Rogue was a Chicago-based men's magazine published by William Hamling from 1956 until 1965. Founding editor Frank M. Robinson was succeeded by other editors including Harlan Ellison and Bruce Elliott. The magazine was subtitled "Designed for Men."
Rogue: Designed for Men
The magazine was a direct competitor to Playboy (the first American magazine to present female nudity and sexually oriented material in a relatively sophisticated format), offering nude and semi-naked photographs and sex advice aimed at a male audience. Rogue featured a wider array of fiction and science fiction than Playboy, along with coverage of jazz by Ted White and others. The first two magazine articles written by Hunter S. Thompson appeared in Rogue in 1961. Other contributors included J. G. Ballard, Brian Aldiss, Graham Greene, Damon Knight, Fritz Leiber, Richard Matheson, Frederik Pohl, William Saroyan, Philip Wylie, and, while still in high school, Steven E. de Souza."Head 'Em off at the Pass, Boys." Rogue. December 1967. Departments were written by Alfred Bester, Robert Bloch, and Fredric Brown.
Greenleaf Publishing Company
In 1950, Ziff-Davis moved its offices to New York City. Hamling declined to go with the company to New York due to family ties and was permitted to form a publishing company of his own instead.
Previously, Hamling had organized the Greenleaf Publishing Company in Chicago.Affidavit of William L. Hamling in support of Motion for Suspension of Execution of Sentence, and Probation, No. 10791, written by William Lawrence Hamling and as prepared by the law offices of Stanley Fleishman, October 31, 1974 The company was at different times known as Greenleaf Classics, Reed Enterprises, Corinth Publications, Regency Publications, Blake Pharmaceuticals, Phenix Publishing, and Freedom Publishing. His wife, science fiction author Frances Deegan Yerxa Hamling, worked closely with him in the early years of his publishing company.
Imagination published its first issue in October 1950. No editorial credit given for the first two issues; however, the editorials and letter column responses were signed "RAP", initials associated with Raymond A. Palmer. The first two issues were published by Clark Publishing Company, which also published Palmer's similar-looking Other Worlds. However, Hamling was the editor and publisher, and Ray Palmer was the front. Although Hamling credits Palmer as the editor in response to a letter in the February 1951 issue of Fantastic Adventures, the last issue of that magazine which Hamling edited.Fantastic Adventures, February 1951 Hamling became notorious for the layers of insulation he kept between his activities, his fronts, and even between himself and co-workers and employees.Rog Phillips' The Club House, edited by Earl Terry Kemp, The Last Stand, 2012, pg. 488. With the third issue Imagination became an "official" Greenleaf property, as did Imaginative Tales when it was launched in September 1954.
While publishing Imagination, Hamling also worked as an editor for a time at a small office on Chicago's North Side on a magazine at PDC (Publisher’s Development Corporation) named Today’s Man where a fellow employee was Hugh Marston Hefner.Not So Good a Gay Man by Frank M. Robinson, TOR, 2017, page 45. Hamling’s boss was George von Rosen. The first fellow employee to befriend Hamling was von Rosen's promotion director, Hugh Hefner, who had already decided to quit and start a magazine of his own.Thy Neighbor's Wife by Gay Talese, Dell Publishing, 1981, page 459.Cult Magazines: A to Z, "Rogue," by Earl Terry Kemp, Nonstop Press, 2009, page 167.
Operating as Greenleaf Publishing Company, he published Imagination and its later companion Imaginative Tales (September 1954 – May 1958, 26 issues), later re-titled Space Travel (July–November 1958), until September 1958. Neither survived the decade and the death of their distributor, American News Company. Hamling regularly purchased cartoons from struggling artist Hugh Hefner.Not So Good a Gay Man by Frank M. Robinson, TOR, 2017, page 45 and 67.
The name for the publishing company came from the telephone exchange (Greenleaf) where he was living at the time in Evanston, Illinois.
Rogue: Designed for Men
Greenleaf Publishing Company initially published science fiction magazines and a spectrum of similar publications, and it was not until November 1955 that Greenleaf published the first issue of Rogue (although it had a cover date of December), a magazine that was competitive with Playboy, a magazine dealing with sex which had been published for about two years at this time.Affidavit of William L. Hamling in support of Motion for Suspension of Execution of Sentence, and Probation, No. 10791, written by William Lawrence Hamling and as prepared by the law offices of Stanley Fleishman, October 31, 1974 In 1953, as a solo and unidentified effort, Hugh Hefner's Playboy V1#1 appeared without a date late in the year [November]. It was an almost immediate success with that calendar photo of Marilyn Monroe being reused to its best advantage.Memoir[s] of an Angry Man by Earl Kemp, The Last Stand, 2013, page 244.http://www.efanzines.com/EK/eI11/index.htm "Fear and Loathing in Evanston" by Earl Kemp
About Playboy and Hugh Hefner, Hamling states in a letter to his friend and lawyer Stanley Fleishman: "I remember my friend Hugh Hefner coming to me in 1953 to propose an idea for a magazine to be called Playboy. Hef was talented but poor and his passion had been a fantasy. He was a struggling cartoonist and had been working in a clerical capacity at Esquire. I had been buying fantasy cartoons from him for several years (they were so bad I never published them but he needed the money and to this day we have a running routine where I threaten to issue them as a nostalgic bonanza but defer to his pleadings of personal embarrassment) and one evening he and his charming wife, Millie [Mildred "Millie" Williams], visited Fran and me, and I responded to his suggestion of Playboy with the remark, 'Hef, you can't sell sex to the American public.' Today Hef is still talented, but he is no longer poor. My quote has since become a standard joke in the fourth estate.
