True Story Magazine

In 1919 the eccentric publisher Bernarr Macfadden began publication of True Story Magazine. According to Macfadden the magazine was inspired by personal letters of "confession" sent to him in his capacity as the editor/founder of Physical Culture. Sensing a widespread interest in the changing social/sexual codes of modern America, Macfadden put out a new magazine filled with first-hand accounts of social problems such as pre-marital sex, illegitimacy, adultery, unemployment, social relations, and crime (alongside ever-so slightly risque movie-stills of each story's most dramatic moments—the kiss, the temptation, the horrible realization). The magazine personalized issues that were hotly debated in Jazz Age America (dancing, drinking, partying, petting) and offered a unique working-class perspective on issues that were not necessarily unique to the working class. Sensational, emotional, and controversial, True Story disseminated tales of sex, sin, and redemption that seemingly revealed the ubiquity of modern sexual and social "irregularity." Most educated observers hated the magazine, figuring that it depicted the worst aspect of the "revolution in manners and morals" that occurred in the 1920s.

But workaday America loved the new confessional magazine. True Story became the publishing smash hit of the 1920s. In 1934 one critic offered Macfadden a back-handed complement when he noted that millions of Americans "wallow in the filth of his politely dressed confessions." Achieving circulation figures close to the two million mark by 1929, True Story easily matched the sales of traditional big-sellers such as Ladies Home Journal and the Saturday Evening Post. True Story (along with siblings True Romance and True Experience, and competitors like True Confessions) would maintain a large and devoted readership right into the 1990s. However the True Story which can be found on back shelves in supermarkets today bears only a slight resemblance to the popular original. Macfadden lost control of his publication during the 1940s, but even by that time the magazine had come to represent a much more muted version of the original "confessional" genre. Over time True Story evolved into a magazine that told mild tales of women's sexual misadventure, tempered by strong doses of normative moral sermonizing. In the 1920s, the period in which True Story shocked middle-class Americans into a series of renewed (and somewhat successful) efforts at censorship, the magazine was an innovative, raunchy, working-class pulp that purveyed an eclectic range of stories designed to appeal to both a male and female audience.

The popularity of True Story has too often been ascribed solely to its "sex sells" credo. In fact, in the 1920s True Story offered the reader much more than titillating sex tales; it offered working-class Americans stories told in their own voice (the magazine offered money for reader's personal stories). Although scholars have, and not without reason, scoffed at Macfadden's claims that his stories were both true and written by authentic working-class Americans, there is little question that his idea that stories of everyday working-class life were important was an original one. True Story argued, both explicitly and implicitly, that the story of modern working-class America was drama of epic proportions. In its original guise, True Story told tales of how working-class men and women struggled to negotiate the changes wrought by modernity. The central premise of the magazine in those early days was the notion that "it is a new world … and it might be well to get ready for it." True Story claimed to help its readers make sense of the "maelstrom of chaotic inconsistency" that was modern life and taught them how to safely embrace "the enthusiastic, buoyant spirit" of the Jazz Age. In short True Story told tales of seemingly particular modern moral downfall (drugs, crime, sex)—even if it did then offer up some patently old-fashioned and universal remedies for redemption (confess, make amends, walk a straighter path).

The importance of True Story lies in the ways in which it challenged the hegemony of middle-class publishing norms. Failing to apologize for the cheapness of his endeavor, Macfadden outraged middle America (even as it tempted its youth) by daring to elevate rowdy, raunchy, working-class youth into modern heroes and heroines. True Story not only revealed and popularized the ways in which working-class youth flouted convention; it argued that its working-class antihero/ines were the success stories of modern America. True Story valorized the lifestyles of the new American working class, with their extra dollars in their pockets, their love of material goods, and their desire for things previously denied. The magazine did not deny the realities of modern temptation; rather, True Story explicitly argued that it could teach working-class youth how to safely negotiate their path through modern life—through the vicarious (albeit entertaining) experience of stumbling, falling, and getting up again.

As the 1920s progressed True Story lost its radical edge. Bernarr Macfadden, influenced by new marketing credos, sought to expand his advertising and his audience base. In order to achieve greater circulation figures and larger advertising revenues, Macfadden successfully transformed his confessional magazine into a women's magazine. He achieved this transformation by erasing most of the "men's stories," including advertising that targeted women, and—as a pander to conservative advertisers—toning down the content of the confessional stories. By the 1930s True Story was a tamer version of the original confessional concept, and a decidedly less exciting one. Although True Story lost its male readership along with its male confessions, the magazine did continue to offer one of the few working-class voices in the marketplace. However that voice was less raw, more conservative, and increasingly mediated by the concerns of advertisers and editors. True Story would barely change its format in the following seven decades. Although the transformation of the magazine into a women's romance magazine proved an effective survival strategy, the moment at which True Story was most vital, most alive, was undoubtedly during that time in the 1920s when Macfadden's confessional stories seemed to herald (terrifyingly and excitingly) the dawn of a raunchy modern American moment.

—Jackie Hatton

Further Reading:

Ernst, Robert. Weakness is a Crime: The Life of Bernarr Macfadden. New York, Syracuse University, 1991.

Hatton, Jacqueline Anne. True Stories: Working-Class Mythology, American Confessional Culture, and True Story Magazine, 1919-1929. Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, Cornell University, 1997.

Hersey, Harold. Pulpwood Editor: The Fabulous World of Thriller Magazines Revealed By a Veteran Editor and Publisher. New York, Frederick A. Stokes, 1937.

Oursler, Fulton. The True Story of Bernarr Macfadden. New York, Lewis Copeland, 1929.