LORANT’S PITTSBURGH Michael Hallett

Stefan Lorant at his home in Lenox in 1994. photo: Abe Aronow.

‘What is the use of a book’, thought Alice, ‘without pictures or conversations.’ Lewis Carroll from Alice in Wonderland, 1865

For Bruce & Gail Campbell who had the tenacity to complete and publish the millennium edition of ‘the Book’

The Michael Hallett Archive

The Stefan Lorant Collection is part of the Michael Hallett Archive deposited at the Library of Birmingham (LoB). Now some of the primary material is published 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 / v1.2 / October 15, 2020

The author can be contacted at [email protected]

Stefan Lorant (1901-1997)

Hungarian-born Stefan Lorant became a legend within his lifetime. His work as a visual and literary editor allowed him to pioneer and develop the genré of picture based journalism at a period in time that saw the emergence of modern mass communications. Internationally he became a guiding force, disseminating his ideas and political knowledge throughout Europe in the late-twenties and thirties by working in Germany, Hungary and England, eventually spreading his sphere of influence to America where he introduced the concept of the pictorial biography. His innovative layouts, his ‘exclusive’ interviews and thirst for knowledge became a familiar part of millions of everyday lives, largely through the pages of his own creations, and in particular the legendary media icon Stefan Lorant with Picture Post. His vision of photography as John F. Kennedy in 1957 a documentary medium inspired Life and Look magazines in America, and paved the way for the eventual emergence of the television documentary. For this he became recognised as ‘the godfather of photojournalism’. He edited the Munchner Illustrierte Presse in Germany, Pesti Naplo magazine in Hungary, and created and edited Weekly Illustrated, Lilliput and Picture Post in England, publishing the work of the early photojournalists. In America he wrote successful pictorial biographies of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt as well as a book on the American presidency called The Glorious Burden. His story of Pittsburgh is a continuing pictorial biography of a city. He became a historian and Lincoln scholar. He was acquainted with political figures of the twentieth century including Hitler, Winston Churchill and John F. Kennedy, and knew Marlene Deitrich, Greta Garbo and Marilyn Monroe amongst others.

OF PEOPLE AND POWER

Michael Hallett reflects on Stefan Lorant’s urban biographical opus Pittsburgh, the story of an American city with photographs by W. Eugene Smith.

‘The Book’ was the title Stefan Lorant used when referring to his monumental history of Pittsburgh to its citizens, and this form of endearment was embraced by them. Why Lorant had this relationship with the city and its well-endowed inhabitants is another of Lorant’s favoured stories. ‘The Book’ was opportunist. On the surface, as Lorant was at pains to admit, the story was simple and straightforward. The idea came from Lorant’s rich friend Edgar Kaufmann who suggested he write a publication on Pittsburgh, on the surface an uninviting, dirty, industrial city. It was a notion that could be easily discounted. The idea that such a book could be produced by a foreigner and stranger to the city was deemed equally ludicrous by some. But it did happen and there had to be some other reasoning beyond the obvious gesture. Lorant was always particularly good at gestures and the publication in 1955 of his shortened illustrated biography, The Life of Abraham Lincoln is a good example; inside, the dedication reads ‘For Edgar J. Kaufmann in friendship’. In return Lorant thrived on the rare and unexpected privilege of power this afforded him. The rich could become famous in Pittsburgh but only Lorant could offer them permanent immortality by inclusion in ‘The Book’. He basked in the glitz and glamour that permeated his lifestyle every time he visited the city. He began to realise ‘The Book’ would give him a prize beyond that of money and friendship; on a cerebral level it provided him with an authority and esteem which he retained for the rest of his life. Lorant had become accustomed to the view from his farmhouse in Lenox. Moving to Pittsburgh he looked for a replacement in a city rich with spectacular views. Initially he had an apartment on Grandview Avenue on the top of Mount Washington, overlooking the Monongahela River from the Golden Triangle down to The Point. Here was an urban extravagance matched only by the likes of the rural expanse from his farmhouse on the hill overlooking the meadow and the mountains beyond. Later, when he became a prodigal son rather than just a frequent visitor to Pittsburgh he preferred the status of the penthouse suite of the Pittsburgh Hilton. He had exchanged views. Instead of looking down from Mount Washington to the tip of the Golden Triangle he looked up towards his original overview on Grandview Avenue. ‘The Book’ is the history of the visionaries who re-shaped and endowed the City, and although employment was provided for the workers this book is not essentially their story. It charts the proud pedigree of what was once the steel capital of the world evolving into a major high tech centre; it is the story of change, of Renaissance to Renaissance II; it is the story of social reform at the cutting edge, particularly through health and education and of sustenance for the body and soul through the power of sport and culture. ‘The Book’ is only eclipsed by Lorant’s story of the book. The idea for the book germinated during his visit to Edgar Kaufmann in Palm Springs. They had been friends since meeting in Saratoga Springs during the war. He visited him often in his home at Bear Run and they met frequently in New York.

In 1954, having read Lorant’s Lincoln, Kaufmann was enthused by it and suggested Lorant should do a similar illustrated book on Pittsburgh, presenting the city’s history from its beginning to the present. Lorant did not take the suggestion seriously having visited the city only once a decade earlier and what he saw repulsed him. ‘The skies were black at noon and one was hardly able to breathe because of the heavy grime and the smog.’ He fled the city and never had the desire to return. Eventually Kaufmann persuaded him otherwise. ‘Edgar was waiting for me at the airport. As his chauffeur Jones drove us to Bear Run, Edgar, who was sitting in the front turned towards me and for an hour and forty minutes—until we reached “Fallingwater” (1) —he kept on elaborating on “his” project. “You have done biographies on Lincoln, and on Franklin D. Roosevelt. Why not try your hand on a biography of a city? You would have a great time with it.”’ ‘So for the next three days I explored Pittsburgh with Jones as my guide. I saw hot steel poured, glass blown, nails made, soups canned, appliances manufactured. I climbed the hills and rode the inclines. We drove to Shadyside where Jones showed me the spacious homes of the well-to-do, then to the Hill District where I looked at the congested quarters of the poor. We went to Carnegie Tech and watched the students rehearsing a play; we stopped at the Mellon

1 ‘Fallingwater’, otherwise known as the ‘Kaufmann House’ was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) in 1936-37. Institute watching researchers at work. We floated down the Monongahela on a coal barge and up the Allegheny in a motorboat.’ Before his trips were over Lorant was as enthusiastic about Pittsburgh as Kaufmann and the idea of the book came to fruition.

Lorant persuaded Harper Brothers, the publisher for his Lincoln book, that he wanted to do a book on Pittsburgh. While not over-enthusiastic they gave Lorant a contract but for only 5,000 copies. Lorant planned to finish the work in no more than two years; not anticipating that it would take ten whole years before the book was complete. Lorant began the pictorial research from scratch; he glossed over the volumes of the early pictorial weeklies (including Harper’s Weekly, Leslie’s Illustrated, Every Saturday) looking for illustrations on Pittsburgh. He visited members of the old families and asked them to let me see their albums. He engaged W. Eugene Smith to picture the city as it was then, and he rented a house on Grandview Avenue where he interviewed many people. Then a few months later in April 1955, Kaufmann died in his sleep in Palm Springs. Lorant thought the project would come to an end. That it did not was due to Theodore Hazlett, Mayor Lawrence, Park Martin and the heads of the Pittsburgh Foundations who decided to offer their help so the book could be finished. Harper’s began to have grave doubts about the success of the book and required subvention money for the plates. Their representative came to Pittsburgh for a meeting with Mayor Lawrence, who stipulated that in order that Pittsburghers could afford the book it should not sell for more than $10. This posed another obstacle. As Harper’s were not enthusiastic about the plan, Lorant took the book back from them and made a contract with Doubleday. However, Doubleday also felt dubious about selling enough copies to make a profit and they too asked for subvention for the colour plates. When they hesitated to print no more than 10,000 copies, Lorant insisted they print 25,000 copies. On publication day in October 1964 Lorant was talking about the book on every television station in Pittsburgh. The Allegheny Conference threw a party in the Hilton, inviting all community leaders. Within a week all 25,000 copies of the first edition were sold and Doubleday had to go back to press with another 25,000 print run. It was not long before the second 25,000 copies was sold, and there was a demand for more. As Doubleday was dubious about the success, Lorant bought back the rights from them and in October 1975 under his own imprint of Authors Edition he issued a new second edition of 25,000 copies. Within a week these were sold and he had to go back to press no less than three times, each time printing an additional ten thousand copies. This second updated Bicentennial edition sold 55,000 copies, 5,000 more than the first edition. In November of 1980, Lorant brought out the third edition with a 20,000 print run. When asked if there would be another edition, Lorant cracked; ‘ Titian painted the Battle of Lepanto when he was 96- years-old—nothing is impossible’. In 1988 came the fourth enlarged edition of 20,000 copies and at the time of his death in 1997 at the age of 96, he was working on the fifth enlarged edition. Again and again, Lorant’s belief in himself and his anticipation of the marketplace was to prove correct.

