tv Susan Ronald Conde Nast CSPAN January 1, 2020 2:25pm-3:31pm EST
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>> you are watching book tv on c-span2. for complete television schedule visit booktv.org. you can also follow along by the scenes on social media @booktvla on twitter, instagram and facebook. >> a very warm welcome to the first lecture of the general society, labor, literature and landmark lecture series. i am karen taylor, pogrom director of the general society. the laboret, literature and landmark lectures are supported in part by public funds from the new york city department of cultural affairs in partnership
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with the city council. for those of you who may be less familiar with the general society, i will ask how many of you here this evening will this be your first visit? all right. warm welcome. of course, welcome back to previous attendees. the general society was founded in 1785 by 22 artisans. today our 234 -year-old organization continues to serve the people of the city of new york. we do this through our cultural and educational pogroms. they include our lecture series of which tonight's lecture is part of and our general society library which celebrates 200 years and next year and our tuition free mechanics institute and the john m which you are
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welcome to visit after our talk this evening and that is upstairs. you will find more information on the blue-and-white postcard on your seats. we have such a wonderful start to this years lecture season season and you have the pleasure of welcoming critically acclaimed biographer susan ronald who tonight will discuss her biography of "conde nast: the man and his empire". i also want to mention if you have not already done so you will have an opportunity to purchase this wonderful book with a stunning cover later this evening so please be aware that you have this opportunity and i'm sure susan will be happy to find the book for you. i also want to mention that c-span are also filming this
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talk tonight so this pogrom will also be rebroadcast on booktv and when we do get to the q&a portion i want to remind you that anyone asking a question that you will have the opportunity to be featured on book tv. born and raised in the united states, ms. ronald, has lived in england for more than 25 years and has come over especially this week to talk about her book. she is the author of a dangerous woman, hitler's art thief, heretical queen, the pirate queen and shakespeare's daughter. it is my considerable pleasure to introduce to you susan rona ronald. [applause] >> thank you everybody. i hope that our technical problems are at an end. you may see this new little dots
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on the bottom and i decided to write about condé nast the because i tend to write about power and greed. all of the people i've written about before there is another book which is not on here but happened have been greedy and they been powerful and almost all of them have had some sort of a brush with the law but after a dangerous woman about florence gould married to the t youngest son of jay gould, many of you who know of, i decided having written about someone who is incredibly powerful, incredibly devious and also the banker to herman goering by the end of the war and never ever was tried for her dastardly deeds i needed to cleanse myself and i wanted to write about the really good person so i told
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this to my agent and my publisher and they looked blankly at me and said you write about power and greed so how could you write about a nice person but it was my agent who suggested i have a look at the publishing industry and i said are there any good guys in publishing and sure enough he was right. i decided that i would write a book about one of the most powerful people at the turn of the century and going into world war two, condé nast. a lot of you know all the veriest nast magazines but they all weren't there at the beginning. i'd like to take you what mean meant -- what made condé nast, condé nast. there were circumstances but mostly -- i apologize for the quality of some of these photographs but they were his mother who is pictured on the right here and unfortunately i don't have her as a young woman. this was the only picture thely
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family still has in their possession. she was quite a lady in her own right. her father was a guy called -- and he settled in st. louis and this lovely home here and was married three times and had 15 children.. he was extremely wealthy and he was a banker and apparently a good guy. i know that doesn't go with the terms banker but we will go with me on this. he left several million dollars to his children when he died and condé as a child played in his maternal grandfather's bedroom here and currently it is stillsa historic house on the outskirts of st. louis for mostly as a wedding venue today but of course esther his mother only inherited 300,000 by0, the time the money came down to her. now, on his father's side his grandfather was born in germany
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and emigrated to the united states as a teacher but was always a depressive kind of chap and very serious but he became and converted to methodism became known as the father of german methodism in north america, excuse me, north america. his eldest son william was a man who wanted to be born with a silver spoon in his mouth but the family did not have any. he decided that he would go off to germany as the american council to germany and by himself meet uniform so he could hobnob with the royals. his father was beside himself and naturally william nast had hard times because he also stole money from american citizens while he was there.re he left germany very quickly under a cloud and took a number of odd jobs. somehow met up with esther in
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new york city. condé was the eldest son and had another brother, louie, who wasr a great pianist but condé grew up essentially without a father and at the edge of three william nast cited he was going back to europe to make his fortune, actually it was more like hard work was only for suckers. condé was the man of the family and had two younger sisters as well who were what they called new women. new women or women who made their own rules and did not hans around with chaperones before the turn of the 20th century, who actually were extremely independent and so was his mother but she had to be to keep the family together. of course, as the years went on his father stayed away until he was 17 and things got tough in the end. the only nast member of the family that stayed close to them
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was his aunt fanny, williams nast younger sister. fanny was actually quite a gal herself. she married into money and she loved fine things and was very stylish in her own way and this picture was taken in the 1880s you can see that she did like to look nice. what is amazing is that she married into the gamble family of procter & gamble fame. she decided that she would help out or esther to get her sons to an american college that would've set them on their way. only problem is when she went to visit louis apparently was very untidy and reminded her a great deal of her brother and of course he abandoned the family and therefore she decided she would only send condé to georgetown university. louis never spoke to his brother again.
