on Saturday night as friends and admirers celebrated the boxing champ's coming 70th birthday at a party in his Kentucky hometown.

As party-goers mingled in a lobby of the Muhammad Ali Center before the party, Ali walked slowly to a second-floor balcony overlooking them. The crowd immediately began to clap, then broke into chants of "Ali! Ali!" followed by singing as Ali watched for about two minutes.

Neil Leifer:

But my favorite subject, no matter what the sport, was and still is Muhammad Ali.

I took my most famous picture on May 25, 1965, when Ali stopped Sonny Liston with one punch in the first round of their heavyweight championship fight in Lewiston, Maine. When Sports Illustrated published its special issue, "The Century's Greatest Sports Photos," my picture of Ali standing over Liston was the cover, and I was honored and thrilled by SI's choice. "It is a great picture of a key moment, filled with emotion and destined to remain etched in the minds of its viewers," says Steve Fine, SI's director of photography. "You can describe this picture to someone, without showing it to them, and they know exactly what you're talking about. It's a true icon of sports photojournalism." This image represents the way people want to remember Ali: strength, confidence and braggadocio. A two-minute fight might be a major disappointment for the fans, but for a photographer, it doesn't matter whether it goes 15 rounds or 15 seconds. All any editor ever expected from me was a great knockout picture. In Lewiston, the knockout happened exactly where I wanted it to, and my only thought was, "Stay right there, Sonny! Please don't get up!"

 

Muhammad Ali Knocks Out Sonny Liston, Lewiston, Maine, May 25, 1965

44 YEARS AGO: MUHAMMAD ALI STRIPPED OF HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP

Bon Gomel: Heavyweight boxer Cassius Clay, aka Muhammad Ali, posing outside the Alvin theater where "The Great White Hope" is playing, New York, 1968

Clay Refuses Army Oath; Stripped of Boxing Crown

The New York Times
By ROBERT LIPSYTE


Houston, April 28 (1967)--Cassius Clay refused today, as expected, to take the one step forward that would have constituted induction into the armed forces. There was no immediate Government action.

Although Government authorities here foresaw several months of preliminary moves before Clay would be arrested and charged with a felony, boxing organizations instantly stripped the 25-year- old fighter of his world heavyweight championship.

"It will take at least 30 days for Clay to be indicted and it probably will be another year and a half before he could be sent to prison since there undoubtedly will be appeals through the courts," United States Attorney Morton Susman said.

Statement Is Issued

Clay, in a statement distributed a few minutes after the announcement of his refusal, said:
"I have searched my conscience and I find I cannot be true to my belief in my religion by accepting such a call." He has maintained throughout recent unsuccessful civil litigation that he is entitled to draft exemption as an appointed minister of the Lost-Found Nation of Islam, the so- called Black Muslim sect.

Clay, who prefers his Muslim name of Muhammad Ali, anticipated the moves against his title in his statement, calling them a "continuation of the same artificially induced prejudice and discrimination" that had led to the defeat of his various suits and appeals in Federal courts, including the Supreme Court.

Hayden C. Covington of New York, Clay's lawyer, said that further civil action to stay criminal proceedings would be initiated. If convicted of refusal to submit to induction, Clay is subject to a maximum sentence of five years imprisonment and a $10,000 fine.

Mr. Covington, who has defended many Jehovah's Witnesses in similar cases, has repeatedly told Clay during the last few days, "You'll be unhappy in the fiery furnace of criminal proceedings but you'll come out unsinged."

As a plaintiff in civil action, the Negro fighter has touched on such politically and socially explosive areas as alleged racial imbalance on local Texas draft boards, alleged discriminatory action by the Government in response to public pressure, and the rights of a minority religion to appoint clergymen.

Full-Time Occupation

As a prospective defendant in criminal proceedings, Clay is expected to attempt to establish that "preaching and teaching" the tenets of the Muslims is a full-time occupation and that boxing is the "avocation" that financially supports his unpaid ministerial duties.

Today, Clay reported to the Armed Forces Examining and Entrance Station on the third floor of the Federally drab United States Custom House a few minutes before 8 A.M., the ordered time. San Jacinto Street, in downtown Houston, was already crowded with television crews and newsmen when Clay stepped out of a taxi cab with Covington, Quinnan Hodges, the local associate counsel, and Chauncey Eskridge of Chicago, a lawyer for the Rev. Martin Luther King, as well as for Clay and others.

