The Saturday Evening Post

File:SaturdayEveningPost19Jan1924.jpg

The Saturday Evening Post was first published in 1821 in the same printing shop at 53 Market Street in Philadelphia, where the Benjamin Franklin-founded Pennsylvania Gazette was published in the 18th century.{{cite magazine |url=https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/history-saturday-evening-post/ |title=History of The Saturday Evening Post |magazine=The Saturday Evening Post |access-date=June 20, 2022 }} While the Gazette ceased publication in 1800, ten years after Franklin's death, the Post links its history to the original magazine.{{cite magazine |url=http://saturdayeveningpost.com/About-The-Saturday-Evening-Post.html |title=About the 'Saturday Evening Post' |magazine=The Saturday Evening Post |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090222211321/http://saturdayeveningpost.com/About-The-Saturday-Evening-Post.html |archive-date=February 22, 2009}}

Cyrus H. K. Curtis, publisher of the Ladies' Home Journal, bought the Post for $1,000 in 1897.{{Cite web|url=http://www.curtispublishing.com/history.shtml|title=Curtis Publishing - The Art of Licensing|website=www.curtispublishing.com|access-date=2018-06-14|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180614194734/http://www.curtispublishing.com/history.shtml|archive-date=2018-06-14|url-status=dead}} Under the ownership of the Curtis Publishing Company, the Post grew to become the most widely circulated weekly magazine in the United States. The magazine gained prominent status under the leadership of its longtime editor George Horace Lorimer (1899–1937).Tebbel, John. George Horace Lorimer and the Saturday Evening Post. Doubleday & Co., 1948.

The Saturday Evening Post published current event articles, editorials, human interest pieces, humor, illustrations, a letter column, poetry with contributions submitted by readers, single-panel gag cartoons, including Hazel by Ted Key, and stories by 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 continue to be reproduced as posters or prints, especially those by Norman Rockwell.{{citation needed|date=September 2020}}

In 1929, at the beginning of the Mexican Repatriation, The Saturday Evening Post ran a series on the racial inferiority of Mexicans.{{cite book|title=Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women in Twentieth-Century America|last=Ruiz|first=Vicki L.|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1998|isbn=978-0-19-513099-7|location=New York|pages=[https://archive.org/details/fromoutofshadows0000ruiz/page/27 27–29]|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/fromoutofshadows0000ruiz/page/27}}

In 1954, it published its first articles on the role of the U.S. in deposing Mohammad Mosaddegh, Prime Minister of Iran, in 1953. The article was based on materials leaked by CIA director Allen Dulles.{{cite journal|author=Douglas Little|title=Mission Impossible: The CIA and the Cult of Covert Action in the Middle East|journal=Diplomatic History|date=November 2004|volume=28|issue=5|page=667|doi=10.1111/j.1467-7709.2004.00446.x|jstor=24914820|author-link=Douglas Little}}

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 appealed to a declining number of people.{{citation needed|date=February 2021}} 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.{{citation needed|date=September 2020}}

In 1967, the magazine's publisher, Curtis Publishing Company, lost a landmark defamation suit, Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts, 388 U.S. 130 (1967),{{ussc|Source=f|388|130|1967}} resulting from an article, and was ordered to pay {{Currency|3060000|US$}} in damages to the plaintiff. The Post article implied that football coaches Paul "Bear" Bryant and Wally Butts conspired to fix a game between the University of Alabama and the University of Georgia. Both coaches sued Curtis Publishing Co. for defamation, each initially asking for {{Currency|10 million|US$|linked=no|passthrough=yes}}. Bryant eventually settled for {{Currency|300000|US$|linked=no}} while Butts' case went to the Supreme Court, which held that libel damages may be recoverable (in this instance against a news organization) when the injured party is a non-public official, if the plaintiff can prove that the defendant was guilty of a reckless lack of professional standards when examining allegations for reasonable credibility. (Butts was eventually awarded {{Currency|460000|US$|linked=no}}.){{citation needed|date=September 2020}}

William Emerson was promoted to editor-in-chief in 1965 and remained in the position until the magazine's demise in 1969.Applebome, Peter. [https://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/business/media/27emerson.html "William A. Emerson Jr., Editor in Chief of Saturday Evening Post, Dies at 86"], The New York Times, August 26, 2009. Accessed August 30, 2009.