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here is condé as he graduated and was a very handsome young man and his best friend at college was bob collier. bob collier was, of course, the heir to the collier library and he went over for a year to europe, england and oxford and came back and his father said i iell give you collier's no not because it's failing. they only had $1000 worth of advertising at the time he gave the weekly over to bob. bob had done a lot of work with condé at various georgetown and went down to st. louis and talked condé into accepting am 12-dollar a week job with him. which he did considering that he was the man of the family at that point and fortunately condé's father had fortunately died it was no longer a drain on the family and the two worked together very happily indeed for about 15 years. bob collierbo pictured here wasn
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innovator. he thought about making collier's last generalized magazine but with condé pushing him and saint look, we could sell advertising if we decide that we will create special issues so you saw before the other picture that i just showed you was a remington issue, reject remington's art this was the issue that started the gibson girls going in terms of collier magazine and he overpaid gibson by the way double of what he would normally get in the ladies home journal so he could have been exclusively s for a period of two years. that was something that condé g learned about as well. bob collier was also very into navigation and his great friend was auto right, on the right ear, together with condé they set up the first ever national
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newspaper, national magazine company that had its own sales network in every major city across america. condé understood that to sell magazines you had to make sure your customer wanted to read the ads that were in it, first of all and that your advertisers had to feel he was not wasting his money advertising and also that you are something called ethical and what you sold. this was the era of quack medicines, almost every newspaper promise to give youe something special to cure -- i don't think i really want to have any swamp route, i don't know about you but i think that's pretty bad. this product called peru not claimed it could cure absolutely anything. collier's joined with, believe it or not, ladies home journal to stop quack medicine advertising. they believed it was killing
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americans. this is just a few of the ads at te time. you could have your diabetes regulate cured, which the urbair system and assuage your thirst and rapidly decrease your sugar and prevent diabetic shock. wonderful. will not talk about these abandoned products. [laughter] the founder of post cereals was another on the people who was selling his cereals as medicine. there is -- here's to another years and years of study nerves, clear brains and vigorous health. well, bob collier spurred on by condé decided he would sue old bw. he did and he won. condé learned a great deal from his relationship with bob.
