movie magazines: a brief history in several parts (part 1)

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At the outset of the 1960s, the popular press generally divided into two camps. There were the respectable mainstream publications such as Life, Look, Time and The Saturday Evening Post, which covered contemporary news. And then there were the so-called “women’s magazines,” which included such varied publications as Vogue, Ladies Home Journal, Cosmopolitan and McCall’s. In contrast to the big boys, the lady mags covered soft news, frothy subjects such as celebrities, fashion and family.

Because women comprised the bulk of their audience, the movie magazines were lumped in with the women’s magazines, though they were a distinct subset unto themselves. A special breed of magazines  invented by the film studios, the movie magazines were originally intended as a publicity tool. Providing a template upon which Us Weekly and In Touch would capitalize later, the movie magazines covered the misadventures, tribulations and lifestyles of television and film stars.

At the height of their popularity, there were upwards of forty publications, including Photoplay, Motion Picture, Modern Screen, and TV Radio Screen. They had little in common with Ladies Home Journal and Vogue.

Most often, the movie magazines were characterized as “tabloids,” but even this classification was misleading as the movie magazines were not tabloids in the truest sense. The term “tabloid” originally denoted periodical size but it had, by the 1960s, become synonymous with down-market sensationalized, special interest magazines.

In a report for the April 1969 issue of Playboy, Reginald Potterton cataloged the preoccupations of the mainstream tabloids: Justice Weekly “boasts an editorial obsession with just about every form of deviation known, short of bestiality and necrophilia; while Confidential Flash, the National Informer and Midnight range over as many bases as possible but incline toward ‘straight’ sex and horror-violence.”

While, in time, the movie magazines would push the boundaries of acceptable celebrity reporting, they never went to these extremes. The world they depicted was populated by glamorous stars seeking comfort in love, family and faith. Even back in the 1960s, celebrities seemed to want nothing more than to be normal. They longed to be Just Like Us.

jackie is having a moment

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my mother has now twice used the phrase “you go, girl.”

the first was way back in march 2010, when she heard i was having coffee with a philosopher, whom i mistakenly believed to be a lawyer. this was coming on the heels of a four-month period during which i’d spent most of my time reading twilight– so i can see how meeting a man for caffeine (regardless of the particulars of his employment) could be interpreted as such great progress that my mum would channel her inner spice girl and exclaim, you go, girl.

the second instance happened this past monday. we’re talking about a jackie idea i’ve been toying with, an idea that suddenly- out of nowhere- seems to have legs. she’s excited and i sense it’s coming. it seems only logical that, at some point, the torrent of “jackie is having a moment” is going to give way and yield yet another you go, girl.

but it’s still a surprise when she says it with such gusto, with such enthusiasm. and it’s still a surprise, the sensation i feel upon hearing her say it. the tiny thrill and very great sense of power that comes from the fact that my mother thinks i can do this and she has said, you go, girl.

(mm photo by john vachon)

t-minus 2 years

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one down, two to go.

on 20 september 2010, while riding home in a cab from midway, i decided i was going to be a biographer for real. i had a post-it and an endpoint and that is all.

this was like going to prom stag or studying at cornell for the summer. one of those adventures that is so exhilarating at the out-set but once you get into it, there’s a primal sensation of “holy shit!”

this past year has been very holy shit.

i don’t know what i thought would happen. all i know is that i expected none of what did, that i’ve no idea what’s next and that i wouldn’t have it any other way.

things you never know if you never ask

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the first legit biographer to ever read jackie was a pulitzer prize winner with whom my only in-person interaction had been the observation that there should be more stalls in the women’s restroom at the national press club.

because, during a panel, she had expressed liberal views about what constitutes a biographical liberty, i shipped eight questionable pages of jackie off to her to see if, in her estimation, i had sinned.

it’s hard to summon momentum. to keep up your energy over the long haul. because this- writing, biography, life- is a mighty long haul. what you need is some galvanizing force that- even if it leads nowhere, even if it’s fleeting at best- gets you going. it gets words on the page.

the pulitzer prize winner wrote back. her email opened with this line: “well, i must say i enjoyed that…”

as though she hadn’t expected to. as though she were genuinely surprised.

i’m tempted to print out this email and frame it as a reminder. because this is the response i’m writing for, this is the response jackie should get.

you think you know her story. you don’t. i’m going to tell it, though i do not yet know how.

(photo by milton greene)

t-minus 750

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how long are you going to keep this up? my father asked.

i have made the mistake of informing him that- thanks to a combination of fun, work and biography- in an eight day stretch i’m going from l.a. to winnipeg and to nyc. all this during the season that i have trumpeted to the family as one in which i will be “taking some time off.”

i gave myself three years. we’re just past one. i’m having the time of my life! it’s a glorious wonderland of biographical dreams come true! a carnival of glitter and happy and cake staffed by jackie’s nearest relatives and dearest friends!

so, it’s almost totally irrelevant that, being the mistress of this carnival over the last year has aged me 800. at least.

and not in a helen mirren way. oh no, no. this is not a fine, full-bodied vintage, but a sour crustiness. the kind that typically comes from whole lifetimes of hardcore drug usage. we’re talking desperately aged. trashed. like keith richards.

i do wonder how long i can keep this up, but i don’t mention that to my dad. instead, i remain incandescently positive and say, i’m almost there! there’s just l.a. and winnipeg and new york and then maybe prague and paris and london and…

this is where he interrupts me. i know, i know. go, have your adventure. you’ll sleep when you’re dead.

