newspaper;” but they finally settled on a term of their own invention: “news-magazine.” (The hyphen disappeared in the late 1920s.) It reflected Hadden’s delight in creating new compound words and phrases. 33
At first they worked virtually alone. Culbert Sudler, their Yale classmate and close friend, joined the staff early on and seemed briefly to be a third and almost equal partner. (He even lived for a time with the Luce family in Morningside Heights.) He was energetic, enthusiastic, and good at using his contacts to identify potential investors. But he was never able fully to commit himself to the venture, partly because of pressure from his family to find a more secure job, and partly because he simply could not keep up with Harry and Brit. “Cully is unfortunately not equal to the ‘present crisis,’ as has been shown during the past two weeks,” Harry wrote during one of the many discouraging moments of their first months in New York. In August, Sudler left to take a publishing job with Doubleday Page. Later, Luce and Hadden tried to recruit their friend Walter Millis, who had remained behind at the
Baltimore News
when they moved to New York. Millis, Luce believed, “had thebest mind in Yale 1920” and was destined to be their “star writer.” But he, too, wavered at the prospect of committing himself to so uncertain a venture; and after changing his mind several times, decided finally to stay in Baltimore after the newspaper offered him a raise—“an affair doing him very little credit,” Harry complained angrily. “His defection simply means that more still depends upon the Bratch & me.” 34
Gradually they moved beyond the circle of their Yale contemporaries—but not far beyond. The early staff of the magazine was drawn entirely from their own generation; almost none of their significant colleagues was older than they were. And it was also drawn almost entirely from their own social world—recent graduates of Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Oxford, and Columbia, all of them, unsurprisingly, white male Protestants. “We didn’t hardly know anybody else,” Luce plaintively explained years later. For the most part Hadden and Luce did not question, or even really notice, what was in fact one of the most distinctive characteristics of their enterprise—its striking homogeneity. It seemed even less remarkable to them that the staff was virtually all male. They hired a few young women as secretaries (“stenos,” they called them), and Luce, at least, flirted at times with bringing in talented social acquaintances to do substantive work on the magazine—on the assumption that such women were likely bored and in need of something interesting to do. He wrote Lila at one point to see if one of her Chicago friends, then living in New York, might be interested in writing the music column for the magazine. And he once asked Lila herself if she would like to help with the religion section. Nothing came of either idea. Hadden and Luce had lived virtually their entire previous lives in all-male institutions—Chefoo (for Harry), Hotchkiss, Yale, the army, newspaper staffs. It rarely occurred to them, or to most other male professionals of their time, to question the absence of women from their offices. 35
Their first important recruit after Sudler was Manfred Gottfried, an aspiring novelist, who had heard about the Luce-Hadden venture through the rumor mill at Yale, where he was a senior. He showed up one day in February at the office on East Seventeenth Street to find Harry and Brit alone in the room, sitting at matching, end-to-end desks under the window, an iron kettle between them to catch cigarette butts. Luce spoke energetically about their plans and grilled Gottfried about his modest experiences. Hadden, who was oddly shy with strangers, remained unsettlingly silent. A few days later Harry traveled up to New Haven to offer Gottfried the job, even if in a typically distracted way. Heasked Gottfried to
At first they worked virtually alone. Culbert Sudler, their Yale classmate and close friend, joined the staff early on and seemed briefly to be a third and almost equal partner. (He even lived for a time with the Luce family in Morningside Heights.) He was energetic, enthusiastic, and good at using his contacts to identify potential investors. But he was never able fully to commit himself to the venture, partly because of pressure from his family to find a more secure job, and partly because he simply could not keep up with Harry and Brit. “Cully is unfortunately not equal to the ‘present crisis,’ as has been shown during the past two weeks,” Harry wrote during one of the many discouraging moments of their first months in New York. In August, Sudler left to take a publishing job with Doubleday Page. Later, Luce and Hadden tried to recruit their friend Walter Millis, who had remained behind at the
Baltimore News
when they moved to New York. Millis, Luce believed, “had thebest mind in Yale 1920” and was destined to be their “star writer.” But he, too, wavered at the prospect of committing himself to so uncertain a venture; and after changing his mind several times, decided finally to stay in Baltimore after the newspaper offered him a raise—“an affair doing him very little credit,” Harry complained angrily. “His defection simply means that more still depends upon the Bratch & me.” 34
Gradually they moved beyond the circle of their Yale contemporaries—but not far beyond. The early staff of the magazine was drawn entirely from their own generation; almost none of their significant colleagues was older than they were. And it was also drawn almost entirely from their own social world—recent graduates of Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Oxford, and Columbia, all of them, unsurprisingly, white male Protestants. “We didn’t hardly know anybody else,” Luce plaintively explained years later. For the most part Hadden and Luce did not question, or even really notice, what was in fact one of the most distinctive characteristics of their enterprise—its striking homogeneity. It seemed even less remarkable to them that the staff was virtually all male. They hired a few young women as secretaries (“stenos,” they called them), and Luce, at least, flirted at times with bringing in talented social acquaintances to do substantive work on the magazine—on the assumption that such women were likely bored and in need of something interesting to do. He wrote Lila at one point to see if one of her Chicago friends, then living in New York, might be interested in writing the music column for the magazine. And he once asked Lila herself if she would like to help with the religion section. Nothing came of either idea. Hadden and Luce had lived virtually their entire previous lives in all-male institutions—Chefoo (for Harry), Hotchkiss, Yale, the army, newspaper staffs. It rarely occurred to them, or to most other male professionals of their time, to question the absence of women from their offices. 35
Their first important recruit after Sudler was Manfred Gottfried, an aspiring novelist, who had heard about the Luce-Hadden venture through the rumor mill at Yale, where he was a senior. He showed up one day in February at the office on East Seventeenth Street to find Harry and Brit alone in the room, sitting at matching, end-to-end desks under the window, an iron kettle between them to catch cigarette butts. Luce spoke energetically about their plans and grilled Gottfried about his modest experiences. Hadden, who was oddly shy with strangers, remained unsettlingly silent. A few days later Harry traveled up to New Haven to offer Gottfried the job, even if in a typically distracted way. Heasked Gottfried to
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