Liberty was an American weekly general-interest magazine, originally priced at five cents and subtitled, "A Weekly for Everybody." It was launched in 1924 by McCormick-Patterson, the publisher until 1931, when it was taken over by Bernarr Macfadden until 1941. At one time it was said to be "the second greatest magazine in America," ranking behind The Saturday Evening Post in circulation.[citation needed] It featured contributions from some of the biggest politicians, celebrities, authors, and artists of the 20th century. The contents of the magazine provided a unique look into popular culture, politics, and world events through the Roaring Twenties, Great Depression, World War II, and postwar America. It ceased publication in 1950 and was revived briefly in 1971.
Liberty Magazine was founded in 1924[1] by cousins Colonel Robert Rutherford McCormick and Captain Joseph Medill Patterson, owners and editors of the Chicago Tribune and New York Daily News respectively. In 1924, the owners held a nationwide contest to name the magazine offering $20,000 ($360,000 in current dollar terms) to the winning entry. Among tens of thousands of entries, Charles L. Well won with his title Liberty "A Weekly for Everybody."[2]
The publication constantly lost money under the family duo, though achieving high circulation. It is believed to have lost McCormick and Patterson as much as $12 million over the course of their ownership, and as a result, it was sold to Bernarr MacFadden in 1931.
Under MacFadden's early leadership, the magazine was a strong proponent of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and an article proclaiming him to be physically fit to hold office may have held substantial sway in the outcome of the election. MacFadden led the magazine to considerable success, until it was discovered in 1941 that he had been falsifying circulation reports by as many as 20,000 copies to increase advertising revenue. John Cuneo and Kimberly-Clark Paper company took over for MacFadden in 1941 and righted the indiscretions, but ad revenues never recovered.
In 1926 and 1927, Liberty published the last six Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, including "The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place,” the last of the 60 stories.
The 1944 film noir classic Double Indemnity was based on a novel that was serialized over eight issues of Liberty. The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain was also serialized in Liberty.
Following the lead of The Saturday Evening Post, in 1942 Liberty increased its cover price from five to ten cents, resulting in a drop in sales, down to 1.4 million, and in advertising dollars. In 1944, the magazine was passed on to Paul Hunter, and until its final publication in 1950,[3] a number of different owners tried to revive its former popularity, to no avail.[4] A Canadian edition was published under a series of different ownerships, among them sports entrepreneur Jack Kent Cooke, through the mid-1960s.
In 1968, Dr. Seuss sued Liberty over a copyright dispute regarding cartoons he had sold to the magazine in 1932. Unlike most publications at the time, Liberty typically bought not only first serial rights, but all publishing and distribution rights to the work of their contributors. Liberty won the case, and their copyrights were solidly established by a landmark ruling in copyright law.[citation needed]
Editors
The first editor was John Neville Wheeler: in 1924, he became executive editor of Liberty and served in that capacity until early 1926 while continuing to run the Bell Syndicate.
Two prominent editors in the fiction department died a month apart in 1939. Elliot Balestier, Rudyard Kipling's brother-in-law, was an associate editor from the magazine's founding through his death on October 17, 1939.[5]Oscar Graeve, former editor of The Delineator, died in the Liberty offices on November 20, 1939.[6]
Beginning in 1942, the cartoon editor was Lawrence Lariar, who started The Thropp Family, the first comic strip to run as a continuity in a national magazine.[7]
Contributors
Liberty carried work by many of the most important and influential writers of the period. As a general interest magazine, it featured content across a broad range of genres including adventure, mystery and suspense, western, biographies and autobiographies, love, war, humor, and a whole host of opinion and interest articles.[8] Unusual for a magazine of the era, they bought the rights to many of the printed works outright, and these remain in the hands of the Liberty Library Corporation.
