Wilder Hobson
Encyclopedia
Wilder Hobson was an American writer and editor for TIME (1930s-1940s), FORTUNE (1940s), Harper's Bazaar
(1950s), and Newsweek
(1960s) magazines. He was also a competent musician (trombone
), author of an history of American jazz, and long-time contributor to Saturday Review (1940s, 1950s, 1960s) magazine. Also, he served on the planning committee of the Institute of Jazz Studies
.
. There, he was a roommate of Dwight Macdonald
, classmate of James Agee
, and a 1928 member of Scroll and Key
.
Famed American documentary photographer Walker Evans
captured Hobson and Agee on a Long Island beach during the summer of 1937, when Evans and Agee were visiting Hobson and his first wife Peggy. (The Metropolitan Museum of Art
houses those photos, which are also available online—see "Images," below.)
branch.
In October 1942, Hobson succeeded the late Calvin Fixx as assistant editor to Whittaker Chambers
, then editor of Arts & Entertainment. Other writers working for Chambers included: novelist Nigel Dennis
, future New York Times Book Review editor Harvey Breit
, and poets Howard Moss
and Weldon Kees
. Hobson worked amidst the struggle between Soviet-sympathizing and anti-Communist staffers at TIME. Chambers and Willi Schlamm
led the anti-Communist camp (and both later joined the founding editorial board of William F. Buckley, Jr.
's National Review
). Theodore H. White
and Richad Lauterbach led the pro-Soviet camp. TIME founder Henry R. Luce came to support the anti-Communist camp before the end of World War II in 1945. Hobson, however, rode out the storm and even managed to write two books at TIME: a historical study called American Jazz Music (1939—see "Music," below) and a novel called All Summer Long (1945).
When Chambers received a promotion to senior editor in September 1943 and then joined TIMEs senior editorial group in December 1932, Hobson succeeded to the Arts & Entertainment section. He hired friend Walker Evans to write reviews first on Film and then on Art (1943–1945).
In 1946, Hobson moved to editorial board of Fortune, where he worked until severe writer's block caused him to resign.
In November 1950, Hobson became managing editor of Harper's Bazaar (then with a ciruculation of 340,605), replacing Frances MacFadden, who retired after 18 years in that position.
Later, Hobson joined Newsweek, where he worked for a decade.
Hobson become a contributor to the (now defunct) Saturday Review during the late 1940s, the 1950s, and into the 1960s.
.
Hobson married his second wife, Verna Harrison (1923–2004), in the mid-1940s after meeting at TIME. At first they lived in Manhattan but moved to Princeton. Each year, they summered at on Squirrel Island, Maine while playing in the Hennessy Five Star Orchestra. Mrs. Hobson worked 1954-1966 as secretary to Robert Oppenheimer
, then director of the Institute for Advanced Study
. After her husband's death in 1964, she moved to London and worked first for the American Association of University Women and then for the London branch of Robert Matthew
, Johnson-Marshall, architects. In 1976, she returned to America and settled in New Gloucester, Maine, working for the independent weekly New Gloucester News and also helping to re-establish The Squirrel Island Squid. In 1998, she became a photographic stringer for The Lewiston Sun. In 2001, she moved to New Rochelle, New York
, to live with her son Archie's family. Surrounded by family and friends, Verna Harrison Hobson died in hospice care on April 13, 2004.
, staff writer at Life in 1938. Sargeant believed that the "swing" in jazz derived from complex African multi-rhythms adapted to relatively simple Western music. Hobson and Sargeant—both amateur, though well informed, jazz enthusiast—believed that jazz came from New Orleans bordellos, whereas in the 1930s European scholars like Robert Goffin
of Belgium and Hugues Panassié
of France had already ascribed (correctly) that jazz was a "vernacular-based art."
