the issues facing the issues of rural america in tight robe. enjoy tonight and on the weekend, c-span2. >> a very warm welcome to the first lecture of the general society, labor, literature and landmark lecture series. i am karen taylor, program director of the general society. the labor, literature and landmark lecturere series are supported in part by public funds from the new york city department of cultural affairs, in partnership with the city council. for those of you who may be less familiar with the general society and if you don't mind i will ask how many of you here f this evening will this be your first visit? okay. right, warm welcome and of course a welcome back to previous attendees. the general society was founded in 1785 by 22 artisans in today are 234 -year-old organization continues to serve the people of the city of new york. ek do this through our culturl and educational programs and they include our lecture series of which tonight's lecture is a part of and general society library which is celebrating 200 years next year and our tuition free mechanics institute and the john m collection which you are welcome to visit after our talk this evening and that is upstairs. you will find more information on the blue-and-white postcard on your seats. we have such a wonderful start to this year's lecture season. pleasure of welcoming the critically acclaimed biographer susan ronald who tonight will discuss her biography of condé nast, the publishing legend of vogue and vanity fair and other illustrious publications i also want to mention if you have not already done so you will have an opportunity to purchase this wonderful book which it has a stunning cover later this evening so please be aware that you have this opportunity and i am sure susan will be happy to find the book for you. i also want to mention that c-span is filming this talk tonight so this program will be rebroadcast from book tv. when we do get to the q&a portion i want to remind you that anyone asking the question that you will have the opportunity to be featured on book tv. t born and raised in the united states miss ronald has lived 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, hitler's arts thief, heretical queen, the pirate queen and shakespeare's daughter. it is my considerable pleasure to reduce to you, susan ronald. [applause] >> thank you everybody. i hope our technical problems are at an end. you may see these thoughts there on the bottom and i decided to write about condé nast really because i tend to write about the power and greed and all the people average about before there's another book which is not on here happened for powerful people and some of have greedy and almost all of them have had some sort of brush with the law but after a dangerous woman about florence gould married to the youngest son of jay gould, many of you will certainly know of i decided that having written about someone who was incredibly powerful, incredibly devious and also the banker to human carrying by the end of the war and never, ever was tried for dastardly deeds i needed to cleanse myself i wanted to write about a really good person. ... so i told this to my agent and my publisher and they just kind of looked blankly at me and they said you write to have a look at the publishing industry, are there any good guys in publishing, sure enough he was right. so i decided that i was going to write a book about one of the most powerful people at the turn-of-the-century and then going in to world war ii. of course a lot of you know all of the magazines but they were not there the beginning, and wanted to give you what makes "conde nast", "conde nast". and for the circumstances mostly, i apologize for the quality of some of the photographs, there is his mother who is pictured on the right, unfortunately i do not have her as a young woman, this is only picture that the family still has in theirth possession. she was quite a lady in her own right. her father, was a guy called louis bedwell and he settled in st. louis in this lovely home, he was married three times and had 15 children. he was extremely wealthy, he was a banker and apparently a good guy. i know that does not go with the term banker but go with me he left several million dollars to his children whenll he died. as a child he remembers playing in his maternal grandfather's bedroom, it is currently still a historic house on the outskirts of st. louis mostly as a wedding venue today. but of course yes, sir, his mother only inherited 300,000 by the time the money came down her. on his father's side, his grandfather was born in germany and immigrated to the united states as a teacher but was always a depressive and very serious he converted to methodism and became the father of german methodism in north america. his oldest son william was a man who wanted to be born with the silver spoon in his mouth but the family did not have any. so he decided he was going to go up to germany of the american consul and buy him a uniform so he could help. his father was absolutely beside himself. and then william fell on hard times because he also stole money from american citizens when he was there. he left germany very quickly and somehow met up with yes, sir. conde was the oldest son had another brother named louis who is a great pianist but can you grow up without a father at the age of three, he decided he was going back to europe to make his fortune more like hard work but were for suckers before