A memorable feature was the "reading time," provided on the first page of each article so readers could know how long it should take to read an article, such as "No More Glitter: A Searching Tale of Hollywood and a Woman's Heart," Reading Time: 18 minutes, 45 seconds." This was calculated by a member of the editorial staff who would carefully time himself while reading an article at his usual pace; then he would take that time and double it.[14]
in 2003, columnist and writing instructor Roy Peter Clark calculated the reading time of the February 10, 1940, issue:
I tested Liberty's calculation by timing my reading of two short pieces, a fictional story and an analysis of national politics. The first one promised me I could read it in 5 minutes, 25 seconds. (It took me 4 minutes and 40 seconds.) Reading Time for the next was 5 minutes and 35 seconds. (For me, 4 minutes, 50 seconds.) I'm not the fastest reader in the world, but I do have practice and education on my side, which leads me to the conclusion that the magazine got the average reading time about right. Now there is a difference between Clock Time and Experience Time. We say that "Time dragged," or that it "Flew by." Some stories read so well that they trap us in Story Time ("I couldn't put it down"). Others forces us to slog through dense verbiage, an experience where seconds can seem like minutes... In the 58 pages of Liberty magazine, there were 15 features marked by Approximate Reading Time. Rounded off to minutes, here they are in order: 21, 19, 14, 5, 17, 7, 4, 12, 5, 28, 7, 15, 8, 9, 7. I'll do the math: 178 minutes. That's two minutes shy of three hours. That doesn’t count the time it would take to read the ads, the movie reviews, and do the crossword puzzle. Liberty magazine existed in a world without television and the Internet. Time pressures on readers and potential readers change with the times.[15]
Cultural references
Over 120 full-feature films and television shows have been produced from content within Liberty, including Mister Ed The Talking Horse, Double Indemnity, and Sergeant York.
In her working notes for The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand mentioned the character Peter Keating as "the kind of person who occasionally reads Liberty magazine",[16] though this reference did not enter the final version of the book. As Rand depicted Keating as a despicable, shallow opportunist and hypocrite, this was no recommendation for the magazine.
In the Alvino Rey song, "I Said No," the female singer teasingly turns down her male caller with a songful of rejections: "I said no, no, no". The song's twist ending is that she is actually saying "no" to a Liberty subscription.[citation needed]
The publication of a poem in the magazine forms part of a sub-plot in "The Chicken Thief", an episode in the second series of The Waltons television series.
Toni Morrison also makes reference to it LibertyThe Bluest Eye (1970) when describing the nameless woman from Mobile.
1970s revival as The Nostalgia Magazine
Liberty: The Nostalgia Magazine
Former editors
James Palmer
Categories
Nostalgia
Frequency
Quarterly
Founder
Robert Whiteman
First issue
Summer 1971
Final issue
Fall 1976
Company
Liberty Library Corporation and Twenty First Century Communications, Inc.
Country
U.S.
Based in
New York City
In 1969, Robert Whiteman, who as a youngster sold the magazine door-to-door, partnered with Irving Green to purchase the Liberty Library Corporation, holder of the many rights of Liberty magazine.[17] Shortly after, in 1971, in partnership with Twenty First Century Communications, Inc., Liberty was revived as a quarterly nostalgia-oriented magazine.
Liberty: The Nostalgia Magazine was originally dedicated solely to reprinting material from the original Liberty, with each issue having a theme. The "Crime" issue featured vintage reports about John Dillinger, Bruno Hauptmann, J. Edgar Hoover, and other newsworthy personalities of the 1920s and '30s. The "Funny Men" issue was devoted to famous comedians (Laurel and Hardy, Burns and Allen, Milton Berle, Charlie Chaplin, etc.). Each issue featured reprints of a humorous essay by Robert Benchley and vintage film reviews by Rob Wagner and other former staff columnists.
The compilation-of-archival-material format ran for only eight issues, when Whiteman and Green's Liberty Library Corporation fully took over publication.[18] The Summer 1973 issue, under new editor James Palmer, was themed "The Sex Gods and Goddesses of Hollywood," in the wake of Burt Reynolds posing naked in the April 1972 issue of Cosmopolitan.[19] Palmer wrote: "There's no doubt about it, it's the bad girls and guys who stir our imagination. And the more they can shock us (in this supposedly shockproof age) the better... Therefore, we've decided to change the format of Liberty from all nostalgia to Liberty Then and Now."[20] Palmer offered his own take on the Burt Reynolds affair by publishing a nude centerfold of a W. C. Fields look-alike. Readers were outraged by the radical change in focus, and Palmer's tenure as editor ended after two issues. He was replaced by a rotating succession of editors, who modified the "then and now" approach by reinstating the vintage material but contrasting it with new overviews (a look at vintage comic strips, a retrospective about "old movies," etc.). A special "50th Anniversary" issue, consisting largely of archival material, was published in 1974. The new Liberty ended with the Fall 1976 issue.
The complete run of the 1970s version was briefly available online via Google Book Search. Liberty Library Corporation, which still owns the rights to the Liberty archives, stated at the time that Google would also eventually digitize the 1,387 issues that comprised the original magazine's run.[21] As of 2014, collections of Liberty articles were available via the Amazon Kindle store.)
