LEISURE & ARTS -- In the Fray: A Once Edgy Magazine Turns 70 -- And Looks Its Age
This month, Esquire is celebrating its 70th anniversary with a special issue. "The Greatest Issue . . . Of All Time" is a teaser on the cover. It's an odd milestone. Waiting five years for the 75th anniversary would have made more sense.</br></br>One possible explanation for popping the champagne corks so early is that owner Hearst Corp.'s marketing department insisted on the idea to gin up advertising pages in a still-recovering economic environment.</br></br>A more likely scenario, in my view, is that Esquire editor David Granger had dinner many months ago with his deputies and over cocktails hatched the ill-conceived plan. In any case, Mr. Granger forged ahead. The results aren't pretty.</br></br>Esquire, of course, is one of a small number of iconic magazines in the U. S. Like the New Yorker, Playboy, the Atlantic Monthly and Time, for example, it navigates through periods of alternating brilliance and irrelevance. Mr. Granger's six-year tenure as editor has seen it fall, unfortunately, into the latter category.</br></br>After reading the self-aggrandizing issue, I was left with one question. Why would Mr. Granger want to magnify Esquire's current shortcomings by showcasing snippets of the magazine's glory days under co-founder Arnold Gingrich and then the legendary 1960s team of editor Harold Hayes and cover designer George Lois?