Luce, Henry Robinson

(1898-1967)

   The son of a missionary, Henry Luce was born in China. He was a student at Yale University and became a commissioned officer in the U.S. Army in 1918. He returned to college in 1919 and graduated in 1920. After a brief period of study at Oxford University, Luce returned to the United States where, with Briton Hadden, he established Time magazine in 1923. In 1930, Luce founded Fortune, a journal aimed at businessmen. Time, Inc. expanded and in 1935 began a documentary newsreel series, The March of Time. In 1936, Luce began production of Life, a magazine of photojournalism. Time and Life were enormously influential journals and had a huge circulation until they were undermined by the advent of television.

   In an editorial entitled “The American Century” in Life in 1941, Luce argued that the United States should abandon isolationism and take a lead in rebuilding a peaceful world after an Allied victory. Luce supported the presidential campaign of Republican Wendell Willkie in 1940 and Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952. After the war, Luce became increasingly conservative and was an advocate of strong resistance to perceived Soviet expansion. A major figure in the “China Lobby” in 1949, he blamed Harry S. Truman’s administration for the loss of China to the communists. He became an ardent supporter of Nationalist China (see Taiwan). Luce later supported groups involved in attacks on Fidel Castro’s Cuba, and he approved of U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam. In the 1950s, he launched House & Home and Sports Illustrated magazines. He retired in 1964.