Today, magazines like Time, Fortune, Sports Illustrated and Life are all pretty well known household names. What you probably didn’t know, however, was that they were all started by the same man: Henry Luce.
As the head of one of the largest print magazine empires of the 20th century, Luce often quipped about how he helped found the “American Century” through influencing American involvement in various world events.
Due to being arguably the most powerful media mogul of his time, Henry Luce earned quite a few nicknames ranging from “Il Luce” (in reference to Mussolini’s title of “Il Duce”) to the “King of American Magazines” to the “King of Timestyle”.
Early Life
Henry Robinson Luce was born as the eldest of four children to Henry Winters Luce, an American missionary in China, and his wife, Elizabeth Middleton (née Root), on April 3 1898 in Tengchow (now Penglai) in the Shandong Province of Qing Dynasty China.
The son of a missionary, Luce’s childhood was defined by religion, in this case Presbyterianism. As a child, Luce received his education at the various several English-language missionary schools in China, where his father taught.
At the age of seven, in 1905, Luce Sr. was asked by the mission to return to the US with his family to raise funds.
Touring the US, the Luces went to almost every major city in the US, including New York, Boston and Chicago, where they petitioned some of America’s richest people for a donation.
In Chicago, the Luces encountered Nancy Fowler McCormick, the wealthy widow of inventor and businessman Cyrus McCormick. Beyond donating a large sum of money to the mission, McCormick took a special interest in the young Henry Luce.
Impressed at the seven-year-old Henry’s intelligence and knowledge of things most seven-year-olds couldn’t comprehend, McCormick offered to raise him in the US (with the intention of bringing him into the McCormick family business) but was rejected.
Despite this, McCormick insisted on paying for his education, which Luce Sr. agreed to.
This allowed Henry Luce to attend the prestigious China Inland Mission School from 1907 onwards. Despite excelling academically, Luce was plagued with loneliness and despised school, turning to religion and writing to keep his ground.
In 1910, the Boxer Rebellion erupted in China against foreigners. Fearing for the safety of his family, Luce Sr. sent his son to a boarding school in St Albans, England in October 1911.
Beginnings as a Journalist
Whilst at the China Inland Mission School, Henry’s only friend was a British classmate, Sydney Cecil-Smith, who similarly excelled academically but despised the school.
Another thing the boys had in common was their love of writing, which soon led them to start their own school newspaper, which whilst short-lived, proved to a young Henry Luce that journalism was the path for him.
During his time at the school, Henry served as editor-in-chief before leaving the paper when he left the school in 1911.
Spending two years at his English boarding school, as well as another in Switzerland, Henry refined his writing as much as possible, before his father sent him back to the US, in 1913, where he attended the prestigious Hotchkiss School in Connecticut.
Not long after joining the school, Henry Luce was introduced to Briton Hadden, a man who similarly yearned to become a journalist. Bonding over this, the pair became inseparable and lifelong partners…
In their sophomore year, both Luce and Hadden joined the Hotchkiss Record, the school’s newspaper.
In their senior year, Hadden was promoted to managing editor, with Luce being named as the assistant managing editor, where he focused on the Hotchkiss Literary Monthly.
Prior to Luce, the Hotchkiss Literary Monthly had been a dreary publication read by pretty much nobody. Under Luce’s tenure, it soon became one of the most popular magazines on campus!
Discovering that Henry Luce wanted to be a writer, Nancy Fowler McCormick introduced Henry to her friend (and successful author), Lyman Abbott, who instructed the teenaged Henry to put everything he had into his school paper, which Henry duly did.
Yale
Thanks to his involvement with the school paper, as well as McCormick’s backing, Henry Luce successfully applied to Yale in 1916, where he attended with Briton Hadden.
At Yale, both Hadden and Luce began writing for Yale Daily News, Yale’s daily newspaper. Unlike at the Hotchkiss Record, both Hadden and Luce (as well as the paper’s other writers) had to fight to get their articles published.
Even in spite of immense competition and pressure, both Hadden and Luce soon distinguished themselves from their competition.
With the US’s entry into WWII in April 1917, a third of the students at Yale left to join the war, including the paper’s chairman, John Elliot Wooley. His departure left a huge gap in the paper’s leadership that needed filling.
