When editors were gods

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.

Abbie Hoffman: Your check is not in the mail

On this day (August 6) in 1976, newspapers reported that Crawdaddy, a rock music and counterculture magazine, was having difficulty finding a mailing address for its new travel editor, who was due a check for his first contribution. The trouble was that the travel editor, Yippie leader Abbie Hoffman, had been on the lam from authorities since 1974. Hoffman eventually resurfaced in upstate New York in the early 1980s.

JFK Jr. covers for George, 1996

On this day (July 30) in 1996, John F. Kennedy, Jr., publicly defended the latest cover of his magazine, George. The cover featured a photograph of Drew Barrymore channeling Marilyn Monroe in her famous 1962 Madison Square Garden appearance, where she sang a sultry rendition of "Happy Birthday" to the junior Kennedy's father. In case anyone might have missed the reference, the major coverline was "Happy Birthday, Mr. President."

Young Kennedy, who seems to have had a knack for attention-getting magazine covers, insisted, "I don't see what possible taste questions could be involved. If I don't find it tasteless, I don't know why anyone would."

For those interested in more about the photo shoot, "JFK Jr., George, & Me," by the magazine's creative director at the time, Matt Berman, covers it in some detail.

 

 

The 3-D craze hits the magazine racks, 1953

On this day (July 25) in 1953 newspapers announced the forthcoming debut of 3-D Screen magazine, an early attempt to cash in on the 3-D craze of the 1950s. The magazine, published by the Kable Printing Company of Mount Morris, Illinois, came complete with a pair of cardboard 3-D glasses, with red cellophane for one lens and blue for the other.

Issue #1 of 3-D Screen seems to have featured an assortment of female Hollywood stars, including Marilyn Monroe, Zsa Zsa Gabor, and Janet Leigh. Pictured on the cover was the famously busty actress Jane Russell, across from the memorable coverline, "So Real You Can Almost Touch Them."

Spiro T. Agnew attacks magazine for election-delay "hoax," 1970

It was on this day (July 21) in 1970 that Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, frequent attacker of the nation’s news media, set his sights on Scanlan’s, a lively but short-lived radical magazine edited by Warren Hinckle and Sidney Zion.

The reason for Agnew’s agita was Scanlan’s publication of what purported to be one page of a four-page memo leaked from the VP's office. The memo discussed an alleged Rand Corporation study, sponsored by the Nixon White House, on the potential impact of postponing the 1972 election and repealing the Bill of Rights.  

Agnew denounced the memo as “completely false” and a “hoax.”

Editor Zion countered that, “We do not hesitate to submit our credibility against his.”

A movie magazine editor's sad final scene

It was on this day (July 8) in 1934 that A.A. Beecroft, age 56, rented a rowboat in Mamaroneck, N.Y., rowed out about 100 yards, stood up, and shot himself in the head. Beecroft, who seems to have gone by the name Jim, had served as a writer, editor, and business executive of the Exhibitors Herald, a movie industry trade magazine.

"Two years ago the publication ended its career and Mr. Beecroft has been idle since," the New York Times noted in an obituary."This idleness, coupled with a separation from his wife two years ago, caused him to be despondent."

An Associated Press account of the incident said that,"Beecroft first fired a shot in the air, apparently to attract the attention of persons in other boats." The United Press didn't mention a first shot but said the event played out in front of "a beach crowded with bathers." 

In addition to his journalism career, Beecroft seems to have been involved in movie production and even served as an occasional extra. The show business paper Variety reported that, "He was widely known and well-liked but never seemed to find himself after his departure from the Herald."

 

 

 

A movie magazine editor's life takes a film noir turn

It seemed like something from a film noir:

On this day (June 16) in 1936, Eliot Keen, 56-year-old editor of the fan magazine Silver Screen, was reported missing by his wife. She said he had disappeared three days earlier and was last seen heading home to Queens, New York, after meeting with a "woman writer" at a hotel. 

