Cover Reveal: Graydon Carter’s Vanity Fair Tell-All

Graydon Carter is ready to pull back the curtain on his storied stewardship of Vanity Fair . And The Hollywood Reporter can now exclusively reveal the cover of the magazine editor’s memoir, out March 25, 2025 from Penguin Press .

Julia Roberts to Narrate Audiobook of Lisa Marie Presley's Posthumous Memoir

The dust jacket for When the Going Was Good: An Editor’s Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines features a younger Carter in a bespoke power suit, cigarette in hand, his trademark hair wings just beginning to take flight.

Carter, 75, was offered the top job at the Condé Nast magazine in 1992, taking over from Tina Brown, who’d edited it since 1984 and was moving to The New Yorker .

Over the next two-and-a-half decades, Carter — who’d immigrated from Canada in 1979 and previously helmed the groundbreaking, celebrity-skewering Spy — transformed the magazine into a monthly must-read.

His Vanity Fair brimmed with tales of obscene wealth, celebrity and riveting true crime — and, if the stars aligned, as it did for Dominick Dunne’s seminal reporting on the O.J. Simpson trial, a story contained all three. Other memorable contributors from the era include Christopher Hitchens, James Wolcott, Maureen Orth and Nancy Jo Sales.

It was the days of town cars, town houses and seven-figure expense accounts for top editors. Only Carter’s former counterpart, Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour (who now also serves as artistic director for all Condé Nast), still stands as a remnant of that bygone era.

“Only when you exit a golden age, do you realize that you were in one,” Carter, 75, tells THR . “I wanted to capture the enterprising spirit and sheer fun of those wonderful years for others.”

Sally Rooney Not Accepting Offers to Adapt Third Book, Says 'Normal People' Media Attention and Discourse Felt Like "a Lot"

Among Carter’s lasting contributions to the entertainment-media landscape is the annual Vanity Fair Hollywood Issue, mere inclusion in which meant a star had truly arrived. At its peak influence, the issue’s covers assembled the most famous faces on the planet, captured like Renaissance paintings by photographer Annie Leibovitz. Herb Ritts, Mario Testino and Bruce Weber were also frequent contributors.

Carter says his final Hollywood Issue cover — which features Oprah Winfrey, Nicole Kidman, Zendaya, Harrison Ford, Robert De Niro and even Carter himself — “was up there in terms of my favorites.” Radhika Jones has held the top editorial post at Vanity Fair since Carter’s departure in 2017.

And it was he who masterminded the magazine’s annual Academy Awards party, which remains one of the most sought-after Oscar-night tickets. The best part of every bash? “Heading back to the hotel knowing the night had been a success,” Carter says.

But more than the glitzy Hollywood soirees, it was the day-to-day grind of putting out the magazine from New York that Carter misses most — which, in its golden age, was a form of glitz in itself.

“The glamour and exhilarating collegiality of a bustling office filled with smart, and smartly-dressed young people,” is how he puts it.

Carter currently oversees Air Mail , a weekly newsletter for “worldly cosmopolitans” he launched in 2019.

Jameela Jamil, Lucien Laviscount and More Join Cast of 'People We Meet on Vacation' Adaptation