Nobody's Perfect

by Doris Willens

  While Jacob spent his days making a living in the great city’s garment district, and the children were busy playing and learning, Rebecca tenaciously clung to the traditions of the Old World, insisting the family conform to them. Thus, none of the children should marry before the first-born daughter. But the years passed and beautiful Minna did not marry. Suitors she had a-plenty; all were rejected as beneath her. Harry watched the process with alarm. He finished his education, started a career as a tax lawyer and wanted to marry. Rebecca swore she would die if he married ahead of Minna.

  Minna never married. In 1927, Harry did. Bill, 15 at the time, could not have failed to observe that their mother, for all her threats to do so, did not die. Still, Harry had married within the faith. Rebecca could bend enough to accept his defiant act.

  But it was faith that had sustained her ancestors and her people against centuries of hatred and violence. She and Jacob had left the heart-in-the-mouth threats of physical terror back in Europe when they came to the golden land. She had never envisioned the possibility of one of her own children succumbing to a different kind of threat to her faith: intermarriage.

  Bill would do that, years into the Great Depression.

  * * *

  Jobs were in scarce supply when Bernbach graduated from New York University, in 1933 with a Bachelor of Commerce degree according to NYU’s records, or in 1932 with a Bachelor of Arts in English literature according to his biographical material. Eventually, through a family connection, he was hired to run the mailroom of Schenley Distillers.

  The Twenty-first Amendment to the Constitution had been ratified on December 5, 1933, repealing Prohibition. Ex-bootleggers turned into distillers. At the young Schenley company, headquartered in an elegant mid-town brownstone, Bill wrapped bundles of “The Merry Mixer,” a promotional brochure of cocktail recipes much in demand across wet-again America. A young Hunter College graduate, Evelyn Carbone, addressed the labels, often glancing up to see if Bill had, as he often did, re-buried his head in a book. She loved his passion for books, seeing him as a kindred spirit in a coven of bootleg-era survivors. Not that she meant to stay long at Schenley’s; she meant to return to Hunter for a master’s degree in French.

  Evelyn in no way resembled the golden girls on whom Bill got crushes in school days. Her beauty was a quiet, dark Italian kind. Not in a sensuous way. Evelyn radiated a sweetness, a shyness that won all hearts. Bill fell in love, and forever. Evelyn brought him home to her large, warm, voluble family.

  Rebecca asked questions as Bill prepared to leave on Sunday for dinner in Brooklyn with the Carbones. He couldn’t lie. When she learned the truth, Rebecca flung herself on the floor and screamed. Why was he trying to kill her? He knew that marrying a shiksa would kill her. Bill protested that this was just a dinner, not marriage. No, who goes clear to Brooklyn for just a dinner? It could only end in her death.

  Sunday after Sunday, the awful scene was repeated. Bill dreaded and loathed these frenzies. They triggered within him a lifelong dedication to decorum, civility, “nice” behavior. But at the time, all he could think to do was cut back on his weekly visits to the Carbones. Even every other week strained his ability to endure his mother’s storms. None of this altered his love for Evelyn.

  Rebecca’s anger only calcified as the years of courtship went on. Meanwhile Bill and Evelyn talked of marriage and worried about their finances. They continued in low-paying jobs at Schenley. She had moved out of the mailroom, to receptionist in the import division, where managers made frequent use of her fluency in French and Italian. Bill worked for Schenley’s board chairman, Grover Whalen, as (in Evelyn’s words) “office boy—but several steps up from that.” Though the job paid little, it had compensating factors.

  Whalen was “Mr. New York” in the press, famed for his many civic activities. He’d been hired by Schenley’s tough and shrewd owner, Lewis Rosenstiel, to bring instant respectability to the business after Prohibition. Whalen’s friendships ranged from mayor and cardinal through celebrities and pols and newsmen on all levels.

