Babette Rosmond (November 4, 1917 – October 23, 1997) edited Doc Savage Magazine from 1944 to 1948…
Babette Rosmond (November 4, 1917 – October 23, 1997) edited Doc Savage Magazine from 1944 to 1948 though William de Grouchey was listed as Editor. Rosmond would continue working as an Editor and other positions in magazine publishing until 1975. She also wrote novels and short stories. For more information: Babette Rosmond.
Beginning in December 1943, William de Grouchey, a business manager who had been hired in 1940 to run Street & Smith’s comic book line, took over. Although listed as the official editor, a woman named Babette Rosmond was actually editor and she, in turn, delegated part of her work load to a woman sub-editor whose name has since been lost to history. Mrs. Rosmond seems to have concentrated upon magazine policy and building up a new stable of writers for the back of the magazines, while her assistant seems to have been given control over the lead Doc Savage and Shadow novels—with comical results. Not knowing any better, this assistant allowed a Doc novel, The Derelict of Skull Shoal, and a Shadow, Voodoo Death, to be published under the true authors’ names, much to Lester Dent’s and Walter Gibson’s joy and Street & Smith’s embarrassment. Later, when Dent submitted The Pharaoh’s Ghost, this woman thinking the word Pharaoh was spelled incorrectly, reversed the final vowels in Pharaoh in the title and throughout the text. When the proofreader corrected her, she stubbornly overrode him, and The Pharaoh’s Ghost became The Pharoah’s Ghost! — Will Murray, Writings in Bronze