With the Family

Being famous is hardly a mom-and-pop operation, but take a peek inside the dream machine’s version of domesticity.

Fondas Together

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Henry shows son Peter the aerodynamic ins and outs of a model plane, while daughter Jane plays with the family cat. Petting the dog is the matriarch, Frances, who sits next to Frances Brokaw, her daughter from a previous marriage. Acid trips, activism, and aerobics videos—along with acting—were in the Fonda children’s future.

These days, press access to celebrity families is restricted by publicists who look out for their famous clients with a fearsomeness that would make Cerberus look like a teacup poodle. (Think of the exclusive photos of the Jolie-Pitt twins, which sold at a reported cost of $14 million in 2008.) So it’s hard to fathom that, once upon a time, LIFE had relatively easy access to stars and their satellites.

The proof is in your hands.

Turn the pages and take a gander at gamine Shirley MacLaine clowning with her daughter, Sachi, and Frank Sinatra with daughter Nancy. Or look at Henry Fonda in Connecticut with his soon-to-be famous children Jane and Peter—not to mention Citizen Kane director Orson Welles piloting a craft with the dubious help of wife Rita Hayworth and his daughter Chris, from a previous marriage.

Of course, appearances can be deceiving. Sachi later said that Shirley “bullied” her into losing her virginity, and Jane and Peter eventually wrestled with the legacy of their famously distant dad. As for the troubled Welles: He became an alcoholic who posed with another daughter, Rebecca, for a Jim Beam advertisement in the 1970s. (“They’re of different generations, these two,” the ad read. “But they’re very much alike when it comes to the feeling they have for their craft. On this they agree. They live for it.”)

But there was plenty of unalloyed love here, too: Sinatra sang “Nancy (with the Laughing Face)” to his beloved girl, who eventually carved out a singing career of her own. And despite his psycho­sexual issues with blonde actresses, Hitchcock doted on his daughter, Patricia (a brunette, it must be noted). The bottom line: If Leo Tolstoy had lived in Hollywood, he might have written that happy families are all alike, but unhappy families end up in People magazine.

Shirley MacLaine

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MacLaine and her two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Sachi, clown for the cameras in 1959. Though she was hardly cut from the Joan Crawford cloth, MacLaine was, Sachi has said, an often absent and career-obsessed mother—seemingly more interested in partying with her Rat Pack pals than in parenting. Frequently left alone, Sachi later wrote, “I entertained myself by eating the lemons I found in the refrigerator.” (MacLaine has denied these allegations.) MacLaine was also the model for Chris MacNeil, the actress mother of the possessed daughter in The Exorcist.

Sophia Loren

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Loren, far right, posing with her mother (center) and her sister, Maria, in Italy.

Alfred Hitchcock

GJON MILI/LIFE/THE PICTURE COLLECTION

Director Hitchcock confers with his actress daughter, Patricia, on the set of 1943’s Shadow of a Doubt. (She also had a pivotal role in Strangers on a Train.)

Gary Cooper

PETER STACKPOLE/LIFE/THE PICTURE COLLECTION

Cooper shows his 11-year-old daughter, Maria, a few dance steps during an Aspen ski vacation that we covered in a 1949 story, “LIFE visits Gary Cooper.” To wit: “She was shy on the dance floor,” we wrote, “but out on the snow could ski circles around her father.”

Dustin Hoffman

JOHN DOMINIS/LIFE/THE PICTURE COLLECTION

Hoffman relaxes while his stepdaughter, Karina, kicks back (literally) in their New York home, circa 1969.

Kirk & Michael Douglas

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Kirk hugs his son Michael in 1949. It’s no secret that Michael grew up to be just as famous as dear old dad—maybe even more so.

Kiefer & Donald Sutherland

CO RENTMEESTER/LIFE/THE PICTURE COLLECTION

Donald and his son Kiefer, fishing in California circa 1970, around the time of poppa’s star turn in Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H. Kiefer had a successful run as an actor—until he became a bona fide TV star with 24. Though he said that his father was rarely around during his childhood, the two later became close. They even acted together—for the first time, both were leads—in this year’s Forsaken, a western.

Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles

PETER STACKPOLE/LIFE/THE PICTURE COLLECTION

Hayworth clowns with then-husband Welles, who is boating in their swimming pool in 1945, and his daughter Chris, from a previous marriage. Such high jinks were nothing new for Chris, née Christopher, who used to make dry martinis for her bibulous dad and endured raucous all-night Hollywood parties.

Mia Farrow

ALFRED EISENSTAEDT/LIFE/THE PICTURE COLLECTION

Farrow reads to her adopted Vietnamese daughter Lark, second from right, and other kids outside her home on Martha’s Vineyard in 1974. Lark—Farrow’s first adopted child—died in 2009 at age 35 of an undisclosed illness.

Dean Martin

ALLAN GRANT/LIFE/THE PICTURE COLLECTION

Martin relaxes with his sons at home in 1958. In 1987, the crooner’s eldest son, Dean Paul Martin (here flexing his muscles), died in a plane crash at the age of 35.

Sammy Davis Jr.

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Davis and son Mark in 1964, around the time of his star turn in the Broadway hit Golden Boy, for which he received a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Musical.

Jack Nicholson

ARTHUR SCHATZ/LIFE/THE PICTURE COLLECTION

Nicholson in 1969 with daughter Jennifer. “I like being Jack Nicholson’s daughter,” she later said, “but people don’t understand the pressures that come along with that.”

Frank & Nancy Sinatra

JOHN DOMINIS/LIFE/THE PICTURE COLLECTION

Ol’ Blue Eyes gets a hug from his beloved daughter Nancy, as actor Yul Brynner looks on in Las Vegas in 1965.

Anjelica & John Huston

© CHRISTOPHER DEAN/PHOTO: LOOMIS DEAN

A teenage Anjelica dances with her director father, John, at their home in Ireland, circa 1966. The son of actor Walter Huston, John became one of the most versatile and colorful American directors, while Anjelica went on to a remarkable acting career, becoming the third generation of her family to win an Academy Award. (And she was Jack Nicholson’s long-time partner, no less.)

Steve McQueen

JOHN DOMINIS/LIFE/THE PICTURE COLLECTION

McQueen kisses his four-year-old daughter, Terry, goodnight at home in 1963, the year of his breakout hit, The Great Escape.

JOHN DOMINIS/LIFE/THE PICTURE COLLECTION

McQueen and his wife, actress Neile Adams, dance to jazz in their living room that same year. “His mixed-up past is mirrored in his hardened face and in the wary look in his eyes,” LIFE wrote of the straight-shooting, motorcycle-riding star. But this Hollywood bad boy wasn’t just playing the part: Growing up without a father, the teenage McQueen attended a school for problem kids, where one teacher “used a butter paddle to set me straight,” he once said. “I could have wound up a hood instead of an actor.”