Variety at 120: Exploring Key Pop Culture Touchstones, From Vaudeville to ‘Easy Rider’ and The Ramones to Taylor Swift
by Variety Staff · VarietyCLICK HERE TO JUMP TO THE SPECIAL VARIETY 120 SECTION
The cover of Variety’s debut issue, published on Dec. 16, 1905, touted the “Reviews of the Week” by Chicot and Sime. These were the pen names of Epes W. Sargent and Sime Silverman. (Silverman, founder of this publication, left the New York Morning Telegraph to launch Variety, after negatively reviewing a show put on by an advertiser.)
So much about the business today would be unrecognizable to Silverman. But as our magazine turns 120 — an anniversary we celebrate in this issue by looking back on the past 120 years of Hollywood — the spirit of honest dealing about the business of entertainment lives on. Variety chronicled the rise of film and then the rise of sound on film, the transformative effects of cable TV and then of streaming. Woodstock and the Beatles, “The Wizard of Oz” and “The Sopranos”: They transformed our culture, and we chronicled the transformation. We’ve evolved, too, infusing Silverman’s trade paper with the lush photography and deep reporting available to a glossy magazine, and learning to break news at the speed of the internet.
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But as we reflect on 120 years of covering the industry that keeps the world entertained — and look ahead to more seismic changes that our best-in-the-business journalists will cover — we hope that Silverman, the man who insisted on reporting on vaudeville just as he saw it, would be proud.