William Shawn (né Chon; August 31, 1907 – December 8, 1992) was an American magazine editor who edited The New Yorker from 1952 until 1987.

[2] Soon after their arrival in New York City, Cecille took a fact checking job at The New Yorker magazine, and her husband began working there in 1933.

Shawn rose to assistant editor of The New Yorker and oversaw the magazine's coverage of World War II.

After Life magazine rejected Hersey's profile of future president John F. Kennedy, Shawn seized the opportunity.

[5]: 37–41  In 1946, Shawn persuaded Ross to run Hersey's story about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima as the entire contents of one issue.

His shyness was office (and New York) legend, as were his claustrophobia and fear of elevators; many of his colleagues maintain that he carried a hatchet in his briefcase, in case he became trapped.

Shawn gave writers vast space to cover their subjects, and nearly all of them (including Dwight Macdonald, Hannah Arendt, and England's Kenneth Tynan) spoke reverently of him.

The ban remained in effect long after the TV series concluded, persisting until Shawn's retirement in 1987.

[1] Saturday Night Live executive producer Lorne Michaels, a longtime admirer, gave Shawn office space in the Brill Building, and he soon took an editorship at Farrar, Straus and Giroux,[1] a largely honorary post that he held until his death in 1992.

Mary, who was eventually diagnosed with autism, was sent away from the family when she was eight years old to attend a special school, and later institutionalized.