As long as they have been in public life, the Kennedys have been associated with the press, making their first fan movie magazine appearance in the September 1927 issue of Photoplay. By the early 1960s, there were upwards of forty fan magazines, including Photoplay, Motion Picture, Modern Screen, and TV Radio Screen. The forerunners of the modern “celebrity magazines” such as Us Weekly and In Touch, the movie mags covered the misadventures, tribulations and lifestyles of television and film stars.
In the wake of the Red Scare and the advent of television, movie admissions and, thus, the movie magazines’ revenue from advertising had dramatically decreased. In response, tabloid editors used Jackie Kennedy’s image with unabashed frequency. Much as popcorn kept movie theaters afloat after the advent of television, so Jackie stories salvaged the movie magazines. Life in the White House had become the world’s most exciting movie and the movie magazines were committed to covering it.
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