"Fortune magazine" Charles J.V. Murphy Signed 3X5.5 Card For Sale

When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.

"Fortune magazine" Charles J.V. Murphy Signed 3X5.5 Card:
$209.99

 Up for sale a RARE! "Fortune magazine" Charles J.V. Murphy Hand Signed 3X5.5 Card. 

ES-2968C

Charles J.V. Murphy, 83, the former Washington bureau chief

for Fortune magazine and the author of best-selling books about the duke and

duchess of Windsor and Adm. Richard Byrd's expeditions to Antarctica, died of

lung cancer Dec. 29 at his home in Grafton, Vt. Mr. Murphy's career as a

journalist included coverage of World War II in Europe and the Pacific and

radio accounts from Antarctica on the progress of Byrd's expedition there in

the early 1930s. In May 1941, he was a passenger aboard the Egyptian steamer

Zamzam when it was sunk in the South Atlantic by a Nazi warship. He wrote a

dramatic account of the incident and the rescue of all 323 passengers for Life

magazine. In the late 1940s, he was commissioned by the duke of Windsor to write

the duke's autobiography, "A King's Story," which became a

best-selling account of the events leading up to the duke's abdication as King

Edward VIII in 1938 to marry "the woman I love," Wallis Warfield

Simpson. Later Mr. Murphy wrote the duchess' autobiography, "The

Heart Has Its Reasons." That book appeared in 1955 after Mr. Murphy had

been fired upon completing 75 percent of it, then rehired to finish the job. In

the late 1970s, he was coauthor with Joe Bryan of "The Windsor

Story," a book about the life together of the duke and duchess after the

abdication. Mr. Murphy spent most

of his career with Time, Life and Fortune magazines. He retired in 1966 after

having been chief of Fortune's Washington bureau for 14 years. He lived in

Washington until moving to Vermont in 1980. He was said to have had an

encyclopedic mind and a love for good whiskey and good conversation. For years,

Mr. Murphy and the late James Jesus Angleton, the fabled former

counterintelligence chief of the Central Intelligence Agency, shared a table at

the Army & Navy Club in Washington where they discussed matters such as the

British debacle at Gallipoli during World War I and Gen. Douglas MacArthur's

tactics during the early months of the Korean War. Mr.

Murphy was particularly well-connected with the defense and intelligence

communities. During the 1950s and 1960s, he was a colonel in the Air Force

Reserve and his duties included advising and writing speeches for NATO

officials. He also wrote children's

books, including "Little Toot," a popular 1940s book about a tugboat

in New York harbor, and "Hercules and Loop," a book about an

airplane. A native of Newton, Mass., Mr. Murphy attended Harvard University,

but he left after two years to take a job as a night rewrite man on the Boston

American. Later he worked for The Associated Press and United Press in New

York. He was fired by United Press in the late 1920s after rewriting a 27-word

dispatch on the fall of Nanking to the Kuomintang during the Chinese revolution

into a dramatic 1,500-word account that was distributed nationwide on the UP

wires. His editors said the facts did not support Mr. Murphy's version. In the

early 1930s, his work came to the attention of Byrd, who asked Mr. Murphy to

accompany him to Antarctica. That trip took two years. In addition to

broadcasting regular accounts of the expedition's progress, Mr. Murphy did the

writing for three books about it that appeared under Byrd's name, "Little

America," "Discovery" and "Alone." In 1935 Mr. Murphy joined Time Inc. He later

became a senior writer on the staff of Life. During World War II, he wrote a

three-part series on Winston Churchill that caught the eye of the duke of

Windsor. That led to the duke's invitation to Mr. Murphy to write his

autobiography. Late in the war, Mr. Murphy was sent to China to replace

Theodore H. White, who had fallen into disfavor with Henry R. Luce, the

editor-in-chief of Time, Life and Fortune. There he spent five months working

on a profile of Chiang Kai-shek, the nationalist Chinese leader, but the

article was never published. 

1930 Empire State Building Fortune Magazine EARLIEST Print Advertising Tearsheet

$200.00

1939 Dow Chemicals Fortune Magazine Print Advertising Bouquet Bride Color

$25.00

"Fortune magazine" Charles J.V. Murphy Signed 3X5.5 Card

$209.99