From The Vault Of Art Shay: Looking Back At My Time Covers

By Chuck Sudo in News on Mar 20, 2013 6:20PM

Working for Time Inc. was like being a permanent cast member of a hit musical comedy. Without seeing the Mormon musical I can well understand the rave reviews of the unlikely variations on its surprising theme. Time Inc. awaits its Gershwin or Hammerstein. Only rarely was an expense item questioned by Time- -not even the bow and arrows I bought for my hunting story (I was still only a mere Time-Life staff writer then, not yet a fotog) in which I pretended to have killed \<em\>Life\<\/em\> photographer George Skadding. Strapped to the hood of my new $2,200 1949 Pontiac. Note those hand made boots I scored on an NBC safari in Kenya. (I\'d been hired as a PR writer and still fotog for eight \<em\>Zoo Parade\<\/em\> movies!)\r\n

Whether shooting Solti, Friedman, Herman\'s Hermits, University of Iowa Nobelist Van Allen of the eponymous belt or taking up the disgusting dares of my Time reporter and a Skid Row lady boasting that her tits were real (\"Feel \'em, sonny!\"), it was fun working for \<em\>Time\<\/em\>.\r\n

I was used to having my neck-tag credentials checked by myriad Secret Service men when covering President Johnson (far left, wearing white Stetson hat).\r\n

Time Inc.\'s reputation made it easy to work with superstars of the day, like stripper-author Gypsy Rose Lee, appearing in a Memphis circus carnival. She taught me the carny superstition that if you said a naughty word in a dressing room (to keep from being cursed with bad luck) you had to turn around three times then spit.\r\n

Doing some \<em\>Time\<\/em\> farm covers in Thomas Hart Benton country made my smart-ass reporter and misinformed self go off the fun track long enough to forget it was Grant Wood, not Benton, who painted Amereican Gothic which we were erroneously mocking. Come to think of it I ultimately did a \<em\>North Shore\<\/em\> magazine cover on a beautiful Benton family socialite, Marge Benton. \<em\>North Shore\<\/em\> was not a fun magazine to shoot covers for, though I did 20 or so for them.\r\n

To go with some sporty covers, I knew that \<em\>Time\<\/em\> wouldn\'t object to a little strong-armed fakery with the man billed as \"Strongest in the World.\"\r\n

Covering the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago I was able to use my WW II gas mask to traverse the tear-gassed purlieus of Lincoln Park and make the opening picture for \<em\>Time\<\/em\>\'s story &mdash; the picture of Hippies being chased by cops behind a tank wafting tear gas over one and all &mdash; for breaking the 11 p.m. Mayor Daley curfew. A picture one year later that \<em\>Life\<\/em\> Magazine would place amongst the greatest pictures of the last 100 years, next to the full page shot of Neil Armstrong\'s very first footprint on the moon. A fun magazine, a fun company. So \<em\>Time\<\/em\>, as it must for most magazines, must come to an end. It will be missed. (Especially my coverage.) A good \<em\>Time\<\/em\> was had by most.\r\n

(Legendary Chicago-based photographer Art Shay has taken photos of kings, queens, celebrities and the common man in a 60-year career. This week, Art looks back on 30 years of Time magazine covers.)

Last week’s news by Time Warner that it is spinning off its Time Inc. magazines into a separate company — a death knell, in my opinion — was caparisoned in the flowery financial crepe-talk we've come to expect from old, wonderful whales suddenly going belly-up. Think of the billions of dollars earned by the magazines, several possible buyers, competition by other media, great cover stories, great covers, great covers, great covers.

That last phrase brought these 90-year-old eyes to tears. I had no real idea how many Time covers I had done or helped do. Helped? Yeah, Time magazine was a compendium of teamwork, and some of the most skilled players were artists and photographers you never heard of, like me. My favorite collaborator (who probably didn't know me by name) was named Boris Chaliapin, son of the great Russian basso. I first became aware of him years ago at the National Portrait Gallery in DC . I was kvelling over three of my photos they bought and hung (Leo Durocher, Hugh Hefner, Robert Crumb) when I happened to look into the adjoining gallery and saw there in full 16x20 glory the first prize winner in a cover competition — my Time cover photo of Green Bay football coach Vince Lombardi. Only the portrait didn't carry my byline!

There in small, proud letters, was the copier's name: Boris Chaliapin. Of course I had been sent to Green Bay (and paid well) to produce the portrait slide for a Time cover. but still.

So my master archivist, Erica DeGlopper, began her ongoing project of building a 3-foot x 3-foot art panel made up of miniatures of all my (GASP!) 1,126 covers. Or at least the thousand or so we can find!

I began reflecting on what a fun place Time Inc. was to work. And what a joy doing some 950 assignments for Time over some 30 years had been. About 10 straight portraits - and a score or more belted around this blog - in cooperative partnership with gifted canvas artists.

The pretty, young Hollywood reporter for NPR was used to interviewing garrulous old showbiz men. I could tell she didn't believe me a month ago at my DRKRM Gallery show in L.A, when I boasted of having done more than 1,000 magazine and book covers, 60 of them on books of my own. Years earlier, my very own son-in-law, then an editor for the NY Times, politely expressed the same doubt.

Erica then started pulling out tear sheets and got to 400 before we all went bleary eyed. We hadn't counted several hundred on magazines like Medical World News and the dozen or so Blue Cross Health Books -or Boy Scout magazine or Business Week, Parade, This Week, Forbes, two on Life, two on Fortune, 10 on Sports Illustrated … fun assignments, mostly.

If you can't wait until this time every Wednesday to get your Art Shay fix, please check out the photographer's blog, which is updated regularly. Art Shay's book, Chicago's Nelson Algren, is also available at Amazon.