New York Graphic

Last updated
New York Evening Graphic
New York Evening Graphic 5 September 1931.jpg
Front page of the New York Evening Graphic
September 5, 1931
Type Daily
Format Tabloid
Publisher Macfadden Publications
Founded1924
Language English
Ceased publication1932
Headquarters New York City

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, [1] and sportswriter-turned-columnist and television host Ed Sullivan.

Contents

History

The New York Evening Graphic's founding editor was investigative reporter Emile Gauvreau, [2] who grew up in Connecticut and in Montreal, Quebec, the eldest son of an itinerant French Canadian war hero. Gauvreau, a high school drop-out, began his journalism career as a cub reporter on the New Haven Journal-Courrier — alongside part-time Yalies such as Sinclair Lewis [3] — during World War I, and by 1919, had moved on to become the youngest managing editor in the history of the Hartford Courant after only three years on the job. He was fired when an investigative project embarrassed "Boss" Roraback, Connecticut's state Republican utilities tycoon J. Henry Roraback. [4] In 1924, Gauvreau made his way to New York to seek his fortune on The New York Times under Carr Van Anda, when, as he relates in My Last Million Readers, [5] he was introduced to Macfadden through the publisher's editor in chief, Fulton Oursler, [6] an almost chance encounter which became "the most violent turning point of my life."

My departure from the Courant, as a result of the medical diploma-mill revelations had injected my name into newspaper stories of investigation. A number of those accounts pictured me as some sort of martyr. MacFadden, who had no use for doctors, quack or legitimate, was keenly interested in the fight I was waging. [7] As a result of our conference I was engaged to organize an afternoon tabloid newspaper to be published in New York under the name The Truth.(...) He spoke of his projected newspaper as a crusading daily, which would tell the truth under all circumstances, and I listened to him with enthusiasm." [8]

Notable content

From the beginning, the paper featured a gossip column by Walter Winchell and when he quit in 1929, Louis Sobol. In 1931, Ed Sullivan, who had authored a sports column entitled "Sport Whirl", [9] debuted his column, Ed Sullivan Sees Broadway. [10] Film director Sam Fuller worked for The Graphic as a crime reporter. Ernie Bushmiller created the comic strip Mac the Manager at the Graphic prior to his creation of the Nancy comic strip. [11]

The Graphic, which sported the motto "Nothing But the Truth", often exploited a montage technique known as the composograph to create "photographs" of events it could not obtain actual photos of, such as Rudolph Valentino's corpse, or Valentino's spirit being greeted in heaven by Enrico Caruso. [12]

Historians Bill Blackbeard and Martin Williams described the Graphic as "possibly the most iconoclastically innovative newspaper in American history," while lamenting its relative absence from Library collections. Writing in 1977, they were fearful that copies of the paper "ha[ve] apparently not survived at all; there may be no file of that paper, public or private, left on earth". [13]

In his 1931 autobiographical novel, Hot News, Gauvreau takes personal credit for the invention and for launching "a new chapter in the history of tabloid journalism". Gauvreau, the Graphic's contest editor Lester Cohen, and Fulton Oursler, Macfadden Publications' second-in-command, later claimed the images were intended to catch attention, present the news in pictorial form, and sell newspapers, but not to deceive. [14] Gauvreau, however, said his staff had to create news to maintain its circulation, and composograph pictorials helped move things along. "We could no longer wait for calamities to happen. "Characters were built up and paraded. Hot news became the wild, blazing, delirious symptom of the time." Cohen credits art department staff member Harry Grogin as "the inventor of the composite picture." [15]

In 1929, Time magazine in a profile of Winchell, wrote:

Not all readers of that gum-chewers' sheetlet, the New York Graphic, are gum-chewers. Some of them smuggle the pink-faced tabloid into Park Avenue homes, there to read it in polite seclusion. They have reason: the Graphic's gossip-purveying, scandal-scooping, staccato-styled Monday column, "Your Broadway and Mine. [16]

Further evidence that the Graphic was secretly enjoyed by the intelligentsia is provided by a 1929 Cole Porter lyric, in which the heroine asks "Should I read Euripides or continue with the Graphic?" [17]

Criticism

N.Y. Evening Graphic composograph illustrating article exploiting the Peaches & "Daddy" Browning scandal of 1926. Peaches & Daddy Browning Composograph 1.gif
N.Y. Evening Graphic composograph illustrating article exploiting the Peaches & "Daddy" Browning scandal of 1926.

