Marion K. Sanders
Encyclopedia
Marion Klein Sanders was an American journalist, editor, and author.
in New York, New York and, in 1925, from Wellesley College, from which she received an Alumnae Achievement Award in 1973. While at Wellesley, she edited the College's yearbook. She also attended the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
.
She did assorted free lance writing and a year's graduate work at the Columbia School of Journalism until 1932 when she took a job as assistant to trustee and public relations director for the Roxy Theater
, and later director of public relations Gaumont British
Picture, Corp.http://www.gaumont-british.co.uk/ until 1936 when she became assistant to chief, Bureau of Commerce (1941 title changed to Assistant Director, Public Relations) for the Port of New York Authority, making 3 documentary motion pictures, conducted a large scale educational program and wrote a large illustrated book on the Port of New York, plus many radio scripts, lectures, speeches, pamphlets, and annual reports. In 1939 she took a 6-month leave of absence without pay to serve as Secretary and Director of Public Relations, Non-Sectarian Committee for German Refugee Children.
In 1944 she took a job as a news editor with the Overseas Branch of the Office of War Information, helping run its news service, which fed the overseas psychological warfare program. At the end of the war she was Assistant Chief of the Publications Bureau, which was publishing magazines in over 20 languages.
In 1946 she was hired to head the State Department's New York office which would handle such publications as were to be continued under the permanent overseas information program. She remained Chief, Magazine Branch, Division of International Press and Publications, Office of International Information, until 1952, as Editor-in-Chief of the magazine Amerika
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,801913,00.html. In 1949 the office took over 4 German language magazines from the Army, and also published a History of the U.S. in 10 languages, including Korean and Urdu.
From 1958 until 1970, she was a senior editor of Harper's Magazine
, where many of her investigative articles on women, medicine, politics, social welfare, and urban affairs appeared. She was later a managing editor of World Press Review
.
In 1973, she wrote the first biography of Dorothy Thompson
, Dorothy Thompson: A Legend in Her Time (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1973). After an unsuccessful run for Congress in the former 28th Congressional District of New York, including Rockland, Orange, Sullivan, and Delaware Counties, in 1952, she wrote,The Lady and the Vote (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1956). Other works include a series of conversations with Saul Alinsky
entitled, The Professional Radical: Conversations with Saul Alinsky, (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), a work of fiction, The Bride Laughed Once co-written with Mortimer S. Edelstein (Farrar & Rinehart,1943), which received the Mary Roberts Rinehart award for mystery writing. She edited The Crisis in American Medicine(Harper and Row, 1961).
campaign as a Democrat-Liberal for the U.S. Congress in what was then the 28th Congressional District of New York, at the time a heavily Republican District encompassing Delaware County
, Orange County
, Rockland County
, and Sullivan County
. In a year when Dwight D. Eisenhower
easily won the Presidency, she was unsuccessful in her bid to unseat incumbent Katherine St. George.
Education
She graduated in 1921 from the Horace Mann SchoolHorace Mann School
Horace Mann School is an independent college preparatory school in New York City, New York, United States founded in 1887 known for its rigorous course of studies. Horace Mann is a member of the Ivy Preparatory School League, educating students from all across the New York tri-state area from...
in New York, New York and, in 1925, from Wellesley College, from which she received an Alumnae Achievement Award in 1973. While at Wellesley, she edited the College's yearbook. She also attended the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism is one of Columbia's graduate and professional schools. It offers three degree programs: Master of Science in journalism , Master of Arts in journalism and a Ph.D. in communications...
.
Professional
She began her career as a free-lance journalist and a political speechwriter. Under the name Marion Klein she was a free lance feature writer for a small news syndicate, as a stringer for The Toronto Star , which published several pieces (November 1925), reviewed books for The Book Review (March 1926), performed minor editorial chores for the Theater Guild Quarterly for which she also wrote a piece (April 1926), wrote several piece for the Chicago Journal under the byline Marionette (May 29, 1926, June 9, 13, 20 and 27,1926). She also served as a rewrite person and translator (French, German, Italian) for Continental Features, Inc. In 1931 and 1932 she ghost wrote pieces for Howard S. Cullman, a commissioner of the Port of New York Authority.She did assorted free lance writing and a year's graduate work at the Columbia School of Journalism until 1932 when she took a job as assistant to trustee and public relations director for the Roxy Theater
Roxy Theater
The Roxy Theatre was a 5,920 seat movie theater located at 153 West 50th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues, just off Times Square in New York City. It opened on March 11, 1927 with the silent film The Love of Sunya, produced by and starring Gloria Swanson. The huge movie palace was a leading...
