The Wrong Kind of Money

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  “Anne,” Carol says.

  “And I’m so thrilled you’re as excited about this as I am, and I can’t believe you guessed that this was what I had in mind. You’re obviously a woman of many facets, darling—getting William Luckman to your house for dinner ahead of everyone else. What a coup! And what is it they say about great minds?” She throws Carol a quick look. “You are excited about this, aren’t you, darling?”

  “Well,” Carol says, “to be honest with you, I’m a little disappointed, Georgette.”

  “Disappointed? Why?”

  “Frankly, I thought you’d asked me to lunch to discuss giving your collection to the museum. I mean, I couldn’t think of any other reason.”

  “Collection? What collection?”

  “Your Chinese porcelains.”

  “Oh, that,” Georgette says with a wave of her hand. “You’d have to talk to Truck about that. It’s really his collection. His grandfather started it. But frankly, darling, I can assure you that Truck has no interest in donating any of that.”

  “But could we talk about that for a minute?” Carol says. “You see, under the new tax laws there are certain advantages in making such an important gift now. In fact, I’ve put together a few facts and figures for you, and listed various ways in which the gift could be made. You might want to take this home and discuss it with your—” She starts to reach for the envelope in her briefcase.

  “Forget it,” Georgette says. “No way, darling.”

  “—husband.”

  “If you want to talk taxes, I don’t see why our party couldn’t be deductible,” Georgette continues. “After all, it would get lots of publicity for Van Degan Glass, and for the Ingraham Corporation. Truck and I have the most marvelous accountant. He’s just a little bit crooked, and his motto is, ‘When in doubt, deduct it.’ They can’t put you in jail for deductions. But we don’t have a minute to lose, darling—June is only six months away. And as for the costs, you and I will split them right down the middle—for the catering, the flowers, the orchestra. I’m thinking of perhaps two orchestras—one for regular dancing and then a rock group, perhaps in a separate tent. And it’s wonderful that your husband’s company will supply the liquor. That will save us—oh, at least ten thousand dollars. Maybe more.”

  “I’ll have to discuss all this with Noah,” Carol says. “And with Anne, of course. But frankly I’m not sure—”

  “They’ll be thrilled. And I’ll call the Duchin office the minute I get home, to make sure we get Peter himself. My dear, we’re going to have the party of the decade! Of the century!” Suddenly she lifts her mirrored lorgnette. “Don’t turn around,” she whispers. “But look who the cat dragged in. Dina Merrill. Oh, good. Jacques has given her a really lousy table. One of yesterday’s people. You have to be so careful in this town, don’t you? If you’re not, everybody will simply forget who you are, and you’re dead in the water. Since your daughter Sally knows him so well—”

  “Anne. My daughter’s name is Anne.”

  “That’s what I said. Since she knows him so well, we should invite William Luckman to our party. That would draw the press, too. Unless he’s turned into one of yesterday’s people by June, which could easily happen. Celebrities have such a short shelf life these days, don’t they? Tell me, do you get back to Kansas often, darling?”

  “Kansas?”

  “Isn’t that where you’re originally from, darling?”

  “I was born and raised in New Hampshire,” Carol says.

  Their lunches arrive, Georgette’s soft-boiled eggs in a silver bowl with two points of toast perched on the rim like the wings of a bird.

  “Oh, yum-yum-yum,” Georgette says to the eggs.

  In another part of town, two other women are also having lunch. They are Hannah Liebling and Bathsheba Sachs. They lunch at least once a month, and Hannah has chosen the Café des Artistes out of consideration for Bathy. The restaurant serves excellent food at reasonable prices; the two women split the check, and Bathy’s budget is limited. Both have ordered, as always, martinis on the stem with Ingraham’s gin.

  “I just realized what day this is,” Hannah says. “It’s Jules’s birthday.”

  “My goodness, you’re right.”

