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Life (magazine)

March 07, 2023

Not to be confused with Life (journal).

Life was an American magazine published weekly from 1883 to 1972, as an intermittent "special" until 1978, and as a monthly from 1978 until 2000. During its golden age from 1936 to 1972, Life was a wide-ranging weekly general-interest magazine known for the quality of its photography, and was one of the most popular magazines in the nation, regularly reaching one-quarter of the population.[1]

Life
A cover of the earlier Life magazine from 1911
EditorGeorge Cary Eggleston
Former editorsRobert E. Sherwood
CategoriesHumor, general interest
FrequencyWeekly
PublisherClair Maxwell (1921–1942)
Total circulation
(1920)		250,000
First issueJanuary 4, 1883; 140 years ago (1883-01-04)
Final issue2000 (2000)
CountryUnited States
Based inNew York City, New York, U.S.
LanguageEnglish
Websitewww.life.com
ISSN0024-3019

Life was independently published for its first 53 years until 1936 as a general-interest and light entertainment magazine, heavy on illustrations, jokes, and social commentary. It featured some of the most notable writers, editors, illustrators and cartoonists of its time: Charles Dana Gibson, Norman Rockwell and Jacob Hartman Jr. Gibson became the editor and owner of the magazine after John Ames Mitchell died in 1918. During its later years, the magazine offered brief capsule reviews (similar to those in The New Yorker) of plays and movies currently running in New York City, but with the innovative touch of a colored typographic bullet resembling a traffic light, appended to each review: green for a positive review, red for a negative one, and amber for mixed notices.

In 1936, Time publisher Henry Luce bought Life, only wanting its title: he greatly re-made the publication. Life (now stylized in all caps) became the first all-photographic American news magazine, and it dominated the market for several decades, with a circulation of more than 13.5 million copies a week at one point. Possibly the best-known image published in the magazine was Alfred Eisenstaedt's photograph of a nurse in a sailor's arms, taken on August 14, 1945 during a VJ-Day celebration in New York's Times Square. The magazine's role in the history of photojournalism is considered its most important contribution to publishing. Its profile was such that the memoirs of President Harry S. Truman, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and General Douglas MacArthur were all serialized in its pages.

After 2000, Time Inc. continued to use the Life brand for special and commemorative issues. Life returned to regularly scheduled issues when it became a weekly newspaper supplement from 2004 to 2007.[2] The website life.com, originally one of the channels on Time Inc.'s Pathfinder service, was for a time in the late 2000s managed as a joint venture with Getty Images under the name See Your World, LLC.[3] On January 30, 2012, the Life.com URL became a photo channel on Time.com.[clarification needed][2][4]

1883 humor and general interest magazine

 
Cover art, January 27, 1910, illustration by Coles Phillips in original Life magazine
 
Cover of issue for January 24, 1924

Life was founded on January 4, 1883, in a New York City artist's studio at 1155 Broadway, as a partnership between John Ames Mitchell and Andrew Miller. Mitchell held a 75% interest in the magazine with the remaining 25% held by Miller. Both men retained their holdings until their deaths.[5] Miller served as secretary-treasurer of the magazine and managed the business side of the operation. Mitchell, a 37-year-old illustrator who used a $10,000 inheritance to invest in the weekly magazine, served as its publisher. He also created the first Life name-plate with cupids as mascots and later on, drew its masthead of a knight leveling his lance at the posterior of a fleeing devil. Then he took advantage of a new printing process using zinc-coated plates, which improved the reproduction of his illustrations and artwork. This edge helped because Life faced stiff competition from the best-selling humor magazines Judge and Puck, which were already established and successful. Edward Sandford Martin was brought on as Life's first literary editor; the recent Harvard University graduate was a founder of the Harvard Lampoon.

The motto of the first issue of Life was: "While there's Life, there's hope."[6] The new magazine set forth its principles and policies to its readers:

We wish to have some fun in this paper...We shall try to domesticate as much as possible of the casual cheerfulness that is drifting about in an unfriendly world...We shall have something to say about religion, about politics, fashion, society, literature, the stage, the stock exchange, and the police station, and we will speak out what is in our mind as fairly, as truthfully, and as decently as we know how.[6]

The magazine was a success and soon attracted the industry's leading contributors,[7] of which the most important was Charles Dana Gibson. Three years after the magazine was founded, the Massachusetts native first sold Life a drawing for $4: a dog outside his kennel howling at the moon. Encouraged by a publisher, also an artist, Gibson was joined in Life early days by illustrators such as Palmer Cox (creator of the Brownie), A. B. Frost, Oliver Herford and E. W. Kemble. Life's literary roster included the following: John Kendrick Bangs, James Whitcomb Riley and Brander Matthews.

Mitchell was accused of anti-Semitism at a time of high rates of immigration to New York of eastern European Jews. When the magazine blamed the theatrical team of Klaw & Erlanger for Chicago's Iroquois Theater Fire in 1903, many people complained. Life's drama critic, James Stetson Metcalfe, was barred from the 47 Manhattan theatres controlled by the Theatrical Syndicate. Life published caricatures of Jews with large noses.

Several individuals would publish their first major works in Life. In 1908 Robert Ripley published his first cartoon in Life, 20 years before his Believe It or Not! fame. Norman Rockwell's first cover for Life magazine, Tain't You, was published May 10, 1917. His paintings were featured on Life's cover 28 times between 1917 and 1924. Rea Irvin, the first art director of The New Yorker and creator of the character "Eustace Tilley", began his career by drawing covers for Life.

This version of Life took sides in politics and international affairs, and published pro-American editorials. After Germany attacked Belgium in 1914, Mitchell and Gibson undertook a campaign to push the U.S. into the war. Gibson drew the Kaiser as a bloody madman, insulting Uncle Sam, sneering at crippled soldiers, and shooting Red Cross nurses.

Following Mitchell's death in 1918, Gibson bought the magazine for $1 million, but the end of World War I had brought on social change. Life's brand of humor was outdated, as readers wanted more daring and risque works, and Life struggled to compete. A little more than three years after purchasing Life, Gibson quit and turned the decaying property over to publisher Clair Maxwell and treasurer Henry Richter. Gibson retired to Maine to paint and lost interest in the magazine.

 
1922 cover, The Flapper by F. X. Leyendecker

In 1920, Gibson selected former Vanity Fair staffer Robert E. Sherwood as editor. A WWI veteran and member of the Algonquin Round Table, Sherwood tried to inject sophisticated humor onto the pages. Life published Ivy League jokes, cartoons, flapper sayings and all-burlesque issues. Beginning in 1920, Life undertook a crusade against Prohibition. It also tapped the humorous writings of Frank Sullivan, Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker, Franklin Pierce Adams and Corey Ford. Among the illustrators and cartoonists were Ralph Barton, Percy Crosby, Don Herold, Ellison Hoover, H. T. Webster, Art Young and John Held, Jr.

Life had 250,000 readers in 1920,[citation needed] but as the Jazz Age rolled into the Great Depression, the magazine lost money and subscribers. By the time Maxwell and editor George Eggleston took over, Life had switched from publishing weekly to monthly. The two men went to work revamping its editorial style to meet the times, which resulted in improved readership. However, Life had passed its prime and was sliding toward financial ruin. The New Yorker, debuting in February 1925, copied many of the features and styles of Life; it recruited staff from its editorial and art departments.[original research?] Another blow to Life's circulation came from raunchy humor periodicals such as Ballyhoo and Hooey, which ran what can be termed "outhouse" gags. In 1933, Esquire joined Life's competitors. In its final years, Life struggled to make a profit.

Announcing the end of Life, Maxwell stated: "We cannot claim, like Mr. Gene Tunney, that we resigned our championship undefeated in our prime. But at least we hope to retire gracefully from a world still friendly."[citation needed]

For Life's final issue in its original format, 80-year-old Edward Sandford Martin was recalled from editorial retirement to compose its obituary. He wrote:

That Life should be passing into the hands of new owners and directors is of the liveliest interest to the sole survivor of the little group that saw it born in January 1883 ... As for me, I wish it all good fortune; grace, mercy and peace and usefulness to a distracted world that does not know which way to turn nor what will happen to it next. A wonderful time for a new voice to make a noise that needs to be heard![6]

1936 weekly news magazine

Life
 
Cover of the June 19, 1944, issue of Life with Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower. The issue contained 10 frames by Robert Capa of the Normandy invasion.
Editor-in-chiefEdward Kramer Thompson
CategoriesNews
FrequencyWeekly (1936–1972)
Monthly (1978–2000)
PublisherHenry Luce
Total circulation
(1937)		1,000,000
First issueNovember 23, 1936; 86 years ago (1936-11-23)
Final issueMay 2000 (2000-05)
CompanyTime Inc.
CountryUnited States
Based inNew York City, New York, U.S.
LanguageEnglish
Websitewww.life.com
ISSN0024-3019

In 1936, publisher Henry Luce paid $92,000 (worth $1.43 million in 2021) to the owners of Life magazine because he sought the name for his company, Time Inc. Time Inc. sold Life's subscription list, features, and goodwill to Judge. Convinced that pictures could tell a story instead of just illustrating text, Luce launched the new Life on November 23, 1936, along with John Shaw Billings and Daniel Longwell as founding editors.[8][9] The third magazine published by Luce, after Time in 1923 and Fortune in 1930, Life developed as the definitive photo magazine in the U.S., giving as much space and importance to images as to words. The first issue of Life, which sold for ten cents (worth $1.95 in 2021), featured five pages of Alfred Eisenstaedt's photographs.

