Holiday
Frank ZacharyWhen it began in the 1930 s,Holiday
magazine was clean and orderly, but its
layout was made with a cookie cutter.
In 1955 Frank Zachary (b. 1919 ), former
editor of Portfolio, who had learned art
direction from Alexey Brodovitch,
changed all that. Zachary began as
photo editor, but when he worked with
pictures he made layouts that were not
just picture spreads in the conventional
sense, but cinematic presentations in
the Brodovitch tradition. Noting a
dramatic difference,Holiday’s editor,
Ted Patrick, offered Zachary the job of
art director. “Jesus, Ted,” responded
Zachary to the offer, “I’m okay, but why
don’t you try to get Brodovitch? He’s
the real master.” Zachary introduced
Patrick to Brodovitch, but the two did
not hit it off.
Zachary knew little about typography, but he did have experience
laying out the pictures in Zebra Books—small thematic pictorial mass-
market paperbacks—that taught him the importance of scale. He saw
himself as a journalist, not a designer per se, more interested in using the
photograph to tell the story than to prettify a page. “I learned the picture is
the layout. If you have a great picture, you don’t embellish it with big type.
You make it tight and sweet,” he said. Soon he developed a cadre of
talented photographers who brought life to the magazine through thematic
picture essays. Among them were Arnold Newman, Tom Hollyman, John
Lewis Stage, Robert Phillips, Fred Maroon, and Slim Aarons, many of
whom followed Zachary years later when he became editor-in-chief of
Town and Country.
Photography was the heart of Holiday, illustration was its soul.
Zachary rejected the prevailing sentimental illustrative approaches used in
most American magazines; he eyed European artists, specifically from
England and France, for their surrealistic comic vision. “Frank brought80