9. Sparkes interview with Francisco and Crane.
10. Weiss, “Advertising a Misadvertised Community,” 117–122.
11. “The Early Years of Community Advertising,” Exhibit 3. “Californians, Inc.” is described in “A National Advertising Campaign for One of the Best-Advertised States,” Printers’ Ink, January 4, 1923, 17–18.
12. John Allen Murphy, “How to Raise the Money for Community Advertising,” Printers’ Ink, May 15, 1924, 105–114.
13. Garner, “Leaves from a Community Advertiser’s Experience Book.”
14. This campaign was written by Frank Hummert, then copy chief in the Chicago office.
15. McWilliams, Southern California, 137.
16. Sparkes interview with Francisco and Crane.
17. Carey McWilliams, California: The Great Exception (New York: A. A. Wyn, 1949), 174.
18. See James Bryce, The American Commonwealth, vol. II (London: Macmillan and Co., 1891), 403.
19. McWilliams, California, 176–180; Bryce, American Commonwealth, 387.
20. McWilliams, California, 182.
21. Greg Mitchell, The Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair’s Race for Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics (New York: Random House, 1992), xii.
22. See, for example, Richard M. Fried’s The Man Everybody Knew: Bruce Barton and the Making of Modern America (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2005), 116–127.
23. See Leon Harris, Upton Sinclair: American Rebel (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1975).
24. Upton Sinclair, The Brass Check: A Study of American Journalism (Pasadena, CA: self-published, 1919), 436–437.
25. David Nasaw, The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000), 115–116.
26. Upton Sinclair, The Autobiography of Upton Sinclair (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1962), 260–261.
27. James N. Gregory, “Introduction” to Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994), vii; Kevin Starr, Endangered Dreams: The Great Depression in California (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 126–128.
28. Quoted in Harris, Upton Sinclair, 311.
29. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Politics of Upheaval, 1935–1936 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003), 112; Sinclair, Autobiography, 268.
30. Sinclair, Autobiography, 269; Harris, Upton Sinclair, 297.
31. Upton Sinclair, “I, Governor of California—And How I Ended Poverty; A True Story of the Future,” pamphlet, 1933.
32. Mitchell, Campaign of the Century, 6; McWilliams, Southern California, 298; Gregory, “Introduction,” viii.
33. Mitchell, Campaign of the Century, 7; Starr, Endangered Dreams, 138–139.
34. Schlesinger, Politics of Upheaval, 114–118; Harris, Upton Sinclair, 307; Starr, Endangered Dreams, 150.
35. Mitchell, Campaign of the Century, 189 and 291.
36. Sparkes interview with Francisco and Crane, 14.
37. Don Francisco letter to Albert Lasker, September 21, 1934, “Correspondence, Lord & Thomas” file, Don Francisco papers, Syracuse University.
38. Mitchell, Campaign of the Century, 202 and 344.
39. Ibid., 344.
40. Variety, October 29, 1934, as quoted by Don Francisco in his October 13, 1937, interview with Sparkes.
41. Irwin Ross, “The Supersalesmen of California Politics: Whitaker and Baxter,” Harper’s, July 1959, 55–61.
42. Ibid.
43. In The Brass Check, Sinclair had written of the Times: “This paper, founded by Harrison Gary Otis, one of the most corrupt and most violent old men that ever appeared in American public life, has continued for thirty years to rave at every conceivable social reform, with complete disregard for truth, and with abusiveness which seems almost insane.” See, for example, David M. Fine’s Imagining Los Angeles: A City in Fiction (Reno, NV: University of Nevada Press, 2000), 62.
44. Mitchell, Campaign of the Century, 5; Nasaw, The Chief, 501; Starr, Endangered Dreams, 143; Sinclair, Brass Check, 202; Sinclair, I, Candidate, 144–148.
45. Sinclair, I, Candidate, 139–140.
46. Sparkes interview with Francisco and Crane, 4.
47. Francisco letter to Ralph Sollitt, October 1, 1934, “Correspondence, Lord & Thomas” file, Francisco papers.
48. Sparkes interview with Francisco and Crane, 4–5.
49. Sinclair, “I, Governor”; Mitchell, Campaign of the Century, 295–297; Schlesinger, Politics of Upheaval, 118; Starr, Endangered Dreams, 148.
