Nation: HENRY R. LUCE: End of a Pilgrimage

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Epic & Titillating. If conscience and commitment led Henry Luce into journalism in the first place, his Yankee ancestry drove him hard to do well at it.* "The bitch goddess," he said, "sat in the outer office." With his Yalemate and co-founder of TIME Briton Hadden, Luce realized after World War I that Americans as a nation were more aware than ever of world problems—"but that their knowledge didn't equal their interest." Luce recalled his father's dictum: "The purpose of education is to make a man feel at home in his universe." That, to him, became the reason for and the aim of his publications.

When TIME was founded, the nation's technology and communications had far outstripped its daily newspapers, which remained local, parochial and, for the most part, ineffably stodgy; the few magazines of comment were not widely circulated. "I do not know any problem in journalism," Luce said later, "which can be usefully isolated from the profoundest questions of man's fate." Yet, he allowed mischievously: "I am all for titillating trivialities. I am all for the epic touch. I could almost say that everything in TIME should be either titillating or epic or starkly, supercurtly factual."

TIME's blend of the epic and the titillating, its telling of news in terms of people, its belief that medicine, art, business, religion, education and many other aspects of everyday life that were largely ignored by the daily press were all newsworthy in themselves, made the magazine a success almost from the start. Most important of all was its founders' guiding concept that the newspaperman's sacrosanct "objectivity" was a myth. Asked once why TIME did not present "two sides to a story," Luce replied: "Are there not more likely to be three sides or 30 sides?"

Lucepapers Without Luce. Few journalists in his time labored harder to examine all three or 30 sides of an argument, or strove more conscientiously to see that the facts were presented fairly. TIME made judgments, about both issues and men. Looking back on his career, Luce once noted with satisfaction that "all our publications, all our activities, are successful. They are successful not only at the box office, but they are successful also in the opinion of a large part of mankind. This is a considerable consolation for our efforts over the years."

Like any wise general, Harry Luce made sure that there would be no slackening of that effort in the event of his death. "I want everyone," he said, "to get used to the idea of what they call the Lucepapers without Luce." In 1960, corporate control of Time Inc.—in which he then held 17% of the outstanding stock—was transferred to Board Chairman Andrew Heiskell and President James A. Linen. When he retired as Editor in Chief, Luce appointed Hedley Donovan, former managing editor of FORTUNE, who for five years had been Editorial Director of Time Inc., as his successor.

After his withdrawal from Time Inc., Luce's pastor, Dr. Read, noted "a strange peace and completeness at this point in his dynamic and turbulent career." Neither unconditioned peace nor unequivocal completeness would ever be signal qualities of his magazines, and that, perhaps, was Harry Luce's best legacy to journalism.