When Time’s ‘Man of the Year’ Meant Something
Subjects of the magazine’s annual story were once viewed as secular saints—or, on occasion, devils.
By Lance Morrow
Time magazine’s Man of the Year selection once was a bigger deal. So, for that matter, were the Academy Awards and the presidency. It was a different time.
During my 40-year career at Time, I wrote seven Man of the Year cover stories. It was called Man of the Year in those days but Time by no means excluded women from consideration. In 1976 I did the Women of the Year story about outstanding women in various fields. A man wouldn’t get that assignment today. It would have to be written by a woman.
In earlier generations, Wallis Simpson, who caused King Edward VII to leave the throne, became Woman of the Year in 1936. A year later, Chiang Kai-shek and his wife, Soong May-ling, were Man and Woman of the Year. The title officially changed to Person of the Year in 1999—an ideological smudging that I find a little prissy. I suppose it can’t be helped.
In the old culture, appearing on Time’s cover was a secular version of being beatified by the Catholic Church. To be Man of the Year was equivalent to being canonized a saint—or perhaps winning a Nobel Prize. Maybe better. Time stipulated, however, that the Man of the Year might be a devil. It was the person who had most affected the course of the year’s events “for good or ill.” Thus, Hitler was named in 1938 and Stalin in both 1939 and 1942. The Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was Man of the Year in 1979.