Our Second 20

By WALTER ISAACSON/MANAGING EDITOR

Welcome to the second of our six keepsake TIME 100 special issues that, by the end of next year, will profile the most influential people of this amazing century. The first installment in April, you'll recall, named 20 in the category of Leaders and Revolutionaries. This time around we've picked the 20 most influential Artists and Entertainers. Over the next year or so we'll tackle the Builders and Titans of the business world, then Scientists and Thinkers and then Heroes and Inspirations. It will all culminate with our issue on the Person of the Century.

Choosing people for each installment of the TIME 100 involves soliciting nominations from our editors and journalists around the world, consulting outside experts and historians, and culling through the millions (yes, literally) of votes you've sent us by mail, e-mail [email protected] and through our website time.com) We also again convened a panel of luminaries with Charlie Rose as host, which was broadcast on his great PBS show; this one, at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, included Sheryl Crow, Rob Reiner, Anna Deavere Smith, our art critic Robert Hughes and Time Inc.'s editor-in-chief, Norman Pearlstine. Then, in a series of occasionally contentious (but stimulating) meetings, we sat down to choose a final list of 20 with our partners at cbs News, who are producing an hour prime-time special on each group. The show will air this Thursday at 10 p.m. E.T., and is presided over by the irrepressible Mike Wallace, whose own preferences (notably, Sinatra) and dissents (we'll leave that a secret) were expressed with his usual passion.

The debates a few months ago over the relative influence of world leaders--Lenin over Stalin, Reagan over Kennedy, Ho Chi Minh over Che Guevara--involved a lot of learned discourses conducted as if we were sipping sherry in a faculty lounge. But the shift from Lenin to Lennon was wrenching. Indeed, the fights we had over artists and entertainers involved a lot of passionate diatribes conducted as if we were swigging tequila at all-night bull sessions in a sophomore dorm. In order to rationalize the process (somewhat), we divided the world of arts into 20 categories, ranging from writer to singer to poet to painter to actor, and chose the most influential in each.

The criterion, we kept having to remind ourselves, was influence, not greatness. In selecting the world leaders, it was easy to understand that we were selecting not those we liked but those (such as Hitler) whose influence was huge. But for artists, everyone was tempted to push for personal favorites, the folks each of us thought were the best. For example, I'm in that slice of my generation that thinks the Stones were better than the Beatles, but I had to admit the Beatles had more influence. In the end a lot of people who may have been the best in their field (film director Ingmar Bergman, for example) did not make the list because their greatness surpassed their enduring influence.

Music was particularly hard. People's opinions tend to be based on when they grew up: as Wallace was pushing Sinatra, I was pushing Dylan. Also on where they grew up: I'm from New Orleans, and Pearlstine, whose deities include Miles Davis and Duke Ellington, is convinced that's the only reason Louis Armstrong made the list.

Picking an artist to do the cover, however, was rather easy. Al Hirschfeld, who turns 95 this month, began drawing theater illustrations for the New York Times 70 years ago and is the premier entertainment caricaturist of our century. In doing a rare color painting for this cover, he displayed not only his inimitable wit and talent but also a bit of patience as we debated changes to our list.

We hope our next issue on business titans will prove less contentious, or at least a little less so. We're already starting to assess which ones most influenced our lives, from Clarence Birdseye to Bill Gates. Your suggestions, as always, are welcome.