Taking careful aim at their prospective readerships, last week a pair of highly specialized publications, one a monthly, one an annual, opened fire.
Bachelor. The monthly was a 35¢ smartchart dedicated to unmarried males and called Bachelor. The size of Vogue, on shiny paper with two of its 84 pages in color, Bachelor appeared to bid for a clientele a social cut above Esquire's. Its use of photography and art indicated that Bachelor also aspired to the 90,000 public of the late Vanity Fair. Bachelor's opening editorial manifesto pictured it as "mirroring the varied interests of the discerning cosmopolite, in society as well as in business or profession, in politics as well as in sport ... in adventure . . . the arts and sciences," with "sympathy, dignity and a leavening amount of humor."
"Why ['Believe It or Not'] Ripley is a Bachelor" was Bachelor's first featured interview. (Ripley's reason: too busy.) Bachelor-of-the-Theatre was Alexander Kirkland, who interviewed himself. A portfolio of "Bachelors-of-the-Arts" included Photographers George Platt Lynes and Hal Phyfe, Poet-Artist Jean Cocteau, Cinemactor Robert Taylor. Julius ("Pete") Street Jr. wrote about Princeton's Triangle Club show under the pseudonym of Peter Street. An article on "The Insolence of American Women" was contributed by a Baron Giorgio Sudani, organizer and president of the Noblemen's Club of New York.
Founder of Bachelor was no bachelor but an intense, earnest lady of Circleville, Ohio. Publisher Fanchon Devoe (actual name: Mrs. Robert Lee Criswell) was graduated in 1921 from Ohio State University as Bess Willis. Successively a newspaper editor, an adwoman, a radio scriptwriter and author, she is now married to a well-to-do Circleville lawyer. Inspired to create Bachelor and having heard from afar of Manhattan's elegant Bachelor Lucius Beebe, she sought him out on his home grounds for advice. Bachelor Beebe, who does a weekly column on metropolitan high life and works on the dramatic side of the Herald Tribune, gave Editor Devoe two manuscripts, introduced her to Photographer Jerome Zerbe who also proved useful. Until recently editorial offices were in Publisher Devoe's suite at the Savoy-Plaza Hotel. Publisher Devoe's residence is still Circleville. The money she risks is her own and her husband's. Contributors are paid cash in hand from a big roll of bills. Fanchon Devoe's 50,000 first print order is a cautious gambit toward Esquire's lucrative 450,000.
Congratulations. A 24-year-old California bachelor and onetime junior golf champion named Daniel Hill Sangster is the publisher of the new magazine which, because of its special public, need get out a new edition but once a year. Publisher Sangster's notion is to give a volume called Congratulations free to every woman who has a baby in a top-notch private U. S. hospital. Profits are to come from advertising sold to baby-food makers, perambulator manufacturers, insurance companies, and anyone else with a message for mothers.