Henry Luce

Henry Robinson Luce (April 3, 1898 to February 28, 1967) was an American magazine publisher who co-founded Time Inc. with Briton Hadden in 1923 and ran the company until his retirement in 1964. He was born in Tengchow, China, to Presbyterian missionaries, graduated from Yale University in 1920, and was elected to Skull and Bones in the tap day of May 15, 1919.¹²³ Life printed his 1941 essay "The American Century," and his associates and wife appear in the record of the Central Intelligence Agency, the psychological warfare apparatus of the Eisenhower administration, the Zapruder film and the LSD experiments of the 1950s and 1960s.

Childhood in China, Hotchkiss and Yale

Luce was born at Tengchow (now Penglai) to the Reverend Dr. Henry Winters Luce and Elizabeth Middleton Luce. He spent the first fourteen years of his life in China apart from a visit to the United States in 1906 and 1907, attended the Chefoo School, a British-run preparatory school in northern China, studied briefly at St. Albans School in England in 1912, and entered the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut, the following year.¹

He entered Yale in 1916 and served as managing editor of the Yale Daily News. A member of the Yale ROTC Field Artillery Unit, he left college to train army recruits at the end of the First World War, was discharged as a second lieutenant at the end of 1918, returned to New Haven and graduated in 1920. Hadden, a classmate from Hotchkiss and Yale, was in the same class.¹ After graduation Luce spent a year studying history at Oxford, and in 1921 took work as a reporter with the Chicago Daily News and then the Baltimore News.¹

Skull and Bones

The Harvard Crimson printed a special dispatch from New Haven dated May 15, 1919, reporting the men elected to the senior societies at Yale in that year's tap day. The Skull and Bones list read: DeForest Van Slyck, James McHenry, Joseph Weir Sargent, L. G. Adams, Daniel R. Winter, Henry R. Luce, John M. Hincks, Harry P. Davison, Theodore L. Safford, Morehead Patterson, Briton Hadden, Alfred C. Schermerhorn, Frank P. Hefflefinger, Francis T. Hobson and David L. Ingalls.³ The name index to Antony C. Sutton's 1983 study of the society lists the class of 1920 with "Hadden, Briton" and "Luce, Henry Robinson."²

Sutton's section on communications states that "There has been a significant penetration into communications," and gives as its first example "Henry Luce of Time-Life is in The Order."⁴ In 1977 Ron Rosenbaum named Luce among the society's members in an article in Esquire. Rosenbaum wrote of Bones reunions: "Where else can you hear Archibald MacLeish take on Henry Luce in a soul-versus-capital debate with no holds barred?"⁵

Time Incorporated and the Luce magazines

Luce left his job at the Baltimore News in 1922 to concentrate on a news magazine with Hadden. Together they formed Time Incorporated, and the first issue of Time appeared in New York in 1923.¹ Luce married Lila Hotz on December 22, 1923; the couple had two sons, and the marriage ended in divorce in 1935.¹ Hadden died in 1929, after which Luce became the sole head of the company.¹ The company started Fortune in 1930, the The March of Time radio series in 1931 and Life in 1936. In 1935 Luce married Clare Boothe Brokaw, a playwright and former managing editor of Vanity Fair; the Library of Congress chronology of her papers gives the date as November 23, 1935.¹⁶ Sports Illustrated followed in 1954.¹

The Century Group, Willkie and the Council for Democracy

In the early years of the Second World War Luce belonged to the Century Group, which advocated assistance to Great Britain; his papers include materials on the group's effort to persuade the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration to provide Britain with old United States destroyers.¹⁷ He was one of the driving forces behind the 1940 Republican presidential candidacy of Wendell Willkie, and Clare Boothe Luce campaigned for Willkie in New York and Connecticut.¹⁶

The Luce papers hold a file on the Council for Democracy for 1940 to 1942, including a draft "Statement of Faith for Coordinating Council for Democracy" with Luce's handwritten response.⁸ C. D. Jackson, then a Time Inc. executive, was president of the council in 1940, and his papers include a folder of correspondence with Luce on the role of "Harry Luce" in it and another listing criticism of the council as a "Luce front" organization.⁹

The American Century

Life printed "The American Century" under Luce's name across pages 61 to 65 of its February 17, 1941 issue.¹⁰ The essay argued that the twentieth century was "America's first century as a dominant power in the world," and that the world of that century "must be to a significant degree an American Century."¹⁰ Luce called on the United States to "undertake now to be the Good Samaritan of the entire world," and urged that American trade be planned on large terms. "We think of Asia as being worth only a few hundred millions a year to us," he wrote, and he continued that Asia would be worth "four, five, ten billions of dollars a year" to the country if Americans thought on those terms.¹⁰