he was s e man of the family, he had two younger sisters that they called new women, new women were women who made their own rules who did not hang around with chaperones before the turn of the 20th century who actually were extremely independent. so was his mother, she had to be school she had to be to get theb family together until his father came away until he was 17 things got pretty tough in the end, the only member of the family staying close to them was william's younger sister. and she was actually quite a gal herself, she married into money, she loved fine things, she was very stylish in her own way and considering this picture taken in the 1880s you could see that she did like to look nice she married into the gamble family of proctoring gamble fame. she decided she was going to help out esther to an american college of without them on their way. when she went to visit louis was untidy and reminded her great deal of her brother who had abandoned the family, therefore she decided she would only send conde to georgetown university. louis never spoke to his brother again. here is conde is a graduate of. a very handsome young man. his best friend at college was bob collier, the heir to the collier library. he went a year or two to europe, england, oxford, came back and his father said i will give you his weekly because it's failing. they only had enough dollars at the time. bob had done a lot of work with conde at various clubs at georgetown and he went down tohe st. louis and talked him into talk taking a 12-dollar week job and he did considering he was the man of the family. conde's father had died and they were together very happily indeed for about 15 years. bob collier pictured left was an innovator. he thought about making collier less of a generalized magazine but with conde pressuring him that we can sell advertising to create special issues. so you saw before that the other picture that i just showed you was frederic remington's art. this was the issue that started the gibson girls going in terms of collier's magazine. he overpaid gibson double of what he would normally get of a journal so we can have it exclusively for a period of two years. that was something that conde learned about as well, collier was actually very navigating his great friend oval right on the right and together they set up the first ever national magazine company that had its own sales network in every major cityin across america conde understood to some magazines you had to make sure your customer wanted to read the ads, your advertiser had to feel like he was not wasting his money and also you are called ethical and what you sold. this was the era of medicines, almost every newspaper promise to give you something special, i don't think i would want to have any small group. i think that is pretty bad. but this product claimed it could cure absolutely anything. so collier joined with ladiess home journal to stop medicine advertising because they believe it was killing americans. this is a view of the other ads at the time you can have your diabetes readily cured. and it will strengthen your system and decrease her sugar and prevent diabetic shock. wonderful. we won't go to his product slowly. you wouldn't believe it or not but cw post who founded posterior is another when selling cereals out of arv medicine. here's to another year of steady nerves, clear brain and vigorous health. bob collier is burned on by condé that he would sue them and he did anyone. he learned a great deal from his relationship with bob and bob introduced him to his first wife, i don't know if any of you remember the legal firm in new york said they had their offices on fifth avenue for many years but they came across america, george washington's friend they established as international lawyers in america in the early 19th century yers in the early 19th century and larry's was part of new york's 400. conde was by now a wealthy man he was part of the 400. condé was a wealthy man by 1902 when he married her. he was earning $40000 a year, the only a person in america anymore with theodore roosevelt as president, he earned 350,000. so she decided that she loved bob collier bob collier did not love her. so conde was a good second, he was after her money, but he understood that she held the with hand as far as exciting was concerned. the only probably conde understood that society was changing, their role was changing, they wanted to become independent, they wanted to vote, they wanted their thoughts to be recognize. while certainly clarice felt like that was for her to, she did not really like the idea of working for a living because that was beneath the member of the 400 on the social register. instead after two years of marriage where she had two children, the son first and then the daughter. she decided she was going to go to paris and become a soprano. of course she would because her three sisters lived there as well. one of them had been supporting the artist as his moneymaker basically for the previous 20 years. now that is not very good for as marriage obviously. conde decided 1904 that he was going to set up on his own, yes bob collier was paying him more money than he was worth, there's no doubt about it, 40000 a year in those days was close to a million dollars and essentially he decided he was going to take a plunge into women's fashion and he would say why women's fashion. here he is as a national magazine and they're starting to go to the