BAKAL, Carl 1918-2004

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born January 11, 1918, in New York, NY; died of a heart attack March 18, 2004, in Manhattan, NY. Editor, photographer, and author. Bakal is best remembered for his anti-gun stance, which he argued for in his 1966 book, The Right to Bear Arms. A graduate of City College (now of the City University of New York), where he earned a B.S. in 1939, he began his career as editor of Fotoshop Almanac and as associate and contributing editor to U.S. Camera. When America joined the war effort in 1942, Bakal enlisted in the Army Signal Corps and became a first lieutenant. After the war, he worked for the military government in Germany, where he produced documentary films, and he later did the same in Japan. In 1947, he returned to civilian life as a writer for the New York Mirror, and, during the early 1950s, as an associate editor for Coronet magazine. A brief time as a freelance photographer was followed by a year editing Real and See magazines. Then, in the early 1960s, Bakal was a public affairs consultant to the U.S. Department of Commerce and a senior associate for Howard Chase Associates in New York City. Two years as director of the magazine department at Carl Byoir & Associates then led to a long period as account supervisor for Anna M. Rosenberg Associates from 1968 to 1984. Continuing to move up the business officer ladder, Bakal became senior vice president of Jack Raymond & Company in 1984, during which time he was also a travel editor for Sylvia Porter's Personal Finance magazine, and then he headed his own company, Carl Bakal Associates, beginning in 1986. Bakal's first two books, the technical Filter Manual (1951) and How to Shoot for Glamour (1955), involved photography; a skilled photographer whose pictures appeared in such national publications as Life, Esquire, Holiday, and Cosmopolitan, he won the international Popular Photography competition in 1956. It was not until the 1960s that Bakal began publishing books on various issues, and his The Right to Bear Arms (revised in 1968 as No Right to Bear Arms) stirred much controversy about the effect of increased gun ownership in America on the level of violence in this country. In 1979 he also published Charity U.S.A.: An Investigation into the Hidden World of the Multi-Billion Dollar Charity Industry, in which he argued for more nonprofit organization accountability to governments.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Chicago Tribune, April 5, 2004, Section 4, p. 8.

Los Angeles Times, April 5, 2004, p. B9.

New York Times, April 3, 2004, p. A25.

Washington Post, April 12, 2004, p. B4.