Among those who applied for the job were Henry Luce and Briton Hadden, with the latter ultimately being successful. Understanding his friend’s skill with a pen, Hadden soon named Luce as managing editor, together taking the paper to new heights!
Thanks to their position as co-heads of the most important college newspaper in the US, both Hadden and Luce were able to join the Skull and Bones secret society, with Luce’s society nickname being “Baal” (a title from antiquity meaning “owner” or “lord”).
Graduating in 1920, Hadden and Luce parted ways. Nancy Fowler McCormick paid for Luce to attend Oxford for a year to study history, whilst Hadden took a job at Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World.
Becoming a Fully-Fledged Journalist
Returning from Oxford in 1921, Nancy Fowler McCormick attempted to persuade Henry Luce to take a position at the International Harvester Company (the company owned by her family).
Not really interested in joining the company, as well as being informed by the head of the company that accepting a position at the International Harvester Company would result in one of the company’s pre-existing employees being fired, Luce respectfully turned down McCormick’s offer.
Realizing that her surrogate son did actually want to become a journalist, McCormick used her connections to get Henry a job as the assistant to Ben Hecht, the top reporter at the Chicago Daily News.
Despite loving the job, Hecht and Luce didn’t get along too well. Unwilling to sack him, Luce was soon relegated to the city room, which Luce found incredibly boring. Not long after, Luce was fired from the Chicago Daily News for poor performance in late 1921.
Reconnecting with his old friend, Briton Hadden, who’d recently taken a job at The Baltimore News, Hadden revealed that the paper was in need of another journalist. Interested, Hadden arranged for his friend to get the job in December 1921.
Whilst both penned entirely separate columns, Hadden and Luce often worked together on their respective stories, with Luce’s story tying in Hadden’s and vice-versa. Beyond this, the pair also spend much of their free time together too!
Founding Time, Inc.
Spending so much time together, the pair often reminisced about their time at the helm of both the Hotchkiss Record and Yale Daily News.
Not long after, the pair began to talk about how most of the American public didn’t have a clue what was going on beyond their local area.
Citing the over 2,000 newspapers, 150 national magazines and 500 radio stations in the US at the time, they surmised that it was due to a lack of a single magazine that could condense everything important into digestible articles whilst leaving the “fluff” for the other outlets.
Over the next few months, Hadden and Luce brainstormed ideas for the name of this outlet, with them eventually settling on “Facts”. However, a late night epiphany caused Hadden to suggest the name “Time” which eventually became the name of magazine.
With the knowledge that the pair of them couldn’t run Time alone, Hadden and Luce tapped up some of their former colleagues at the Yale Daily News to come and work for them, whilst tapping up wealthy classmates to help fund their business idea.
Bringing on Robert Livingston Johnson and another classmate from Yale as financiers and journalists, Hadden and Luce managed to raise $86,000 for their magazine.
This was partly funded by their wealthy Yale classmates and partly through investors they met through Nancy Fowler McCormick.
Quitting their jobs at the age of 23 in 1922, the group incorporated Time, Inc. in New York that same year. Luce served as the business manager, whilst Hadden was editor-in-chief.
Wanting to maintain equality between the two main co-founders (Hadden and Luce), they alternated having the roles of president and treasurer annually, with Johnson serving as the permanent vice-president.
The first issue of Time, featuring retired Speaker of the House of Representatives Joseph G. Cannon, was published on March 3 1923.
Early Years
As a new (and thus unheard of) publication, very few copies of the first few issues were actually printed, let alone bought! Realizing this, it was Henry Luce’s job as the business manager to try and increase circulation.
Despite trying a number of methods to try and get people to buy Time, Luce realized that newsstands were refusing to stock Time as it was an unknown magazine and wasn’t guaranteed to sell, Luce hatched a plan.
Paying several attractive young women to be “customers”, they’d walk up to the newsstands in and around New York and ask for a copy of Time.
When they were informed that the newsstand didn’t stock Time, the women began to cry until the newsstand placed and received an order for the latest issue. Within a few weeks, every newsstand in New York City stocked Time.
As time progressed, more and more curious onlookers picked up a copy and began reading it over its alternative: Literary Digest. It was long before Time got a reputation for its high quality and value for money and was in most newsstands on the East Coast.