, and later director of public relations Gaumont British
Gaumont British
Gaumont-British Picture Corporation was the British arm of the French film company Gaumont. The company became independent of its French parent in 1922, when Isidore Ostrer acquired control of Gaumont-British....
Picture, Corp.http://www.gaumont-british.co.uk/ until 1936 when she became assistant to chief, Bureau of Commerce (1941 title changed to Assistant Director, Public Relations) for the Port of New York Authority, making 3 documentary motion pictures, conducted a large scale educational program and wrote a large illustrated book on the Port of New York, plus many radio scripts, lectures, speeches, pamphlets, and annual reports. In 1939 she took a 6-month leave of absence without pay to serve as Secretary and Director of Public Relations, Non-Sectarian Committee for German Refugee Children.
In 1944 she took a job as a news editor with the Overseas Branch of the Office of War Information, helping run its news service, which fed the overseas psychological warfare program. At the end of the war she was Assistant Chief of the Publications Bureau, which was publishing magazines in over 20 languages.
In 1946 she was hired to head the State Department's New York office which would handle such publications as were to be continued under the permanent overseas information program. She remained Chief, Magazine Branch, Division of International Press and Publications, Office of International Information, until 1952, as Editor-in-Chief of the magazine Amerika
Amerika (magazine)
Amerika was a Russian language magazine published by the United States Department of State during the Cold War for distribution in the Soviet Union. It was intended to inform Soviet citizens about American life. Amerika was distinguished among other Soviet publications by its high-grade paper,...
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,801913,00.html. In 1949 the office took over 4 German language magazines from the Army, and also published a History of the U.S. in 10 languages, including Korean and Urdu.
From 1958 until 1970, she was a senior editor of Harper's Magazine
Harper's Magazine
Harper's Magazine is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts, with a generally left-wing perspective. It is the second-oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S. . The current editor is Ellen Rosenbush, who replaced Roger Hodge in January 2010...
, where many of her investigative articles on women, medicine, politics, social welfare, and urban affairs appeared. She was later a managing editor of World Press Review
World Press Review
World Press Review is an independent, nonpartisan New York based magazine founded in 1974 and initially published by Stanley Foundation and Teri Schure, with an online edition which was launched in 1997...
.
In 1973, she wrote the first biography of Dorothy Thompson
Dorothy Thompson
Dorothy Thompson was an American journalist and radio broadcaster, who in 1939 was recognized by Time magazine as the second most influential women in America next to Eleanor Roosevelt...
, Dorothy Thompson: A Legend in Her Time (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1973). After an unsuccessful run for Congress in the former 28th Congressional District of New York, including Rockland, Orange, Sullivan, and Delaware Counties, in 1952, she wrote,The Lady and the Vote (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1956). Other works include a series of conversations with Saul Alinsky
Saul Alinsky
Saul David Alinsky was a Jewish American community organizer and writer. He is generally considered to be the founder of modern community organizing, and has been compared in Playboy magazine to Thomas Paine as being "one of the great American leaders of the nonsocialist left." He is often noted...
entitled, The Professional Radical: Conversations with Saul Alinsky, (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), a work of fiction, The Bride Laughed Once co-written with Mortimer S. Edelstein (Farrar & Rinehart,1943), which received the Mary Roberts Rinehart award for mystery writing. She edited The Crisis in American Medicine(Harper and Row, 1961).
Published articles for Harper's
- Enemies of Abortion March 1974
- Addicts and Zealots: The Chaotic War Against Drug Abuse. June 1970
- The Professional Radical:1970. January 1970
- The Sex Crusaders from Missouri. May 1968
- The Doctors Meet the People. January 1968
- The Several Worlds of American Jews. April 1966
- The Professional Radical. June 1966
- A Professional Radical Moves in on Rochester. July 1965.
