Scribner's to the Smoking Room

David A. Smart is a onetime stenographer who in 1937 exulted: "Why didn't somebody tell me about this publishing game before? It's a cinch." Dave Smart had twice hit the jackpot: with Apparel Arts, a men's fashion magazine which began paying off soon after he started it in 1931, and Esquire, which, started in 1933, became a hit overnight. Esquire's Editor Arnold Gingrich packed it full of cheaply bought stories by big-name authors and flashy risque color cartoons, made it the greatest smoking-room magazine of all time. Circulation zoomed until it hit 625,000 in December 1937, and that issue carried 155 pages of advertising. Dave Smart and his co-publisher, William Hobart Weintraub, thought they could not miss.

But miss they did. In October 1936, they started Coronet, a pocket-sized monthly which now sells about 150,000 copies a month. In April 1938, Messrs. Smart, Gingrich and Weintraub tried again with Ken, and Ken folded last month (TIME, July 10). Meanwhile, Esquire was having its own troubles. By last June its advertising guarantee had been cut to 450,000 and Esquire had trouble meeting that. Dave Smart and his brother Alfred had sold $1,400,000 of their stock and the stock had dropped from $16 to $4 a share.

Last week Dave Smart did two things to boost the sales of his magazines: 1) he cut the price of Coronet from 35-c- to 25-c-, effective with the September issue; 2) he bought, for a reputed $11,000, the 80,000 circulation of Scribner's Magazine, which suspended publication last May (TIME, May 15).

Far from a flop is Esquire. With a circulation of even 350,000 it could be a financial success. Its stories are no longer hand-me-downs and its cartoons are often funny to anybody. Publishers like it because it has made the men's clothing industry advertising-conscious. Women like it because it has changed the clothing habits of the American male. Men's clothing advertisers like it because it is the U. S. male Vogue. Men like it because it is still the best smoking-room magazine in the land.

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