  “If he were alive, he wouldn’t let us forget it, would he? Let’s see,” she says, counting on her fingers. “If he were alive, he’d be a hundred and one!” She raises her glass. “Well, here’s to the old s.o.b.,” she says with a wink.

  “Yes,” Bathy says, smiling and lowering her eyes. They touch glasses.

  Bathy, Hannah thinks, has somehow managed to keep both her looks and her figure, though Hannah, by her own admission, has thickened somewhat in the hips and middle. Bathy still has that slender blond loveliness, though she has let the blond hair go to gray—pulled back, behind her neck, in a trim chignon that shows off her wide, pale, smooth forehead, her best feature, because set in that forehead are the same merry blue eyes, the Sachs eyes. All Sachses have them.

  Hannah says, “Do you remember that time in Harry’s bar in Venice when he kicked up such a godawful fuss because the bartender didn’t have any Ingraham brands in stock? Oh, there was going to be hell to pay for that poor Italian bartender. I thought that bartender was going to burst into tears—didn’t you?”

  “He just couldn’t understand why any bar in the world wouldn’t stock his labels. And then if they did, he always made the bartenders rearrange their shelves so that the Ingraham brands would be displayed front and center, with their front labels facing the customer. Do you remember who that Italian bartender turned out to be?”

  “Harry Cipriani himself!”

  “Right, and he raised such hell about the stock being displayed that most bartenders were afraid to change it back again. He might come back and raise even more hell.”

  “Of course, I usually slipped the bartender fifty dollars when Jules wasn’t looking,” Hannah says.

  “Of course! So would I.”

  “Under-the-counter payoffs. It still goes on, except nobody talks about it.”

  “Except you and I.”

  “Except you and I.” The two women exchange smiles.

  “If your husband could have had his way, Ingraham bottles would have been one solid label. He hated that government regulation that no more than thirty percent of a bottle’s surface can be covered with labels.”

  “Hated it. He said it was worse than Communist Russia.”

  “Oh, my. What you and I went through with that man.”

  “But what fun we had. Sometimes.”

  “Remember the time he threw the telephone out the window?”

  “Someone had phoned him with bad news. Thank goodness it landed on the street and not on someone’s head.”

  “I can’t remember what the bad news was, can you?”

  “Neither can I. Something from the state liquor commissioner, I imagine. That was usually what it was.”

  “Incidentally,” Bathy says, “I was touched to see that you ran my Christmas ad again this year.”

  “We’ll always run it, as long as I have anything to say about it. It was one of the best ideas you ever had, Bathy dear.”

  Were you aware that Bathsheba Sachs was for many years the advertising director for Ingraham? She started with Hannah’s husband’s company after graduating from the Fieldston/Ethical Culture School and after what was then the mandatory year’s grand tour of Europe. At first she was little more than a messenger, delivering mail and memos to the various offices in the building, but soon the company was letting her try her hand at writing advertising copy. She turned out to be a clever writer, and in 1960 Jules Liebling named her as his director of advertising. She was only thirty-two and, at the time, she was the youngest person, and the only woman, in the distilling industry to occupy such a position. With her unusual name and her even more unusual beauty, she soon became something of a legend in the business. In 1965 Advertising Age named her its Woman of the Year, and devoted its cover
story to her. Alas, this is a business that forgets its legends very quickly.

  The so-called Christmas ad has appeared in mid-December every year since 1960. Those years—the 1960s—were not good ones for the liquor business. Public tastes seemed to be changing. Up to then vodkas seemed to dominate distillers’ sales charts, the theory being that consumers believed that vodka left no telltale breath. This was not really true, but the industry had been delighted to encourage the notion that by drinking vodka, a man or woman could be a secret drinker. Ingraham’s had capitalized on this misconception, too, with ads for Ingraham’s Vodka that employed the slogan, “It Has the Secret!” And a competitive brand claimed, “It Leaves You Breathless!” But in the 1960s vodka sales began to go soft. Younger people, it seemed, preferred to get their highs from other chemical substances, while the more traditional market seemed to be turning from distilled spirits to wines, wine spritzers, light beers, soft drinks, and bottled spring or mineral waters. Distillers panicked.

