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“Get this goddam tie off me.”
Boss Ross
by George Ducker
If the launching of a magazine is measured in terms of luck vs. talent, then Harold Ross and Raoul Fleischman were two of the luckiest people in the business. As editor and publisher, respectively, the two men miraculously got out a magazine that hit a social nerve. You might have heard of it. They dubbed their initially cash-strapped rag The New Yorker.
The inscription reads: “To Katherine Angell, God bless her, who brought this on herself.
Although writing almost no copy (under his own name at least) in his 26 years as its editor, Harold Ross should be celebrated for not only his wide range of curiosities and his endless encouragement of lengthy writing on the best kinds of hitherto-called ‘esoteria,’ but also for his ability to corral and manage a stable of writers whose names now strike fear in J-School thesis-writers and listless high schoolers alike.
“The Rainmaker” – Harry Nilsson: mp3
This past Tuesday, November 6, marks what would have been his 116th birthday. God forbid anyone should live so long, even though Ross was struck down in his fifties by cancer brought on by the staggering amount of cigarettes which he’d smoked his whole life.
At the St. Regis with 3rd wife, Ariane, right, and Gertrude Lawrence.
A Colorado native, the son of a speculator, Ross was put in the unique position of captaining a magazine that claimed to cater to the ‘cosmopolitan class.‘
The cast of characters in those early days was as shifty as the characters in a floating poker game. People drifted in and drifted out. Every week the magazine teetered on the edge of financial ruin. Katherine Angell arrived in 1925… Then Ralph McAllister Ingersoll arrived, right out of the social register. Lois Long, Peter Arno, Rogers Whittaker arrived, right out of the subway. Rea Irvin arrived before anyone else. He was the only person around the place who seemed to know what he was doing… Ross fumed, fussed, broke down partitions, changed the format every issue, strove and strove, cursed and raged.
— EB White
“Looking for Gold” – The Tough Alliance: mp3
E.B. White, James Thurber.
“Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear” – Harry Nilsson: mp3
Joseph Mitchell, A.J. Leibling.
“Worried Blues (Daytrotter Session)” – Phosphorescent: mp3
With his Fowler’s Modern English Usage ever close at hand, Ross employed the comma like ancient armies once loosed arrows at their stunted enemies. In addition to, or perhaps because of his strenuous editing duties, Ross could also write a mean letter. As epistolarians go, he’s up there with H.P. Lovecraft, whom Ross may not equal in length or volume, but bests every time in the use of expletives.
Katherine Angell White.
“Worried Blues (Daytrotter Session)” – Phosphorescent: mp3
Ironically, he was less willing use of “daring words” in his own magazine. Harold Ross wrote the following to Vanity Fair editor Frank Crowninshield in 1933:
Dear Frank,
The use of daring words is one of our most serious problems, or at any rate, one of my most serious concerns. I, too, suspect frequently that I am a generation behind. Much of my activity the last couple of years has been fighting the use of words which I think are shocking in print. I am completely disqualified as a judge of what is shocking. That is my difficulty in the present situation. I am an old-fashioned double-standard boy who is shocked at nothing, absolutely nothing in a stag setting, but who is embarrassed poignantly at any word or reference which used to be called off-color in mixed company.
A magazine is certainly something for circulation in mixed company and I always keep in mind that The New Yorker will be left around the house where it is available to women and children. That is a practical consideration and, it seems to me, a very important one. The hell of it is that in these days of frankness and disillusionment, when fathers insist that they want their daughters to have “experience before marriage” and when Vassar graduates turn up with a vocabulary which you haven’t heard since the old days in Fanny Brown’s hook shop in California, I don’t know how to gauge the standards of mixed company….
O n the other hand, I am theoretically in favor of a certain amount of frankness, sex freedom, and all the other things which are talked about today…Especially we hedge on “Christ” used as an expletive. Usually we use”Jeez.” Sometimes in fiction stories and where the writer is entitled to considerable privilege, we let “Christ” go through; “bitch” probably, yes; “bastard” I would shrink at. I have argued three or four “bastards” out of print in the last three or four months…
I could discuss this subject further but I won’t we are both in the same situation, although I have been beaten down further than you have, I think.
Yours sincerely,
Ross
Ross with daughter, Patricia.
Excellent summations of Ross’s life and career as a blue-pencil man and editorial captain can be found by both the living and the dead inThomas Kunkel’s biography Genius In Disguise and James Thurber’s more comic The Years With Ross. The latter is worth reading as many of his notes and remembrances are cribbed by Kunkel.
Ross with 1st wife, Jane Grant.
“Keep Me in Your Heart (Strings Only)” – Van Dyke Parks: mp3
Last year, the fine fine Chicago magazine Stop Smiling ran a feature on Ross. Exciting as it was to see his picture between covers again, the piece was not nearly as long or in-depth as the occasion should have warranted. It is hoped that this situation will be amended by Mr. Gabel and Co. in the future (as it sadly can’t be here).
Al Hirschfeld’s Stalin/Ross comparison in 1937′s Life.
There was more than one day, though, when Ross invaded my office to lament the dwindling of humorous pieces with the growth of what he called “grim stuff.” When William Attwood turned in a brief parody of PM the young newspaperman was wined and diner and encouraged to submit more humor. Legend has it that Attwood’s next piece was “grim.” Ross said to me, in one of his darkest moods, “You find a guy that can write humor, and the first thing you know he turns in a piece about a man stumbling over the body of his wife on the floor, or something like that.”
–James Thurber
“Everyday I’m Hustling” – Rick Ross: mp3
“Who the fuck ya think ya fuckin with I’m the fuckin boss
745, white on white that’s fuckin Ross
I cut em wide, I cut em long, I cut em fat (What)
I keep em comin back (What!), we keep em coming back
I into distrabution, I’m like Atlantic
I got them motha fuckas flyin cross the Atlantic (Whoo!)“
Saul Leiter
“Worried Blues (Daytrotter Session)” – Phosphorescent: mp3
George Ducker is a senior contributor to This Recording. He would like to point out that, to the best of his knowledge, Harold Ross did advocate neither the use of cocaine, nor its distribution.
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