markets, conde had decided that women's fashion was going to be key to the changing role of women. up until now women's fashion in terms of the closing that would be put into patterns had two distinct shortcomings. the first of course, all patterns were giveaways. alongside the second which was even more incredible is the fact there was only one size and conde decided the new woman has many sizes, i'm going to empower her, i will empower women without money to make theirgo on clothing and all the sizes ofmo the coming and they should discard their corsets, enjoy life and be women. and of course he was right. he ended up allowing ladies home journal to label his own patterns. so home pattern company was his first company, he is still working for bob colyer. but due to a number of circumstances, he ended up in 1906, 1907 was the first time he tried to buy vogue but he field. he went across europe to rescue his two children from paris and his wife, she decided that she wanted to stay on so they went across, picked up the children and n the nurse, clarice decided she would come home to but then in 1909 he bought vogue and clarice disappeared for six months, nobody in the family knows why but she did. he was lucky enough to buy vogue sadly because the owner a guy called author turner who is part of the coal years which is a big club forve publishers, he said t up very early on in 1995, he hired on a lady as a mail clerk on the left, her name is edna chase. by the time you see her on the right she had been the editor of vogue, the editor and chief for over 50 years. conde kept her on obviously and it was his sister who was the editor of the time andnd got it and she left to a disagreement over money. in 1912 he decided to buy two more magazines and put them into one, something called house and garden and i think you refer to that. now he is home pattern, vogue, houseno and garden 1912. by 1914 he decides he would like to set up an international magazine empire dedicated to women and women's fashion. unfortunately there's something called world war i that began in europe in 1914 and for america it began in 1970. edna comes up and saysn i have this wonderful idea, i know were cut off from french fashion and from the british men fashion as well because of the work but why don't we have something called a charity fashion show and will get all ofow the near i've hundd involved and he said it's skeptical, clarice doesn't 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 and was able to talk her into creating the fashion show and she immediately tells the disaster and it was a done deal. the only problem was it was going to be at the ritz-carlton in new york and all the models for all the fashions previously were tied to various fashion houses in europe not america. that they were able to cobble together a very interesting show of new yorkf fashion. laugh. here it is. the new york city public library just found some of the skills 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 conde was making close in different sizes because not all of them are models were they. so there is more of these apparently at the new york city public library and i thought it would be really interesting to see. anyway, this upset another gentleman calledam william randl who just bought harper's bazaar. he sent his people out to badmouth vogue and conde as people wanted to get rid ofor entering european fashion and not reported to america anymore and only out to support new york clothing designers et cetera et cetera. what happened conde's representative arrived in paris during the war with a big fat check for the seamstress who is put out of work and so he lost the first trauma he was not going to give up, we all know he did not do that. come 19152 things happen. the most important one was a lunch with a gentleman who founded the coffeehouse in the building frankfurt and shield. frank was a great of modern art, he was everybody's favorite, he had miles and acres of friendscr throughout new york city and conde had lunch with him probably at the coffeehouse. i don't knowus where exactly and he said i have a problem, i bought two magazines called dress in vanity fair and i tried to edit them but i'm a publisher, i'm not an editor. where do you think i'm getting wrong. frank said it's very simple. you have to make it fizzle, you have to make it a cocktail polity enter party where everybody turns the page they yoare joining you in a conversation, they are understanding what it is that everybody in society or everybody who we read about is thinking about. so conde decided to hire frank as editor for vanity fair on a handshake. he did his best deals on a handshake. they had one competitor at the time the editor in the smart set where they said one civilized reader is worth a thousand boneheads. [laughter] is smart set went out of business but they had a very friendly rival between them in a matter of fact george jean mason ended up working at vanity fair after closed. he believed in hiring the best people no matter what. it didn't matter whether they were gay, lesbian, jewish, catholic, whatever, black it did not matter. what mattered was talent, it did not matter if they weree known. so he hired a girl called dorothy to write captions for vogue. the one that caught his eye was the soul of laundry. [laughter] she kept dropping little poems to try to transfer over f from little vogue into vanity fair and finally he agreed to take her on. and then