The program had four parts. The essay described America as "the principal guarantor of the freedom of the seas" and as "the dynamic leader of world trade." It pictured the country sending out "technical and artistic skills" in the form of "Engineers, scientists, doctors, movie men, makers of entertainment, developers of airlines, builders of roads, teachers, educators." The last section named America as "the powerhouse of the ideals of Freedom and Justice."¹⁰

The essay addressed the war in Europe and the isolationist position in the United States, and it closed on Roosevelt. Luce wrote that "Our only chance now to make it work is in terms of a vital international economy and in terms of an international moral order," and that Roosevelt "must succeed where Woodrow Wilson failed."¹⁰

China, the China Lobby and United China Relief

The biographical note of Luce's papers records that through the 1950s and 1960s he was continuously involved in charities related to the Presbyterian Church, Yale and China, and that he "led a concerted campaign to provide aid to China under the aegis of the United China Relief."¹ United China Relief was founded in New York in February 1941 in an attempt to consolidate several smaller agencies already aiding China. A Colorado College thesis by Sam Schoenecker wrote that Luce loaned prominent journalists from Time Inc. to the organization, and that the prominence of Time Inc. employees in its marketing raised questions about Luce's control over its picture of China.¹¹¹² The same thesis describes Luce as one of the influential figures associated with the China Lobby.¹¹

The folder list of the papers records the relationship at the level of the files. A United China Relief folder for 1939 to 1950 and 1956 notes that the organization later changed its name to "United Service to China," and includes a memorandum from Douglas Auchincloss to Luce describing a meeting with Pearl S. Buck and correspondence from Buck, Herbert Hoover, Cordell Hull and Joseph P. Kennedy.¹³ Another folder holds the English translation of Chiang Kai-shek's greeting to supporters of China through United China Relief on the thirty-third national day of the Republic of China, the reports "Five Years of United China Relief," minutes of the Committee on American Activities of the United Service to China, and the "Appeal to Americans: Stand By Our Chinese Friends Now!"¹⁴ A further folder includes "Russell Birdwell's Preliminary Plan for The Free China Movement."¹⁵

Madame Chiang's 1943 tour of the United States is documented in two folders. One includes the press release of the Citizens Committee to Welcome Mme. Chiang Kai-shek, the speech she gave at Madison Square Garden, programs from her appearances in San Francisco, Chicago and Los Angeles, and a draft memorandum by United China Relief executives, "Items for Consultation with Madame Chiang Kai-shek." The other holds a letter marked "secret" announcing that she had left for the United States and a letter from Luce to her describing his impressions of China after a 1945 trip.¹⁶¹⁷ A folder on the China Institute in America includes a memorandum from Charles L. Stillman on his impressions of Taiwan and a transcript of an NBC interview with Chiang Kai-shek, and Luce delivered the speech at the dedication of China House on August 27, 1944.¹⁸¹⁹ A further folder includes correspondence from the Committee of One Million Against the Admission of Communist China to the United Nations, a "Formosa Report" from Kip Finch, and a draft of "The Luce Scholarship Foundation for Yenching University."²⁰

Luce's trip files show visits to China in 1941, with a handwritten report titled "China: To the Mountains," in 1945, with invitations in Chinese from T. V. Soong and Chiang Kai-shek, cables, a diary, and an outline of Nationalist and Communist strength in Shantung, and in 1946. Further files cover trips to Formosa and Hong Kong and to Indochina in 1952 and 1953, and travel to Taiwan and Vietnam in 1964.²¹²²²³ The files for Luce's correspondence with Jackson from 1945 list a "Chungking Diary, Oct.1945, by Luce" among its topics.⁹

The papers of C. D. Jackson at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library include a folder titled "China-America Council," described as covering the "Time Inc. relationship with council," and a general-file entry for "Time coverage of events in Asia and China, 1937."⁹

National War Fund

The National War Fund issued a speakers handbook dated as of August 13, 1945. Its officers list names Winthrop W. Aldrich as president and Prescott Bush as a vice president for New York. The executive committee lists "Henry R. Luce" with Aldrich, Bush and John D. Rockefeller Jr., and Gerard Swope, listed as chairman of the budget committee, appears on the same committee.²⁴