The Graphic was dubbed the "pornoGraphic" by critics of the time [18] and journalist Ben Yagoda in 1981 called the trashy, enormously popular daily, "one of the low points in the history of American journalism", [19] offering sample headlines: "Aged Romeo Wooed Stage Love with a Used Ring", "Weed Parties in Soldiers' Love Nest", and "Two Women in Fight, One Stripped, Other Eats Bad Check". Yagoda quotes "one reader" as saying "The only value ever claimed for it was that it educated readers up to a point where they were able to understand the other tabloids." [19]

In 1930, Time, after saying that "Publisher Bernarr Macfadden's feelings are hurt by any suggestion that he or any of his publications are pornographic", added that recent Graphic headlines included "Girls Need Sex Life for Beauty" and "Rudy Vallee Not So Hot In Love's Arms". [20]

Barry Popik notes that the New York Public Library believed the Graphic to be trashy and did not collect the issues, which are now lost." [21]

Decline

Despite the enormous popularity of its puzzle contests and lonely hearts page, [22] the Graphic had trouble securing advertisers who feared being associated with the scandal-fed image of the pornoGraphic. Some advertisers claimed the Graphic's readers had no buying power. By 1929, however, the Graphic's racy editorial had become mainstream in New York's tabloidia, but competition with papers such as the Tribune's Daily News, William Randolph Hearst's Journal and New York Daily Mirror had become cutthroat and the Graphic's cost structure was out of control. The Great Depression further exacerbated the paper's economic troubles.

In Gauvreau's 1956 obit, Time filed a choice anecdote illustrating his freewheeling indifference:

He "exposed" the Atlantic City beauty contest as a "frame-up," thereby pushing the total libel suits filed against the Graphic to $12 million. When the treasurer complained wistfully, Gauvreau cracked: "Take it out of my salary. [23]

Some half-hearted attempts at implementing cost-cutting measures – re-use of crossword puzzle engravings, for example – served only to alienate its loyal readership, and a dispirited Gauvreau met secretly with Hearst [24] and signed on to take the helm at the Mirror. [25]

As the Graphic began its final decline, Macfadden was also distracted by his risible and ultimately futile quest for the Republican presidential nomination. The Graphic finally folded on July 7, 1932, after years of losses, as much as $11,000,000, according to his wife and business partner, Mary Macfadden.

The Graphic's demise was precipitated by pressure from other rising New York tabloids and financial pressures throughout Macfadden's faltering publishing empire. Author Helen MacGill Hughes [26] draws on Gauvreau's Hotnews to conclude that Macfadden's late entry into the tabloid game was a key contributing factor in the Graphic's difficulty in competing with the New York genre's first movers, Patterson's Daily News [27] and Hearst's Mirror: "What does seem probable, however, is that the latter two already had most of the advertising suited to the sort of readers that tabloids attract."

Aftermath

Lester Cohen, the paper's contest editor and Gauvreau confidante, chronicled its rise and fall in his 1964 book, The New York Graphic: The World's Zaniest Newspaper: [28]

The paper was doomed by Macfadden's temperament. But it had the most brilliant staff, I think, of any paper of its time. That staff lived on to make some of the history, some of the books, some of the entertainment of the '30s, '40s, '50s, '60s. ... "Gauvreau tried to make it sensational," analyzed one of its employees, "Winchell tried to make it amusing, editor (Louis) Weitzenkorn tried to make it semirespectable, but it remained one thing overall: Macfadden." [29]

Guavreau never tired of reminiscing on the phenomenon that was "the newspaper that never was," dwelling at length on his remarkable experience in his 1931 novel Hot News, [30] a second novel, The Scandal Monger in 1932 (the basis for Universal's Scandal for Sale , [31] 1932, starring Charles Bickford), his 1941 memoir, [32] and later, in Dumbbells and Carrotstrips, a vilfying book on Macfadden himself, co-authored with Mary Macfadden, [33] whom Bernarr Macfadden had sued for divorce in 1933. [34]

Related Research Articles

<i>Chicago Tribune</i> Major American newspaper, founded 1847

The Chicago Tribune is an American daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper", it remains the most-read daily newspaper in the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region. In 2022, it had the seventh-highest circulation of newspapers in the United States.

