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Andrew HeiskellAndrew Heiskell
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Session:         Page of 824

see Dan Longwell, who was Assistant Managing Editor. And it turned out that I was now being interviewed for the job of Science and Medicine Editor of LIFE. They had had a fellow who was very qualified in terms of his knowledge--he was the son of Breasted, the Egyptologist, but he didn't seem to be able to make any story come alive and be interesting. So I was interviewed at considerable length, and when the final question was asked about what I knew about science and medicine, I had learned my lesson, and I said: “Oh, quite a lot!” And I was hired. So I started at the age of--what was I then? 22? I started as an Editor, with two researchers and a secretary working for me. One of my greatest problems was I hadn't the faintest idea what you did with a secretary or how to dictate [laughter]. But anyway, I got into the swing of things. The managing editor at the time was John--

Q:

This was at the 9 Rockefeller Plaza Building that you--

Heiskell:

No, this was in the Chrysler Building. This goes all the way back to the Chrysler Building in 1937. And we were on the 43rd or 44th floor, I think it was, of the Chrysler Building. As a matter of fact, I've been there recently, and sort of looked and said: “well, the view is familiar, the insides look different.” The whole organization, I think, only occupied less than two floors of the Chrysler Building.

Learning how to be a Science and Medicine Editor turned out to be both difficult and easy, namely: difficult because nobody quite knew how to do science and medicine in pictures--they hadn't been done





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