The Vanity Fair Diaries by Tina Brown
NICKY HASLAM The Vanity Fair Diaries
By Tina Brown Weidenfeld and Nicolson £25 Oldie price £15.87 inc p&p
Vanity Fair was once the crown jewel of Condé Nast’s publishing company. Edited – perhaps controlled is more accurate – by the brilliantly urbane Frank Crowninshield, it had been the ne plus ultra of sophisticated American wit, taste and intellectual novelty. But post-war years and staff had somehow dulled its edge and, by the early 1960s, when I was hired by Condé Nast, the
emergence of a vibrant post-war American fashion industry had made Vogue the leading light on news-stands; indeed, it carried the logo ‘ Vogue Incorporating Vanity Fair’. A few months later, when Condé Nast was bought by the Newhouse group, VF was left to languish, unloved and unused.
To financial wizards like Newhouse, Seventh Avenue was a winner, but why not take on Park Avenue as well? So plans were made to revive this sleeping milch-cow, and a new VF appeared. The project was a dismal failure, and the Newhouse boys scratched their canny heads. Their eyes fell on Tina Brown in England, who had yanked Tatler from its Betty Kenward-style doldrums. Tina had the scent of hot-blooded New York already in her nostrils, and Tatler was a mere perfume-tester for her; she was
convinced that she was born to edit a major American magazine.
After a few months of dickering, Si Newhouse installed her as Vanity Fair’s editor. Their decision, and Tina’s conviction, were spot on. It was a true case of ‘I’ll take Manhattan’.
How did Brown ever find time, while operating and schmoozing day and night deep in that heart of taxes and takeovers, the photo shoots and celebs, the climbers and the fallen-crested, to keep these lengthy, detailed diaries? A single entry notices Lord Lambton ‘gauntly waving’, Stephen Spender’s ‘wonderfully malicious nostrils’, and Jackie Onassis at the end of the evening carrying ‘her strange, tight stare away into the spring night’. The description of this party is reason enough to buy the book.
Her genius showed not only in
commissioning a raft of good writers, from Dominick Dunne to William Styron and James Fox, but in importing a kitchen cabinet of young English firebrands, among them Chris Garrett, Sarah Giles, Michael Roberts, and particularly Miles Chapman, of whose later illness she writes with a tendresse as deep as that with which she recounts the difficult birth and infancy of her first child, her marriage with Harry Evans, her separation from her dearly loved parents and, occasionally, her nostalgia for England. She has an alarmingly acute ear for conversations, whether later embroidered or not, and her impressions of the Condé Nast grandees chime exactly with mine from a few years before.
Tina charms the pants off them, and sends sales and revenue rocketing, but she is canny enough to keep an eye out for other offers, such as Barry Diller’s of her own film studio, or the rival Hearst’s to make her commander-in-chief of its huge print empire, even Alex Liberman’s suggestion of taking over his hitherto unassailable position as editorial director of all Condé Nast’s publications. Neither is she afraid to take on Si Newhouse, frequently branding him a wimp when he wants to put social fears above press freedom. So she stayed where she was, cutting deals for ever-higher salary increases rather than any highfalutin corporate title.
Eventually she is offered the irresistible jewel in the Condé crown, the editorship of the New Yorker. To this she brought the same verve, leaving a glittering bedrock at VF for its next editor, Graydon Carter, to build on. After some years updating the New Yorker, there came the fated debacle of Talk, a magazine financed by Harvey Weinstein – perhaps the only person Tina did not see through at first sight – and launched with a vast, vain party at the Statue of Liberty. Whether Tina is as loved now in her adopted city is a moot point, but we can only hope she kept as vivid a diary over these ensuing years.