And landmark series. I am Karen Taylor Program director of the general society. The lectures are supported in part by public friends one funds in partnership with the city council. For those of you less familiar with the society how many of you here this is your first visit . s a warm welcome and of course welcome back to previous attendees. Founded in 1785 by 22 artisans today 234 yearold organization continues to serve the people of new york does this through the cultural and Educational Programs that includes our lecture series that tonight is part of our tuition free Mechanics Institute and the collection you are welcome to visit after our talk this evening and thats upstairs. More information on the cards on your seats we have a wonderful start to this years lecture series and we have the pleasure of welcoming critically acclaimed biographer susan ronald who will discuss her biography of conde nast the publishing legend and other publications i would also mention you have an opportunity to purchase this wonderful book later this evening so please be aware you have this opportunity im sure shell be happy to sign the book for you also cspan is filming so this will be rebroadcast on the tv when we get to the q a portion i would remind you you will have the opportunity to be featured on book tv. Born and raised in the United States living in england for more than 25 years and has come over especially this week to talk about her book she is the author of a dangerous woman the pirate queen and shakespeares daughter. It is my pleasure to introduce to you susan ronald. [applause] thank you everybody i hope our technical problems are at an end. I decided to write about conde nast because i tend to write about power and greed all the people i have written about before they are very powerful people some are greedy almost all of them have had a brush with the law but after a dangerous woman married to the youngest son of jay gould i decided having written about somebody incredibly powerful and devious and those that were never tried for dastardly deeds i needed to cleanse myself to write about a really good person they said you write about power and greed. Agencies suggested i look at the publishing industry. So i decided i would write a book about the most powerful people at the turn of the century and going into world war ii. Of course a lot of you know those magazines but they were not all there in the beginning of what makes conde nast. Threw for two of this circumstances i apologize for the quality of these photographs they are his mother who is pictured on the right unfortunately i dont have her as a young woman is the only family one picture family still has in their position her father settled in saint louis in this lovely home married three times with 15 children. And extremely wealthy and was a banker he was a good guy. And left several Million Dollars to his children when he die died, and dave remembers playing in his grandfathers bedroom it is clear still a Historic House on the outskirts of st. Louis mostly as a wedding venue that his mother only inherited 300,000 by the time the money came to her. On his father side his grandfather was born in germany immigrated to the United States as a teacher but always depressive and very serious but he converted to methodism known as the father in north america. His eldest son william was a man who wanted to be born with a silver spoon in his mouth but didnt have any so he decided he would go off to germany to buy himself a uniform to hobnob with the wardens. His father was beside himself and william nast has fell in very hard times because he stole money from american citizens when he was there. So he took a number of odd jobs to help with esther but conde was the eldest son another was a pianist for cho but he grew up essentially without a father at the age of three william decided he was going back to europe to make his fortune and that hard work was for suckers so he was the man of the family his sisters were what they were called new women who didnt like the chaperones before the 20th century and extremely independent. So was his mother. She had to be to keep them together but the years went on things got pretty tough in the end the only nast member that stayed close to them was william nast older sister actually she was quite a gal herself and married into money she loved fine things and was very stylish in her own way you could say one see she didnt like to look nice she married into the Gamble Family of Procter Gamble so decided she would help out esther to get her sons to an American College to put them on their way but when she went to visit apparently he was not tidy and reminded her of his brother and therefore she decided to only send conde to georgetown so he never spoke to his brother again. So here is conde as he graduated he was very handsome. Bob colyer of course was the heir to the library went to europe and to england and to oxford and came back they only had about a thousand dollars at the time that he had done a lot of work with conde and he went down to st. Louis and talked him into accepting a 12dollar a week job with him. Which he did considering he was the man of the family. And to be the innovator he thought about making them less of a generalize magazine but conde said we could really sell advertising if we decide we will create special issues. The other one was a remington issue this was the issue that started the gibson girls going he overpaid gibson by the way and to have it exclusively for a period of two years and thats what conde learned about as well. To be into navigation and together they set up the first ever Magazine Company that had its own Sales Network every major city across north america. Conde understood you had to make sure your customer wanted to read the ads first of all the advertiser had to feel he wasnt wasting his money and also you were ethical and what you sold. Every newspaper