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not only that but bob introduced him to his first wife, clarice. i don't know if any of you remember the legal firm -- brothers here in new york city and had their offices on fifth avenue for many, many years but the family came across to america at the behest of the marquis de lafayette, george washington's friend and established themselves as international lawyers in america in the early 19th century and clarice was part off new york's 400. condé was, by now, a wealthy man. by 1902 when he married her he was earning about $40000 a year and the only person in america earning more at that time was theodore roosevelt as president. he earned 50000. she decided that she loved bob collier but bob collier did not love her. condé was a good second for her interview but he was not afterod her money that he understood she
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held the whip hand as far as society was concerned. only problem was condé understood society was changing. women were changing. they are always changing. they wanted to become independent and they wanted the vote and they wanted their thoughts to be recognized and while certainly clarice felt that was for her to she did not like the idea of working for a living because that was beneaths a member of the 400 on the social register. instead after two years of marriage where she had twoo children, the son first and the daughter. she decided she would go to paris and become a soprano. [inaudible] her three sisters lived there as well and one had been supporting the artist -- as his moneymaker basically for the
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previous 20 years. that isn't very good for a marriage obviously.vi condé decided in 1904 he would set up on his own but yes, bob collier was paying him more money than he was worth and there was no doubt about it, 40000 a year in those days was close on $1 million. essentially he decided he would take a plunge into women's fashion.n. now you say why women's fashion? here he is at a national magazine and they are starting to go to the nich markets and condé decided that women's fashion would be key to the changing role of women. up until now women's fashion in terms of the closing that would be put into patterns had two distinct shortcomings. the first, ofpa course, was that all patterns or giveaways alongside fabrics.n the second, which is moreas
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incredible, was the fact that there was only one size. condé decided the new woman has many sizes. i will empower her and i will empower women without money to make their own clothing and all the sizes they come in and that they should discard their corsets, enjoy life and beat women. of course, he was right. he ended up allowing ladies home journal to own labels their own patterns. home pattern company was his first company. he still worked for bob collier but due to a number ofmp circumstances he ended up leaving in 1906. 1907 was the first time he tried to bite folk but he failed. he went across to europe at that point to rescue his two children from paris and his wife and she. decided she wanted to stay on and so they went across, picked up the children and the nursemaid and clarice decided
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they wanted to come home, too. but then in 1909 he bought vogue. clarice disappeared again for six months. no one in the family knows wife but she did. he was lucky enough to buy vogue sadly because it's owner at that time called arthur turner part of colliers which was a big club at the time for publishers set it up very early on in 1895 and he had hired on a lady at that time as a mail clerk on the left. her name is [inaudible] by the time you see her on the right she had been the editor of vogue or editor in chief of vogue for over 50 years. condé kept her on obviously. it was turner's sister who have been the actual editor at the time they bought it and she basically left due to a disagreement over some money.
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1912 he decided to buy two more magazines and puts them into one, something called house and garden. i think a few of you have heard of that one, too. now he has home patterns, vogue and house and garden and we are only in 1912. by 1914 he decides he really would like to set up an international magazine empire dedicated to women and women's fashion. unfortunately, there's something called world war i which began in europe in 1914 and for america began in 1917. edna woman chase comes up to condé and says i have this wonderful idea and i know were cut off from french fashion and a note were cut off from there british men's fashions as well because of the war but why do we have something called a charity fashion show and get all of the new york 400 involved and condé was skeptical and said it smacks of trade. clarice does not like working can you imagine these women working on a charity fashion
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show? she said give me a chance and she made it a success. she went to -- and was able to talk her into creating this fashion show. maybe telephoned missus astor and it was a done deal. only deal was it was arranged to be at the carlton in new york and all the models for all the fashions previously were tied to various fashion houses in europe, not in america. missus astor and missus fish were able to cobble together an interesting show of new york's fashion. don't laugh. 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 fortunately condé was making
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clothes in different sizes because not all of them work models, or they? there were more of these apparently at the new york city public library and i thought it would be interesting to see. anyway, this upset another gentleman called william randolph hearst to adjust bought harper's bazaar. he saidr' -- he sent his people out to badmouth vogue and condé mast is people who wanted to get rid of european fashion and not import it into america anymore and they were only out to support clothing designers et cetera et cetera. well, what happened though was condé's representative arrived in paris during the war and with a big fat check from the seamstress who had been put out of work. hearst lost the first round but he was not going to give up. we all know he never did that. , 19152 things happened. the most important was lunch with a gentleman who founded the
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inffeehouse in this building, frank. frank was a great aficionado of modern art and was everybody's favorite [inaudible] and had milesfr and acres of friends throughout new york city and condé had lunch with him probably at the coffeehouse actually. i don't know exactly and he said i've got a problem and i've bought two magazines called dress and vanity fair. i've tried to edit them myself but i'm a publisher, not an editor. what hee think i'm getting wrong two frank said well, it's very simple. you have to make it fizzle. you have to make it a cocktail party where every time someone turns the page they are joining you in a conversation and understanding what it is that everybody in society or everybody who we read about is thinking about.
