AMERICAN MASTERS: A VISION OF EMPIRE: HENRY LUCE AND TIME-LIFE'S AMERICA (TV)
Summary
One in this documentary series that explores the lives and achievements of America's most celebrated native-born and adopted artists, performers, and creative talent. This program profiles the life and career of Henry Luce, founder of Time, Inc. The production includes interviews with historians, biographers, and Luce's colleagues.
The program opens with a Nov. 11, 1956 clip of Ed Sullivan, on his weekly variety show, asking Luce about his goals for the future of Life magazine, which was celebrating its twentieth anniversary. The narrative then flashes back to Luce's childhood at a boarding school in Northern China, where, as the eldest son of missionary parents, he had established himself as a writer and editor at age thirteen. Historian Alan Brinkley notes that Luce's parents deemed him "brilliant" after he started reading at age three.
After receiving a scholarship to The Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Conn., Luce became editor of the campus literary magazine. He also met fellow student Britton Hadden, who edited the campus newspaper and would become a lifelong friend. In 1916, Luce and Hadden enrolled at Yale University, where both wrote for The Yale Daily News and joined the secret society Skull and Bones. After graduation, Luce and Hadden got jobs at The Baltimore News.
By age twenty-two, Luce and Hadden moved to New York City to start their own publication to cover national news, naming it Time magazine. The first edition was published on March 3, 1923. Geoffrey Colvin, Time, Inc. historian, details how Luce and Hadden decided to "tell news through the people in the news." Author Gore Vidal comments that the editorial style of Time was initially considered "a joke," due to its Republican-leaning, highly opinionated, and outrageously worded articles.
In late 1923, Luce married Lila Hotz, with whom he had two sons; meanwhile, Hadden remained "a man about town." When Time began to show a profit, Luce and Hadden considered expanding. However, Hadden developed a blood infection and died in 1929 at the age of thirty-one.
The following year, Luce began publishing the elaborate, business-oriented Fortune magazine, which succeeded despite the onset of the Great Depression. Luce hired Margaret Bourke-White as Fortune's staff photographer and writers like James Agee, giving the magazine a new level of prominence. Meanwhile, Time continued to thrive.
By 1935, Roy E. Larsen, Luce's new second-in-command, convinced his boss to begin producing "The March of Time" newsreels, earning considerable acclaim for his efforts. Luce subsequently met writer Clare Boothe, which according to Boothe biographer Sylvia Jukes Morris, irrevocably upended both parties. Brinkley comments that Luce's hastily made decision to divorce Hotz and marry Boothe was the most difficult decision of his life.
Following his honeymoon, Luce launched a picture-based magazine, Life, on Nov. 23, 1936. Boothe took umbrage when she wasn't allowed to edit the new publication, which became history's fastest-growing magazine. In the '40s, Luce tried to make Americans aware of the dangers posed by Adolf Hitler by assigning his wife to cover stories for Life in Belgium. Luce then made it his mission to drive Franklin Delano Roosevelt from the White House by putting his weight behind Wendell Wilkie. Following the attack at Pearl Harbor, Luce ensured that Life comprehensively covered all aspects of the war. Due to an ongoing interest in the country of his birth, Luce also showcased China and supported its Nationalist leader, Chiang Kai-shek, in his war against the Japanese.
In the '50s, Luce became the first major publisher to denounce Sen. Joseph McCarthy for his Communist witch hunts. Luce also made his sentiments known about presidential nominee Dwight D. Eisenhower. Hugh Sidey of Time.Life admits that Luce's overt backing of Eisenhower made Time and Life into "propaganda instruments." Following Eisenhower's win, Boothe was named to be U.S. ambassador to Italy. Luce subsequently became known as "the ambassador's wife."
In 1954, Luce launched another new magazine, "Sports Illustrated," which lost money for its first twelve years. Though Life magazine continued to prove popular via Luce's depiction of middle-class life in the '50s, the publication received negative reaction to its 1956 five-part series on segregation. Richard B. Stolley of Life recalls the climate suddenly seeming "downright dangerous."
According to Otto Fuerbringer of Time, John F. Kennedy openly "courted" Luce after winning the presidency, hoping that the publisher wouldn't become his enemy due to his previous support for Richard Nixon. Later in the '60s, Luce ensured that Time and Life supported an increased American presence in Vietnam. Next, the narrative details how Life magazine acquired and published split-second sequences from the Abraham Zapruder film of Kennedy's assassination.
In 1964, the sixty-five-year-old Luce ceded his position as editor-in-chief at Time, Inc. to Hedley Donovan. After a period of being "a roving elder statesman" for his magazines, Luce died at age sixty-eight on Feb. 28, 1967. The program concludes by telling how Life magazine ceased to publish in 1972, only to be replaced by Time-Life's People magazine two years later. Includes one show-sponsored commercial.
Cataloging of this program was made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
This selection from the Alan Gerry Cable Collection has been made available by the Gerry Foundation, Inc.
Details
- NETWORK: PBS
- DATE: April 28, 2004 9:00 PM
- RUNNING TIME: 1:26:47
- COLOR/B&W: Color
- CATALOG ID: 100377
- GENRE: Public affairs/Documentaries
- SUBJECT HEADING: Biography; Business
- SERIES RUN: PBS - TV series, 1986-
- COMMERCIALS:
- TV - Commercials - American Century investments
CREDITS
- Susan Lacy … Executive Producer
- Julie Sacks … Supervising Producer
- Stephen Stept … Producer, Director, Writer
- Jennie Amias … Co-Producer
- Cheryl Lynn van Grunsven … Associate Producer
- Prudence Glass … Series Producer
- Peter Nashel … Music by
- Thomas Wagner … Theme Music by
- Scott Simon … Narrator
- Harris Yulin … Voice, Henry Luce
- Joel Bernard … Voice, Young Luce
- Conor Paolo … Voice, Young Luce
- James Agee
- Margaret Bourke-White
- Alan Brinkley
- Chiang Kai-shek
- Geoffrey Colvin
- Hedley Donovan
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
- Otto Fuerbringer
- Britton Hadden
- Adolf Hitler
- Lila Hotz
- John F. Kennedy
- Roy E. Larsen
- Clare Boothe Luce
- Henry Luce
- Joseph McCarthy
- Sylvia Jukes Morris
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt
- Hugh Sidey
- Richard B. Stolley
- Ed Sullivan
- Gore Vidal
- Wendell Wilkie
- Abraham Zapruder