Marian Sulzberger Heiskell, Who Came up with the Idea for PEOPLE Magazine, Dies at 100

Steve Helling
Updated

Marian Sulzberger Heiskell, the New York-based philanthropist who came up with the idea for PEOPLE Magazine, died in her Manhattan home last week. She was 100.

Sulzberger Heiskell was well known for her philanthropic work in New York. According to the New York Times, she was a director of the National Audubon Society, the National Park Foundation, the New York Botanical Garden, the New York City Partnership and the Community Service Society of New York.

In addition to her community activism, Sulzberger Heiskell has been credited with coming up with the idea for PEOPLE Magazine. In 1965, she married Andrew Heiskell, who would later become the chairman of Time Inc., the parent company of PEOPLE from 1974 to 2018. (Meredith Corporation has since acquired Time Inc.)

PEOPLE’s former managing editor, Landon Y. Jones, tells the New York Times that Sulzberger Heiskell suggested that her husband expand the one-page “People” segment in Time to a standalone magazine.

“In the early 1970s, she remarked to her husband, that the best read department of TIME magazine was its weekly ‘People’ page featuring celebrities. She suggested that a magazine could be started called PEOPLE.”

Dick Stolley, PEOPLE’s founding managing editor, says that Sulzberger Heiskell was always a big proponent of the magazine.

“I don’t know if she suggested it to her husband; I can’t speak to that,” Stolley tells PEOPLE. “But she was a really big advocate for PEOPLE. She loved this magazine.”

Sulzberger Heiskell’s passion transpired into a lot of long hours that went into the creation of PEOPLE magazine.

“An idea is one thing, but execution takes a lot of hard work,” Stolley says.

PEOPLE’s first issue hit newsstands in March 1974 with Mia Farrow on the cover. Stolley says that they learned a lot of lessons from the start.

People
People

“We said that PEOPLE would sell a million copies on the newsstand, and people thought we were crazy. But by July of 1974, we were selling a million copies!”

PEOPLE’s success may not have happened without Sulzberger Heiskell. “[Her husband] took her idea to the editors,” Landon Y. Jones tells the Times, “and the result was the creation of PEOPLE, which became one of the biggest successes in publishing history.”