46. Andersen auditors’ report.
47. “End of a Name,” Time, January 4, 1943, www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,790682,00.html. The article concluded on an interesting note: “Dopesters figured that he took his identification with the name too personally to leave it to someone else.”
48. Cone, With All Its Faults, 142.
49. “Advertising Will Play Major Post-War Role, Lasker Says,” Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch, January 17, 1943.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
1. Reminiscences of Mary Lasker, in the Columbia University Oral History Research Office Collection (hereafter “Mary Lasker oral history, CUOHROC”), 612.
2. Ibid., 612.
3. Ibid., 105.
4. Ibid., 476.
5. Ibid., 128.
6. See The American Society for the Control of Cancer: Its Objects and Methods and Some of the Visible Results of Its Work, published by the Society in 1925, 65–67.
7. For details on the Smith gift, see “Appropriate,” Time, June 15, 1925; for details on the Lasker Foundation, see the University’s “Developing the Medical Center” historical summary at www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/spcl/excat/donors5.html. The medical context of the gift is described in great detail in “Donate $1,000,000 to Prolong Life,” New York Times, Jaunary 9, 1928, 1.
8. Mary Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 77.
9. See “Important Events in NCI history” on the National Institutes of Health Web site at www.nih.gov/about/almanac/archive/2002/organization/NCI.htm.
10. Mary Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 136.
11. Ibid., 479.
12. Ultimately, according to Mary, this gentlemen’s agreement wasn’t honored. Although Lever Bros.contributed $50,000 in 1944, the company gave only $25,000 for each of the next two years, and then stopped its contributions altogether. Mary Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 484–485.
13. Another version of this story has Emerson Foote as the prime mover behind the name change. See Walter S. Ross, Crusade: The Official History of the American Cancer Society (New York: Arbor House, 1987), 37.
14. “Wartime Cancer Show,” Fibber McGee and Molly, April 28 1945.
15. Mary Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 534.
16. Louis Lasagna, The Doctors’ Dilemmas (1962; rpt. Ayer Co. Publishing, 1970), 69.
17. Mary Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 170.
18. Kline later became celebrated as the author of the best-selling From Sad to Glad (New York: Putnam, 1974).
19. Alfred Lasker letter to Ernst Mahler, August 2, 1951, from the Arthur Schultz collection.
20. Alfred Lasker letter to Charles Mendl, October 4, 1951, from the Arthur Schultz collection.
21. Mary Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 710.
22. See Alfred Frankfurter’s introduction to The Albert D. Lasker Collection: Renoir to Matisse, published in 1957 by Chanticleer Press with a subsidy from Mary Lasker, xiv.
23. Mary Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 714.
24. The Albert D. Lasker Collection, xvi.
25. Ibid., 109.
26. John Gunther, Taken at the Flood: The Story of Albert D. Lasker (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960), 312.
27. Nadine Brozan, “Woman in the News: Mary Lasker; Lobbyist on a National Scale,” New York Times, November 21, 1985.
28. Gunther, Taken at the Flood, 181.
29. Ibid., 225.
30. Transcript of a telephone conversation between Alfred Lasker and Robert Hutchins, May 14, 1942, University of Chicago Library.
31. Milton Mayer, Robert Maynard Hutchins: A Memoir (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 229. Mayer provides a remarkably dispassionate—even sympathetic—view of Lasker in this episode.
32. One of Lasker’s sisters became ill en route to Israel and had to return home for emergency surgery.
33. Unless otherwise noted, Lasker’s quotes regarding Israel are from the reminiscences of Albert Lasker, in the Columbia University Oral History Research Office Collection, 153–180.
34. J. R. Fuchs’s oral history interview with Oscar R. Ewing, Harry S. Truman Library & Museum, www.trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/ewing4.htm.
35. Gunther, Taken at the Flood, 336.
36. Ibid., 335.
37. Alfred Lasker letter to Charles Mendl, June 20, 1951.
38. Alfred Lasker letter to Harry Meyer, December 26, 1951.
39. Mary Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 274.
40. Alfred Lasker, Last Will and Testament, February 1952.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
1. Sparkes, 341.
2. Sparkes, 345.
3. Sparkes, 39.
4. From “Advertising and Its Contribution to the General Welfare,” an undated speech (or perhaps article) from the 1930s.
5. Sparkes interview with Sollitt, November 5, 1937, 18.
6. Sparkes interview with Hertz, May 29, 1938, 7.
7. Sparkes interview with Sarnoff, January 11, 1938, 4–11.
8. Reminiscences of Mary Lasker, in the Columbia University Oral History Research Office Collection (hereafter “Mary Lasker oral history, CUOHROC”), 76.