Photography and the W. Eugene Smith saga

The confluence of three great rivers cutting through a wooded mountainous landscape provided it with a natural beauty. Visually it was the Holy Grail. Here the Allegheny and the Monongahela Rivers merge into the Ohio. Glass, coal, oil and steel made Pittsburgh prosperous, filthy and photogenic. All these things brought twentieth century photographers to record the city in its various forms of splendour. Lorant was well aware of this documentary history which viewed Pittsburgh as the nation’s industrial powerhouse and as a fertile subject for exploring urban realities and symbols. Such visionaries included Alvin Langdon Coburn, E O Hoppé, and Edward Weston. Roy Stryker and his team of photographers produced more than fourteen thousand negatives of the city between 1950 and 1953. Stryker’s Pittsburgh Photographic Library used such diverse photographers as Clyde Hare, Harold Corsini, Elliott Erwitt, Esther Bubley, Richard Saunders and James Blair. Margaret Bourke-White photographed Pittsburgh for Life magazine twice, originally in 1936 and later in 1956. Stefan Lorant and W. Eugene Smith (2) were both men of extremes. They were arrogant, walked a tightrope of self-destruction and within their own area of expertise both were brilliant. Any thought that they could work together was doomed to failure. When Lorant contacted Smith in 1955 to invite him to take photographs for the Pittsburgh book it was still within a year of Smith abandoning his prestigious and well paid job with Life magazine, for the freedom and insecurity of working as a freelance photographer. Now there was an urgency to show the editors of Life magazine the scope of the visual revolutionary they had been constraining all along. It was the polarities of the two men’s requirements that would create difficulties. In Lorant’s terms, as the person who commissioned the project, his requirements were simple. He needed a photographer, an exceptional photographer, to present a visual record of the city. All the other illustrations, engravings and photographs had been gleaned from many different sources and represented a wide range of visual styles. This was his one opportunity to commission a harmonious series of photographs for a section of the book that would be complete in itself. It was the polarities of the two men that also provided the catalyst for their individual success. Smith grasped the Pittsburgh commission as his opportunity to expand the form of the photographic essay to the dimension of ‘an epic in the tradition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass’. The Pittsburgh project is now acknowledged as a remarkable milestone. In all, Smith exposed more than 13,000 negatives during five months in 1955 and a few weeks in 1957. Lorant eventually used 64 of Smith’s most visually stunning images. Smith left

2 W. Eugene Smith (1918-1978): Smith started his professional career in 1937 as a press photographer contributing to the Wichita Eagle and Wichita Beacon before becoming a freelance photographer a year later for the Black Star Agency, contributing to Life, Colliers, American Magazine and The New York Times. At various times Staff Photographer / War Correspondent to Life magazine. Between 1955 and 1958 member of Magnum Photos. Changed our perception of the photo-essay with memorable stories such as ‘Country Doctor’, ‘Spanish Village’ and ‘Nurse Midwife’, all exemplars of how the form may best be used. Lorant decided to use Smith for his Pittsburgh project having seen ‘Spanish Village’. Smith’s photography of Pittsburgh became one of his massive photographic endeavours, yet despite Guggenheim Fellowships, never became the substantial book that Smith envisaged. Smith’s final and arguably most major completed project was his project on Minamata. Its value to the people of Minamata, its importance in stimulating the environmental movement, are amongst Smith’s greatest legacies to the humanity from which he drew his subjects. Pittsburgh in late-1955 and with two Guggenheim Fellowships spent the next three years developing the Pittsburgh photographs, producing approximately two thousand 5 x 7 inch prints and working on layouts. Lorant had supported Smith’s Guggenheim applications but said privately that he doubted Smith’s ability to complete the project, and ultimately the Pittsburgh story has never been published in any form approaching Smith’s original intentions. The most complete version called ‘Labyrinth Walk’ and with Smith’s own layout, comprised 88 photographs over 37 pages and was published in the 1959 Photography Annual. Smith proclaimed it a ‘debacle’, a ‘failure’, a ‘wreckage’, then kept on working. It was John G. Morris as executive editor of Magnum Photos that brokered the deal on behalf of Smith and later referred to it as 'the worst I ever made for any photographer'. 'Unfortunately,' as Lorant explained to Morris, his budget did not 'permit' him to pay more than $1,200, plus $500 for expenses. Lorant only needed book rights; the second rights would remain with the photographer 'and be invaluable'. As for expenses Smith was expected to stay on the bottom floor of the house in Pittsburgh loaned to Lorant and this had the facility of a darkroom. Over the next two years the Lorant-Smith deal tied up virtually all of Magnum's capital. At one point Magnum's lawyer filed a suit against Lorant while Lorant filed a countersuit. More recently, when asked about Lorant, Cornel Capa replied. 'Lorant was unloved by photographers, but certainly a genius'. Robert B. Pease, ‘the imaginative Executive Director of the Allegheny Conference’ (quote Lorant) recalled Gene Smith. ‘He would come to town and would spread his recent photographs all over the office. On a typical contact sheet of 35mm prints some he liked and others he would expand. He was a very interesting character and I loved to watch him work. He used to come with his three Leica cameras around his neck and with different films. He was such an eager professional in the way that he worked, in my eyes at least. We looked at his photographs in the book and I can picture him in the darkroom, forcing those prints to get just what he wanted’. Gene Lasko’s drama documentary W. Eugene Smith; photography made difficult was filmed in 1989. Over the opening credits Lorant’s voice is unmistakable—as was his frustration. ‘As a photographer, he was superb. As a man, terrible.’ Lorant did not stop there. ‘I wanted maybe 50 photographs in two weeks. He did about 10,000. He didn’t listen to people. As a passionate man he overdid it.’ Lorant’s instructions for Smith

There are two versions of Lorant’s instructions from 1955 for Gene Smith. The first is typically in Lorant’s longhand scrawl, and the second, reproduced here, is a typescript that has been further edited by hand.

Gene, Here is what I need. You do them in your own way.

• Pittsburgh is steel. Pittsburgh is coal. • Pittsburgh was smog, Pittsburgh was grime. • Pittsburgh was a city of floods. • Pittsburgh is the city of three rivers, of hills, of inclines, of steps. • Pittsburgh is a city of religions, with Presbyterianism dominant, but Catholics, Protestant, Baptist churches, Jewish synagogues. • Pittsburgh is a city of nationalities—the original melting pot: Chechs, Slovaks, Greeks, Hungarians, and other nationalities, formed its core. Their clubs, their churches, their festivities. • Pittsburgh is a city of Universities: The University of Pittsburgh (The Cathedral of Learning), Carnegie Tech, Chatham College (girls), Duquesne University, (Catholic) Mount Mercy. • Carnegie Library in Oakland and also on the North Side (the first library Carnegie founded). • Carnegie Institute—dinosaurs, models of antiquities. • The Negroes comprise the city’s important part—their homes and the streets where they live on the north side—the Hill district. • Get some telling pictures of steel mills, steelworkers, manufacturing establishments (Pittsburgh Plate Glass, ask Leland Hazard,) H. J. Heinz (Jack Heinz), Westinghouse, J & L, Alcoa, Blow-Know (ask Jim Bilking), Mesta, Koppers, etc. • Get ‘different’ shots from the newly erected building (U.S. Steel, Alcoa, Gateway Center, Hotel Hilton, IBM, Bell Telephone, etc., etc.) • Get some street scenes, incidents, anecdotes, storefronts, street signs, also some photos which are critical of conditions. • Pittsburgh is the city of the Mellons, the Heinz. It was the city of Carnegie, Westinghouse, Frick—get some of their residences, also Mellon Bank (The Cathedral of Learning) • Pittsburgh is also a city of culture: • Pittsburgh Symphony (William Steinberg conductor), • Carnegie International (also David Thompson and his collection) the Rosenblooms and their collections— juxtapositions with steelworkers clubs near the steel mills and millionaires club at Fox Hollow. • Personalities: Mayor David Lawrence and his role in the rebuilding of the city. • The Allegheny Conference and its movers: Park Martin, Jack Robin, Ted Hazlett, and others (ask John Grove for names). • Also Dr. Ben Spock, (children) Dr. Jonas Salk and other scientists and professors.

1955 and the diary notes

For the younger generation Lorant could be ‘enchanting and interesting’. Joan Apt, one of the founders of the Public Theatre in Pittsburgh met him at the Symphony Ball one year. ‘He was a powerhouse, one of the most dynamic and alive people. He loved living.’ There was a pause and then she added. ‘He would kiss my hand and then he would pat my ass.’ For Robert B. Pease ‘there was an aura about him. He was fun to be with.’ This was the original language surrounding Lorant’s success. The diary notes of this particular year are almost entirely concerned with Lorant’s working life, specifically his first full year researching the Pittsburgh book. Networking appears limited to researching for illustrations at the various major library and museum collections. His dealing with Gene Smith are recorded in detail, from the initial meeting through to Smith’s ‘worries and unhappiness’ followed by Lorant’s firm resolve over the situation. The death of his friend Edgar Kaufmann, and the request for an additional $30,000 for the project colours the year.

