Felker also tapped novelist Norman Mailer -- and gave him free rein -- to cover the 1960 Democratic convention in Los Angeles, at which John F. Kennedy was nominated for president and Mailer produced a lengthy, thought-provoking piece of literary journalism, "Superman Comes to the Supermart."
And Felker gave Gloria Steinem, then a little-known freelancer, what she calls her "first serious assignment" as a writer: a report on the then-new contraceptive pill.
After researching and writing her story, Steinem recalled in a 2005 piece on Felker in California magazine, a publication for UC Berkeley alumni, "Clay blue-penciled my pages on the history of the pill, told me I had left people out, and made the memorable comment: 'You've performed the incredible feat of making sex dull.' "
Felker, Steinem wrote, then "sent me out to do interviews and a total rewrite. That was why I produced in 1962 an article on sexual politics and new science that prefigured the women's movement. I had a great editor."
After losing a battle for the editorship of Esquire to Harold Hayes, Felker left the magazine in 1962.
The next year, he was hired as a consultant at the New York Herald Tribune, where he helped remake Today's Living, the magazine supplement of the newspaper's Sunday edition.
Renamed New York -- and with Felker taking over as editor -- the revamped Sunday supplement became a weekly showcase for the talents of Wolfe and his Herald Tribune colleague, columnist Jimmy Breslin.
Within two years, the city-oriented New York was considered the hottest Sunday read in town.
Helping fuel New York's reputation were stories such as Wolfe's controversial 1965 send-up of the staid, in-house culture of the New Yorker magazine and the idiosyncrasies of the 40-year-old literary institution's low-profile editor, William Shawn: a two-part, more than 10,000-word piece written in what Wolfe has described as a "hyperbolic style."
The first installment ran under a blaring, tabloid-style headline, "TINY MUMMIES! The True Story of the Ruler of 43rd Street's Land of the Walking Dead!" and featured an illustration of Eustace Tilley, the New Yorker's monocle-wearing Victorian dandy icon, wrapped up like a mummy.
In a 1997 interview, Felker described Wolfe's "incredible piece of reporting" as "the making of New York magazine."
