Getchell's Picture

A magazine cover showing the bare, potted back of a man undergoing "suction cup" treatment will fascinate, arrest, sell itself to at least 800,000 people who see it on the newsstands this week. At any rate, that is the hope of Adman John Stirling Getchell, mainspring of the new picture magazine Picture.

Eighth to enter the burgeoning U. S. pictorial magazine field, J. Stirling Getchell was one of the first to consider it, and he certainly has the unique distinction of being the only adman-publisher in the game. Since 1924, when he was a high-priced Lord & Thomas copywriter, Mr. Getchell has toyed with the picture magazine idea, in 1935 prepared a sample photo magazine but was unable to raise the $2,000,000 he thought he needed for Picture. His present 10-c- monthly was put out on a slenderer budget.

Widely reputed a pioneer user of news-style pictures in advertisements (Fleischmann, Goodrich), Mr. Getchell aims at a clientele supposedly unsatisfied by either Look or LIFE. Picture makes no attempt to create sensations or cover the news, goes in for illustrated expositions of topics like the life of a chorus girl, the dangers of lightning, "Strange Animal Diets." what happens to you in a Turkish bath, how Connecticut operates its premarital, Wassermann testing, the way to give a bum a new lease on life, how San Francisco cultivates potential artists, aged 3 1/2 and up.

Getchell Partner John Veneroff Tarleton has become Picture's editor, Remie Lohse its head cameraman. Lest Getchell clients like Chrysler, DeSoto, Plymouth, Kelly-Springfield or Seagram's fear that he is neglecting his $8,000,000-a-year agency for the new magazine, Publisher Getchell wants it known that every bit of work he has or will put in on Picture comes at night and over the weekends.

Mr. Getchell holds two-thirds of the stock of Picture, shares with Popular Science President Albert L. Cole and Benton & Bowles Agency Director William B. Benton, also stockholders, its direction. Picture's nominal president is Getchell Brother-in-Law J. Paschall Davis, attorney and son of Ambassador-at-Large Norman Davis.

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