January 11 In Pittsburgh. Unpleasant confrontation with Virginia Lewis, head of the University of Pittsburgh collection. She asked me to give her a list of the required illustrations for the book then she would let me know whether she has them. Obviously she doesn’t want to help. A month ago when I first saw her, she gave me the cold treatment, showing open hostility to the project and also to me. January 12 Told Park Martin at the Allegheny Conference of my encounter with Miss Lewis; in the afternoon went through the Roto sections of the Pittsburgh Press. Talked to editor Forster about a photo contest; ordered reproductions of pictures at the Western Historical Society and at Mellon’s office. January 13 Interview with Mel Seidenberg for the Pittsburgh Post- Gazette. January 14 Chronology of Pittsburgh completed; interview in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette by Mel Seidenberg appeared. February 15 At Frick Museum going through the index cards on Pittsburgh. February 16 Troubles with Pittsburgh Press because of my interview in Post-Gazette. Fry, the paper’s magazine editor, said he cancelled the profile on me because he only wants an exclusive. It seems that journalists and librarians in Pittsburgh give vent to their jealousies and will create obstacles. Lois Mulkearn of the University of Pittsburgh Press was enraged because I said in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette interview that Pittsburgh was not history conscious. February 17 Meeting with Editor Fry at the Pittsburgh Press; trying to pacify him. He was hostile and I couldn’t clear up the misunderstanding. It seems Pittsburghers will be against me—an outsider and a foreigner. Difficulties are mounting. February 18 Searched for pictures in the U.S. Steel Library and made notes at Mellons. February 22 Dorothy Daniel offered her help; she knows the city and its people well. Robert Foley in Lebanon showed me his old picture collection on Pittsburgh—quite good. February 23 Lillian Young at the Carnegie Library offered assistance. The story about my difficulties with Miss Lewis spread. February 25 Miss Dorothy Miller at Sewickley offered her Pittsburgh pictures for reproduction. She has a small collection of paintings and drawings. March 1 Dorothy Kantner, Maria McSwigan and Dorothy Daniel came for lunch; all news-hens, ready to help. Charles Rosenbloom invited me for dinner with Gladys Smith, the novelist and her husband. She turned down my offer to do a chapter for the book. March 3 Met Anita Morganstern who introduced me to Leon Arkus from the museum. He complained about Betsy Braemer. They said that they would be of assistance (but rather perfunctorily). March 5 Jack Robin might do a chapter but won’t let me know until the beginning of April how and when. March 8 At the print room in the Library of Congress in Washington barely any Pittsburgh material except the Farm Security Administration pictures from the 30s: nothing at the National Archives. Carl Stange at the Library helpful. March 10 In New York: W. Eugene Smith, the photographer, came to breakfast at the Hotel Westbury. I offered him $1,000 and $200 for expenses for a modern profile on Pittsburgh. March 11 Searching for Pittsburgh illustrations in the Frick Reference Library in New York. At Life’s archives looking for pictures, also at Wide World (but nothing there) Meeting with photographer Arnold Newman: offering the same terms as to Smith, but he wants $600 a day. March 15 At Worcester, American Antiquarian Society searching for Lesseuer sketches of Pittsburgh in the 1830s. March 19 Meeting with photographer Elliott Erwitt and John Morris. Agreed with Gene Smith that he will come to Pittsburgh. He will get $1200, Erwitt will get $600. March 21 At New York Public Library photo collection; no Pittsburgh material can be found. March 22 Planning competition with illustrators. Talking details are with Charles McClintock of the Western Pennsylvania Historical Society and Dorothy Daniel. March 24 In Pittsburgh with Geraldine Page and Darren McGavin at Jones & Laughlin steel mill. March 27 Met William Block of the Post-Gazette, a charming man. March 29 At Old Economy with Dorothy Daniel. March 30 At Duquesne Club looking at historical paintings. At Pittsburgh Screw & Bolt looking for material. April 5 Gene Smith and wife arrived in Pittsburgh with 57 pieces of luggage. April 8 In New York Historical Society, nothing on Pittsburgh, in New York Public Library. April 12 Dinner at Duquesne Club with Adolf Schmidt, Leland Hazard, Stanton Belfour, Park Martin, John Grove and Ted Hazlett. I showed them some of the material I collected and they seemed to be pleased. Dorothy Kantner brought Phyllis Battelle of the Hearst newspapers to my house with some other woman journalists. Gene Smith showed them his photographs of Dr. Schweitzer which he took in Africa. April 13 Looking at photographs at the Art Commission in Pittsburgh City Hall. Talked with Mayor Lawrence and his press secretary Jones, an intelligent black man; he promised his help. Gene Smith started taking photographs at the Philharmonic rehearsals. April 15 Miss Clinton, Edgar’s secretary, called after dinner saying that Edgar died a few hours ago. I called Palm Springs; talked to Grace and Edgar Jnr. Evening with Carmen Smith at Syria Mosque listening to Bach B Minor Mass. April 17 At Samson Funeral Home where Edgar—strangely waxen, dark and small—was laid out. Eugene Smith took pictures. In the evening with Smith at Syria Mosque listening to Bach B Minor Mass (second time). April 18 Once more at the funeral home; then looking through old magazines at Carnegie Library. Smith taking pictures at the Rosenbloom home. April 19 Edgar’s funeral. Lunch with Mel Seidenberg. April 27 In New York; Museum of Modern Art looking for Pittsburgh and related material. April 30 Leon Arkus, Dorothy Daniel, Anita Morganstern came to the house at Grandview Avenue to look at Gene Smith’s photographs. May 1 Big cocktail party at 718 Grandview Avenue—over 100 people came, including Mayor Lawrence. May 5 Lunch with Roy Stryker in Pittsburgh; an old fashioned windbag. May 6 Looking over Pittsburgh Gazette of 1934 on the ‘American Procession’. May 8 Reading Pittsburgh history. May 10 Preparing subjects for illustrations. Talk with Eugene Smith who talked about his worries and unhappiness. May 12 William Libby promised to do ten engravings for the book. May 23 Gene Smith’s five cameras stolen and three weeks work gone. The lost cameras did not worry Lorant, but the thieves also took Smith’s undeveloped negatives, the result of many weeks work. Lorant was sure they had no use for the undeveloped films—and that they had disposed of the box containing them—probably threw them in the next garbage can, so he went to the Mayor’s office and his secretary offered him help. The secretary called his friends in the sanitation department who searched the garbage in that part of the city where the films were stolen, and miracles of miracles, the undeveloped negatives were found in the garbage heap. They were usable. June 1 Asking Gene Smith to organise his work better and finish. June 2 Planning Smith’s schedule; he wants to stay until July 1st. June 5 Lunch with McClintock, president of Historical Society and Dr. Thomas Arbuthnot. McClintock gave me a fascinating album of photographs. June 6 Lunch with Charles Pierson, managing editor of Pittsburgh Press. June 8 Showed pictures to Charles Lewis, who was pleased. June 10 Dinner with Betsy Braemer at the Bernhards (managing editor of Pittsburgh Post Gazette) and the Nikolai Lopatnikoffs. June 13 Mayor David Lawrence came to visit at Grandview Avenue and I interviewed him while Gene took the photographs. June 14 Interview with Erwin Wolff at his home; he was in bed after his cancer operation. I put a tape of what he said. Interview with Park Martin; recording on tape. June 15 George Swetnam will write an outline on the first three hundred years. June 27 John Morris in Pittsburgh arguments about Gene Smith’s pictures; they promised me 100 prints soon. June 29 Jack Heinz and wife with Stanton Belfour came to Grandview to visit and stayed until midnight. June 30 At last Gene Smith is leaving; difficulties about expenses with Park Martin; finally agreed to figures. Sept. 10 Gene Smith gave a detailed schedule when I will receive his pictures. Sept. 26 Gene Smith sent batch of photographs—excellent. Oct. 9 Gene Smith came to Lenox with negatives; selected 350. Oct. 18 Park Martin didn’t send full cheque as promised. Oct. 27 Speaking in the Historical Society on Pittsburgh. Nov. 2 Historical Society Exhibition of the illustrations to Pittsburgh. Controversy with Gordon Washburn head of Carnegie Museum about Pittsburgh material at the Carnegie Museum. Nov. 3 Show of my illustrative material in the Historical Society. Nov. 8 Told Park Martin that the project needed more money. Nov. 9 Talked to members of the Women’s City Club in Pittsburgh. Nov. 18 With Margaret Bourke-White at dinner at the Daniels. Nov. 22 Allegheny Conference lunch at Dusquesne Club with Leland Hazard, Stanton Belfour, Adolf Schmidt, Park Martin, John Grove. I told them about the difficulties and asked for $15,000 for more research and $15,000 for me. Schmidt asked me to put it in writing. Nov. 30 Dinner at the Lopatnikoffs with the Ernst Tochs and the William Steinbergs. Dec. 3 Sent letters to Stanton Belfour, Adolf Schmidt and Dr. Lewis. Dec. 13 Park Martin wrote that he wants to stick to the contract; asks for a letter from Harpers that they will extend the contract. Edgar Jr. would not honour his father’s obligation. Edgar Jr. is impossible. Dec. 14 Difficulties with Edgar Jr. Talked to Adolph Schmidt and Irwin Wolf about it. They suggested that Park Martin should put the squeeze on him. Dec. 15 Talked to Park Martin and Ted Hazlett for two hours. Afterwards pleasant dinner with Hazlett at the Yale-Princeton-Harvard Club; he might be able to work out a solution. Dec. 28 Trouble with Gene Smith and John Morris; they want to sell the Pittsburgh pictures to Look magazine. I said no.

