Henry Robinson Luce (April 3, 1898 – February 28, 1967) was an American magazine magnate who founded ''
Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and event (philosophy), events that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various me ...
'', ''
Life
Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for growth, reaction to stimuli, metabolism, energy ...
'', ''
Fortune
Fortune may refer to:
General
* Fortuna or Fortune, the Roman goddess of luck
* Luck
* Wealth
* Fortune, a prediction made in fortune-telling
* Fortune, in a fortune cookie
Arts and entertainment Film and television
* ''The Fortune'' (1931 film) ...
'', and ''
Sports Illustrated
''Sports Illustrated'' (''SI'') is an American sports magazine first published in August 1954. Founded by Stuart Scheftel, it was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the National Magazine Award for General Excellence tw ...
'' magazine. He has been called "the most influential private citizen in the America of his day".
Born in
Shandong
Shandong ( , ; ; Chinese postal romanization, alternately romanized as Shantung) is a coastal Provinces of China, province of the China, People's Republic of China and is part of the East China region.
Shandong has played a major role in His ...
, China, to
Presbyterian
Presbyterianism is a part of the Reformed tradition within Protestantism that broke from the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland by John Knox, who was a priest at St. Giles Cathedral (Church of Scotland). Presbyterian churches derive their n ...
parents, Luce moved to the US at the age of 15 and later attended
Yale College
Yale College is the undergraduate college of Yale University. Founded in 1701, it is the original school of the university. Although other Yale schools were founded as early as 1810, all of Yale was officially known as Yale College until 1887, ...
. He launched and closely supervised a stable of magazines that transformed journalism and the reading habits of millions of Americans. ''Time'' summarized and interpreted the week's news; ''Life'' was a picture magazine of politics, culture, and society that dominated American visual perceptions in the era before television; ''Fortune'' reported on national and international business; and ''
Sports Illustrated
''Sports Illustrated'' (''SI'') is an American sports magazine first published in August 1954. Founded by Stuart Scheftel, it was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the National Magazine Award for General Excellence tw ...
'' explored the world of sports. Counting his
radio projects and newsreels, Luce created the first multimedia corporation. He envisaged that the United States would achieve world hegemony, and in 1941 he declared the 20th century would be the "
American Century
The American Century is a characterization of the period since the middle of the 20th century as being largely dominated by the United States in political, economic, and cultural terms. It is comparable to the description of the period 1815–1 ...
".
Early life
Luce was born in Tengchow (now
Penglai),
Shandong
Shandong ( , ; ; Chinese postal romanization, alternately romanized as Shantung) is a coastal Provinces of China, province of the China, People's Republic of China and is part of the East China region.
Shandong has played a major role in His ...
,
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...
, on April 3, 1898, the son of Elizabeth Root Luce and
Henry Winters Luce, who was a
Presbyterian
Presbyterianism is a part of the Reformed tradition within Protestantism that broke from the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland by John Knox, who was a priest at St. Giles Cathedral (Church of Scotland). Presbyterian churches derive their n ...
missionary.
Education
At 15, he was sent to the US to attend the
Hotchkiss School in Connecticut, where he tried hard to overcome his stuttering. As a scholarship student he was isolated from the upper-class boys. He was subsidized by an elderly Chicago heiress,
Nancy Fowler McCormick, who favored sons of missionaries. Applying himself to study, Luce quickly became the top student. He was especially strong in languages—he studied Greek, Latin, French and German—and already knew Chinese. He edited the ''Hotchkiss Literary Monthly''. There, he first met
Briton Hadden; they became best friends.
Hotchkiss was a feeder prep school for Yale. After a summer working on a Springfield newspaper, Luce matriculated in New Haven in fall 1916. He was the top freshman academically, but grades did not confer as much prestige as a staff role on the ''Yale Daily News''. Only four freshmen were chosen by the ''News''; they included Luce and Hadden. When the U.S. entered the World War in 1917, a third of the students joined the army; the rest including Luce, joined ROTC and attended class in uniform. Luce also joined Alpha Delta, a minor fraternity. His grades remained top-level, and every spare hour was devoted to newspaper work. Luce and Hadden were the two outstanding journalists; when the vote came in January 1918 for chairmanship of the ''News'' Hadden beat Luce by one vote. Luce instead became managing editor and the two worked closely together and started planning their future. Meanwhile, the Army assigned them as ROTC leaders to train new recruits. The war ended before either was commissioned. They returned to campus in January 1919 as juniors. In May they were both tapped for the highly prestigious secret society
Skull and Bones. He tried but failed to get a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford, but he was admitted and paid his way. He spent the year travelling Europe, observing the postwar scene closely. He returned to the United States to take a newspaper job in Chicago as a junior reporter.
Magazines
Nightly discussions of the concept of a news magazine led Luce and Hadden, both age 23, to quit their jobs in 1922. Later that same year, they partnered with
Robert Livingston Johnson and another Yale classmate to form Time Inc.
Luce, supported by Editor-in-Chief
T. S. Matthews
Thomas Stanley Matthews (January 16, 1901 – January 4, 1991) was an American magazine editor, journalist, and writer. He served as editor of ''Time'' magazine from 1949 to 1953.
