When editors were gods

When Playboy's bunnies started hopping

There's no leap day this year, but it was on one in 1960 that Playboy opened its first Playboy Club to the public, in the magazine's home city of Chicago. According to a 2010 press release commemorating the 50th anniversary of the event, "Each club featured cocktail Bunnies, a camera Bunny, a checkroom Bunny, a cabaret Bunny, a gift shop Bunny, a bumper pool Bunny, a customer service Bunny, and floor Bunnies." At right, the former Playboy Building in Chicago as it now looks (or did last week, anyhow). It's the building with the beacon on top.

Death of a boy genius

Briton Hadden, a co-founder and the first editor of Time magazine, died on this day (February 27) in 1929. He had celebrated his 31st birthday a little over a week earlier. The exact cause of Hadden's death remains a mystery but seems to have involved some sort of infection.

Hadden's short life has been the subject of two biographies: a 1949 one by his cousin, the writer Noel F. Busch, and 2006's "The Man Time Forgot," by Isaiah Wilner. 

Happy 420th birthday, Edward Cave, first magazine publisher

Edward Cave, the English printer generally credited with publishing the first modern magazine, was born on this day (February 27) in 1691. The Gentleman's Magazine began publication in 1731, a decade before the first magazine in the American Colonies.

When Fortune magazine proved a poor fortune teller

It was on this day (February 27) in 1939 that Fortune magazine published a survey-based article concluding, "it appears practically impossible for [President Franklin D.] Roosevelt to be re-elected in 1940." Roosevelt ultimately defeated his Republican opponent, Wendell Willkie, with 54.7 percent of the popular vote and 449 electoral votes to Willkie's 82.

A fictional magazine editor explains all

"A magazine must be like a human being. If it comes into the home it must contribute. It just can't lie around." — Fictional fashion editor Maggie Prescott in the 1957 movie musical "Funny Face." The Prescott character, editor of Quality magazine, was played by Kay Thompson, purportedly channeling the real-life editor Diana Vreeland.

 

The model magazine article, 1923

"My definition of a model magazine article is one that interests alike the person who knows all about the subject and the one who knows nothing about it." — Robert Underwood Johnson, editor of The Century Magazine, in his memoir "Remembered Yesterdays" (1923).

Millicent Fenwick: politico, pipe smoker, cartoon inspiration, editor

Today (February 25) would have been the 101^st birthday of Millicent Fenwick (R-NJ), “best-remembered as the pipe-smoking grandmother in Congress and as the model for Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury character Lacey Davenport,” Amy Schapiro, author of “Millicent Fenwick: Her Way,” notes. Earlier in her career, Fenwick served as an associate editor of Vogue and wrote “Vogue’s Book of Etiquette” (1948). Sort of makes you wonder what that etiquette book had to say about pipe smoking…

Death comes to "the world's greatest reporter"

Will Irwin, a journalist billed as, among other things, "the world's greatest reporter," died on this day (February 24) in 1948 at age 74. Irwin served as an editor for Collier's Weekly, McClure's, and other major magazines of his day. 

Some parting words from Malcolm Forbes

"Those carried away by power are soon carried away." — Malcolm Forbes, late editor-in-chief of Forbes magazine. Forbes died on this day (February 24) in 1990. He was 70.

The trick of magazine making: every issue different, yet the same

"Where another business may live a lifetime on one idea and wax fat and prosperous selling it over and over again in neat little packages, the magazine must have new ideas for every month and each month's product must be different, yet the same, as that of the previous month."  — George Horace Lorimer, longtime editor of The Saturday Evening Post, quoted in The Writer magazine, 1910.

The San Francisco sea disaster that claimed a magazine editor

One hundred and ten years ago today (February 22, 1901), Rounsevelle Wildman, former editor of the Overland Monthly, died in the sinking of the steamship City of Rio de Janeiro off San Francisco. Wildman had more recently served as the U.S. counsel general to Hong Kong. Wildman's wife and two children were also reported as among the 122 victims of the disaster, which occurred when the ship hit a rock in dense fog. 

George Washington on magazines

George Washington, whose birth in 1732 we celebrate on February 22, reportedly said this about magazines in a 1788 letter:

"I consider such easy vehicles of knowledge more happily calculated than any other to preserve the liberty, stimulate the industry, and meliorate the morals of an enlightened free people." 

Two centuries later, Washington would be the namesake of John F. Kennedy, Jr.'s magazine, George.