- The New American Female: Demi-feminism Takes Over. July 1965
- Sweden's Remedy for "Police Brutality". November 1964
- The Next Mayor of New York? February 1963
- A Slight Case of Library Fever. April 1962
- Nobody Here But Us Pompadours. October 1962
- New York is Different. July 1961
- A Proposition for Women. September 1960
- It's Not the Gift, It's the Wrapping. December 1959
- The Cozy Camel of Winston Salem. February 1959
- Mutiny of the Bountiful. December 1958.[condensed in Reader's Digest, February 1959]
- Country Doctors Catch Up. April 1958
- Social Work: A Profession Chasing Its Tail. March 1957
- Women in Politics. August 1953
Book-Length Special Supplements edited for Harper's
- Crime and Punishment. April 1964
- The American Female. October 1962
- The Mood of the Russian People. May 1961
- The Crisis in American Medicine. October 1960
Articles for other publications
- Requiem for ERA, The New RepublicThe New RepublicThe magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
, November 29, 1975 - Narcotics and the Media. Columbia Journalism ReviewColumbia Journalism ReviewThe Columbia Journalism Review is an American magazine for professional journalists published bimonthly by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism since 1961....
. Fall 1970 - James Houghton Wants 500,000 More Jobs, New York Times Magazine, Sept 14, 1969
- The Case for a National Service Corps, New York Times Magazine, August 7, 1966 [Reprinted in Social ProgressSocial progressSocial progress is the idea that societies can or do improve in terms of their social, political, and economic structures. This may happen as a result of direct human action, as in social enterprise or through social activism, or as a natural part of sociocultural evolution...
, November-December 1966] - Issues Girls, Club Ladies and Camp Followers, New York Times Magazine, December 1, 1963
- What's it like to work in the suburbs, Today's Living, May 3, 1959
- The Case of the Vanishing Spinster, New York Times Magazine, September 22, 1963
- Charity Drives? Suburbia Today, October 1963
- The Problem of Labor Union Responsibility, The Society for the Advancement of Management Journal, November 1937 (with V. Henry Rothschild, 2nd)
Books published
- Dorothy Thompson: A Legend in Her Time (Houghton Mifflin 1973)
- The Professional Radical: Conversations With Saul Alinsky (Harper & Row 1970)
- The Crisis in American Medicine (Ed., Harper & Row 1961)
- The Lady and the Vote (Houghton Mifflin 1956)
- With Mortimer S. Edelstein, The Bride Laughed Once (Farrar & Rinehart 1943)
Personal life
On July 3, 1926, she married Theodore Michael Sanders (1890-1965), a physician, in New York, New York. She had two children, Theodore Michael Sanders, a physicist, Ann Arbor, Michigan (b. 1927) and Mary Sanders von Euler, a lawyer and liberal activist, Bethesda, Maryland (b.1930).Political activity
In 1952, she ran a grassrootsGrassroots
A grassroots movement is one driven by the politics of a community. The term implies that the creation of the movement and the group supporting it are natural and spontaneous, highlighting the differences between this and a movement that is orchestrated by traditional power structures...
campaign as a Democrat-Liberal for the U.S. Congress in what was then the 28th Congressional District of New York, at the time a heavily Republican District encompassing Delaware County
Delaware County, New York
Delaware County is a county located in the U.S. state of New York. As of 2010 the population was 47,980. The county seat is Delhi. It is named after the Delaware River, which was named in honor of Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr, appointed governor of Virginia in 1609.-History:When counties...
, Orange County
Orange County, New York
Orange County is a county located in the U.S. state of New York. It is part of the Poughkeepsie–Newburgh–Middletown, NY Metropolitan Statistical Area and is located at the northern reaches of the New York metropolitan area. The county sits in the state's scenic Mid-Hudson Region of the Hudson Valley...
, Rockland County
Rockland County, New York
Rockland County is a suburban county 15 miles to the northwest of Manhattan and part of the New York City Metropolitan Area, in the U.S. state of New York. It is the southernmost county in New York west of the Hudson River, and the smallest county in New York outside of New York City. The...
, and Sullivan County
Sullivan County, New York
Sullivan County is a county located in the U.S. state of New York. As of the 2010 census, the population was 77,547. The county seat is Monticello. The name is in honor of Major General John Sullivan, who was a hero in the American Revolutionary War...
. In a year when Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army...
easily won the Presidency, she was unsuccessful in her bid to unseat incumbent Katherine St. George.
Awards
- Kappa Tau AlphaKappa Tau AlphaKappa Tau Alpha is an American college honor society which recognizes academic excellence and promotes scholarship in journalism and mass communication...
Award for Research in Journalism (1974) - Front Page award of the Newswomen's Club of New York (1974) for her Harper's piece "Enemies of Abortion, March 1974
- Fellow Society of American Historians (1974)
- Distinguished Alumnae Award, Wellesley College (1973)