Graham, Philip Leslie

Graham, Philip Leslie,

1915–63, American publisher, b. S.Dak. After editing the Harvard Law Review, he served as a law clerk to his mentor, Supreme Court Justice Felix FrankfurterFrankfurter, Felix,
1882–1965, American jurist, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1939–62), b. Vienna, Austria. He emigrated to the United States as a boy and later received (1906) his law degree from Harvard law school. He was assistant U.S.
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. In 1940 he married Katharine Meyer, whose father, Eugene MeyerMeyer, Eugene,
1875–1959, American financier and newspaper publisher, b. Los Angeles. He was a successful broker and a director of many corporations. In 1917 he was appointed to guide American war production and finance, serving in many government agencies.
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, owned the Washington Post. Meyer named him associate publisher of the Post in 1946, and publisher six months later. After Graham took charge, he gave the Post a new and more politically assertive direction and was considered by many to be an influential journalist. In 1961, the Post acquired Newsweek magazine. After the severely depressed Graham committed suicide in 1963, Katharine Meyer GrahamGraham, Katharine Meyer,
1917–2001, American publisher, b. New York City, grad. Univ. of Chicago (1938). She first worked as a copy girl at the Washington Post, which was owned by her father, Eugene Meyer; after college, she joined the San Francisco News.
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 took over the company.

Bibliography

See H. Bray, Pillars of the Post (1980); C. M. Roberts, In the Shadow of Power (1989).