he also wanted to take on the vanity fair articles more substantial so he brought on the middle guy called robert. he was actually one of thebe funniest people i've ever read about and i read his own biography and it's absolutely hysterical. harvard graduate, he had been the editor of the harvard lampoon and 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. essentially by the way went on to win an oscar for show produced by mgm called how to sleep. [laughter] it is hysterically funny if you can ever get a hold of it. dorothy of course would eventually go into other things but the third person in the picture ise a gentleman called robert sherwood who is about 6-foot eight and he was fresh out of o the army in 1919 and ce to work he said hed was a very good writer, he wanted to believe him he had been very wounded during the war, he had been gassed, shot in the legs and as dorothy would say how did they miss his heart. this guy wassk enormous. and he would go one to win for poet surprised and become a speech writer for fdr. so these are all unknowns but they all misbehave tremendously and of course ended up getting fired. it was all basically because dorothy decided as a critic by now that she was going to go after broadway producers and she ended up -- she had no choice, conde did not want to fire her but knew she had to go and it was frank who had to do it. during the war he sets up british vogue because he cannot export paper from america believe it or not during world war i and decides at the end of the war in 1919 that he will go to europe and set up a french vogue. so now he has become the first international magazine publisher inga the world, we talked abouta few of the staff writers, we will to show you a few pictures because of course that's what magazines are all about. his number one photographer was on the left and it was in 1915 after he lost the first battle -- after hearst lost the first battle with conde that he decided he was going to poach to meyer. it was a loss but only for about ten minutes because george, that's how he pronounced his name replaced him and it was george who took the first pictures of movement. he was followed by edward and of course general later on. then there was the discovery of the model turned photographer named lee miller. he was actually the war photographer during the secondas world war, we will come back to her pictures in a minute. this is an example of the type of picture that he took, he actually had the wedding dress and conde's daughter who is modeling it. it is apparently so small nobody but a child could fit into it. this is a lady called grace more who we met soprano, she also became his mistress by 1919 when his marriage to clarice finally broke up. the picture is one of the pictures and it shows that they are starting to play with atshadows and light in a way tht is more kin to what were used to today. but he's the one who created the celebrity enter photographer off. he ran charlie chaplin adele and fred, noel coward, who conde saved from starvation giving his first ten bucks when he came to america in thers 1920s. greta and this is his specialty, he used to make people of a certain weight then and here is how he managed to change her from a portly lady to somebody who is quite beautiful. but then again she was also friendly with the reddish aristocracy but when it came time for edward the eighth to marry wallis simpson, it was her who took the pictures, a course that was made by the designer main backer who happened to be a conde mast employee. the only ugly pictures to ever appear en vogue were these taken by lee miller and that on the left is a picture of lee in hitler's back on the right and it's what happened when she walked in to one of the huts. i mentioned that he hired lots of people, lots of writers, log of o everything. pg woodhouse, believe it or not jack dempsey, all these people work for him and what mattered was a diversity in the fact that people had something special to give to the reader, the artists were incredible, this is benito, eduardo bonito, one of his famous covers. here we have colonel erickson with one of his more beautiful light touches for one of the models. and here's miguel, i always get his name wrong but you know who i mean. he did some of the more vogue covers. the other thing that happened with the photography and vogue and particularly is that he never doubted what any picture was trying to selld you. so here weha have sandals, hats, we also have marlena dietrich who is modeling a hat. more hats, if you want to buy any kind of cosmetic, you have to have the gold compact in the you.ry to go with it don't in the covers, it was not unusual to see black people on the covers of vogue in the al1930s. you always knew what every issue was going to sell you and then there came a fresh face to vogue carmel white, carmel snow is who she became who is one of the 400, she arrived and she was. a complete breath of fresh air, completely untrained just like edna in the beginning and her only claim to fame was that her brother worked for william randall hearst and now little did conde know that would mean something in several years ahead. but carmel's husband was veryy much into sports and she was very much into the idea that women could do anything and go anywhere and be anything. so the covers became more exotic, you had women who were doing sports, riding camels who were shooting, who were going skiing who were boating who were