Intellectuals Incorporated: Politics, Art, and Ideas Inside Henry Luce's Media Empire

389 Pages·2010·6.357 MB·English

by  Robert Vanderlan

INTELLECTUALS
INCORPORATED
POLITICS AND CULTURE
IN MODERN AMERICA
Series Editors:
Glenda Gilmore, Michael Kazin, and Thomas J. Sugrue
Volumes in the series narrate and analyze political and social
change in the broadest dimensions from 1865 to the present,
including ideas about the ways people have sought and wielded
power in the public sphere and the language and institutions
of politics at all levels—local, national, and transnational.
The series is motivated by a desire to reverse the fragmentation
of modern U.S. history and to encourage synthetic perspectives
on social movements and the state, on gender, race, and labor,
and on intellectual history and popular culture.
INTELLECTUALS
INCORPORATED
Politics, Art, and Ideas
Inside Henry Luce’s Media Empire
ROBERT VANDERLAN
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS
PHILADELPHIA • OXFORD
Copyright ©  University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used
for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this
book may be reproduced in any form by any means without
written permission from the publisher.
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania -
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
         
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Vanderlan, Robert.
Intellectuals incorporated : politics, art, and ideas inside Henry
Luce’s media empire / Robert Vanderlan.
p. cm. — (Politics and culture in modern America)
ISBN: ---- (acid-free paper)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
. Luce, Henry Robinson, –—Political and social
views. . Time, inc.—History. . Periodicals—Publishing—
United States—History—th century. . Mass media—United
States—History—th century. . United States—Intellectual
life—th century. I. Title.
Z.T V 
.—dc 
For my family:
Audrey
Benjamin
William
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CONTENTS
Introduction: Intellectuals in Mass Culture America 
Chapter One: On the Road to Time Inc. 
Chapter Two: Giving the People the Truth the Time Inc. Way 
Chapter Three: The Search for a “Radical Capitalism”
at Fortune Magazine 
Chapter Four: Intellectuals Visible and Invisible 
Chapter Five: The Intellectual as Insider at Time Inc. 
Chapter Six: Journalism and Politics at Time Magazine 
Chapter Seven: Interstitial Intellectuals and the Liberal Consensus 
Epilogue: Intellectuals in Their American Century and in Ours 
Archival Sources and Abbreviations 
Notes 
Index 
Acknowledgments 
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INTRODUCTION
Intellectuals in Mass Culture America
As the big clock ticks on and on, the trap closes slowly but steadily around
George Stroud. A highly paid editor for a popular magazine, Stroud is in
trouble. He has been picked to head his company’s search for a man spotted
leaving the scene of a murder. Stroud knows that the organization’s explanation
for why the man needs to be found—something about involvement in an
international conspiracy—is a ruse. Th e real reason? Only this mysterious
stranger can connect the company’s head, press baron Earl Janoth, to the
murder of Janoth’s girlfriend. Stroud knows the organization will kill the man
when they locate him. Stroud knows all these things because he is the man he
is assigned to fi nd.
Pursued by Janoth and his assistant, Stroud walks a tightrope, appearing
to run a thoroughly effi cient manhunt while continually trying to defl ect
the organization’s attention away from its quarry. As he works privately to
prove that Janoth committed the murder, his offi cial investigation begins to
uncover the leads and bring in the witnesses that will reveal his own identity.
He feels the noose steadily tightening, until he fi nds himself trapped inside
the company’s offi ce building, as a room-by-room search begins that will
reveal his identity.
Th is is the premise of Kenneth Fearing’s 1946 novel, Th e Big Clock, one
of a host of novels appearing aft er the Second World War that focused on the
struggle of the individual for autonomy inside journalism organizations such
as Time Inc.1 All these novels centered on idealistic young men and women
who found themselves writing for mass-market magazines and who struggled
to make their work meaningful. Each featured press magnates based on
Henry Luce, owner and publisher of Time, Fortune, and Life magazines and
the March of Time newsreels. Th ese Luce fi gures controlled magazine empires
of extensive reach and power, and they were willing to distort journalism for