Half a dozen Negro men, apparently en route to work, applauded Clay and shouted: "He gets more publicity than Johnson." Clay was quickly taken upstairs and disappeared into the maw of the induction procedure for more than five hours.

Two information officers supplied a stream of printed and oral releases throughout the procedure, including a detailed schedule of examinations and records processing, as well as instant confirmation of Clay's acceptable blood test and the fact that he had obeyed Muslim dietary strictures by passing up the ham sandwich included in the inductees' box lunches.

Such information, however, did not forestall the instigation, by television crews, of a small demonstration outside the Custom House. During the morning, five white youngsters from the Friends World Institute, a nonaccredited school in Westbury, L.I., who had driven all night from a study project in Oklahoma, and half a dozen local Negro youths, several wearing Black Power buttons, had appeared on the street.

Groups Use Signs

Continuous and sometimes insulting interviewers eventually provoked both groups, separately, to appear with signs. The white group merely asked for the end of the Vietnam war and greater efforts for civil rights.

The Negro eventually swelled into a group of about two dozen circling pickets carrying hastily scrawled, "Burn, Baby, Burn" signs and singing, "Nothing kills a nigger like too much love." A few of the pickets wore discarded bedsheets and table linen wound into African-type garments, but most were young women dragged into the little demonstration on their lunch hours.

There was a touch of sadness and gross exaggeration throughout the most widely observed noninduction in history. At breakfast this morning in the Hotel America, Clay had stared out a window into a dingy, cold morning and said: "Every time I fight it gets cold and rainy. Then dingy and cool, no sun in sight nowhere."

He had shrugged when Mr. Hodges had showed him an anonymously sent newspaper clipping in which a photograph of the local associate counsel had been marked "Houston's great nigger lawyer."

Sadly, too, 22-year-old John McCullough, a graduate of Sam Houston State College, said: "It's his prerogative if he's sincere in his religion, but it's his duty as a citizen to go in. I'm a coward, too."

46 Called to Report

Then Mr. McCullough, who is white, went up the steps to be inducted. He was one of the 46 young men, including Clay, who were called to report on this day.

For Clay, the day ended at 1:10 P.M. Houston time, when Lieut. Col. J. Edwin McKee, commander of the station, announced that "Mr. Muhammad Ali has just refused to be inducted."

In a prepared statement, Colonel McKee said that notification of the refusal would be forwarded to the United States Attorney General's office, and the national and local Selective Service boards. This is the first administrative step toward possible arrest, and an injunction to stop it had been denied to Clay yesterday in the United States District Court here.

Clay was initially registered for the draft in Louisville, where he was born. He obtained a transfer to a Houston board because his ministerial duties had made this city his new official residence. He had spent most of his time until last summer in Chicago, where the Muslin headquarters are situated, in Miami, where he trained, or in the cities in which he was fighting.

After Colonel McKee's brief statement, Clay was brought into a pressroom and led into range of 13 television cameras and several dozen microphones. He refused to speak as he handed out Xeroxed copies of his statement to selected newsmen, including representatives of the major networks, wire services and The New York Times.

The statement thanked those instrumental in his boxing career as well as those who have offered support and guidance, including Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Muslims; Mohammed Oweida, Secretary General of the High Council for Islamic Affairs, and Floyd McKissick, president of the Congress of Racial Equality.

The statement, in part, declared:

"It is in the light of my consciousness as a Muslim minister and my own personal convictions that I take my stand in rejecting the call to be inducted in the armed services. I do so with the full realization of its implications and possible consequences. I have searched my conscience and I find I cannot be true to my belief in my religion by accepting such a call.

"My decision is a private and individual one and I realize that this is a most crucial decision. In taking it I am dependent solely upon Allah as the final judge of these actions brought about by my own conscience.

"I strongly object to the fact that so many newspapers have given the American public and the world the impression that I have only two alternatives in taking this stand: either I go to jail or go to the Army. There is another alternative and that alternative is justice. If justice prevails, if my Constitutional rights are upheld, I will be forced to go neither to the Army nor jail. In the end I am confident that justice will come my way for the truth must eventually prevail.

"I am looking forward to immediately continuing my profession.

"As to the threat voiced by certain elements to 'strip' me of my title, this is merely a continuation of the same artificially induced prejudice and discrimination.