Rockefeller Brothers Fund Special Studies Project

The Luce papers at the New-York Historical Society include a file on the Rockefeller Brothers Fund Special Studies Project, dated 1956 to 1963 with a 1974 addition. The file contains a memo regarding a conversation between Luce and Henry A. Kissinger about the project, and correspondence from Kissinger and Nelson A. Rockefeller.²⁵ Luce is listed on the roster of Panel II, "International Security: The Military Aspect," alongside Laurance Rockefeller.²⁶

C. D. Jackson and the psychological warfare apparatus

Jackson was appointed assistant to the president of Time Inc. in 1931 and a vice president in 1940. He was managing director of Time-Life International in 1945 and publisher of Fortune in 1949, and became publisher of Life in 1960; his papers at the Eisenhower Library describe him as one of Luce's vice presidents who supervised the company's overseas activities in the late 1940s.⁹ The papers include his correspondence with Luce and with John K. Jessup.⁹

The finding aid for Jackson's papers sets a condition on any use: "Permission of Time Incorporated is required to cite or quote materials originated by any individual in his capacity as an official of Time Incorporated."⁹ Jackson served in psychological warfare with the Office of War Information during the Second World War, as deputy chief of the Psychological Warfare Branch at Allied Force Headquarters in 1943 and deputy chief of the Psychological Warfare Division at SHAEF in 1944 and 1945. His Luce correspondence for 1943 and 1944 lists OWI and PWB personnel and operations among its subjects.⁹ He was president of the Free Europe Committee, which directed Radio Free Europe, from 1951 to 1952, and the finding aid describes him as an active participant in Radio Free Europe from its founding in 1949 until his death in 1964. He then became special assistant to President Dwight D. Eisenhower for international affairs in 1953 and 1954. The finding aid states that he "took the lead in preparing" the Atoms for Peace speech delivered at the United Nations on December 8, 1953.⁹

The Eisenhower Library's records for Jackson, 1953 and 1954, state that "As Special Assistant to the President, Jackson worked closely with the Psychological Strategy Board and the Operations Coordinating Board, and served as an official member of the latter." The same finding aid records that the Psychological Strategy Board was authorized by President Truman in June 1951, and that the Jackson Committee recommended abolishing it in favor of the Operations Coordinating Board, a change completed in September 1953.²⁷

The correspondence series of the Jackson papers carries the Luces through the Eisenhower years. The folder for Luce in 1951 and 1952 lists "Vietnam, Bao Dai, Ho Chi Minh," and "qualifications for CDJ's job." The folder for Henry and Clare in 1953 lists "Trieste issue; Italy-U.S. relations." The third 1954 folder lists "Indochina-role of DDE, W.B. Smith, Dulles, and French; Adm. Radford; A. Dulles; Dienbienphu." The 1955 folders list Formosa, Quemoy and Matsu, and the 1956 folder lists "Free Europe Comm.; RFE," Suez and "CIA." Jackson's own log for 1954 lists "CIA plans" and "Prince Bernhard-Bilderberg Conf." beside Luce and Walter Bedell Smith.⁹

Jackson was one of eleven members of the Quantico Vulnerabilities Panel, which met at Quantico from June 5 to 10, 1955 under the chairmanship of Walt Rostow.²⁸

Covert relationships with the CIA

The minutes of the CIA Deputies' Meeting of July 21, 1952 record Frank Wisner noting that the agency was prepared to talk to Luce's representative whenever he came to Washington, and that it had enough material on hand to allow Time or Life to publish an exclusive story on the Duclos affair beyond the information already made public. Asked by Director Walter Bedell Smith about authenticity, Wisner said the agency was 90 percent positive about the information.²⁹

In "The CIA and the Media," a cover story in Rolling Stone on October 20, 1977, Carl Bernstein listed the executives who "lent their cooperation to the Agency." They included William S. Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting System, "Henry Luce of Time Inc.," Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times, Barry Bingham Sr. of the Louisville Courier-Journal and James Copley of the Copley News Service.³⁰ Bernstein wrote that Allen Dulles "often interceded with his good friend, the late Henry Luce," who "readily allowed certain members of his staff to work for the Agency and agreed to provide jobs and credentials for other CIA operatives who lacked journalistic experience." He wrote that Luce "made it a regular practice to brief Dulles or other high Agency officials" after his trips abroad, and that in the 1950s and early 1960s Time's foreign correspondents attended CIA "briefing" dinners similar to those the agency held for CBS.³⁰ Bernstein also wrote, citing CIA and Senate sources, that agency files contain written agreements with former foreign correspondents and stringers for Time and Newsweek.³⁰