The Kennedy Foreword

An article in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette on November 25, 1963 just three days after the assassination highlighted Lorant’s friendship with Kennedy. ‘Only last March, the historian said, he had seen the President to ask him to write a foreword for his monumental text-and-picture book on Pittsburgh. The book, now in page-proof form, has a space on the title page reserved for the Kennedy signature. Under the heading “Foreword”, the artist’s dummy shows two empty columns. “I was going to Washington in a couple of weeks and see him about it”, Lorant said sadly....’ ‘I had spoken to President Kennedy to whom I was bound with devotion and friendship and asked him to write a short introduction to the book. He promised—and then came November 22. I was doing research in the Carnegie Library in Oakland when a stranger approached me and asked whether I would now do a book on Kennedy. I did not understand what he meant. I had worked the whole morning in the library and did not know what happened. When I went back to Webster Hall and put on the television, I first thought that it replayed the days of Franklin Roosevelt’s death. Then I heard the announcer saying that President Kennedy was dead. I fell on my bed crying, remembering the happy days with him and our happy talks together.’ ‘I recalled our conversation in 1957 on a Jamaican beach when I asked him whether he would run again for the vice presidency in 1960. He shook his head and put up the finger of his right hand—”No, only for first place” he replied.’ ‘I said jokingly: “I wish you wouldn’t run for it in 1960—every President elected since 1840 in twenty year intervals died of natural death or was assassinated while serving in office.” The bad streak began with William Henry Harrison (“Old Tippecanoe”) in 1840. He died a month after his inauguration. Twenty years later in 1860 Lincoln was elected. After chosen for his second term he was assassinated. In 1880 Garfield was elected and shot by an assassin a year later. In 1900 William McKinley was President, a year later he was killed. In 1920 President Harding died while in office. In 1940 it was Franklin Roosevelt who died while still President—and now comes 1960. Kennedy laughed, “Don’t worry about that—first I should be elected then I will see to it that the twenty years bad luck will be interrupted.”’

Published Pittsburgh

When eventually published in 1964, this first edition of Pittsburgh: the story of an American city (3) is the mature Lorant at his most brilliant. The book introduces new ideas while the publication itself is the culmination of a long and successful career. In many ways Lorant had been lucky though he recognised the opportunity; he had arrived in the New World at a point in time where America had yet to seriously write its own history. As author and editor of Pittsburgh: the story of an American city, he created, developed and produced a new genré— which has frequently been copied—but not surpassed. Part of his skill is the bringing together and editing some of the greatest American talent of his time, a skill he developed in Europe and perfected in the New World. Of the ten chapters he only takes personal responsibility for writing two of them. He uses the country’s outstanding historians: Henry Steele Commager, Oscar Handlin, John Morton Blum and J. Cutler Andrews, all professors of history at Amherst College, Harvard, Yale and Chatham College respectively who between them give the book its academic validation. Additionally there are chapters by Sylvester K. Stevens, executive director of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission and Henry David, president of the New School for Social Research. The final chapter on Pittsburgh’s ‘Rebirth’ is an interesting amalgam by David L. Lawrence (as told to John P. Robin and Stefan Lorant) who, as Mayor of Pittsburgh between 1946-1959 and Governor of Pennsylvania between 1959 and 1963 had been a figure central to the story. Visually this book is a tour de force and undoubtedly the ‘deluxe’ book that Edgar Kaufmann originally envisaged. Lorant’s book layouts are classic, clean and of their time. The large, luxurious nine by twelve-inch page provide expansive and expensive double page spreads. Lorant uses a two-column page with a 3 1/2 inch justified measure, allowing for generous borders and gutters. Irrespective of the

3 Pittsburgh, the story of an American City published (520 pages), 1st. edition published by Doubleday & Co, New York. 1964. various contributors, the layouts and way that illustrations are placed on the pages is typically Lorant. Frequently a story will be told over a spread using four or six illustrations with two or three column captions of anything up to a dozen lines. While the book is predominantly printed in black and white there are a number of strategically placed 4-page colour inserts throughout. The use of the bleed varies throughout the book. It is conspicuously absent in the early chapters where the illustrations are from woodcuts and lithographs, but in the later sections where the images are photographically more urgent the single photograph bled on three sides becomes a frequent and effective way of presenting an image. Pictures are the foremost way of developing the story. Paintings, engravings, maps, newspaper cuttings and later photographs progress the tale. Early on in the book the pages are grey with black and white illustrations from the pages of Harper’s Weekly or the Carnegie Free Library of Allegheny amongst others. The introduction of the photograph in the second half of the nineteenth century shows both the development of the medium and the city. Photographs from local Pittsburgh newspapers and the special introduction of colour photographs brings the story almost up to date. The richness of tone, the strong blacks and clean whites are only achieved with Smith’s powerful, incisive and graphic images. The book is crammed with Lorant’s visual signature and a very strong and distinctive hand it is at that. For example, the last full spread of the final chapter depicts the ages of man with the final photograph showing Edgar Kaufmann’s funeral. There are juxtapositions emphasising relationships between old and new; a plan of the city of Pittsburgh in 1795 and a photograph of the same area taken with the latest vertical aerial mapping camera in 1963 is particularly telling.

Lorant’s Authors Edition

By the time the Bicentennial Edition (4) reached the bookshops in 1975, Lorant’s ‘Foreword’ about the new edition probably left more unsaid than said. We are told this is ‘revised, enlarged and updated’ and not just a reprint. ‘Because the original plates got lost, all illustrations had to be freshly introduced from the originals, as did all the colour plates. The text has been revised and an entirely new chapter with a hundred new photographs both in black and white and colour were added,

4 Pittsburgh, the story of an American City published (608 pages) (Authors Edition, Lenox, Mass.) (2nd. enlarged edition).1974. Bicentenial Edition. bringing forward the Pittsburgh story from the years of the Renaissance to the middle of the nineteen-seventies.’ While the number of pages had increased from 520 to 608 to account for the additional passage of time, the page size had reduced from 12 by 9 inches to 11 by 8 1/2 inches. More importantly the imprint had changed from Doubleday & Company, Inc. to Authors Edition, Inc., Lorant’s own imprint based at his farmhouse in Lenox, Massachusetts. Authors Edition was incorporated on July 9, 1975 in time for the bicentennial edition of the Pittsburgh book. It was incorporated in Delaware on August 13, 1979. Lorant consistently used it for all his business transactions and with his tax returns from 1976 onwards. It was only after having become completely disenchanted with the major publishing houses in America that Lorant launched his own publishing imprint. It was both brilliant on one hand and a failure on the other. Lorant believed in giving his reader good value for money combining high sales with a tight profit margin. Working as his own publisher he was able to cut out the middle man, increase his profit margin and keep retail prices low. In an attempt to keep individual unit cost down he reduced the page size and used a lighter weight paper— enough to remove the ‘de luxe’ feel of the book. An almost 20% increase in the number of pages gave the reader better value for money, but this is offset by a cheaper binding which did not help the pages stay together. Theodore W. Kheel, the New York labour management lawyer spoke of his working relationship with Lorant as being ‘more of a business friend than a lawyer’. He explained. ‘Stefan was always having a quarrel with publishers. He had no respect for them and positively disliked them. Having been in publishing, he thought he knew how to run their business better than they did. He knew all the tricks, all of the sensitive points. He would negotiate his contracts with a publisher but then he would get into a quarrel with them. He would develop a strategy and I would write a letter and in generally it worked. I learned about publishers and how small-minded they were.' 'Authors Edition was Lorant’s creation. It was a legal entity that entered into contacts with printers. It was Lorant who negotiated the original contract for the Pittsburgh book with Doubleday. I was only the sword for the strategy he developed. I would communicate with Doubleday with the view to us reacquiring the publishing rights, while Lorant then set out to publish himself. He realised that with this particular book the market was not the entire United States, so he approached the Mellon family and persuaded them to buy 10,000 copies at a very low price. He then went to a large printing house in Chicago with a print order of, say, 15,000. Following this he offered the book to stores in Pittsburgh at a modest price. It was a simple strategy and he had made a couple of hundred dollars for himself.' Bob Pease viewed himself and Lorant as ‘associates’. ‘As he went into his second, third and fourth editions of the book there was always a problem to get it published because Stefan wasn’t going to risk his own money. I helped sell 10,000 copies of the second edition before it was printed. Foundations and corporations bought it—this was to be a hand out—a give-away for corporations. I’ve forgotten whether the Allegheny Conference bought 500 or 1,000 copies. We bought some too, I still have some at my house, they’re very scarce. I also helped with the sales of the third edition. On the fourth edition I told Stefan he had to do this one himself—I was worn out being a book salesman!’’ Not all recollections of Lorant were favourable. William Block, publisher of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, met Lorant when he was first preparing ‘the Book’ and grew to know him over the years. ‘He would show up at the newspaper when he was planning another edition and wanted publicity’, he said. To Block, Lorant was ‘an odd, eccentric man, but he was very clever and persistent. He wouldn’t take no for an answer. He worked hard to get guarantees from a lot of Pittsburgh companies that they would buy so many copies of the book before he went ahead. But, when the book came out, it was a big success.’ Despite the success, he was known to be ‘tight with a dollar…. I guess I’d call him pretty chintzy sometimes,’ Block said. ‘Really, in a lot of ways, Lorant was quite a rascal. At least one Pittsburgh writer complained about never being paid for his work for the book. Lorant also failed to return photos taken from the Pittsburgh Press and Post- Gazette files.’