50. Sparkes interview with Francisco and Crane, 8–9.
51. Gregory, “Introduction,” viii; x; Starr, Endangered Dreams, 152.
52. Mitchell, Campaign of the Century, 530 and 574.
53. Sparkes interview with Francisco and Crane, 9.
54. I, Candidate; quotation from 144.
55. Godfrey M. Lebhar, Chain Stores in America, 1859–1969 (New York: Chain Store Publishing Corporation, 1952), 231.
56. Sparkes interview with Francisco and Crane, 16.
57. Lord & Thomas, “Discrimination vs. Business,” 27.
58. Lebhar, Chain Stores in America, 28–38.
59. Ibid., 53 and 66.
60. Ralph M. Hower, “Urban Retailing 100 Years Ago,” Bulletin of the Business Historical Society 12 (December 1938): 91–101; Richard S. Tedlow, New and Improved: The Story of Mass Marketing in America (New York: Basic Books), 186–199.
61. Tedlow, New and Improved, 198.
62. Lebhar, Chain Stores in America, 66.
63. Joseph Schumpeter, “The Creative Response in Economic History,” Journal of Economic History 7 (November 1947): 149–159.
64. Lebhar, Chain Stores in America, 129 and 159–162.
65. Ibid., 154–169.
66. Ibid., 129–147.
67. Ibid., 230.
68. “Discrimination vs. Business,” 4.
69. Ibid., 5.
70. Lebhar, Chain Stores in America, 233.
71. Jeffrey L. Cruikshank and David B. Sicilia, The Engine That Could: Seventy-Five Years of Values-Driven Change at Cummins Engine Company (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1997), 88.
72. Sparkes interview with W. G. Irwin, 10.
73. Lebhar, Chain Stores in America, 234; “Discrimination vs. Business,” 8.
74. “Discrimination vs. Business,” 8 and 15.
75. Ibid., 7.
76. Ibid., 6 and 9; Lebhar, Chain Stores in America, 235.
77. “Discrimination vs. Business,” 16–17.
78. California Chain Stores Association, “The Fifty Thousand Percent Chain Store Tax”; “Discrimination vs. Business,” 17–18.
79. “Discrimination vs. Business,” 18.
80. Ibid., 27–28.
81. Ibid., 23–24.
82. “The Fifty Thousand Percent Chain Store Tax.”
83. Lebhar, Chain Stores in America, 237–238; “Discrimination vs. Business,” 22.
84. “The Fifty Thousand Percent Chain Store Tax.”
85. Lebhar, Chain Stores in America, 240.
86. Sparkes interview with Noyes, June 23, 1938, 8.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
1. Mark O’Dea, who worked for Lasker from 1914 to 1930 and then went into competition with him, set up the speaking engagement for him. It was, O’Dea told Boyden Sparkes, the largest group of his peers that Lasker had ever addressed. Sparkes interview with O’Dea.
2. In the summer of 1935, Lasker wrote several letters to his children, then touring Europe, and mentioned Flora’s impending stay at Watkins Glen.
3. Sparkes interview with Edward Lasker (undated). Unless otherwise noted, the quotes in this section are from Sparkes’s conversations with Albert and Edward about Flora’s death.
4. From the Gunther papers at the Chicago Historical Society, Box 105, folder 12, notes on Sarnoff conversation.
5. Sparkes interview with Sollitt, 24.
6. Edward Lasker’s unpublished memoirs, Of Me I Sing
, 17.
7. Sparkes, 200.
8. “Flora Lasker’s Heirs to Divide $1,359,000 Estate,” Chicago Tribune, December 16, 1937.
9. In his interview with Ralph Sollitt, Boyden Sparkes recounts Mary Lasker Foreman’s objections to the project.
10. Saturday Evening Post, June 9, 1934, 8
11. This and the following descriptions are from various conversations between Sparkes and Lasker.
12. Sparkes, 5.
13. Albert Lasker letter to “Partridges,” October 1, 1937.
14. Letter to Paul Patterson from his nephew, October 29, 1937, from the Arthur Schultz collection.
15. Albert Lasker letter to “D. L.” and “A. K.” (Partridges), April 14, 1938.
16. Except as noted, these details and quotes come from a rambling conversation with Sparkes, which most likely took place on either June 22 or June 24, 1938.
17. Letter, Joseph P. Kennedy to Thomas W. Lamont, May 4, 1938, from the Joseph P. Kennedy Papers Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.
18. Unless otherwise noted, all office details are from an undated six-page “Memorandum,” prepared by the Lord & Thomas administrative staff in 1938.
