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Italian Women's Experiences with American Consumer Culture, 1945–1975 pp 27–50Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

How to Read like Mrs. Consumer: Modernizing and Americanizing the Mondadori Publishing Company’s Magazine Division

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Part of the book series: Italian and Italian American Studies ((IIAS))

Abstract

This chapter reveals for the first time the modernization and Americanization of the Mondadori Publishing Company’s magazine division after the Second World War. Exploring the concentrated efforts and various strategies of company owner, Arnoldo Mondadori, to Americanize his magazines, including courting the powerful American publisher Henry R. Luce, founder of Time, Life, and Fortune magazines, and his wife, Clare Boothe Luce, US Ambassador to Italy (1953–1956), Harris illustrates how Mondadori’s publications played a key role in bringing postwar American female consumer culture to Italy. Additionally, this chapter demonstrates how this culture created new definitions for Italian women that contrasted with the traditionally more conservative Catholic and Communist models also competing for prominence in postwar Italy.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Grazia, 13 Novembre 1960.

  2. 2.

    Album Mondadori 1907/2007, 2007, 169; Mondadori Group, “Mondadori History,” accessed April 15, 2015, http://www.mondadori.com/Group/History

  3. 3.

    Pier Paolo D’Attore (1991, 28); “Mondadori History.”

  4. 4.

    William Murray (2000, 186).

  5. 5.

    “Mondadori History.”

  6. 6.

    The Gialli Mondadori book covers were yellow hence the name gialli, which means yellow in Italian. In Italy, detective stories, both literary and film/TV, are known as gialli.

  7. 7.

    Grazia, in fact, was targeted by the regime because it was seen as promoting a depraved and tasteless femininity deriving from French periodicals that contrasted the rural housewife ideal promoted by Mussolini. For more information regarding the ideal Fascist woman and foreign feminine models, see Chaps. 1 and 5. Enrico Decleva (1993, 243).

  8. 8.

    “Mondadori History.”

  9. 9.

    Ibid.

  10. 10.

    John Killick (1997, 46).

  11. 11.

    Ibid., 48.

  12. 12.

    Sylvia Jukes Morris (2014), Kindle.

  13. 13.

    Killick.

  14. 14.

    Ibid., 119.

  15. 15.

    D.W. Ellwood (1995, 34).

  16. 16.

    Decleva (1993, 399).

  17. 17.

    Ibid., 397, 398.; Album Mondadori 1907/2007, 236.

  18. 18.

    Filmic Light, Snow White Archive, accessed July 20, 2014, http://filmic-light.blogspot.com/2011/01/kay-kamen-growth-of-disneyana.html

  19. 19.

    Fondazione Arnoldo e Alberto Mondadori (FAAM), Milano, Archivio Storico Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, Arnoldo Mondadori, fasc. Walt Disney, Arnoldo Mondadori a Kay Kamen, Milan, 19th January 1949.

  20. 20.

    Album Mondadori 1907/2007, 396–397.

  21. 21.

    Ibid., 492.

  22. 22.

    Ibid., 339.

  23. 23.

    Vera Zamagni (1995, 77).

  24. 24.

    Ibid., 78.

  25. 25.

    Ibid., 86.

  26. 26.

    Penny Sparke (1995, 161).

  27. 27.

    “Mondadori History.”

  28. 28.

    Selezione first appeared on Italian newsstands in 1948. The magazine, from its articles to advertisements, promoted the “American way of life.” Chiara Campo argues in “L’America in salotto: Il Reader’s Digest in Italia” that the periodical was a “spokesman and interpreter of middle-class Americanism” which “made it the ideal tool for the diplomacy of ideas.” Since Italy was an important piece in the Cold War political puzzle, Selezione played a significant role in bringing its readers, who were primarily women, away from the Communist threat and closer toward the prosperity and abundance of the United States. Campo concludes that “if Selezione’s task was to Americanize its readers, one has to conclude that the purpose was reached: the middle-class (certainly not only for the role played by the magazine) was not only the protagonist of the consumerism boom, but also the first supporters of the alliance with the United States, the most tenacious adversary of the Communists” Chiara Campo (1991, 426).

  29. 29.

    Album Mondadori 1907/2007, 236.

  30. 30.

    The Mondadoris traveled to the United States in 1954, 1960, 1964, and 1969.

  31. 31.

    Murray (2000, 186).

  32. 32.

    Janet Flanner and Natalia Danesi Murray Papers: A Finding Aid to the Collection in the Library of Congress (1996/2010, 4).

  33. 33.

    FAAM, fasc. Natalia Danesi Murray, Arnoldo Mondadori a Natalia Danesi Murray, Promemoria per la Signora Danesi.

  34. 34.

    FAAM, fasc. Natalia Danesi Murray, Arnoldo Mondadori a Natalia Danesi Murray, 13 febbraio 1953.

  35. 35.

    Ibid.

  36. 36.

