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Andrew HeiskellAndrew Heiskell
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Session:         Page of 824

Dan was indecisive, nervous, jittery, forever contradicting himself, jumping from one thing to another. Exactly the contrary of what John Shaw Billings was. John took this magazine from scratch, never having any particular experience with pictures by the way, other than as managing editor of Time, but they didn't use that many pictures in those days, and made it in to the most successful magazine around. By the time he quit it was the magazine of the way the American people really saw the war. John did it week after week without ever batting an eye. Quite an extraordinary man, and very nice man too. At least he was to me. But he scared some people. He was sort of awesome.

Q:

What was his relationship with the staff? How did they respond, you know, relate to him?

Heiskell:

Well, he never got to be buddy, buddy with anybody. He was very independent, somewhat distant, but in a very nice way, not at all negative in attitude towards people. He had some crazy people working for him, like Alexander King who wore every day the same green tweed suit with a pink shirt, and a pink tie. He had a large red mustachio. He was sort of in charge of all the crazy projects. He was the inventor of everything that was crazy that went in to the magazine, and about his father, from John Billings, an attitude, views as could be. But John felt that they worked well with him. King ended up--he was the first case of drug scene that I've known. He really went in to drugs and ended up in the drug hospitals several times, had a rather sad ending.





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