Oursler Out

Next to Bernarr Macfadden (who "retired" from Macfadden Publications last year) the best-known Macfadden name is Charles Fulton Oursler, high-priced editor of Liberty. Last week Editor Oursler too was out. Liberty's new editor is 58-year-old Sheppard Butler, who quit the same job when Macfadden bought Liberty from Cousins Joe Patterson and Bertie McCormick in 1931. Editor Oursler, busy with a novel and a play, kept mum about the reasons for his departure and his 10,000 shares of Macfadden stock (market price: $1.25 per share).

Onetime law clerk, piano salesman, magician and Baltimore reporter, Editor Oursler went to work for Macfadden in 1921, two weeks later was left in charge while Macfadden took a vacation. Thereafter Editor Oursler sat permanently on Macfadden's right. He shuffled staffs', set up and knocked down magazines, started that ill-fated and ill-smelling Macfadden tabloid, the New York Graphic.

Describing himself "not as a prophet but as one who has talked with prophets," Editor Oursler once got Liberty circulation to 2,700,000 with the Emil Ludwig series on Roosevelt, in 1936 bought a prophetic story written by a then pulp writer named George Fielding Eliot in which the U.S. Fleet is crippled in a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. But Editor Oursler does not point with pride to Liberty's classic embarrassment in printing a lead article shortly after Pearl Harbor which began: "Hawaii is ready."

Of current rumors that Liberty is sailing in rough waters, ex-Editor Oursler categorically echoes Macfadden Publications in calling them gross slanders.

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