The Magazine That Failed
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By Megan McKinney
Hugh Hefner didn’t stumble often. In fact, this may have been it, but he plummeted big time in the early 1960s and took quite a few of New York’s magazine professionals with him when he hit the ground.
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Hugh Hefner in about 1960
Was everyone in the magazine business up and down Madison Avenue talking about Chicago in the early 1960’s? They certainly were at 488 Madison, the Look Building. And even more so over on Sixth Avenue in the Time & Life Building. The five publications where it seemed that every editor, writer, and columnist was most buzzing about Chicago in 1960 and 1961 were Time, Life, Newsweek, Look, and TV Guide.
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Hugh Hefner, right, with A. C. Spectorsky at left.
Coincidentally, a major idol of Madison Avenue’s commuting crowd—those who rode The New Haven from Grand Central to suburban and exurban Conncticut—was the writer, A. C. Spectorsky, beginning in 1955 with the publication of his best-selling book The Exurbanites. He became so great a hero within the communications industry that Mr. Hefner in the far Midwest hired him as Associate Publisher of Playboy and moved the noteworthy Manhattan commuter to the wilds of Chicago, where his admirers among the New Haven’s bar car passengers were discovering for the first time that the French-born, much-married, super-sophisticate Mr. Spectorsky did not himself live in the exurbs of New York but in Chicago, at 900 North Michigan Avenue. (For those unfamiliar with the 900 address before it was redeveloped as “the Bloomingdale’s building,” the previous structure on the site was an elegant, much admired ten-story apartment building, home to some of the nation’s most urbane city dwellers.)
Rumor number one flying up and down Madison Avenue in the early sixties was that Hugh Hefner was planning to add a second print magazine to his then fabulously successful Playboy. This was followed by a second rumor that the publication would be focused on show business—leading to a third grapevine tale that he would be raiding five New York celebrity focused magazines to staff the new venture: Life, Look, Time, Newsweek, and TV Guide.
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A fourth tale—and probably true, because he had financed Playboy well, eventually—was that Mr. Hefner would be reaching into his then deep pockets for hefty salaries that would have an even greater stretch in Chicago than in New York.
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In addition, word of a Chicago Gold Coast mansion Mr, Hefner had acquired, and into the basement of which he was installing a swimming pool, had reached Madison Avenue.
Suddenly, rumors stopped, and a phenomenon began. It had a name: Spectorsky’s Raid.
A, C. Spectorsky
From 900 North Michigan Avenue directly to key editors, writers, and columnists at Life, Look, Time, Newsweek, and TV Guide came personal invitations from their exurbanite idol to travel out to visit Chicago and to pal around with Spec and Hef at the Pump Room, which was still Hollywood Midwest.
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Nineteen-sixties television star Ed Sullivan visiting the Pump Room in Chicago.
Added would be frequent trips over to 1340 North State Parkway to the mansion with a pool in the basement and Bunnies living on upper floors. Is it surprising that more than a few of the editors, writers and columnists took the bait, leaving their commuting lives and cushy jobs at Life, Look, Time, Newsweek, and TV Guide for a week in the sticks—and loving it. Even wanting to stay.
When the new magazine was founded, many did give up their Manhattan jobs and exurban homes to settle in Chicago.
It was a disaster for all involved. There were twelve issues of Hugh Hefner’s Show Business Illustrated. Publishing began in September 1961 and continued until April 1962, when the hugely successful Playboy founder realized he now had a genuine turkey on his hands, in spite of changing the magazine’s name, along with its cover format—from Show Business Illustrated to SBI. As for the former exurbanites, their Chicago tenure proved to be as short as it was sweet. Show Business Illustrated, it turned out, did not have the reader appeal of Playboy.
When SBI produced its last issue in April 1962, a few of the former exurbanites were granted jobs at Playboy and several—now committed to their new city—found jobs with public relations firms or advertising agencies in Chicago. But others went skulking home, where the New York magazine market was engulfed with out-of-work editors, writers, and columnists specializing in the entertainment industry. The only safe port was Huntingting Hartford’s rival new magazine of the era, SHOW, which continued publishing for another two years before even the impractical Huntington decided to focus his attention—and funds—on other money vacuums.
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Barbara Hutton
Not only were the pockets of Mr. Hartford, heir to the A&P grocery store chain, almost bottomless but he was also willing to continue emptying them indefinitely. Only Barbara Hutton, another colorful figure of the period, was as effective as he in taking an immense inheritance and whizzing it away to virtually nothing.
SHOW magazine publisher Huntington Hartford
Come back next week for the follow-up story.
Author photo: Robert F. Carl
