The Dishiest Mag Alive

Damn, he thought. Elvis Presley was dead. On Tuesday. Wouldn’t you know it. These things always seemed to happen on Tuesday, the day the magazine was supposed to close.

--Judy Kessler, “Inside People”

*

It was Aug. 16, 1977, and People magazine’s founding editor, Dick Stolley, was putting the finishing touches on the next week’s cover. With deadline looming, Stolley mourned Elvis’ poorly timed demise but didn’t think it was worth replacing the cover he had planned.

“The King” was dead, but as the nation grieved, People’s cover would tout bug-eyed comedian Marty Feldman and actress Ann-Margret in a movie remake of “Beau Geste.”

Not putting Elvis on the cover--even if it meant stopping the presses--was a miscalculation that caused Stolley enormous regret and cost People millions in lost newsstand sales. But it was a valuable lesson. To appreciate how well it was learned, count the number of covers People has posthumously dedicated to Princess Diana.

Never again would a celebrity go out of this world without a proper full-cover send-off from People. Nor would a celebrity get married, get arrested, get pregnant or get divorced without a story from People.

On the eve of People’s 25th anniversary, the weekly that wrote the book on personality journalism is more popular and profitable than ever. For reasons ranging from Cher’s navel to Monica’s dress, from Brad and Gwyneth “Calling It Quitteth,” to Charles and Camilla “Together at Last,” the magazine we trust to tell us who’s hot and who’s not is now read by a stunning one in five Americans.

With few exceptions--among them, People’s controversial decision to make first daughter Chelsea Clinton a cover subject--the magazine has maintained a reputation for gentle journalism that keeps it at the front of the pack of celebrity news hounds.

It has become a safe place for stars to turn when they marry (as Barbra Streisand did when she wed James Brolin), when they want to set the record straight (as Calista Flockhart tried to do with her rumored anorexia) or when they have major news (as Michael J. Fox did with his exclusive-to-People announcement that he was battling Parkinson’s disease).

More than any magazine of the 20th century, People has successfully exploited what one editor has called “the curious willingness of people to talk about profoundly personal things.”

“It is a journalistic and cultural phenomenon,” marvels media psychologist Stuart Fischoff. “Twenty-five years ago, when we were at the crest of a national obsession with celebrities and their lives, People magazine was there to catch the wave.”

But People’s greatest contribution, says Fischoff, a Cal State L.A. professor, “may be that it simply helps us through the night.”

Creators Aimed for Polish and Credibility

When People magazine made its debut on Feb. 25, 1974 (although the issue was dated March 4), there was considerable speculation that it would soon run out of subjects. After all, skeptics sniffed, how many people in the world are interesting enough to sustain reader attention, let alone a magazine’s circulation, 52 times a year?

But from its coy first cover of Mia Farrow nibbling on a string of pearls in her role as “The Great Gatsby’s” Daisy to its feverish look inside Burt Reynolds’ love affair with Dinah Shore, the magazine was mining a field that until that time was owned by Hollywood’s often tawdry fan rags.

People magazine would be different, vowed its creators. It would assume the polished veneer of Life magazine (which had folded two years before) and make the most of the credibility of its Time Inc. parents. It would employ almost as many fact-checkers as it did reporters, and it would strive, as founding editor Stolley pledged, to “never be cruel or awe-struck or gushy.”

Whether People has achieved those lofty goals depends on whom you ask. Was it cruel, for example, when in 1987 People paid a friend of presidential candidate Gary Hart’s paramour, Donna Rice, for a compromising photo of the two on the deck of the cabin cruiser “Monkey Business”?

Would “gushing” be the best word to describe how People covered Elizabeth Taylor’s marriage to Larry Fortensky? (“He Does, She Does--They Do!” was the cover caption. A $175,000 donation to Liz’s AIDS charity was the price People paid to print the wedding pictures.)

And, finally, could publication of 50 covers featuring Princess Diana be construed as evidence of awe-struckness?