In planning the weekly news magazine, Luce circulated a confidential prospectus,[10] within Time Inc. in 1936, which described his vision for the new Life magazine, and what he viewed as its unique purpose. Life magazine was to be the first publication, with a focus on photographs, that enabled the American public,

To see life; to see the world; to eyewitness great events; to watch the faces of the poor and the gestures of the proud; to see strange things — machines, armies, multitudes, shadows in the jungle and on the moon; to see man’s work — his paintings, towers and discoveries; to see things thousands of miles away, things hidden behind walls and within rooms, things dangerous to come to; the women that men love and many children; to see and take pleasure in seeing; to see and be amazed; to see and be instructed...

—Prospectus for a New Magazine[11][12]

Luce's first issue cover depicted the Fort Peck Dam in Montana, a Works Progress Administration project, photographed by Margaret Bourke-White.[13]

 
19 West 31st Street

The format of Life in 1936 was a success: the text was condensed into captions for 50 pages of photographs. The magazine was printed on heavily coated paper and cost readers only a dime. The magazine's circulation was beyond the company's predictions, going from 380,000 copies of the first issue to more than one million a week four months later.[14] It soon challenged The Saturday Evening Post, then the largest-circulation weekly in the country. The magazine's success stimulated many imitators, such as Look, which was founded a year later in 1937 and ran until 1971.[citation needed]

Luce moved Life into its own building at 19 West 31st Street, a Beaux-Arts building constructed in 1894. Later Life moved its editorial offices to 9 Rockefeller Plaza.[citation needed]

Success

A co-founder of the new Life magazine, Longwell served as managing editor from 1944 to 1946 and chairman of the board of editors until his retirement in 1954.[8] He was credited for publishing Winston Churchill's The Second World War and Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea.[15][16][17]

Luce also selected Edward Kramer Thompson, a stringer for Time, as assistant picture editor in 1937. From 1949 to 1961 he was the managing editor, and served as editor-in-chief for nearly a decade, until his retirement in 1970. His influence was significant during the magazine's heyday, which was roughly from 1936 until the mid-1960s. Thompson was known for the free rein he gave his editors, particularly a "trio of formidable and colorful women: Sally Kirkland, fashion editor; Mary Letherbee, movie editor; and Mary Hamman, modern living editor."[18]

When the U.S. entered the war in 1941, so did Life. By 1944, of the 40 Time and Life war correspondents, seven were women: Americans Mary Welsh Hemingway, Margaret Bourke-White, Lael Tucker, Peggy Durdin, Shelley Smith Mydans, Annalee Jacoby, and Jacqueline Saix, an Englishwoman. (Saix's name is often omitted from the list, but she and Welsh are the only women listed as part of the magazine's team in a Times's publisher's letter, dated May 8, 1944.)[19]

Life backed the war effort each week. In July 1942, Life launched its first art contest for soldiers and drew more than 1,500 entries, submitted by all ranks. Judges sorted out the best and awarded $1,000 in prizes. Life picked 16 for reproduction in the magazine. The National Gallery in Washington, D.C. agreed to put 117 entries on exhibition that summer. Life, also supported the military's efforts to use artists to document the war. When Congress forbade the armed forces from using government money to fund artists in the field, Life privatized the programs, hiring many of the artists being let go by the Department of War (which would later become the Department of Defense). On December 7, 1960, Life managers later donated many of the works by such artists to the Department of War and its art programs, such as the United States Army Art Program.[20]

Each week during World War II, the magazine brought photographs of the war to Americans; it had photographers from all theaters of war. The magazine was imitated in enemy propaganda using contrasting images of Life and Death.[21]

In August 1942, writing about labor and racial unrest in Detroit, Life warned that "the morale situation is perhaps the worst in the U.S. ... It is time for the rest of the country to sit up and take notice. For Detroit can either blow up Hitler or it can blow up the U.S."[22] Mayor Edward Jeffries was outraged: "I'll match Detroit's patriotism against any other city's in the country. The whole story in Life is scurrilous ... I'd just call it a yellow magazine and let it go at that."[23] The article was considered so dangerous to the war effort that it was censored from copies of the magazine sold outside North America.[24]

 
Cover of the September 13, 1948, issue of Life with Marshal Josip Broz Tito

The magazine hired war photographer Robert Capa.[when?] A veteran of Collier's magazine, Capa accompanied the first wave of the D-Day invasion in Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944, and returned with only a handful of images, many of them out of focus. The magazine wrote in the captions that the photos were fuzzy because Capa's hands were shaking. He denied it, claiming that the darkroom had ruined his negatives. Later he poked fun at Life by titling his war memoir Slightly Out of Focus (1947). In 1954, Capa was killed after stepping on a landmine, while working for the magazine covering the First Indochina War. Life photographer Bob Landry also went in with the first wave at D-Day, "but all of Landry's film was lost, and his shoes to boot."[25]

In a notable mistake, in its final edition just before the 1948 U.S. presidential election, the magazine printed a large photo showing U.S. presidential candidate Thomas E. Dewey and his staff riding across San Francisco, California harbor entitled "Our Next President Rides by Ferryboat over San Francisco Bay". Incumbent President Harry S. Truman won the election.[26] Dewey was expected to win the election, and this mistake was also made by the Chicago Tribune.[citation needed]

On May 10, 1950, the council of ministers in Cairo banned Life from Egypt forever. All issues on sale were confiscated. No reason was given, but Egyptian officials expressed indignation over the April 10, 1950 story about King Farouk of Egypt, entitled the "Problem King of Egypt". The government considered it insulting to the country.[27]

Life in the 1950s earned a measure of respect by commissioning work from top authors.[citation needed] After Life's publication in 1952 of Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, the magazine contracted with the author for a 4,000-word piece on bullfighting. Hemingway sent the editors a 10,000-word article, following his last visit to Spain in 1959 to cover a series of contests between two top matadors. The article was republished in 1985 as the novella, The Dangerous Summer.[28]

In February 1953, just a few weeks after leaving office, President Harry S. Truman announced that Life magazine would handle all rights to his memoirs. Truman said it was his belief that by 1954 he would be able to speak more fully on subjects pertaining to the role his administration played in world affairs. Truman observed that Life editors had presented other memoirs with great dignity; he added that Life also made the best offer.[citation needed]

For his 1955 Museum of Modern Art traveling exhibition The Family of Man, which was to be seen by nine million visitors worldwide, curator Edward Steichen relied heavily on photographs from Life; 111 of the 503 pictures shown, constituting more than 20% as counted by Abigail Solomon-Godeau.[29] His assistant Wayne Miller entered the magazine's archive in late 1953 and spent an estimated nine months there. He searched through 3.5 million images, most in the form of original negatives (only in the last years of the war did the picture department start to print contact sheets of all assignments) and submitted to Steichen for selection, many that had not been published in the magazine.[30]

In November 1954, the actress Dorothy Dandridge was the first African-American woman to be featured on the cover of the magazine.[citation needed]

In 1957, R. Gordon Wasson, a vice president at J. P. Morgan, published an article in Life extolling the virtues of magic mushrooms.[31] This prompted Albert Hofmann to isolate psilocybin in 1958 for distribution by Sandoz alongside LSD in the U.S., further raising interest in LSD in the mass media.[32] Following Wasson's report, Timothy Leary visited Mexico to try out the mushrooms, which were used in traditional religious rituals.[citation needed]

Life's motto became[33] "To see Life; to see the world." The magazine produced many popular science serials, such as The World We Live In and The Epic of Man in the early 1950s. The magazine continued to showcase the work of notable illustrators, such as Alton S. Tobey, whose contributions included the cover for a 1958 series of articles on the history of the Russian Revolution.[citation needed]

However, as the 1950s drew to a close and television became more popular, the magazine was losing readers. In May 1959 it announced plans to reduce its regular news-stand price from 25 cents a copy to 20. With the increase in television sales and viewership, interest in news magazines was waning. Life had to try to create a new form.[citation needed]

1960s and the end of an era

 
Henri Huet's photograph of Thomas Cole featured on the cover of Life, February 11, 1966
 
Cover of March 25, 1966 issue with the feature story on LSD
 
A subscription offer from LIFE 1970, the US price was then 19 issues for $2.55

In the 1960s, the magazine was filled with color photos of movie stars, President John F. Kennedy and his family, the war in Vietnam, and the Apollo program. Typical of the magazine's editorial focus was a long 1964 feature on actress Elizabeth Taylor and her relationship with actor Richard Burton. Journalist Richard Meryman traveled with Taylor to New York, California, and Paris. Life ran a 6,000-word first-person article on the screen star.[citation needed]