9. Sparkes interview with Hummert, 32.
10. Sparkes interview with Bullis, October 27, 1937, 17.
11. Sparkes interview with Hummert, 37.
12. Sparkes interview with Sollitt, November 3, 1937, 14.
13. Sparkes, 209.
14. Sparkes interview with Sollitt, April 22, 1938, 10.
15. Sparkes, 3.
16. Mary Lasker oral history, CUOHROC, 50.
17. Sparkes, 252.
18. Alfred Lasker letter to W. G. Irwin, August 18, 1917, from the W. G. Irwin papers.
19. Richard M. Fried, The Man Everybody Knew: Bruce Barton and the Making of Modern America (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2005), 82–83. Barton visited rest-cure camps in upstate New York for a decade, took long “vacations” with his brother in Wyoming, and also sought relief at a clinic in Canada.
20. Fairfax Cone, With All Its Faults: A Candid Account of Forty Years in Advertising (Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1969), 70–80.
21. The few documented “manic” episodes that Lasker had—such as the wild night in Grand Rapids in 1900 with Arthur Warner that culminated in a youthful Lasker attempting to drive a carriage into a bar—seem to have been the result of drink, rather than mania. The three-day lecture that Lasker delivered to his associates in April 1925, apparently at a fever pitch, makes a stronger case for mania.
22. Sparkes interview with Crane and Francisco, 32.
23. Sparkes interview with Sullivan, November 30, 1937, 2.
24. Sparkes interview with Hertz, May 29, 1938, 3.
25. Sparkes interview with Noyes, June 23, 1938, 14.
26. Sparkes, 99–100.
27. Sparkes interview with O’Dea, December 3, 1937, 9.
28. John Gunther, Taken at the Flood: The Story of Albert D. Lasker (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960), 207.
29. Sparkes interview with Sollitt, November 16, 1937, 8–9.
30. Edward Lasker letter to John Gunther, December 16, 1959, 9.
31. Sparkes interview with Sollitt, November 5, 1937, 8.
32. Sparkes, 146.
33. Sparkes interview with Sollitt, November 16, 1937, 18.
34. Sparkes interview with Field, March 16, 1938, 9.
35. Sparkes interview with Irwin, 11.
36. Sparkes interview with Sollitt, November 5, 1937, 18.
37. Sparkes interview with Irwin, 1.
Acknowledgments
First, we owe special thanks to the many libraries, archives, museums, and repositories that gave us access to their collections, as detailed in our “Note on Sources.” Books like this are not possible without resources like theirs. We are also indebted to the many people who forwarded Lasker-related materials to coauthor Schultz over the years, including his colleagues at Foote, Cone & Belding (today’s Draftfcb).
David Sicilia, Chloe Kline, and Lauren Schug all made major contributions to one or more chapters.
Chloe, in particular, dug deep to make this book happen, organizing our primary and secondary materials into an accessible collection and regularly engaging in spirited arguments with the noisy ghost of Albert Lasker. Liza Rogerson investigated several archives and pulled together decades’ worth of newspaper clippings.
We thank the many, many individuals—including several members of the Lasker family—who looked at chapters in progress and made suggestions as to how to improve them. The late Francie Lasker Brody, Albert’s younger daughter, gave us an interview in March 2004; we’re happy to have had that opportunity.
We thank the companies that permitted us to reprint their ads, logos, and other copyrighted materials. There is no better way to understand Lasker’s contributions to advertising than to look at ads before and after Lasker.
There are too many great people at the Harvard Business Review Press to thank individually, but Jeff Kehoe—our editor—is in a class by himself. Nearly a decade ago, he said that he hoped the Press could do more high-quality business biographies aimed at a broader audience. That is what we tried to deliver.
We end with our agent, Helen Rees, who one day, way back at the turn of the century, said, “Why don’t you try a biography? That might play to your strengths.”
About the Authors
JEFFREY L. CRUIKSHANK is a writer, editor, and communications consultant. The cofounder (in 1989) of The Cruikshank Company (www.cruikshank.org), he is the author or coauthor of several dozen books, including a murder mystery (Murder at the B School); books on commercial real estate and venture capital; and histories of Cummins, New England Electric, Herman Miller, Perdue Farms, the Harvard Business School, and the United States Merchant Marine Academy. He lives and works in Milton, Massachusetts.
ARTHUR W. SCHULTZ is a preeminent and respected authority on the founding of modern advertising. He was CEO of Foote, Cone & Belding—the successor agency to Albert Lasker’s Lord & Thomas—from 1971 to 1982. He met Albert Lasker, has known many members of the Lasker family, and has worked with many of Lasker’s senior executives and key clients. His access to the Lord & Thomas files, reports, and correspondence facilitated the creation of this book. A graduate of the University of Chicago, Schultz served on the university’s board of trustees and has also served as a trustee and chairman of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is the author of In Praise of America’s Collectors and lives in Southern California.
The Man Who Sold America: The Amazing (but True!) Story of Albert D. Lasker and the Creation of the Advertising Century Page 55