<i>Five Star Final</i> 1931 film

Five Star Final is a 1931 American pre-Code drama film about the excesses of tabloid journalism directed by Mervyn LeRoy and starring Edward G. Robinson, Aline MacMahon and Boris Karloff. The screenplay was by Robert Lord and Byron Morgan based on the 1930 play of the same name by Louis Weitzenkorn. The title refers to the practice of newspapers publishing a series of editions throughout the day, with their final-edition front page having five stars printed and the word "Final." "Five Star Final" is also a font introduced during World War I and then favored by newspapers for its narrow type.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Walter Winchell</span> American gossip reporter (1897–1972)

Walter Winchell was a syndicated American newspaper gossip columnist and radio news commentator. Originally a vaudeville performer, Winchell began his newspaper career as a Broadway reporter, critic and columnist for New York tabloids. He rose to national celebrity in the 1930s with Hearst newspaper chain syndication and a popular radio program. He was known for an innovative style of gossipy staccato news briefs, jokes, and Jazz Age slang. Biographer Neal Gabler claimed that his popularity and influence "turned journalism into a form of entertainment".

<i>Hartford Courant</i> Daily newspaper in Connecticut, US

The Hartford Courant is the largest daily newspaper in the U.S. state of Connecticut, and is advertised as the oldest continuously published newspaper in the United States. A morning newspaper serving most of the state north of New Haven and east of Waterbury, its headquarters on Broad Street in Hartford, Connecticut was a short walk from the state capitol. It reports regional news with a chain of bureaus in smaller cities and a series of local editions. It also operates CTNow, a free local weekly newspaper and website.

<i>Photoplay</i> American film magazine

Photoplay was one of the first American film fan magazines, its title another word for screenplay. It was founded in Chicago in 1911. Under early editors, Julian Johnson and James R. Quirk, in style and reach it became a pacesetter for fan magazines. In 1921, Photoplay established what is considered the first significant annual movie award. For most of its run, it was published by Macfadden Publications. The magazine ceased publication in 1980.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Composograph</span>

Composograph refers to a forerunner method of photo manipulation and is a retouched photographic collage popularized by publisher and physical culture advocate Bernarr Macfadden in his New York Evening Graphic in 1924.

<i>New York Daily Mirror</i> Daily newspaper in New York City (1924–1963)

The New York Daily Mirror was an American morning tabloid newspaper first published on June 24, 1924, in New York City by the William Randolph Hearst organization as a contrast to their mainstream broadsheets, the Evening Journal and New York American, later consolidated into the New York Journal American. It was created to compete with the New York Daily News which was then a sensationalist tabloid and the most widely circulated newspaper in the United States. Hearst preferred the broadsheet format and sold the Mirror to an associate in 1928, only to buy it back in 1932.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bernarr Macfadden</span> American physical culturist and magazine publisher (1868–1955)

Bernarr Macfadden was an American proponent of physical culture, a combination of bodybuilding with nutritional and health theories. He founded the long-running magazine publishing company Macfadden Publications.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Milo Hastings</span> American inventor, author and nutritionist

Milo Milton Hastings was an American inventor, author, and nutritionist. He invented the forced-draft chicken incubator and Weeniwinks, a health-food snack. He wrote about chickens, science fiction, and health, among other things. Some of his writing is available in book form and on Project Gutenberg. Hastings was married twice and had three children.

<i>Liberty</i> (general interest magazine) Magazine published in the United States 1924-1950

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. 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.

Hillman Periodicals, Inc., was an American magazine and comic book publishing company founded in 1938 by Alex L. Hillman, a former New York City book publisher. It is best known for its true confession and true crime magazines; for the long-running general-interest magazine Pageant; and for comic books including Air Fighters Comics and its successor Airboy Comics, which launched the popular characters Airboy and The Heap.

Jazz journalism was a term applied to American sensational newspapers in the 1920s. Focused on entertainment, celebrities, sports, scandal and crime, the style was a New York phenomenon, practiced primarily by three new tabloid-size daily newspapers in a fight for circulation. Convenient for readers on subways, the small-format papers were designed to display large page one photographs and headlines for newsstand sales. The tabloids' popularity was controversial, but also influenced the city's and nation's more traditional media, especially when columnist Walter Winchell became popular both in print and on the air.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harold Hersey</span> American magazine editor and publisher

Harold Brainerd Hersey was an American pulp editor and publisher, publishing several volumes of poetry. His pulp industry observations were published in hardback as Pulpwood Editor (1937).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fulton Oursler</span> American dramatist

Charles Fulton Oursler Sr. was an American journalist, playwright, editor and writer. Writing as Anthony Abbot, he was an author of mysteries and detective fiction. His son was the journalist and author Will Oursler (1913–1985).

