Art & Commerce: Volume 1, Number 1

Iused to collect first issues of magazines. Sports Illustrated’s first cover was Eddie Matthews of the Milwaukee Braves, newly moved from Boston and heading toward a 47-homer season, taking a Ruthian swing with a stadium background in a wide-angle shot. It told you (or should have told you) that this sports magazine would be different. It was, too. It had a chess column by grandmaster Larry Evans and a bridge column by Charles Goren, two less-than-athletic pieces of content that probably slowed its first decade’s movement toward eventual profitability.

Life, which died twice and now thrice as of a few weeks ago, began during the Depression with a Margaret Bourke-White black-and-white cover photograph of a hydroelectric plant; nevertheless, it lasted four decades in its first incarnation.

I have first issues of Fame, George and Premiere.