In 1968, Martin Ackerman, a specialist in troubled firms, became president of Curtis after lending it {{Currency|5M|US$|linked=no|passthrough=yes}}. With the magazine still in dire financial straits, Ackerman announced that Curtis would reduce printing costs by cancelling the subscriptions of roughly half of its readers. Those who lost their subscriptions were offered a free transfer to a subscription to Life magazine; Life publisher Time Inc. paid Curtis {{Currency|5M|US$|linked=no|passthrough=yes}} for the exchange, easing the company's mounting debts.[https://www.newspapers.com/clip/129109479/ "Publishers Agree In Financial Plan"], The Kansas City Star, May 19, 1968, page 4A. The move was also widely seen as an opportunity for Curtis to abandon older and more rural readers, who were less valuable to the Post's advertisers.{{cite news |title=Martin Ackerman, 61, publisher; closed The Saturday Evening Post |author=Lambert B |date=August 4, 1993 |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1993/08/04/obituaries/martin-ackerman-61-publisher-closed-the-saturday-evening-post.html }} Columnist Art Buchwald lampooned the decision, suggesting that "if the Saturday Evening Post considered you a deadbeat, you didn't have much choice but to either pretend you were still getting the magazine and live a lie, or move out of the neighborhood before anyone found out."Buchwald, Art. [https://www.newspapers.com/clip/129110302/ "Saturday Evening Post, How Could You?"], via Newsday, May 21, 1968, page 28.Buchwald, Art. [https://www.newspapers.com/clip/129110387/ "The Saturday Evening Post Saga"], via the Akron Beacon-Journal, January 19, 1969, page D 11.

These last-ditch efforts failed to save the magazine, and Curtis announced in January 1969 that the February 8 issue would be the magazine's last. Ackerman stated that the magazine had lost {{Currency|5M|US$|linked=no|passthrough=yes}} in 1968 and would lose a projected {{Currency|3M|US$|linked=no|passthrough=yes}} in 1969.Bedingfield, Robert E. [https://www.nytimes.com/1969/01/11/archives/feb-8-issue-of-saturday-evening-post-to-be-last.html "February 8 Issue of Saturday Evening Post to Be Last"], The New York Times, January 11, 1969. Accessed August 29, 2009. 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".Carmody, Deirdre. [https://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FA0E12F73A541B7B93C3A8178AD85F4D8685F9 "Magazine staff says sad good-by; Post Secretaries Find a Rose on Desk to Mark the Day"], The New York Times, January 11, 1969. Accessed August 29, 2009.

At a March 1969 post-mortem 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".Dougherty, Philip H. [https://www.nytimes.com/1969/03/30/archives/postmortem-on-saturday-evening-post.html "Postmortem on Saturday Evening Post"], The New York Times, March 30, 1969. Accessed August 29, 2009. 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 (1962–69), he argued that corporate management was unimaginative and incompetent. Friedrich acknowledges that The Post faced challenges while the tastes of American readers changed over the course of the 1960s, but he insisted that the magazine maintained a standard of good quality and was appreciated by readers.{{citation needed|date=September 2020}}

In 1970, control of the debilitated Curtis Publishing Company was acquired from the estate of Cyrus Curtis by Indianapolis industrialist Beurt SerVaas.{{cite magazine | title = Return of the Post| magazine = Time | date = June 14, 1971

| url = http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,909890-2,00.html

| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20090213232711/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,909890-2,00.html

| url-status = dead

| archive-date = February 13, 2009

| access-date = April 12, 2008}} SerVaas relaunched the Post the following year on a quarterly basis as a kind of nostalgia magazine.