"I'm not a 'sex queen' or a 'sex symbol,' " Taylor said. "I don't think I want to be one. Sex symbol kind of suggests bathrooms in hotels or something. I do know I'm a movie star and I like being a woman, and I think sex is absolutely gorgeous. But as far as a sex goddess, I don't worry myself that way... Richard is a very sexy man. He's got that sort of jungle essence that one can sense... When we look at each other, it's like our eyes have fingers and they grab ahold.... I think I ended up being the scarlet woman because of my rather puritanical upbringing and beliefs. I couldn't just have a romance. It had to be a marriage."[34]

In the 1960s, the magazine featured photographs by Gordon Parks. "The camera is my weapon against the things I dislike about the universe and how I show the beautiful things about the universe," Parks recalled in 2000. "I didn't care about Life magazine. I cared about the people," he said.[35]

The June 1964 Paul Welch Life article entitled "Homosexuality In America" was the first time a national publication reported on gay issues. Life's photographer was referred to the gay leather bar in San Francisco called the Tool Box for the article by Hal Call, who had long worked to dispel the myth that all homosexual men were effeminate. The article opened with a two-page spread of the mural of life-size leathermen in the bar, which had been painted by Chuck Arnett in 1962.[36][37] The article described San Francisco as "The Gay Capital of America" and inspired many gay leathermen to move there.[38]

On March 25, 1966, Life featured the drug LSD as its cover story. The drug had attracted attention among the counter culture and was not yet criminalized.[39]

In March 1967, Life won the 1967 National Magazine Award, chosen by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.[citation needed]

Despite the industry's accolades and its coverage of the U.S. mission to the Moon in 1969, the magazine continued to lose circulation. Time Inc. announced in January 1971 its decision to reduce circulation from 8.5 million to 7 million, in an effort to offset shrinking advertising revenues. The following year, Life cut its circulation further, to 5.5 million beginning with the January 14, 1972 issue. Life was reportedly not losing money, but its costs were rising faster than its profits. Life lost credibility with many readers when it supported author Clifford Irving, whose fraudulent autobiography of Howard Hughes was revealed as a hoax in January 1972. The magazine had purchased serialization rights to Irving's manuscript.[citation needed]

Industry figures showed that some 96% of Life's circulation went to mail subscribers, with only 4% coming from the more profitable newsstand sales. Gary Valk was publisher when on December 8, 1972, the magazine announced it would cease publication by the end of the year and lay off hundreds of staff.[citation needed] The weekly Life magazine published its last issue on December 29, 1972.[40]

From 1972 to 1978, Time Inc. published ten Life Special Reports on such themes as "The Spirit of Israel", "Remarkable American Women" and "The Year in Pictures". With a minimum of promotion, these issues sold between 500,000 and 1 million copies at cover prices of up to $2.[citation needed]

1978 monthly (1978–2000)

Beginning with an October 1978 issue, Life was published as a monthly, with a new, modified logo. Although it remained a familiar red rectangle with the white type, the new version was larger, the lettering was closer together and the box surrounding it was smaller.

Life continued for the next 22 years as a moderately successful[original research?] general-interest, news features magazine. In 1986, it decided to mark its 50th anniversary under the Time Inc. umbrella with a special issue showing every Life cover starting from 1936, which included the issues published during the six-year hiatus in the 1970s. The circulation in this era hovered around the 1.5 million-circulation mark. The cover price in 1986 was $2.50 (equivalent to $6.18 in 2021). The publisher at the time was Charles Whittingham; the editor was Philip Kunhardt. In 1991 Life sent correspondents to the first Gulf War and published special issues of coverage. Four issues of this weekly, Life in Time of War, were published during the first Gulf War.

The magazine struggled financially and, in February 1993, Life announced the magazine would be printed on smaller pages starting with its July issue. This issue also featured the return of the original Life logo.

Life reduced advertising prices by 34%[when?] in a bid to make the monthly publication more appealing to advertisers. The magazine reduced its circulation guarantee for advertisers by 12% in July 1993 to 1.5 million copies from the current 1.7 million. The publishers in this era were Nora McAniff and Edward McCarrick, while Daniel Okrent was the editor. Life for the first time was the same trim size as its longtime Time Inc. sister publication, Fortune.

Though experiencing financial trouble, in 1999 the magazine still made news by compiling lists to round out the 20th century. Life editors ranked their "Most Important Events of the Millennium." This list has been criticized for being overly focused on Western achievements.[citation needed] The Chinese, for example, had invented type four centuries before Johannes Gutenberg, but with thousands of ideograms, found its use impractical. Life also published a list of the "100 Most Important People of the Millennium." This list, too, was criticized for focusing on the West. Thomas Edison's number one ranking was challenged since critics believed other inventions, such as the Internal combustion engine, the automobile, and electricity-making machines, for example, had greater effects on society than Edison's. The top 100 list was criticized for mixing world-famous names, such as Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Louis Pasteur, and Leonardo da Vinci, with figures largely unknown outside of the United States (18 Americans compared to 13 Italian and French, and 11 English).[citation needed]

In March 2000, Time Inc. announced it would cease regular publication of Life with the May issue.

"It's a sad day for us here," Don Logan, chairman and chief executive of Time Inc., told CNN.com. "It was still in the black," he said, noting that Life was increasingly spending more to maintain its monthly circulation level of approximately 1.5 million. "Life was a general interest magazine and since its reincarnation, it had always struggled to find its identity, to find its position in the marketplace," Logan said.[41]

The magazine's last issue featured a human interest story. In 1936, its first issue under Henry Luce featured a baby named George Story, with the headline "Life Begins"; over the years the magazine had published updates about the course of Story's life as he married, had children, and pursued a career as a journalist. After Time announced its pending closure in March, George Story happened to die of heart failure on April 4, 2000. The last issue of Life was titled "A Life Ends", featuring his story and how it had intertwined with the magazine over the years.[42]

For Life subscribers, remaining subscriptions were honored with other Time Inc. magazines, such as Time. In January 2001, these subscribers received a special, Life-sized format of "The Year in Pictures" edition of Time magazine. It was a Life issue disguised under a Time logo on the front. (Newsstand copies of this edition were published under the Life imprint.)

While citing poor advertising sales and a difficult climate for selling magazine subscriptions, Time Inc. executives said a key reason for closing the title in 2000 was to divert resources to the company's other magazine launches that year, such as Real Simple. Later that year, its parent company, Time Warner, struck a deal with the Tribune Company for Times Mirror magazines, which included Golf, Ski, Skiing, Field & Stream, and Yachting. AOL and Time Warner announced a $184 billion merger, the largest corporate merger in history, which was finalized in January 2001.[43]

In 2001, Time Warner began publishing special newsstand "megazine" issues of Life, on topics such as the September 11 attacks in 2001 and the Holy Land. These issues, which were printed on thicker paper, were more like softcover books than magazines.[clarification needed]

1990s online presence

Life's online presence began in the 1990s[44] as part of the Pathfinder.com network. The standalone Life.com site was launched on March 31, 2009, and closed on January 30, 2012. Life.com was developed by Andrew Blau and Bill Shapiro, the same team who launched the weekly newspaper supplement. While the archive of Life, known as the Life Picture Collection, was substantial, they searched for a partner who could provide significant contemporary photography. They approached Getty Images, the world's largest licensor of photography. The site, a joint venture between Getty Images and Life magazine, offered millions of photographs from their combined collections.[45] On the 50th anniversary of the night Marilyn Monroe sang "Happy Birthday" to John F. Kennedy, Life.com presented Bill Ray's iconic portrait of the actress, along with other rare photos.

2013 movie release

The film, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013), starring Ben Stiller and Kristen Wiig, portrays Life as it transitioned from printed material toward having only an online presence.[46] Life.com later became a redirect to a small photo channel on Time.com. Life.com also maintains Tumblr[47] and Twitter[48] accounts and a presence on Instagram.

2004 supplement (2004–2007)

Beginning in October 2004, Life was revived for a second time. It resumed weekly publication as a free supplement to U.S. newspapers, competing for the first time with the two industry heavyweights, Parade and USA Weekend. At its launch, it was distributed with more than 60 newspapers with a combined circulation of approximately 12 million. Among the newspapers to carry Life were the Washington Post, New York Daily News, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Denver Post, and St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Time Inc. made deals with several major newspaper publishers to carry the Life supplement, including Knight Ridder and the McClatchy Company. The launch of Life as a weekly newspaper supplement was conceived by Andrew Blau, who served as the President of Life. Bill Shapiro was the founding editor of the weekly supplement.

