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LIFE magazine releases rare JFK pictures

(CBS News) LIFE magazine has released rare behind-the scenes photos of John F. Kennedy's 1960 run for the White House. Most of the photos were never published.

See the pictures at LIFE

It was a campaign for the ages featuring an impossibly handsome young war hero, Sen. John F. Kennedy and his regal bride Jackie looking to lead the nation at the height of the Cold War.

One reporter wrote that when he was away from the public Kennedy would work while reclining -the only way to ease his chronic back pain.

Norman Mailer followed the young candidate and wrote a long profile that he titled "Superman comes to the supermarket." Of then 31 year old Jackie, Mailer wrote, "a lady whose face might be too imaginative for the taste of a democracy.."

"He would seem at one moment older than his age," Mailer wrote. "...Five minutes later.. He would look like a movie star again."

Mailer said one could argue that this, "Was one of the most important conventions in America's history, and could prove conceivably to be the most important. The man it nominated was unlike any politician who had ever run for president in the history of the land."

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