(mm photo by jock carroll)

los angeles

winnipeg

new york

right-o

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when i met with yusha this last time, he looked me in the eye and said, she would have liked you. she would have liked that you’re doing this. 

i tabled that in my head. it’s an endorsement that will take time to process. sometimes i don’t even like that i’m doing this. i can’t imagine how jackie could.

i’ve been doing whatever you want to call my whole jackie thing for the last 17 years. that’s not an exaggeration. it’s been that slow of a burn.

after all that time, i’m pretty certain i know what i’m doing and i’m pretty certain i’m right. i’m pretty certain she was a feminist figure who, through her sense of adventure, quietly pushed the limits of what it was acceptable for nice women to do.

but there’s still just enough doubt lingering there to necessitate the word “pretty,” and that little “pretty” goes a long way in rendering all my certainty null.

if the jackie tapes are going to give me anything, it is the confirmation that she was, in fact, the woman i have come to know. the woman i have written about.

caroline kennedy told diane sawyer that the main lesson her mother would have wanted people to draw from her story was that life is an adventure, always. when she said this- thus, giving credence to everything i’ve ever written on a hunch- i felt a wave of the cockiness that must’ve compelled babe ruth to call his shot.

the “pretty” is dead. i know i’m right. someday, even if it’s a day still 17 years away, just you wait. i am going to knock one out of the park.

dear brad pitt

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brad

hey, let’s chat…

HAVE YOU LOST YOUR EVER-LOVING MIND?

you have been a celebrity for like 30 years. for the last 7, you’ve been a member of the world’s favorite tabloid triangle, the biggest thing to have happened since eddie fisher jilted debbie reynolds and ran off with liz. it has been SEVEN YEARS since you divorced and yet the tabloids still cover it as though it were yesterday. you are the eddie fisher of today. you should know better by now.

but this country’s celebrity industrial complex is infinitely tricky, so i’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt. i’m going to assume you maybe didn’t think anyone read parade magazineanymore (a valid assumption- i didn’t know they did either) so that’s why you told them you were “pathetic” during your marriage to jennifer aniston. 

but here’s what i don’t understand. in the last four days, during which this has turned into a shit storm resulting in an aniston-fan fatwa, why the hell have you been trying to correct the record? 

i’m doubting you’re surrounded by academics who can tell you about the ripple effects of these things but this seems like pretty rudimentary stuff. it should be in your knowledge basket by now. 

you should know that there is no correcting the record. that once you’ve said something it has been said and, despite your best efforts, anything you say subsequently will only serve to make everything go to total shit.

this is elementary. it’s celebrity studies 101. if you contend the tabloids are creating drama that doesn’t exist, it appears that you are trying to conceal a drama that does exist, which will only further fuel the drama that doesn’t exist.

dear brad pitt, you are being an idiot. i realize you’re promoting a film and doing a press tour and you really really want an oscar for this one* but, for the love of us weekly, shut your mouth. 

love,
o.

*[ps. on the oscar front, lainey’s analysis is brill: “He wants Moneyball SO bad. So bad he even sat down for Moviefone!!! You can watch the full interview here. Put it this way – he’s taking questions from “fans”. Put it this way – this is whatTwilight people do to promote their work. Put it this way – George Clooney isn’t doing Moviefone.”] 

dated

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in the spring of 2004, with the confidence one can only have as a graduate student straight out of undergrad, i wrote the eleventh chapter of a non-existent book.

because i had to read anna karenina in five days and my longing to compare the use of the first person plural narrators in a rose for emily and the virgin suicides never gained any traction, i wrote about jackie. i knew her life like the back of my hand. i figured writing about her would be a breeze.

it wasn’t. to this day, it isn’t.

i might’ve been a nicer person in graduate school had i known then that i would be wrestling that same chapter for that nonexistent book now. might’ve been less prideful, less hee, hee! you’re all trying to apply hegelian theory to the grapes of wrath while i’m reading tabloids and revising a chapter that i’ve finished three weeks before our thesis is due!

eight years later i am still revising that chapter. admittedly, it’s changed. there’s better characterization and structure, and it’s gone from the middle of the book to the beginning. but the guts are the same. and, much to my chagrin, it’s gotten a little dated.

way back in 2004, i made a mistake all rookie writers make. i assumed my book would be published immediately, to great fanfare. because of that, i opened with this sentence: “the fallout was instantaneous, the response was shock and awe.”

in my innocence, i didn’t realize an allusion to the war strategies of george w. bush might not be the way to go.