the only problem was all of the moderns models were tied to various fashion houses in europe, not in america. mrs. astor and mrs. fish were able to cobble together a very interesting show of new york fashion at last. here it is. the new york city public library just found some of the stills and if you go to their website you will see the fashions. as i said, the models were tied to other places and as you can see alternately conde

was making close in different sizes because not all of them were models, are they? so there's more of these apparently at the new york city public library and i thought it would be really interesting to see. anyway, this upset another gentleman called william randolph hearst who had just bought harper's bazaar and he sent his people out to badmouth vogue and conde nast as people who wanted to get rid of european fashion and not imported to america anymore and they were only out to support new york clothingdesigners . what happened was conde's representative arrived in paris during the war with a big fat check for the seamstresses who'dbeen put out of work . so hearst lost the first round but he wasn't going to give up. we all know he never did that. from 1915, two thingshappened .

most important one was a lunch with the gentleman who founded the coffeehouse in this building , frank wrote in shield. frank was a great aficionado of modern art. he was everybody's favorite raconteur. he had acres of friends throughout new york city and conde had lunch with him probably at the coffeehouse. i don't know where, exactly and he said i had a problem. i bought two magazine called dress and vanity fair. i tried to editthem myself but i'm a publisher, not an editor . what you think i'm getting wrong? frank said it's very simple. you have to make it sizzle. you have to make ita cocktail party wears every time somebody turns the page they're joining you in a conversation . their understanding what it is that everybody in society or everybody who we read about is thinking about.

so conde decided to hire frank on as the editor for vanity fair on a handshake. he did his best deals on a handshake. they had one competitor at the time, hl mencken was the editor and it was the smart set where they said one civilized reader is worth 1000 boneheads . smart set eventually went out of business but they eventually had a friendly rivalry between them and george who had worked at the smart set and it up working at vanity fair after it closed . conde believed in hiring the best people no matter what. it didn't matter whether they were gay, lesbian, jewish , catholic, whatever. itdidn't matter . what mattered was talent. it didn't matter if they were known so he hired a girl

calleddorothy rothschild to write captions for vogue . the one that caught frank's i was brevity is the soul of lingerie . she kept dropping little poems on frank's desk to transfer over from vogue into vanity fair. finally he agreed to takeher on . we then also wanted to take on somebody to make the vanity fair articles more substantial so he brought on the chap in the middle, a guy called robert benchley who was actually one of the funniest people i've ever read about and i've read his own biography and it's absolutely hysterical but robert benchley was a harvard graduate. he had been editor of the harvard lampoon and he got the job because it was going to get all very serious. i open the book with one of the incidents that happened while they were working

there. eventually by the way went on to win an oscar for a short produced by mgm called how to sleep. and it is hysterically funny if you can ever get a hold of it. dorothy of course would eventually go on to other things but the third person in the picture is a gentleman called robert sherwood who is about six foot eight. it was fresh out of the army in 1919, came to work. he said he was a very good writer. frank wanted to believe him. he had been very wounded during the war. it had been gassed, he'd been shot in the leg and as dorothy would say, how did they miss hisheart ? this guy was enormous. sherwood would go on to win for pulitzer prizes and become a speechwriter for fdr . so these were all unknowns, but they all misbehaved tremendously.

and of course ended up getting fired. it was all basically because dorothy decided that as theater critic by now that she was going to go after broadway producers and she and uplibeling them so he really had no choice . conde didn't really want to fire her but she had to go and it waspoor frank who had to do it .so during the war he sets up british vogue because he can't export paper from america believe it or not during world war i . and decides at the end of the war in 1919 that he's going to go across to europe and set up a french vogue so he's now become the first international magazine publisher in the world . now, we've talked about a few of the staff writers. i'm just going to show you a few pictures because ofcourse

