Description
Collector's Note – Why This Issue Matters
The September 1996 issue of George magazine arrives at a precise and revealing moment in American cultural history — one where the boundaries between celebrity, politics, and media spectacle were being actively redrawn, and where George itself was still proving to a skeptical press establishment that the concept could work. Launched just a year earlier in September 1995 by John F. Kennedy Jr. and co-founder Michael Berman, the magazine had entered a crowded market with an audacious premise: that politics could be covered with the same visual sophistication and cultural fluency that fashion and entertainment magazines brought to their subjects. By its one-year mark, George had not only survived the initial wave of skepticism but had established a genuine editorial identity, and the September 1996 issue — arriving in the thick of a presidential election year — represents the publication operating at the height of its original ambition. Election years were George's natural habitat, and 1996, with Bob Dole challenging incumbent Bill Clinton, gave the magazine exactly the kind of politically charged cultural moment it was built to document.
Drew Barrymore on the cover is a choice that communicates everything about what George was trying to accomplish. By September 1996, Barrymore was completing one of the more remarkable rehabilitation arcs in modern Hollywood history — a former child star who had moved through well-documented personal difficulties in her teenage years and emerged in the early 1990s as a serious and increasingly celebrated adult actress. Films like Poison Ivy (1992), Bad Girls (1994), and Batman Forever (1995) had reestablished her screen presence, and she was on the cusp of the commercial breakthroughs that would define her late-1990s peak. For collectors building out a serious Drew Barrymore magazine archive, this cover represents her at a genuinely transitional moment — visible enough to anchor a major cover, not yet the fully mainstream star she would become within two years. The editorial pairing of her image with an Elizabeth Dole profile inside is quintessentially George: Hollywood glamour on the outside, substantive political content within.
Elizabeth Dole's presence as a featured subject in this issue carries its own historical weight. In September 1996 she was among the most prominent figures in American political life — a former Secretary of Transportation under Reagan, former Secretary of Labor under George H.W. Bush, and, crucially, the wife of the Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole at the precise moment his campaign was entering its final stretch against Clinton. A profile of Elizabeth Dole in the September 1996 issue of a politically oriented magazine was not incidental filler; it was timely, substantive coverage of a figure at the center of that election cycle's conversation. She would later mount her own presidential campaign in 1999, making her an even more significant figure in retrospect. For collectors interested in the full run of George magazine, this issue sits squarely in the publication's most historically resonant window — a presidential election year, an iconic cover subject, and a featured political figure whose relevance only grew in the years that followed. Among magazines from 1996, few capture the particular cultural atmosphere of that election cycle with the same editorial precision this issue achieves.
About the Publication
George was an American political lifestyle magazine founded by John F. Kennedy Jr. and Michael Berman, with its debut issue published in September 1995. The magazine occupied a genuinely original editorial space — treating politics as popular culture, covering elected officials, political strategists, and policy debates with the same visual ambition and narrative sophistication that mainstream lifestyle magazines applied to entertainment and fashion. Published by Hachette Filipacchi Media and based in New York, George attracted a readership that was broadly culturally literate rather than narrowly politically engaged, and its covers — which routinely featured actors, musicians, and athletes styled in politically themed imagery alongside actual political figures — became some of the most discussed in 1990s magazine publishing. Kennedy served as editor-in-chief from the magazine's founding until his death in July 1999, after which the publication struggled to sustain its identity and circulation, eventually ceasing publication in 2001. The magazine's run of roughly five and a half years, concentrated entirely within the Kennedy editorship, is what collectors value — a coherent, distinctive body of work with a clear creative vision and an editor whose personal significance to American cultural history lends the entire archive an additional layer of meaning.
Key Highlights Inside
- Cover photograph of Drew Barrymore, styled in the politically inflected visual language that George applied to its celebrity cover subjects — a document of both her image at a pivotal career moment and the magazine's distinctive editorial aesthetic.
- A feature profile of Elizabeth Dole, published at the peak of her national prominence as the wife of 1996 Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole, with the general election less than two months away at the time of this issue's publication.
- Editorial content consistent with George's September 1996 format, which would have included the magazine's characteristic blend of political reporting, cultural commentary, and personality-driven journalism calibrated to the final stretch of a presidential election cycle.
- Advertising content representative of the magazine's upscale, culturally engaged readership demographic in the mid-1990s — itself a period document of the commercial landscape surrounding prestige print media at the time.
- Note: Specific interior article titles and additional features beyond those confirmed in the listing have not been independently verified. The above reflects documented cover and feature content alongside the publication's known editorial format for this period.
Condition & Rarity
Surviving copies of this issue described as being in good condition with typical age-related wear occupy the mid-tier of the collector grading spectrum for 1990s newsstand periodicals — honest, displayable, and representative of how most copies from this era have come through nearly three decades of storage and handling. The presence of an original address label is a condition detail worth understanding in context: subscription copies of George were delivered with mailing labels affixed directly to the cover, which distinguishes them from newsstand copies and is a factor experienced collectors weigh when assessing display quality. In this case, the label is noted as covered by a removable protective layer designed to allow clean removal without surface damage to the cover underneath — a preservation approach that, when executed carefully, can restore a subscription copy to near-newsstand display appearance. The underlying cover integrity, page completeness, and absence of more significant structural damage are the primary condition factors that determine long-term collectible value for issues of this type. George was printed on coated stock typical of upscale 1990s lifestyle magazines, which holds color and resists yellowing better than the newsprint-adjacent stocks used by lower-budget publications of the same era, making well-preserved copies more visually stable over time than their age might suggest.
Looking for More Issues Like This?
This particular issue — Drew Barrymore on the cover of a presidential election year George, with an Elizabeth Dole feature inside — is a specific and meaningful combination that does not come up often in collector inventories in genuinely displayable condition. If you're pursuing the broader Barrymore archive, the Drew Barrymore magazine collection at OriginalMagazines.com is the most concentrated place to find her cover appearances across multiple titles and eras. For collectors focused on the Kennedy editorship as a complete body of work, the George magazine collection covers the full run, and the 1996 magazine archive offers the wider cultural context of that election year across publications well beyond the political press.