The New Yorker

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The New Yorker

The first issue of the New Yorker magazine arrived on newsstands in February of 1925. The brainchild of an unlikely genius named Harold Ross, the periodical weathered a rocky start but soon established itself as a bastion of literacy, wit, and sophistication. A mixture of fact, fiction, poetry, and cartoons, the New Yorker set high standards in all four fields, despite the fact that founder/editor Ross himself had never completed high school. The first writers to set the tone for the magazine were E. B. White and James Thurber. Their sly, elegant wordplay enabled Ross to achieve his vision of a magazine that—unlike the popular Saturday Evening Post —would "not be (edited) for the old lady in Dubuque." But in fact, the magazine, with its deliberately cosmopolitan focus, found unexpectedly wide favor across the country. Over the next decades, stories and cartoons from the New Yorker became the basis for successful plays, films, and television series, from Clarence Day's Life with Father and Sally Benson's Meet Me in St. Louis to Thurber's The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and (Charles) Addams' Family. Among the leading literary lights who contributed humor and serious fiction to the New Yorker were Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker, S. J. Perelman, Ring Lardner, Eudora Welty, John Cheever, John O'Hara, Truman Capote, and Woody Allen. Upon the death of Ross in the 1950s, William Shawn took over the editorship with equal success—until his abrupt dismissal in 1987, the result of the magazine's change in ownership. In later years, the periodical has undergone some rough periods, but maintains the status of its "snob appeal." It may have smacked of hubris when the New Yorker courted new subscribers by touting itself as "The best magazine that ever was," but the people at the periodical knew that, in the eyes of many long-time readers, the hubris was completely justified.

Harold Ross was born in Aspen, Colorado, in 1892. The family later moved to Salt Lake City, where Ross dropped out of high school in his sophomore year. After itinerant work on over a score of newspapers, Ross enlisted in the army upon America's entry into World War I. Once overseas, young Ross went A.W.O.L. to Paris, where he soon got himself hired onto the staff of the army's new journal for soldiers, Stars & Stripes. Before long, he was running the paper and turning it into a great success. After the armistice, the civilian Ross ended up in Manhattan, where old army buddy Alexander Woollcott invited him to join the legendary Algonquin Round Table, a daily gathering of writers and wits at the hotel of that name, whose avowed purpose was to drink, play cards, and best each other at bons mots (not necessarily in that order). The wit of the Algonquin crowd—which included, among others, Benchley, Parker, Lardner, George S. Kaufman, and Edna Ferber—provided Ross with much of the inspiration to start a new magazine. And it was a late-comer into the Round Table, bakery heir Raul Fleischmann, who would provide Ross with the wherewithal that enabled him to realize his dream. Journalist Gigi Mahon has described the odd couple thusly: "Fleischmann was calm and diplomatic, Ross was crude and obstreperous…. If one tried to guess which was the baker and which the editor, one would likely have got it wrong."

Their differences notwithstanding, the two men formed F-R Publishing Corp., for Fleischmann-Ross. The majority of the money was Fleischmann's and the concept for the magazine was all Ross'—public relations man John Peter Toohey christened it the New Yorker and artist Rea Irvin created the monocled dandy regarding a butterfly which graced the cover of the first issue, and the cover of almost every subsequent anniversary issue; eventually the dandy was given a name, Eustace Tilley. Prior to publication, Ross had set down his vision for the New Yorker in a position paper, describing the contents and standards of excellence with which he planned to imbue his magazine. Eventually, as Mahon puts it, "The New Yorker could boast the rarest of achievements: It became exactly what it set out to be."

But that first step out of the gate was a stumble. The magazine's tone was arch and its humor was not funny. Fortunately, Fleischmann kept putting money into the enterprise long enough for the New Yorker to find its unique voice and its adoring readership. With the valuable editorial assistance of Katherine Angell (later Mrs. E. B. White), Ross' magazine began to resemble the one he had always had in mind. Readers started to look forward to such features as the lighthearted "Talk of the Town" and the insightful "Profiles" of prominent people. The first sell-out issue was the result of a piece by Ellin MacKay (later Mrs. Irving Berlin), "Why We Go to Cabarets: A Post Debutante Explains." Although the popular article contrasted the gay nightlife at cabarets with the stuffy doings at debutante balls, the New Yorker itself cultivated a definite "snob appeal," courting advertisements from only the poshest and ritziest of Manhattan emporiums. Because his magazine was just starting out, Ross could not afford to publish articles and stories by famous writers. Consequently, he welcomed new talent, and the magazine and its writers grew famous together. E. B. White, who later would pen the children's classic, Charlotte's Web, contributed much to the early success of the New Yorker by editing the "Talk of the Town" column and writing its "Notes and Comments" preface. Another prime White contribution to the magazine was his encouragement and support of his friend, James Thurber, who soon became known not only for his humorous stories and reminiscences but also for his uniquely artless style of cartooning (a famous Thurber cartoon showed a seal leaning against the headboard of a couple's bed—do not ask why—and the wife saying to the husband, "All right, have it your way. You heard a seal bark!"). Other regular New Yorker contributors included Ross' friend Alexander Woollcott (the "Shouts and Murmurs" column), Woolcott Gibbs (whose brilliant parody of rival Time magazine included the famous line, "Backward ran sentences until reeled the mind"), Alva Johnston, author of many of the well-received "Profiles," and Clifton Fadiman and Lewis Mumford, who wrote about books and art respectively.

