The Saturday Evening Post

1903 cover of The Saturday Evening Post: Otto von Bismarck illustrated by George Gibbs.

Note: Several other minor publications were also called the Saturday Evening Post, including some local British newspapers.

The Saturday Evening Post is a bimonthly American magazine. While the publication traces its historical roots to Benjamin Franklin and The Pennsylvania Gazette first published in 1728, The Saturday Evening Post, rechristened under new ownership in 1821 as a four-page newspaper, eventually became the most widely circulated weekly magazine. The magazine gained prominent status under the leadership of its longtime editor George Horace Lorimer (1899–1937).

The Saturday Evening Post published current event articles, editorials, human interest pieces, humor, illustrations, a letter column, poetry (including work written by readers), single-panel cartoons and stories by the leading writers of the time. It was known for commissioning lavish illustrations and original works of fiction. Illustrations were featured on the cover, and embedded in stories and advertising. Some Post illustrations became popular and continue to be reproduced as posters or prints, especially those by Norman Rockwell.

Curtis Publishing Co. stopped publishing the Post in 1969 after the company lost a landmark defamation suit and was ordered to pay over $3 million in damages. The Post was revived in 1971 as a quarterly publication. Today, the Saturday Evening Post magazine is published six times a year by the "Saturday Evening Post Society", which purchased the magazine in 1982.

Illustration

A Norman Rockwell Post cover illustration from January 1922.

In 1916, Saturday Evening Post editor George Lorimer discovered Rockwell, then an unknown 22-year-old New York artist. Lorimer promptly purchased two illustrations from Rockwell, using them as covers, and commissioned three more drawings. Rockwell's illustrations of the American family and rural life of a bygone era became icons. During his 50-year career with the Post, Rockwell painted more than 300 covers.

The Post also employed Nebraska artist John Philip Falter, who became known "as a painter of Americana with an accent of the Middle West," who "brought out some of the homeliness and humor of Middle Western town life and home life." He produced 120 covers for the Post between 1943 and 1968, ceasing only when the magazine began displaying photographs on its covers. Other cover illustrators include the artists N.C. Wyeth, J. C. Leyendecker and John E. Sheridan.

Content

Each issue featured several original short stories and often included an installment of a serial appearing in successive issues. Most of the fiction was written for mainstream tastes by popular writers, but some literary writers were featured. The opening pages of stories featured paintings by the leading magazine illustrators. The Post published stories and essays by Ray Bradbury, Kay Boyle, Agatha Christie, Brian Cleeve, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, C. S. Forester, Kurt Vonnegut, Paul Gallico, Hammond Innes, Louis L'Amour, Sinclair Lewis, Joseph C. Lincoln, John P. Marquand, Edgar Allan Poe, Sax Rohmer, William Saroyan, John Steinbeck and Rex Stout and Rob Wagner.

Emblematic of the Post's fiction was author Clarence Budington Kelland, who first appeared in 1916-17 with stories of homespun heroes, Efficiency Edgar and Scattergood Baines. Kelland was a steady presence from 1922 until 1961.

For many years William Hazlett Upson contributed a very popular series of short stories about the escapades of Earthworm Tractors salesman Alexander Botts. Publication in the Post launched careers and helped established artists and writers stay afloat. P. G. Wodehouse said "the wolf was always at the door" until the Post gave him his "first break" in 1915 by serializing Something New.

After the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Post columnist Garet Garrett became a vocal critic of the New Deal. Garrett accused the Roosevelt administration of initiating socialist strategies. After Lorimer died, Garrett became editorial writer-in-chief and criticized the Roosevelt administration's support of the U.K. and efforts to prepare to enter what became World War II. Garrett's positions aroused controversy and may have cost the Post readers and advertisers.

