When editors were gods

A crime writer cries foul on editors' capricious title changes

"I don’t know why editors—especially magazine editors—insist on changing good titles to invariably lousy ones." — Crime writer Ed McBain, introducing one of his early short stories in his 2006 collection, "Learning to Kill."

In assembling the book, McBain took the opportunity to restore the story's original title.

McBain's title: "Downpour."

Title the editors of Argosy changed it to: "Murder in the Keys."

Which is better? You decide.

Incidentally, McBain was no stranger to changing names, having changed his own from Salvatore Albert Lombino to Evan Hunter. He also had an assortment of pseudonyms, McBain being the most famous.

One famous magazine magnate's bloody secret of success

"The secret of magazine success is: Give the people what they want and give it to them at a right price, and they will do the rest.

"I know only two things that command spontaneous circulation, assuming, of course, that the price is right. A monthly cannot be timely or local; it cannot give news or neighborhood chat. It must depend on two things—first, Fiction; second, Human Blood.

"It is the slaughter of real people that makes Town Topics sell. It was [Thomas W.] Lawson’s flaying of the rich that made Everybody’s sell. It was Ida Tarbell’s carving up of John D. [Rockefeller] that made McClure’s sell.  When we see real citizens burnt at the stake it gives us the same thrill that we get from fiction when the Indians slaughter the Puritans or the villain stabs the hero in the back."

— The hugely successful and widely scorned magazine and newspaper publisher Frank Munsey (Munsey’s, Argosy, and other titles) in a 1908 newspaper interview. Not for nothing was Munsey nicknamed "The Undertaker."

Even more intimidating than presidents or movie stars

"A writer may never find himself intimidated by governors or even presidents, by tycoons or even movie stars, for he knows he has the power to write about them. But editors have the power to pass on his writing." — Meyer Levin in his 1973 nonfiction book, "The Obsession."

Levin is probably best remembered today as the author of "Compulsion," a fictionalized account of the Leopold and Loeb murder case.

President saves editor from the slammer, 1909

On this day (November 17) in 1909, President William Howard Taft remitted the prison sentence of editor and publisher Bernarr Macfadden. The famous health faddist had been sentenced to two years at hard labor in the New Jersey state penitentiary for what newspaper reports called “mailing unmailable matter.” The matter in question was a series titled “Growing to Manhood in Civilized (?) Society” that Macfadden had published in his magazine Physical Culture in 1906 and 1907. Macfadden still had to pay a fine of $2,000.

Dogged editor in dognapping drama

On this day (September 2) in 1948, the Associated Press reported the apparent theft of Marco, a Pekinese puppy belonging to Richardson Wright, longtime editor of House & Garden magazine, five days days earlier. Wright was vacationing on Cape Cod at the time of the incident, which was witnessed by the wife of his estate's caretaker.

The United Press, which also covered the story, said Marco was “believed to be the first recorded victim of a ‘dognapping.’”

According to the caretaker, Marco was playing with another Pekinese named Mickey in front of the Wright home when, “A big car drove up and stopped and whoever was in it grabbed the dog. My wife was so shocked she can’t describe either the car or the people in it.”

The caretaker added that soon after the alleged dognapping he had received a phone call demanding “as much money as you can pay” for the release of Marco.

Reached by a United Press reporter, editor Wright stood firm, vowing “not to pay a cent” to the dognappers.

Fortunately, the matter came to a happy ending a day later when a Stamford, Connecticut, man phoned the Wright home to report that he had the dog. He said he found Marco wandering on a highway, thought he was lost, and took him home. Later, he’d heard about the alleged dognapping on the radio.

The police wrote the mysterious phone call off as a misunderstanding, possibly a stranger who had read about the incident and simply wanted to know whether Wright was offering a reward.

Wright retired from House & Garden the following year, after a remarkable three-and-a-half-decade run as the magazine’s editor.

The murdered editor and the famous L.A. landmark

On this day (May 20) in 1931, Herbert Spencer, associate editor of a Los Angeles political magazine called Critic of Critics, was shot to death in the office of Charles Crawford, a notorious L.A. crime figure. Crawford, who by some accounts funded Spencer's publication, was also shot dead. An allegedly corrupt former district attorney was charged with the murders but acquitted by a jury. On the site of the crime, Crawford's widow later built Crossroads of the World, an early shopping center and longtime Hollywood landmark.

From magazine editor to chain gang

On this day (May 22), back in 1929, newspapers reported the arrest of Robert Elliott Burns, 38-year-old editor and publisher of Greater Chicago, a local business magazine. Much to the surprise of his fellow Chicagoans, who  considered him a civic leader, Burns had escaped from a Georgia chain gang in 1922 after serving several months of a six-year sentence for his role in a grocery store holdup. Returned to Georgia to finish his sentence, Burns escaped once more and, while in hiding, wrote a popular 1932 book called "I Am a Fugitive From a Georgia Chain Gang!"  Later that year, Burns' book was made into a movie of the same title, minus the "Georgia," which the state had objected to. Eventually pardoned by a sympathetic Georgia governor, Burns finished out his days as a tax consultant in New Jersey.

An L. A. shootout leaves an editor dead

Eighty years ago today (May 20,1931), Herbert Spencer, associate editor of a Los Angeles political magazine called Critic of Critics, was shot to death in the office of Charles Crawford, a notorious L.A. crime figure. Crawford, who by some accounts funded Spencer's publication, was also shot dead. An allegedly corrupt former district attorney was charged with the murders but acquitted by a jury. On the site of the crime, Crawford's widow later built Crossroads of the World, an early shopping center and longtime Hollywood landmark.

The brutally murdered editor who inspired a movie classic

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." 

Editor dies, wife fries: the electrifying end of a famous murder case

It was on this day (January 12) in 1928 that Ruth Snyder and Judd Gray both went to the electric chair for the murder of Snyder's husband, Albert, the apparently mild-mannered art editor of Motor Boating magazine. The made-for-the-tabloids case is remembered for one of the most famous news photos of all time and was also the inspiration for several books and movies, including "Double Indemnity."

 

The fly-by-night editor behind an aviation magazine

It was on this day (January 6) in 1970 that Henry Woodhouse (a.k.a. Mario Terenzio Enrico Casalegno), a founder and managing editor of Flying magazine, died. Casalegno had served four years for murder before re-inventing himself as Woodhouse and establishing himself as an early aviation expert with credentials seemingly pulled out of thin air. Later in life he would gain further distinction as an alleged forger of historical documents.

 

A scandal magazine editor's scandalous exit, 1958

Howard Rushmore, ex-editor of the scandal magazine Confidential, shot himself and his estranged wife to death in a New York City taxi cab shortly after 7 p.m. on this day (January 3) in 1958. Howard Rushmore was 45. His wife, Frances, a former cover girl, was 37. Confidential's saga is chronicled in this recent book by Henry E. Scott.