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on ‘SI is the fourth news weekly.’” Well, they swallowed and swallowed, and they finally did it.

By God it worked. This was 1963 when I sold it, the idea. Some time around 1964, 1965, the magazine went in to the black. From there on it just soared to the point where today it's about 2,800,000 circulation and carries 200 million dollars worth of advertising and nets maybe forty-five or fifty million dollars a year. Now it's branching out in all sorts of other directions. The point is that for nine or ten years, it lost money and it lost a total of thirty-three million, which in todays terms would be 150, 200 million dollars. It took a lot of staying power to keep going and lose that much money when by then, you are a public corporation and had to justify your activities to the board of directors and to analysts, and so on, so on. Everybody knows you're losing your shirt, and why the hell are you going on losing your shirt? This could not be done today.

But the losses all occurred while Luce was still alive, and still owned a large chunk of stock. I mean, was it his staying power?

Yes. Well it was his staying power but I remember that from 1960 on, I had to do an awful lot of the defending of the idea to the board. Coming up with a new explanation practically every other month as to why it was about to turn the corner. Of course it did!

But I mean was there ever a question in your mind in those years