Liberty Library Corporation now offers a similar online feature called "The Watchlist"[22] which features early stories linked to current news headlines. A recent pairing, for example, was a 2009 headline about New York Yankees player salaries and a 1938 article by Joe DiMaggio titled "How Much Is a Ball Player Worth?"[23]
In 2014, glendonTodd Capital acquired a controlling share of Liberty Library Corporation.[24] The company hoped to revive the brand and reinvigorate the content after its 40-year dormancy.
Related Research Articles
Theodor Seuss Geisel was an American children's author and cartoonist. He is known for his work writing and illustrating more than 60 books under the pen name Dr. Seuss. His work includes many of the most popular children's books of all time, selling over 600 million copies and being translated into more than 20 languages by the time of his death.
The Cat in the Hat is a 1957 children's book written and illustrated by American author Theodor Geisel, using the pen name Dr. Seuss. The story centers on a tall anthropomorphic cat who wears a red and white-striped top hat and a red bow tie. The Cat shows up at the house of Sally and her brother one rainy day when their mother is away. Despite the repeated objections of the children's fish, the Cat shows the children a few of his tricks in an attempt to entertain them. In the process, he and his companions, Thing One and Thing Two, wreck the house. As the children and the fish become more alarmed, the Cat produces a machine that he uses to clean everything up and disappears just before the children's mother comes home.
If was an American science fiction magazine launched in March 1952 by Quinn Publications, owned by James L. Quinn.
Edward Groff Conklin was an American science fiction anthologist. He edited 40 anthologies of science fiction, one of mystery stories, wrote books on home improvement and was a freelance writer on scientific subjects as well as a published poet. From 1950 to 1955, he was the book critic for Galaxy Science Fiction.
Amazing Stories is an American science fiction magazine launched in April 1926 by Hugo Gernsback's Experimenter Publishing. It was the first magazine devoted solely to science fiction. Science fiction stories had made regular appearances in other magazines, including some published by Gernsback, but Amazing helped define and launch a new genre of pulp fiction.
Raymond Alfred Palmer was an American author and magazine editor. Influential in the first wave of science fiction fandom, his first fiction stories were published in 1935.
Irving Wallace was an American best-selling author and screenwriter. He was known for his heavily researched novels, many with a sexual theme.
Green Eggs and Ham is a children's book by Dr. Seuss. It was published by the Beginner Books imprint of Random House on August 12, 1960. The book follows Sam-I-am as he follows an unnamed man, repeatedly asking him if he would like to try some green eggs and ham before the man eventually tries it and likes it. Seuss began writing Green Eggs and Ham after his editor Bennett Cerf bet him $50 that he could not write an engaging children's book with a vocabulary of 50 words. Finding the challenge difficult, Seuss used notes, charts, and checklists to keep track of his progress. The book covers themes of conflict between individuals, though Seuss has said that it lacks any deeper meaning. Green Eggs and Ham was widely praised by critics for its writing and illustration, and challenge of writing a book in 50 words is regarded as a success. The book has been the subject of multiple adaptations, including a television series of the same name in 2019.
The Strand Magazine was a monthly British magazine founded by George Newnes, composed of short fiction and general interest articles. It was published in the United Kingdom from January 1891 to March 1950, running to 711 issues, though the first issue was on sale well before Christmas 1890. Its immediate popularity is evidenced by an initial sale of nearly 300,000. Sales increased in the early months, before settling down to a circulation of almost 500,000 copies a month, which lasted well into the 1930s.
Other Worlds, Universe Science Fiction, and Science Stories were three related US magazines edited by Raymond A. Palmer. Other Worlds was launched in November 1949 by Palmer's Clark Publications and lasted for four years in its first run, with well-received stories such as "Enchanted Village" by A. E. van Vogt and "Way in the Middle of the Air", one of Ray Bradbury's "Martian Chronicle" stories. Since Palmer was both publisher and editor, he was free to follow his own editorial policy, and presented a wide array of science fiction.
O, The Oprah Magazine, also known simply as O, is an American monthly magazine founded by talk show host Oprah Winfrey and Hearst Communications. In 2021, Winfrey and Hearst rebranded it as Oprah Daily.
The American Mercury was an American magazine published from 1924 to 1981. It was founded as the brainchild of H. L. Mencken and drama critic George Jean Nathan. The magazine featured writing by some of the most important writers in the United States through the 1920s and 1930s.
Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories is a picture book collection by Theodor Seuss Geisel, published under his more commonly known pseudonym of Dr. Seuss. It was first released by Random House Books on April 12, 1958, and is written in Seuss's trademark style, using a type of meter called anapestic tetrameter. Though it contains three short stories, it is mostly known for its first story, "Yertle the Turtle", in which the eponymous Yertle, king of the pond, stands on his subjects in an attempt to reach higher than the Moon—until the bottom turtle burps and he falls into the mud, ending his rule.
Imagination was an American fantasy and science fiction magazine first published in October 1950 by Raymond Palmer's Clark Publishing Company. The magazine was sold almost immediately to Greenleaf Publishing Company, owned by William Hamling, who published and edited it from the third issue, February 1951, for the rest of the magazine's life. Hamling launched a sister magazine, Imaginative Tales, in 1954; both ceased publication at the end of 1958 in the aftermath of major changes in US magazine distribution due to the liquidation of American News Company.
Fantastic Adventures was an American pulp fantasy and science fiction magazine, published from 1939 to 1953 by Ziff-Davis. It was initially edited by Raymond A. Palmer, who was also the editor of Amazing Stories, Ziff-Davis's other science fiction title. The first nine issues were in bedsheet format, but in June 1940 the magazine switched to a standard pulp size. It was almost cancelled at the end of 1940, but the October 1940 issue enjoyed unexpectedly good sales, helped by a strong cover by J. Allen St. John for Robert Moore Williams' Jongor of Lost Land. By May 1941 the magazine was on a regular monthly schedule. Historians of science fiction consider that Palmer was unable to maintain a consistently high standard of fiction, but Fantastic Adventures soon developed a reputation for light-hearted and whimsical stories. Much of the material was written by a small group of writers under both their own names and house names. The cover art, like those of many other pulps of the era, focused on beautiful women in melodramatic action scenes. One regular cover artist was H.W. McCauley, whose glamorous "MacGirl" covers were popular with the readers, though the emphasis on depictions of attractive and often partly clothed women did draw some objections.
The New York Evening Graphic was a tabloid newspaper published from 1924 to 1932 by Macfadden Publications. Exploitative and mendacious in its short life, the Graphic exemplified tabloid journalism and launched the careers of Walter Winchell, Louis Sobol, and sportswriter-turned-columnist and television host Ed Sullivan.
Helen Marion Palmer Geisel, known professionally as Helen Palmer, was an American children's writer, editor, and philanthropist. She was also the Founder and Vice President of Beginner Books, and was married to fellow writer Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, from 1927 until her death.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas! is a Christmas children's book by Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel written in rhymed verse with illustrations by the author. It follows the Grinch, a cranky, solitary creature who attempts to thwart the public's Christmas plans by stealing Christmas gifts and decorations from the homes of the nearby town of Whoville on Christmas Eve. Miraculously, the Grinch realizes that Christmas is not all about money and presents.
Macfadden Communications Group is a publisher of business magazines. It has a historical link with a company started in 1898 by Bernarr Macfadden that was one of the largest magazine publishers of the twentieth century.
Science-fiction and fantasy magazines began to be published in the United States in the 1920s. Stories with science-fiction themes had been appearing for decades in pulp magazines such as Argosy, but there were no magazines that specialized in a single genre until 1915, when Street & Smith, one of the major pulp publishers, brought out Detective Story Magazine. The first magazine to focus solely on fantasy and horror was Weird Tales, which was launched in 1923, and established itself as the leading weird fiction magazine over the next two decades; writers such as H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard became regular contributors. In 1926 Weird Tales was joined by Amazing Stories, published by Hugo Gernsback; Amazing printed only science fiction, and no fantasy. Gernsback included a letter column in Amazing Stories, and this led to the creation of organized science-fiction fandom, as fans contacted each other using the addresses published with the letters. Gernsback wanted the fiction he printed to be scientifically accurate, and educational, as well as entertaining, but found it difficult to obtain stories that met his goals; he printed "The Moon Pool" by Abraham Merritt in 1927, despite it being completely unscientific. Gernsback lost control of Amazing Stories in 1929, but quickly started several new magazines. Wonder Stories, one of Gernsback's titles, was edited by David Lasser, who worked to improve the quality of the fiction he received. Another early competitor was Astounding Stories of Super-Science, which appeared in 1930, edited by Harry Bates, but Bates printed only the most basic adventure stories with minimal scientific content, and little of the material from his era is now remembered.
"Liberty, A Weekly for Everybody". magazineart.org: A visual encyclopedia of American magazine art 1870-1940. Archived from the original on 2022-12-03. Retrieved 2023-01-14.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
