The Man Time Forgot: A Tale of Genius, Betrayal, and the Creation of Time Magazine
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The Man Time Forgot: A Tale of Genius, Betrayal, and the Creation of Time Magazine
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Overview
Friends, collaborators, and childhood rivals, Briton Hadden and Henry R. Luce were not yet twenty-five when they started Time, the first newsmagazine, at the outset of the Roaring Twenties. By age thirty, they were both millionaires, having laid the foundation for a media empire. But their partnership was explosive and their competition ferocious, fueled by envy as well as love. When Hadden died at the age of thirty-one, Luce began to meticulously bury the legacy of the giant he was never able to best.
In this groundbreaking, stylish, and passionate biography, Isaiah Wilner paints a fascinating portrait of Briton Hadden—genius and visionary—and presents the first full account of the birth of Time, while offering a provocative reappraisal of Henry R. Luce, arguably the most significant media figure of the twentieth century.
“A riveting narrative . . . richly detailed . . . part This Side of Paradise, part Citizen Kane.” —The Wall Street Journal
“[A] scintillating biography . . . a perceptive psychological study and cultural history, with a touch of ink-stained romanticism.” —Publishers Weekly
“With access to the Time archives and unpublished interviews and correspondence, Wilner offers all the excitement of a new media enterprise launched in the Roaring Twenties by two fascinating figures.” —Booklist
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780061747267 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins |
| Publication date: | 12/15/2023 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 384 |
| Sales rank: | 600,353 |
| File size: | 857 KB |
About the Author
Isaiah Wilner is a writer for New York magazine. He attended Yale University and was editor in chief of the Yale Daily News. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Read an Excerpt
The Man Time Forgot
A Tale of Genius, Betrayal and the Creation of Time Magazine
By Isaiah Wilner
HarperCollins
Copyright © 2006
Isaiah Wilner
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-06-050549-4
Prologue
Death Wish
In January of 1929, the creator of Time magazine lay dying in a
Brooklyn hospital bed. He was thirty years old. Briton Hadden did not
look like a man with only a few weeks to live. His family had decided
not to tell him of his dire condition. But the doctors believed he stood
almost no chance. Hadden, who had only just begun the creative
revolution that would transform journalism in the subsequent
century, had drunk and partied his way to his deathbed.
In the giddy and rebellious decade just ending, a time when
youth shattered old rules of behavior, a time that saw the emergence
of jazz, modern literature, and transcontinental flight, Hadden had
influenced popular culture in ways that would permeate the American
mindset, changing the way people thought and acted in the twentieth
century. By the age of twenty-five, he had created the first magazine
to make sense of the news for a broad national audience. By the age
of twenty-seven, he had invented a writing style that brought great
events to life, informing a wide group of Americans. By the age of
thirty, he had made his first million dollars.
"Anyone over thirty is ready for the grave," Hadden had
proclaimed during theheady years of his quick rise to influence. A
muscular man with a barrel chest and a square jaw, he looked more
like an athlete than an editor. But there were signs of eccentric
genius in his intense face: the gray-green eyes that twinkled when he
laughed, the pencil-thin mustache that drew attention to a
mischievous smile. He had lived fast all the way, dancing to
"Hindustan" at the Plaza, hosting outrageous cocktail hours that
mixed ministers with call girls, shocking friends by showing up for
parties in an asbestos suit and stamping out cigarettes on the arm of
his jacket.
In a hurry to achieve all he had dreamed, Hadden had rushed
about with his coat collar up, chewing gum, chain-smoking, and
swinging his cane. When he talked, he often barked. When he liked a
joke, his raucous laugh shot through the room as if fired from a
machine gun. Writers called him "The Terrible-Tempered Mr. Bang"
because he growled and stamped his feet when they used a word he
didn't like, but it was all part of his act-a beautiful insane act that
swept people up within his orbit and filled them with the magic of his
grand persona. People loved Hadden; they admired him. The
dramatist Thornton Wilder called him "a prince."
Now almost thirty-one, Hadden was wasting away of an unknown
ailment. Doctors had diagnosed him with an infection of
streptococcus, and they guessed that the bacteria had spread
through his bloodstream to reach his heart. Hadden, a lover of
animals, believed he had contracted the illness by scooping up a
wandering tomcat and taking it home to feed it a bowl of milk, only
to be attacked and scratched. Now Hadden was losing strength.
Without penicillin, his doctors were all but helpless, and they were
beginning to consider desperate measures-a direct infusion of the
antiseptic Mercurochrome, perhaps, or a massive series of blood
transfusions.
In this dark hour, the most frequent visitor to Hadden's bedside,
aside from his devoted mother, was a tall, thin man with slightly
hooded eyes framed by a pair of thick, bushy eyebrows, a receding
line of straw-colored hair, and an open, angelic face. Equally as
attractive as Hadden, he also looked his diametric opposite. Hadden's
business partner, Henry R. Luce, was penetrating where Hadden
was witty, analytical where Hadden was creative, organized and
careful where Hadden was spontaneous and reckless. They had been
drawn together as only opposites can be almost since the moment
they had met. Their rivalry was legend, and so was their friendship.
