Los Angeles Times West
Adding even more weight to the Sunday edition of the Los Angeles Times, West magazine debuted in September of 1966.
Looking to capture the vitality of color and life in modern Western America, the new publication
Reviews ranged from the positive, "The magazine fills the needs of many Southern Californians... I think West is the best thing that has ever happened to the Los Angeles Times", to the unimpressed, "I am appalled! Is this the voice of the New Left? Your articles are disgusting when you spend pages giving free publicity to organizations such as the Free Press... Please cover the fine and good things about our California and leave the politics to the editorials."
First introduced in September 1965 by Times publisher Otis Chandler as 'a new weekly rotogravure magazine', West named former Saturday Evening Post staffer Marshall Lumsden (1922-2010) as editor. Supervising the editorial operation was James Toland - a familiar name who was then editing the Los Angeles Times' other Sunday companion, Home (then in its 20th year).
Lumsden departed in the fall of 1971 to start the psychology magazine Human Behavior. Taking over was Peter Bunzel. This was short-lived as the magazine only survived until 1974.
Among the notable writers for West were Digby Diehl, George Christy, Ray Bradbury, William Saroyan, and Reva Berger. Art director and photographer Mike Salisbury joined the weekly in 1967 and remained until 1973. Salisbury went on to design album cover artwork and joined Francis Ford Coppola's Bay area magazine City in 1975.
Los Angeles Times West.
“From Yesteryear”, 1971. Ry Cooder and Susan Titelman. Photographed by Marty Evans. Salisbury/Zoell Production.
Two years later, however, New York Magazine publisher Clay Felker emerged with New West Magazine - which promised "no big city snobbery" and no patronizing, "let the New York sophisticates show the country bumpkins" attitude.
In an interesting twist, Felker's well-funded weekly found itself up against another magazine of the same name. Edited and published by Jerry Kobrin, New West operated from Laguna Beach and fought the East Coast intruder over rights to the name.
Cover by Gary Panter.
It didn't matter. By 1977, after taking control of the New York Post, Australian media magnate Rupert Murdoch snapped up Clay Felker's New West, as well as Felker's other titles New York Magazine and the Village Voice.
In 2006, the Los Angeles Times relaunched West as a glossy companion to the Sunday edition and hired author Amy Tan as Literary Editor. Among the Senior Writers was author and journalist Lynell George. Speaking to the Los Angeles Times in January 2006, West editor Rick Wartzman was quoted as saying, "We're aiming to capture California in the grandest sense imaginable."
The revived magazine folded two years later.
Nevertheless, what remains here is a treasure trove of the original West magazine covers and a bounty of vintage advertising.
