The Fawcett Formula

To prove its respectability, True Confessions has just spent $50,000. It was a year's job. During the first five months, interviewers rang doorbells all over Dayton, Ohio (picked by the Census Bureau as a typical wartime U.S. city) and badgered Confessions' readers into answering 600 questions. It took seven more months to find out what the answers meant. Last week the results were in: since most Confessions' readers are between 20 and 34 years old, they are obviously neither frustrated old maids nor sex-stirred bobby-soxers; 72% are married; they pay more rent ($29 a month) than the average Daytonite ($25); 72% have graduated from high school, 3% from college; 100% buy soap.

The Wages of Sin. Cleanliness is a latter-day worry of Confessions' publishers, the four sons of "Captain Billy" Fawcett. Since building the family fortune on the smokehouse smut of Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, they have made crime pay (Daring Detective, Startling Detective, Dynamic Detective), profited from pleasing the star-struck (Movie Story, Motion Picture), discovered that respectability is the most fun of all.

True Confessions (current circ. 1,795,000) 'is now as straight-laced as a temperance speaker's corset. For two years no one between its covers has given birth to an illegitimate child, or even been seduced. The siren never wins the sweet young thing's husband; the crooked lawyer never does Honest John out of his inheritance; every last confession ends in an odor of uplift.

Last month, by getting Eleanor Roosevelt to write an article for Confessions, the Brothers Fawcett reached respectability with a capital R. But big-name contributors are only incidental music to a magazine with so pat an editorial formula: 1) no heroine is ever extremely poor or rich, and no story is ever set in unfamiliar lands (Confessions' middle-class readers can thus envision themselves in every tell-all); 2) since the readers live drab lives, they naturally wonder what would have happened if they had gone sinning instead -- and by reading about sin in True Confessions, they have the satisfaction of knowing that they were wise to stay pure.

"Holy Moley!" Publishing wisdom has come slowly and somewhat secondhand to the Four Fawcetts, who have probably bred and killed more magazines than any two other U.S. publishers. Only around the office, never to the public, do they call themselves the "greatest seconds in the business." But True Confessions began three years after Macfadden's phenomenal True Story ; Modern Mechanics, started in 1928, changed its name to Mechanic Illustrated because Popular Mechanics objected. When Ballyhoo created a big, brief stir in 1931, the Fawcetts came up with Hooey. When LIFE scored, the Fawcetts brought out a picture magazine called Spot. Their No. 1 comic hero is wonder working, high-flying Captain Marvel, and he is currently court-bound as too close an imitation of Superman.

At one time, the Fawcetts ad 63 magazines going at once. Now with the paper shortage, they are putting out only 14, but are the nation's sixth largest magazine-paper consumers.

Even Fawcett comics (4,400,000 a month: Captain Marvel, Whiz Comics, Wow Comics, etc.) are morally impeccable. Captain Marvel would never think of saying "Holy Moses"; when pressed, he ejaculates "Holy Moley!" -- perhaps the most inspired bowdlerizing since Ring Lardner wrote "Golly is in his heaven." The Fawcetts debated long before adding the Petty girl to their men's maga zine, True (circ. 440,000). Although her presence is justified by a "noted psychologist's" learned "analysis," the Fawcetts regularly ask each other: "Does it add?" No Fawcett editor speaks of "sex"; the approved office word is "romance." Brother Act. Employes call the Fawcetts "the greatest brother act in history." All four own equal shares of stock, are the company's only directors. Their Times Square offices are paneled alike, with equal-sized gold letters on the door. They wear Broadway ties, golf together, give each other hotfoots at board meetings.

Brother Wilford H. ("Buzz") Fawcett Jr., 37, is president because he is eldest; Brother Roger, 35, is general manager; Brother Gordon, who has just passed his Army physical, is 33 and treasurer; Brother Roscoe, recently discharged from the Army, is 32 and circulation director. They have been working together ever since, as boys, they peddled father's Whiz Bang around Minneapolis. Billy Sr., an Army captain in World War I, had come home jobless but with a tin hat full of dirty stories, which he began mimeographing for fellow vets. Soon Whiz Bang had to be printed to meet demand, and within four years it had a circulation of 425,000, made a profit of $500,000 a year.

After the nation's mood in humor changed to slicker stuff, Whiz Bang slowly sizzled out, finally died in 1932. Since then the Fawcett policy has been quick profit or sudden death. Totally disdainful of comfortable subscriber backlogs, the brothers sell 99% of their 10,000,000 magazines a month on the stands.

Last week the four Fawcetts, well-skilled in the art of editing their magazines in the circulation department, were already making flashy bets on postwar reading habits. Their judgment: uplift is here to stay; when the guns of World War II stop firing, there will be no demand for a new Whiz Bang.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.