Life (magazine)

Encyclopedia : L : LI : LIF : Life (magazine)

---

"LIFE" redirects here. For , see .

Life has been the name of two notable magazines published in the United States. The second of them is still published, and is now owned by Time Warner.

Life 1883 - 1930s

The first "Life Magazine" was a weekly humor publication put out by the Life Publishing Company of Manhattan, New York City. It was known for its energetic cartoons, pin up girl art, humorous pieces, and reviews of theater and cinema. The magazine was a forerunner of The New Yorker, with its use of cartoons, poetry, gags, similar cover artists, cultural listing roundups, and high-society élan .

In 1908 Robert Ripley published his first cartoon in Life, later becoming first publisher of Charles Schulz of Peanuts fame.

Norman Rockwell's first cover for Life, Tain't You, was published May 10, 1917. Rockwell's paintings were featured on Life's cover 28 times between 1917 and 1924.

In 1918 Charles Dana Gibson, the famous illustrator, became the magazine's president. The famed Gibson girls originally appeared in the magazine. Gibson had sold his first professional pen-and-ink drawings years before, in 1886, to magazine founder John Ames Mitchell.

Among the contributors to this version of Life were:

• Robert Benchley, who was drama editor
• Dorothy Parker, who kicked in poems and stories
• Franklin Pierce Adams who wrote verse
• Robert E. Sherwood, the first silent film critic on the magazine before he became a playwright.

All were members of the Algonquin Round Table.

John Held, Jr. was one of the most popular cover artists of the era, known for his depictions of jazz musicians and flappers.

This edition of Life fell victim to the Great Depression, and ceased publication in the early 1930s. The name was then purchased by Henry Luce for use on his Time, Inc. magazine.

Life, the photojournalism magazine

Weekly (1936-1972)

In 1936, Luce reinvented Life as a photojournalism magazine. The publication was a mammoth success. The first issue was dated November 23, with a cover depicting the Fort Peck Dam in Montana photographed by Margaret Bourke-White. Luce pulled a stringer for TIME, Edward K. Thompson, to become assistant picture editor in 1937. From 1949–1961 he was the managing editor and editor in chief, until his retirement in 1970. His influence was significant during the magazine's heyday - roughly from its launch until the early 1960s. LIFE was the most influential and popular magazine in America, with tens of millions of subscribers and readers. Its impact on American public opinion, especially among the exploding suburban middle class in the U.S, was almost incalculable.

Thompson was known for the free reign he gave his editors, particularly a "trio of formidable and colorful women: Sally Kirkland, fashion editor; Mary Letherbee, movie editor; and Mary Hamman, modern living editor."Hamblin, Dora Jane: "That Was The LIFE", page 161. W.W. Norton & Company, 1977.

Life's original mission was "to see Life; see the world." The magazine has published some of the most iconic images of events in the United States and the world. Scores of talented photographers were employed to take the most original and unique views on the world. Life also produced many excellent science serials such as "The World We Live In" and "The Epic of Man".

Life was published weekly until dwindling circulations for magazines as a whole, coupled with rising advertising rates, caused the magazine to print its final weekly issue on December 29, 1972, (its annual "The Year in Pictures" edition).

Semi-annual (1973-1978)

Starting in 1973, Life was published semiannually until October 1978.

Monthly (1978-2000)

With the October 1978 issue, Life was restarted as a monthly magazine. A weekly Life in Time of War was published for a month or two during the first Gulf War. Monthly publication ceased in May 2000.

Weekly (2004- )

Starting in October 2004, Life resumed weekly publication, this time as a supplement to U.S. newspapers. At its launch, it was distributed with over seventy newspapers with a combined circulation of over 12 million:

Life's ten most important events of the second millennium

The magazine ranked its top ten events of the millennium:

1. Printing by movable type (Johann Gutenberg, 1455)
2. Discovery of the New World (Christopher Columbus, 1492)
3. A new major religion (Martin Luther, 1527)
4. Steam engine starts industrial revolution (James Watt, 1769)
5. Discovery that Earth revolves around sun (Galileo Galilei, 1610)
6. Germ theory of disease (Louis Pasteur, 1864; Robert Koch, 1876)
7. Gunpowder weapons (China, 1100)
8. Declaration of Independence (United States) (1776)
9. Adolf Hitler comes to power (1933)
10. Compass goes to sea (China, 1117)

This list has been criticised for being overly focused on Western achievements. The Chinese, for example, had invented movable type four centuries before Gutenberg, but with thousands of ideograms, found its use impractical.

