The Press: Macfadden’s Pill

In 1898 Bernarr Macfadden (then Kinistherapist Bernard Adolphus McFadden) invented a massaging device. To advertise it he brought out a 5¢ pamphlet consisting principally of a serial called “The Athlete’s Conquest” with cover illustrations of “Professor B. McFadden in Classical Poses.” The pamphlet far outsold the massager, became the Professor’s chief interest as Physical Culture magazine.

In 1910 Physical Culture (price 15¢) announced “the principles for which we stand. . . . We are struggling for the complete annihilation of those terrible evils which curse humanity the world over: 1) prudishness 2) corsets 3) muscular inactivity 4) gluttony 5) drugs 6) alcohol 7) tobacco.”

In 1920 the magazine (price 25¢) went in for “big names” and such personal success stories as “How Charles Dana Gibson Keeps Fit,” “Leonard Wood, Physical Culturist.” But after five years of it the Macfadden public became bored with inspirational wealth-through-health interviews and in 1926 Physical Culture added departments on food, householding, beauty and some inferior fiction.

By the turn of this year Macfadden’s Editorial Director Charles Fulton Oursler had worked astonishing changes in the magazine. The large sums usually spent on promotion and advertising were appropriated to buy good fiction, good illustrations, color printing. While the circulation of other magazines fell off during spring and summer, Physical Culture held its own (290,000). With the appearance last fortnight of the October issue, the price was slashed from 25¢ to 10¢. The newsstand sale doubled.

That was the signal for Publisher Macfadden to offer $10,000 in prizes for a new name to take the place of Physical Culture. Said he: “The mission of Physical Culture has been to make people healthier and happier. And there is absolutely no change in these commendable purposes. But we are endeavoring to reach a larger number of readers by making our presentation more interesting. We are sugar-coating the ‘pill,’ if we may so far condescend as to make such a reference to Physical Culture.”

The “pill” has been so effectively coated that, in its current issue, Physical Culture bears a striking physical resemblance to Red Book and to Hearst’s Cosmopolitan. At arm’s length the cover design looks, even to Artist Bradshaw Crandell’s signature, exactly like the work of Red Book’s Artist McClelland Barclay. The contents include the final instalment of Warwick Deeping’s serial The Ten Commandments; articles by Will Durant and the Grand Duchess Marie; stories by Grace Perkins (Night Nurse), Harold Bell Wright.

For all this ingenious coating, the pill of physical culture is there in full potency. But in 30 years Bernarr Macfadden’s taste in presentation has improved. Instead of photographs of the publisher clad only in an abdominal supporter to illustrate his lectures on “physcultopathy” there are chastely presented “personal messages,” no more offensive to the eye than a Bruce Barton editorial. Instead of testimonials of persons who “cured themselves” of asthma, rheumatism, appendicitis “by natural methods,” there are articles on dietetics, child guidance, prevention of tooth infection, by qualified authorities. Instead of hints for the enlargement of the female bosom there is an article by Muriel Draper entitled “Mary Garden in Her Body” (“Is Mary Garden, After a Half Century of Time, Still the Most Perfect Specimen of All-Around Womanhood in the World Today?”).

The resemblance of Physical Culture to Cosmopolitan in layout, illustration & typography sharply recalls the fact that Editor Harry Payne Burton goes Oct. 1 to succeed outgoing Editor Ray Long of Cosmopolitan. (Also it revives a rumor that Cosmopolitan may likewise reduce its price from 25 cents to 10 cents.) But the Physical Culture which was executed by Editor Burton had been conceived by Di rector Oursler. Highbrowed, spectacled. Editor Oursler is 38, wrote his first play when he was 9. At 16 he was a reporter on the Baltimore American, at 19 its music critic. He was a piano salesman, law clerk, professional magician before hitting his stride as a novelist and play wright. (Plays: The Spider, Behold This Dreamer. Books: Sandalwood, Stepchild of the Moon.) Few years ago he attached himself to Publisher Macfadden, wrote The True Story of Bernarr Macfadden as a serial in Physical Culture.