promised to give you something special. I dont want swamp root. That absolutely anything so joining with the ladies home journal to stop quack medicine advertising because they believed it was killing americans. And then to assuage your thirst and decreases sugar to prevent diabetic shock. You would not believe it but post serial founder was another who was selling his cereals as a medicine. Heres to another year of steady nerves and vigorous health. Well call your spurred on by conde decided he would sue mister post he did and he won. So conde learned a great deal from his relationship with bob. Not only that he introduced him to his first wife clarice. I dont know if you remember the brothers in new york city had their offices for many years but they came to america at the behest of lafayette and establish themselves as International Lawyers in america in the early 19th century and clarice was part of new yorks 400. Conde now was a wealthy man earning 40000 a year the only person in america earning more at that time was Theodore Roosevelt as president earning 50000. So she decided she loved bob colyer but he did not love her. Conde was a good second. He was not after her money and understood she held the pen with society but conde understood society was changing and women were changing. Decided 1904 o set up on his own. Bob callier was paying more money than he was worth, there is no doubt about it. 40,000 a year in those days was close to a Million Dollars. He decided he was going to take a plunge into womens fashion. You might say why womens fashion. Here he is a national magazine. They are starting to go to the markets. He decided womens fashion was going to be key to the changing rolroles of women. Up until now womens fashion in terms of the clothing that would be put into patterns had two distinct shortcomings. First of course was that all patterns were giveaways alongside fabrics. Second was even more incredible is the fact that there was only one size. He decided women have many sizes. Im going to empower women without money to make their own clothing in all the sizes they come in and they should discard their corsets, enjoyin enjoy lie women and of course he was right. It ended up allowing ladies home journal to own his home pattern so home company was his first company. Due to a number of circumstances he ended up leaving the company in 1906. 1907 was the first time he tried to buy vogue but he failed. He went across europe at that point tthat claimto rescue his m paris and his wife but she decided she wanted to stay on so they went across, picked up the children and teresa decided she would come home at the 1909 he bought vogue and she disappeared again for six months. Nobody in the family knows why but she did. He was lucky enough to buy vogue because the owner at that time Arthur Turner was part of a big club at the time for publishers, he had set it up very early on in 1895 and he had hired on a lady at that point as a mail clerk on the left. Her name is ed. By the time you see her on the bright she had been the editor in chief at both for over 50 years. He kept her on obviously. It was turners sister who had been the actual editor at the time and she left me disagreement over money. 1912 he decided to buy two more magazines and put them into one, something called house and garden i think a few of you have heard of that one. So now he has home pattern, vogue and home and garden. By 1914 he decided he would like to set up an International Magazine empire dedicated to women and womens fashion. Unfortunately theres something called world war i that began in 1914 and for america it began in 1917. Edna comes up and says i have a wonderful idea. I know we are cut off from the french fashion and mens fashion because of the four but why dont we have something called a Charity Fashion show and get all of the 400 involved. He was very skeptical. Clarice doesnt like working can you imagine these women working on a Charity Fashion show. She said give me a chance and she made it a success. She went to mrs. Syverson and was able to talk her into creating this fashion show. It was a done deal the only problem is it was arranged to be at the ritzcarlton in new york and all of the models all of the fashions previously were tied to various fashion houses in europe, not america. But they were able to cobble together a very interesting show at new york fashion. Dont laugh. Here is. The new York City Public Library just found some of the stills and if you go to the website you will see the fashions. As i said the models were tied to other places and as you can see, fortunately he was making clothes in different sizes because not all of them are models. There is more of these at the new York City Public Library and i thought it would be really interesting to see. Anyway, this upset another gentleman called William Randolph hearst who just bought Harpers Bazaar. He sent people out to badmouth vogue as people who wanted to get rid of european fashion and not imported to america anymore and they were on the out to support new yorks clothing designers etc. What happened was this representative arrived in progress during the war with a big fat check for the seamstresses who had been put out of work. So hearst lost the first round but he wasnt going to give up. We all know he never did that. Come 19152 things happened. Most important was lunch wit wia gentle man that founded the coffee house in the building. Frank is a great aficionado of modern art. He was everybodys favorite rock into her and he had acres of friends and probably at the coffee house, i dont know where exactly, but he said i have a problem. I thought to magazines called dress and vanity fair. I tried to edit them myself but im a publisher not an editor. What do you think i am getting wrong. Frank said its very simple you have to make it fizzle. You have to make it a Cocktail Party where everybody but turns the page