Life's 100 most important people of the second millennium

The magazine also published a list of the "100 Most Important People in the Last 1000 Years":

Thomas Edison American Christopher Columbus Italian Martin Luther German Galileo Galilei Italian Leonardo Da Vinci Italian Isaac Newton English Ferdinand Magellan Portuguese Louis Pasteur French Charles Darwin English Thomas Jefferson American William Shakespeare English Napoleon Bonaparte French Adolf Hitler German/Austrian Zheng He Chinese Henry Ford American Sigmund Freud Austrian Richard Arkwright English Karl Marx German Nicolaus Copernicus Polish Orville and Wilbur Wright American Albert Einstein German/Swiss/American Mohandas Gandhi Indian Kublai Khan Mongol James Madison American Simón Bolívar South American Mary Wollstonecraft English Guglielmo Marconi Italian Mao Zedong Chinese Vladimir Lenin Russian Martin Luther King Jr. American Alexander Graham Bell Scottish/Canadian/American René Descartes French Ludwig Van Beethoven German Thomas Aquinas Italian Abraham Lincoln American Michelangelo Italian Vasco Da Gama Portuguese Suleyman the Magnificent Turkish Samuel F. B. Morse American John Calvin French Florence Nightingale English Hernán Cortés Spanish Joseph Lister English Ibn Battuta Morroccon Zhu Xi Chinese Gregor Mendel Austrian John Locke English Akbar Indian Marco Polo Italian Dante Alighieri Italian

John D. Rockefeller American Jean Jacques Rousseau French Niels Bohr Danish Joan of Arc French Frederick Douglass American Louis XIV of France French Nikola Tesla Serbian born in Austro-Hungary (now Croatia)/American Immanuel Kant German Fan Kuan Chinese Otto von Bismarck German William the Conqueror French Guido of Arezzo Italian John Harrison English Pope Innocent III Italian Hiram Maxim American Jane Addams American Cao Xueqin Chinese Matteo Ricci Italian Louis Armstrong American Michael Faraday English Ibn Sina Persian Simone de Beauvoir French Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi Persian/Afghan Adam Smith Scottish Marie Curie Polish/French Andrea Palladio Italian Peter the Great Russian Pablo Picasso Spanish Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre French Antoine Laurent Lavoisier French Phineas Taylor Barnum American Edwin Hubble American Susan B. Anthony American Raphael Italian Helen Keller American Hokusai Japanese Theodor Herzl Austrian Elizabeth I of England English Claudio Monteverdi Italian Walt Disney American Nelson Mandela South African Roger Bannister English Leo Tolstoy Russian John Von Neumann Austro-Hungarian/American Santiago Ramon y Cajal Spanish Jacques-Yves Cousteau French Catherine de Medici Italian/French Ibn Khaldun Tunisian Kwame Nkrumah Ghanaian Carolus Linnaeus Swedish

This list, too, was criticized for focusing on the West. Also, Edison's number one ranking was challenged since there were others whose inventions (combustion engine, car, electricity-making machines, for example) which had greater impact than Edison's. The top 100 list was further criticised for mixing world-famous people, such as Newton and Einstein and Pasteur and da Vinci, with numerous Americans largely unknown outside of the United States (18 Americans compared to 13 Italians and French, 12 English).

Well-known employees

• Margaret Bourke-White (photojournalist)
• Robert Capa (photojournalist)
• Alfred Eisenstaedt (photojournalist)
• Clay Felker (sportswriter, founder of ''New York Magazine)
• Dirck Halstead (photojournalist)
• Mary Hamman (modern living editor)
• Sally Kirkland (fashion editor)
• Mary Leatherbee (movie editor)
• Lee Miller (photojournalist)
• Gordon Parks (photojournalist)
• Will Lang Jr. (Bureau Head / Chief Regional Bureau Director)
• George Silk (photojournalist)
• Edward K. Thompson (managing editor 1949–1961; editor in chief 1961–1970)

References

External links

• [Vintage Life magazine website]
• [Life magazine website]
• [Life's Millennium list I]
• [Life's Millennium list II]
• [Life to Return as Weekend Magazine]

 

---

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

Search Titles

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z

?