Conjoined by mutual brilliance, a passion for the news, and the
love for a good fight, they had competed ardently and at times bitterly
for fifteen years. They had drawn intellectual sustenance from each
other. At Yale, in the secret society of Skull and Bones, their fellow
club mates had drawn a picture of them on horseback, dueling with
lances, because each was the greater warrior for facing the other.
During the Great War, at a dusty training camp in South Carolina,
they had brainstormed the idea that would shape their lives and those
of millions more. Believing people nationwide were outrageously
ignorant, they resolved to create a magazine that would make sense
of the news for the average American. A few years later, they quit
their jobs to launch Time, the first newsmagazine. Publishers predicted
failure, but within a few years the awkward upstart was growing
faster than all of its competitors.
Hadden and Luce launched their magazine in a time when a
young nation stood open to the influence of adventurers and
iconoclasts, people with new ideas of how the world should be run
and the courage, ambition, and drive to make their dreams reality. It
was Hadden, Time's creative genius and editor, who would shape the
style in which Americans think about and tell the news. In doing so,
he set the foundation for the newspaper and magazine chains, radio
and television networks, cable stations and Internet sites that have
come to occupy a prominent place in the national culture.
Hadden told the news just as he viewed it-as a grand and comic
epic spectacle. He hooked readers on the news and sold them on its
importance by flavoring the facts with color and detail, and by
painting vivid portraits of the people who made headlines. Hadden's
entertaining writing style proved so popular that it quickly spawned
imitators. As the rest of the media took up Hadden's style of
narrative reporting, journalists transformed themselves from mere
recorders into storytellers. The burgeoning national news media
acquired a grip on the American imagination and a power
unprecedented in public life.
That achievement alone would qualify Hadden as one of the few
seminal publishers in American history. But that was not all Hadden
did. Within a year of printing the first issue of Time, he created the
first radio quiz show. Three years after that, he began publishing a
trade magazine about advertising that took business reporting in a
new direction. In the last year of his life, he dreamed up the idea for
a magazine devoted exclusively to sports, which later became Sports
Illustrated. Sniffling with the first hints of illness, he talked excitedly
of his idea for a new picture magazine, which he hoped to call Life.
Hadden's ideas were so influential that a single page from one
notebook found among his things after his death would serve as a
virtual road map for the next half-century of the company he
founded.
Luce called Hadden an "original" and was deeply influenced by his
ideas. Throughout their many battles, whether for the editorship of the
school paper or for creative control of Time, it was Hadden who won.
Luce, who couldn't stand to lose, had been forced to content himself
with second place for more than a decade. He had worked as
Hadden's deputy in both prep school and college. During the founding
of Time Incorporated, Hadden had acted more "on the originality side,"
as one friend put it, while Luce had served as the creative "brake."
Luce had continued to live in Hadden's shadow ever since. For years,
when Luce walked in the door of the New York Yale Club, the waiters
would greet him as "Mr. Hadden," because Luce ate there on Hadden's
account.
But Luce was a dogged competitor, capable of acquiring new
talents, and each time they raced Luce finished a hair closer. In
recent years, Luce had pressed Hadden for control of the company.
Offended by Luce's desire for power, Hadden had been further
depressed by a string of romantic failures. In his final few years, he
had turned to the bottle, driven drunk through town, picked fights in
speakeasies, and spent nights in jail. Finally it seemed that the
brighter of two brilliant candles was about to flicker out. "It's like a
race," Hadden had once said of their strange friendship. "No matter
how hard I run, Luce is always there." Now Luce was at Hadden's
deathbed, ready to slog out the final grueling lap of their rivalry.
For several months Luce had been developing a plan to publish
the company's second major product-a business magazine to be
called Fortune. Hadden was opposed. Believing the business world to
be vapid and morally bankrupt, he had devoted the last few years to
lampooning businessmen in print, even when they happened to be
Time's own advertisers. Luce was adamant. He kept coming to
Hadden's bedside, discussing draft articles and mock-ups. Hadden,
true to form, had been drawn into a series of lengthy arguments. Day
after day, Hadden and Luce had yelled at each other-so loudly that
Hadden's nurse could hear them from behind the closed door.
From the perspective of Luce and others at the company, Hadden
was out of his head. "He's a sick man," Hadden's cousin told Luce. An
executive later reflected, "He was too sick to know and comprehend."
Luce was going ahead without Hadden; it wasn't necessary to fill him
in on every detail. But there Luce was at Hadden's bedside,
insistently pressing his case. Luce would stay for an entire hour, and
when he finally got up to leave Hadden would be visibly exhausted.
