He also expanded to the West Coast, founding Los Angeles-based New West magazine in 1976 but displeased his company's board of directors by reportedly spending four times his original $1-million estimate to launch the new magazine.
In early 1977, Felker lost control of the New York Magazine Co. after a hostile takeover by media mogul Rupert Murdoch.
Embittered over having New York magazine "sold out from under me by money-grubbing little men" -- as he described the situation to Newsweek -- Felker made a comeback later that year by acquiring Esquire magazine with the financial backing of Vere Harmsworth, head of Britain's Associated Newspaper Group Ltd.
Felker vowed to restyle the ailing magazine to "appeal to the interest of sophisticated men."
But in 1979, with strained finances due to the expense of turning the magazine from a monthly to a biweekly and drops in advertising and circulation revenue, Associated Newspapers sold Esquire.
Among Felker's numerous post-Esquire ventures were stints as editor of an unsuccessful afternoon edition of the New York Daily News and the magazines Adweek, Manhattan, inc. and M.
"Journalism," Felker told Newsweek in 1977 after losing New York magazine, "has been my life."
Born Oct. 2, 1925, Felker grew up in Webster Groves, Mo., an affluent suburb of St. Louis.
Journalism was a natural career choice: His father was managing editor of the weekly newspaper the Sporting News and editor of Sporting Goods Dealer, a monthly trade publication; and his mother was a former newspaper women's section editor.
After graduating from high school in 1942, he went to Duke University in Durham, N.C., where he worked as a reporter on the school newspaper, the Chronicle.
A year later, he joined the Navy and became sports editor and a writer for the Navy newspaper, the Blue Jacket.
After graduating from Duke in 1951, Felker was hired as a sportswriter at Life magazine.
He later turned one of his Life features, a profile of baseball legend Casey Stengel, into the 1961 book "Casey Stengel's Secret."
"I enjoyed writing," Felker later told Weingarten, "but it wasn't my real ability."
In 1994, Felker began teaching a course called "How to Make a Magazine" at the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley, where the Felker Magazine Center was established the next year, with Felker as director.
Felker's first two marriages, to Leslie Aldrich and actress Pamela Tiffin, ended in divorce.
In addition to Sheehy, Felker is survived by his sister, Charlotte Gallagher; his daughter, Mohm Sheehy; his stepdaughter, Maura Sheehy Moss; and three step-grandchildren.
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dennis.mclellan@latimes.com