This version of Life retained its trademark logo but sported a new cover motto, "America's Weekend Magazine." It measured 9½ x 11½ inches and was printed on glossy paper in full color. On September 15, 2006, Life was 19 pages of editorial content. The editorial content contained one full-page photo, of actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and one three-page, seven-photo essay, of Kaiju Big Battel. On March 24, 2007, Time Inc. announced that it would fold the magazine as of April 20, 2007, although it would keep the web site.[2][4]

2008: Google partnership

On November 18, 2008, Google began hosting an archive of the magazine's photographs, as part of a joint effort with Life.[49] Many images in this archive had never been published in the magazine.[50] The archive of over six million photographs from Life is also available through Google Cultural Institute, allowing for users to create collections, and is accessible through Google image search. The full archive of the issues of the main run (1936–1972) is available through Google Book Search.[51]

2016 and later: special issues

Special editions of Life are published on notable occasions, such as a Bob Dylan edition on the occasion of his winning the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 2016, Paul at 75, in 2017, and "Life" Explores: The Roaring '20s in 2020.[52] Life is now published by the IAC's subsidiary Dotdash Meredith.

Today

Life is currently owned by Dotdash Meredith, which own most of former Time Inc. and Meredith Corporation assets.

Contributors

Notable contributors have included:

Photojournalists:

Film critics:

Fashion:

Photographers:

Illustrators:

Writers:

See also

References

  1. ^ Sebastian Smee, "In Life, as in art, every picture has stories to tell", The Washington Post, October 23, 2022, p. E12.
  2. ^ a b c (Press release). Time Warner. March 26, 2007. Archived from the original on January 5, 2011.
  3. ^ Keith J. Kelly (23 September 2008). . The Huffington Post. Archived from the original on 2008-09-25. Retrieved 8 October 2013.
  4. ^ a b "End comes again for 'Life,' but all its photos going on the Web". USA Today. New York. March 26, 2007.
  5. ^ "Full text of "The miscellaneous reports: cases decided in the inferior courts of record of the state of New York"". 1892. Retrieved 2012-01-15.
  6. ^ a b c . TIME. October 19, 1936. Archived from the original on January 27, 2011.
  7. ^ "Old Magazine Articles". www.oldmagazinearticles.com.
  8. ^ a b "Daniel Longwell, a Founder of Life; Chairman of Editors' Board Until 1954 Dies at 69". timesmachine.nytimes.com. Retrieved 2021-08-28.
  9. ^ Inc, Time (1953-08-10). Life. Time Inc. {{cite book}}: |last= has generic name (help)
  10. ^ "Life: A Prospectus for a New Magazine". life.tumblr.com.
  11. ^ Sebastian Smee, "In Life, as in art, every picture had stories to tell", The Washington Post, October 23, 2022, p. E12.
  12. ^ . Retrieved September 24, 2015
  13. ^ French, Alex (9 August 2013). "The Very First Issues of 19 Famous Magazines". Mental Floss. Retrieved 12 August 2013.
  14. ^ "Pictorial to Sleep", Time, March 8, 1937.
  15. ^ Wainwright, Loudon (1986). The Great American Magazine: An Inside History of Life. New York: Knopf. p. 106. ISBN 0394459873.
  16. ^ Dunlap, David W. (2016-08-11). "1948-1953 | Have a Few Years to Curl Up With a Book?". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-08-28.
  17. ^ Kale, Verna; Spanier, Sandra (2020), Curnutt, Kirk; del Gizzo, Suzanne (eds.), "Correspondence and the Everyday Hemingway", The New Hemingway Studies, Twenty-First-Century Critical Revisions, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 47–62, ISBN 978-1-108-49484-7, retrieved 2021-08-28
  18. ^ Dora Jane Hamblin, That Was the 'Life', New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1977, p. 161.
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  25. ^ The Great Life Photographers, Thames and Hudson, paperback ed. 2009, ISBN 978-0-500-28836-8, p. 294
  26. ^ Abels, Jules, Out of the Jaws of Victory, New York: Henry Holt and Company (1959), p. 261.
  27. ^ "Life magazine is banned in Egypt after publishing an unflattering article about King Farouk". South African History Online. Retrieved November 27, 2013.
  28. ^ Michael Palin, "Michael Palin's Hemingway Adventure", PBS, 1999.
  29. ^ Solomon-Godeau, Abigail; Parsons, Sarah (Sarah Caitlin) (2017), Photography after photography : gender, genre, and history, Duke University Press, ISBN 978-0-8223-7362-9
  30. ^ Sandeen, Eric J (1995), Picturing an exhibition : the family of man and 1950s America (1st ed.), University of New Mexico Press, pp. 40–41, ISBN 978-0-8263-1558-8
  31. ^ Joaquim Tarinas. . Imaginaria. Archived from the original on January 14, 2012. Retrieved January 15, 2012.
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Further reading

  • Bissonette, Devan L. (2009). "Between Silence and Self-Interest". Journalism History. 35 (2): 62–71. doi:10.1080/00947679.2009.12062786. S2CID 140850931.
  • Centanni, Rebecca (2011). "Advertising in Life Magazine and the Encouragement of Suburban Ideals". Advertising & Society Review. 12 (3). doi:10.1353/asr.2011.0022. S2CID 154297703.
  • Doss, Erika, ed. (2001). Looking at Life Magazine. Essays by experts.
  • Grady, John (2007). "Advertising images as social indicators: Depictions of blacks in LIFE magazine, 1936–2000" (PDF). Visual Studies. 22 (3): 211–239. doi:10.1080/14725860701657134. S2CID 35722845.
  • Keller, Emily (1996). Margaret Bourke-White: A Photographer's Life. Twenty-First Century Books. ISBN 978-0-8225-4916-1.
  • Lester, Paul; Smith, Ron (1990). "African-American Photo Coverage in Life, Newsweek and Time, 1937–1988" (PDF). Journalism Quarterly. 67: 128–136. doi:10.1177/107769909006700119. S2CID 145442771.
  • Moore, Gerald (2016). Life Story: The Education of an American Journalist. ISBN 978-0-8263-5677-2.
  • Vials, Chris (2006). "The Popular Front in the American Century: Life Magazine, Margaret Bourke-White, and Consumer Realism, 1936–1941". American Periodicals. 16 (1): 74–102. doi:10.1353/amp.2006.0009. JSTOR 20770947. S2CID 144607109.
  • Wainwright, Loudon. The Great American Magazine: An inside history of Life (Random House Inc, 1986). ISBN 978-0-394-45987-5.
  • Webb, Sheila M. (2016). "Creating Life: "America's Most Potent Editorial Force"". Journalism & Communication Monographs. 18 (2): 55–108. doi:10.1177/1522637916639393. S2CID 147872092. Evolution of photojournalism, centered on the magazine.
  • Webb, Sheila (2012). "The Consumer-Citizen: Life Magazine's Construction of a Middle-Class Lifestyle Through Consumption Scenarios". Studies in Popular Culture. 34 (2): 23–47. JSTOR 23416397.
  • Webb, Sheila (2010). "Art Commentary for the Middlebrow: Promoting Modernism & Modern Art through Popular Culture—How Life Magazine Brought "The New" into Middle-Class Homes". American Journalism. 27 (3): 115–150. doi:10.1080/08821127.2010.10678155. S2CID 152990744.
  • Webb, Sheila (2006). "A Pictorial Myth in the Pages of Life: Small-Town America as the Ideal Place". Studies in Popular Culture. 28 (3): 35–58. JSTOR 23416170.

External links

 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Life (magazine).
  • Life.com official site
  • Life archives (1883–1936) at HathiTrust Digital Library
  • Full Life magazine issues from 1936 through 1972 at Google Books
  • "Le magazine Life, la chronique de l'Amérique" at Le Monde
  • Life covers at CoverBrowser
  • Magazine Data File: Life (1883)
  • Online archive 2020-01-01 at the Wayback Machine, Life covers, the humor magazine (1883–1936)

