Henry Luce#Henry Luce Foundation

{{Infobox person

| image = Henry Luce 1954.jpg

| caption = Luce in 1954

| birth_name = Henry Robinson Luce

| birth_date = {{Birth date|1898|04|03}}

| birth_place = Tengchow, China

| death_date = {{Death date and age|1967|02|28|1898|04|03}}

| death_place = Phoenix, Arizona, U.S.

| spouse = {{plainlist|

{{marriage|Lila Ross Hotz|1923|1935|end=divorced}}
{{marriage|Clare Boothe Luce|1935|}}

}}

| children = 3

| parents = Henry W. Luce

| occupation = Publisher, journalist

| alma_mater = Yale University

| party = Republican

}}

Henry Robinson Luce (April 3, 1898 – February 28, 1967) was an American magazine magnate who founded Time, Life, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated magazines. He has been called "the most influential private citizen in the America of his day".{{cite book|author=Robert Edwin Herzstein|title=Henry R. Luce, Time, and the American Crusade in Asia|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fb30H5d_jZkC&pg=PA1|year=2005|publisher=Cambridge U.P.|page=1|isbn=9780521835770}}

Born in Shandong, China, to parents from the United States who were serving as Presbyterian missionaries, Luce moved to the US at the age of 15 and later attended Yale University. He launched and closely supervised a stable of magazines that transformed journalism and the reading habits of millions of Americans. Time summarized and interpreted the week's news; Life was a picture magazine of politics, culture, and society that dominated American visual perceptions in the era before television; Fortune reported on national and international business; and Sports Illustrated explored the world of sports.

Counting his radio projects and newsreels, Luce created the first multimedia corporation. He envisaged that the United States would achieve world hegemony, and in 1941 he declared the 20th century would be the "American Century".Editorial (1941-02-17) The American Century, Life Magazine{{cite web | url=https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/henry-luce-henry-r-luce-and-the-rise-of-the-american-news-media/650/ | title=Henry R. Luce and the Rise of the American News Media | publisher=American Masters (PBS) | date=April 28, 2004 | access-date=19 June 2014 | author=Baughman, James L.}}

Early life and education

Luce was born in Tengchow, Shandong, China, now Penglai, on April 3, 1898, the son of Elizabeth Root Luce and Henry Winters Luce, who was a Presbyterian missionary.

At 15, he was sent to the U.S. to attend the Hotchkiss School in Connecticut, where he tried hard to overcome his stuttering. As a scholarship student he was isolated from the upper-class boys. He was subsidized by an elderly Chicago heiress, Nancy Fowler McCormick, who favored sons of missionaries. Applying himself to study, Luce quickly became the top student. He was especially strong in languages, studying Greek, Latin, French, and German, and already knowing Chinese. He edited the Hotchkiss Literary Monthly.Brinkley, The Publisher: Henry Luce and his American Century (2010) p. 35. There, he first met Briton Hadden; they became best friends.

Hotchkiss was a feeder prep school for Yale University. After a summer spent working on a Springfield newspaper, Luce matriculated in the fall of 1916. He was the top freshman academically, but grades did not confer as much prestige as a staff role on the Yale Daily News. Only four freshmen were chosen by the News; they included Luce and Hadden.Brinkley, pp. 54-57. When the U.S. entered World War I in 1917, a third of the students joined the army; the rest, including Luce, joined the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) and attended class in uniform.

Luce also joined Alpha Delta, a minor fraternity. His grades remained top-level, and every spare hour was devoted to newspaper work. Luce and Hadden were the two outstanding journalists; when the vote came in January 1918 for chairmanship of the News, Hadden beat Luce by one vote. Luce instead became managing editor and the two worked closely together and started planning their future. Meanwhile, the Army assigned them as ROTC leaders to train new recruits. The war ended before either was commissioned.

In January 1919, Luce and Hadden returned to Yale University as juniors. In May 1919, they were both tapped into the prestigious Skull and Bones secret society. Luce tried, but failed, to win a Rhodes Scholarship to the University of Oxford, but he was admitted to the university and paid his way. He spent the year travelling Europe, observing the post-World War I scene closely. He returned to the United States to take a newspaper job in Chicago as a junior reporter.Brinkley, pp. 61–63, 70–83.

Career

Nightly discussions of the concept of a news magazine led Luce and Hadden, both age 23, to quit their jobs in 1922. Later that same year, they partnered with Robert Livingston Johnson and another Yale classmate to form Time Inc.{{cite magazine|last=Warburton|first=Albert|date=Winter 1962|volume=48|number=4|magazine=The Emerald of Sigma Pi|title=Robert L. Johnson Hall Dedicated at Temple University|pages=111|url=http://www.enivation.com/SigmaPi/archive/Emerald/1962/SP_Emerald_VOL_48_NO_4_WINTER_1962.pdf|access-date=October 13, 2016|archive-date=September 15, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160915082411/http://www.enivation.com/SigmaPi/archive/Emerald/1962/SP_Emerald_VOL_48_NO_4_WINTER_1962.pdf|url-status=usurped}}

Luce, supported by editor-in-chief T. S. Matthews, appointed Whittaker Chambers as acting Foreign News editor in 1944, despite the feuds that Chambers had with reporters in the field.Brinkley, The Publisher: Henry Luce and his American Century (2010) pp. 322–93