The following day the mystery was solved: Keen was in Riker's Island Hospital, having been "found helpless on a subway platform." Doctors seem at first to have thought he was drunk, but later decided he had "aphasia" (or difficulty speaking) possibly as a result of a head injury or stroke.

Whatever had happened to him, Keen remained editor of Silver Screen until his death, from a heart attack, in 1939.

In his obituary, the New York Times reported that, in addition to being an editor, Keen was also an artist and inventor.

 

Better unread than Red: When Cincinnati schools banned Consumer Reports

It was on this day (June 13) in 1951 that newspapers reported the banishment of Consumer Reports magazine from public schools in Cincinnati, Ohio. The school superintendent explained that the magazine's publisher had been identified as a Communist front.

Future right-wing hero takes a walk on the Wildean side

On this day (November 11) in 1922, Whittaker Chambers was at the center of his first, but certainly not last, controversy.

In decades to come, Chambers would gain fame as a former Soviet spy turned anti-Communist, nemesis of Alger Hiss and deflater of Ayn Rand, and hero to the likes of Ronald Reagan. But at the time, Chambers was a 21-year-old Columbia University undergraduate who'd recently lost his job as editor-in-chief of a campus literary magazine, Morningside.

Chambers had been forced to resign in late October over a sketch he had published in the magazine, called "A Play for Puppets." According to an account in the New York Tribune, Chambers's piece, whose characters included Jesus Christ, the voice of God, an angel, and a couple of Roman centurions, "was believed to have overstepped the bounds of cleverness and propriety." The newspaper added that it was written with "a distinctly Wildean flavor."

A November 11 newspaper account said that Chambers had been reluctant to discuss the matter with reporters, fearing that he'd be expelled from the university. But it quoted him defending the piece: "I am not ashamed of the play. I do not consider it either blasphemous or anti-Christian. I put it forward simply as literature, without any aim at propaganda, and I have no apologies to make. I am sorry that the place was not civilized enough to take the play as it was written."

Whittaker Chambers's magazine career was not over, however. He would spend about a decade as an editor at Time magazine and later have a short stint at William F. Buckley's National Review. Chambers died in 1961.

The Literary Digest’s second-worst prediction

The Literary Digest, a major magazine of the late 19^th and early 20^th century, is probably best known today for its disastrous prediction that Republican candidate Alf Landon would defeat incumbent Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1936 presidential election. The prediction, which was based on faulty polling, helped contribute to the magazine’s demise (and absorption by Time) the following year.

But that wasn’t the first faulty forecast to appear in the Literary Digest. Consider this, from its October 14, 1890 issue:

“The ordinary type of ‘horseless carriage’ is at present a luxury for the wealthy, and although its price will probably fall in the future, it will never, of course, come into as common use as the bicycle.”

Busy editor finds time to take on Nazis

On this day (October 6) in 1938, Arnold Gingrich testified before the House Committee on Un-American Activities about German attempts to set up a spy network in the United States, working in collusion with Nazi sympathizer groups here. Gingrich was called to testify as a result of several investigative articles that had recently appeared in Ken magazine, including one titled "Prelude to American Fascism."

According to another Ken article, the Nazis' goal was "not mere propaganda and conversion to Nazi ideology, but a military organization for sabotage and espionage in the United States in the event of European war, whether we are neutral or not. For this ticklish work the leaders are too smart to use suspected aliens but rely on native Americans."

At the time, the very busy Gingrich was the editor not only of Ken, but also of Esquire and Coronet.

The Library of Congress has this photo of Gingrich in the witness chair.

 

R.I.P. Condé Nast

Condé Nast, the man, not the company, died 77 years ago yesterday (September 19, 1942) at age 69.

Although Nast was primarily a publisher and gave his celebrated editors (such as Edna Woolman Chase at Vogue and Frank Crowninshield at Vanity Fair) relatively free rein, he also seems to have had keen editorial instincts, making him if not an editor then at least an honorary one. 

Nast is the subject of a recently released biography, "Condé Nast: The Man and His Empire," by Susan Ronald.