doing all kinds of activities. but you never forgot his core business which was selling clothing and fashion to women. so you can look at the cover and you know they're trying to sell me jewelry. here we have the beginning of the pair seaso enter pair season the new york season everything was done with the purpose so the customer in reader knew what they were getting and the advertiser always knew what they were advertising and initiative and it meant something to people. and meanwhile conde's friendship with frank blossomed, they were really like brothers, there was a lot of rumors that they were getting, i don't know about frank one way or the other, i know edwin who is one of the editors at vanity fair for a very brief period of time believed that he was unique and i prefer to call him a bachelor. conde on the other hand love women. and he was always seen with pretty women on his arm after he and clarice split up, it took many years for them to agree to diverse but that is for something in theiv future. in the meantime in the 1920s clarice moved 1000 park avenue, their daughter became many of conde's famous parties and of course conde moved to 1040 park and the person whoul decorated apartment. that is where the most famous society parties took place. i would like to say i can't imagine groucho marx dancing. that is the sort of thing anybody he was in the news and anybody who is a trendsetter was allow allowed into the party, they didn't even know conde to begin with, that was the case with charles lindbergh as an example he just returned from his flight over to france and conde decided to throw a party in his honor and he came, they ended up having to rescue him but that's a whole another story. frequently a backdrop and vanity fair in times two en vogue, i apologize for the quality, these are pictures the pictures and the familyfrfr albums. he gives you an idea what it was like on the right-hand side you have the ballroom and these were actual shots that appeared in various vogue and vanity fair magazines. and guesss what happens in 1925a guy decides to come up with something called the new yorker. so they get worried about vanity fair but it turns out they decided to work with harold and when i say that conde was the first to think of a lot of things, he was a pioneer and technology and he had the best printing plan in the entire united states and connecticut and they did a deal with the new yorker to. theicti new yorker at conde's printing plant. and basically it was a very successful relationship for many years. new yorkerought the and the two magazines were part of the conde mast publication. as you can see they also have veryo stylish artist and this s her in 1928 -- 29 when she was still in the name for conde and she introduced him to this man on the right called iva who was a right russian who had come over to the states and started out as a runner on wall street and always very fashionable and she insisted with her father that you will love this man, he is just like you and he said yc just like me, he says he thinks and numbers and he sees numbers as pictures. he understands how important it is to have a balance sheet that works and to have all of the covers at work to understand what covers are attracting people and which ones don't attract people, i promise you that he's a great guy. they met, they liked each other and conde was thinking about something else. he had fallen in love with a woman the same age as his daughter. leslie foster. the picture on the lower right is leslie who is facing us and that is in a teacup talking to her. ashe was afraid people would mae fun of them and she was afraid people would make fun of them, they were a real generation apart but at the end of the day they truly truly love each other and they got married right before theth crash. this is a picture of them on the honeymoon in a matter of fact he was so nervous that he invited all of his children to join him on the honeymoon and he agreed to hire prints because he was thinking in terms of the future, i need somebody who is reliable who can take over for me. sorry about this, this is a really bad shot, i apologize. that is the house that they brought together on long island on sam's point, that is the sunroom that overlooks and within the first year leslie gave birth to her daughter, little leslie who is one of the main people who help me on this book, little leslie is 89 today. these two sly guys look like bankers, they are. the one on the left some of them have heard of him and some have not. the one on the left is harrison williams in a generation company in the united states. he was the chairman of goldman sachs and together they decided in 1928 that they will start telling people to companies they wanted to acquire once the crash came that they should load themselves up withh debt. one thing that conde believed and let the experts advise you at the end of the day at your decision but you have to trust the experts in these men were his friends and he trusted them. and they loaded him up with too much debt so when the crash came condee was worthless and conde mast publication was taken over by them and they tried to get conde out of the company. they might have succeeded if it hadn't been for edna woman chase because they wanted to make her in charge of the company and sh said not only would she take the job but she would quit and she would make sure all staff would quit as well. so conde was left in place but he