Колье́рс: История Американского Журнала

Former American general interest magazine

Collier's was an American general interest magazine founded in 1888 by Peter Fenelon Collier. It was launched as Collier's Once a Week, then renamed in 1895 as Collier's Weekly: An Illustrated Journal, shortened in 1905 to Collier's: The National Weekly and eventually to simply Collier's. The magazine ceased publication with the issue dated the week ending January 4, 1957, although a brief, failed attempt was made to revive the Collier's name with a new magazine in 2012. As a result of Peter Collier's pioneering investigative journalism, Collier's established a reputation as a proponent of social reform. After lawsuits by several companies against Collier's ended in failure, other magazines joined in what Theodore Roosevelt described as "muckraking journalism." Founded by Nathan S. Collier, a descendant of Peter Collier, the Collier Prize for State Government Accountability was created in 2019. The annual US$25,000 prize is one of the largest American journalism prizes, and it was established to honor Peter Collier’s legacy and contributions in the field of investigative reporting.

Peter F. Collier (1849–1909) left Ireland for the U. S. at age 17. With the issue dated April 28, 1888, Collier's Once a Week was launched as a magazine of "fiction, fact, sensation, wit, humor, news". It was sold with the biweekly Collier's Library of novels and popular books at bargain rates and as a stand alone priced at seven cents. When Robert Collier died in 1918, he left a will that turned the magazine over to three of his friends, Samuel Dunn, Harry Payne Whitney and Francis Patrick Garvan. Robert J. Collier won a lawsuit against Postum Cereal Company and was awarded $50,000 in damages, but in 1912 an appeals court then handed down a majority decision that Postum deserved a new trial. The Postum Company believed that Collier's weekly used magazine coverage to attack their company's products in retaliation for not advertising in Collier's after Collier's wrote against a Grape Nuts's claim that it was an "A Food for Brain and Nerves." Postum then bought advertising pages in major newspapers in retaliation. After 1924, printing of the magazine was done at the Crowell Collier printing plant on West High Street in Springfield, Ohio. was built between 1899 and 1946, and incorporated seven buildings that together had more than ——of floor space.

Collier's popularized the short short story which was often planned to fit on a single page. Knox Burger was Collier's fiction editor from 1948 to 1951 when he left to edit books for Dell and Fawcett Publications; he was replaced by Eleanor Stierhem Rawson. The numerous authors who contributed fiction to Collier's included F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ray Bradbury, Eleanor Hoyt Brainerd, Willa Cather, Roald Dahl, Jack Finney, Erle Stanley Gardner, Zane Grey, Ring Lardner, Sinclair Lewis, E. Phillips Oppenheim, J. D. Salinger, Kurt Vonnegut, Louis L'Amour, Albert Payson Terhune and Walter Tevis. Humor writers included Parke Cummings and H. Allen Smith. Serializing novels during the late 1920s, Collier's sometimes simultaneously ran two ten part novels, and non fiction was also serialized. Between 1913 and 1949, Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu serials, illustrated by Joseph Clement Coll and others, were hugely popular. The first three Fu Manchu novels by Rohmer were actually compilations of 29 short stories that Rohmer wrote for Collier’s. The Mask of Fu Manchu, which was adapted into a 1932 film and a 1951 Wally Wood comic book, was first published as a 12 part Collier's serial, running from May 7 to July 23, 1932. The May 7 issue displayed a memorable cover illustration by famed maskmaker Władysław T. Benda, and his mask design for that cover was repeated by many other illustrators in subsequent adaptations and reprints.

Leading illustrators contributed to the covers of Collier's. They included C. C. Beall, W. T. Benda, Chesley Bonestell, Charles R. Chickering, Howard Chandler Christy, Arthur Crouch, Harrison Fisher, James Montgomery Flagg, Alan Foster, Charles Dana Gibson, Vernon Grant, Emil Hering, Earl Oliver Hurst, Alonzo Myron Kimball, Percy Leason, Frank X. Leyendecker, J. C. Leyendecker, Paul Martin, John Alan Maxwell, Ronald McLeod, John Cullen Murphy, Maxfield Parrish, Edward Penfield, Robert O. Reed, Frederic Remington, Anthony Saris, John Sloan, Jessie Willcox Smith, Frederic Dorr Steele, Emmett Watson, Jon Whitcomb and Lawson Wood. Other top illustrators contributed prolifically to their short stories. They included Harold Mathews Brett, Richard V. Culter, Robert Fawcett, Denver Gillen and Quentin Reynolds. In 1903, Gibson signed a $100,000 contract, agreeing to deliver 100 pictures (at $1000 each) during the next four years. From 1904 to 1910, Parrish was under exclusive contract to Collier's, which published his famed Arabian Nights paintings in 1906 07.

The circulation battle with The Saturday Evening Post led to the creation of The Collier Hour, broadcast 1927–32 on the NBC Blue Network. It was radio's first major dramatic anthology series, adapting stories and serials from Collier's. The hour long program initially aired on the Wednesday before weekly publication, but switched to Sundays to avoid spoilers with stories that appeared simultaneously in the magazine. In 1929 the program began to incorporate music, news, sports and comedy with the dramatic content of the show.

At the outbreak of World War II in 1941 with William L. Chenery as editor, Collier's readership reached 2.5 million. In the October 14, 1944, issue, the magazine published one of the first articles about concentration camps. It was Jan Karski's "Polish Death Camp," a harrowing account of his visit to Belzec. The now problematic title is explored in "Polish death camp controversy", under the heading "Use and Reactions". Karski's book Story of a Secret State, which included the Collier's excerpt, was published later that year by Houghton Mifflin. It became a Book of the Month Club selection, and bestseller with 400,000 copies sold in 1944 45. The Collier's selection was reprinted in Robert H. Abzug's America Views the Holocaust: 1933 1945 (Palgrave, 1999). Collier's had a circulation of 2,846,052 when Walter Davenport took over as editor in 1946, but the magazine began to lose readers during the post World War II years. Collier's published a regular men's fashion feature contributed by Esquire co founder Henry L. Jackson and also published long awaited images from the 200 inch (5.08 m) Hale telescope's first light in 1949. In the early 1950s, Collier's ran a groundbreaking series of science based articles speculating on space flight, Man Will Conquer Space Soon!, which prompted the general public to seriously consider the possibility of a trip to the moon, with the percentage of Americans who believed a crewed lunar trip could happen within 50 years changing from 15% to 38% by 1955. In 1951, an entire issue described the events and outcome of a hypothetical war between the United States and the Soviet Union, entitled Preview of the War We Do Not Want. Collier's changed from a weekly to a biweekly in August 1953, but it continued to lose money. In 1954, John O'Hara became a columnist with his "Appointment with O'Hara" column. The magazine ceased publication with the issue for the week ending January 4, 1957. Princess Grace of Monaco was featured on the cover, pregnant with her first child Caroline.