Wilder's close ancestors were Maine
"Downeasters" and he played summers on Squirrel Island
in Southport
with the Hennessy Five-Star Orchestra, which slide-trombonist Wilder joined in 1921 at age 15. Wilder's second wife Verna later became a tuba player. Family members still return, where, as of 2001, the Hennessy band was "still alive and well." Daughter Eliza Hobson became a jazz disc jockey and broadcast journalist as well as playing piano and guitar. A biography of TIME colleague Weldon Kees includes a reminiscence of Kees on piano and Hobson on trombone in the Greenwich Village home of James Agee's sister.
Harper's Bazaar
Harper’s Bazaar is an American fashion magazine, first published in 1867. Harper’s Bazaar is published by Hearst and, as a magazine, considers itself to be the style resource for “women who are the first to buy the best, from casual to couture.”...
(1950s), and Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
(1960s) magazines. He was also a competent musician (trombone
Trombone
The trombone is a musical instrument in the brass family. Like all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player’s vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate...
), author of an history of American jazz, and long-time contributor to Saturday Review (1940s, 1950s, 1960s) magazine. Also, he served on the planning committee of the Institute of Jazz Studies
Institute of Jazz Studies
The Institute of Jazz Studies is the largest and most comprehensive library and archive of jazz and jazz-related materials in the world, located at the Newark campus of Rutgers University.-History:...
.
Early Years
Born in 1906, Hobson attended Yale UniversityYale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
. There, he was a roommate of Dwight Macdonald
Dwight Macdonald
Dwight Macdonald was an American writer, editor, film critic, social critic, philosopher, and political radical.-Early life and career:...
, classmate of James Agee
James Agee
James Rufus Agee was an American author, journalist, poet, screenwriter and film critic. In the 1940s, he was one of the most influential film critics in the U.S...
, and a 1928 member of Scroll and Key
Scroll and Key
The Scroll and Key Society is a secret society, founded in 1842 at Yale University, in New Haven, Connecticut. It is the wealthiest and second oldest Yale secret society...
.
Famed American documentary photographer Walker Evans
Walker Evans
Walker Evans was an American photographer best known for his work for the Farm Security Administration documenting the effects of the Great Depression. Much of Evans's work from the FSA period uses the large-format, 8x10-inch camera...
captured Hobson and Agee on a Long Island beach during the summer of 1937, when Evans and Agee were visiting Hobson and his first wife Peggy. (The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...
houses those photos, which are also available online—see "Images," below.)
Magazines
Hobson wrote for TIME in the 1930s and 1940s. After covering a coal strike during the 1930s, he helped lead unionization at Time and became the first head of Times Newspaper GuildNewspaper Guild
The Newspaper Guild-CWA is a labor union founded by newspaper journalists in 1933 who noticed that unionized printers and truck drivers were making more money than they did...
branch.
In October 1942, Hobson succeeded the late Calvin Fixx as assistant editor to Whittaker Chambers
Whittaker Chambers
Whittaker Chambers was born Jay Vivian Chambers and also known as David Whittaker Chambers , was an American writer and editor. After being a Communist Party USA member and Soviet spy, he later renounced communism and became an outspoken opponent later testifying in the perjury and espionage trial...
, then editor of Arts & Entertainment. Other writers working for Chambers included: novelist Nigel Dennis
Nigel Dennis
Nigel Forbes Dennis was an English writer, critic, playwright and magazine editor.-Early life:Born at his grandfather's house in Surrey, England, Dennis was the son of Lt.-Col...
, future New York Times Book Review editor Harvey Breit
Harvey Breit
Harvey Breit was an American poet, editor, and playwright. He was married to poet and playwright Patricia Rinehart. He co-wrote the play The Disenchanted with Budd Schulberg, an adaption from Schulberg's novel of the same name, about the life of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Breit adapted other novels for...
, and poets Howard Moss
Howard Moss
Howard Moss was an American poet, dramatist and critic, who was poetry editor of The New Yorker magazine from 1948 until his death. He won the National Book Award in 1972 for Selected Poems.-Biography:...
and Weldon Kees
Weldon Kees
Harry Weldon Kees was an American poet, painter, literary critic, novelist, jazz pianist, and short story writer...
