How Muhammad Ali’s Iconic ‘Esquire’ Cover Helped Cement a Legend
In early 1968, Muhammad Ali was suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Stripped of his heavyweight title and banned from boxing because he refused to be inducted into the U.S. military due to his opposition to the Vietnam War, the world’s most famous athlete was smeared as a draft-dodger and was battling to stay out of prison. (It would be three years until the Supreme Court heard his case.) Plus, his 1964 conversion to Islam, which prompted him to change his name from Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali, drew additional ire during a time when the Civil Rights movement roiled America. So when Esquire art director George Lois began thinking of how best to portray the embattled boxer on the magazine’s cover, which would become one of the most famous of the 1960s, he hit upon the idea of having his subject be struck by actual arrows.
“Back in those days, there was no Wikipedia or Google, so I did some research on Saint Sebastian,” Lois tells Rolling Stone after Ali’s death on Friday. An iconic third-century Christian martyr who was slain with arrows for his faith, Sebastian (and his violent death) was a popular subject for artists. As Lois recalls, “There were many, many paintings of him, and I was trying to find one where his body was solid and strong, but his arms were behind his back and he was in pain.”
When Ali arrived at the studio for the shoot, Lois (who is widely recognized as an inspiration for Mad Men‘s brilliant creative director Don Draper) showed him a postcard of a painting of Sebastian rendered by 15th-century artist Francesco Botticini. Ali loved the connection between Sebastian’s persecution and his own until he recognized a major problem, telling Lois, “I can’t pose as a Christian. It’s against my religion.”
“I said, ‘Oh, shit,'” Lois remembers. “I’ve got a studio [full of] people — they can see I’m gonna lose the shot.” As a last-ditch measure to save his idea, Lois asked to speak to Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam and Ali’s spiritual guide. “Elijah Muhammad and I had [a phone call] — maybe it was three minutes, but it felt like 20 minutes,” says Lois. “He wanted to know who I was, how old I was, am I religious. We talked about symbolism and martyrdom. He knew full well why I was doing it. Finally, he said, ‘I think it would be a very good image.'”
Satisfied, Ali posed for the photo while Lois’s team attached six arrows to his body to mimic the Botticini painting. The champ quickly internalized the martyr conceit. Lois remembers that during the shoot, “Ali said, ‘Hey, George…,’ which always meant he wanted to talk. He took his right hand out from behind his back and pointed at each of the arrows. And then he’d say the names of the people in this world that were out to get him. He’d point to one arrow: ‘Lyndon Johnson.’ The next one: ‘General [William] Westmoreland [who led the Vietnam operation].’ Then: ‘Robert McNamara.’ Each of the arrows [was] a person in the government that had hurt him. I can’t even tell you how stunning it was.”