Table Of Content

TRUE STORY T R U E S TO RY How a Pulp Empire Remade Mass Media SHANON FITZPATRICK HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, Massachusetts & London, England 2022 Copyright © 2022 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Publication of this book has been supported through the generous provisions of the Maurice and Lula Bradley Smith Memorial Fund First printing Cover art: Image from the cover of True Story November1929 9780674275676 (EPUB) 9780674275669 (PDF) thelibraryofcongresshascatalogedtheprintededitionasfollows: Names: Fitzpatrick, Shanon, author. Title: True story : how a pulp empire remade mass media / Shanon Fitzpatrick. Description: Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021053974 | ISBN 9780674268012 (cloth) Subjects: LCSH: Macfadden, Bernarr, 1868–1955. | Sensationalism in journalism—United States—History—20th century. | Mass media—United States—History—20th century. | Pulp literature, American—History—20th century. | Health in mass media—History—20th century. | Physical fitness—United States—History—20th century. Classification: LCC PN4784.S4 F58 2022 | DDC 070.5092 [B]—dc23/eng/20220217 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021053974 Dedicated to Ruthann Meyer, Emily Rosenberg, and Timothy Merlis Contents Introduction 1 1. Decades of Fitness in the Dynamic Midwest 14 2. The Transatlantic Birth of the Physical Culture Publishing Company 38 3. Circulating Physiques in an Age of Imperialism and Migration 61 4. Building Up the Nation during the First World War 88 5. The Sensational Rise of Macfadden Publications Inc. 114 6. The Great Depression and the Macfadden Market 147 7. International Issues, Foreign Editions, and the Global Popular 184 8. From the World of Tomorrow to the American Century 214 Epilogue: Pulp Empire Today 247 Abbreviations 255 Notes 257 Acknowledgments 297 Index 299 Introduction On a breezy august afternoon in 1952, high above Orly Field outside Paris, a wiry old man wearing red flannel pajamas hurled himself out of a plane. Hundreds of feet below, news crews, police guards, curious factory workers, and a bevy of women in bikinis craned their necks to watch. A few tense seconds passed; then, right on time, a para- chute billowed open. The skydiver’s plan was to descend gently into the river Seine, where the bathing beauties would fish him out, but strong winds blew him fifty yards off course. Skirting elm trees and power lines, he crash-landed in a dusty watermelon patch, to which the reporters rushed to find him unscathed. The following day, newspapers in France and the United States described the unusual way the American fitness en- trepreneur and former publishing mogul Bernarr Macfadden had cele- brated his eighty-fourth birthday.1 If you have never heard of Macfadden, it is not your fault. But to be fair, it is not his fault either. When the sprightly octogenarian made his Paris jump, it was just the latest episode in a long career spent courting fame through dramatic acts of self-promotion and bodily spectacle. In fact, the man had once released three different illustrated biographies about himself on the same day, all telling the remarkable story of how a poor and sickly orphan pulled himself up by his bootstraps to become a legendary body- builder, health guru, writer, editor, and magazine publisher. Even more re- markably, much of this story was true.