Within six months of launching Time, it had a circulation of 19,000 – quite impressive given the circumstances.
By March 1925, two years after the first issue was printed, Time had a circulation of 70,000 and a profit of $674.15 ($10,500 adjusted for inflation).
While Hadden was on vacation in Europe in March 1925, Luce became the acting editor-in-chief alongside his roles as president and business manager.
It was here where he found that Time had lost a serious amount of money due to the high rents in New York. With guidance from his wife, Luce moved Time to the much cheaper Cleveland, Ohio.
Although a great business move that arguably saved the fledging magazine, Luce did it without consulting Hadden or the rest of his employees. Not only did this put a strain on Hadden and Luce’s friendship but also resulted in many of their staff quitting too.
Alas, the company survived the move to Cleveland and prospered.
Expanding Time
Political Opposition
Continued Expansion
Death
Despite each of his magazines being multimillion dollar enterprises in and of themselves, with hundreds of staff and writers for each magazine, Henry Luce remained as the editor-in-chief of all his publications until 1964.
Stepping down for health reasons, Luce took the honorary position of editorial chairman, which essentially allowed him to retire to his home in Phoenix, Arizona. It would be here where he would die of natural causes on February 28 1967 at the age of 68.
His death was announced via obituaries published in the various magazines he owned (the first and only time these magazines have published obituaries in many cases) with these obituaries being written by the new managing editors of the magazines.
At the time of his death, Henry Luce was said to have had a net worth of around $100 million, all derived from stock he held in Time, Inc. Adjusted for inflation, Luce’s net worth would be around $805.97 billion.
He was survived by his wife, Clare (who died in 1987), his ex-wife Lila Ross (who he’d remained close to as the mother of his children, died 1999), two sons, Henry III and Peter Paul, and stepdaughter, Ann Clare.
Despite his huge fortune, Henry Luce’s funeral was relatively small, being attended only by his close friends and family (including future Republican president Richard Nixon). He is buried at Mepkin Abbey in Charleston, South Carolina that he helped establish.
Legacy
How Can I Replicate What Henry Luce Did?
Reading about the incredible life of Henry Luce, you’re probably wondering how you could replicate what he did to form your own huge media empire and perhaps even influence world events like Luce did!
Sadly, print magazines are a dying industry. Each year, more and more people cancel their magazine subscriptions, reducing circulation massively, which cuts into the already low profit margins of print media companies.
As such, 100% replicating what Henry Luce did probably isn’t the smartest business move. Instead, his life can serve more as a “how to” guide that just needs a little modernization…
You see, whilst print media is a dying industry, e-media (such as blogs, podcasts and YouTube channels etc.) are just beginning to take off, with more and more people gaining access to the internet each year.
Following what Luce did, you could start a blog/podcast/YouTube channel, producing content that’ll last forever (as opposed to news-style content which soon becomes outdated) until its one of the largest blogs/podcasts/YouTube channels in its niche.
From here, you establish more and more blogs/podcasts/YouTube channels in other niches, using what you learned the first time around to make the subsequent media outlets similarly as successful.
By the end of things, you may have a multibillion dollar media empire!
A word of warning however. Blogs, podcasts and YouTube channels have been out there for a while now (almost 20 years in some cases!) and there are already some extremely successful e-media companies that aren’t looking to share their success.
Then again, people probably said the same thing when Henry Luce and Briton Hadden started Time…
What Can we Learn From Henry Luce?
Despite having been dead for almost 60 years, the life of Henry Luce can teach you a lot. Not just about starting your own business, but also life in general…
Don’t Forget to Give Back
Having a net worth of $100 million in 1967, Luce was one of the richest men of his time. He could’ve quite easily sat in his ivory tower, counting his gold coins and presiding over his media empire.
Yet, from the get-go, Henry wanted to give back.
In 1936, at 38 years old, Henry was one of the most powerful media moguls in the country. Wanting to give back, Henry floated the idea of establishing a charity to the Time, Inc. board, who soon joined him.
To that end, Henry formally incorporated the Henry Luce Foundation that same year, which gives grants out to institutions and organizations that seek to “advance and disseminate knowledge” particularly in regards to Asia and religion.