In early 1982, ownership of the Post was transferred to the Benjamin Franklin Literary and Medical Society, founded in 1976 by the Post's then-editor, Corena "Cory" SerVaas{{cite news | title = Around the Nation: Saturday Evening Post Sold to Franklin Society| work = The New York Times | date = January 10, 1982

| url = https://www.nytimes.com/1982/01/10/us/around-the-nation-saturday-evening-post-sold-to-franklin-society.html

| access-date = September 28, 2010}} (wife of Beurt SerVaas).{{cite news| last = Melissa Mace| title = Beyond the Original Mission| work = Iowa Journalist| date = Fall 2005| url = http://www.uiowa.edu/~iowajour/ijfall2009/archive/2005/fall/CoreySerVaas.html| access-date = September 28, 2010| archive-date = August 3, 2010| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20100803100421/http://www.uiowa.edu/~iowajour/ijfall2009/archive/2005/fall/CoreySerVaas.html| url-status = dead}} The magazine's core focus was now health and medicine; indeed, the magazine's website originally noted that the "credibility of The Saturday Evening Post has made it a valuable asset for reaching medical consumers and for helping medical researchers obtain family histories. In the magazine, national health surveys are taken to further current research on topics such as cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, ulcerative colitis, spina bifida, and bipolar disorder."{{cite news | title = Saturdayeveningpost.com publishes a classic American bi-monthly magazine

| url = http://www.aboutus.org/SaturdayEveningPost.com

| access-date = September 28, 2010}} Ownership of the magazine was later transferred to the Saturday Evening Post Society; SerVaas headed both organizations. The range of topics covered in the magazine's articles is now wide, suitable for a general readership.{{citation needed|date=September 2020}}

By 1991, Curtis Publishing Company had been renamed Curtis International, a subsidiary of SerVaas Inc., and had become an importer of audiovisual equipment.{{cite news | title = Company News: Briefs| work = The New York Times | date = June 26, 1991

| url = http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F20616F93B550C758EDDAF0894D9494D81

| access-date = September 28, 2010}} Today the Post is published six times a year by the Saturday Evening Post Society, which claims 501(c)(3) non-profit organization status.{{cn|date=July 2024}}

With the January/February 2013 issue, the Post launched a major makeover of the publication, including a new cover design and efforts to increase the magazine's profile, in response to a general public misbelief that it was no longer in existence.{{cite news |url=http://observer.com/2013/01/magazine-success-story-the-saturday-evening-post-keeps-on-going/ |title=Magazine Success Story: The Saturday Evening Post Keeps on Going |date=January 15, 2013 |access-date=April 3, 2014 |newspaper=New York Observer |first=Kara |last=Bloomgarden-Smoke }} The magazine's new logo is an update of a logo it had used beginning in 1942.{{cite web|url=http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/artists-gallery/saturday-evening-post-cover-artists/norman-rockwell-gallery/rockwell1940s|title=Rockwell—1940s – The Saturday Evening Post|author=The Saturday Evening Post Society}} As of October 2018, the complete archive of the magazine is available online.{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/24/arts/design/saturday-evening-post-norman-rockwell-archive.html |title=Craving Some Americana? The Saturday Evening Post Archive Is Online |date=October 24, 2018 |newspaper=The New York Times |first=Sara |last=Aridi |access-date=February 5, 2020 }}

Image:Rockwellboywithstereoscope.png Post cover illustration in January 1922]]

In 1916, Saturday Evening Post editor George Horace Lorimer discovered Norman Rockwell, then an unknown 22-year-old New York City 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.{{citation needed|date=September 2020}}

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. {{citation needed|date=September 2020}}