<i>Metropolitan Magazine</i> (New York City) American magazine

Metropolitan was an American magazine, published monthly from 1895 to 1925 in New York City. Former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt was editor of the magazine during World War I when it focused on politics and literature. It was sometimes named, or called, Metropolitan Magazine or The Metropolitan, and its final issues were published as Macfadden's Fiction-Lover's Magazine.

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.

<i>True Story</i> (magazine) American magazine published by True Renditions, LLC

True Story is an American magazine published by True Renditions, LLC. It launched in 1919 and was the first of the confessions magazines genre. It carried the subtitle "Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction".

<i>Ghost Stories</i> (magazine) American pulp magazine

Ghost Stories was an American pulp magazine that published 64 issues between 1926 and 1932. It was one of the earliest competitors to Weird Tales, the first magazine to specialize in the fantasy and occult fiction genre. It was a companion magazine to True Story and True Detective Stories, and focused almost entirely on stories about ghosts, many of which were written by staff writers but presented under pseudonyms as true confessions. These were often accompanied by faked photographs to make the stories appear more believable. Ghost Stories also had original and reprinted contributions, including works by Robert E. Howard, Carl Jacobi, and Frank Belknap Long. Among the reprints were Agatha Christie's "The Last Seance", several stories by H. G. Wells, and Charles Dickens's "The Signal-Man". Initially successful, the magazine began to lose readers and in 1930 was sold to Harold Hersey. Hersey was unable to reverse the magazine's decline, and publication of Ghost Stories ceased in early 1932.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John R. Coryell</span> American crime writer (1851–1924)

John Russell Coryell was an American dime novel author. He wrote under the Nicholas Carter and Bertha M. Clay house pseudonyms, and, like many of his fellow dime novelists under many other pseudonyms, including Tyman Currio, Lillian R. Drayton, Julia Edwards, Geraldine Fleming, Margaret Grant, Barbara Howard, Harry Dubois Milman, Milton Quarterly, and Lucy May Russell.

Emile Gauvreau (1891-1956) was an American journalist, newspaper and magazine editor and author of novels and nonfiction books. He is best known as editor of two of New York's entertainment and sensation oriented "jazz age" tabloid newspapers.