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and so, condé 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 1000 [inaudible]. smart set went out of business but, they had a very friendly rivalry between him and as a matter of fact, george nathan who worked at smart set ended up working at vanity fair before it closed. condé believed in hiring the best people, no matter what, it did not matter whether they were gay, lesbian, jewish, catholic, whatever, black, it did not matter. what mattered wasn't talent. it did not matter if they were known and so he hired a girl
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called dorothy rothschild to write captions for vogue and the one that caught the frank site was brevity is the soul of monterey. [laughter] she kept dropping little poems on frank's desk to transfer over from little old vogue into vanity fair and finally he greed to take her on. he then also wanted to take on somebody to make the vanity fair substantial so he brought on the chap in the middle that i call robert benchley who was one of the funniest people i've ever read about and i've read his biography and it's absolutely hysterical. robert benchley was a harvard graduate and had been the editor of the harvard lampoon and he got the job because it was getting all very serious. i opened the book with one of the incidents that happened while they were working there.
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essentially, they went on to win an oscar for a short produced by mgm called how to sleep and it's hysterically funny if you can ever get a hold of it. dorothy would eventually go on to other things robert sherard was 6'8" and fresh out of the army in 1919 and came to work and he was a very good writer but frank wanted to believe himd and had been wounded during the war and have been gassed and shot in the legs and as dorothy would say how did they miss his heart? this guy was enormous. sherwood would go on to and for pulitzer prizes become theer speechwriter for fdr. these were all unknowns but they all misbehaved and tremendously and of courseou he was fired.
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it was all basically because dorothy decided to ask a theater critic by now that he would go after broadway producers and she ended up libeling them and so he had no choice. condé did not really want to fire her but knew she had to go and he had to do it. so during the war he said believe it or not during world war i and at the end of the war in 1919 he will go across tode europe and sent set up a french vogue. he's now become the first international magazine publisher in the world and we talked about a few of the staff writers and they will show you a few pictures because that is what magazines are all about. his number one photographerec ws
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esther meyer here on the left and it was in 1915 after he lost the first battle or sorry after hearst lost the first battle with condé nast that he decided he was going to poach meyer. it was a loss but only because ten minutes because george was how he pronounced his name replaced hime and it was george who took the first pictures with movement. he was followed by edward -- and of course, subtle -- later on. there was the discovery of the model turned photographer, lee muller paid the muller actually was vogue's war photographer during the second world war and came back onto her pictures in eight minutes. this is an example of the type of picture that -- took and it's very nice and it's the wedding
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dress to douglas fairbanks senior and its condé's daughter who is modeling it. it was apparently so small nobody but a child could fit into it. this is a lady called grace moore who was the mets soprano and she also became condé's mistress by 1919 when his marriage to clarice finally broke up. the picture is one of hume's pictures and it shows that now they are starting to play with shadows and light in a way that is more akin to what we did today but [inaudible] here we have gloria swanson and charlie chaplin and adele and fred astaire, noel coward who condé saved from starvation giving hii his first ten dollars when he came to america in the 1920s.
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greta garbo and this is seth's specialty used to make people of a certain weight then. here is how he managed to change rubinstein from a portly lady into somebody who was quite beautiful. then again subtle his family with the british aristocracy and when it came time for the abdication of edward the eighth to mary wallis simpson -- took pictures of her trousseau but it was made by the designer may fokker who wasbe also a condé nt employee. the only ugly picture to ever appear en vogue where these taken by lee muller. on the left is a picture of lee and hitler's bath and on the right isal what happened when se walked in to one of the huts a
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at -- out. i mentioned he hired lots of people and people as as diverse as f scott fitzgerald, pg warehouse and jack dempsey. all these people rose for him so what mattered was the diversity and the fact that people had someone special to give to the reader. the artists were i incredible. this is eduardo benito, one of his famous covers. here we have carl erickson with one of his more beautiful just very light touches for one of the models he drew. [inaudible] i always get his name wrong but you know who i mean. he did some of the more fanciful book covers the other thing that happened with the photography en vogue in particular was that you
