Magazines: Look How Outrageous!

• Share

Each month, somebody, somewhere, nearly bursts a blood vessel over the cheeky covers of newly prosperous Esquire. In June, the magazine's cover took off on Jacqueline Kennedy. In a doctored photograph, Esquire showed her sledding with Crooner Eddie Fisher, under the quote: "Anyone who is against me will look like a rat — unless I run off with Eddie Fisher." Last November, a ventriloquist's dummy made to look like Hubert Humphrey graced the visible part of a foldout cover. Said the dummy: "I have known for 16 years his courage, his wisdom, his tact, his persuasion, his judgment, and his leadership." When the cover was opened, the full picture showed the dummy superimposed on the lap of, yes, Lyndon Johnson, who in turn was saying: "You tell 'em, Hubert."

The covers are meant to shout "Look at us! Look how outrageous we can be!" Sometimes the contents match the packaging. Every month, at least one Esquire article snipes at a sacred cow or takes some other unorthodox approach to a topic in the news. Recently, the magazine has offered "The Holy Kennedys," "The Late General MacArthur, Warts and All," "Bobby Baker Has It Made," "Two Cheers for the National Geographic," "In Defense of Cassius Clay," "The Life and Suspiciously Hard Times of Anthony Quinn," and "The American Newspaper Is Neither Record, Mirror, Journal, Ledger, Bulletin, Telegram, Examiner, Register, Chronicle, Gazette, Observer, Monitor, Transcript, nor Herald of the Day's Events."

Pseudotypical. The magazine can indeed be bold and occasionally brilliant, and sometimes superficial or old hat or appallingly tasteless. Such features as a parody of Scientific American, a roster of "The 100 Best People in the World" (Harry Bridges, Orson Welles, Charles de Gaulle), and recurring lists of what is In and what is Out might have had difficulty making the Harvard Lampoon. A cover like the tear-stained photograph of John F. Kennedy, which ran less than a year after his assassination, was patently concocted for shock. Another cover showed a morose nude jammed, derriere-first, into a garbage can. The article it advertised—"The New American Woman: through at 21" —was so heavily rewritten (seemingly to fit the cover illustration) that Freelance Writer Harlan Ellison refused to let Esquire use his byline. The article described a pseudotypical Los Angeles woman, prone to suicide, sexually jaded, hooked on pills and astrologically obsessed, who was supposed to be the wave of the future for all American women coming into their early 20s.

Regular features include acerbic book reviews by Malcolm Muggeridge, pedestrian travel notes by Richard Joseph, political commentary by Dwight Macdonald, a music column by Martin Mayer. Sprinkled throughout are a few of the oldfashioned, full-page cartoons of yesteryear's Esquire.

The mixture works. Circulation has climbed every month for the past 28 months, now stands at 1,050,000. (More than 25% of the readers are women.) In 1962, Esquire, Inc. lost $431,175. Last year profits totaled $3,450,000.