Word: lannan
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...hero of the rescue was Chicago's Tycoon J. (for Joseph) Patrick Lannan, 50, whose enthusiasm for the poets' corner has been obscured until now by his zest for cornering corporate stocks (TIME July 25). Yet for years, Lannan has wooed the muse with unpublished verse and unpublicized donations to Poetry. When he learned that the magazine might succumb to an unpaid printer's bill he determined to give it all the benefits of high-pressure, big-business promotion. "I could have just given them $25,000 " he explained, "but that would have been the easy...
Philistines. Instead, Lannan launched a thousand VIPs in a Poetry-saving drive He persuaded Robert Frost to come to Chicago to read his poetry as a prelude to a $50-a-plate champagne supper and literary auction this week, then lined up guests and sponsors to pay for the supper so that all the receipts would go to Poetry. He ran afoul of a few Philistines. Publisher Bennett Cerf refused to kick in declaring roundly that "Poetry is dead " but when Lannan let that be known among the literati, Cerf came around. Louis Untermeyer thought the whole idea vulgar...
...Lannan got impressive support elsewhere. Carl Sandburg called him "the St. John the Baptist that poets have been looking for since Harriet Monroe [the magazine's founder] died"-and agreed to do a fund-raising reading next year. Among the sponsors for the supper: Pierre du Pont III, William J. ("Wild Bill") Donovan, Daniel R. Topping, Charles Edison. Conspicuously absent was Adlai Stevenson's ex-wife Ellen Borden Stevenson, longtime Poetry Patroness who resigned from the magazine's board 18 months...
Lady Chatterley's Lover. The guest list swelled until Lannan's caterers had to send to their Manhattan supplier for more champagne, donated by Madison Square Garden President James Norris and Sports Promoter Art Wirtz. After supper, TV's Bergen ($64,000 Question) Evans auctioned off letters and manuscripts by such literary titans as John Masefield, George Bernard Shaw. Thomas Wolfe, Harry S. Truman. Lannan put up his own copy (published in Florence in a limited 1928 edition) of Lady Chatterley's Lover. In all, Lannan estimated the day's take...
Once a profit was in sight, Crowell-Collier President Smith set to work to bring in badly needed new capital. He laid his financial problem before Manhattan Broker Edward L. Elliott, who found him a group of 26 big investors, including Chicago Financier J. Patrick Lannan (see BUSINESS). The Elliott group agreed to buy $3,000,000 worth of new Crowell-Collier debentures, convertible to 600,000 common stock shares (at $5 a share). It also took an option to buy half the 400,000 shares (26% of outstanding stock) held by the late Joseph Knapp's Publication Corp...