March 07, 2023
life, magazine, this, article, needs, additional, citations, verification, please, help, improve, this, article, adding, citations, reliable, sources, unsourced, material, challenged, removed, find, sources, life, magazine, news, newspapers, books, scholar, js. This article needs additional citations for verification Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed Find sources Life magazine news newspapers books scholar JSTOR July 2022 Learn how and when to remove this template message Not to be confused with Life journal Life was an American magazine published weekly from 1883 to 1972 as an intermittent special until 1978 and as a monthly from 1978 until 2000 During its golden age from 1936 to 1972 Life was a wide ranging weekly general interest magazine known for the quality of its photography and was one of the most popular magazines in the nation regularly reaching one quarter of the population 1 LifeA cover of the earlier Life magazine from 1911EditorGeorge Cary EgglestonFormer editorsRobert E SherwoodCategoriesHumor general interestFrequencyWeeklyPublisherClair Maxwell 1921 1942 Total circulation 1920 250 000First issueJanuary 4 1883 140 years ago 1883 01 04 Final issue2000 2000 CountryUnited StatesBased inNew York City New York U S LanguageEnglishWebsitewww wbr life wbr comISSN0024 3019Life was independently published for its first 53 years until 1936 as a general interest and light entertainment magazine heavy on illustrations jokes and social commentary It featured some of the most notable writers editors illustrators and cartoonists of its time Charles Dana Gibson Norman Rockwell and Jacob Hartman Jr Gibson became the editor and owner of the magazine after John Ames Mitchell died in 1918 During its later years the magazine offered brief capsule reviews similar to those in The New Yorker of plays and movies currently running in New York City but with the innovative touch of a colored typographic bullet resembling a traffic light appended to each review green for a positive review red for a negative one and amber for mixed notices In 1936 Time publisher Henry Luce bought Life only wanting its title he greatly re made the publication Life now stylized in all caps became the first all photographic American news magazine and it dominated the market for several decades with a circulation of more than 13 5 million copies a week at one point Possibly the best known image published in the magazine was Alfred Eisenstaedt s photograph of a nurse in a sailor s arms taken on August 14 1945 during a VJ Day celebration in New York s Times Square The magazine s role in the history of photojournalism is considered its most important contribution to publishing Its profile was such that the memoirs of President Harry S Truman Prime Minister Winston Churchill and General Douglas MacArthur were all serialized in its pages After 2000 Time Inc continued to use the Life brand for special and commemorative issues Life returned to regularly scheduled issues when it became a weekly newspaper supplement from 2004 to 2007 2 The website life com originally one of the channels on Time Inc s Pathfinder service was for a time in the late 2000s managed as a joint venture with Getty Images under the name See Your World LLC 3 On January 30 2012 the Life com URL became a photo channel on Time com clarification needed 2 4 Contents 1 1883 humor and general interest magazine 2 1936 weekly news magazine 2 1 Success 2 2 1960s and the end of an era 3 1978 monthly 1978 2000 4 1990s online presence 4 1 2013 movie release 5 2004 supplement 2004 2007 6 2008 Google partnership 7 2016 and later special issues 8 Today 9 Contributors 10 See also 11 References 12 Further reading 13 External links1883 humor and general interest magazine Edit Cover art January 27 1910 illustration by Coles Phillips in original Life magazine Cover of issue for January 24 1924 Life was founded on January 4 1883 in a New York City artist s studio at 1155 Broadway as a partnership between John Ames Mitchell and Andrew Miller Mitchell held a 75 interest in the magazine with the remaining 25 held by Miller Both men retained their holdings until their deaths 5 Miller served as secretary treasurer of the magazine and managed the business side of the operation Mitchell a 37 year old illustrator who used a 10 000 inheritance to invest in the weekly magazine served as its publisher He also created the first Life name plate with cupids as mascots and later on drew its masthead of a knight leveling his lance at the posterior of a fleeing devil Then he took advantage of a new printing process using zinc coated plates which improved the reproduction of his illustrations and artwork This edge helped because Life faced stiff competition from the best selling humor magazines Judge and Puck which were already established and successful Edward Sandford Martin was brought on as Life s first literary editor the recent Harvard University graduate was a founder of the Harvard Lampoon The motto of the first issue of Life was While there s Life there s hope 6 The new magazine set forth its principles and policies to its readers We wish to have some fun in this paper We shall try to domesticate as much as possible of the casual cheerfulness that is drifting about in an unfriendly world We shall have something to say about religion about politics fashion society literature the stage the stock exchange and the police station and we will speak out what is in our mind as fairly as truthfully and as decently as we know how 6 The magazine was a success and soon attracted the industry s leading contributors 7 of which the most important was Charles Dana Gibson Three years after the magazine was founded the Massachusetts native first sold Life a drawing for 4 a dog outside his kennel howling at the moon Encouraged by a publisher also an artist Gibson was joined in Life early days by illustrators such as Palmer Cox creator of the Brownie A B Frost Oliver Herford and E W Kemble Life s literary roster included the following John Kendrick Bangs James Whitcomb Riley and Brander Matthews Mitchell was accused of anti Semitism at a time of high rates of immigration to New York of eastern European Jews When the magazine blamed the theatrical team of Klaw amp Erlanger for Chicago s Iroquois Theater Fire in 1903 many people complained Life s drama critic James Stetson Metcalfe was barred from the 47 Manhattan theatres controlled by the Theatrical Syndicate Life published caricatures of Jews with large noses Several individuals would publish their first major works in Life In 1908 Robert Ripley published his first cartoon in Life 20 years before his Believe It or Not fame Norman Rockwell s first cover for Life magazine Tain t You was published May 10 1917 His paintings were featured on Life s cover 28 times between 1917 and 1924 Rea Irvin the first art director of The New Yorker and creator of the character Eustace Tilley began his career by drawing covers for Life This version of Life took sides in politics and international affairs and published pro American editorials After Germany attacked Belgium in 1914 Mitchell and Gibson undertook a campaign to push the U S into the war Gibson drew the Kaiser as a bloody madman insulting Uncle Sam sneering at crippled soldiers and shooting Red Cross nurses Following Mitchell s death in 1918 Gibson bought the magazine for 1 million but the end of World War I had brought on social change Life s brand of humor was outdated as readers wanted more daring and risque works and Life struggled to compete A little more than three years after purchasing Life Gibson quit and turned the decaying property over to publisher Clair Maxwell and treasurer Henry Richter Gibson retired to Maine to paint and lost interest in the magazine 1922 cover The Flapper by F X Leyendecker In 1920 Gibson selected former Vanity Fair staffer Robert E Sherwood as editor A WWI veteran and member of the Algonquin Round Table Sherwood tried to inject sophisticated humor onto the pages Life published Ivy League jokes cartoons flapper sayings and all burlesque issues Beginning in 1920 Life undertook a crusade against Prohibition It also tapped the humorous writings of Frank Sullivan Robert Benchley Dorothy Parker Franklin Pierce Adams and Corey Ford Among the illustrators and cartoonists were Ralph Barton Percy Crosby Don Herold Ellison Hoover H T Webster Art Young and John Held Jr Life had 250 000 readers in 1920 citation needed but as the Jazz Age rolled into the Great Depression the magazine lost money and subscribers By the time Maxwell and editor George Eggleston took over Life had switched from publishing weekly to monthly The two men went to work revamping its editorial style to meet the times which resulted in improved readership However Life had passed its prime and was sliding toward financial ruin The New Yorker debuting in February 1925 copied many of the features and styles of Life it recruited staff from its editorial and art departments original research Another blow to Life s circulation came from raunchy humor periodicals such as Ballyhoo and Hooey which ran what can be termed outhouse gags In 1933 Esquire joined Life s competitors In its final years Life struggled to make a profit Announcing the end of Life Maxwell stated We cannot claim like Mr Gene Tunney that we resigned our championship undefeated in our prime But at least we hope to retire gracefully from a world still friendly citation needed For Life s final issue in its original format 80 year old Edward Sandford Martin was recalled from editorial retirement to compose its obituary He wrote That Life should be passing into the hands of new owners and directors is of the liveliest interest to the sole survivor of the little group that saw it born in January 1883 As for me I wish it all good fortune grace mercy and peace and usefulness to a distracted world that does not know which way to turn nor what will happen to it next A wonderful time for a new voice to make a noise that needs to be heard 6 1936 weekly news magazine EditLife Cover of the June 19 1944 issue of Life with Gen Dwight D Eisenhower The issue contained 10 frames by Robert Capa of the Normandy invasion Editor in chiefEdward Kramer ThompsonCategoriesNewsFrequencyWeekly 1936 1972 Monthly 1978 2000 PublisherHenry LuceTotal circulation 1937 1 000 000First issueNovember 23 1936 86 years ago 1936 11 23 Final issueMay 2000 2000 05 CompanyTime Inc CountryUnited StatesBased inNew York City New York U S LanguageEnglishWebsitewww wbr life wbr comISSN0024 3019In 1936 publisher Henry Luce paid 92 000 worth 1 43 million