. Hobson worked amidst the struggle between Soviet-sympathizing and anti-Communist staffers at TIME. Chambers and Willi Schlamm
Willi Schlamm
William S. Schlamm was an Austrian-American journalist. Born in Przemyśl, then part of the Austrian Empire, the son of a wealthy Jewish merchant, he became a Communist, being received when he was 16 years old by Vladimir Lenin in the Kremlin, After completing his Abitur , he became a writer...
led the anti-Communist camp (and both later joined the founding editorial board of William F. Buckley, Jr.
William F. Buckley, Jr.
William Frank Buckley, Jr. was an American conservative author and commentator. He founded the political magazine National Review in 1955, hosted 1,429 episodes of the television show Firing Line from 1966 until 1999, and was a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist. His writing was noted for...
's National Review
National Review
National Review is a biweekly magazine founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955 and based in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion."Although the print version of the...
). Theodore H. White
Theodore H. White
Theodore Harold White was an American political journalist, historian, and novelist, known for his wartime reporting from China and accounts of the 1960, 1964, 1968, 1972 and 1980 presidential elections.-Life and career:...
and Richad Lauterbach led the pro-Soviet camp. TIME founder Henry R. Luce came to support the anti-Communist camp before the end of World War II in 1945. Hobson, however, rode out the storm and even managed to write two books at TIME: a historical study called American Jazz Music (1939—see "Music," below) and a novel called All Summer Long (1945).
When Chambers received a promotion to senior editor in September 1943 and then joined TIMEs senior editorial group in December 1932, Hobson succeeded to the Arts & Entertainment section. He hired friend Walker Evans to write reviews first on Film and then on Art (1943–1945).
In 1946, Hobson moved to editorial board of Fortune, where he worked until severe writer's block caused him to resign.
In November 1950, Hobson became managing editor of Harper's Bazaar (then with a ciruculation of 340,605), replacing Frances MacFadden, who retired after 18 years in that position.
Later, Hobson joined Newsweek, where he worked for a decade.
Hobson become a contributor to the (now defunct) Saturday Review during the late 1940s, the 1950s, and into the 1960s.
Later and Life of Verna Hobson
Hobson was a heavy alcoholic and died at the age of 57 in 1963 of gastrointestinal hemorrhage in Princeton, New JerseyPrinceton, New Jersey
Princeton is a community located in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. It is best known as the location of Princeton University, which has been sited in the community since 1756...
.
Hobson married his second wife, Verna Harrison (1923–2004), in the mid-1940s after meeting at TIME. At first they lived in Manhattan but moved to Princeton. Each year, they summered at on Squirrel Island, Maine while playing in the Hennessy Five Star Orchestra. Mrs. Hobson worked 1954-1966 as secretary to Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Oppenheimer
Julius Robert Oppenheimer was an American theoretical physicist and professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. Along with Enrico Fermi, he is often called the "father of the atomic bomb" for his role in the Manhattan Project, the World War II project that developed the first...
, then director of the Institute for Advanced Study
Institute for Advanced Study
The Institute for Advanced Study, located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States, is an independent postgraduate center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It was founded in 1930 by Abraham Flexner...
. After her husband's death in 1964, she moved to London and worked first for the American Association of University Women and then for the London branch of Robert Matthew
Robert Matthew
Sir Robert Hogg Matthew, OBE, FRIBA was a Scottish architect and a leading proponent of modernism.- Early life & studies :Robert Matthew was the son of John Matthew . He was born and brought up in Edinburgh, and attended the Edinburgh College of Art.- Career :Robert was apprenticed with his...
, Johnson-Marshall, architects. In 1976, she returned to America and settled in New Gloucester, Maine, working for the independent weekly New Gloucester News and also helping to re-establish The Squirrel Island Squid. In 1998, she became a photographic stringer for The Lewiston Sun. In 2001, she moved to New Rochelle, New York
New Rochelle, New York
New Rochelle is a city in Westchester County, New York, United States, in the southeastern portion of the state.The town was settled by refugee Huguenots in 1688 who were fleeing persecution in France...
, to live with her son Archie's family. Surrounded by family and friends, Verna Harrison Hobson died in hospice care on April 13, 2004.