they are joining you in a conversation and actually understanding what it is that everybody we read about is thinking about and so he decided to hire frank as the editor for vanity fair on a handshake. He did his best deals on a handshake. He had one competitor at the time. Hl mencken was the competitor and the smart set at a sensible list readers were worth a thousand boneheads. [laughter] well, they eventually went out of business but they had a very friendly rivalry between them anthenand as a matter of fact, e who worked here into the parking vanity fair after it closed. He believed in hiring the best people no matter what. It doesnt matter whether they were gay, lesbian, jewish, catholic, it didnt matter. What mattered is talent. It didnt matter if they were known. So he hired a girl called Dorothy Rothschild to write captions for vogue. The one that caught his eye was brevity is the soul of lingerie. She kept dropping poems on his desk to transferred over from vogue to vanity fair and finally he agreed to take her on. He then also wanted to take on somebody to make the vanity fair articles more substantial so he brought on the chap in the middle, Robert Benchley who was one of the funniest people ive ever read about in either of his own biography and it is absolutely hysterical. He was a harvard graduate and have been the editor of the harvard lampoon. He got the job because it was going to get very serious. I open the book with one of the incidents that happened while they were working there and eventually went on to win an oscar for a short but was produced by mgm called hell to sleep. It is hysterically funny if you can ever get ahold of it. Dorothy of course would eventually go on to other things that the third person in the picture is a gentle man called Robert Sherwood was about 6foot eight, fresh out of the army in 1919 came to work he said he was a very good writer. Franks wanted to believe him. He had been wounded during the war, gassed, shot in the legs and is dorothy would say how did they miss his heart. He was enormous. He would go on to win for pulitzefourpulitzer prizes and a speechwriter for fdr. So, these were all unknowns but they all misbehaved tremendously and of course ended up getting fired. It was all because dorothy basically decided as a theater critic by now she was going to go after broadway producers and she ended up libeling them so he really had no choice. Conde didnt want to fire her but he knew she had to go and it was poor frank that had to do it. So he sets up British Vogue because he cant export paper from america believe it or not during world war i and he decides at the end of the war in 1919 he is going to go across to europe and to set up french code so hes now become the first International Magazine publisher in the world. Now we talked about a few of the Staff Writers and i will show you a few pictures because of course that is what magazines are all about. His number one photographer was on the left here and it was 1915 after he lost the first battle, sorry, after hearst lost the first battle that he decided he was going to punch. It was a loss but only for about ten minutes because george replaced him and george took the first pictures of movement. He was followed by edward and cecil later on. Then there was the discovery of the model turned photographer miller who was both more photographer during the Second World War and we will come back to those pictures in a minute. So this is an example of the type of picture. Its very nice. Its actually the Wedding Dress and condes daughter is modeling it. It was so small nobody but a child could fit into it. This is a lady that was the lead soprano and also became conde mistress when his marriage broke up. The picture is one of his and shows them how they are starting to play with shadows and light in a way that more akin to what we are used to today. But hes the one that created the celebrity photographs. Here we have gloria swanson, charlie chaplin, a dell and fred astaire who by the way he saved from starvation giving him his first 10 when he came to america in the 1920s. Data garbo. This is the specialty. He used to make people of a certain weight thing. Heres how he managed to change from a rather portly lady into somebody who was quite beautif beautiful. But then again, cecil was also very friendly with the british aristocracy, and when it came time for the abdication of edward 8 it was he who took the pictures the only pictures to ever appear were these taken by the miller command on the left is a picture of lee on the right is what happens when. I mentioned that he hired lots of people, lots of writers come up with everything. People as diverse as scott fitzgerald. These people had something haveg special to give to the reader. The artists were incredible. Here we have Carl Erickson with one of his beautiful white patchepagesfor one of the model. He did some of the more fanciful covers. Now the other thing that happened with photography and vogue in particular is that you never doubted that any picture was trying to tell you. So, here we have sandals, hats. If you want to buy any kind of cosmetics, of course you have to have the gold compact and jewelry to do with it. And the covers. It wasnt unusual to see black people on the cover of vogue in the 1930s. As if she wa she was at the tims she became as one of the 400 just as in the beginning her only claim to fame is that her brother worked for William Randolph hearst he was very much into sport and also very much into the idea that women could do anything and go anywhere and be anything. And they became more exotic. You had women that were actually doing sports, writing camels, shooting, skiing, boating, doing all kinds of activities. But he never forgot his core business which was selling clothing and fashion to women, so you can look at the cover and you know they are trying to sell me jewelry. Here we have the beginning