Holiday Troubles

Behind a door marked "Magazine X," high up in Rockefeller Center's RKO Building, a staff of 27 had worked over their blueprints for six months. They had plenty of time and potentially plenty of money--the millions of Curtis Publishing Co. (Satevepost). "X" was a mystery, but not without clues: it was to be a LiFE-like picture magazine. The staff had its editorial plans set, but "X" would not appear until 1948--and then only if the Curtis board (which has not yet given its O.K.) decided to try it out.

Last week leisurely "X" had its tempo jolted. Curtis' first postwar baby, Holiday, was ailing and in need of transfusions. Curtis President Walter D. Fuller raided "X", transferred its editor, natty, 44-year-old Manhattan Adman Ted Patrick,* to edit Holiday. Fuller also dug into what Patrick called his "terrific staff" of "X"-men, many recruited from Yank and OWI. Holiday, Curtis' flashily upholstered but unexciting travel magazine, had dropped from a first-appearance (TIME, Feb. 25) sale of 450,000 to 400,000 (about half of them pre-publication trial subscribers), and newsstand returns were heavy. Fuller brushed off rumors that Holiday might fold ("damn foolishness") and said that Holiday's current circulation was actually above original estimates. Said he: "It has to do better than that. I want it to be hot. I want it to be so hot that it disappears from the newsstands." Over "differences on editorial policy," Fuller fired Holiday's first editor, spare, balding J. Frank Beaman, who had once been Fuller's secretary. Fuller also fired Holiday's art director, Don May. From "X" Fuller took James F. Yates as art director and Yank's former managing editor Al Hine as temporary troubleshooter.

Patrick's touch won't be visible until the October Holiday (the August and September numbers have already gone to press). Patrick intends to make Holiday bigger, do something about its cookie-cutter picture layouts. Fuller made clear: there will be no more space for the poor man's holiday. "I don't want stories about how to cook supper in the backyard or how to save up 50-c- to go to Coney Island. I want articles about . . . what to do and what to see at Yellowstone Park. And in between, articles about what to wear at such places. That's what people want from a magazine called Holiday. Even people who can't afford to go to Bermuda want to read about it."

*He wrote the emotional, pacifist World Peaceways ads (without pay) which appeared in U.S. magazines during the 1930s. (Most striking: a steel-helmeted skeleton, captioned "Cornfed Kid from the West.")

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