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“Tragedy by the Sea”: A tragic incident that changed a couple's life forever, 1955 “Tragedy by the Sea”: A dreadful incident that changed a couple's life forever, 1955. April 2, 1954: A couple are photographed moments after learning that their 19-month-old child had been swept out to sea at Hermosa Beach. On the morning of April 2, 1954, Los Angeles Times photographer John Gaunt was lounging in the front yard of his beachfront home in Hermosa Beach when he heard a neighbor shout, “Something’s happening on the beach!” Instinctively, Gaunt grabbed his Rolleiflex camera and rushed over to see a horrified couple clutching each other. On the shore, with high, crashing surf as a backdrop, stood a young couple, Mr. and Mrs. John McDonald. As they moved forward, then back, clinging to one another, their body language told Gaunt a story that tightened his stomach. He realized that someone must be lost and he took a photograph from two hundred feet away. Only then did he learn that just

James Dean Posing Inside a Casket Seven Months Before His Death, 1955 Throughout April of 1955, Life magazine commissioned photographer Dennis Stock to do a “visual biography” covering the life and times of actor James Dean. In addition to photos taken in New York City and Hollywood, it included a trip to his boyhood home of Fairmount, Indiana. In what would seem like eerie foreshadowing, Dean decided to pose inside a funeral parlor coffin for a series of shots. Sadly, the occasion would mark the last time Dean would visit Fairmont. He died just seven months later on September 30, 1955, in a car accident near Paso Robles, California. Afterwards, in 1956, George Stevens, director of Dean’s last and posthumous film “Giant,” was forced to address the photos while promoting the film. He told the Associated Press, “Jimmy Dean lived every day for the future. He had no more premonition of death than you or I … the picture beside the coffin was made when Dean visited a high school chum in his