Founded in 1911 in Chicago, the same year that J. Stuart Blackton founded Motion Picture Story, Photoplay began as a short fiction magazine concerned mostly with the plots and characters of films at the time and was used as a promotional tool for those films.
Photoplay covers in the 1910s
In 1915, Julian Johnson and James R. Quirk became the editors (though Quirk had been vice president of the magazine since its inception), and together they created a format which would set a precedent for almost all celebrity magazines that followed.
By 1918, the circulation exceeded 200,000, with the popularity of the magazine fueled by the public’s increasing interest in the private lives of celebrities.
For most of its run, Photoplay was published by Macfadden Publications. In 1921, Photoplay established what is considered the first significant annual movie award. The magazine ceased publication in 1980.
A set of amazing photos that shows early Photoplay covers featuring classic beauties in the 1910s.
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