The Post readership began to decline in the late 1950s and 1960s. In general, the decline of general interest magazines was blamed on television, which competed for advertisers and readers' attention. The Post had problems retaining readers: The public's taste in fiction was changing, and the Post 's conservative politics and values remained controversial. Content by popular writers became harder to obtain. Prominent authors drifted away to newer magazines offering more money and status. As a result, the Post published more articles on current events and cut costs by replacing illustrations with photographs for covers and advertisements.

Curtis Publishing Co. stopped publishing the Post after the company lost a landmark defamation suit, Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts 388 U.S. 130 (1967), resulting from an article, and was ordered to pay $3,060,000 in damages to the plaintiff. The Post article implied that football coaches Paul "Bear" Bryant and Wally Butts conspired to fix a game between the University of Alabama and the University of Georgia. Butts sued Curtis Publishing Co. for defamation. The case went to the Supreme Court, which held that libel damages may be recoverable (in this instance against a news organization) if the injured party is a non-public official. But the plaintiff must prove that the defendant was guilty of a reckless lack of professional standards when examining allegations for reasonable credibility.

William Emerson was promoted to editor-in-chief in 1965 and remained in the position until the magazine's demise in 1969. In announcing that the February 8, 1969, issue would be the magazine's last, Curtis executive Martin Ackerman stated that the magazine had lost $5 million in 1968 and would lose a projected $3 million in 1969. In a meeting with employees after the magazine's closure had been announced, Emerson thanked the staff for their professional work and promised "to stay here and see that everyone finds a job".

At a March 1969 postmortem on the magazine's closing, Emerson stated that The Post "was a damn good vehicle for advertising" with competitive renewal rates and readership reports and expressed what The New York Times called "understandable bitterness" in wishing "that all the one-eyed critics will lose their other eye". Otto Friedrich, the magazine's last managing editor, blamed the death of The Post on Curtis. In his Decline and Fall (Harper & Row, 1970), an account of the magazine's final years (1962-1969), he argued that corporate management was unimaginative and incompetent. Friedrich acknowledges that The Post faced challenges as the tastes of American readers changed over the course of the 1960s, but he insisted that the magazine maintained a standard of quality and was appreciated by readers.

In 1971, The Post was revived as a quarterly publication, gaining wide recognition for its in-depth coverage of health and disease prevention, in additional to general interest articles. More recently, the Post embraced a broader range of subject matter for its readers, while maintaining its tradition of cover illustration. Today, the Saturday Evening Post magazine is still published six times a year by the "Saturday Evening Post Society", a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.

Editors

(from the purchase by Curtis, 1898)

• William George Jordan (1898–1899)
• George Horace Lorimer (1899–1937)
• Wesley Winans Stout (1937–1942)
• Ben Hibbs (1942–1962)
• Robert Fuoss (1962)
• Robert Sherrod (1962)
• Clay Blair, Jr. (1962–1964)
• William Emerson (1965–1969)
• Beurt SerVaas (1971–1975)
• Cory SerVaas, M.D. (1975–2008)
• Joan SerVaas (2008–Present)

Cover gallery

• May 20, 1905. Illustrated by N. C. Wyeth
  May 20, 1905. Illustrated by N. C. Wyeth
• 
  December 28, 1907. Cover by J. C. Leyendecker.

Read

• Upson, William Hazlett. "We’re Going to Ruin the Lower Classes." The Saturday Evening Post, January 24, 1931 (full text). -- Henry Ford's minimum wage
• "New Paths" by Benito Mussolini, The Saturday Evening Post, 1928, September 8.

See also

• Cyrus Curtis
• John Philip Falter
• Garet Garrett
• Ladies' Home Journal
• J. C. Leyendecker
• Norman Rockwell
• John E. Sheridan (illustrator)
• Harry Simmons

Similar magazines

• Collier's Weekly
• Reader's Digest
• Life
• Look

External links

• Saturday Evening Post website
• Saturday Evening Post illustration archive
• George Horace Lorimer
• Saturday Evening Post Society - Current Publisher of the Saturday Evening Post Magazine and SaturdayEveningPost.com