    FAAM, fasc. Natalia Danesi Murray, Natalia Danesi Murray a Arnoldo Mondadori, 15 ottobre 1953.

  37. 37.

    FAAM, fasc. Natalia Danesi Murray, Natalia Danesi Murray a Arnoldo Mondadori, 3 marzo 1954.

  38. 38.

    Ibid.

  39. 39.

    FAAM, fasc. Natalia Danesi Murray, Arnoldo Mondadori a Natalia Danesi Murray, 16 luglio 1954.

  40. 40.

    FAAM, fasc. Clare Boothe Luce, Tentative Schedule – Visit of Arnoldo Mondadori to Time Inc., September 28, 1954.; FAAM, fasc. Natalia Danesi Murray, Arnoldo Mondadori a Natalia Danesi Murray, 16 luglio 1954.

  41. 41.

    FAAM, fasc. Natalia Danesi Murray, William Murray a Russell Bourne, November 15, 1954.

  42. 42.

    FAAM, fasc. LIFE, Arnoldo Mondadori a Alberto Tedeschi, 8 gennaio 1958.

  43. 43.

    Murray (2000, 229).

  44. 44.

    Ibid., 230.

  45. 45.

    FAAM, fasc. Clare Boothe Luce, Arnoldo Mondadori a Henry Luce, February 10, 1953.

  46. 46.

    Ibid.

  47. 47.

    Clare Boothe Luce was an accomplished journalist and successful playwright before entering the political world. She wrote several plays that were taken to production. Her most famous play was The Women, a hit on Broadway, and which served as the basis for the famous 1939 film version of the same name starring Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, and Rosalind Russell and directed by George Cukor. In the late 1920s and into the mid-1930s, Boothe Luce worked for Vogue and Vanity Fair, becoming the managing editor of the latter. Following her time at these two magazines, she worked as a war correspondent for Time. Jukes Morris (1997), Kindle.

  48. 48.

    FAAM, fasc. Natalia Danesi Murray, Natalia Danesi Murray a Clare Boothe Luce, February 18, 1953.

  49. 49.

    FAAM, fasc. Clare Boothe Luce, Arnoldo Mondadori a Henry Luce, 21 aprile 1953.

  50. 50.

    Decleva (1993, 416).

  51. 51.

    FAAM, fasc. Natalia Danesi Murray, Arnoldo Mondadori a Natalia Danesi Murray, 1 giugno 1953.

  52. 52.

    Ibid.

  53. 53.

    FAAM, fasc. Natalia Danesi Murray, Arnoldo Mondadori a Natalia Danesi Murray, 17 agosto 1953.

  54. 54.

    Jukes Morris (2014), Kindle.

  55. 55.

    Ibid.

  56. 56.

    Alessandro Brogi (2002, 13).

  57. 57.

    Jukes Morris (2014), Kindle.

  58. 58.

    Longines Chronoscope, 1955, https://www.c-span.org/video/?299426-1/ambassador-clare-boothe-luce-interview

  59. 59.

    Jukes Morris (2014), Kindle.

  60. 60.

    Ibid.

  61. 61.

    Mario Del Pero (2004, 412); Brogi (2002, 11–12).

  62. 62.

    Jukes Morris (2014) Kindle.

  63. 63.

    OSPs were contracts between the United States and various western European countries in which the United States gave money to these countries for armament development. The armaments would then be used by the producing countries as well as other NATO members. Leopoldo Nuti (2002, 40).

  64. 64.

    Clare Boothe Luce (1986, 14–15).

  65. 65.

    Jukes Morris (1997) Kindle.

  66. 66.

    Henry R. Luce (1999, 165).

  67. 67.

    Ibid., 166, 168.

  68. 68.

    FAAM, fasc. LIFE, Arnoldo Mondadori a Henry Luce, 12 aprile 1955.

  69. 69.

    Ibid.

  70. 70.

    FAAM, fasc. Clare Boothe Luce, Arnoldo Mondadori a Clare Boothe Luce, May 3, 1955.

  71. 71.

    FAAM, fasc. Natalia Danesi Murray, Arnoldo Mondadori a Natalia Danesi Murray, 3 dicembre 1955, 15 dicembre 1955.

  72. 72.

    FAAM, fasc. Natalia Danesi Murray, Natalia Danesi Murray a Arnoldo Mondadori, 19 dicembre 1955.

  73. 73.

    “Mondadori History.”

  74. 74.

    FAAM, fasc. Natalia Danesi Murray, Natalia Danesi Murray a Arnoldo Mondadori, 23 novembre 1955.

  75. 75.

    Campo (1991, 426).

  76. 76.

    Umberto Eco (1991, 29).

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  1. St. John’s University, Queens, NY, USA

    Jessica L. Harris

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Harris, J.L. (2020). How to Read like Mrs. Consumer: Modernizing and Americanizing the Mondadori Publishing Company’s Magazine Division. In: Italian Women's Experiences with American Consumer Culture, 1945–1975. Italian and Italian American Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47825-4_2

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