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never doubted what any picture was trying to sell you. here we havese sandals, hats and re also have marlena dietrich who is modeling a hat. more hats. if you want to buy any kind of cosmetics you, of course, haveu to have the gold complex and the jewelry to go with it, don't you? and the covers. it was not unusual to see black people on the covers of vogue. this was in the 1930s. you always knew what every issue would sell you. and then there came a fresh face to vogue. carmel white, as she was at the time, some carmel snow as she became when she married -- who was part of the 400. she was a complete breath of
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fresh air, completely untrained just like edna had been in the beginning and her only claim to fame was that her brother worked for william randolph hearst. now, little did condé know that would mean something 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. the covers became more exotic. you had women who were doing sports and riding camels and who were shooting and going skiing and voting and alll kinds of activities. he never forgot his core business which was selling clothing and fashion to women. you can look at the cover and you know they're trying to sell me jewelry. here we have the beginning of the paris scene -- season, everything was done with the purpose so that the customer and
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the reader always knew what they were getting andwe the advertisr always knew what they were advertising and an issue that meant something to people. meanwhile, condé's friendship with frank blossomed and they were really like brothers and a lot of rumors they were gay and i don't know about frank, one way or the other but i know edmund wilson, one of the editors at vanity fair for a very brief period of time, i believe he was a eunuch and i prefer to call him a confirmed bachelor. condé on the other hand loved women. he was alwayson seen with a prey woman on his arm and after he and clarice split up. it took many years for her to agree to a divorce but that is for something in the future. in the meantime in the 1920s clarice moved to 1000 park
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avenue and their daughter became the hostess that many of condé's famous parties and of course, condé moved to 1040 park and elsie do wolf is the person who decorated the apartment. that is where the most famous café society parties took place. i'd like to say think of missus astor dancing with groucho marx but i can't imagine groucho mar dancing but that is the sort of thing that anybody who was in the news and anybody who was a trendsetter was allowed into the party or invited to the party.lo frequently they did not even know condé to begin with. that was the case with charles lindbergh, as an example.he he returned from his solo flight over france and condé decided to throw a party in his honor and tk. he ended up having to be rescued but that's a whole other story.
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this is the apartment, the famous apartment. frequently a backdrop in vanity fair and at times to en vogue. i apologize for the qualities of the pictures but they are pictures of pictures in the family albums. it gives you an idea of what they are like. ... actual shot that appeared in various vogue or vanity fair magazines. and guess what happens >> decided to come up with something called the new yorker. they get worried about "vanity fair," but it turns out that they decided to work with harold ross. 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 plant in the entire united states in greenwich, connecticut. and they did a deal with the new yorker to print the new yorker at conde's printing plant. and basically, it was a very
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successful relationship for many years. it was only once the new house was bought, the new yorker, that the two magazines were part of the conde nast publications. so as you can see, they also had stvery stylish artists. and this is in 1928-29 when she was still a hose access for -- hostess for conde. she introduced him to this man on the right, a chap who was a white russian who had come over to the states. he started out as a runner on wall street, was always very fashionable, very debonair. and natika insisted with her father, you will love this man, he's just like you. and he said, well, why is he just like me. he thinks in numbers. he sees numbers as pictures. he understands how important it is to have a balance sheet that
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works, to have all of the covers that work, understand what coffers are attracting people -- covers are attracting people. i promise you, dad, he's a great guy. they met, they liked each other. but conde was thinking about something else. he had fallen in love with a woman the same age as his daughter. leslie foster. now, the picture on the lower right is leslie, who's facing us, and that is natika talking to her. he was afraid people would make fun of him, she was afraid people would make fun of them. they were a real generation apart. but at the end of the day, they truly, truly loved each other, and they got married right before the crash. this is a picture of them on honeymoon. as a matter of fact, he was so nervous that she invited all his children to join them on
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honeymoon and also the russian. is so he agreed to hire the russian because he was thinking in terms of the future. i need someone who's reliable who can take over for me. sorry about this, this is a really bad shot. i i a apologize. that's the house they bought together on long island, that's the sun room that overlooks the sound. and within the first year, leslie gave birth to her daughter, little leslie, who's one of thett main people who 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? well, they are. the chap on the left is wadell catchings. the chap on the right is harrison williams. harrison williams owned the largest power generation company in the united states.