that's what magazines are all about, right ? is number one photographer was aldous meyer on the left. it was in 1915 after hearst lost the first battle with conde nast that he decided he was going to poach denier. it was a loss but only for about 10 minutes because george hennigan hurley was how he pronounced his name but it's probably who'd replaced him and it was george who took the first pictures ofmovement . he was followed by edward stuyken and there was the discovery of the model turned from not photographer lee miller . lee was vogue's war photographer during thesecond world war . we will come back to her pictures in a minute. this is an example of the

type of picture that aldous demeir took. it's conde nast's daughter lucky got that's modeling it apparently so small nobody but a child could fit into it . this is a lady called grace moore who was the mets soprano. she became conde's mistress by 1919 when his marriage to clary's broke up. the picture is one of his pictures and it shows that now they're starting to play with shadows and light in a way that is more akin towhat we would just do today .but i can is the one who created this celebrity photographer photograph. here we have gloria swanson and charlie chaplin. nl and fred astaire. noel coward who by the way, they saved from starvation giving him his first $10 when

he came to america in 1920. grandma garbo. and this is just sessile beaten specialty. used to make people of a certain weight then. and here's how he managed to change helena rubenstein from a portly lady into somebody quite beautiful. but then again, russell beaten was friendly with the british british aristocracy and when it came time for the abdication of edward viii to marry wallis simpson, it was beaten so took the pictures of her trousseau. and of course the trussell was made by the designer vaulter who happened to be a condc nast employee. the only ugly pictures to ever appear in vogue for these taken by lee miller and that's on the left as a picture of lee. in hitler's bath on the right

, is what happened when she walked into one of the huts at dock how. i mention that he hired lots of people, lots of writers, lots of everything . glass diverse as scott fitzgerald, pg woodhouse and jack dempsey, all the people wrote for him. so what mattered was the diverse city. the fact that people have something special to give to the reader . the artists were incredible. this is benito, edward open ito. one of his famous covers. here we have carl erickson with one of his more beautiful just very light touches for one of his models that he drew. now i'm going to say miguel. i always get his name wrong but you know who i mean. he did some of the more fanciful vogue covers . the other thing that happened with the photography in vogue in particular was that you

never doubted what any picture was trying to sell you. so here we have had, also marlena dietrich whose modeling a half. more hats. if you want to buy any kind of asthmatics, you course have to have the gold compact andthe jewelry to go with it , don't you? and the covers. it was not unusual to see black people on the covers of vogue. in the 1930s. you always knew what every issue was going to sell you . and then there came a fresh face tovogue . carmel white as she was at the time. carmel snow as she became when she married pam snow was

one of the 400. she arrived and she was a complete breath of fresh air. completely untrained just like and i had been in the beginning . her only claim to fame was that her brother worked for william randolph first . now, little did conde know that would mean something and several years hence but carmel's husband was very much into sports and she was also very much into the idea that women could do anything and go anywhere and be anything. though thecupboard became more exotic .you had women who were actually doing work, writing area who were shooting, going on skiing. who were voting, doing all kinds of activities. he never forgot his core business which was selling clothing and fashion to women . so you could look at thecover and you know they're trying to sell me jewelry . here we have the beginning of the paris season, beginning of the newyork season . everything was done with the

purpose so that the customer and reader always knew what they were getting. the advertiser always knew that they were advertising in an issue that meant something to the people . and meanwhile conde's friendship with frank cronin shield blossom. they were really like brothers. therewere a lot of rumors that they were gay . i don't know about frank one way or another area i know edmund wilson was one of the editors at vanity fair for a brief time believed that he was a unit. i prefer to call him a confirmed bachelor. conde on the other hand love women. and he was always seen with a pretty woman on his arm after he and larry's read up. it took years forher to agree to a divorce . but that's for something in the future . in the meantime in the 1920s clary's moved to 1000 park

avenue. their daughter nikita became a hostess of many of conde's famous parties. and of course, conde moved to 1044 and lc you'll is a person who decorated the apartment . that's where the most famous cafc society party took place . i'd like to say you think of mrs. after dancing with groucho marx, i can't imagine groucho marx dancing but the sort of thing. anybody was in the news, anybody who was a trendsetter was allowed into the party or invited to the party react frequently they didn't even know conde to begin with. that was the case with charles lindbergh as an example. he had returned from his solo flight over france and conde decided to throw a party in his honor and he came. he was mom but he came.