Another prominent artist was Charles R. Chickering, a freelance illustrator who went on to design numerous postage stamps for the U.S. Post Office. Other popular cover illustrators include artists George Hughes, Constantin Alajalov,{{cite magazine | url=http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2011/12/30/art-entertainment/artist-constantin-alajalov.html | title=Classic Covers: Constantin Alajalov | magazine=The Saturday Evening Post | date=December 30, 2011 | access-date=May 23, 2013 | author=Denny, Diana}}

John Clymer, Alonzo Kimball, W. H. D. Koerner, J. C. Leyendecker, Mead Schaeffer, Charles Archibald MacLellan, John E. Sheridan, Emmett Watson, Douglass Crockwell, and N. C. Wyeth.{{cite magazine | url=http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/artists-gallery/saturday-evening-post-cover-artists/amos-sewell-art-gallery | title=Amos Sewell | magazine=The Saturday Evening Post | date=December 3, 2014 | access-date=May 4, 2018 }}

Cartoonists have included: Irwin Caplan, Clyde Lamb, Jerry Marcus, Frank O'Neal, Charles M. Schulz, and Bill Yates. The magazine ran Ted Key's cartoon panel series Hazel from 1943 to 1969.{{citation needed|date=September 2020}}

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.{{citation needed|date=September 2020}}

The Post published stories and essays by H. E. Bates, Ray Bradbury, Kay Boyle, Agatha Christie, Brian Cleeve, Eleanor Franklin Egan, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, C. S. Forester, Ernest Haycox, Robert A. Heinlein, Kurt Vonnegut, Paul Gallico, Normand Poirier, Hammond Innes, Louis L'Amour, Sinclair Lewis, Joseph C. Lincoln, John P. Marquand, Edgar Allan Poe, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Sax Rohmer, William Saroyan, John Steinbeck, Rex Stout, Rob Wagner, Edith Wharton, and P.G. Wodehouse.{{citation needed|date=September 2020}}

Poetry published came from poets including: Carl Sandburg, Ogden Nash, Dorothy Parker, and Hannah Kahn.{{citation needed|date=September 2020}}

Jack London's best-known novel The Call of the Wild was first published, in serialized form, in the Saturday Evening Post in 1903.{{cite web |url=http://manhattanrarebooks-literature.com/london_call_of_the_wild.htm |title=Jack London: First edition of The Call of the Wild in the Saturday Evening Post |work=manhattanrarebooks-literature.com |publisher=The Manhattan Rare Book Company |access-date=February 9, 2010}}

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.{{citation needed|date=September 2020}}

For many years William Hazlett Upson contributed a very popular series of short stories about the escapades of Earthworm Tractors salesman Alexander Botts.{{cite web |url=https://www.caterpillar.com/en/company/history/archive/tractoractorwinsoscar.html |title=Tractor Actor Wins Oscar |publisher=Caterpillar Inc. |access-date=September 4, 2020 |quote=Upson wrote more than 100 stories featuring his exploits with the Earthworm Tractor Company for the Saturday Evening Post from 1927-1974. |archive-date=August 1, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180801190218/https://www.caterpillar.com/en/company/history/archive/tractoractorwinsoscar.html |url-status=dead }}

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.{{cite web |url= http://www.theparisreview.com/media/3773_WODEHOUSE.pdf |title=The Art of Fiction – P.G. Wodehouse |access-date=June 9, 2008 |year=2005|edition=reprint |work=The Paris Review |pages=21 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20080529040738/http://www.theparisreview.com/media/3773_WODEHOUSE.pdf |archive-date = May 29, 2008}}

After the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Post columnist Garet Garrett became a vocal critic of the New Deal. Garrett accused the Roosevelt administration of initiating socialist strategies.{{cn|date=July 2024}}

After Lorimer died, Garrett became editorial writer-in-chief and criticized the Roosevelt administration's support of the United Kingdom and efforts to prepare to enter World War II, and allegedly showed some support for Adolf Hitler in some of his editorials. Garrett's positions aroused controversy and may have cost the Post readers and advertisers in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor.{{citation needed|date=June 2017}}