Music
In 1939, Hobson became the second American to write a major book on jazz, American Jazz Music. A year earlier, colleague Winthrop SargeantWinthrop Sargeant
Winthrop Sargeant was an American music critic, violinist, and writer. He studied the violin in his native city with Albert Elkus and with Felix Prohaska and Lucien Capet in Europe. In 1922, at the age of 18, he became the youngest member of the San Francisco Symphony...
, staff writer at Life in 1938. Sargeant believed that the "swing" in jazz derived from complex African multi-rhythms adapted to relatively simple Western music. Hobson and Sargeant—both amateur, though well informed, jazz enthusiast—believed that jazz came from New Orleans bordellos, whereas in the 1930s European scholars like Robert Goffin
Robert Goffin
Robert Goffin was a Belgian lawyer, author, and poet, credited with writing the first "serious" book on jazz, Aux Frontières du Jazz in 1932.-Life:...
of Belgium and Hugues Panassié
Hugues Panassié
Hugues Panassié was a French jazz critic and producer. His most famous works were Hot Jazz: The Guide to Swing Music and The Real Jazz, published in 1936 and 1942, respectively....
of France had already ascribed (correctly) that jazz was a "vernacular-based art."
Wilder's close ancestors were Maine
Maine
Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...
"Downeasters" and he played summers on Squirrel Island
Squirrel Island, Maine
Squirrel Island, Maine is a summer resort colony off the coast of Boothbay Harbor. The origin of the name is unknown, since according to island chronicler Charles McLane "[s]quirrels do not inhabit the island ."Farmers and sheep herders have resided on Squirrel Island since the American...
in Southport
Southport, Maine
Southport is a town in Lincoln County, Maine, United States. The population was 684 at the 2000 census. It includes the villages of Southport, West Southport, Cape Newagen, and Squirrel Island.-History:...
with the Hennessy Five-Star Orchestra, which slide-trombonist Wilder joined in 1921 at age 15. Wilder's second wife Verna later became a tuba player. Family members still return, where, as of 2001, the Hennessy band was "still alive and well." Daughter Eliza Hobson became a jazz disc jockey and broadcast journalist as well as playing piano and guitar. A biography of TIME colleague Weldon Kees includes a reminiscence of Kees on piano and Hobson on trombone in the Greenwich Village home of James Agee's sister.
Books
- American Jazz Music. (NY: W.W. Norton, 1939, republished in 1941 and 1976)
- All Summer Long. (New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1945) (review in TIME)
Articles
- "Hobson on Jazz," TIME, April 10, 1939
- "Clarinetist's Progress," TIME, April 17, 1939
- "An Album of Chinese Paintings," LIFE, October 11, 1943, 7 pp
- "The Business Suit - A short and possibly tactless essay on the costuming of American enterprise," Fortune, July 1948, illustrated by Bernarda Bryson
- "The Gospel Truth," Down BeatDown BeatDown Beat is an American magazine devoted to "jazz, blues and beyond" to indicate its expansion beyond the jazz realm which it covered exclusively in previous years. The publication was established in 1934 in Chicago, Illinois...
, May 30, 1968. vol. 35, p. 19. (posthumous)
Photos
- Metropolitan Museum of Art - photo of Wilder Hobson by Walker Evans in 1937 (one of 30 in collection)
- Portsmouth Herald - Wilder Hobson as part of the Hennessy Five Star Orchestra on Squirrel Island in Booth Bay Harbor, Maine
Sources
- Herzstein, Robert E. Henry R. Luce, Time, and the American Crusade in Asia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005). ISBN 9780521835770
- Rathbone, Belinda. Walker Evans: A Biography (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Books, 1995). ISBN 9780618056729
- Reidel, James. Vanished Act: The Life and Art of Weldon Kees'. (University of Nebraska Press, 2007). ISBN 9780803259775
- Tanenhaus, Sam. Whittaker Chambers: A Biography (New York: Random House, 1997). ISBN 978-0394585598.
- Down Beat magazine