Bernstein described C. D. Jackson as "Luce's personal emissary to the CIA." He wrote that Jackson "approved specific arrangements for providing CIA employees with Time-Life cover," and that some of these arrangements were made with the knowledge of "Luce's wife, Clare Boothe." He also wrote that Jackson, while a Time executive, coauthored a CIA-sponsored study recommending reorganization of the American intelligence services in the early 1950s. Hedley Donovan, who took over editorial direction of all Time Inc. publications in 1959, denied any knowledge of such arrangements. "I was never approached and I'd be amazed if Luce approved such arrangements," Donovan said. "Luce had a very scrupulous regard for the difference between journalism and government."³⁰

The Church Committee took up the subject in Book I of its 1976 final report. Chapter X.B, "Covert Relationships With the United States Media," records that the CIA maintained covert relationships with "about 50 American journalists or employees of U.S. media organizations" until February 1976, as part of a network of several hundred foreign individuals who provided intelligence and at times attempted to influence foreign opinion through covert propaganda.³¹ The report notes that George H. W. Bush, the new director, pledged that "CIA will not enter into any paid or contractual relationship with any full-time or part-time news correspondent accredited by any U.S. news service, newspaper, periodical, radio or television network or station."³¹ In the covert action chapter the committee quotes the February 11, 1976 announcement (it begins "Effective immediately"), records that "More than a dozen United States news organizations and commercial publishing houses formerly provided cover for CIA agents abroad," that "A few of these organizations were unaware that they provided this cover," and states that the use of American journalists and media organizations for clandestine operations "is a threat to the integrity of the press."³²

The Zapruder film

After the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Abraham Zapruder took his film to a Dallas processing plant, had three copies made, gave two to representatives of the Secret Service, and sold the original and one copy to Life for a reported $150,000, according to a memorandum by Sheryl Walter of the Assassination Records Review Board.³³ A 1998 account by Jim DiEugenio in the journal Probe, which draws on an interview with Richard Stolley, who was then working for Time-Life, states that Stolley got the print rights for $50,000, and that two days later, after viewing the film in New York, the company bought all rights for $150,000.³⁴

Zapruder told the Warren Commission that he had received $25,000 and that he had given it to the family of J. D. Tippit. The review board memorandum records that this sum "apparently was the first of six payments for the film and its copy."³³ At the commission's request a representative of Life brought the original to the commission's offices and screened it several times, because "the original had considerably more detail and more there to study than any of the copies, since in the photographic process each time you copy you lose some detail."³³

DiEugenio wrote that "Reportedly, C. D. Jackson of Time-Life, who was close to Allen Dulles, was so upset by what the film depicted he decided to restrict what that company would show through its mass market magazines." He wrote that Life never showed the film in anything like its entirety, that the company sued Josiah Thompson, whom it had allowed to see the film, over stills in his book Six Seconds in Dallas, and that in 1969 Jim Garrison subpoenaed the film from Time-Life for the trial of Clay Shaw in New Orleans.³⁴

The Walter memorandum dates Time-Life's notice to the National Archives that it was considering a donation of its rights to 1974. A review board letter of April 21, 1995 to Harry M. Johnston III, general counsel of Time Warner, gives the notice from Lawrence Layburne, then a vice president of Time Inc., as 1975.³³³⁵ Time Inc. donated a first and a second generation copy to the government and sold the copyright in the original to the Zapruders for "$1 and other valuable consideration."³⁵ The original was placed with the National Archives and Records Administration at the Zapruders' request for storage, and no deed of gift for the original was executed.³³ In 1993 Henry Zapruder asked for possession of the film, and the archive declined to give it to him.³³

A review board letter of May 1, 1995 to E. Gabriel Perle, a former general counsel of Time Inc., reported that from the company's files "it appears that the Zapruders do have legal title to the original film as well as ownership of the copyright," and that Time Inc. had been constrained by terms in the original contract.³⁶ The Walter memorandum records a reported $40,000 that the Zapruders had collected from Oliver Stone for use of the film in JFK.³³ On August 3, 1999 the Justice Department announced that an arbitration panel had awarded the heirs of Abraham Zapruder $16 million for the film.³⁷

LSD and the Luce magazines

The first Time article on LSD, "Dream Stuff," ran in 1954 and reported on the drug as an adjunct to psychotherapy. In May 1957 Life published R. Gordon Wasson's account of a mushroom ceremony in Mexico in its Great Adventure series, a seventeen-page spread with color photographs. Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain wrote in their 1985 book Acid Dreams that Wasson was then a vice president of J. P. Morgan and Company.³⁸³⁹

