Collier's - Later Years

Later Years

During World War II, with William L. Chenery as the editor (1941), Collier's readership reached 2.5 million. In the October 14, 1944, issue, the magazine published one of the first articles about concentration camps, Jan Karski's "Polish Death Camp," a harrowing account of his visit to Belzec. Collier's carried that excerpt from Karski's Story of a Secret State a month-and-a-half prior to the book's publication by Houghton Mifflin. A Book of the Month Club selection, Karski's book became a bestseller, with 400,000 copies sold in 1944-45. The Collier's selection was reprinted in Robert H. Abzug's America Views the Holocaust: 1933-1945 (Palgrave, 1999).

Collier's had a circulation of 2,846,052 when Walter Davenport took over as editor in 1946, but the magazine began to lose readers during the post-World War II years. Collier's published a regular men's fashion feature contributed by Esquire co-founder Henry L. Jackson and also published long-awaited images from the 200-inch (5.08 m) Hale telescope's first light in 1949. In the early 1950s, Collier's ran a groundbreaking series of science-based articles speculating on space flight, Man Will Conquer Space Soon!, which prompted the general public to seriously consider the possibility of a trip to the moon, with the percentage of Americans who believed a manned lunar trip could happen within 50 years changing from 15% to 38% by 1955.

In 1951, an entire issue described the events and outcome of a hypothetical war between the United States and the Soviet Union, entitled Preview of the War We Do Not Want. Collier's changed from a weekly to a biweekly in August 1953, but it continued to lose money. In 1954, John O'Hara became a columnist with his "Appointment with O'Hara" column.

The magazine ceased publication with the January 4, 1957 issue.