  At Schenley’s, Whalen quickly spotted the quality in the mailroom kid from the Bronx, and moved him onto his turf. Bernbach’s brightness and inexperience brought out the paternal in Whalen. He instructed Bill on the fine art of tipping. He took Bill along on a not-so-necessary business trip so that the young man would have his first airplane ride. He invited Bill and Evelyn to accompany him to celebrity-laden events. A prominent Catholic, he understood the pain that religious differences could create. He encouraged the young lovers to follow their hearts.

  * * *

  Once Bill brought Evelyn to dinner at his brother Harry’s house, where their father Jacob would be. The brothers hoped that when Jacob met Evelyn, he would respond to her gentle zieskeit, her sweetness, and would take up the cause of their union. But through the entire meal, Jacob refused either to look at Evelyn or speak a word to her. Evelyn sat rigid, stricken with terror.

  Bill saw he would have to chose. In 1938, he and Evelyn went to a justice of the peace and were married.

  Despite all of Rebecca’s scenes, Bill’s marriage did not kill her. But something almost as dramatic and fateful followed. Rebecca, vengeful as a Greek fury over what she perceived to be rejection, betrayal and religious violation, instructed Jacob on what he must do.

  And so, in the Orthodox tradition, Bill Bernbach’s father declared that his son was dead.

  Accounts gained from 1949 through 1960:

  Barton’s Candy

  Book of Knowledge

  Broxodent

  Buxton leather goods

  BVD

  Chemstrand

  Clairol

  Coffee of Colombia

  Cole of California swimwear

  Dreyfus Corp.

  El Al Israel Airline

  Flexalum blinds

  General Mills

  Hess department store

  Hygrade Foods

  Israel Tourist Office

  Lane Furniture

  Levy’s Bread

  Max Factor

  Necchi-Elna

  Ohrbach’s apparel stores

  Olin Mathieson

  Philip Morris Alpine cigarets

  Polaroid

  Rheingold Breweries

  Schenley

  Tom McAn shoes

  Utica Club Beer

  Volkswagen

  Warner foundation garments

  Wear Right Gloves

  Wedgewood

  3

  The Golden Age of Advertising

  “An idea can turn to dust or magic, depending on the talent that rubs against it.”—Bill Bernbach

  “Every period has its own special group, like the Algonquin Round Table. I think for now, we’re it.” The comment was expressed matter-of-factly at a gathering of the agency’s creative people in the Plaza Hotel at the end of 1959. For then, and the decade that followed, they had reason to believe they were it, fellows of Bernbach’s round table, in the Golden Age of Advertising.

  In 1956, the New York Times reported that Doyle Dane Bernbach “has had a pattern of success rivaled by few in the Madison Avenue field. In 1958, Time magazine noted that the agency’s billings had “shot up to $20 million—and the growth of its reputation has been even more spectacular.” In 1959, a Newsweek article said that the agency “has been piling up new clients almost without trying . . . In fact, most of Doyle Dane’s new clients have sought out the agency themselves after they were attracted by advertising that Bernbach describes as the ‘interrupted idea—something unusual enough to stop you, make you look and listen.’”

  The clients won in the 1950s were still the little guys, or products in trouble, or experimental brands (Alpine cigarets for Philip Morris), or newcomers to their field (Polaroid) or to this country (Volkswagen). The top advertisers still went to the top ten agencies, which were bigger than ever. J. Walter Thompson hit $250 million in billings in 1960, and BBDO was a close second with $234.8 million. The smallest of the
1960 top ten, Foote Cone & Belding, billed $99.6 million. But Doyle Dane Bernbach was coming along fast, reaching $46.4 million in 1960. And doing it, not with slogans and jingles and advertisingese, but with breakthrough work that came to symbolize advertising’s Golden Age.

  The agency’s copywriters and art directors—known collectively as “the creatives,” a term they disliked but never shook—shared in discovery, adventure, invention. They were in the right place at the right time. They were the envy of the industry. At Doyle Dane Bernbach, the very atmosphere seemed to expand talent. Egged on by Bernbach to be better and better, they flourished in the excitement of it all, learning from one another, knocking themselves out to astonish one another with their inventiveness. Competitive they were, in that sense, but also supportive, encouraging. They ran through the halls, calling out to all to come look at what so-and-so had done.