Lee and Shlain wrote that Luce "turned on a half-dozen times in the late 1950s and early 1960s under the supervision of Dr. Sidney Cohen," a Los Angeles psychiatrist attached to UCLA and the Veterans Hospital, and that Cohen also gave the drug to Clare Boothe Luce. Their notes cite W. A. Swanberg's biography Luce and His Empire (p. 463) and Wilfred Sheed's Clare Boothe Luce (p. 125) for the count.³⁸ Jack Shafer wrote in Slate that Alan Brinkley's biography of Luce limits the discussion to about three pages and says Henry took the drug once or perhaps twice, against Clare's multiple trips.³⁹

The Library of Congress finding aid for the Clare Boothe Luce papers states that she "experimented with LSD under the tutelage of Gerald Heard and Sidney Cohen," and lists a subject file "LSD (drug)" holding clippings for 1961 to 1963 and 1983. Her correspondents include Gerald Heard and Cohen.⁶ The authors of Acid Dreams quote her remarks on the Dick Cavett program of April 9, 1982: "Oh, sure, we all took acid. It was a creative group, my husband and I and Huxley and Isherwood." The book gives her comment on the drug's use by others, "We wouldn't want everyone doing too much of a good thing," from Abbie Hoffman's memoir Soon to Be a Major Motion Picture, p. 73.³⁸

Stephen Siff wrote that both Luces reviewed the 1963 Life article "The Chemical Mind-Changers" before publication, and that Time covered LSD earlier and more often than other magazines.³⁹ According to Shafer's summary of Siff's reconstruction from Clare Boothe Luce's papers, Luce's first trip was taken at Clare's urging with Cohen observing in Phoenix, and a trip of Clare's on March 11, 1959 was interrupted by a telephone call from Richard Nixon, which she declined.³⁹ Brinkley's biography, as Shafer summarizes it, reports her later statement that LSD "saved our marriage."³⁹ Andrew Heiskell, a former Life publisher, recalled in a Columbia University oral history that Luce announced at a New York banquet that he and Clare "were taking LSD!"³⁹

Clare Boothe Luce, Congress and the Italian embassy

Clare Boothe Luce served two terms in the House of Representatives, from 1943 to 1947, after joining the Republican Party in 1940.⁶ The Library of Congress chronology of her papers lists her as ambassador to Italy for 1953 to 1956, and the Office of the Historian records her as a non-career appointee from Connecticut, appointed ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to Italy on March 2, 1953, presenting her credentials on May 4, 1953 and leaving the post on December 27, 1956.⁶⁴⁰ The biographical note of Henry Luce's papers states that after her appointment he opened an office in Rome and divided his time between Italy and the United States from 1953 to 1956.¹ The embassy papers in her collection include records "relating to missions, investigations, and projects undertaken by the embassy" and papers on the Trieste crisis.⁶

Eisenhower nominated her ambassador to Brazil in 1959; the Senate confirmed the nomination and she withdrew before taking office after her remarks about Senator Wayne Morse during the confirmation hearings.⁶⁴⁰ The Jackson papers list a folder on the "attack on C. Luce and mission to Brazil in 1959."⁹ The Library of Congress chronology records her as a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board for 1973 to 1977 and 1980 to 1986, and the series of her papers for the board runs from 1974 to 1987, with classified material in the 1981 to 1987 folders.⁶

Jennet Conant documents that Roald Dahl was assigned during the war to cultivate Clare Boothe Luce for political intelligence. Dahl later described the assignment as the worst of the war, reportedly saying that she "talked too much both before and after."⁴¹

Death and papers

Luce died in Phoenix, Arizona on February 28, 1967. His papers include files on memorial services at the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church and at Time Inc. in New York, and on memorial services held at Tung Hai University in Taiwan.¹⁴²

The Luce papers at the New-York Historical Society were divided after his death. Records classed as business became part of the Time Inc. archives, and records classed as personal became part of the Henry R. Luce papers. Some of his files were given to the Library of Congress, with copies of the more prominent records kept in his papers.¹ The Clare Boothe Luce papers at the Library of Congress (MSS30759, 1862 to 1997) include Henry Luce's correspondence with Clare, general and "V.I.P." correspondence, scrapbooks, speeches, "Time-Life memoranda," a will and writings.⁶