Publisher

Parade’s first issue appeared on May 31, 1941, just prior to the U.S. entering WWII. Parade was started by Chicago businessman Marshall Field III as a small publication with a print run of only 125,000 copies. It sold on newsstands for a nickel. Parade is now part of the Newhouse family’s Advance Publications. Parade’s first food editor was none other than Julia Child, who served in that role from January 1982 until March of 1986. Parade’s most popular feature story, which has run every year for the past 30 years, is What People Earn. Parade’s two most popular and enduring columns both began in 1986. They are “Walter Scott’s Personality Parade” and “Ask Marilyn.” Walter Scott is a pseudonym used by a rotating group of Parade staffers, working from real reader letters. However, “Marilyn” is Marilyn Vos Savant, who is not only a real person, but a really smart one. She is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as having the World’s Highest I.Q. (190). Real or not, Walter Scott was prescient. Back in 1971, a reader submitted a question asking if a celebrity would ever be President. The column responded that Ronald Reagan would be the first celebrity to make it to the White House. Reagan was sworn in ten years later. Parade was instrumental in the foundation of “Take Our Daughters to Work Day.” In May of 1992, the magazine published a feature about a local movement that generated so much interest a national effort was begun. The first national “TODTWD” debuted a year later. The event, which takes place on the fourth Thursday of April every year, now includes sons. Writer Dotson Rader began writing for Parade in 1980 and still shocks with his exclusive, revealing celebrity interviews 32 years later. Just one example: Brad Pitt started a firestorm throughout the entertainment world when he revealed that he felt “pathetic” during the 1990s. Pitt told Rader that he “wasn’t living an interesting life…I think that my marriage [to Jennifer Aniston] had something to do with it.” Pitt later publicly apologized to his ex-wife. It was in Parade that astrologer Jeane Dixon predicted the assassination of JFK. In 1956, Parade had asked her for her predictions for the future, including the outcome of the 1960 Presidential elections. Parade’s faded notes, dug from the files, show she replied: “He will be an unlucky President.” The rest of her answer was published in Parade’s May 13,1956 issue: “As for the 1960 election, Mrs. Dixon thinks it will be won by a Democrat. But he will be assassinated or die in office.” Parade has published Ernest Hemingway (who sent in reports from the Far East), Ben Hecht (author of “the Front Page”), Dr. Carl Sagan (who provided his first report on Nuclear Winter), James Thurber, Herman Wouk, Norman Mailer, John Cheever and Alex Haley, among many others. Parade has published interviews with virtually every major star, political leader and President since 1941. Parade put 20-year-old Marilyn Monroe on the February 14, 1947 cover, when her hair was still brown. Parade All-America football honorees are an elite group, including Earl Campbell, Tony Dorsett, Marcus Allen, Herschel Walker, Charles Woodson, Johnny Manziel, Jameis Winston, Joe Montana, Dan Marino, John Elway, Eric Dickerson, Peyton Manning and Jeff Hostetler, among many others. Parade is credited with first proposing the idea of a “Hot Line” between the leadership of the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. in March 20, 1960. The suggestion was put into effect 3 years later, and President Kennedy wrote the magazine a letter thanking it for the idea. Parade then followed up with a proposal for a joint Soviet-American space flight, which came to reality in the Apollo-Soyuz orbital linkup in 1975. In 1955, a Parade editorial team flew to the Soviet Union and spent a month traveling around the country, still largely unknown to many U.S. readers, talking to the people and interviewing government leaders. The result? “Parade Visits Russia”, the first time any magazine had ever given itself over to one single subject. Very occasionally, Parade’s weekly closing schedule caused problems: One of the most celebrated involved the issue of December 1, 1963, which contained an article entitled “Is Jackie Kennedy Tired of the White House?” The issue had already been shipped when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on November 22. A substitute issue was quickly printed and sent out, those who couldn’t replace in time either withheld the issue altogether, or distributed with an explanation in the news section. Parade’s first issue devoted to a single person was the April 11, 1993 issue—an exclusive introduction to First Lady Hillary Clinton.

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