had to find somebody to help him out with the debt. fortunately these guys overreach themselves and they were taken over by floyd who is basically put the publication back on a level floating but he also said i will sell to anybody who wants to buy this so i can make a profit. by now conde is really getting upset he approached joe kennedy to buy it because he ough offero buy the hearst publication which was also in trouble and joe said no, he asked his good friend, he said no, everybody in america said no. exactly the same time good old carmel said she will go to harper's bazaar. terriblecourse was a blow to conde. and he never forgive her now and she's the only person who did her wrong that he never forget. as you can see there is a very famous new yorker diana freedman who is a harper's bazaar talking to carmel and by now carmel's brother tom wait is the general manager of all the hearst companies in one of seven people theis bailing out hearst at same time. as if that were not bad, he gets prostate cancer and has a heart attack. he is a radical prostatectomy, hard word to say. basically is in such poor health he does not know what he's going to do. there isor a lady who he meets t a cocktail party and he still married to leslie but he is deciding if he's prepared to ruin the young woman's life, she will not be able to have anymore children with him, he is not quite sure what he's going to do about it and this lady comes into his life, does everybody know who she is. atyb the time she was claire brokaw. and conde met her at a cocktail party frequently the case he said go meet mrs. chase and mrso europe for the summer, come back in september and i will say parking hire you. claire being claire did the most amazing thing i have ever seen. ever. she decided since conde was away and since edna was away she would, as she put it was her way into vogue. what does that mean she reported for work and claim she was the new girl. and actually suddenly there was stuff on her desk and she started working by the time edna came back it was too late to fire her. she went from that to becoming the managing director of vanity fair eventually but all within three years. there were lots and lots of rumors that conde was enamored with her and going to leave his wife for her and everything else and frankly that is a lot of hokum and she would not have buried conde anyways. and conde decides very painfully to tell his wife leslie that se has to go and marry somebody else. and he had arranged for her to meet this gentleman who was a banker in england and they did fall in love and they did get married but as rex's children said, leslie and conde remained entirely devoted to each other for the rest of his life. they had two children together and of course they were very happy. conde kept little leslie in new york with him so she could go to an american school and obviously it was very difficult for big leslie as a culture in the family to keep leslie in england at the time. meanwhile dear claire decide she's going to marry henry, the picture on the left was taken only four months before the picture on the right, it was not a happy unit. i just put this in for the fun of it because dorothy parker was a breath of fresh air. so i'm hearing that she was kind to her and dorothy said where did she find them. meanwhile conde about 1934 finally find somebody who is going to bail him out and buys him a mass publication from a gentleman in england called william barry who owned a variety of women's magazines and also at the time thear daily telegraph in the deal that they did was a handshake deal and nobody was to know the cameras had bailed them out and conde still stayed in charge of all of his magazines. i don't know anywhere today where that would happen. so clear by 1936 -- 32, 34, 35 is in charge of vanity fair and she was a republican as some of you may recall, she decides as the election is coming up and 32 that she's going to lampoon fdr because his new deal is ami terrible thing and fdr is a horrible man. and that did not play very well because naturally fdr was very popular with the people. so vanity fair subscription started to fall off, people were not buying as much on the newsstand and this continued through 1936 election. finally will happen she married henry and helen brown took over very briefly as a managing director and conde had a brief affair with her and she wrote about him in her book a stranger at the party but i think he would've been very upset to find out that she was publicizing their sex life. he was a very private and try man and he did not want his sex life to be talked about public pre-this is the last issue of vanity fair in 1936 and februar. helen became helen lorentzen and on to write for the esquire and became a biographer for claire as well. vanity fair was assumed into vogue and frank and conde were both broken, it was their love affair with new york that had created vanity fair and they were so upset they were never going to be thehe same. one of the other things vanity fair got wrong, it decided it would talk about mussolini and hitler but their predictions to what they would do to europe and the world were entirely wrong and of course hitler invades the west in 1939 and by june 1940 they had taken over paris. conde is now an old man in many ways, his heart has been broken by all the strain of trying to save his company, he had several heart attacks that he kept secret, he kept secret his prostate