in 2021 to the owners of Life magazine because he sought the name for his company Time Inc Time Inc sold Life s subscription list features and goodwill to Judge Convinced that pictures could tell a story instead of just illustrating text Luce launched the new Life on November 23 1936 along with John Shaw Billings and Daniel Longwell as founding editors 8 9 The third magazine published by Luce after Time in 1923 and Fortune in 1930 Life developed as the definitive photo magazine in the U S giving as much space and importance to images as to words The first issue of Life which sold for ten cents worth 1 95 in 2021 featured five pages of Alfred Eisenstaedt s photographs In planning the weekly news magazine Luce circulated a confidential prospectus 10 within Time Inc in 1936 which described his vision for the new Life magazine and what he viewed as its unique purpose Life magazine was to be the first publication with a focus on photographs that enabled the American public To see life to see the world to eyewitness great events to watch the faces of the poor and the gestures of the proud to see strange things machines armies multitudes shadows in the jungle and on the moon to see man s work his paintings towers and discoveries to see things thousands of miles away things hidden behind walls and within rooms things dangerous to come to the women that men love and many children to see and take pleasure in seeing to see and be amazed to see and be instructed Prospectus for a New Magazine 11 12 dd dd dd dd dd dd dd dd dd Luce s first issue cover depicted the Fort Peck Dam in Montana a Works Progress Administration project photographed by Margaret Bourke White 13 19 West 31st Street The format of Life in 1936 was a success the text was condensed into captions for 50 pages of photographs The magazine was printed on heavily coated paper and cost readers only a dime The magazine s circulation was beyond the company s predictions going from 380 000 copies of the first issue to more than one million a week four months later 14 It soon challenged The Saturday Evening Post then the largest circulation weekly in the country The magazine s success stimulated many imitators such as Look which was founded a year later in 1937 and ran until 1971 citation needed Luce moved Life into its own building at 19 West 31st Street a Beaux Arts building constructed in 1894 Later Life moved its editorial offices to 9 Rockefeller Plaza citation needed Success Edit A co founder of the new Life magazine Longwell served as managing editor from 1944 to 1946 and chairman of the board of editors until his retirement in 1954 8 He was credited for publishing Winston Churchill s The Second World War and Ernest Hemingway s The Old Man and the Sea 15 16 17 Luce also selected Edward Kramer Thompson a stringer for Time as assistant picture editor in 1937 From 1949 to 1961 he was the managing editor and served as editor in chief for nearly a decade until his retirement in 1970 His influence was significant during the magazine s heyday which was roughly from 1936 until the mid 1960s Thompson was known for the free rein he gave his editors particularly a trio of formidable and colorful women Sally Kirkland fashion editor Mary Letherbee movie editor and Mary Hamman modern living editor 18 When the U S entered the war in 1941 so did Life By 1944 of the 40 Time and Life war correspondents seven were women Americans Mary Welsh Hemingway Margaret Bourke White Lael Tucker Peggy Durdin Shelley Smith Mydans Annalee Jacoby and Jacqueline Saix an Englishwoman Saix s name is often omitted from the list but she and Welsh are the only women listed as part of the magazine s team in a Times s publisher s letter dated May 8 1944 19 Life backed the war effort each week In July 1942 Life launched its first art contest for soldiers and drew more than 1 500 entries submitted by all ranks Judges sorted out the best and awarded 1 000 in prizes Life picked 16 for reproduction in the magazine The National Gallery in Washington D C agreed to put 117 entries on exhibition that summer Life also supported the military s efforts to use artists to document the war When Congress forbade the armed forces from using government money to fund artists in the field Life privatized the programs hiring many of the artists being let go by the Department of War which would later become the Department of Defense On December 7 1960 Life managers later donated many of the works by such artists to the Department of War and its art programs such as the United States Army Art Program 20 Each week during World War II the magazine brought photographs of the war to Americans it had photographers from all theaters of war The magazine was imitated in enemy propaganda using contrasting images of Life and Death 21 In August 1942 writing about labor and racial unrest in Detroit Life warned that the morale situation is perhaps the worst in the U S It is time for the rest of the country to sit up and take notice For Detroit can either blow up Hitler or it can blow up the U S 22 Mayor Edward Jeffries was outraged I ll match Detroit s patriotism against any other city s in the country The whole story in Life is scurrilous I d just call it a yellow magazine and let it go at that 23 The article was considered so dangerous to the war effort that it was censored from copies of the magazine sold outside North America 24 Cover of the September 13 1948 issue of Life with Marshal Josip Broz Tito The magazine hired war photographer Robert Capa when A veteran of Collier s magazine Capa accompanied the first wave of the D Day invasion in Normandy France on June 6 1944 and returned with only a handful of images many of them out of focus The magazine wrote in the captions that the photos were fuzzy because Capa s hands were shaking He denied it claiming that the darkroom had ruined his negatives Later he poked fun at Life by titling his war memoir Slightly Out of Focus 1947 In 1954 Capa was killed after stepping on a landmine while working for the magazine covering the First Indochina War Life photographer Bob Landry also went in with the first wave at D Day but all of Landry s film was lost and his shoes to boot 25 In a notable mistake in its final edition just before the 1948 U S presidential election the magazine printed a large photo showing U S presidential candidate Thomas E Dewey and his staff riding across San Francisco California harbor entitled Our Next President Rides by Ferryboat over San Francisco Bay Incumbent President Harry S Truman won the election 26 Dewey was expected to win the election and this mistake was also made by the Chicago Tribune citation needed On May 10 1950 the council of ministers in Cairo banned Life from Egypt forever All issues on sale were confiscated No reason was given but Egyptian officials expressed indignation over the April 10 1950 story about King Farouk of Egypt entitled the Problem King of Egypt The government considered it insulting to the country 27 Life in the 1950s earned a measure of respect by commissioning work from top authors citation needed After Life s publication in 1952 of Ernest Hemingway s The Old Man and the Sea the magazine contracted with the author for a 4 000 word piece on bullfighting Hemingway sent the editors a 10 000 word article following his last visit to Spain in 1959 to cover a series of contests between two top matadors The article was republished in 1985 as the novella The Dangerous Summer 28 In February 1953 just a few weeks after leaving office President Harry S Truman announced that Life magazine would handle all rights to his memoirs Truman said it was his belief that by 1954 he would be able to speak more fully on subjects pertaining to the role his administration played in world affairs Truman observed that Life editors had presented other memoirs with great dignity he added that Life also made the best offer citation needed For his 1955 Museum of Modern Art traveling exhibition The Family of Man which was to be seen by nine million visitors worldwide curator Edward Steichen relied heavily on photographs from Life 111 of the 503 pictures shown constituting more than 20 as counted by Abigail Solomon Godeau 29 His assistant Wayne Miller entered the magazine s archive in late 1953 and spent an estimated nine months there He searched through 3 5 million images most in the form of original negatives only in the last years of the war did the picture department start to print contact sheets of all assignments and submitted to Steichen for selection many that had not been published in the magazine 30 In November 1954 the actress Dorothy Dandridge was the first African American woman to be featured on the cover of the magazine citation needed In 1957 R Gordon Wasson a vice president at J P Morgan published an article in Life extolling the virtues of magic mushrooms 31 This prompted Albert Hofmann to isolate psilocybin in 1958 for distribution by Sandoz alongside LSD in the U S further raising interest in LSD in the mass media 32 Following Wasson s report Timothy Leary visited Mexico to try out the mushrooms which were used in traditional religious rituals citation needed Life s motto became 33 To see Life to see the world The magazine produced many popular science serials such as The World We Live In and The Epic of Man in the early 1950s The magazine continued to showcase the work of notable illustrators such as Alton S Tobey whose contributions included the cover for a 1958 series of articles on the history of the Russian Revolution citation needed However as the 1950s drew to a close and television became more popular the magazine was losing readers In May 1959 it announced plans to reduce its regular news stand price from 25 cents a copy to 20 With the increase in television sales and viewership interest in news magazines was waning Life had to try to create a new form citation needed 1960s and the end of an era Edit Henri Huet s photograph of Thomas Cole featured on the cover of Life February 11 1966 Cover of March 25 1966 issue with the feature story on LSD A subscription offer from LIFE 1970 the US price was then 19 issues for 2 55 In the 1960s the magazine was filled with color photos of movie stars President John F Kennedy and his family the war in Vietnam and the Apollo program Typical of the magazine s editorial focus was a long 1964 feature on actress Elizabeth Taylor and her relationship with actor Richard Burton Journalist Richard Meryman traveled with Taylor to New York California and Paris Life ran a 6 000 word first person article on the screen star citation needed I m not a sex queen or