The later editions

Both the third edition in 1980 (5) and the fourth edition published in 19886 follow on Lorant’s successful tried and tested formula of the second edition. For the third edition Lorant added two chapters ‘The city of champions’ and ‘Renaissance II’ and for the fourth edition one

5 Pittsburgh, the story of an American City published (672 pages) Authors Edition, Lenox, Mass. (3rd. enlarged edition). 1980. 6 Pittsburgh, the story of an American City published (736 pages) Authors Edition, Lenox, Mass. (4th. enlarged edition.). 1988. additional chapter, ‘The great transformation in the eighties’. The third edition reflects the greater use of colour photography, some by Joel Librizzi but the majority by Norman Schumm. By the fourth edition Schumm had all but taken over the photography, showcasing with aerial cityscapes that are particularly spectacular. Roy McHugh, one-time columnist-at-large for the Pittsburgh Press enjoyed bantering with the great editor. While Lorant achieved fame and perhaps more than a little notoriety observing Pittsburgh, McHugh enjoyed observing Lorant observing Pittsburgh. ‘The author was in his shirtsleeves. He balanced himself on a straight-backed chair. Conversational preliminaries done with, he said, “The book is completed after 26 years. There will be no more additions to, and no more editions of, Pittsburgh, the story of an American City.... “I end the book, the last sentence”—he flipped the pages—“saying, Pittsburgh is once more on the march. I believe that.”’ ‘But in Horne’s, when I was autographing copies, a middle- aged woman came up and said, “Oh, Mr. Lorant. This book is like the Bible.” I said, “Why do you say that?” “Because I go back and read it over and over.” I said, “Lady, you love your city.” And she said, “I sure do.”’ With the publication of the fourth edition the success of ‘The Book’ was becoming its failure. Physically the additional pages made the book too heavy to handle with any ease and the number of pages, 736 compared with the original 520, changed the entire nature of the publication. It is a book with four final chapters appearing to have their roots embedded in public relations rather than analysis of the recent past. The new chapters offer less analysis, stylistically showing a ‘snapshot’ of the present—captured in an instant in time just prior to publication of the new edition. By the late 1990s ‘The Book’ was being seen from a different perspective. John Craig, then editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette sees the Pittsburgh book as ‘impressionistic rather than analytical’. People were moved by the first Pittsburgh Renaissance and he judged the book to be more important to society in the 60s rather than the 90s. For him there was a ‘blip’ in the 80s and Lorant’s response to Renaissance II lacked the precision of his earlier text. The moral of the photographs

Gregory D. Curtis was running one of the Mellon family private offices7 in Pittsburgh when he first met Lorant who, as ever, was trying to drum up support for publication of the 1988 edition of his book. Lorant was ‘extremely annoyed’ having recently returned from the Carnegie Library to whom he had given the photographs and illustrations from the first edition of his Pittsburgh book some years previous. Now he found his photographs in the public domain, lying around in boxes, unprotected and generally in shabby order. Lorant immediately removed the photographs without permission to place them in what he saw as ‘safekeeping’. Having listened to Lorant and then spoken to a number of local people, Curtis was of the opinion that Lorant had at least a moral responsibility to return the photographs even though there might not be a legal obligation. Equally, the Library had a moral duty to care for the photographs since they were of archival importance. As Curtis saw it, both sides were equally in the right and in the wrong, and this should provide the basis for a resolvable situation. One of the problems pivoted around the fact that the Carnegie Library was not equipped with archival quality storage, regarding it as too expensive to provide such a facility for this one collection of photographs. Curtis believed that if he could find financial support for this project then it would encourage Lorant to release them and allow the Library to begin collecting other important collections. Curtis spoke to some of the larger foundations that had shown an interest in the book and concluded it was probably feasible to raise enough money and create the conditions to satisfy Lorant. Additionally there was some concern in Pittsburgh as to whether or not Lorant still had the photographs. There were rumours he had sold some and there was some dissent as to what condition they might be in. Curtis picks up the story. 'I paid a visit along with Jo Leggett and Charlee Brodsky, an ardent feminist who found Lorant extremely chauvinistic and was deeply offended by the man. The two had an immediate and intense distaste for each other. Lorant threw a fit and announced that Ms. Brodsky was never going to see the photographs let alone lay her hands on them and examine them in detail. Leggett, on the other hand, found him much more of a charming old rogue and paid a constructive role in preventing him throwing us out of the house.'

7 Part of the Pittsburgh banking family established by Thomas Mellon. 'As the weekend progressed Lorant became very annoyed that ‘this woman Brodsky’ was neither prepared to like him or respond to his charms, but at the same time he found her something of a challenge. He continued to tantalise her by dwelling on how many photographs he held, the importance of individual photographs and describing the conditions under which they were taken. He told her of his collection of old German photographs which she was keenly interested in. At one point she told him she did not believe he had such a collection and that if such a collection existed then she would have known about it. Lorant crossed the room to his filing cabinet, opened the drawer, showed her the photographs then slammed the drawer shut and locked it.' As the weekend drew towards a close and Curtis intimated his displeasure at Lorant’s behaviour, Lorant opened another drawer to prove that the Pittsburgh photographs were all present. Despite a deteriorating situation Curtis continued to try to broker some sort of agreement but the issue came to a head when Lorant announced that he did not want a typical photographic archive but a large memorial to his son. As a compromise it was suggested that space be created in the Carnegie Library with a photographic facility named after Mark, but this remained unacceptable to Lorant. The matter remained unresolved until after Lorant's death (8).

It was almost two years after Lorant’s death that in October 1999 that the ‘Millennium Edition’ (9} was available in the bookshops with a print run of 25,000 copies. Lorant had left the copyright to his Pittsburgh friends, Bruce and Gail Campbell who had the tenacity to push the project to eventual fruition. Bruce Campbell wove the strands of the upbeat, final chapter using Lorant’s choice of title, ‘The best is yet to come’. On one hand, W. Eugene Smith considered his great photographic portrait of Pittsburgh a colossal failure while in his notes and letters he referred to this body of work as his ‘greatest’ or ‘finest’ set of photographs. But he did not live to receive confirmation of

8 It was the W. Eugene Smith photographs that concerned the Carnegie Library. The eventual agreement was that half the photographs remained with the Carnegie Library and the other half remained with the Lorant Trust. The Lorant Trust have since sold those copies. 9 The ‘Millennium Edition’ of Pittsburgh: the story of an American city was published (776 pages) by Esselmont Books, 1999. Subsequently the title and interest in the copyright of all the editions has been sold to the National Book Network of Lanham, Maryland. accolades of success. It was only with the opening of Dream Street: W. Eugene Smith’s Pittsburgh Photographs, a travelling exhibition drawn from Smith’s 2,000 master prints we can see the scope of Smith’s ambition and brilliance. For Stefan Lorant, his urban biographical opus proved to be the realisation of the book that Edgar Kaufmann had only dreamed. Lorant had complete confidence in its potential from the beginning, and through words and pictures narrated the story of the personalities and visionaries who gave Pittsburgh citizens a pride and dignity. In so doing he produced the elegant concept for a pictorial biography of a city, a concept and a masterpiece that has yet to be surpassed. Stefan Lorant and W. Eugene Smith both shared a love for music and through Pittsburgh chronicled a great visual symphony in their own impressive style.