nikita ended up having to rescue him butthat's another story . this is the apartment. frequently a backdrop in vanity fair and i apologize for the quality of the picture. these are pictures of pictures and the familyalbums . but it gives you an idea of what it was like. on the right-hand side you got all room and these were shots that appeared in various boat or vanity fair magazines. and guess what happened. suddenly in 1925 dipole harold ross decides to comeup with something called the new yorker . they get worried about vanity fair. but it turns out they decided to work with harold ross and when i say that conde was the first to think of a lot of things, he was a pioneer in all new technologies and he had the best printing in the united states in greenwich connecticut. they did a deal with the new yorker to print the new yorker at his printing plant.

and basically it was a very successful relationship for many years . there was it was only once the new house was bought, the new yorker that the two magazines were part of the publications. as you can see, they also had very stylish artists. and this is the 1928, 29 . she was still a hostess in the main four conde. she introduced into this man on the right. a called ivan who was a white russian who had come over to the states. it started out as a runner on wall street, was always very fashionable, very debonair and nitika insisted you will love this man. he thinks and numbers. he sees numbers as pictures.

he understands how important it is to have a balance sheet that works. have all the covers that work , to understand which covers are attracting people, which ones don't attract people . he's a great guy. they met, they like each other but conde was thinking about something else. he had fallen in love witha woman the same age as his daughter . leslie foster. of the picture on the lower right is leslie who's facing us and that is nitika talking to her. he was afraid people would make fun of them. she was afraid people would make fun of them. they were a real generation apart but at the end of the day they truly love each otherand got married right before the crash . this is a picture of them on honeymoon. as a matter of fact he was so

nervous he invited all his children to join them on honeymoon and also consider it so he agreed to hire him and because he was thinking in terms of the future, i need somebody who is reliable can take over for me. sorry about this, this is a bad shot . that's the house that they bought together on long island at sands point. at the sunroom that overlooks thesound . and within the first year, leslie and her daughter was one of the main peoplewho helped me on this book. little leslie is 89 today . so this is, these two sly guys here, they look like bankers, don't they mark well they are. the chapter on the left is ideal catchings and the chapter on the right is harrison williams.

harrison williams over the largest generation company in the united states, catchings was the chairman of flax and they decided in 1928 there were going to start telling people whose companies they wanted to acquire one of the crash came that they should load themselves up with debt and the one thing conde believed in is you go to the experts, let the experts advise you and at the end of the day it's your decision but you have to trust the experts and these men were his friends and he trusted them. and they loaded him up with too much debt so that when the crash came, conde was worthless and conde nast publications was taken over by them and they tried to get conde out of the company. they might have succeeded if it hadn't been for ed windchase because they wanted to make her in charge of the company. and she said not only would she not take the job but she

would quit and she would make sure all the staff would quit aswell . so conde was left in place but he had to find somebody to help him out with the debt. fortunately these guys overreached themselves and they were taken over by floyd odom who basically put the conde nast publications back on level footing but also said i will sell to anybody who wants to buy this so i can make a profit. by now conde's really getting upset. he approached joe kennedy to buy it because he had offered to buy it with for hearst publications which were also in trouble and joe said no, he asked his good friend bernard baruch who said no. everybody in america said no. and at exactly the same time good old carmel snow decides she's going to defect to harper's bazaar.

which of course was a terrible blow to conde and he never forgave her. never, and she's the only person get him wrong who he never forgave. as you can see there's a very famous new yorker diana friedman talking to carmel snow. by no carmel's brother tom white is the general manager of all the hearst companies and he's one of seven people whose bailing out hearst at the same time . as if that weren't bad enough he got prostate cancer and has aheart attack . he has a radical prostatectomy, it's a hard word to say. i'll get off that slide . and basically is in such for help hedoesn't know what he's going to do . and there's this lady he meets at a cocktail party. he's still married to leslie by now he's trying to decide if he's prepared to ruin this young woman's life.