Luce, who remained editor-in-chief of all his publications until 1964, maintained a position as an influential member of the Republican Party.[https://archive.today/20130105003801/http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,836722,00.html "Henry R. Luce: End of a Pilgrimage"]. Time. March 10, 1967 An instrumental figure behind the so-called "China Lobby", he played a large role in steering American foreign policy and popular sentiment in favor of Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek and his wife, Soong Mei-ling, in their war against the Japanese. (The Chiangs appeared in the cover of Time eleven times between 1927 and 1955.){{cite magazine | url=http://search.time.com/results.html?N=46&Ntt=Chiang | title=Time magazine historical search | magazine=Time | access-date=19 June 2014 | url-status=dead | archive-url=https://archive.today/20120630081514/http://search.time.com/results.html?N=46&Ntt=Chiang | archive-date=30 June 2012 }}

Luce authored an editorial for Life in 1941, titled "The American Century", in which he defined the role of U.S. foreign policy for the remainder of the 20th century.

Personal life

Image:THU Luce Memorial Chapel.jpg at Tunghai University in Taiwan]]

Luce met his first wife, Lila Hotz, while he was studying at Yale University in 1919.{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1999/04/03/nyregion/lila-luce-tyng-100-first-wife-of-henry-r-luce.html |title=Lila Luce Tyng, 100, First Wife of Henry R. Luce |first=Nick |last=Ravo |work=The New York Times |date=April 3, 1999 |access-date=January 16, 2018}} They married in 1923 and had two children, Peter Paul and Henry Luce III, before divorcing in 1935.

In 1935, he married his second wife, Clare Boothe Luce, who had an 11-year-old daughter, Ann Clare Brokaw, whom he raised as his own.

Luce died of a coronary occlusion on February 28, 1967 in Phoenix, Arizona. He was 68.{{cite web | url=https://time.com/archive/6630572/nation-henry-r-luce-end-of-a-pilgrimage/#:~:text=On%20the%2044th%20anniversary%20of,He%20was%2068 | title=Nation: HENRY R. LUCE: End of a Pilgrimage | date=March 10, 1967 }} At his death, he was said to be worth $100 million in Time Inc. stock.{{cite magazine| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=HecCAAAAMBAJ&q=Henry+Luce++%24100+million+in+Time+Inc.+stock&pg=PA93 |title=Why the Power Vacuum at Time Inc. Continues|author= Edwin Diamond|magazine=New York |date = October 23, 1972}} Most of his fortune went to the Henry Luce Foundation.

Legacy

He was honored by the United States Postal Service with a 32¢ Great Americans series (1980–2000) postage stamp.{{Cite news| url =http://usstampgallery.com/view.php?id=42704f6c73679f11b3d8dee5a6b4a647de266c45 |title=Henry R. Luce|publisher=US Stamp Gallery |date = April 3, 1998}} Luce was inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame.{{cite web|title=Appendix O- National Business Hall of Fame Laureates|url=https://www.juniorachievement.org/documents/20009/2737219/HistoryK-O.PDF|access-date=30 December 2019|website=Junior Achievement Inc.|archive-date=August 10, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220810165810/https://www.juniorachievement.org/documents/20009/2737219/HistoryK-O.PDF|url-status=dead}}

Henry Luce Foundation

The Henry Luce Foundation, Inc. is a private, nonprofit organization incorporated in New York. It was established in 1936 by Henry Luce in his thirties. His son Henry III served as its chairman and chief executive for many years.{{Cite web |title=History {{!}} The Henry Luce Foundation |url=https://www.hluce.org/about/history/ |access-date=2024-08-19 |website=www.hluce.org}}

References

=Primary sources=

Luce, Henry. The ideas of Henry Luce ed by John Knox Jessup, (1969) [https://archive.org/details/ideasofhenryluce00luce/page/n7/mode/2up online]

External links

[https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/data/batches/ncu_iris_ver01/data/sn78002169/0027955825A/1947030201/0022.pdf John Foster Dulles and Clare Boothe Luce link (pdf format)]
[http://www.time.com/time/mediakit/about/biographies/founders/luce.html TIME biography]{{dead link|date=January 2025|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}}
[http://www.hluce.org/ The Henry Luce Foundation]
[http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/luce/ Luce Center for American Art at the Brooklyn Museum – Visible Storage and Study Center]
Whitman, Alden. [https://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0403.html "Henry R. Luce, Creator of Time–Life Magazine Empire, Dies in Phoenix at 68"], The New York Times, March 1, 1967.
[https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/henry-luce-henry-r-luce-and-the-rise-of-the-american-news-media/650/ PBS American Masters]
[http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/nyhs/ms3014_henry_luce/ Henry R. Luce Papers] at the [https://www.nyhistory.org/library New-York Historical Society]

Category:1898 births

Category:1967 deaths

Category:Alumni of the University of Oxford

Category:American anti-communists

Category:American magazine founders

Category:American magazine publishers (people)

Category:American mass media owners

Category:American Presbyterians

Category:Businesspeople from Yantai

Category:Children of American missionaries in China

Category:Connecticut Republicans

Category:Hotchkiss School alumni