Whilst relatively small for its first 30 years of existence, Luce ensured that the foundation received a large portion of his estate following his death, allowing it to invest millions of dollars in giving out grants – something that continues to this day!
Branding is Key
Today, pretty much everyone, even those who’ve never read them, are familiar with names like Time, Fortune and Sports Illustrated. And that’s all thanks to Henry Luce…
When Time first came out, many newsstands refused to stock a magazine they’d never heard of (as they had to pay for them before they could sell them).
Hoping to encourage newsstand owners to stock the magazine, Luce came up with the idea for them to hire young, attractive women to walk up to newsstand owners in New York City and ask for a copy of Time.
When they told them they didn’t stock the magazine they wanted, the woman would begin to cry until the newsstand owner rang Time directly to ask for some copies, thus getting it in almost every newsstand in New York City.
Curious at this new magazine, people purchased the magazine and liked what they read, paying for a monthly subscription. It wasn’t long until every newsstand in America (and beyond!) had Time on their shelves.
From there, it was just a matter of consistently producing good issues and gaining a good reputation. Once Time was a household name, making his other magazines household names was easy – they were just thrown in with orders for Time and stocked by newsstand owners!
You Don’t Need to be Eccentric
Partly due to eccentric billionaires like Howard Hughes and Elon Musk (both of whom have been featured on the cover of Time several times) gathering media attention, it’s easy for non-entrepreneurs to think that all entrepreneurs are eccentric.
Whilst most of us are certainly more eccentric than your average 9-5 Joe, the majority of us are nowhere near as eccentric as Howard Hughes or Elon Musk.
Perhaps the best example of this would be Henry Luce.
Having developed a stutter as a child, due to the fact his brain worked faster than his mouth did meaning he stumbled over his words, Luce was famous for being quite quiet, quite reserved, and when he did speak, he did so calmly and slowly rarely raising his voice.
Where Britton Hadden had screamed and shouted at his employees to get things done, garnering a lot of bad publicity after his passing, Luce could command a room just by opening his mouth and speaking softly.
This not only made Luce great when performing business deals or interviewing people for his magazines, but also made his employees love him, perhaps more so than Musk or Hughes’ employed love(d) them!
Make Powerful Friends
Relentlessly attacking ideals like socialism, communism and fascism, as well as political leaders like Francisco Franco, Benito Mussolini and Franklin D. Roosevelt, Luce made his fair share of enemies.
Had anyone else done this, it would likely have been the end of their business career as they knew it.
Yet, Luce protected himself by making just as many powerful friends as he did enemies. Among his most powerful friends included President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-Shek and CIA director Allen Dulles among many others.
And this was a quasi-official quid pro quo arrangement. By protecting Luce from his numerous enemies, Luce in turn used his massive media empire to keep his friends in power.
It was due to Luce’s influence that the US would recognize Taiwan (ruled by Chiang Kai-Shek’s Kuomintang) as “China” until 1979, as articles in Time and his other publications influenced the American public into supporting the capitalist Kuomintang over the communist CCP.
It was also thanks to Luce that Eisenhower won both the 1952 and 1956 Presidential Elections, and why Allen Dulles was the longest-serving Director of Central Intelligence in history (serving 1953-1961).
Be Different
Having worked at several newspapers before establishing Time, Henry realized that reading a newspaper was actually really boring.
To grad the reader’s attention, newspaper journalists crammed all the important facts and figures in the first few paragraphs. Whilst this did help grab the reader’s attention, it made the rest of the article incredibly dull.
Instead of just copying what newspapers did, Luce encouraged his journalists to write more like novelists.
Rather than having all the facts at the beginning, Luce encouraged his journalists to place facts throughout the entire article and the headline, which kept the entire article informative and prevented much of the sensationalism that plagued newspaper journalism.
Beyond that, Luce also encouraged his journalists different phrases to introduce people.
For example, every other company introduced William Shakespeare as just “William Shakespeare”, Time introduced him as “famed poet William Shakespeare”. And this style of introduction was used for everyone, be it a businessman, politician, criminal or whatever…
Colloquially known as “Timestyle”, it’s something that Time and countless other media companies still use today!
Has the story of Henry Luce inspired you? Tell me in the comments below!