(Listed from the purchase by Curtis, 1898)Otto Friedrich, Decline and Fall (Harper & Row, 1970), flyleaf, chapter 2, and passim, provides info for 1898–1969

{{Columns-list|colwidth=25em|

• William George Jordan (1898–99)
• 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 (2008–2009)
• Patrick Perry (2009){{cite web |title=Letters: From the Editor |url=http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/sections/letters/from-the-editor |work=The Saturday Evening Post |access-date=July 7, 2009}}
• Stephen C. George (2009–10)
• Steven Slon (2012–2022){{cite news |url=http://www.minonline.com/news/19751.html |title=Steve Slon to Lead The Saturday Evening Post |last=Smith |first=Steve |date=January 18, 2012 |access-date=January 31, 2012 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120125225426/http://www.minonline.com/news/19751.html |archive-date=January 25, 2012 }}Slon's resume at [http://www.stevenslon.com/sts_01CV.html stevenslon.com/sts_01CV.html] shows editorial direction since October 2010 [when Stephen George left]
• Patrick Perry (2022–present)Editorial realignment revealed in masthead of September/October 2022 issue.

}}

• Jane Nickerson{{Cite news |date=2000-03-02 |title=Jane Nickerson Steinberg, 83, Food Editor |language=en-US |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2000/03/02/nyregion/jane-nickerson-steinberg-83-food-editor.html |access-date=2023-09-28 |issn=0362-4331}}

Image:Babynew.jpg|December 28, 1907. Cover by J. C. Leyendecker

File:SatrudayEveningPost041610.jpg|April 16, 1910. Cover by Anton Otto Fischer

File:SaturdayEveningPost11Mar1911.jpg|March 11, 1911. Cover by Alonzo Myron Kimball

File:1920-12-04-Saturday-Evening-Post-Norman-Rockwell-cover-Santa-and-Expense-Book-no-logo-400-Digimarc.jpg|December 4, 1920. Cover by Norman Rockwell

File:1921-6-4 No Swimming - Norman Rockwell.jpg|June 4, 1921. Cover by Norman Rockwell

• Constantin Alajalov
• Cyrus Curtis
• John Philip Falter
• Anton Otto Fischer
• Garet Garrett
• Ladies' Home Journal
• J. C. Leyendecker
• Norman Rockwell
• John E. Sheridan (illustrator)
• Harry Simmons
• Frank Glasgow Tinker
• Edmund Ward

• Collier's
• Harper's Weekly
• Liberty
• Life
• Look
• Reader's Digest (still in publication)

{{Reflist|colwidth=30em}}

• Cohn, Jan. Creating America: George Horace Lorimer and the Saturday Evening Post (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1990)
• Damon-Moore, Helen. Magazines for the millions: Gender and commerce in the Ladies' Home Journal and the Saturday Evening Post, 1880–1910 (SUNY Press, 1994)
• Hall, Roger I. "A system pathology of an organization: the rise and fall of the old Saturday Evening Post." Administrative science quarterly (1976): 185–211. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/2392042 in JSTOR]
• Tebbel, John William. George Horace Lorimer and the Saturday Evening Post (1948)

{{Commons category|The Saturday Evening Post}}

• {{Official website|saturdayeveningpost.com}}
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20170930023142/http://www.curtispublishing.com Curtis Publishing] (archived 30 September 2017)
• [https://www.villagevoice.com/2010/06/17/pete-hamill-on-the-death-of-newsweek-the-saturday-evening-post/ "More Irrelevant Than Irreverent"] by Pete Hamill for The Village Voice, January 16, 1969.

{{Saturday Evening Post}}

{{Cyrus Curtis}}

{{Norman Rockwell}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Saturday Evening Post}}

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