******** Bob Pease interviewed by Michael Hallett

Robert B. Pease (born 1925) was known as ‘the man who helped remake postwar Pittsburgh.’ He was born in Nebraska and during WW2 was an Air Force navigator before arriving in Pittsburgh to study engineering at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University). On graduating he worked with a group that focussed on postwar development of the campus. In 1953, he joined the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh (URA) and by 1958 became its executive director, working on more than 40 projects in the city including the neighbourhoods of the Lower Hill and East Liberty. He subsequently became executive director of the Allegheny Conference on Community Development (ACCD) in the late 1960s. Under his leadership, the organisation secured grants for public schools and the expansion of the Pittsburgh International Airport. After leaving the Allegheny Conference in 1991, he became senior vice president of the National Development Corporation. He also served as consultant for urban redevelopment projects around the world, including Japan. India, Ireland and the United Kingdom.

(Bob Pease) I met Stefan in 1957 when he was working on the first edition of the Pittsburgh. He had been retained by the Allegheny Conference on Community Development and I recall the driving person behind that was Edgar Kaufmann who then owned Kaufmann’s Department Store. He was a very active, good, civic citizen and Stefan then was writing, he was behind schedule. The book was to come out for the Pittsburgh bicentennial celebrations. I think it came out a year later. I met him when he was here writing and living in his Mount Washington studio. I also worked closely with Gene Smith, his photographer and I had heard of Gene Smith and of course I’d heard of Stefan just through some of the books I had run across, his Lincoln book in particular. It was one my dad had. So I just got acquainted with him and in some ways I was an errand boy doing things for him. I was young at the time and I was assistant, director and chief engineer of the redevelopment authority so I was involved then and about to become executive director the following year. So that is how I met Stefan just because of the book project.

(Michael Hallett) How did you find him as a person? You say you were young and you met this man who’s in his fifties. What did you think of this man? (BP) First there was the admiration that a young person has for someone who has done what he has done. ‘I knew Hitler, I was in the war, I escaped, I went to Great Britain and lived there and finally came to the United States.’ Well there was that aura about him which was interesting and of course and combined with the fact that I flew in World War 2, I’ve served in North Africa and Italy and dropped a lot of bombs on Germany, so that was not a kinship but it was interesting that just the position of two people that were involved in World War 2 in very different ways. I found him fun to be with and do remember dinner one evening,, shortly after he got married, I don’t quite when that was, but I also remember his excitement when his wife became pregnant with his son.

(MH) That would have been about 1963 ?

(BP) So I just crossed paths with him several times during that period and I always thought he was fun to be with. Never had the experience of being with him for three weeks running. The other experience which was interesting was as he went into his second, third and fourth editions of the book there always a problem to get it published because Stefan wasn’t going to risk his money trying to get it published and the second edition I helped sell 10,000 copies before it was printed. Foundations bought it, corporations bought it, and this was to be a hand out, a give-away for corporations. I’ve forgotten whether the Allegheny Conference bought 500 or 1,000 copies. We bought some too, I still have some at my house. They’re very scarce. The third edition I also helped with the sales. On the fourth edition I told Stefan he had to do this one himself. I’m worn out being a book salesman. I only tell those stories to point out that I really only knew him in the context of the book. I never visited him in Lenox. I had dinner with him on a number of occasions but only because he was here, on the project and he’d call me from time to time I would try to help him with information but I would never claim that Stefan and I were great friends, we were associates. That’s a better term.

(MH) You mentioned Gene Smith a moment ago, I have brought with me, and I’m going to leave you a copy, a couple of extracts from the Pittsburgh chapter which originate from Stefan. One is his briefing of Eugene Smith, which nobody has ever seen. You may find it interesting. Two the notes I made from his 1955 diary when he spent most of his time working on the **** book. How did you meet Eugene Smith? (BP) Gene Smith would come to town and he would spread all over the office his recent photographs. Some sheets typical of 35mm prints other he liked he would expand, and I’ve also visited the photographic archive at the University of Arizona which has all his stuff. I’ve been there with white gloves, going through all his Pittsburgh photographs etc. He never dated anything and if he were here I would strangle him. Very difficult to find photographs because I knew the dates but his stuff wasn’t dated. There are thousand and thousands of photographs in that collection just on Pittsburgh. He was a very interesting character and I loved to watch him work. I’m not a great photographer but I’ve got some good cameras and I like to take pictures and he used to come around with his three Leica cameras around his neck and with different films etc. He was such an eager professional in the way that he worked, in my eyes at least. We looked at the photographs in the book and I picture him in the darkroom, forcing those prints to get what he wanted and the one I liked is those where every marshalling yard and railroad track just glistened and I can just picture the work it took to make them look that way.

(MH) Were you aware there were problems between Gene Smith and Stefan?

(BP) Only vaguely. I believe there were arguments about Gene getting paid. That was one thing I was aware of. The other tensions I don’t know. I do know that some pictures in later editions Stefan himself took. Because he also ran around with a Leica hanging around his neck and would take black & white pictures in various places. But no. I don’t know too much about that.

(MH) What was the feeling in Pittsburgh after the publication of the early editions. How did Pittsburghers see it ?

(BP) At first people said that this was the best book ever published about a city. I think people were very enthusiastic about it. It sold well and I forget the numbers but Stefan was so proud because it was a book of the type that doesn’t sell in such huge numbers. And that did. So I think without a doubt the book was well received and sometimes some people, however, joked about a little bit because Stefan used so many different authors to put the book together. So they joked is this really Stefan’s book? It was really Stefan’s book because he organised it and he did it. The early chapters were by historians and they were good chapters.

(MH) He was able to bring together literally America’s best.

(BP) Exactly. I used to lecture in the University of Pittsburgh in the graduate school and that was one of the texts that I had as required reading for the students because I was teaching about the development in Pittsburgh. It’s a good book. I am particularly impressed with the first and second edition. I have slight niggles about three and four but as I see it the first edition was produced at a point in time before the Americans had the big book on their cities. Stefan was in the right place at the right time. If you say it was about a city, in many ways it was about America anyway. It was a case history, a biography of a city, using Pittsburgh. But if you look at the big books about cities, they’re put out by commercial houses, usually in connection with the chamber of commerce, and they have descriptions of all the companies and pictures of all the C.E.O.s etc. It sickens me when I go into an office and see that book about Pittsburgh when what really should be on that coffee table is Stefan’s book about Pittsburgh. Those are so typical of what’s put out and they’re just money-makers. There’s one that came out about Pittsburgh that had the wrong names under the C.E.O.s picture. It was just appalling. What I’m trying to say is that Stefan’s book is really superior. I agree with you, the third and fourth edition with the pictures of the girls in their short skirts and the city of champions was almost adding a couple of quick chapters to have a re-sale of the book. But it was still interesting and people still bought it.

(MH) I’m sure that the fifth Millennium Edition will as well. He wanted to get this last edition out I think before Christmas 1997. The last time I actually spoke to Stefan I phoned him in the Mayo Clinic, he’d already had his leg amputated and the phone rang and eventually this very weak voice answered and I said ‘Stefan it’s Michael, how are you?’ ‘I’m lousy.’ I said ‘Stefan we’re thinking about you.’ and I said it I thought, that’s sloppy. But he said ‘Yes but what are you thinking about me?’ I said ‘Stefan I’m thinking about the fact that there is nothing wrong with your brain and I’m still going to have to watch what I say.’ Then he started laughing and we talked. ‘What are you going to do Stefan?’ ‘I want to get out of here, I’m going down to Pittsburgh, I’ve got to finish that bloody book. I only need one good day.’ I said ‘Perhaps today Stefan, perhaps tomorrow.’ That’s the last we spoke. That was our signing off. He never got that good day.

(BP) The fact that somebody in their nineties produces a new edition of a book, not just any old book but a book of that sort of stature, is quite something. Very impressive and I saw the layouts very early on. One of the people I helped him get to see is Tony O’Reilly, from the Heinz company. Tony’s an Irishman and one time a world famous rugby player, you may know all about that. I said I went to see Tony and Tony remembered what were the papers that Stefan published in England? well Tony was a great admirer of those and he still had copies. Stefan was ecstatic to run across him. I didn’t know that I just wanted him to meet this guy. He hadn’t met him before. I don’t know where Tony is right now, he’s retired from the Heinz company, he maybe back in Ireland or South Africa, he has interests all over the world. That was a fascinating experience for Stefan to run across that. His energy must have been great in those years when he escaped from Germany and did so much work and seized opportunities to continue doing work when he came here. The books on the presidents etc. I admire him greatly.

