Lindsay, lead singer with Paul Revere & the Raiders
Georgia had a slight Dixie drawl, camouflaged by layers of elocution lessons, so that she sounded kind-a highbrow. Her store-bought blue jeans were sent off to a seamstress to be tapered to accentuate her butt, years before French-cut jeans hit America. Her Hi-Fi wafted the blues, “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.” [The Staple Singers]
Georgia kept bottles of champagne chilling in the fridge of her Sutton Place flat, and was known to have an eye on the boys, who willingly popped her cork with an eye on a 16 cover shot. It was a cozy arrangement, but so many teen idols were “interviewed” in her apartment that she cleverly created a cover format that would accommodate up to six to eight boys. She would cut the faces out of photos and a graphics artist would create colorful cartoon bodies, and assemble them into a theme, like a beach party or a hayride, a clever design choice that distinguished 16 from all other teen magazines.
Georgia Winters was the editor of 16 magazine, the most popular of all the teen fan publications. Formerly a fashion model, as Gloria Stevers, her real name, Georgia was tall and svelte, with creamy skin under a soft layer of peach fuzz, and perfect teeth, which
she flossed endlessly. “These choppers set me back a few bucks, so I’m just protecting my investment,” she’d laugh.
Georgia had the knack of plucking fresh, unpaid talent to labor up in her cramped little 16 offices on Fifth Avenue, overlooking Central Park. One was a chubby little teen with a bulbous nose, the terribly-shy President of The Eddie Fisher Fan Club, Rona Bernstein. She would have gone unnoticed had it not been for her steel-trap mind and her amazing ability to grasp the inner workings of show business, the facts, fiction and trivia. Years later she would emerge as the glamorous Hollywood reporter Rona Barrett.
1966 was the first year that rock ‘n’ roll became a billion-dollar industry. Her 16 magazine now boasted a circulation of 1.2 million subscribers, which translated into about five million pass-around monthly readers. Georgia was now the preeminent arbiter of pop culture.
In addition, she was in the midst of a secret affair with one of 16 magazine’s archetypal shirtless pinup boys, Jim Morrison of The Doors. Their drama had a long run, but was hardly poetic, with Georgia falling victim to Jimmy’s sadistic mind games, her one and only passionate conquest in which she did not maintain the upper hand.
Georgia Winters was the Editor-in-Chief of 16 magazine, from 1958 to 1975; she left the magazine after seventeen years, following a dispute with the publisher. At the time 16 had more than five-million readers. In 1983, Georgia, a long term smoker, died of lung cancer at Presbyterian Hospital in New York. She was 56 years old.
Georgia took all her own pictures on an inexpensive Brownie; here she snaps Jim Morrison of the Doors