The People formula is this:

* Young is better than old.

* Pretty is better than ugly.

* Rich is better than poor.

* TV is better than music.

* Music is better than movies.

* Movies are better than sports.

* Anything is better than politics.

* And nothing is better than the celebrity dead.

The recipe, devised by Stolley (although movies have since ascended), was extracted from the magazine’s early successes and failures. From the cover of 85-year-old philanthropist John Paul Getty that was so close-up you could count the pores in his bulbous nose, People learned that rich--even very, very rich--could not in itself overcome the readers’ distaste for old and ugly.

And from poor-selling covers on not-pretty, not-young sports announcer Howard Cosell and failed vice presidential candidate Tom Eagleton came confirmation of the sports / politics curse.

But from People’s first cover story on a dead celeb--its record-breaking 1980 tribute to slain Beatle John Lennon--came the revelation that when celebrity is combined with tragedy, “nothing,” as Stolley put it, “could be better.”

Later, Stolley would add to the winning mix “ordinary people caught up in extraordinary circumstances.” People like Baby Jessica and her rescue from the well, Ryan White and his battle against AIDS, tax evader Leona Helmsley, the McCaughey septuplets, Heidi Fleiss, Lorena Bobbitt.

‘We Want to Amuse, but Not to Confuse’

Still, the power of People lay in its nonstop, gotta-have-it, head-to-toe coverage of people whose names, according to a well-researched People equation, were immediately recognizable to at least 80% of the American public.

In her book “Inside People” (Villard Books, 1994), former People reporter Judy Kessler quotes a top People editor’s reasons for compressing the magazine’s message. “Readers are in a hurry,” noted the editor, “We want to amuse them, but not confuse them.”

The emphasis on compression led to a heightened cleverness that began to express itself most vividly during the magazine’s breathless countdowns of the world’s most intriguing, best-dressed, worst-dressed, and sexiest men alive.

People headlines were famous even without the stories they topped. This trio of heads pretty much told the story of the disintegration of Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s troubled marriage: “Malice in the Palace,” “The Big Chill” and, finally, “Save the Wales!”

As entertaining as People’s language was, it was the magazine’s pioneering use of the now popular “swarm” method of reporting that produced some of its most remarkable stories. Using hundreds of correspondents and stringers around the world, People editors covered celebrity news like other publications covered war.

Even if someone People decides to profile doesn’t want to be profiled--which happens more often now that the magazine has pulled back from offering money for photos or as-told-to interviews--that won’t stop the story. Staff reporters, researchers and stringers in the field can in a matter of days gather enough information to file “a write-around”--a story written around (and often, in spite of) the subject’s refusal to participate.

Stories to Bring a Tear to the Eye

When Michael Jackson’s handlers advised People in 1987 that he wanted his face on a People cover but would not allow anyone to interview him, Todd Gold of the Los Angeles bureau submitted 25 easy questions to the elusive singer.

Although he didn’t exactly answer the questions, what Michael sent back to Gold, awkwardly scrawled on a couple of sheets of scrap paper, was poignant and prophetic:

“I cry very, very often because I worry about the children. . . . I was sent forth for the world, for the children. But have mercy, for I’ve been bleeding a long time now.”

People’s “Message from Michael” wasn’t the first cover to bring a tear. When David Philip, the boy with the immune disorder who spent his life in a plastic bubble to shield him from germs, died at age 12, reporter Kent Demaret helped his mother write one of People’s most moving stories. The life and death of the Bubble Boy became one of People’s bestselling covers. It also led to one of its happiest endings when two years later, the Bubble Boy’s mother married the reporter.

There was little love between Robin Williams and the reporter assigned to profile him for People in 1988. The zany comedian’s newest movie “Good Morning, Vietnam” was about to be released, but that wasn’t the story that was pitched to People, according to Kessler’s account. The story offered had less to do with any on-screen drama than with Williams’ personal life. He was separated from his wife and he was in love with his son’s former nanny.

