Book Alert / The Man Time Forgot
The Man Time Forgot -- A Tale of Genius, Betrayal, and the Creation of Time Magazine by Briton Hadden, HarperCollins '06, $26.95, 342 pages, ISBN #0-06-050549-4. Index, bibliography, source notes, grouping of b&w glossy images.
Four decades ago, while working in Washington for a liberal Democratic senator, I picked up a news bulletin on the Senate floor that Henry R. Luce, publisher of Time, had just died. When I phoned the senator's chief-of-staff to suggest our boss might want to issue a statement, he said, "Why are you bothering me with that news? Luce is no one we care to honor." Luce, the man who invented or at least revolutionized the modern news magazine, had infused his product with an outspoken conservative slant. He was a man you either loved or hated. And yet he, alone, stood atop the magazine business's Mount Olympus.
A generation or more later, Isaiah Wilner was glorying in his new position as editor of the Yale Daily News when he noticed a large portrait of one Briton Hadden looming over the board room of the Briton Hadden Memorial Building. Hadden, Wilner's predecessor in title about 1920, was identified as the co-founder of Time, which sounded strange, since everyone knows Henry Luce founded this iconic magazine. And so started Wilner's quest for the truth, which culminates in his debut offering, The Man Time Forgot -- a well-researched, accessibly-written contribution to the annals of American journalism.
In fact, Wilner asserts, Hadden and Luce were both friends and rivals from their days at Yale and together raised the capital to create Time in 1923. And while they agreed that they would each hold the title of editor every other year, Hadden remained at the helm until his death at age 31 in 1928. It was an alliance of two alpha males but with one clearly first among equals. Not only was Hadden the more gregarious and well-connected of the two but his creative genius conceived such magazines as Fortune, Life, and Sports Illustrated, which he never lived to see published.
Had Hadden fallen ill 15 years later from what may have been a bacterial infection caused by a cat scratch, Time and, indeed, the magazine industry would probably have evolved differently. But with penicillin only a laboratory experiment at the time, the dynamic Hadden grew weaker and weaker. Before he died, his family prevailed upon him to leave a will decreeing that his stock in Time couldn't be sold until 49 years after his death, thereby depriving his old partner of majority control upon his death.
It was unrealistic for Hadden's dead hand to keep equal control with Luce of the magazine for nearly a half-century after he died. But Luce did no better -- and some would say did a lot worse -- in honoring their friendship and business partnership. A week after Hadden's death, Luce ripped Hadden's title as co-founder off the magazine, from which it would never return. He banned anyone from outside the magazine from reading Hadden's letters until after Luce's death. And he barely mentioned his partner in his public utterances thereafter.
Wilner has created a fine read for those who care about public affairs and/or journalism. His is an insightful lesson in the ability of those alive to manipulate or bury the memory of the dead and, in so doing, to reinvent history.
