David Maness, 85, Editor Helped Coin ‘Camelot’
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David Maness, who died Thursday at 85, was a longtime editor at Time Inc. who inadvertently helped to foster the metaphor of Camelot in regard to the alleged glories of the Kennedy administration.
Mannes, a favorite editor of the journalist Theodore H. White at Life magazine in 1963, transcribed White’s telephoned-in flash interview with the widow Jacqueline Kennedy from the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port barely a week after President Kennedy was killed in Dallas. As recounted in Joyce Hoffmann’s 1996 book “Theodore H.White and Journalism as Illusion,” the scene went as follows: “David Maness, on the other end of the telephone in New York, argued that perhaps the Camelot theme was overplayed. Yes, isn’t it lovely, answered White, trying to signal Maness that Mrs. Kennedy was within earshot. She could hear his objections but remained adamant Camelot it must be. So, with White’s help, Jacqueline Kennedy enshrined that wistful vision of her husband’s presidency on the national consciousness.”
As a senior editor at Life starting in 1961, Maness had his hand in any number of big stories, and in addition to White was an editor of Art Buchwald, Ray Bradbury, and Loudon Wainwright II. The Jackie Kennedy interview was his closest brush with the actual creation of a cultural myth.
Born in Cleveland in 1920, Maness attended Boston Latin School at the same time as White. He studied journalism at Boston University, and then served in an intelligence unit with the Army Air Corps and Air Force.
In 1949, Maness joined Collier’s, where he first worked as White’s editor. The two were at Collier’s until it folded in 1956. After a stint as a writer for “Tonight! America After Dark” — a predecessor to the “Tonight” show — Maness became executive editor of Consumer Reports. He moved to Life in 1961.
After Life ceased publishing in 1973, Maness became executive editor of Time-Life Books, a position he held until 1981. In 1985, he capped his career with the production of “Life, the First Fifty Years: 1936–1986,” a coffeetable retrospective that became a bestseller.
Maness retired to Cape Cod and then Albuquerque, N.M. He is survived by three daughters and two grandchildren.