Word: luce
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...Profits. Elson also describes the courtship that landed Winston Churchill's memoirs in LIFE (and the New York Times). It began with the purchase of some Churchill paintings as well as his secret wartime speeches to Parliament (which Luce found boring). Getting rights to the great man's memoirs cost LIFE $750,000, not to mention picking up the check for Churchill's frequent vacations in Marrakech. Was it worth it? LIFE's circulation department found that the memoirs had a "devastating effect" on newsstand sales. But, says Elson, "Luce took a more elevated view...
TIME's columns were less partisan in the 1956 campaign and approximately neutral in 1960. Although Luce was on close terms with the son of his old friend Joe Kennedy, LIFE's editorial page gave a narrow endorsement to Nixon. When Luce suggested that, as a Democrat, J.F.K. would naturally adopt a liberal domestic policy, the elder Kennedy seemed surprised. "Harry," he erupted, "you know goddam well no son of mine could ever be a goddam liberal...
Life assessed the Eisenhower years favorably, though concluding that Ike "had rather reigned than ruled." This elicited an extraordinary letter from Ike to Luce, in which the President explained why he had been "too easy a boss." One reason: "The government of the U.S. has become too big, too complex ... for one individual to pretend to direct [its] details." Luce had learned a similar lesson about Time...
...Luce has often been criticized as a leader of the China Lobby. Elson shows that his support of Chiang Kai-shek was actually quite ambiguous. Luce felt that Chiang, as the official wartime ally of the U.S., deserved at least as much postwar support as De Gaulle. But he gave a hearing and ample space to his anti-Chiang correspondent in China, Teddy White. Luce even tried to "get off the hook with Chiang" after he refused to accept General Marshall's proposals to face the realities of Nationalist China. From then on, Luce continued to lobby personally...
...even as LIFE lay dying SPORTS ILLUSTRATED was moving into its most prosperous years. Elson recounts the birth pangs of the magazine, the last one Luce had a direct hand in founding. Despite the fact that he knew little about sports, Luce maintained his enthusiasm and support for SI, even though the magazine lost $6,000,000 in its first year and took more than five years to get into the black...