she won't be able to haveany more children children with him . is not sure what he's going to do about it and this lady comes into his life. anybody know who she is? claire booth, at the time she was clare booth brokaw and conde met her at a cocktail party and he says no meet mrs. chase, she goes and meets mrs. chase. ms. chase said i'm off to europe for the summer, come back in september and i'll see if i can hire you . they are being claire in the most amazing thing i have ever seen. ever. she decided since conde was away and sent edna was away she would as she put it was her way into vogue. what does that mean? she reported for work and claimedshe was the new girl . and actually suddenly there was stuff on her desk and she started working. by the time edna came back it was too late to fire her so

she went from that to becoming managing director of vanity fair eventually. but all within three years. there were lots and lots of rumors that conde was enamored with her and was going to leave his wife orher and everything else . frankly that's a lot of hokum and she wouldn't have married conde anyway. but conde decides painfully to tell his wife leslie she has to go and marrysomebody else . and he had arranged for her to meet this gentleman rex benson who wasa banker , and they did fall in love and did get married but as rex's children said to me, leslie and conde remain entirely devotedto each other for the rest of his life . they had two children together and of course they were very happy.

conde kept leslie, little leslie in new york with him so she could go to an american school. obviously it was difficult for big leslie as they called her in the family to keep leslie in england atthe time . meanwhile dear claire decides she's going to marry henry liz. the picture on the left was taken only four months before the picture on theright . it was not a happy union. i just put this in for the fun of it because dorothy parker was such a breath of fresh air . so i'm hearing claire booth liz, dorothy said where does she hide them? meanwhile conde 1934 finally finds the money who's going to bail him out and buy conde nast publications from one. it's a gentleman in england

called william perry lord cameras who owned a variety of women's magazines and also at the time the daily telegraph. and the deal that they did was handshake deal, nobody was to know, the cameras and bailed him out and conde nast stayed in charge of all his magazines. i don't know anywhere today where that would happen. and so claire is now by 1936, 32, 34, 35, he's in charge of vanity fair and she was of course a staunch republican as some of you may recall. he decides that as the election is coming up in 32 that she's going to start lampooning fdr because his new deal is a terrible thing and fdr is a horrible man. that didn't really play very well because naturally, fdr was very popular with the people. and so vanity fair subscriptions to falloff.

people weren't buying it as much on the newsstand. and this continued through 1936 election. finally what happened, bear course left when she married henry liz and help helen brown norton took over briefly asits managing director . conde had a brief affair with her . she wrote about him in her book stranger at the party. but i think he would have been very upset to find out that she was publicizing their sex life because he was a very quiet, very shy man and he didn't want his private life to be talked about in public . and this is the last issue of vanity fair in 1936, february 1936. helen brown norton became helen lorentzen and went on to write a lot for esquire and became a sort of biographer for claire as well

. vanity fair was subsumed into vogue and frank and conde were both broken. it was their love affair with new york that had created vanity fair and they were just so upset. they were never going to be the same. and one of the other things vanity fair got wrong is it decided it would of course talk about mussolini and hitler but their predictions for what they were going to be doing to europe and the world were entirely wrong. and of course hitler invades the less in 1939 and by june 1940 they had taken over paris. conde is now an old man in many ways. his heart has been broken by all the strain of trying to save his company. he said several heartattacks . he kept secret his prostate

condition. nobody knew anything except only his secretary, his daughter and his mother. that was it. so now he's faced with a situation where all the people that he hired in france who he loved, many of whom were close friends were now in danger and he brought as many ofthem to safety as he could . on the right-hand side he brought over michelle deborah who was the editor at vogue. there he's pictured after the war with lee miller. on the left was solange diane who was the fashion editor at vogue. she was put into concentration camp but did survive the war. her husband put into a different concentration camp did not but there's a lot in the book about how conde desperately tried to save people. how he spent any cash that he had in sending care packages to the british as well

