Nicky’s methods of betting weren’t scientific, but they worked. When he won, he collected. When he lost, he told the bookies to go fuck themselves.
It was followed in late 1936 by Life, the picture magazine, which was an astonishing newsstand success: “By the end of 1937 . . . circulation had reached 1.5 million — more than triple the first-year circulation of any magazine in American (and likely world) history.” But then, as throughout much of its existence, Life was troubled by high production costs and insufficient advertising revenues.
Luce’s empire grew to include “The March of Time,” first a radio broadcast and then a newsreel for theatrical distribution, and finally, in 1954, the slow-growing but eventually phenomenally successful Sports Illustrated.
The empire was called Time, Incorporated, a name that no longer exists. In 1990 — 23 years after Luce’s death — it merged with Warner Brothers and has since been known as Time Warner, a partnership that has seen its rough times but is now “one of the three largest media companies in the United States.” It is “a powerful and successful company, although the magazine division that had launched the company [is] weakening fast in the digital world of the twenty-first century.” Time, which was required reading in the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s, even for those who detested it, seems now to be waiting-room reading; Fortune retains relatively strong circulation but seems primarily known for its “Fortune 500″ rankings; and Sports Illustrated, though still widely read, is no longer noteworthy, as it once was, for superb journalism that at times reached the lower rungs of literature.