"...That night brought another turning point in my life. While I refused financial participation in Playboy (the greatest economic error in publishing history) I helped him secure authors and artists and indeed over the early years provided a training school for his editorial and art personnel. I trained the editors, and he hired them away..."Letter, July 9, 1974, from William L. Hamling, on Reed Enterprise, Inc. stationary, to his friend, and lawyer, Stanley Fleishman
In October 1955 Hamling began the non-science fiction men's magazine Rogue, initially subtitled "for Men" (later "Designed for Men"), a clear imitation of Playboy. After a young Hugh Hefner sought out the experienced publisher, his fellow ex-von Rosen employee, and offered him a significant stake (50%) to partner with him at the time of its startup on a new idea he had for a magazine for men. The magazine was to be called Playboy. Hamling turned him down—and kicked himself for doing so for years thereafter.
Greenleaf, then, published Rogue and a photographic magazine in book form called Model Art, as well as different numbers of science fiction publications.Affidavit of William L. Hamling in support of Motion for Suspension of Execution of Sentence, and Probation, No. 10791, written by William Hamling and as prepared by the law offices of Stanley Fleishman, October 31, 1974 Rogue began much as Imagination had before it, there in the Hamling basement on Fowler Avenue in Evanston. Hamling and his wife, Frances, sat side by side and worked on it together, business as usual.
Hefner thought he was helping his friend, Hamling, change Space Travel, a science fiction digest, into a men's book, by hooking Hamling up with his distributor. Not wanting to set Hamling up as a competitor, he set restrictions on the new Rogue—no slick paper stock, no four-color reproduction, or full-page cartoons, and certainly no centerfold.Not So Good a Gay Man by Frank M. Robinson, TOR, 2017, page 68.
Hamling was the editor and publisher, his wife, Frances, was the executive editor, and Frank M. Robinson was the first managing editor. Henry Botts, a friend of Hamling, became the first associate editor. Lead fiction was by a hot science fiction author, Harlan Ellison who became associate editor with the third issue (April 1956).Not So Good a Gay Man by Frank M. Robinson, TOR, 2017, pg. 86.
The first issue of Rogue was published in November 1955, with a December release date. Following Hefner's successful lead with the first issue of Playboy, that first issue of Rogue contained "A New Aspect of Marilyn Monroe," with a full-page photo of the star hiding behind a towel, plus five more nice publicity photos all by Andre de Dienes.
The initial cover price of the magazine was 35 cents, and it remained that way until January 1960 when it was raised to 50 cents. In just one more year, the cover price was raised to 60 cents and remained at that figure for the rest of the life of the Greenleaf magazine.
Three issues later Frank M. Robinson left for the first time.
In the beginning, both Playboy and Rogue were distributed by Empire News, and in 1955 attempts were made by the Post Office to ban these magazines. The services of Thurman Arnold, Abe Fortas, and Paul Porter were obtained in Washington, D.C., and Judge Thurman Arnold represented Rogue before the district court in Washington, where an injunction was granted against the government and the magazine received the right to use the mails. The adjudication took place in 1957. Second-class mailing privileges were granted, and within thirty days Playboy received the same relief.
Under the watchful eye of publisher William Hamling, Rogue became a close competitor of Playboy and as a Greenleaf publication was at the press from December 1955 until December 1965. Rogue was well known for its racy cartoons, although always filled with plenty of provocative semi-nude photos, what set Rogue apart from all other competitors was the great science fiction and fantasy, along with other fiction from notable authors.
Editors (at one time or another) at Greenleaf Publishing—the parent company—included Harlan Ellison, Algis Budrys, Larry Shaw, and Bruce Elliott. Robert Bloch ("Basic Bloch"), Alfred Bester ("Bester’s World"), and Mack Reynolds (as the foreign travel editor) all had regular columns, articles, and fiction published. Hunter S. Thompson, Lenny Bruce, Charles Beaumont, Arthur C. Clarke, Fritz Leiber, J. G. Ballard, Ben Hecht, Graham Greene, William Saroyan, Philip Wylie, George Clayton Johnson, William F. Nolan, Wilson Tucker, and Robert Silverberg also popped up sometimes. Many of these authors worked for Playboy and the Rogue editors got a lot of submissions with Hugh Hefner's fingerprints on them. No other men’s magazine—or science-fiction magazine or digest, for that matter—ever had that much editorial talent in depth.Cult Magazines: A to Z, "Rogue," by Earl Terry Kemp, Nonstop Press, 2009, page 168.
One such story on this order was "All of Us Are Dying," by George Clayton Johnson which appeared in the October 1961 issue. In this there is a character with interchangeable personalities who is so plastic in his emotional make-up that he can be mistaken by anybody for practically anyone else that they may happen to know.The Proceedings; ChiCon III, edited by Earl Kemp, Advent:Publishers, 1963 Later it was produced as a script by Rod Serling as "The Four of Us Are Dying" for his The Twilight Zone television anthology series.
In that same October 1961 issue, Hunter S. Thompson saw his first story appear in print, "Big Sur: The Tropic of Henry Miller."Rogue, October 1961Not So Good a Gay Man by Frank M. Robinson, TOR, 2017, pg. 90.