"Regardless of the difference in my outlook, I insist upon my right to pursue my livelihood in accordance with the same rights granted to other men and women who have disagreed with the policies of whatever Administration was in power at the time.

"I have the world heavyweight title not because it was 'given' to me, not because of my race or religion, but because I won it in the ring through my own boxing ability.

"Those who want to 'take' it and hold a series of auction-type bouts not only do me a disservice but actually disgrace themselves. I am certain that the sports fans and fair-minded people throughout America would never accept such a 'title-holder.'"

Clay returned to his hotel and went to sleep after the day's activities. He is expected to leave the city, possibly for Washington, in the morning.

BORN TODAY: MUHAMMAD ALI

Muhammad Ali (born Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr.; January 17, 1942)

Steve Schapiro:  Cassius Clay, Lexington, Kentucky, 1963

Bob Gomel: Black Muslim leader Malcolm X photographing Cassius Clay, Miami, 1964

 

Neil Leifer: Muhammad Ali Knocks Out Sonny Liston, Lewiston, Maine, May 25, 1965

The official site of Muhammad Ali

PHOTO LA, DAY 2: THE ANNIVERSARY OF MARTIN LUTHER KING'S BIRTHDAY

Today is the anniversary of Martin Luther King's birthday.

Monroe Gallery, Booth A-102 at Photo LA.

Third row from left, top is a rare vintage print of the Funeral Procession for Martin Luther King by Lynn Pelham; below is Charles Moore's iconic photograph of  Martin Luther King, Jr. being "Arrested on a Loitering Charge, Montgomery, September 3, 1958"; below is Steve Schapiro's photograph of the Freedom Bus Riders from the summer of 1964.

And, Bill Eppridge's gripping photographs from the Neshoba Civil Rights Murders. To the right, Steve Schapiro's photograph of Martin Luther King during the Selma March, Bob Gomel's classic photograph of Malcolm X and Cassius Clay the night before Clay would declare his conversion to Islam and changing his name to "Muhammad Ali", and Rosa Parks.

Next right row: Grey Villet's photographs of the Little Rock Nine, Martin Luther King, and Steve Schapiro's shocking photograph of Segregationists in 1964.

More updates from Photo LA soon.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS AQUIRES BOB GOMEL'S ICONIC PHOTOGRAPH OF MALCOLM X AND CASSIUS CLAY

Monroe Gallery of Photography is very pleased to announce that the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division has acquired Bob Gomel's classic photograph of “Black Muslim Leader Malcolm X Photographing Cassius Clay Surrounded by Fans After He Beat Sonny Liston for the Heavy Weight Championship, Miami, February, 1964".

Bob Gomel worked extensively during the Kennedy administration as a photojournalist for LIFE magazine. He was frequently assigned to photograph political events, although he perhaps most remembered for his photograph of then 8 - year old John F. Kennedy Jr. standing solemnly at the funeral of his uncle, Robert Kennedy, in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. This photograph appeared in a two-page spread in the June 1968 “Special Kennedy Issue” of LIFE magazine.


Recently, speaking about the circumstances of making the now-classic photograph of Malcolm X and Cassius Clay, Bob recalled: It was February 26, 1964 in a Miami restaurant after Clay won the heavyweight championship from Sonny Liston. Howard Bingham, Ali's personal photographer is seen at the far right above Ali. Clay's brother Rahaman is seated to Cassius's left (only a fist is visible in the famous frame.) The name and exact location of the restaurant are paled into insignificance.” The following day, bolstered by his mentor Malcom X, Clay stepped in front of a room of journalists to declare his conversion to the Nation of Islam. After fielding hostile questions, he voiced the words that would become his lifelong anthem and would forever change the world of sports: “I don’t have to be what you want me to be.”


Bob continues: “Mr. Fields was my grade school science teacher. His classroom was decorated with beautiful sepia-toned examples of his photography. The image closest to me was a back-lit nightview of a manhole cover on a cobblestone street. It was irresistible. I joined his photography club. I was hooked. WWII ended and I delivered groceries to pay for the first post war camera: a Ciroflex. In no time I took over a closet/cum darkroom in our apartment and began a great adventure which was to last the rest of my life. The French have a expression “joie de vivre”. For me that includes the thrill of making a compelling photograph. That has not diminished over time. I suspect it never will.”
 
For more, read an interview with Bob Gomel here: "Photographer's Life in Pictures, and Vice Versa".