Liberty Magazine was founded in 1924[1] by cousins Colonel Robert Rutherford McCormick and Captain Joseph Medill Patterson, owners and editors of the Chicago Tribune and New York Daily News respectively.

Under MacFadden's early leadership, the magazine was a strong proponent of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and an article proclaiming him to be physically fit to hold office may have held substantial sway in the outcome of the election.

MacFadden led the magazine to considerable success, until it was discovered in 1941 that he had been falsifying circulation reports by as many as 20,000 copies to increase advertising revenue.

Following the lead of The Saturday Evening Post, in 1942 Liberty increased its cover price from five to ten cents, resulting in a drop in sales, down to 1.4 million, and in advertising dollars.

[6] Beginning in 1942, the cartoon editor was Lawrence Lariar, who started The Thropp Family, the first comic strip to run as a continuity in a national magazine.

[8] Unusual for a magazine of the era, they bought the rights to many of the printed works outright, and these remain in the hands of the Liberty Library Corporation.

Examples of some of Liberty's most well known authors include F. Scott Fitzgerald, P. G. Wodehouse, Dashiell Hammett, George Bernard Shaw, Agatha Christie, H. L. Mencken, Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Benchley, Paul Gallico, Irvin S. Cobb, Eric S. Hatch, John Galsworthy, MacKinlay Kantor, F. Hugh Herbert, J. P. McEvoy, H. G. Wells, and Louis Bromfield.

[9] As a general interest magazine for the masses, Liberty frequently had opinion pieces by the biggest names in sports and entertainment of the day, many of whom remain iconic in American culture.

Featured in Liberty's pages are articles by Frank Sinatra, Harry Houdini, Groucho Marx,[10] Shirley Temple, Mae West, Jack Dempsey, W.C. Fields, Mary Pickford, Greta Garbo, Al Capone, Babe Ruth, Mickey Rooney, Jean Harlow, and Joe DiMaggio.

Included within the magazine's pages are James Montgomery Flagg (of "Uncle Sam Wants You" fame), Walt Disney, Dr. Seuss, Leslie Thrasher, John Held Jr., Peter Arno, McClelland Barclay, Robert W. Edgren, Neysa McMein, Arthur William Brown, Emmett Watson, Wallace Morgan, Ralph Barton, W. T. Benda, John T. McCutcheon, Willy Pogany, Harold Anderson, and many more.

[14] in 2003, columnist and writing instructor Roy Peter Clark calculated the reading time of the February 10, 1940, issue: Over 120 full-feature films and television shows have been produced from content within Liberty, including Mister Ed The Talking Horse, Double Indemnity, and Sergeant York.

In her working notes for The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand mentioned the character Peter Keating as "the kind of person who occasionally reads Liberty magazine",[16] though this reference did not enter the final version of the book.

The "Crime" issue featured vintage reports about John Dillinger, Bruno Hauptmann, J. Edgar Hoover, and other newsworthy personalities of the 1920s and '30s.

The "Funny Men" issue was devoted to famous comedians (Laurel and Hardy, Burns and Allen, Milton Berle, Charlie Chaplin, etc.).

Each issue featured reprints of a humorous essay by Robert Benchley and vintage film reviews by Rob Wagner and other former staff columnists.