Lorant's Picture Post

LORANT’S PICTURE POST Michael Hallett Stefan Lorant with Michael Hallett, Lenox Mass, February 1997 photo: Sue Mead ‘What is the use of a book’, thought Alice, ‘without pictures or conversations.’ Lewis Carroll from Alice in Wonderland, 1865 For Heinz K. Henisch (1922-2006) who understood the Lorant enigma, and provided unwavering support, wisdom & wit. The ARTicle Press: Michael Hallett was Founding Publishing Editor for The ARTicle Press, a publishing venture run by the University of Central England's Department of Art (now Birmingham City University, School of Art). The Press published some fifteen scholarly publications and one journal between late-1990 and March 1997. It was very much a one-man show in those early days of the computer using Apple Mac and Pagemaker. Republishing in 2020 The Real Story of Picture Post was originally published in 1994 by The ARTicle Press with copyright being retained by the two authors. Stefan Lorant published much of his later work with his own imprint, Author’s Edition. Now The Real Story of Picture Post is being republished with additions by Michael Hallett under his own imprint, CrabApple Publications. The crab apple is a versatile fruit indigenous to Worcestershire. Published by CrabApple Publications, Worcester. U.K. Designed with Pages using Helvetica Neue fonts. Copyright © 2020 Michael Hallett All rights reserved. The scanning, uploading and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the author is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights. ISBN see back cover First edition / v2.3a / September 10, 2020 The author can be contacted at [email protected] The dedication that Stefan Lorant wrote on Michael Hallett’s copy of The Real Story of Picture Post The Real Story of Picture Post (original text) Michael Hallett, Principal Lecturer, School of Theoretical & Historical Studies in Art & Design, University of Central England. Stefan Lorant’s Picture Post was one of the early popular pictorial magazines in England. Before its birth in 1938, a number of other pictorial publications, like Illustrated London News, The Sphere, The Tatler, The Sketch, and The Bystander were already displayed on the news-stands. All these magazines catered to the upper classes. Picture Post appealed to the common man. After two years of editing and bringing Picture Post’s circulation to 1.7 million Lorant left for America. He was succeeded by his assistant, Tom Hopkinson, who edited the magazine for the next decade. After Picture Post’s publisher Edward Hulton sacked Hopkinson in 1950, there were a series of editors until the magazine expired. Its life lasted from October 1938 to June 1957. Talk today to people in England who by virtue of their age remember Picture Post, and they will recall the magazine with admiration and affection. What made it so special, so unique, so remarkable? Keith Waterhouse writes nostalgically. ‘Just walk down a terrace street or along a suburban avenue on a spring Sunday morning, when you’ll catch a whiff of a dozen roast beef dinners floating out from a dozen open windows. It is an essentially English aroma that somehow embraces a dozen other flavours - pubs, allotments, Sunday papers, cricket, municipal parks and Picture Post manages to capture all this flavour in black and white...’ ‘What Picture Post did (brilliantly) was to explore the fascinating range of small social foothills - commercial travellers’ dinner dances, anglers’ outings, amateur dramatic nights, street parties, mystery coach tours, mock parliaments, flower shows, market days, jumble sales, pigeon races, whippet races, brass band contests, darts matches, tennis matches and all the rest of it - that more than the Pennine chain itself, form the backbone of England.’ For the English, Picture Post arrived in critical times. Its birth coincided with the agreement between Chamberlain and Hitler for ‘peace for our time’, a year before the outbreak of the Second World War. There was a build-up in the war effort: the RAF took delivery of more than 400 planes a month, free air raid shelters were distributed to London homes, conscription was introduced, children were evacuated from cities, food was rationed and farmers were urged to ‘dig for victory’. George VI was on the throne, and in May1940 Winston Churchill became Prime Minister of a wartime coalition government. Picture Post responded to the upheavals in Europe, by explaining the important issues and voicing strong criticism of Chamberlain’s policies - and pussy footing with Hitler. Lorant’s creation of Picture Post was a continuation of his work on publications in Germany, Hungary, and in England. He was not a ‘penniless Hungarian refugee’ as one of his detractors pictured him, but one of the most revered and successful