For all the excellence of its prose, the New Yorker took a special pride of place among periodicals for its presentation of excellent cartoons—although not an artist, White supplied the caption for a classic: A mother at the dinner table says to her child, "It's broccoli, dear." The kid replies, "I say it's spinach and I say the hell with it." Peter Arno was one noted cartoonist whose gags usually poked fun at the upscale businessmen and matrons of Manhattan—a distinguished-looking gentleman, kneeling at his bedside in prayer: "Harrison J.Endicott speaking." The characters created by Charles Addams, on the other hand, inhabited a world all his own, a macabre, fantastic pastiche of horror-movie haunted house and twisted suburbia. Decades later, his prime creations would find fame on television—and, still later, in films—as The Addams Family.

The New Yorker was eventually one of the most successful magazines in the country—and, despite its carefully crafted cosmopolitan image, 80 percent of its readership lived well outside the greater Manhattan area. With the coming of World War II, the periodical inevitably grew more sober in its content, and the New Yorker, like a lot of less prominent publications, suffered from wartime paper shortages. On the other hand, Harold (Stars & Stripes) Ross produced a stripped-down "pony" edition of the New Yorker for the armed forces which ended up outselling the original—and, more importantly, gaining new readers who would make the postwar New Yorker more successful than ever. Ever since its inception, Fleischmann had been gaining more financial control over the New Yorker, but there was no question that in matters editorial Ross was still the god of the magazine. There was something of the stumblebum about the profane Ross, who once asked of a writer, "Was Moby Dick the whale or the captain?" But there was no denying his knack for hiring exceptional talent and then worrying, fretting, questioning, and in general pushing it to the limits of its capability. In his affectionate memoir, The Years with Ross, Thurber relates that journalist/financier John Duncan Miller had this impression upon meeting the legendary figure: "During the first half hour, I felt that Ross was the last man in the world who could edit the New Yorker. I left there realizing that nobody else in the world could."

Inevitably, however, somebody else had to. Harold Ross died in December of 1951, and the following month it was announced that his successor would be William Shawn. A member of the editorial staff since 1933, it had been Shawn who convinced Ross to devote an entire 1946 issue of the magazine to John Hersey's devastating chronicle, Hiroshima. Whereas Ross had been blustery, Shawn was quiet, well-spoken, and shy—but his rule was every bit as absolute as his predecessor's. The years with Shawn at the helm would alter the New Yorker in subtle ways—fewer humorous covers, a tendency toward more serious and political literature—and yet bring the magazine continued success. By the mid-1950s, although ranking seventy-second of all magazines in circulation, the New Yorker was running third in terms of advertising pages. As Mahon points out in The Last Days of the "New Yorker," "(The magazine) was … virtually alone in catering to people with intelligence and wealth. It was … the only literary publication that consistently made money." The New Yorker continually proved that seriousness of purpose was not inconsistent with commerce. It was the New Yorker that published such ground-breaking works as Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, marking the beginning of the environmental movement, James Baldwin's impassioned examination of race relations, The Fire Next Time, and Truman Capote's "fact-novel" about murder, In Cold Blood. A serious writer about the often disparaged topic of movies was the New Yorker's controversial critic, Pauline Kael, who came to dominate her field. Outstanding as a sports writer was the New Yorker's Roger Angell.

The institution of the New Yorker, commensurate with its high-tone image, has always had about it an air of insularity; since the magazine's first days with Ross, the masthead has never listed the editor's name. Within that special enclave, there has been fostered a family feeling, frequently reinforced by marriages between personnel. And, as with most families, there have been squabbles. A line of demarcation was drawn between the editorial and business branches so clearly that they might almost have been working for two different magazines; it was understood that the latter was not to interfere in the doings of the former. Business had a decisive impact on editorial in the late 1980s, however, when the New Yorker was purchased by media emperor S. I. Newhouse and his Conde Nast corporation. Within a year, William Shawn was forced into retirement, an action which had a singularly demoralizing effect on the New Yorker family. For a brief time, Tina Brown of Vanity Fair magazine was brought in to edit the New Yorker, but she departed Manhattan for Hollywood in the late 1990s. The magazine may never see another long-running editorial dynasty such as Ross' or Shawn's, but it still is a going concern, its reputation a bit battered, perhaps, but still largely intact, and still an influential component of contemporary culture—television's Seinfeld series had an episode in which "Elaine" gets herself hired onto the New Yorker staff, purely because she does not get the joke in one of the cartoons, and wishes to confront the editor. Many readers will continue to regard it as "the best magazine that ever was," whether or not it remains the best magazine that is.

—Preston Neal Jones