Henry Luce

St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture, Jan 29, 2002 by Emma Lambert

Editors themselves rarely attract more attention than their news headlines, but Henry Luce's success in the field of magazine publishing made him a legend in his own lifetime, and an enduring influence beyond it. The corporation he founded, Time Inc., has been described as the third most important institution in the United States, after the President and Congress, and his magazines have been estimated to reach one quarter of the entire population of the United States. Luce's constant articulation of and fight for "America" and its values, visually and verbally, personally and corporately, throughout his life (and particularly in the politically and culturally charged years of the Cold War) ensured that his impact went far beyond mere journalism, and established him within the canon of influential American public figures.

All this lay far in the future for the child born Henry Robinson Luce on April 3, 1898, to Presbyterian missionary parents, in Tengchow, China. Not until he was 14, in 1912, did the young Luce see England, and not until the following year did he reach the soil of the nation that was to become his home and his life, America. Although he would never lose sight of his spiritual home back in China, Luce was quick to take on the values of the society in which he found himself, and to become part of its elite. He arrived in America in 1913 to take up a scholarship he had won to the prestigious Hodgkiss School. From there, aged 18, he proceeded to Yale, graduating Phi Beta Kappa and being tapped for Skull and Bones. Luce had now entered mainstream, if privileged, America, and the aristocratic-elitist philosophy of Yale was one to which he would subscribe all his life. He cemented his relationship with the world of establishment privilege by his first marriage, on December 22, 1923, to the wealthy and well-connected Lila Ross Hotz, and furthered his influence and connections with his second marriage, on November 23, 1935, to the rising social and literary star, Clare Boothe Brokaw (famous, as Clare Boothe, for her play, The Women).

Luce's publishing career began shortly after graduation from Yale when he and Brian Hadden, whom he had first met at Hodgkiss, discussed plans to start a magazine together. Although Luce himself saw the world of journalism merely as a stepping stone into the world which really held his fascination, that of politics, he agreed to the venture. Hadden proposed an idea for a magazine that, based upon selected newspaper stories in a given week, would condense the news into an easily digestible magazine format. The pair considered the idea further, moved to premises in New York, and began to gather around them an embryonic staff, several of whom (like Roy E. Larsen) would remain part of Time Inc. for many years to come. After a year spent developing the original idea, the first issue of Time magazine hit the news-stands on March 3, 1923, it's aim being to "summarize the week's news in the shortest possible space." The first issue did not sell particularly well, but over the next few years a dedicated staff worked hard to ensure the long-term success of the publication, and by 1926 the magazine had built a solid foundation from which to grow. By 1935, Time made $2,249,823 profit--a corporate record.

The second Time Inc. publication, Fortune magazine, was started in February 1930. It grew out of the business sections of Time magazine, which Luce thought could be expanded into a publication in its own right to create a new kind of business journalism, radically different from existing trade journals--a "literature of business." Fortune grew steadily, and although it would never reach the circulation levels of other Time Inc. publications, by 1935, it too was making a profit ($500,000). A year later, in November 1936, Luce launched the third of his trio of great American magazines--Life. Breaking new frontiers in photojournalism to tremendous, and ultimately world famous and historically valuable, effect, the magazine aimed to "see life; to see the world; to witness great events ... to see and take pleasure in seeing, to see and be amazed: to see and be instructed." Like the other Luce publications, Life magazine soon became a success. Henry Luce was to see the addition of several other elements to his empire, not least of which was the development of The March of Time radio and cinema newsreel programs. Finally, in 1954, Luce added Sports Illustrated. A sports magazine had been his personal project for some time, yet it was born against the advice of many. Luce, however, read the market just right, launching the magazine at the peak of the postwar leisure industry. Advance promotion also ensured that 90 percent of the magazines vanished from the news-stands on the first day of issue, and reader response was excellent.

As editor-in-chief of all Time Inc. publications, Henry Luce was technically responsible for all final editorial decisions, although he left the day-to-day decision making to trusted colleagues on each publication, appointing managing editors such as Edward Thompson at Life, Hedley Donovan at Fortune, and E. Roy Alexander at Time. He himself worked from an office on the Life editorial floor at the Time-Life building in New York City, from where he observed proceedings, occasionally talked directly with individual editors, and sat in on discussions about subjects for editorials. He had little to worry about in terms of magazine content since, even without his direct daily editorship of each and every publication, his managing editors knew well the kind of magazine he wanted and subscribed to roughly the same ideology. As Edward Thompson explains in his autobiography, "One could not ignore Luce's strong political opinions, but if I hadn't believed roughly in the kind of world Luce wanted, I couldn't have worked at Time Inc. very long." Even when he was away from New York, Luce would keep in touch by phone or cable, but even so, as Thompson observed "we knew enough about what he didn't believe in to avoid direct contradiction of his views. We operated on the assumption that the country thought that a Life editorial was in Luce's own words."