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Session:         Page of 824

OB
Interviewee: Andrew Heiskell
Interviewer: Jessica Holland
Date: February 3, 1987
Place: New York City

Q:

Today is the 3rd of February, 1987. This is Jessica Holland. We're at 870 U.N. Plaza. This is for the Columbia Oral History project. Would you state and spell your full name?

Heiskell:

I'm Andrew Heiskell, spelled H-e-i-s-k-e-l-l.

Q:

Okay. What I would like to talk about with you today is management at Time Inc.--how the corporation was managed. And I would like you to do this chronologically, and to begin when you arrived, which as I recall is 1937--obviously from the vantage point of a younger man, yourself not involved in top management--and take it through until the time that you left in 1980, and describe the changes in the lines of authority and who were the key players and how management structured itself. Go ahead.

Heiskell:

Well, obviously, when I first came there in 1937, I was very far down the line, in fact, far enough down the line that I couldn't see the peak. I could see about as far as the managing editor, John Shaw Billings, and I was aware of a publisher called Roy Larsen and a general manager called Jackson. Quite clearly, as far as I was concerned at that point, the joint was managed by John Shaw Billings. [laughs] That's all that counted for me.

Within a couple of years, when I became interested in management











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