The doctors, believing Hadden was wasting his precious energies,
came to fear the moment of Luce's arrival. But Luce continued to
visit, and Hadden's condition continued to deteriorate.
As Hadden lay near death, too weak to speak above a whisper,
he and Luce had their decisive conversation. No one else would ever
know what transpired that January day in that Brooklyn hospital
room. It was only known that Luce came by and sat behind a closed
door. But the story that later circulated among Time's employees was
that Luce brought up the major financial matter that lay between
Time's young founders. Together, Hadden and Luce held slightly
more than half of the voting stock in Time Incorporated-just
enough, together, to maintain control. Singly, however, each of them
owned less than 30 percent of the voting stock. If Hadden died, Luce
could lose control of the company-unless somehow he got his hands
on Hadden's stock.
In that moment it was nearly certain that Hadden would die, and
that he would die holding the shares his successor desperately
needed to keep control of Time. Given his ambitions, Luce would
have been foolish not to ask for those shares. One rumor passed
along by Luce's detractors was that he broached the question as
Hadden lay dying-an awkward matter that would have abruptly
shocked Hadden with the full gravity of his rapidly deteriorating
condition. Luce, of course, told a different story. He claimed he did
not ask Hadden for his shares; in fact, there was never any "open
recognition" between them that Hadden was dying. But if this were
the case, it would be difficult to explain what happened next.
A few days later, Hadden took a decisive step. He asked his
roommate, a young lawyer named William J. Carr, to draw up a will.
Carr, who didn't have much experience with estates, took out a piece
of paper and simply wrote, "I, Briton Hadden, declare this to be my
last will and testament." He must have strained to hear his friend,
who was speaking so quietly by then that he could hardly express his
desires at all. Clinging to life but fast approaching death, Hadden
forbade his family from selling his stock in Time Inc. for forty-nine
years. When Carr handed Hadden the will, he felt too weak to sign
his name, but he managed to guide his hand to the line. There
Hadden scrawled an "X." In settling his estate, Hadden prevented
Luce from gaining immediate control of the company they had
founded together.
Hadden's heart gave out one month later-six years, almost to
the hour, since he had sent the first copy of Time to press. It was
four A.M. in New York, three A.M. in Chicago, where the latest issue
rolled off the press, too soon to mention Hadden's passing. The next
week, a short notice led off Time's National Affairs section: "Creation
of his genius and heir to his qualities, Time attempts neither
biography nor eulogy of Briton Hadden. But there will be privately
printed, within the year, a book about him which will be sent to all
who ask."
That book was not printed for more than twenty years. Within a
week, Luce removed Hadden's name from the masthead of the
magazine. Hadden's name would not return until after Luce's death
nearly forty years later. Within a year, Luce violated Hadden's death
wish by negotiating a deal with his bereaved family to purchase
Hadden's shares in Time Inc. at a bargain-basement price. Freed
from Hadden's shadow, Luce quickly grew into his talents, becoming
the most influential magazine publisher in history and for decades the
most powerful media mogul in America. Employing his editor's post
as a lectern, Luce became the missionary of the media, an imperialist
who consistently urged Americans to spread democracy and
capitalism throughout the globe.
As he traveled the world, delivering hundreds of speeches about
everything from his childhood in China to his years at Yale, Luce
repeatedly claimed credit for Hadden's ideas. In all of his talks before
a public audience, Luce mentioned Hadden's name only a handful of
times. If asked to discuss Hadden, Luce would downplay his partner's
role, saying Hadden died just as Time was "beginning to see the light."
When a friend who deeply missed Hadden gently brought him up in
conversation, Luce sniffed, "Time was his monument, and he done it."
By the time Luce died in 1967, Hadden was nothing but a faint
memory.
Now, nearly eighty years after his untimely death, Hadden is all
but erased from history. One recent book described him as a
"footnote" in the faded past of the company he brought to life. Luce's
face has been printed on a postage stamp and his achievements
have been chronicled in multiple biographies, while Hadden has been
the subject of a single book, commissioned by Luce. Long out of
print, it was derided by the writer's own brother as an "affront to the
memory of Briton." Considering the magnitude of Hadden's
achievements, it seems natural to ask why he has all but vanished
from the historical record.
For more than half a century, the answer to this question has
been kept under lock and key in the archives of the company Hadden
and Luce founded together. Recently I was permitted to view these
records. Suddenly a world long hidden from view lay bare, revealing
the extraordinary story of a tortured friendship that ignited a media
revolution. The following narrative describes how two young men
transformed the way we make sense of the world around us. It is the
story of perfect opposites who formed an epic partnership, of a
rivalry so ferocious as to create the best of friends. It begins with
their birth, on opposite sides of the world, at the dawn of the
twentieth century.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Man Time Forgot
by Isaiah Wilner
Copyright © 2006 by Isaiah Wilner.
Excerpted by permission.
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