Clinton Leads Gala Honoring Time

Time magazine celebrated its 75th anniversary with a gala Tuesday night that included guests who have been featured on the periodical’s cover.

“Tonight, Time magazine has paid tribute to the time it not only observed, but helped to shape--the 100 stunning years that your founder Henry Luce so unforgettably called the American Century,” President Clinton told the audience of hundreds, including Elie Wiesel, John Glenn, Bill Gates and Muhammad Ali.

The eclectic list of attendees also included Sean Connery, Julia Child, Raquel Welch, Betty Friedan and retired pathologist Jack Kevorkian. Even Hitler’s filmmaker, Leni Riefenstahl, was invited. Kevorkian, who hates to fly, drove to New York for the event. He wore a used tuxedo, the first one he’s ever owned.

William H. Ginsburg, lawyer for former White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky, attended. But Lewinsky, herself featured on a recent Time cover, was not invited.

Gawking celebrities were packed shoulder to shoulder amid more than 2,000 people. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and John F. Kennedy Jr. struck up conversation.

In prepared remarks, Clinton said President Franklin D. Roosevelt was the personification of the American Century and that the present generation could learn from the Depression-era leader as it headed toward 2000.

“Tonight, with barely 700 days before the new century and the new millennium, it falls to us in this generation to carry on America’s mission,” Clinton said. “To strengthen the bonds of union, widen the circle of opportunity, and deepen the reach of freedom.”

For the dinner celebration, the seats at Radio City Music Hall were being covered for the first time by a tiered platform for tables and dancing.

“It’s been 75 years, but we feel really young,” Time Managing Editor Walter Isaacson said in a telephone interview.

The magazine was launched in 1923 by two Yale students, Luce and Briton Hadden, as “a brief, readable chronicle of significant events.”

Over the years, the price of the New York-based weekly went from 15 cents to $2.95 as it grew into one of the magazine industry’s leaders in circulation and advertising revenue.

It now has more than 31 million readers in 210 countries, and ranked third last year in magazine ad revenue with $533.2 million. On Monday, Adweek named it “Hottest Magazine of the Year.”

Isaacson said Time has changed since Luce’s days, when he called it “a very opinionated journal.”

“Now we hope to be based on great reporting and good storytelling,” he said. The magazine began its Man of the Year tradition with aviator Charles Lindbergh in 1927. Wallis Warfield Simpson was the first Woman of the Year, in 1936.