  It was a time of “waves crashing, and the moon over the mountains,” in the words of one who’d been there.

  They invented new looks, new attitudes, new approaches. A cautionary “you can’t do that, it’s never been done that way,” uttered by a cameraman, a photo-grapher, a type shop owner, or an account man, would elicit a “why not?” from the creatives.

  Greatest of all the stars of Bernbach’s round table were the legendary art directors, Bob Gage and Helmut Krone.

  No one had ever seen an ad anything like Krone’s early campaign for Polaroid. The page was all but filled with a close-up of a deeply lived-in face: Louis Armstrong, Georgia O’Keeffe, a sad clown. In a sea of the vacuous faces that illustrated ads of the time, they could not have been more riveting. A mere six lines of copy quietly introduced a new, sharper-image Polaroid film. No headline, no logo; high readership, strong response.

  Krone on Volkswagen, a new kind of car ad, the Beetle perched in limbo. Honest in its total lack of pretension. Free of Detroit’s traditional “borrowed elegance”—the columned mansion in the background, the beautifully-gowned woman in the foreground. And with its plain look, the revolutionary message, “Think small.”

  Krone on Avis, creating a new look by turning the Volkswagen format (large space for picture, one- or two-word headline, small block of copy) inside out. For Avis, the picture became very small; the headline and type very large.Its message turned ad boastfulness inside out, finding virtue in being “only No.2.”

  Gage, meanwhile, moved from print to television commercials. He scorned the look and feel of what he saw on the air. Shot by Hollywood cameramen, with Hollywood lighting and Hollywood draperies, they reflected, to Gage, a movie point of view. Gage sought an advertising point of view, and achieved it by hiring top-rank New York photographers to shoot his commercials. The rest of the industry would soon follow Gage.

  Many of the techniques later taken for granted began with Gage. Stop-motion commercials, which he invented for Chemstrand nylons. Vignettes, for American Airlines’ “Business traveler” campaign. Quick cuts, for Jamaica Tourist’s “Contrasts” campaign (“It has mountains, it has beaches . . . it’s mysterious, it’s obvious . . . it’s hot, it’s cool . . .”). Copied and copied and copied.

  Commercials hadn’t tried to touch viewers’ hearts before Gage and Phyllis Robinson began selling Polaroid through love.

  “When Bob saw ‘West Side Story,’ he was knocked out by the song ‘Maria,’” recalled Robinson. He sang it all day in the office—Maria, Maria, Maria. ‘I clocked the song,’ he told me. ‘It’s three minutes. If Leonard Bernstein can make people cry in three minutes, we can do it in a minute.’”

  And they did. A mother and father, proud and shaken as they leave their little boy in sleep-away camp for the first time. An adoring father with his sleepy little girl on a Central Park horse carriage ride at the end of a happy day at the zoo. Weddings and farewells and homecomings. Each moved viewers’ emotions in 60 seconds, a third of the time for Bernstein’s “Maria.”

  Since then, we’ve seen weddings and farewells and homecomings for wines and soft drinks and deodorants and insurance and cars and chemical companies and . . . you name it. Some are good indeed. But none has ever packed more warmth and love in a minute than Gage and Robinson’s early commercials for Polaroid.

  * * *

  “You knew you were in a very special place,” recalled Paula Green, who went on to open her own agency. “You were always aware of that. And it was a matter of wanting to be very good.”

