Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Trump Letter-1957



Not much Wood here but an interesting letter from the January, 1957 issue of PLAYBOY, published the same month that issue 1 of TRUMP came out. Apparently TIME had stated flat out that MAD was gone!

Trump

I purchased TIME and read the article they ran about you and also the statement which inferred (sic) that MAD was defunct (“a short-lived satire pulp magazine”) and that you had hired the entire staff. I was shocked, to say the least, by the unethical, underhanded method you used to try and give the impression to the public that Mad was defunct. My friends and I feel the same way about the matter. I was so annoyed that I have decided to take the following action:

1. I will no longer buy TIME as I have come to the conclusion they print articles which have not been cleared and verified.

2. I will no longer buy PLAYBOY, though till now I would never have thought of missing an issue.

3. With the money I save from TIME and PLAYBOY, I intend to extend my subscription to MAD because I do not believe it will come defunct.

In all fairness to Al Feldstein, the new editor of MAD, I would like to say that I read his last two issues and enjoyed them very much—just as much as the earlier issues not edited by him.

Jerry H.

Brooklyn

The error was TIME’s, not ours: they mistakenly assumed that because PLAYBOY hired the magazine’s editorial staff, MAD was defunct. We’ve long been fans of MAD, too—that’s why we wanted its editors (Harvey Kurtzman, Harry Chester) and artists (Bill Elder, Jack Davis, Wally Wood) to help create our new humor mag, TRUMP.

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