From 1937 to 1971 Look magazine was one of the largest and most influential high circulation magazines in America. It was distributed to newsstands every week and had a subscriber circulation of 7.75 million by the middle of the 1960s. In its best year, the advertising revenue of Look reached $80 million. In 1971 the magazine's founder commented that Look “tried to be serious without being solemn, entertaining without being frivolous, angry without being bitter, and hopeful without being complacent.”
Look was founded in 1937 by Gardner “Mike” Cowles and his brother John. It was an outgrowth of a publishing formula which the Cowles brothers had developed on the family owned Des Moines (Iowa) Register and Tribune newspaper. The formula was based on the belief that public interest could be stimulated in almost any topic if it was presented properly. The Cowles brothers believed that picture-language was the most effective way of reaching and informing great numbers of people.
The Cowles experiment with a picture-language format on the Des Moines Sunday Register was so successful that the next step was to launch a national magazine using the same technique. The first issue of Look went on sale on newsstands throughout the United States in January 1937 promising “200 pictures...1,001 facts.” First as a monthly, then as a biweekly, it concentrated initially on fads, fashions, celebrities, and sports figures. After World War II, Gardner Cowles directed the magazine in a more serious and ambitious vein. While Look did not cover immediate news, it managed to produce illuminating stories from Washington, and became editorially concerned with many major issues of the day. As early as 1947 it ran Elliott Roosevelt's memorable interviews with Joseph Stalin and later produced respected social commentary on “The South v. the Supreme Court” (1956) and “The Blacks and the Whites” (1969). Look also featured topical and dramatic coverage of such stories as poverty in American and the Vietnam War. The magazine serialized William Manchester's The Death of a President in 1967 and helped make William L. Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich a best seller by publishing extracts of the main text. Indicative of Look's authority and stature was the fact that it was one of the most widely quoted periodicals in the United States. Also noteworthy was Look's roster of distinguished contributors including Adlai Stevenson, Fulton Sheen, Norman Vincent Peale, Robert E. Sherwood, Earl Warren, Bertrand Russell, and Ernest Hemingway.
By the mid 1960s, rising paper and printing costs cut deeply into Look's revenues, and television progressively siphoned off potential advertising. Beginning in 1965 Look's advertising revenues declined steadily putting the magazine into a deficit by 1969. Drastic economy moves and a cutback in circulation failed to generate sufficient savings to keep the publication solvent. Citing loss of revenue, a recessionary economy, and spiraling postal costs, Gardner Cowles announced the magazine would cease publication with its October 19, 1971 issue. The abrupt demise of one of the nation's two leading photo-journalistic periodicals, after 34 years of publication, saddened its many admirers in the press and public.