  The great work rolled out. The classic “torn ocean” ad for El-Al Airlines. The unforgettable “cat” ad for Ohrbach’s. (“Has Bill gone crazy?” asked N.M. Ohrbach. “Who will get that a cat smoking a cigaret is supposed to be a catty woman? Well, if Bill likes it, okay.”) The elegant and witty ads for Chivas Regal. (“Give dad an expensive belt.”) Juan Valdez picking coffee beans one at a time for Coffee of Colombia. The delights of “Tummy Television” for Sony. The hilarious “sock dance” for Burlington Mills. The stunning prisms of hair colors for Clairol. The dramatic “We want you to live” campaign for Mobil. The unending appeal of the Volkswagen ads. The gorilla banging an American Tourister suitcase against his cage, trying without success to damage it. The Cracker Jack commercials featuring the funny, touching Jack Guilford. The important anti-nuclear ads (“Dr. Spock is worried”) for SANE. And on, seemingly endlessly, on.

  These days, ads are tested for overnight recall. Doyle Dane Bernbach’s ads are remembered decades after they ran.

  * * *

  Bernbach supervised it all, through the Golden Age. And so these were often called “Mr. Bernbach’s ads.” Traditionally, ads were credited to their agencies, almost never to staffers. Agencies worried that talent would be pirated if names became known, and so copywriters and art directors worked in anonymity.

  But these were not “Doyle Dane Bernbach ads,” they were “Mr. Bernbach’s ads. That was something else again. Bernbach’s children, indoctrinated with the importance of artistic talent, had egos of their own. Insiders began to speak of “love/hate” feelings among the creatives for Bernbach. They loved him for fathering their growth. They needed his approbation. (“We did it to see Bill’s eyes light up,” Gage said.) They feared his disapproval of their work. They resented their work becoming his. They wondered if they’d have to leave home to prove they could do it without him.

  * * *

  “The nice little guy . . . on the scared side” that Ned Doyle had met at Grey grew into an industry legend. He was “the man who launched the creative revolution on Madison Avenue,” the patron saint of creatives, the hero who feared no clients.

  Such acclaim inevitably affected the atmospherics. Bernbach considered his role as a leader.

  “You have to learn to be arrogant,” he instructed Gage, who struck him as too comradely and direct with those he supervised. “You can’t do this job if you’re not arrogant.”

  And: “If you feel a creative person is getting out of line, thinking he’s just too great, when he shows you his next piece of work, even if it’s terrific, tell him you’re not quite sure of it.”

  He knew how to play his children, how to keep them aware of his authority. He also knew how to pick them up when they felt down, and how to make them feel he was on their side, even when he wasn’t.

  “If you do great work, we’ll sell it,” he had told them again and again. Again and again they had brought him work they thought was great, that the client wouldn’t buy. An oft-repeated scene in Bernbach’s office went like this:

  Creative team (defiantly in love with their proposed campaign): “The client doesn’t like it. We think it’s terrific.”

  Bernbach (studying the stats): “My God! This IS terrific!” (He beams approbation; the creatives beam gratitude.) “We’d better get the account man up here.” (Creatives nod, expecting the account man will be told to say to the client, “Take this or else.”)

  Account man arrives. (Women rarely ran accounts in those days.)

  Account man: “The client agrees it’s terrific. But they don’t like certai
n things about it and they’re not going to buy it.”

  Bernbach: “Well, they’re wrong. This is terrific.” (Creatives sit taller.) “What is it the client wants?” (Account man gives specifics.) “Oh, is that so?” (To the creatives): “I don’t see how you can do better than this, but maybe you can. Think about what they’re thinking about. I’ll bet you can come up with an even better idea.”

  Exit creative team, on air, eager to get back to the drawing board, to “do it” for Bill, to show him he’s right about their ability to come up with something even better.

  That was part of his genius, motivating them to want to go back to the drawing board after the client rejected their babies. Contrary to legend, Bernbach never believed in shoving work down a client’s throat. He knew well that his creative people, in their stretch to “do it different,” frequently went clear off the wall.

  “What is it we’re trying to do here?” he asked the team, before he looked at their boards. And then, “Is this a smart way to sell the product?” They had continually to be set on the right track, and reminded that advertising was about selling, not about cleverness.