(MH) The general feeling out thereon the street is that everybody admires Stefan. Maybe people have got certain reservations about some things but you cannot help but admire the guy. Talking about energy, did he come across as having some, I know every time I phoned him, one of his sayings was ‘I’ve been working like a dog’ right up to the end when it may not have been true. Did you get the impressions of a power house of energy?

(BP) Yes I did. It was interesting because he was really leaning on me to sell the books the second and third edition, and I was in a position to be helpful but he wouldn’t let up on it and he wanted them so fast, I didn’t sell them as fast as he wanted. but that to me was reflective of his energy, he was tenacious and he has a stubbornness about him. In a way he was a pain in the rear end sometimes for me. But the fact is we accomplished it and the book got out. That was important.

(MH) The new fifth edition will be out hopefully this autumn. I think we are really looking at before Christmas. I think Bruce is talking about September. But it’s 95% finished and printed, so 3 months is plenty of time, even allowing for some spillage. How do you think people in general see a book like that now, is there the same interest with the new generation? Or has there been a change?

(BP) That’s a difficult question. You’re asking a marketing question and I have to respond with intuition. I predict that those who have the earlier editions will buy it because they just want to stick it on a shelf with the other books. I certainly belong to that category. Thinking of my children, who are in their forties, they’ll have a special interest partly because of my work, but I think partly because they love Pittsburgh. I just that Pittsburgh an interesting place. When you get right down to it, as much as people might gripe about something the mayor did, or gripe about the pirates losing a game or whatever it might be, in general I think people are very proud of being Pittsburghers. That’s almost like a crazy logic to thins town which has been through a lot in the last 15 years. Economically we were in a tank 15 years ago. So I think people are going to look at this very enthusiastically and the department stores or the bookstores or whoever handle it puts the big ad in the paper saying ‘here it is folks, come and get it.’ They’ll go and get it. That’s my prediction. Of course the book I want to see is yours. The biography. I’ve got Eugene’s Smith biography at home which is fascinating but I want to read the story of Stefan. All I know about his life, in Germany and so on, is a fascinating period and a fascinating life but I’ll be very interested in reading what you have written.

(MH) You’ve hit the key points in that people knew Stefan in America but in America they don’t know about Germany and Hungary and England. In England they don’t know about America and Germany and Hungary etc. One of things that I disagree with Stefan on is when he was doing autobiographies all in four parts. I said ‘no way am I going to follow that Stefan.’ ‘Why not it’s obvious.’ ‘It’s obvious that you shouldn’t do it because if you do the American book, the Americans will buy it, the English will buy the English book. Nobody will know how absolutely brilliant you were, they will only know parts of your brilliance.’ I’m not 100% sure that I persuaded him on that but he did accept that was the way it was going to be and I actually did have a powerful argument and every time I referred to him as being brilliant it did actually slow down the ...

(BP) I’m sure he agreed with you. (MH) The story has evolved a lot since when he was alive, which I thought it would do, because there’s a lot of people who have talked to me since. There’s a lot of things that I didn’t believe. What Stefan said was always true but there was always a spin on it. I needed to work on it. I’ve got some intriguing things that have come my way. I was asked on Saturday night ‘If Stefan came back what questions would you be asking him now?’ Which I thought was a marvellous question to ask me. Staying around that sort of discussion, I know the formal story, why did Stefan agree to do the Pittsburgh book?

(BP) I don’t think I can answer that one. I’m sure it’s a complex answer. I’m sure that he saw in Edgar Kaufmann and the Allegheny Conference which then consisted of 24 chief executives of major corporations in Pittsburgh, I’m sure he saw that as an opportunity and he saw that there would not be a funding issue in terms of getting the book out. This is fanciful but it may have been that he came to Pittsburgh and liked it like you did, what a city. This would be a great city to write about, I don’t know. I think because he was a book writer this was an opportunity to do a different kind of book. A little bit in the style of all his books with lots of pictures and lots of writing and good information.

Bob Pease was interviewed in Pittsburgh, PA. on February 15, 1999. This edited transcript was made in 2020.

******** Joan Apt interviewed by Michael Hallett

Joan Frank Apt (1926-2020), was cofounder of the Pittsburgh Public Theater and leader of Pittsburgh cultural organisations for more than 60 years. She lived in Pittsburgh most of her life. She was the granddaughter of Pittsburgh industrialist and civic leader Isaac W. Frank, and the daughter of Cecelia Kaplan Frank and Robert Jay Frank, an engineer and the vice-president for sales of Copperweld Steel Co. She grew up initially on Inverness Avenue. When she was 13, her family moved into a home on Woodland Road that they commissioned from architects Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer. Living in this modernist masterpiece inspired her lifelong interest in the arts. After graduating from the Winchester Thurston School in 1944, she attended Wheaton College, where she majored in art history. She married Jerome Apt Jr. in1944, and the couple settled in Springfield, Mass., where her husband was an engineer for Monsanto Chemical Co. In 1949, they moved to Pittsburgh. They purchased land in the East End and engaged architect James Speyer, a student of Mies van der Rohe, to design a striking steel and glass home in which she loved to entertain, most recently on her 90th birthday. She began her service to Pittsburgh's cultural institutions as a founding member of the board of the Civic Light Opera. She helped found the American Wind Symphony and the Three Rivers Shakespeare Festival, and served the Pittsburgh Symphony Association at various times. In 1971-72, she was responsible for conceiving, planning and implementing the subscription sales campaign for the symphony's move into the newly-renovated Heinz Hall. The campaign enabled an expanded concert series and other programs and healthy acceptance of Heinz Hall by the public and all constituent cultural groups, as well as a general rebirth of the adjacent downtown area.

(Michael Hallett) Joan, What did you think of Stefan when you first came across him?

(Joan Apt) I think he was probably one of the most dynamic and alive people who loved living. He was a powerhouse.

(MH) Was he the editor or was he just a person enquiring about Pittsburgh. He never enquired about anything. He probably wrote the history of his era as he saw it in his eyes, based on fact. Or fact as he saw it. The first time you saw the Pittsburgh book had you seen the first edition before you were chosen for inclusion in the second?

(JA) I think we met when he was doing the first edition. I believe we met at the Symphony Ball one year. I don’t remember what year, what year did it come out?

(MH) 1964.

(JA) We moved back here in 1950, after we were married so I would definitely have met him while he was doing the first edition.

(MH) What were your thoughts about the Pittsburgh book when you saw it ?

(JA) I thought it was overpowering and I thought it was an absolutely fabulous look at the history of an era of a city that changed from black to white. It was a remarkable transformation and my family were very good friends with all those power shakers and movers in that era so I watched all this with great excitement and when the book came out and showed how black it used to it was quite a statement about what we have done here. I remember about as a young girl, playing a game, we used to wear uniforms to school with long-sleeved white blouses and several of us used to keep one mark that we never washed for a week. Of course our parents never saw it because it was under our sleeves but it was really black and that was a great change and I think that Stefan showed the excitement of the city after the clean-up.

(MN) Of more recent time, you met Stefan on occasions?

(JA) Over the years he kept in close touch with all of us. When we started the public theatre in 1974 was when he put my friend Margaret Rick and me in the book with our first director. It was then that Stefan kept coming back and forth to try doing a second edition. He knew we had started the theatre and he wanted to put it in the book and that’s how Margaret Rick and my pictures was taken in my living room with the theatre’s first director.

(MH) There’s a very strange and holy alliance really, between the Hungarian editor, an émigré to America, produces a book on what had previously been an industrial city. Why do you think that Stefan agreed to do it? (JA) Did he agree to do it or did he instigate it? Before I can answer you. The story as I understand it is that Edgar Kaufmann asked him to do it. And after some while where he didn’t agree, he then agreed to do it. At least that is the official story. If you know it differently? I don’t.

(MH) As with so many of Stefan’s stories have several layers to them. I understand that Edgar Kaufmann, who he met in Palm Springs, asked him to come down to Pittsburgh. He’d seen Stefan’s Lincoln. (JA) This is very logical. It could have happened that way. I simply don’t know. But knowing Stefan as we all knew him, Stefan knew how to pique imaginations and interest in something that he was interested in.

(MH) So which came first? It’s not important.

(JA) I think what you are saying is that Edgar Kaufmann may have asked him to do one thing but Stefan actually produced something much grander. Very different from what Edgar Kaufmann thought. I would not second guess that because Edgar was a large thinker also. His imagination, well I was a very young girl when Falling Water was being built but my parents used to take us up to watch the progress, to a friend’s house that was across the valley. I can understand that one Edgar Kaufmann being interested in Stefan doing a history of Pittsburgh pictorially, and I also think that you are correct in surmising that it grew from the original. I don’t know though.

(MH) I think everything that Stefan did, grew in size and stature when he got into it. I could tell you about what was supposed to be a two minute presentation at the International Centre for Photography in 1993 where just say 20 slides, used 178 and took 43 minutes.