editors in Europe, with a firm understanding of the financial constraints of magazine publishing. Before he came to England in the spring of 1934 to find a publisher for his book I was Hitler’s Prisoner, a diary of his experiences in Nazi prisons in Munich and where he was kept for over six months in ‘protective custody’, he edited magazines in three languages - in German, in Hungarian and in English. Within a week of his arrival, he was asked by Odhams Press, the publishers of some fifty magazines, to start Weekly Illustrated, the first popular English pictorial magazine, selling for 2d. Born in Budapest in 1901, Stefan Lorant came from a well-to- do middle class family. His father, as a young man, worked in newspapers. After his marriage he became manager of Erdélyi, the prominent photographic studio in Budapest which catered for the royal family, the aristocracy and the upper classes. In 1917, his father lost his life in the war. Two years later, in 1919, the 18 year old Lorant graduated from the Academy of Economics and left Budapest not wishing to live under the Fascist dictatorship of Admiral Horthy. Between the years of 1920 and 1925, first in Austria, then in Germany - he became a film maker, making fourteen films altogether. He recalls, ‘At first I was a still photographer doing pictures for publicity, then I became a cameraman, a scriptwriter, and finally a director - all within a single year.’ His very first film, the Life of Mozart, established him as a sought-after cameraman. Thus, eighteen years before the first issue of Picture Post appeared, the 19 year old Lorant was well known in the film world. In 1925, having mastered the German language, he started writing articles for Berlin newspapers, then he became - through a fluke - editor of the newly published Das Magazin. Following that he edited the film magazine UFA and the Sunday magazine Bilder Courier. When offered the post as Berlin editor of the Münchner Illustrierte Presse, he accepted. Within a year he became chief editor and moved to Munich. Under his guidance the paper became the first modern picture magazine in the world - with a weekly circulation of 750,000. When Hitler came to power in Bavaria in March 1933 Lorant was among the first editors to be put in political prison by the Nazis. No reason was given for his imprisonment. Six and a half months later, after the Hungarian government succeeded in obtaining his release, he returned to his home city where within 24 hours he was offered editorship of the Sunday supplement of Pesti Napló, the leading newspaper in Budapest. During the day he worked in the editorial office and in the evening he wrote the book based on his diaries which he had smuggled out of prison. When I was Hitler’s Prisoner was ready for publication by the spring of 1934, Lorant left Budapest for London to find an English publisher. Within a day a publisher was found and Lorant was asked by Odhams Press to reshape their floundering magazine Clarion. Instead of reshaping it, he made the dummy for a popular paper and Odhams accepted his suggestion. Weekly Illustrated, which he created in 1934 was an immediate success. His book came out in England the following year and received rave reviews. Wickham Steed, the great political writer, wrote in The Observer ‘that his book will live longer than Hitler’s Germany’. The Sunday Express featured the book on its front page. Its 8-column banner headline lauded it as ‘the most moving book to come out of Germany’. Lorant first heard of Edward Huston’s existence when, in mid- April 1938, Maxwell Raison came to see him in his Lilliput office at 34 Chancery Lane to ask him to contribute some ‘political juxtapositions’, similar to the ones he was doing in Lilliput, for a new political weekly which his friend Hulton was to publish. The amused Lorant declined. But Raison and Lorant hit it off. Raison borrowed a volume of Lorant’s edited Münchner Illustrierte Presse to show Edward Hulton. Shortly thereafter Lorant and Hulton met. Lorant was not impressed with the young millionaire or his enthusiasm towards Oswald Mosley and his blackshirts. However Maxwell Raison was persistent. He was determined to get Lorant for the newly formed Hulton Press. An agreement was reached whereby Lorant would create a pictorial magazine, which Hulton Press was to finance. The nature of this magazine would be left entirely to Lorant. He was to be the absolute editor of this new publication, without any interference. The only condition was that Edward Hulton would pen a weekly article for it, but even this was not sacrosanct from editorial control. ‘When he gave me his first article, I handed it to Tom Hopkinson, who was my assistant, and told him to rewrite it’, says Lorant.

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