People’s story, “A Comic’s Crisis of the Heart,” detailed how Williams “snatched every opportunity to give Marsha a tender kiss or a hearty hug” in front of People’s reporter. “At least once, to hell with who was watching, he cupped her buttocks and pulled her in close for the kind of kiss usually exchanged in a bedroom.”

The magazine went on to wonder when the affair began and then answered its own question: “Nobody’s talking.” People’s treatment of the beloved comic turned an entire industry against it, according to a former writer for the magazine. “After that, a lot of people in Hollywood just wouldn’t trust us anymore. It took a long time to recover.”

Well, not all that long. Even if Williams did not immediately forgive the magazine for suggesting--inaccurately, he says--that his second wife was a home wrecker, few of the biggest names in Hollywood wanted to risk banning People from their lives.

With a circulation of 3.6 million and another estimated nine pass-along readers for every issue sold, People’s reach is formidable.

People, according to a package of press materials being distributed this week to kick off the anniversary celebration, has in the last 25 years become “a weekly entertainment event with a larger audience than any top-rated TV show or blockbuster film.”

Hype, yes. But hype with the figures to back it up. People leads the industry with annual ad revenues of nearly $627 million. And despite its high-priced subscriptions ($103.48 a year is the going price), it has more than 2.2 million subscribers and another 1.4 million readers who shell out $2.99 a copy to buy it on the newsstand.

Need to Fawn Over Celebrities Is Primal

In the last year, People has also reached out to two new markets with monthly issues of Teen People (which already has a circulation of 1.2 million) and People en Espan~ol. People also publishes an annual People Almanac, People On-Line, People POP Profiles and an 11-week CNN series to begin airing in mid-March, “People Profiles.”

Will there ever be too much People?

Not likely, according to those who study such things. Some attribute People’s popularity to its ability to reassure us that we’re not so different from those we put on a pedestal: Even the hottest actress in Hollywood breaks up with her boyfriend; even the future king of England can’t please his mother. In short, People, by sharing the most intimate details of those envied others’ lives, makes us feel better about ourselves.

Media psychologist Fischoff sees it as one more way we ape the apes. “The truth of the matter is, if you go back to the primates, you see that there were always alpha males who all the rest of us had to groom and flatter and give all our attention to. If we didn’t pay attention to these early ‘celebrities,’ we wouldn’t get food and we wouldn’t get protection.

“Now here we are in the ‘90s with an elaboration of that early survival system,” says Fischoff, “and though the celebrities are no longer responsible for keeping us safe or well-fed, we still seem to be programmed to need them in our lives.”

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Stories of Death, Birth and Marriage Are the Biggest Hits

The 10 bestselling newsstand People covers (regular issues*):

1. “Good-bye Diana,” Sept. 22, 1997--2.992 million sales

2. “John Lennon, 1940-1980: A Tribute,” Dec. 22, 1980--2.644 million

3. “Princess Grace, 1929-1982: A Tribute,” Sept. 27, 1982--2.623 million

4. “5th Anniversary Issue: A Surprising Readers’ Poll,” March 5, 1979--2.593 million

5. “Nice Work, Luv: Andy and Fergie Marry,” Aug. 4, 1986--2.59 million

6. “Oh Boy! Diana Gives Birth to Prince William,” July 5, 1982--2.579 million

7. “Good Show! Royal Wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana,” Aug. 3, 1981--2.551 million

8. “Olivia Newton-John: Greased Lightning,” July 31, 1978--2.508 million

9. “Karen Carpenter: Death Comes at 32,” Feb. 21, 1983--2.506 million

10. “Brooke Shields in ‘Blue Lagoon,’ ” Aug. 11, 1980--2.494 million

* The bestselling issue of all time was “Princess Diana’s Death,” a combined issue with “1997’s Best & Worst Dressed People.” It sold more than 5.1 million copies.

Source: People magazine