including at that point to his former wife. conde died september 1942 of heart failure essentially. there's a very touching story that edna chase wrote about those last days which in which i which i do including the book . he died virtually without any money. his first wife clary's had an apartment on east 72nd street which conde had bought for her outright. they work to gather for the benefit of the grandchildren and he was always wonderful to her and very generous. he and leslie remained good friends after his death. frank was the only member of the vanity fair team who came out on top. he sold his conde nast shares on the eve of september 8. right before the stock market crash. so here we have conde's furniture, all his personal

effects of the auction and very sadly even the family had to bid for it at auction. they were allowed thesmallest trinket . now i've lost my, there it is. i thought who i mentioned before was named by conde as the new chief executive of the magazine empire. he wanted to marry marlena dietrich, marlena didn't want him . he was active in hollywood. here he pictured on the left with some of his good friends david niven. you've got james stewart. he eventually married lewis in 1963 and they stayed married. he was cut from the same cloth as conde. his word was his bond. he hired people who he felt were right for the jobas opposed to famous . but he to realize that he had

to sell the magazine empire when william perry died. he was given the opportunity to find an american buyer and he opted for the new house family. so of course a new era, percentage though is still in charge of conde nast. he brings forward alex lieberman and of course they poach to get their own back on the hearst empire. dianafriedman . now, here the twoof them look happy . i think this picture characterizes their relationship a lot better, don't you? they didn't get on. she left, grace mirabella took over and of course after her we have tina brown who came in to effectively resurrect vanity fair in 1984 and she did a great job until 1992. of course the lady on the

right needs no introduction to new york . even if she is british i think ill or partially british. but the one really made vanity fair saying every single song that used to send was definitely great and carter. he again made vanity fair what it had been originally. in other words, it wasn't that you would invite stars to a vanity fair party at the oscars, it was that the stars had to be at the vanity fair party at the author or they work stars. it's a big difference and anybody who read vanity fair was allowed to go in that world . he didn't only have movie stars, they wrote a fabulous article about the girl collection which was what i wrote about four are the. they did what i would call important journalism in many different ways. and essentially here we have their 100 issue. 100 anniversary issue and for

hundred 50 years it wasn't in publication but that's what vanity fair was allabout . and conde nast was a shy man from very modest beginnings who actually brought business ethics to america. america's can-do attitude to europe and european style to newyork . thank you. [applause] >> ladies and gentlemen, please wait for the microphone to be passed to you for your questions so we can record and be sure to speak clearly and directly into themicrophone, thank you .

>> come on, somebody must have a question. gentlemen here. >> who currently has the apartment at 1040. i'm sorry? who has a house on long island and the apartment at 1040 park, do you know? >> i don't know, i asked leslie who owns the house now at sandpoint and she didn't know. so, but i can tell you what happened at 1040. it's a very sad story. it was a dirty to room duplex apartment . with an enclosed balcony all the way around. magnificence. it could not be sold. and it was eventually after about five years, more than that.

1948. it was subdivided back into three separateapartments . and no longer a duplex. nitika used to go there with her daughter to paint because it had fantastic lifein it . and her daughter used the dance or ballet in the dance floor. that's part is also in the book but unfortunately it didn't remain. it's a pity. thank you. >> there are two beautiful granite stone pillars where i assume the printing plant was . who owns those posts? is it the town of greenwich? >> i believe that the town of greenwich has asked for them to remainin place so they taken over the care and maintenance . essentially the printing

plant was the most extraordinary place. it was i think 400 acres originally that had been scrubland and they turn it into themost beautiful park . and they were printing for about 25 of america's post-important magazines at the time . it was sold after the new house was bought. conde nast publications. and i'm pleased that it was after conde's life because it would have been a tremendous sadness to him. it probably would have killed him vanity fair had gone a long way towards that already and i'm almost certain that it's the town of greenwich owns them. >> thank you, they're very beautiful and well-maintained . >> they are gorgeous, yes. >> what is one of those storiesthat you heard that