condition, nobody knew anything except only his secretary, his daughter and his butler, that waste it. so now he's faced with a situation where all the people that he hiredha in france whom e loved, many were) were now in n danger. he brought as many of them to safety as he could and on the right-hand side he brought over michelle he was editor of old, there he's pictured after the war with lee miller and on the left was a fashion editor for vogue, she was put into concentration camps but did survive the war, her husband who is put into different concentration camp didon not. there is a lot in the book about how conde desperately tried to say people and how we spent any cash thatt he had in sending cae packages to the british including at that point to his former wife. conde dies inn september 1942 of heart failure essentially. it was very touching story the edna woman chase wrote about the last days of him which iwh do include in the book, he died virtually without any money. his first wife clarice had an apartment on east 72nd street which conde bought for her outright, they work together for the benefit of the grandchildren and he was always wonderful to her and very generous, he and leslie remain very good friends after g his debt, frank was only member of the vanity fair team who came out on top, he sold his shares on the -- september the eighth right before the stock market crashed. so here we f have his furniture, all his personal affect up for auction and very sadly even the family were allowed the smallest trinket. he was named by conde as a new chief executive of the magazine empire, he wanted to marry marlena and marlena did not want him. he was very active in hollywood and here he's pictured on the left with some of his good friends. you have james stewart, he eventually married in 1963 and they stayed married. he was cut for the same reason as conde, his word was his bond, whatever he hired people who he felt were right for the job as opposed to famous, he too realized that he had to sell the magazine empire when william barry died. he was given the opportunity to find an american buyer any opted for the new house family. so of course a a new era, i hope the savages still charge of conde mast, he brings forward alex lieberman and they poach to get back on thewn hearst empire diana freedman. here the two look very happy, i think this picture characterizes their relationship a lot better. [laughter] they do not get along. she left and grace took over and after her we have tina brown who came in effectively to resurrect vanity fair in 1984 and she did a great job until 1992 and of course the lady on the right needs no introduction the one who made vanity fair sing every single song that used to spring wasin t definitely he made vaniy fair what had been originally and they had to be at the vanity fair party athos chris but they were notty stars. and that's a big difference in everybody who read vanity fair was allowed to go into t that world and he did not only have movie stars, they wrote a fabulous article about a collection which is what i wrote about, they did what i would call important journalism in many different ways. and essentially here we have their 100 issue 100 anniversary issue and for 50 years it was not a publication. but that's what vanity fair was alll about and conde was a very shy man from very modest beginnings who actually brought business ethics to america america's can-do attitude to europe and european-style to new york. thankro you. [applause] >> ladies and gentlemen. please wait for the microphone to be passed to you for your question so we can record it and make sure to speak clearly and directly into the microphone. thank you. >> somebody must have a question. gentlemen here. >> who currently has the apartment -- who currently has the house on long island in the apartment at 1040 park. >> i do not know. i asked leslie who actually owns the house now and she did not know. so i k can tell you what happend to 1040, it's a very sad story it was a 32 room duplex apartment with an enclosed balcony all the way around, magnificent, it cannotma be sold and it was eventually after five years actually more than that, 1948 was subdivided back into three separate b apartments ando longer duplexes. she used to go there often with her daughter to paint because i had a fantastic light and it and her daughter used to dance her ballet on the dance floor and that park is also in the book but unfortunately it did not remain. it's a pity. >> thank you. >> there are two very beautiful granite pillars that i assume -- who owns those the city or the town or private property. >> i believe the town of greenwich has asked them to remain in place and they taken over the care and maintenance. essentially the printing plant which was the most extraordinary place, i think 400 acres originally that had been scrubland and they turned into the most beautiful park and they were printing for about 25 of america's most important magazines at the time and it was sold after it was bought with the publications and it's pleased after conde's life would of been a tremendous sadness to him. it probably would've killed him if vanity fair had not gone towards already. and i'm almost certain it's a city in the town owns them. >> thank you. they're very beautiful and well maintained. >> they are gorgeous. >> thank you. what is one of the stories that you heard that most surprised you in your research for the book. >> i think it