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catchings was the chairman of goldman sachs. and together they decided in 1928 that they were going to start telling people whose companies they wanted to acquire once the crash came that they should load themselves up with debt. one thing that conde always believed is in is you go to the experts, let the experts advise you. yes, at thean end of the day its your decision, but you'll have to trust the experts x. 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 actually taken over by them. and they tried to get conde out company. they might have succeeded if it hadn't have been for edna woolman chase 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
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that all the staff would quit as well. and 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 odlam who, basically, put conde nast publications back on more of a level footing. but he also said is i will sell to anybody who wants to buy this so imo can make a profit. well, by now comde's really -- conde's really getting upset. he approached joe kennedy to buy it, because kennedy had offered to buy hearst publications. everybody in america said no. and at exactly the same time, good old carmel snowe decides she's doingct to defect to
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"harper's bazaar". and she's the only person who did him wrong who he never forgave. but as you can see, there's a very famous new yorker, diana friedman, who's at "harper's bazaar" talking to carmel snowe. by the now her brother is the general manager of all the hearst companies, and he's bailing out hearst at the same time. as if that weren't bad enough, he gets prostate cancer and has a heart attack. he has a radical prostate prostateectomy -- that's a hard word to say, sorry, i'll get off that slide -- and, basically, is in such poor health, he doesn't know what he's going to do. and there's this lady who he meets at a cocktail party. he's still married to leslie, but by now he's trying to decide if he's prepared to ruin this young woman's life. she won't be able to have any more children with him, he's not
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quite sure whatve he's going too about it. and this lady comes into his life. anybody know who she is? clare boothe luce. at the time she was brokaw, and conde met her at a cocktail party. go meet mrs. chase. mrs. chase says i'm off to europe for theha summer, come bk in september, and i'll see if i can hire you. clare being clare did the most amazing thing i are have ever seen ever. she decided since conde was away and since edna was away, she would, as she put it, ooze her way intoas vogue. what does that mean? she reported for work and claimed she was the new girl. [laughter] and, actually, suddenly there was stuff on her desk, and she started work. and by thely time edna came bac, it was too late to fire her. so she went from that to becoming a managing director of
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"vanity fair"it eventually but l within three years. now, there were lots and lots of rumors that conde was enamored with her and he was going to leave his wife for her and everything else. frankly, that's a lot of hoe couple. and she wouldn't have married him anyway. he decides very painfully to tell his wife leslie she has to go and marry somebody else. and he had arranged for her to meet this gentleman, rex benson, who was a banker in england, and they did fall in love, and they did get married. but as rex's children said to me, leslie and conde remained entirely devoted to 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
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school. obviously, it was very difficult for big leslie, as they called her in the family, to keep leslie in england at the time. meanwhile, dear clare decides she's going to marry henry luce. the picture on the left was taken only four months before the picture on the right. 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. [laughter] is so, yes, so i'm hearing that clare boothe luce was invariably kind b to her inferiors. dorothy said, and where does she find them? meanwhile, conde about 1934 finally finds somebody who's going to bail him out and buy conde nast publications from odlam. it's a gentleman in england called william berry, lord
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cambrose, who owned a variety of women's magazines and also at the time the daily telegraph. and the deal they did was a handshake deal, okay? nobody was to know that he had been bailed out, and conde still stayed in charge of all of his magazines. i don't know anywhere today where that would happen. and so now by 1936 -- 32, 34, 35 -- she's now in charge of "vanity fair," and she was, of course, a staunch republican as some of you may recall. she decides that as the election is coming up in '32 that she's going to start lampooning fdr because, of course, his new deal is a terrible thing, and fdr is a horrible man. and that didn't really play very well because, naturally, fdr was very popular with the people. and so "vanity fair" subscriptions started to fall off, people weren't buying it as
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much on the newsstand, and this continued through 1936 election. finally what happened, clare, of course, left when she married henry luce, and helen brown norton took over very briefly as manager. conde had a brief affair with her. he 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 s life to be talked about in public. this is the last, this is the cover of the last issue of "vanity fair" in 1936, in february '36. helen brown norton became, of course, helen lorenson, and she went on to write a lot for esquire and became a sort of biographer for clare as well.
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"vanity fair" was subsumed into vogue, and frank and conde were both a 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. now,w, one of the other things "vanity fair" gotme wrong is it decided that it would, of course, talk about mussolini and hitler, butal their predictions for what they were going to be doing to europe and f the world were entirely wrong. and, of course, hitler invades the west in 1939, and by june 1940 they'd taken other paris. 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's had several heart attacks that he's kept secret. he kept secret his prostate condition. nobody knew anything except only
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his secretary, his daughter and his butler. that was it. so now he's faced with a situation where all of the people that he hired in france who he loved, many of whom were very close friends, were now in danger. and he brought as many of them to safety as he could. on the right-hand side, he brought over michelle -- [inaudible] who was the editor at vogue. there he's pictured after the war with lee miller. on the left with solange who was the fashion editor at vogue. solange was put into a concentration camp but did survive the war. pher husband, who was 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.
