Arthur Harrison Motley

Arthur Harrison Motley (August 22, 1900 – May 30, 1984) was an American salesman and advertising executive best known as the publisher of Parade. Under his direction, the magazine expanded its circulation nearly 5-fold.

Early life Arthur Harrison Motley was born on August 22, 1900, in Minneapolis or outside Jordan, Minnesota. He was raised on his parents' farm, where his father had to supplement the family income by working in road construction. At 13, he launched his first business, "M&G Company": in partnership with his cousin John Groff, he hired a horse and wagon, and the two boys collected ashes and delivered manure and topsoil. When he began high school, his parents moved the family into Minneapolis each winter so that he could have access to better education.

His freshman year at the University of Minnesota was interrupted by the First World War; he enlisted in the United States Army and "spent the war guarding the Willys-Overland building in St. Paul". However, after watching Ed Wynn in The Perfect Fool three times, Motley concluded that he could never meet Wynn's standard, and abandoned that idea. In 1927, he attended Columbia Law School, however, that job ended when sales of cough syrup declined in springtime, because "people quit coughing". At the time, Parade had a print circulation of approximately 2.1 million; by which point circulation had reached 21 million, with distribution in 116 newspapers.

In 1985, Motley was posthumously inducted into the Advertising Hall of Fame. He is the namesake of Zeta Psi's "Red Motley Leadership Fund". He attributed his habit of "clipping out news items about people he knew and mailing them to the subjects with brief notes of congratulations" written in red pencil crayon—which he did an estimated 10,000 times per year—to the need to build social bonds with clients despite being unable to go drinking with them; The Washington Post stated that he had been inspired in this by James Farley, who had a similar habit except that Farley used green ink. Some sources attribute his nickname "Red" to this habit, while others attribute it to his red hair.

In 1928, he married Helene Bishop at the Little Church Around the Corner. He and Bishop subsequently had two daughters, who likewise had their weddings at the Little Church: Yvonne to Thomas B. McCabe Jr., son of Thomas B. McCabe, and Marcia to William A. Patterson Jr., son of William A. Patterson.