most surprised you in your research for the book ? >> i think that it was the story about leslie and conde and why they decided to divorce. i had a bizarre connection with the benson's, the benson side of the family. my husband works for benson as a banker. we gave up banking by the way, investment banking in 2005 so we work hard of the bad stuff. anyway, i knew about him and i knew that he was quite a swashbuckling character. unfortunately, what was so good is that leslie's half-brother robin and david evening access to their father's diary about when he had met leslie and how he was afraid that he was falling in

love with a married woman and she was afraid she might be falling in love with him but they hadn't actually realized that conde had sent her over to england to meet him on purpose. and you know, they always say if you love somebody a lot you have to be willing to let them go . and in conde's case he not only waswilling to let her go but he felt that was the only way she could have a life . he was afraid she had married an old man, they love each other but frankly it wasn't a good life for her. she needed to have a different life and it was his selflessness on top of the fact he was this terribly ethical person. that made me say i wish i had known him . there are so few people around like that. it would have been lovely to have met him but meeting his children and his great-grandchildren has been

nice i suppose. >> this lady in the front. can you please stand? i'm sorry. >> i wanted to know about the new houses, what they are doing with conde nast? >> did everybody here the question? she wanted to know about the new houses and whatthey're doing with conde nast. the short answer is no . simply because when i was being vetted by conde nast, as to whether or not i was a fit person to go into their archives they asked me one question. who are you writing about and i said conde nast. are you going to be writing about anybody who's living at the time new house was still alive and i said no, i like writing about dead people.

so i specifically stated, i stayed away from the new houses . obviously because i think people didn't want to just have the story and with the sadness of conde dying, it was important you understand that in the book the empire and the dawn, there are an awful lot of changes at conde nast and all the new house publications. obviously the world is spinning at such a rate right now that print magazines are difficult for people to make any kindof a profit on . when you privately held company like advanced publications is, it's very difficult for anybody outside tounderstand . there were lots of rumors around carter's quitting when he did. there have been huge changes in personnel. i think what they're trying to do is very simply make it profitable and keep all of

the magazines in print as well as online. whether they'll succeed i don't know. it's baby will during world in media right now and i think if conde were alive today he would be totally besidehimself . does that help? okay, good. >> last question. >> at the peak of his empire, what were the publication numbers in terms ofreadership ? >> this is, at the peak of the empire it was probably around 5 million. but you have to understand that in that 5 million you've got offices that had been out

on their tables when people were in their waiting rooms, doctors offices and what have you so you would probably multiply that by five . >> thank you. thank you everybody. [applause] >>. [inaudible] i feel like we were immersed in society so thank you somuch for that . on the occasion like this we

would like to make a presentation to you and to do so is our executive director. >> i join also in saying it was so thoughtfully put together and we all can't wait to read the book and thank you for your very auto research and for really i can tell you about your characters. so on behalf of the general society , it's 1785 we express our gratitude to susan ronald, author of conde nast: a man and his empire for her participation in the laborliterature and landmark lecture series . [applause]

>> we can already tell there's another book inside of you. we've made you a lifetime member to our library archives go back to 1785 and we have the new york times bestseller so i'm sure you'll find something so come back . >> since you say that, the next book is about somebody else was also known in america . i've gone back to the dark side . sorry. it's called the ambassador and it's about joseph p kennedy as ambassador to britain, 1938 to 1940. >> we look forward to it, thank you. >> i want to thank you all for coming this evening. i want to remind you this is for sale and susan would be happy to autograph it and i hope you'll join us now for a glass of wine and i'm sure susan will be happy to answer more questions . thank youso much for coming this evening .

>> you're watching tv on cspan2 with topnonfiction books and authors every weekend . televisionsfor serious readers . >> good afternoon, thank you for coming on this supposedly autumnal very beautiful sunday . my name is emily greenhouse and i have an editor at the newyork review of books since march. it's an honor to be here today . such insightful thinkers on the review on this minor question . before i introduce a net,