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conde dies in september 1942 of heart failure, essentially, and there's a very touching story that edna woolman chase wrote about those last days i do include in this book. he died virtually without any money. his first wife, clarice, had an apartment on east 72nd street which conde had bought for her outright. they worked together for the benefit of the grandchildren, and he was always wonderful to her and very generous. he and leslie remained very good friends after his death. frank wasas the only member of e "vanity fair" team who came out on top. he sold his conde nast shares on the eve of, literally on -- i think it was september the 8th, right before the stock market crash. soef here we have conde's furniture, all his personal effects up for auction.
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and, very sadly, even the family had to bid. they weren't allowed the smallest trinket. oh, dear, now i've lost my -- there it t is. iva, who i mentioned before, was named by conde as the new chief executive of the magazine empire. he wanted to marry marlena dietrich, she didn't want him. he was very active in hollywood. here he's pictured on the left with some of his good friends, david niven, james stewart. he eventually married chespera lewis inn 1963, and they stayed married. and he was cut from a the same cloth as conde. his word was his bond. he hired people who he felt were right for theev job as opposed o famous. he, too, realized that he had to sell the magazine empire when
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william berry died. he was given the opportunity to find an american buyer, and he opted for the newhouse family. so, of course, the new era. iva, though, is still in charge of conde nast. he brings forward alex lieberman and, of course, they poach to get their own hearst empire, diana friedman. here the children look very happy. i think this picture characterizes -- [laughter] their relationship a lot better. don't you? [laughter] they didn't get on. she left. grace marabela 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 though she is
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british, i think, still. or partially british. but the one who's really made "vanity fair" sing every single song that it used to sing was definitely graden carter. he, again, made "vanity fair" what it had been originally. in other words, it wasn't that you would invite the stairs to "vanityy fair" party at the oscars, it was that the stars had to be at the "vanity fair" party at the oscars or they weren't tars. it's a big difference -- or they weren't stars. it's a big difference, and anybody who read "vanity fair" was allowed to go into that world. and he didn't only have movie stars. they wrote a fabulous article about the girl at collection, which was what i wrote about for hitler's art thief. they did what i would call important journalism in many different ways. and, essentially, here we have their 100th an verse are i
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issue -- anniversary issue. never mind the 50 years it wasn't in publication, okay? but that's what "vanity fair" was all about. and conde nast was a very shy man from very modest beginnings who actually brought business ethics to america, america's p can-do attitude to europe and european style to new york. thank you. [applause] >> ladies and gentlemen, please wait for the microphone to be passed to you for your question so we can record it, and make sure to speak clearly and directly into the microphone. thank you. >> come on, somebody must have a
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question. oh, gentleman here. [laughter] >> who currently has the apartment at 1040 -- i'm sorry? who currently has the house on long island and the apartment at 1040 park, do you know? >> i don't know. i asked leslie who bought, who actually owns the house now at sand point, and she didn't know. so, but i can tell you what happened to 1040, it's a very sad story. it was a 32-room duplex apartment with an enclosed balcony all the a way around, magnificent. it could not be sold. and it was eventually, after about five years -- actually, more than that, 1948 -- it was subdivided back i into three
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separate apartments and no longer a duplex. natika used to go there often with her daughter to paint because it had fantastic light in it. andta her daughter used to dance her ballet in the dance floor. that part is also in the book. but unfortunately, it didn't remain. it's a pity. thank you. >> in greenwich there are two very beautiful granite stone pillars where i assume the printing plant was. >> yes. >> who owns those pillars? >> is it the city of greenwich or the town of greenwich, or is it private property? >> i believe that the town of greenwich has asked for them to remain in place, and they've taken over the care and i anmaintenance. essentially, the printing plant which was the most extraordinary place, i think 400 acres
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originally, that had been scrubland, and they turned it into the most beautiful park. and they were printing for about 25 of america's most important magazines at the time. it was sold after the newhouses bought conde nast publications, and i'm pleased that it was after conde's life, because it would have been a tremendous sand sadness to him, you know? it probably would have killed him if "vanity fair" hadn't gone a long way towards that already. but i'm almost certain that it's the city, the town of greenwich hethat owns them. >> thank you. they're very beautiful, and they are maintained. >> they are gorgeous, yes. [laughter] >> thank you. what is one of the stories that you heard that most surprised you in your research for the book?
