In the walk-up to TIME's 100th anniversary, we spoke to archivist Bill Hooper about the most exciting items in the archives, the colorful personalities behind the red border, and where the publication’s influence can be seen today
hen Bill Hooper started work as an archivist for Time Inc. in 1980, the company was headquartered in the Time-Life building in New York City’s Rockefeller Center complex and the artifacts that told the story of TIME’s history were housed on-site. Hooper quickly became a go-to for staffers’ questions about the history of the publication—always ready with a Henry Luce quote or an appropriate anecdote or example.
I think he does [get more credit], just because Brit Hadden died so young [in 1929 at age 31]. It was Luce who built the empire, but Hadden was the editorial genius.He was very interested in language and brevity because he thought thewere just too dense and that people were too busy to sift through all of that. He wanted to come up with a magazine that would get you all the news you needed in a week and break it down by sections—Theater, U.S. News, Medicine—which was fairly unique at that time.
Another thing that fascinated me was there was a woman who worked for years on the TIME copy desk named Marie Menken Maas. She was an artist and avant-garde filmmaker, married to an English professor at Wagner College. They lived in a penthouse apartment on Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights, and they would have these alcohol-fueled salons every weekend, and their guests were frequently Truman Capote and Edward Albee.
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