19. From Robert Eck’s “A Face of Character,” March 30, 1994, typewritten collection of reminiscences about Lasker, 6.
20. John Gunther, Taken at the Flood: The Story of Albert D. Lasker (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960), 205.
21. Sparkes interview with Crane and Francisco, October 11, 1937, 54.
22. Eck, “A Face of Character,” 6.
23. “Francisco to Manhattan,” Time, August, 1, 1938.
24. See, for example, Lasker’s July, 25, 1938, letter to Pepsodent’s Kenneth G. Smith.
25. “I like Doris Kenyon very much,” playwright Mary P. Hamlin wrote in 1931. “She is blond but she can act.” See the summary of Hamlin’s memoir and letters in the University of Rochester Library Bulletin 30, no. 1 (Autumn 1977), www.lib.rochester.edu/index.cfm?PAGE=3570.
26. “To Fight Movie Censors,” New York Times, April 24, 1916, 11.
27. Mick LaSalle, Dangerous Men. Pre-Code Hollywood and the Birth of the Modern Man (New York: Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press, 2002), 139–140.
28. See 138 F. 2d 989, Lasker v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, No. 8322, Circuit Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit, December 4, 1943.
29. Authors’ interview with Frances Brody, March 22, 2004.
30. The sable coat reference is from Eck, “A Face of Character,” 6.
31. From John Gunther’s first draft of Taken at the Flood, Box 99, Folder 13, John Gunther papers, University of Chicago.
32. Kenyon’s stepdaughter gives a colorful rendition of Lasker’s relationship with Kenyon, including the impotence reference. See the Doris Kenyon Web site at www.lind.org.zw/people/doriskenyon/doriskenyon.htm. Third wife Mary Lasker later also mentioned Lasker’s problems with impotence.
33. From Leonard Lyons’s February 2, 1939, syndicated column, The Lyons Den.
34. “Doris Kenyon to Sue,” New York Times, February 21, 1938, 21.
35. “Doris Kenyon Given Divorce,” Los Angeles Times, June 9, 1939, 22. The stated reason—cruelty—was either a legal convenience or it accurately reflected how Kenyon felt she had been treated during her brief marriage to Lasker.
36. Gunther, Taken at the Flood, 278.
37. Lasker first ran across Manton many years earlier, when Manton—as U. S. Second Circuit Judge in New York—issued a ruling regarding a 1921 Shipping Board case. See “U. S. Mail Line Fleet Regained by Lasker,” New York Times, August 28, 1921, 1.
38. John Gunther devotes a chapter to the Manton affair, and provides substantially more detail than we include here. See Taken at the Flood, 244–256.
39. “Letter Is Offered in Levy-Hahn Case,” New York Times, July 26, 1939, 3.
40. “Borrowing Judge,” Time, February 8, 1939, www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,771417,00.html?promoid=googlep. See also “Not a Pretty Story,” Time, June 5, 1939, www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,761412,00.html.
41. Manton appears to have had a notion of using Lasker’s influence to merge National Cellulose—the bottom-feeding firm in which Manton and Sullivan had an interest—with the far more reputable International Cellulose, with which Lasker had been associated for almost two decades. Lasker wanted nothing to do with any such deal. See “Hahn, as Witness, Backs Loan Deal,” New York Times, July 29, 1939, 10.
42. For the particulars of Dewey’s charges against Manton, including those involving Lasker, see “Dewey Letter on Manton,” and “Dewey Says Judge Manton got $400,000 from Litigants; Sends Charges to Congress,” New York Times, January 30, 1939, 1.
43. In his own defense, Manton argued that he took bribes from both sides in cases before his court, listened to the arguments, made up his mind, and returned the losing side’s bribe. This argument prompted Justice Learned Hand—Manton’s former colleague on the Circuit Court of Appeals, and his successor as chief judge—to refer to Manton as a “moral moron.”
44. “Lasker Held Dupe in Manton Deal,” New York Times, July, 25, 1939.
45. “Not a Pretty Story.”
46. “L. S. Levy Is Barred from U. S. Courts over Manton Loan,” New York Times, November 15, 1939, 1.
47. Sparkes memo to himself, August 30, 1939.
48. Albert Lasker letter to Sparkes, May 14, 1940.
CHAPTER TWENTY
1. John Gunther, Taken at the Flood: The Story of Albert D. Lasker (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960), 234.