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>> i think that it was the story about leslie and conde and why they decided to divorce. we, i had a bizarre connection with the bensons, the benson side of the family. my husband worked for many years for men soften as a banker. we -- benson. we gave up banking, by the way, investment banking in 2005, okay? so we weren't part of the bad stuff. anyway, he -- i knew about him, and i knew that he was quite a swashbuckling character. unfortunately, what was so good is that leslie's half brothers, robin and david, gave me 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
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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. in conde's case he not only was willing to let her go, but he knelt that was the only way -- he felt that was the only way she could have a life. she had married an old man, yes, they loved 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 that he was this terribly ethical person that made me say, oh, i wish i had known him. there's so few people around like that. it would have been lovely to thave actually met him. but meeting his children and his grandchildren and great grandchildren has been my so lace, i suppose. -- solace, i
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suppose. thank you. this lady here in the front. could you please stand? >> can you tell us a little bit more about the newhouses, what they are doing with conde nast? [laughter] >> i don't know, did everybody hear the question? okay. she asked if i could tell us a little bit more about the newhouses and what they're doing with conde nast. the very 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 archive, they asked me who are you writing about. and ian said, conde nast. are you going to be writing about anybody whoe is living? at the time, cy newhouse was till alive. and i said,. no, i like writing about dead people. [laughter] so i specifically stayed a away
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from the newhouses. obviously, because i think people didn't want to just have the story end with sadness of conde dying. it wasad important you understod that, in the book that the empire lived on. there are an awful lot of changes at conde nast and at all the newhouse publications. obviously, the world is shipping at is such a -- spinning at such a rate right now that print ifmagazines are difficult for people to make any kind of a profit on. but when you're with a privately held company like advance publications is, it's very difficult for anybody outside to understand. there were lots of rumors around gradingen carter's quitting when he did. thereca have been huge changes n personnel. i think what they're trying to do is very simply make it erprofitable. and keep all of the magazines in
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print as well as online. when they'll succeed, i don't know -- whether they'll succeed, i don't know. it's a bewildering world in media right now, and i think if conde were alive today, he would be totally beside himself. okay in does that help? >> yes.? >> okay, good. >> last question. >> at the peak of his empire, what was the publication, what were the publication numbers in terms of readership and buying? >> okay. this is -- at the peak of the empire, it was probably around five million. but you have to understand that in that five million you've got offices that had them out on
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their tables when people were in the waiting rooms, doctors' offices and what have you. so you would probably multiply that by five. okay? thank you. [applause] thank you, everybody. thanks for coming. [applause] [inaudible conversations] and conde nast the empire. it was absolutely engrossing, and i feel like we were emerged in café society, so thank you so much for that. >> thank you. >> on the occasion like this, we would like to make a presentation toe you, and to do so is our executive director,
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victoria bengal. >> thank you. >> and 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 thorough research and for really, you can tell you really loved your characters. so on behalf of the general society of the city of new york founded in 1785, we express our gratitude to susan ronald for her participation in the general society labor, literature and landmark lectureit series. >> thank you very much. [applause] >> we can already tell there's another book inside of you. we've made you a lifetime member to our library whose archives
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began at 17 is 85. and we also have new york times i'm sure you'll find something. so come back. [laughter] >> since you say that, the next book is about somebody else who's also 9/11 in america -- known in america. i've gone back to the dark side, sorry. it's calledy. the ambassador, ad it's about joseph p. kennedy as ambassador to britain, 1938-1940. >> we look forward to it, thank you. [applause] >> i want to thank you all for coming this evening. i want to remind you that this book is for sale, and susan would be happyha to autograph i. and i hope you'll also join us now for a glass of wine, and i'm sure susan will be happy to answer more questions. thank you so much for coming this evening. [applause]
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[inaudible conversations] >> booktv covers book fairs and festivals around the country. here's what's coming up. our 2020 festival season will kick off in january with the rancho mirage writers' festival in california followed by the savannah book festival in georgia. then in march booktv visits arizona for the tucson festival of books. and later that month, the virginia festival of the book will take place in charlottesville. for more information and to watch our previous festival coverage, chick the book fairs tab on our web site, booktv.org. >> good afternoon, everyone. [inaudible conversations] >> thank you. [laughter] i don't like to always shout people out at the very beginning, but in walking right now is p.t. barnum's great, great, great granddaughter eleanor biggs and
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