was the story about leslie and conde and why they decided to divorce. i had a bizarre connection with the benson side of the family, my husband worked many years for claremore benson. we gave up beginning 2005, so we weren't part of the badot stuff. anyway i knew about him and i knew he was quite a buckling character and unfortunately what was so good is that leslie half-brother robin and david gave me access to her father's diary about when he had met leslie and how he was afraid that he was w falling in love wh a married woman and she was afraid she might be falling in love with him but they hadn't actually realized that conde had centered over to england to meet him on purpose. and you know they say if you love somebody a lot that you have to be willing to let them go he was only willing to let her go but he felt that was the only way she could have a life. he was afraid that she married an old man, yes they love each other but frankly was a good life for her and she needed to have a different life. it was his selflessness on top of the fact that he was terribly ethical person that made me say i wish i had known him in there so people around like that and it would've been lovely toe met him in meeting his children in hisis great-grandchildren has bn my solace i suppose. >> this lady in the front. >> can you please stand. >> about the new houses, what are they doing. >> did everybody here the question. >> she asked if i could tell a little bit more about the new houses and what they're doing with conde mast. a very short answer is no. yimply because when i was being vetted by conde nast when i was a person to go into their archive, they asked me one question, who are you writing about and i said conde nast and he said are youve going to be writing about anybody who is living in at the time i knew he was still alive and i said i like writing about dead people. and i specifically stayed away from the new houses and obviously because i think people didn't just want to have the story and with conde dying, in the book the empire there aren't an awful lot of changes at conde nast in the publications and obviously the world is spinning at such a rate right now that. magazines are difficult for people to make any profit on and when you're privately held company again bans publication it is very difficult for anybody outside to understand that there were lots of rumors around carter's quitting whens he did there have beenth huge changes n personnel, i think what they're trying to do is very simply make it profitable. and keep all of the magazinesit in. as well as online. whether they will succeed, i don't know. it's a bewildering world in media and i think if conde were alive today he would be totally besides himself. >> does that help, okay good. >> last question. >> at the peak of the empire what was the publication numbers in terms of readership. >> at the peak of the empire, it was probably around 5 million but you have to understand in the 5 million you have offices in their tables when people were in the waiting room and doctors offices and what have you and you would probably multiply that by five. >> okay. >> thank you. >> thank you everybody. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> i feel like we were emerged in a society and i thank you so much for that. >> on an occasion like this we would like to make the presentation to you and to do so as our executive director. >> it was so thoughtfully put together and we all cannot wait to read the book and thank you for your very thorough research and i can tell that you really loved your characters. on behalf of the general society in the city t of new york in 175 we express our gratitude to susan ronald author of condon mast for the general society labor, literature and landmark lecture series. [applause] >> thank you. [applause] we can already tell there is another book inside of you, we made a lifetime member to our library whose archive go back to 1785 in the bestseller, i'm sure you'll find something, come back. since you say that, the next book is about somebody else who is known in america and i've gone back to the dark side. sorry. it is called the ambassador and is called joseph p kennedy as ambassador to britain, 1938 to 1940. we look forward to it. thank you. i want to thank you allus for coming this evening, i want to remind you that this book is for pyle and susan would be happy to autograph. i hope you will join us now for the glass of wine and i'm sure susan would be happy to answer more questions. thank you so much for coming this evening . . . lause] >> you're watching a special edition of tv, airing down during the week on while members of congress are in their district due to the pandemic. tonight, the digital world. first michael strain discussing how the future of success is bright in his book the american dream is notdead . then timothy carney on his book alienated america. looking how the american dream is less attainable. later nicholas kristof and sheryl wu done on issues facing the working class in america. enjoyabletv now and over the weekend on c-span2 . >> good evening and welcome. you can go ahead and clap, it's okay. welcome to the schomburg center for research and black culture where we are dedicated to the preservation and interpretation of global black experiences my name is novella ford, director for public programs and exhibitions. thank you for joining us for is

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