Background
Thomas Stanley Matthews was born on January 16, 1901 ...
, appointed
Whittaker Chambers
Whittaker Chambers (born Jay Vivian Chambers; April 1, 1901 – July 9, 1961) was an American writer-editor, who, after early years as a Workers Party of America, Communist Party member (1925) and Soviet Union, Soviet spy (1932–1938), defe ...
as acting Foreign News editor in 1944, despite the feuds that Chambers had with reporters in the field.
Luce, who remained editor-in-chief of all his publications until 1964, maintained a position as an influential member of the
Republican Party
Republican Party is a name used by many political parties around the world, though the term most commonly refers to the United States' Republican Party.
Republican Party may also refer to:
Africa
* Republican Party (Liberia)
*Republican Party ...
.
["Henry R. Luce: End of a Pilgrimage"]
''Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and event (philosophy), events that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various me ...
''. March 10, 1967 An instrumental figure behind the so-called "
China Lobby
In American politics, the China lobby consisted of advocacy groups calling for American support for the Republic of China during the period from the 1930s until US recognition of the People's Republic of China in 1979, and then calling for cl ...
", he played a large role in steering American foreign policy and popular sentiment in favor of
Kuomintang
The Kuomintang (KMT), also referred to as the Guomindang (GMD), the Nationalist Party of China (NPC) or the Chinese Nationalist Party (CNP), is a major political party in the Republic of China, initially on the Chinese mainland and in Ta ...
leader
Chiang Kai-shek and his wife,
Soong Mei-ling, in their war against the Japanese. (The Chiangs appeared in the cover of ''Time'' eleven times between 1927 and 1955.)
Luce penned a famous editorial in ''Life'' magazine in 1941, called "
The American Century", which defined the role of U.S. foreign policy for the remainder of the 20th century (and perhaps beyond).
He died in Phoenix, Arizona in 1967. At his death, he was said to be worth $100 million in
Time Inc. stock. Most of his fortune went to the Henry Luce Foundation, where his son Henry III served as chairman and chief executive for many years.
[
]
Family
Luce met his first wife, Lila Hotz, while he was studying at Yale
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...
in 1919. They married in 1923 and had two children, Peter Paul and Henry Luce III, before divorcing in 1935.[
]
Recognition
He was honored by the United States Postal Service
The United States Postal Service (USPS), also known as the Post Office, U.S. Mail, or Postal Service, is an independent agency of the executive branch of the United States federal government responsible for providing postal service in the ...
with a 32¢ Great Americans series (1980–2000) postage stamp. Luce was inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame.
References
Further reading
* Baughman, James L. "Henry R. Luce and the Business of Journalism." ''Business & Economic History On-Line'' 9 (2011)
online
* Baughman, James L. ''Henry R. Luce and the Rise of the American News Media'' (2001
online
* Brinkley, Alan. ''The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century'', (Alfred A. Knopf, 2010) 531 pp
online
*
Book review by Janet Maslin
Janet R. Maslin (born August 12, 1949) is an American journalist, best known as a film and literary critic for ''The New York Times''. She served as a ''Times'' film critic from 1977 to 1999 and as a book critic from 2000 to 2015. In 2000 Maslin ...
, ''The New York Times'', April 19, 2010
* Brinkley, Alan. ''What Would Henry Luce Make of the Digital Age?'', ''Time'' (April 19, 2010
excerpt and text search
* Elson, Robert T. ''Time Inc: The Intimate History of a Publishing Enterprise, 1923–1941'' (1968); vol. 2: ''The World of Time Inc.: The Intimate History, 1941–1960'' (1973), official corporate history
vol 1 online
als
vol 2 online
* Herzstein, Robert E. ''Henry R. Luce, Time, and the American Crusade in Asia'' (2006
online
* Herzstein, Robert E. ''Henry R. Luce: A Political Portrait of the Man Who Created the American Century'' (1994)
online
* Morris, Sylvia Jukes. ''Rage for Fame: The Ascent of Clare Boothe Luce'' (1997).
* Swanberg, W. A., ''Luce and His Empire'', Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1972.
* Wilner, Isaiah. ''The Man Time Forgot: A Tale of Genius, Betrayal, and the Creation of Time Magazine'' (HarperCollins, 2006).
Primary sources
*Luce, Henry. ''The ideas of Henry Luce'' ed by John Knox Jessup, (1969
online
External links
John Foster Dulles and Clare Boothe Luce link (pdf format)
The Henry Luce Foundation
Luce Center for American Art at the Brooklyn Museum – Visible Storage and Study Center
* Whitman, Alden
''The New York Times'', March 1, 1967.
*
Henry R. Luce Papers
at th
New-York Historical Society
{{DEFAULTSORT:Luce, Henry
1898 births
1967 deaths
Alumni of the University of Oxford
American anti-communists
American magazine founders
American magazine publishers (people)
American mass media owners
American Presbyterians
Businesspeople from Yantai
Children of American missionaries in China
Connecticut Republicans
Hotchkiss School alumni
New Right (United States)
People from Penglai, Shandong
People from Ridgefield, Connecticut
Skull and Bones Society
Time (magazine) people
Yale University alumni