Marshall Field

Background

He was born in New York City, the son of Marshall Field III and Evelyn Marshall. A great-grandson of the founder of Chicago's Marshall Field and Company department store, he was heir to one of America's largest family fortunes.

Education

He was educated at the Fay School in Southboro, Massachussets, and St. Paul's in Concord, New Hampshire.

A good student, he entered Harvard in 1934 to study English literature. During the summer of his freshman year, he shoveled slag in a steel mill, using the name "Mike Farly" to avoid being recognized as a rich man's son. He received the B. A. in 1938.

Field then studied law at the University of Virginia and received the LL. B.

Desiring sea duty, Field resigned his initial commission as an ensign and attended a ninety-day midshipman's school at Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill.

Career

Shortly after graduation, he was admitted to the Illinois bar and clerked briefly for Judge A. M. Dobie of the Fourth U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Field had intended to clerk for U. S. Supreme Court Justice J. Stanley Reed, but following the United States' entry into World War II, he promptly enlisted in the navy.

Desiring sea duty, Field resigned his initial commission as an ensign and attended a ninety-day midshipman's school at Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill.

He was recommissioned an ensign in June 1942 and was shipped to the Pacific. From August 1942 to October 1944, Field participated in twelve major naval engagements. As a gunnery officer on the U. S. S. Enterprise, he was wounded twice during the Battle of Santa Cruz (October 26, 1942).

After the war Field abandoned his law career and joined the staff of the Chicago Sun (founded, edited, and published by his father) as a truck driver's assistant in the circulation department.

From 1946 to 1949, he worked successively in the advertising, promotion, administration, production, and editorial departments, also serving briefly in the paper's Washington and London bureaus. Two years after joining the Sun, Field became assistant editor.

In August 1947, Marshall Field III bought the Chicago Times, an evening tabloid. In October the Sun became a tabloid, too, and in February 1948, the papers were merged to form the Chicago Sun-Times.

In October 1949, Field was appointed assistant publisher and associate editor of the new Sun-Times. A year later, when his father retired, Field became editor-publisher.

Ambitious to challenge Colonel Robert R. McCormick's domination of Chicago journalism, Field broke ground in 1955 for a $21-million building large enough to house two newspapers.

He also began negotiations to purchase the Chicago American, but the attempt was not successful. For some six months after his father's death in November 1956 Field suffered from a nervous breakdown.

But in 1957, he opened the new Sun-Times plant and resumed active management of the newspaper and of Field Enterprises, of which he was now president. He sold Field Enterprises' interest in Simon and Schuster and in Pocket Books, and reorganized Quarrie Publications (publishers of the World Book and Child Craft encyclopedias) as a wholly owned subsidiary, Field Enterprises Educational Corporation.

In 1958 he sold Parade, a Sunday supplement, to John Hay Whitney for a reported $10 million. He used that money and a bank loan to buy the Chicago Daily News, an afternoon newspaper, from John S. Knight for $24 million.

The deal was announced in January 1959, and the Daily News became part of Field Enterprises soon after--as did the Manistique (Mich. ) Pulp and Paper Company. Manistique used an exclusive flotation process that recycled deinked waste paper.

With these and other innovations, Field expanded and increased the profit of the communications network that he had inherited. He also changed its political stance. Marshall Field III had been an ardent New Deal liberal who had endorsed Adlai Stevenson for president in 1952.

However, Marshall Field IV and the Sun-Times endorsed Dwight David Eisenhower. "I'm a liberal conservative, " he said, and both the Sun-Times and Daily News reflected their publisher's centrist Republican attitudes and respect for journalistic decorum.

Field died in Chicago.

Achievements

• Field was commissioned as an Ensign in the United States Navy in June 1942. He served as a gunnery officer aboard the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise in a number of engagements in the Pacific and was wounded during the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands. His conduct in the engagement won him the Silver Star, the Purple Heart, and the Presidential Unit Citation. He was discharged with the rank of Lt. Commander in 1944. He learned the newspaper trade as a reporter for the Chicago Sun, owned by his father, from 1946 to 1948. He had a nervous breakdown and was briefly institutionalized following his father's death in 1956, then took up the reins as the owner of the Chicago Sun-Times and Field Enterprises. He also owned Parade magazine from 1956 to 1958 and purchased the Chicago Daily News in 1959.

Politics

"I'm a liberal conservative, " he said, and both the Sun-Times and Daily News reflected their publisher's centrist Republican attitudes and respect for journalistic decorum.

Connections

On June 20 of that year he married Joanne Bass, daughter of Robert P. Bass, a former governor of New Hampshire. They had two children.

On August 13, 1963, Katherine Woodruff divorced Field, and on July 7, 1964, he married Julia Lynne Templeton.

Father:

Marshall Field III

mother Evelyn Marshall

1st wife:

Joanne Bass

2nd wife Katherine Woodruff 3rd wife Julia Lynne Templeton