a sex symbol Taylor said I don t think I want to be one Sex symbol kind of suggests bathrooms in hotels or something I do know I m a movie star and I like being a woman and I think sex is absolutely gorgeous But as far as a sex goddess I don t worry myself that way Richard is a very sexy man He s got that sort of jungle essence that one can sense When we look at each other it s like our eyes have fingers and they grab ahold I think I ended up being the scarlet woman because of my rather puritanical upbringing and beliefs I couldn t just have a romance It had to be a marriage 34 In the 1960s the magazine featured photographs by Gordon Parks The camera is my weapon against the things I dislike about the universe and how I show the beautiful things about the universe Parks recalled in 2000 I didn t care about Life magazine I cared about the people he said 35 The June 1964 Paul Welch Life article entitled Homosexuality In America was the first time a national publication reported on gay issues Life s photographer was referred to the gay leather bar in San Francisco called the Tool Box for the article by Hal Call who had long worked to dispel the myth that all homosexual men were effeminate The article opened with a two page spread of the mural of life size leathermen in the bar which had been painted by Chuck Arnett in 1962 36 37 The article described San Francisco as The Gay Capital of America and inspired many gay leathermen to move there 38 On March 25 1966 Life featured the drug LSD as its cover story The drug had attracted attention among the counter culture and was not yet criminalized 39 In March 1967 Life won the 1967 National Magazine Award chosen by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism citation needed Despite the industry s accolades and its coverage of the U S mission to the Moon in 1969 the magazine continued to lose circulation Time Inc announced in January 1971 its decision to reduce circulation from 8 5 million to 7 million in an effort to offset shrinking advertising revenues The following year Life cut its circulation further to 5 5 million beginning with the January 14 1972 issue Life was reportedly not losing money but its costs were rising faster than its profits Life lost credibility with many readers when it supported author Clifford Irving whose fraudulent autobiography of Howard Hughes was revealed as a hoax in January 1972 The magazine had purchased serialization rights to Irving s manuscript citation needed Industry figures showed that some 96 of Life s circulation went to mail subscribers with only 4 coming from the more profitable newsstand sales Gary Valk was publisher when on December 8 1972 the magazine announced it would cease publication by the end of the year and lay off hundreds of staff citation needed The weekly Life magazine published its last issue on December 29 1972 40 From 1972 to 1978 Time Inc published ten Life Special Reports on such themes as The Spirit of Israel Remarkable American Women and The Year in Pictures With a minimum of promotion these issues sold between 500 000 and 1 million copies at cover prices of up to 2 citation needed 1978 monthly 1978 2000 EditBeginning with an October 1978 issue Life was published as a monthly with a new modified logo Although it remained a familiar red rectangle with the white type the new version was larger the lettering was closer together and the box surrounding it was smaller Life continued for the next 22 years as a moderately successful original research general interest news features magazine In 1986 it decided to mark its 50th anniversary under the Time Inc umbrella with a special issue showing every Life cover starting from 1936 which included the issues published during the six year hiatus in the 1970s The circulation in this era hovered around the 1 5 million circulation mark The cover price in 1986 was 2 50 equivalent to 6 18 in 2021 The publisher at the time was Charles Whittingham the editor was Philip Kunhardt In 1991 Life sent correspondents to the first Gulf War and published special issues of coverage Four issues of this weekly Life in Time of War were published during the first Gulf War The magazine struggled financially and in February 1993 Life announced the magazine would be printed on smaller pages starting with its July issue This issue also featured the return of the original Life logo Life reduced advertising prices by 34 when in a bid to make the monthly publication more appealing to advertisers The magazine reduced its circulation guarantee for advertisers by 12 in July 1993 to 1 5 million copies from the current 1 7 million The publishers in this era were Nora McAniff and Edward McCarrick while Daniel Okrent was the editor Life for the first time was the same trim size as its longtime Time Inc sister publication Fortune Though experiencing financial trouble in 1999 the magazine still made news by compiling lists to round out the 20th century Life editors ranked their Most Important Events of the Millennium This list has been criticized for being overly focused on Western achievements citation needed The Chinese for example had invented type four centuries before Johannes Gutenberg but with thousands of ideograms found its use impractical Life also published a list of the 100 Most Important People of the Millennium This list too was criticized for focusing on the West Thomas Edison s number one ranking was challenged since critics believed other inventions such as the Internal combustion engine the automobile and electricity making machines for example had greater effects on society than Edison s The top 100 list was criticized for mixing world famous names such as Isaac Newton Albert Einstein Louis Pasteur and Leonardo da Vinci with figures largely unknown outside of the United States 18 Americans compared to 13 Italian and French and 11 English citation needed In March 2000 Time Inc announced it would cease regular publication of Life with the May issue It s a sad day for us here Don Logan chairman and chief executive of Time Inc told CNN com It was still in the black he said noting that Life was increasingly spending more to maintain its monthly circulation level of approximately 1 5 million Life was a general interest magazine and since its reincarnation it had always struggled to find its identity to find its position in the marketplace Logan said 41 The magazine s last issue featured a human interest story In 1936 its first issue under Henry Luce featured a baby named George Story with the headline Life Begins over the years the magazine had published updates about the course of Story s life as he married had children and pursued a career as a journalist After Time announced its pending closure in March George Story happened to die of heart failure on April 4 2000 The last issue of Life was titled A Life Ends featuring his story and how it had intertwined with the magazine over the years 42 For Life subscribers remaining subscriptions were honored with other Time Inc magazines such as Time In January 2001 these subscribers received a special Life sized format of The Year in Pictures edition of Time magazine It was a Life issue disguised under a Time logo on the front Newsstand copies of this edition were published under the Life imprint While citing poor advertising sales and a difficult climate for selling magazine subscriptions Time Inc executives said a key reason for closing the title in 2000 was to divert resources to the company s other magazine launches that year such as Real Simple Later that year its parent company Time Warner struck a deal with the Tribune Company for Times Mirror magazines which included Golf Ski Skiing Field amp Stream and Yachting AOL and Time Warner announced a 184 billion merger the largest corporate merger in history which was finalized in January 2001 43 In 2001 Time Warner began publishing special newsstand megazine issues of Life on topics such as the September 11 attacks in 2001 and the Holy Land These issues which were printed on thicker paper were more like softcover books than magazines clarification needed 1990s online presence EditLife s online presence began in the 1990s 44 as part of the Pathfinder com network The standalone Life com site was launched on March 31 2009 and closed on January 30 2012 Life com was developed by Andrew Blau and Bill Shapiro the same team who launched the weekly newspaper supplement While the archive of Life known as the Life Picture Collection was substantial they searched for a partner who could provide significant contemporary photography They approached Getty Images the world s largest licensor of photography The site a joint venture between Getty Images and Life magazine offered millions of photographs from their combined collections 45 On the 50th anniversary of the night Marilyn Monroe sang Happy Birthday to John F Kennedy Life com presented Bill Ray s iconic portrait of the actress along with other rare photos 2013 movie release Edit The film The Secret Life of Walter Mitty 2013 starring Ben Stiller and Kristen Wiig portrays Life as it transitioned from printed material toward having only an online presence 46 Life com later became a redirect to a small photo channel on Time com Life com also maintains Tumblr 47 and Twitter 48 accounts and a presence on Instagram 2004 supplement 2004 2007 EditBeginning in October 2004 Life was revived for a second time It resumed weekly publication as a free supplement to U S newspapers competing for the first time with the two industry heavyweights Parade and USA Weekend At its launch it was distributed with more than 60 newspapers with a combined circulation of approximately 12 million Among the newspapers to carry Life were the Washington Post New York Daily News Los Angeles Times Chicago Tribune Denver Post and St Louis Post Dispatch Time Inc made deals with several major newspaper publishers to carry the Life supplement including Knight Ridder and the McClatchy Company The launch of Life as a weekly newspaper supplement was conceived by Andrew Blau who served as the President of Life Bill Shapiro was the founding editor of the weekly supplement This version of Life retained its trademark logo but sported a new cover motto America s Weekend Magazine It measured 9 x 11 inches and was printed on glossy paper in full color On September 15 2006 Life was 19 pages of editorial content The editorial content contained one full page photo of actress Julia Louis Dreyfus and one three page seven photo essay of Kaiju Big Battel On March 24 2007 Time Inc announced that it would fold the magazine as of April 20 2007 although