When editors were gods

One bookish editor's marital downfall

On this day (March 31) in 1916, the Oakland Tribune announced that Howard Wheeler, editor of Everybody's Magazine, had been sued for divorce by his wife of 10 years. In explaining what had come between them, Mrs. Wheeler said, "My husband preferred to spend his time with books."

One ex-editor's recipe for success in journalism

"Energy, curiosity, intelligence, and an ability to write are the main prerequisites for success in journalism. Accuracy helps too." — David Brown, husband of editor Helen Gurley Brown and longtime author of Cosmopolitan's legendary coverlines, in his 1990 memoir, "Let Me Entertain You" (William Morrow and Company). Early in his career, before going Hollywood, Brown was the editor of magazines such as Pic and Liberty. 

 

The editor who revived The Saturday Evening Post

Ben Hibbs, who is generally credited with revitalizing The Saturday Evening Post, starting in 1942, and who went on to edit it through the prosperous post-war years and into the 1960s, died at age 73 on this day (March 29) in 1975. Before the Post, Hibbs was editor in chief of The Country Gentleman magazine, and post-Post he was an editor at The Reader's Digest. He also had a long journalistic association with fellow Kansan Dwight D. Eisenhower.

In an interview at the time of his retirement, Hibbs told The New York Times, "Magazine editing today is a team job. A magazine no longer reflects some strong individualist like George Horace Lorimer or Edward Bok. The day of the one-man show is gone forever." 

 

Two magazine editors who became diplomats

Today is the birthday of Norman Hapgood, crusading editor of magazines such as Collier's Weekly and Harper's Weekly, who also served briefly as U.S. ambassador to Denmark. Hapgood was born in Chicago on March 28, 1868. His memoir is "The Changing Years" (1930).

Another magazine editor turned diplomat was Rounsevelle Wildman, onetime editor of the Overland Monthly.

 

 

A poet on the value of editors' advice

"Editors are fond of giving advice to writers. It is not so expensive as giving them a check." — S. W. Foss in The Writer magazine, 1887. Foss is best known today as the author of the poems "The House by the Side of the Road" and "The Calf-Path."

 

A movie star shows why he wasn't a magazine editor

"If I were a magazine editor, and wanted to gain the real interest and approval of my readers, I would publish nothing but stories of failure." — actor Douglas Fairbanks, 1921.

 

Gloria Steinem on traditional women's magazines

"Most women's magazines simply try to mold women into bigger and better consumers." — Gloria Steinem, magazine writer and editor and a founder of Ms. magazine. Steinem was born on this day (March 25) in 1934, in Toledo, Ohio.

 

T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound on editors

"Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers." — T. S. Eliot, poet, critic, and sometime editor.

"I still preserve the illusion that there once were American magazine editors who cared for literature." — poet Ezra Pound, 1914.

 

The magazine editor with a cocktail named after him

Ray Long, a hugely famous (in his day) editor of Cosmopolitan and other magazines, was born in Lebanon, Indiana, on this day (March 23) in 1878. This cocktail seems to have been named for him.

Here's Ray Long's advice to would-be magazine editors.

 

Cruel editors vs. kindly ones

"Happy is he who is born cruel, for if not he will have to school himself in cruelty. Without it, he is unfit for his job; because the kindly editor soon finds his columns filled with junk." — John Fischer, editor of Harper's magazine, 1965.

The male sci-fi writer who edited a major women's magazine

Edwin Balmer, who enjoyed an unlikely dual career as the editor of Redbook and a science-fiction and detective novelist, died at age 75 on this day (March 21) in 1959. Among Balmer's books was "When Worlds Collide" (co-written with Philip Wylie), the basis of a popular 1951 movie.  

An obscure editor's very famous murder

On this day (March 20) in 1927, Albert Snyder, mild-mannered art editor of Motor Boating magazine, was beaten, strangled, and chloroformed to death by Judd Gray, lover of Snyder's apparently scheming wife, Ruth. The ensuing trial became one of the most sensational of the 1920s, despite protests by writers such as Damon Runyon that neither perpetrator was worth the attention. The widow Snyder gained immortality of a sort when her final, blurry moments in the electric chair were recorded by a hidden camera strapped around a photographer's ankle. The case later inspired, very loosely, the much better novel and film "Double Indemnity."