References

  1. ↑ "Louis Sobol, 90, Dies; Broadway Columnist". The New York Times. The Associated Press. 1986-02-10. Retrieved 2010-05-20.
  2. ↑ Gauvreau, Emile (1974). My Last Million Readers, 1974 Popular Culture in America edition. ISBN   9780405063763.
  3. ↑ "Emile Gauvreau of the New Haven Journal Courier".
  4. ↑ "Political Notes: Yankee Boss". Time Magazine. 1937-05-31. Archived from the original on January 25, 2012. Retrieved 2010-05-20.
  5. ↑ "My Last Million Readers".
  6. ↑ "The Press: Oursler Out". Time Magazine. 1942-02-16. Archived from the original on October 14, 2010. Retrieved 2009-06-28.
  7. ↑ "Macfadden Attacked Out". Time Magazine. 1924-11-10. Archived from the original on November 21, 2010. Retrieved 2009-06-28.
  8. ↑ Gauvreau, Emile (1974). My Last Million Readers. Ayer Publishing. pp. 101–102. ISBN   0-405-06376-8.
  9. ↑ "New York Evening Graphic". BernarrMcFadden.com. Retrieved 27 September 2013.
  10. ↑ "Excerpt from Impresario: The Life and Times of Ed Sullivan". 2005–2006. Retrieved 2006-12-13.. According to this source, Sullivan claimed his column would not promote the prurient; some thought the column's claim of propriety merely funny, like a Burlesque dancer lecturing on grammar.
  11. ↑ "Punch Lines: Ernie Bushmiller's Mac the Manager," Hogan's Alley, 1998 [ permanent dead link ]
  12. ↑ Stepno, Bob (1997). "The Evening Graphic's Tabloid Reality" . Retrieved 2008-05-05.
  13. ↑ Blackbeard, Bill and Williams, Martin (ed.)s, The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics, Smithsonian Institute Press/Harry N. Abrams, Inc. (1977), p. 12
  14. ↑ "Unfair Solicitation?". Time Magazine. 1925-02-02. Archived from the original on February 19, 2012. Retrieved 2009-06-28.
  15. ↑ The New York Graphic, p. 97 (1964)
  16. ↑ "Turn to the Mirror". Time Magazine. 1929-06-17. Retrieved 2006-12-13. (The title is a reference to Winchell's defection to Hearst's New York Mirror .)
  17. ↑ Porter, Cole (1929), "Which?" (Song lyric from Wake Up and Dream)
  18. ↑ Hunt, William R. Body Love: The Amazing Career of Bernarr Macfadden. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1989: 135.
  19. 1 2 Yagoda, Ben (1981-11-01). "The True Story of Bernarr Macfadden: Life and Loves of the Father of the Confession Magazine". American Heritage. Archived from the original on 2007-02-19. Retrieved 2009-06-28.
  20. ↑ "Hero Business". Time Magazine. September 22, 1930. Retrieved 2006-12-13.
  21. ↑ Barry Popik (2005-04-16). "Orange Julius & Orange Juice Gulch" . Retrieved 2005-12-13.. Popik, who traces origins of New York phrases and expressions, credits Walter Winchell with originating the phrase "Orange Juice Gulch" to refer to Times Square. He says that it "appears that Walter Winchell coined this term in the New York Graphic in 1928" but that "Unfortunately, the New York Public Library believed the Graphic to be trashy and didn't collect the issues, which are now lost."
  22. ↑ "The Press: Lonely Hearts". Time Magazine. 1928-08-28. Archived from the original on November 21, 2010. Retrieved 2009-06-28.
  23. ↑ "Tabloid Napoleon". Time Magazine. 1956-10-29. Archived from the original on October 27, 2010. Retrieved 2009-06-28.
  24. ↑ "Education: Now". Time Magazine. 1929-07-29. Archived from the original on October 27, 2010. Retrieved 2009-06-28.
  25. ↑ "The Press: Chemise Sheet". Time Magazine. 1929-11-18. Archived from the original on August 15, 2009. Retrieved 2009-06-28.
  26. ↑ Hughes, Helen Macgill (1981). News and the Human Interest Story (1940). ISBN   9780878557295.
  27. ↑ "The Press: Bulldog's Tail". Time Magazine. 1925-11-16. Archived from the original on February 19, 2012. Retrieved 2010-05-20. Captain Patterson, taking a hint from Lord Northcliffe ("New York's simply begging for a picture newspaper"), decided that the bulldog needed a tail. He started the New York Daily News, gum-chewer's sheetlet, which began to wag at a great rate. In three years its circulation was 400,000. "When it reaches a million," said Mr. Patterson, "I shall go to New York for good.
  28. ↑ Cohen, Lester (1961). "The New York Graphic. The World's Zaniest Newspaper".
  29. ↑ Gabler, N. (1995). Winchell: Gossip, Power and the Culture of Celebrity. Vintage Books. p. 183. ISBN   978-0-679-76439-7 . Retrieved January 11, 2021.
  30. ↑ "The Press: Editor Bares All". Time Magazine. 1931-07-13. Archived from the original on December 15, 2008. Retrieved 2009-06-28.
  31. ↑ Sandra Brennan (2012). "Scandal for Sale". Movies & TV Dept. The New York Times . Baseline & All Movie Guide. Archived from the original on 2012-10-21. Retrieved 2009-06-28.
  32. ↑ "The Press: Tabloid Editor's Confessions". Time Magazine. 1941-10-06. Archived from the original on May 5, 2008. Retrieved 2009-06-28.
  33. ↑ "Life With a Genius". Time Magazine. 1953-04-20. Archived from the original on December 22, 2008. Retrieved 2009-06-28.
  34. ↑ "Milestones, November 27, 1933". Time Magazine. 1933-11-27. Archived from the original on November 22, 2010. Retrieved 2010-05-20. Mutual charges: misconduct. Publisher Macfadden further charged that his wife, ridiculing his gospel of physical culture, encouraged their six daughters to smoke and drink in swanky speakeasies.
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.