it would keep the web site 2 4 2008 Google partnership EditOn November 18 2008 Google began hosting an archive of the magazine s photographs as part of a joint effort with Life 49 Many images in this archive had never been published in the magazine 50 The archive of over six million photographs from Life is also available through Google Cultural Institute allowing for users to create collections and is accessible through Google image search The full archive of the issues of the main run 1936 1972 is available through Google Book Search 51 2016 and later special issues EditSpecial editions of Life are published on notable occasions such as a Bob Dylan edition on the occasion of his winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016 Paul at 75 in 2017 and Life Explores The Roaring 20s in 2020 52 Life is now published by the IAC s subsidiary Dotdash Meredith Today EditLife is currently owned by Dotdash Meredith which own most of former Time Inc and Meredith Corporation assets Contributors EditNotable contributors have included John Kendrick Bangs editor writer Dominic Behan writer Photojournalists Harry Benson Berry Berenson Walter Bosshard Margaret Bourke White Brian Brake Larry Burrows David Burnett David Douglas Duncan Robert Capa Henri Cartier Bresson Loomis Dean John Dominis Alfred Eisenstaedt Eliot Elisofon Bill Eppridge Andreas Feininger Ron Galella Alfred Gescheidt Bob Gomel Allan Grant Dirck Halstead Marie Hansen Bernard Hoffman Henri Huet Isaac Kitrosser Peter B Martin Hansel Mieth Lee Miller Gjon Mili Ralph Morse Carl Mydans Gordon Parks John Phillips Bill Ray Co Rentmeester Paul Schutzer Art Shay George Silk George Strock W Eugene Smith Peter Stackpole Pete Souza Edward K Thompson M editor 1949 61 editor 1961 70 John Vachon Jeff Vespa and editor Leigh Wiener Tony Zappone Europe edition John G Zimmerman Lalaine Madrigal Film critics Brad Darrach Wheeler Winston DixonFashion Howell Conant fashion photographer Sally Kirkland editor fashion Clay Felker sportswriter founder of New York magazine Photographers John Florea Henry Grossman Philippe Halsman Dorothea Lange Nina Leen Mark Shaw Andre Weinfeld portrait Edward Steichen portrait Illustrators Charles Dana Gibson Lejaren Hiller Sr Mary Hamman modern living editor Jane Howard journalist correspondent Will Lang Jr bureau chief Henry Luce publisher editor in chief Richard Edes Harrison cartographer Gerald Moore reporter Writers Normand Poirier Ronald B Scott Thomas Thompson and editor David Snell journalist writer cartoonist See also EditList of defunct American periodicalsReferences Edit Sebastian Smee In Life as in art every picture has stories to tell The Washington Post October 23 2022 p E12 a b c Time Inc to Close Life Magazine Newspaper Supplement Press release Time Warner March 26 2007 Archived from the original on January 5 2011 Keith J Kelly 23 September 2008 Time Inc And Getty Images Team Up To Renew Life Title The Huffington Post Archived from the original on 2008 09 25 Retrieved 8 October 2013 a b End comes again for Life but all its photos going on the Web USA Today New York March 26 2007 Full text of The miscellaneous reports cases decided in the inferior courts of record of the state of New York 1892 Retrieved 2012 01 15 a b c Life Dead amp Alive TIME October 19 1936 Archived from the original on January 27 2011 Old Magazine Articles www oldmagazinearticles com a b Daniel Longwell a Founder of Life Chairman of Editors Board Until 1954 Dies at 69 timesmachine nytimes com Retrieved 2021 08 28 Inc Time 1953 08 10 Life Time Inc a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a last has generic name help Life A Prospectus for a New Magazine life tumblr com Sebastian Smee In Life as in art every picture had stories to tell The Washington Post October 23 2022 p E12 Life in 2012 The Year in 12 Galleries Retrieved September 24 2015 French Alex 9 August 2013 The Very First Issues of 19 Famous Magazines Mental Floss Retrieved 12 August 2013 Pictorial to Sleep Time March 8 1937 Wainwright Loudon 1986 The Great American Magazine An Inside History of Life New York Knopf p 106 ISBN 0394459873 Dunlap David W 2016 08 11 1948 1953 Have a Few Years to Curl Up With a Book The New York Times ISSN 0362 4331 Retrieved 2021 08 28 Kale Verna Spanier Sandra 2020 Curnutt Kirk del Gizzo Suzanne eds Correspondence and the Everyday Hemingway The New Hemingway Studies Twenty First Century Critical Revisions Cambridge Cambridge University Press pp 47 62 ISBN 978 1 108 49484 7 retrieved 2021 08 28 Dora Jane Hamblin That Was the Life New York W W Norton amp Company 1977 p 161 Prentice P I 8 May 1944 A Letter From The Publisher Time p 11 Marian R McNoughten The Army Art Program PDF A Guide to the Stude and Use of Military Histor Archived from the original PDF on May 7 2011 Life and Death propaganda Psywar March 30 2011 Archived from the original on July 3 2010 Retrieved September 25 2014 Detroit is Dynamite Life August 17 1942 p 15 Retrieved November 20 2011 Mansfield Ohio News Journal August 17 1942 Letters to the Editor Life September 7 1942 p 12 Retrieved November 20 2011 The Great Life Photographers Thames and Hudson paperback ed 2009 ISBN 978 0 500 28836 8 p 294 Abels Jules Out of the Jaws of Victory New York Henry Holt and Company 1959 p 261 Life magazine is banned in Egypt after publishing an unflattering article about King Farouk South African History Online Retrieved November 27 2013 Michael Palin Michael Palin s Hemingway Adventure PBS 1999 Solomon Godeau Abigail Parsons Sarah Sarah Caitlin 2017 Photography after photography gender genre and history Duke University Press ISBN 978 0 8223 7362 9 Sandeen Eric J 1995 Picturing an exhibition the family of man and 1950s America 1st ed University of New Mexico Press pp 40 41 ISBN 978 0 8263 1558 8 Joaquim Tarinas Robert Gordon Wasson Seeking the Magic Mushroom Imaginaria Archived from the original on January 14 2012 Retrieved January 15 2012 Medicine Mushroom Madness Time June 16 1958 Archived from the original on January 31 2011 Retrieved May 7 2010 Ronk Liz December 2 2012 Life in 2012 The Year in 12 Galleries Time Archived from the original on January 4 2016 Our Eyes Have Fingers Time December 25 1964 The Rocky Mountain News November 29 2000 page 1 yax 192 Life in 1964 part 1 Yawningbread org 1964 07 27 Archived from the original on 2005 01 20 Retrieved 2012 05 18 Rubin Gayle 1998 Folsom Street The Miracle Mile FoundSF Retrieved 2016 12 28 Leather Archives amp Museum Leather History Timeline Archived from the original on 2012 04 21 Retrieved 2019 12 30 Life Magazine LSD Cover Psychedelic library org Retrieved 2010 04 20 Life magazine final issue Archived from the original on 2021 10 20 Retrieved 2021 10 20 Time Inc to cease publication of Life magazine CNN March 17 2000 David E Sumner 2010 The Magazine Century American Magazines Since 1900 Peter Lang pp 89 ISBN 978 1 4331 0493 0 Who Owns What Time Warner Corporate Timeline cjr org 2006 08 18 Archived from the original on 2006 08 18 Retrieved 2019 08 10 Life Magazine Home Page pathfinder com 1998 02 16 Archived from the original on 1998 02 16 Retrieved 2019 08 10 Life com Life com Retrieved 2012 01 15 The Secret Life of Walter Mitty waltermitty com 2013 06 28 Archived from the original on 2013 10 06 Retrieved 2013 12 29 Tumblr Life tumblr com 1940 12 13 Retrieved 2012 01 15 Twitter Twitter Retrieved 2012 01 15 Ewen MacAskill in Washington November 18 2008 Google makes Life magazine photo archives available to the public Guardian Retrieved 2012 01 15 Google gives online life to Life mag s photos Associated Press 2008 11 19 Retrieved 2008 11 19 Google Inc has opened an online photo gallery that will include millions of images from Life magazine s archives that have never been seen by the public before Life magazine Google Books 14 December 1942 Retrieved 10 December 2016 Life Explores The Roaring 20s The Decade that Changed America 2020 New York Meredith Further reading EditBissonette Devan L 2009 Between Silence and Self Interest Journalism History 35 2 62 71 doi 10 1080 00947679 2009 12062786 S2CID 140850931 Centanni Rebecca 2011 Advertising in Life Magazine and the Encouragement of Suburban Ideals Advertising amp Society Review 12 3 doi 10 1353 asr 2011 0022 S2CID 154297703 Doss Erika ed 2001 Looking at Life Magazine Essays by experts Grady John 2007 Advertising images as social indicators Depictions of blacks in LIFE magazine 1936 2000 PDF Visual Studies 22 3 211 239 doi 10 1080 14725860701657134 S2CID 35722845 Keller Emily 1996 Margaret Bourke White A Photographer s Life Twenty First Century Books ISBN 978 0 8225 4916 1 Lester Paul Smith Ron 1990 African American Photo Coverage in Life Newsweek and Time 1937 1988 PDF Journalism Quarterly 67 128 136 doi 10 1177 107769909006700119 S2CID 145442771 Moore Gerald 2016 Life Story The Education of an American Journalist ISBN 978 0 8263 5677 2 Vials Chris 2006 The Popular Front in the American Century Life Magazine Margaret Bourke White and Consumer Realism 1936 1941 American Periodicals 16 1 74 102 doi 10 1353 amp 2006 0009 JSTOR 20770947 S2CID 144607109 Wainwright Loudon The Great American Magazine An inside history of Life Random House Inc 1986 ISBN 978 0 394 45987 5 Webb Sheila M 2016 Creating Life America s Most Potent Editorial Force Journalism amp Communication Monographs 18 2 55 108 doi 10 1177 1522637916639393 S2CID 147872092 Evolution of photojournalism centered on the magazine Webb Sheila 2012 The Consumer Citizen Life Magazine s Construction of a Middle Class Lifestyle Through Consumption Scenarios Studies in Popular Culture 34 2 23 47 JSTOR 23416397 Webb Sheila 2010 Art Commentary for the Middlebrow Promoting Modernism amp Modern Art through Popular Culture How Life Magazine Brought The New into Middle Class Homes American Journalism 27 3 115 150 doi 10 1080 08821127 2010 10678155 S2CID 152990744 Webb Sheila 2006 A Pictorial Myth in the Pages of Life Small Town America as the Ideal Place Studies in Popular Culture 28 3 35 58 JSTOR 23416170 External links Edit Wikimedia Commons has media related to Life magazine Life com official site Life archives 1883 1936 at HathiTrust Digital Library Full Life magazine issues from 1936 through 1972 at Google Books Le magazine Life la chronique de l Amerique at Le Monde Life covers at CoverBrowser Magazine Data File Life 1883 Online archive Archived 2020 01 01 at the Wayback Machine Life covers the humor magazine 1883 1936 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Life magazine amp oldid 1138860127, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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