(JA) But how exciting for the audience.

(MH) Not when the last train back to Connecticut was actually leaving.

(JA) He gave it as a lecture later at the Museum of Modern Art and people were enthralled. But there is a time and a place for everything.

(MH) What do you think Stefan has done for Pittsburgh?

(JA) Probably made it in other people’s eyes, a very inviting place to come to. Perhaps even despite our tax structure even a place to come and live and settle and work. Certainly to raise a family. I’m not sure that Stefan is alone responsible of making it an attractive place to raise a family but it certainly is. Certainly the way he had of talking to people that made you feel important was a unique characteristic of his. When he wanted something from you there was nothing that would stand in the way of his getting it because he made himself enchanting and interesting.

(MH) That’s what I think happened with Edgar. I don’t know that. Stefan met Edgar at the age of 50. They were talking about this when Stefan was 53. He was the mature editor, designer, thinker. Interesting it’s just part of the conversation that we’ve been having over the two few days and these conversations are beginning to merge into one another. That’s my concern, is that somebody was saying that one of the problems with Stefan is that he doesn’t have a specific opus which people recognise like they would an author, or playwright.

(JA) He saw himself as an Historian.

(MH) But Stefan achievements encompassed too many different areas. I agree he saw himself an Historian. He loved talking about the presidencies and he had his favourites of course. But I also think he found his niche in talking about A person and certainly A city and he kept redoing and redoing and regenerating to his own satisfaction. He would not rest while he knew he could improve on it.

Joan Apt was interviewed in Pittsburgh, PA on February 14, 1999. This edited transcript was made in 2020.

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Stefan Lorant workingin his Grandview apartment in Pittsburgh. January 13, 1955.Pittsburgh Post-Gazette photo: Stueberger.

(Left to right) Mayor David Laurence, John O’Connor, Stefan Lorant and Judge Anne Alpern, Pittsburgh. May 1 1995. Pittsburgh Post Gazette photo: Harry Coughanoor. Stefan Lorant interviews Mayor David Lawrence in Lorant’s Grandview Avenue studio, Pittsburgh 1955. Photo: W. Eugene Smith

Stefan Lorant showing the completed dummy of the Book to David Lawrence and Theodore Haslett. Pittsburgh. October 17, 1963 Stefan Lorant with Bill Block, the publisher of the Pittsburgh-Post Gazette, Pittsburgh, June 1975. Photo: Joel Librizzi Pittsburgh: The Story of an American City, first edition, 1964

Pittsburgh: The Story of an American City, second edition, 1975 Pittsburgh: The Story of an American City, third edition, 1980

Pittsburgh: The Story of an American City, fourth edition, 1988 A ‘must-have’ for any millennium book list

We landed at Pittsburgh International Airport a little after dusk, impressed with how the runways appeared to grow out of the natural contours of the land. We joined the flowing rush hour traffic as the comfortable limousine sped in towards the city. Joe, our driver, talked enthusiastically about the change from steel city to high tech city, the history of an era that changed from black to white, but nothing was to prepare us for what was to follow. As we escaped through the Fort Pitt tunnel the night light panorama left us breathless—this surely is one of the new post-modern views of a post-industrial age.

The purpose of our visit had everything to do with ‘The Book’; the style in which Pittsburgh’s citizens would affectionately refer to Stefan Lorant’s monumental opus Pittsburgh: the story of an American city. With an initial ten years in the making, first published in 1964 and revised in 1974, 1980 and 1988, Lorant was completing a fifth edition when he died in November 1997 just 100 days short of his 97th birthday. Twenty-five thousand copies of this new version, the ‘Millennium Edition’ are now on the bookstalls due to the tenacity, talent and sheer hard work of Bruce and Gail Campbell who inherited the copyright. Lorant himself was tenacious, immensely talented, capable of recognising talent in others and certainly subscribed to the work ethic. It is intriguing to speculate why a Hungarian, a foreigner and stranger to the city could write such a volume, on the surface a notion to be easily dismissed but a reality that became spectacularly successful. Stefan Lorant was born in Budapest on February 22nd, 1901 and died in Rochester, Minnesota on November 14th, 1997 at 96-years- of-age. He was a witness to the century with his life spanning a period of political turmoil, war and social change. Lorant became a legend within his lifetime. His work as a visual and literary editor allowed him to pioneer and develop the genré of picture based journalism at a period in time which saw the emergence of modern mass communications. Internationally he became a guiding force, disseminating his ideas and political knowledge throughout Europe in the late-twenties and thirties by working in Germany, Hungary and England, eventually spreading his sphere of influence to America where he introduced the concept of the pictorial biography. His innovative layouts, his ‘exclusive’ interviews and thirst for knowledge became a familiar part of millions of everyday lives, largely through the pages of his own creations, and in particular the

legendary media icon Picture Post. His vision of photography as a documentary medium inspired Life and Look magazines in America, and paved the way for the eventual emergence of the television documentary. For this he became recognised as ‘the father of picture journalism’. Originally published in 1964, the first edition of Pittsburgh: the story of an American city is the mature Lorant at his most brilliant. ‘The Book’ had a specific local audience as well as a wider interested public throughout America and that is reflected by the reviews of the first edition. Harrison E. Salisbury in The New York Times sees ‘The whole tumultuous story of Pittsburgh, magnificently illustrated... is presented in this volume... the study of the metamorphosis is all here—the bloody struggles of the nineteenth century, the grit and smoke, the politics, the toil, the sweat—the imagination.’ Publishers’ Weekly was equally congratulatory but in a different way. ‘It is certainly one of the most fascinating detailed picture histories yet attempted of any city anywhere. For readability, thoroughness (ten years of research went into it), graphic quality, and broad scope (it covers political and social history, daily life, labor problems, architecture and what have you), this is a model history of an American city.’ Lorant’s Pittsburgh: the story of an American city is not just a biography of a city but a microcosm of the American peoples. Just ten or so days before he died in November 1997, Lorant complained that he only needed a good day to complete ‘The Book’. To be accurate Lorant’s ‘good day’ did not mean a working period of time between dawn and dusk, or any other measure within that 24-hour cycle. It was an infinitely variable amount of time necessary to complete the story to Lorant’s satisfaction. He was not to have that ‘good day’. He had completed the layout for the new pages and commissioned the new photographs, most of which were in place. Picking up the editorial reigns, Gail and Bruce Campbell have produced this new edition with Bruce weaving the strands of the new final chapter from 1988 to the millennium which he entitles, ‘The best is yet to come’. There are parallels with which Lorant would have been acquainted. Mozart’s pupil Süssmayr, well appraised of his master’s procedure and intentions completed the final masterpiece—Requiem in D minor. By comparison, the Campbell’s share an affinity with Lorant’s intentions and have produced a contemporary and forward looking vision which retains Lorant’s classic composition. Those of us who knew Lorant well, can still visualise him sat at his kitchen table in his farmhouse in Lenox with a copy of the new Millennium Edition open in front of him. For a while nothing would be said, though nothing would be missed. Eventually there would be a slight shrug of his shoulders, a nonchalant wave of his hands. ‘It is good, very good—but with my help, perhaps we could have made it ten percent better.’ That would be praise indeed from this great Hungarian editor, for without question Lorant would have approved. This is a ‘must-have’ for any millennium book list!

Customer Comments on www.amazon.com October 22,1999 submitted by Michael Hallett

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Stefan Lorant’s Pittsburgh: the story of an American city, fifth Millennium edition is published by Derrydale Press (part of the Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group) in 1999 and available from them in 2020. Michael Hallett

Michael Hallett is a teacher, professional photographer and internationally published photo historian. His involvement with communication and media, and a career in the theory and practice of art & design education provides the environment for this storyteller’s use of words and pictures.

He has extensive experience in higher education including what is now De Montfort University, the Arts University Bournemouth, Manchester Metropolitan University, Birmingham City University and also as Visiting Professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, New York.

He has written continuously in the photographic press for over five decades. His biographical trilogy, Stefan Lorant: Godfather of Photojournalism, Never a Dull Moment, and A Hungarian in England brought Lorant's work to a new public. His 2019 book Being There (CrabApple Publications) is based on his interviews with photojournalists active since the introduction of the Leica in 1923. He holds a PhD by published work.

As a cultural/photographic historian he is concerned with the images of others’ while with Bullring: the heart of Birmingham and his extended visual essay on the seaside he is increasingly immersed in his own photographic practice. His most recent ‘Inconsequential Images’ explore the critical questions surrounding identity, influences, lifestyle, excesses, and the cult of the individual. With Birmingham being the home of the 2022 Commonwealth World Games his new project is for a series of publications with the working title of Birmingham: a great city.

The Michael Hallett Archive (collection ref: MS2342) including his Stefan Lorant Collection, is deposited at the Library of Birmingham, UK.