Look magazine
Look magazine was a prominent American photo magazine founded in 1937, known for its vibrant color covers featuring models, Hollywood stars, and significant cultural figures. The publication emerged from the Cowles family media empire, which expanded from its midwestern roots to establish a national presence in New York City, reflecting a progressive Republican platform. Throughout the 1940s, Look adapted to the socio-political climate, covering World War II themes and shifting its focus to glamour and lifestyle content in the postwar era. Under the leadership of Gardner "Mike" Cowles, Jr. and editor Fleur Fenton, the magazine embraced a more sophisticated approach, integrating sections on fashion and food, appealing to the optimism of a growing postwar middle class. Notable photographers, including future filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, contributed to its innovative visual storytelling. Despite its success, Look faced challenges from the rise of television and economic shifts in the 1970s, ultimately leading to its decline. The magazine's influence, however, remains notable in the history of American media and cultural representation.
Look magazine
Identification Popular general-interest magazine
Publisher Gardner Cowles, Jr. (1903-1985)
Date Published from 1937 to 1971
Look magazine, along with its competitor, Henry R. Luce’s Life magazine, documented Hollywood, World War II at home and abroad, fashion, and cuisine in the United States during the 1940’s. Within reach of nearly three million subscribers by decade’s end, Look sold for ten cents per copy and made its profits through advertisers that bought space in its 11-by-14-inch issues.
Only three years after its founding in 1937, Look magazine was featuring beautiful young models, Hollywood stars and starlets, and cute babies on its large color covers. Like the 1940’s itself, Look’s progress can be measured and evaluated in terms of the war years and the postwar years. Gardner “Mike” Cowles, Jr., and his older brother John inherited the media empire of their father, the holdings of which included the Des Moines Register and Des Moines Tribune and later the Minneapolis Star and Minneapolis Times. Along with radio stations and other newspaper holdings around the country, Cowles Communications was a midwestern media giant with big-city aspirations. Look magazine, founded by Mike Cowles, propelled his father’s company from its midwestern roots and small media markets to its new corporate headquarters at 488 Madison Avenue in New York City, the architecturally distinctive Look Building, giving the family business a national audience and a voice for its progressive Republican platform.
Cowles and his family were internationalists as well as supporters and good friends of failed 1940 Republican presidential candidate Wendell Willkie. In 1943, Willkie and Cowles, in the latter’s capacity as deputy director of the Office of War Information, flew around the world on a diplomatic mission sanctioned by Franklin D. Roosevelt. The purpose of the mission, which Cowles called the highlight of his life, was to demonstrate bipartisan support for international cooperation in a postwar world. The experience was the basis for Willkie’s best-selling book, One World (1943).
Back home, Look magazine replaced its cover shots of actors Judy Garland, Rita Hayworth, and June Allyson with portraits of leaders Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, and Dwight D. Eisenhower. Pictures of men and women in uniform, from paratroopers to Army nurses, also graced the covers. The Cowles media empire backed a second run in 1944 for Willkie, but a key early primary loss in Wisconsin to Thomas E. Dewey and Willkie’s failing health cut short the campaign. With the war’s end, Look continued to change with the times and mirror the optimism of its readers while shifting its focus more to glamour and style.
Cowles took a stronger hand in the running of Look, leaving his Des Moines base for New York City and a residence on Park Avenue. In December of 1946, having divorced his first two wives, Cowles married Fleur Fenton, a New York advertising executive. Fenton became an influential editor at Look and introduced sections on fashion and food. Even though the annual average salary in the United States in 1946 was only $2,500, the war’s end brought a new optimism and a renewed hope for prosperity. Fenton, Cowles, and Look appealed to the nation’s mood.
As a photo magazine, Look relied on a staff of talented photographers, including, in its early years, Arthur Rothstein and John Vachon, who had both worked with the New Deal’s Farm Security Administration. In addition, Look assigned work to freelance photographers. One freelancer, who began working for the magazine in 1946 and accepted more than three hundred assignments, was future film director Stanley Kubrick.
Impact
In an age before the domination of television, Look brought the world of high fashion, Hollywood, and international politics to the American reader. Look’s run lasted thirty-five years, and like its competitor, Life, it was finally squeezed out of the marketplace by television’s wider availability and less expensive ad rates, combined with increased postal costs and the economic slump of the early 1970’s.
Bibliography
Albrecht, Donald, and Thomas Mellins. Only in New York: Photographs from “Look” Magazine. New York: Museum of the City of New York and the Monacelli Press, 2009.
Cowles, Gardner. Mike Looks Back: The Memoirs of Gardner Cowles, Founder of “Look” Magazine. New York: G. Cowles, 1985.