2. Reminiscences of Mary Lasker, in the Columbia University Oral History Research Office Collection (hereafter “Mary Lasker oral history, CUOHROC”), 57.
3. Ibid., 59.
4. Ibid., 60.
5. Ibid., 47.
6. “Hollywood Is Redoing All the Hey-Hey Girls,” New York Post, March 6, 1935.
7. Paul Jodard, Raymond Loewy (New York: Taplinger Publishing Company, 1992), 37. The details of the commission are from Mary Lasker oral history.
8. Mary Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 72.
9. In her Columbia oral history, Mary recalled that she had made the same request of her first husband, Paul Reinhardt. Reinhardt went to one session, declared ironically, “I have been analyzed,” and never went back. Mary Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 530
10. Authors’ interview with Frances Brody, March 22, 2004.
11. Box 99, Folder 14, John Gunther papers, University of Chicago. Gunther also talked to George Daniels, who provided additional details (Box 104, Folder 10).
12. Gunther, Taken at the Flood, 260.
13. Parker Hall letter to William Benton, January 7, 1954, University of Chicago Library.
14. The University sold the estate (which was thirty-two miles from the main campus, as the crow flies) in seven transactions beginning in 1943 and ending in 1947—the year that Lasker’s fabulous golf course fell victim to a developer. University officials put the proceeds from these sales into a special account and later used them to build a new administration building and purchase a thirteen-story apartment building adjacent to the campus.
15. Gunther, Taken at the Flood, 262.
16. According to Gunther’s original manuscript, Lasker continued to see Daniels at irregular intervals in subsequent years.
17. Mary Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 73.
18. Ibid., 80.
19. Authors’ interview with Frances Brody, March 22, 2004.
20. Mary Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 49.
21. Ibid., 440.
22. Ibid., 449.
23. Sanger made reference to this influential early gift in an address delivered on October 25, 1950, at the thirtieth annual meeting of the Planned Parenthood Federation. Margaret Sanger Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College Library.
24. See Woodbridge E. Morris, MD, letter to Albert Lasker, November 21, 1939, Margaret Sanger papers.
25. Albert Lasker letter to Margaret Sanger, July 14, 1942, M
argaret Sanger papers.
26. Albert Lasker letter to Margaret Sanger, February 9, 1940, Margaret Sanger papers.
27. Mary Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 87.
28. See Madeline Gray, Margaret Sanger: A Biography of the Champion of Birth Control (New York: Richard Marek Publishers, 1979), 399.
29. Albert Lasker letter to Margaret Sanger, February 9, 1940.
30. Mary Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 88.
31. Ibid., 467.
32. Ibid., 449.
33. See the Seversky biography on the “AcePilots” Web site, at www.acepilots.com/wwi/pio_seversky.html.
34. Mary Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 99.
35. Review, New York Times, July 19, 1943, movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res= 9404EFDF1738E33 BBC4152DFB1668388659EDE (accessed January 3, 2008).
36. See Leonard Maltin’s introduction to Victory Through Air Power on Walt Disney on the Front Lines, a DVD collection of Disney wartime propaganda, 2004.
37. Fairfax Cone, With All Its Faults: A Candid Account of Forty Years in Advertising (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1969), 140–141. Cone gives a fascinating account of Lasker’s decision to shut down Lord & Thomas.
38. Albert Lasker letter to Leonard Masius, December 19, 1942.
39. Don Francisco letter to Ralph Sollitt, December 15, 1933, “Correspondence, Lord & Thomas” file, Box 2, Don Francisco papers, Syracuse University Special Collections.
40. Unless otherwise noted, this financial analysis comes from Lasker letter to Masius, December 19, 1942.
41. From a June 3, 1943, accounting from A. E. Rood to the firm of Appel & Brach. It is worth noting in this context that Lasker paid between half and two-thirds of his income in taxes.
42. From the Arthur Andersen auditors’ report dated December 31, 1942.
43. Gunther, Taken at the Flood, 269.
44. This complete break between old and new was necessitated by Lasker’s inability to get a reading from the Treasury Department—then swamped by tens of thousands of such inquiries, owing to the dramatic spike in the liquidation tax—as to the taxability of goodwill. Lasker simply couldn’t afford to risk a tax liability of unknown size.
45. With his Foote, Cone & Belding colleagues, coauthor Schultz spent years trying to rebuild this “lost” international network.
The Man Who Sold America: The Amazing (but True!) Story of Albert D. Lasker and the Creation of the Advertising Century Page 54