  Ingraham had tried to get into the bottled-water business by buying a brand called Yukon Spring Water, but despite heavy advertising Yukon Spring failed to take off. The “designer waters,” Evian and Perrier, continued to dominate. Bathy’s idea, then, for the 1962 Christmas ad had been an unusually subtle means of appealing to the changing public attitudes toward drinking. It was an all-type ad, and appeared as a full page in national news-magazines, as well as in major newspapers across the country, headlined: A HOLIDAY MESSAGE FROM THE H & W INGRAHAM COMPANY. “The holidays are a time for joy and high spirits everywhere,” the copy began. But the copy then went on to warn drinkers not to take the term “high spirits” literally. “As distillers, we know only too well the tragic results of overindulgence in spirits at this time of year,” the copy said, and it cautioned drinkers to approach liquor with respect, especially when they intended to be behind the wheels of motor vehicles or any other piece of machinery. There were other commonsense tips and suggestions about alcohol, its effects on the brain and central nervous system, and readers were urged to refuse to have “one for the road.” “As distillers,” the copy concluded, “we have always believed that spirits should be approached with moderation and respect, and that the safest place to drink is in the home.”

  At first Jules Liebling had been almost violently opposed to the Christmas ad. “What?” he screamed. “In our biggest selling season you want us to run an ad telling people not to drink? This is crazy!”

  “Not not to drink, Jules,” Bathy said. “Just telling people not to drink too much, to be careful how and where they drink. Not to drink if they’re going to be handling a car, in particular.”

  “You’re telling them to drink at home! My bar business is seventy percent of sales! How do they get to the bars if they don’t drive there in a car?”

  “I’m just urging them not to drink too much.”

  “You are crazy, Bathy! What will my competition think? They’ll laugh at me. They’ll think I’ve gone meshugge!”

  “Just try it, Jules,” Bathy persisted. “In terms of public relations, I think this could pay off in the millions.”

  “Public relations, public shmelations,” he said. “This is a meshuggener idea your sister has.”

  But Hannah had agreed with Bathy. “Just try it,” they both urged him.

  “People nowadays are turning away from hard liquor because they’re afraid of what it will do to them,” Bathy said. “This ad will tell them there’s a way to enjoy drinking without getting into trouble. This is very reassuring copy.”

  “There’s a difference between drinking and getting in toxicated,” Hannah said.

  He agreed initially to run the copy, or an abbreviated version of it, in small print at the bottom of Ingraham’s regular schedule of holiday ads, much the way the government-mandated warnings now appear on labels. But Bathy insisted that for the ad to have any impact at all, it must run in full pages in newspapers and magazines, and make a big splash. And finally he gave in to “this crazy experiment of your sister’s.”

  The effect of that first Christmas ad was immediate and overwhelming. Newspapers across the country editorialized on it, praising “this sober and responsible distiller” who “cares more for humanity than profits” (New York Times), and citing Jules for his altruism, honesty, civic spirit, and concern for the public welfare. The ad was even quoted, verbatim, on radio and national television newscasts, publicity that could never have been bought since liquor advertising is not accepted by the non-print media. Women’s magazines, many of which also refused liquor advertising, published laudatory articles about Jules Liebling, his company, and his praiseworthy stance, and Fortune put him on its cover. Reporters who had never referred to Jules with epithets much kinder than “the billionaire booze baron” now called him “this caring, public-spirited citizen.”

  Jules was invited to appear on radio and television talk shows, where he cheerfully took full credit for the ad, and even managed to get across the dubious point that Ingraham products were “more purely distilled,” and “contained fewer harmful esters,” making them less likely to cause hangovers, thereby reducing absenteeism in the workplace. One TV talk show host went so far as to call Ingraham “the Tiffany of distillers,” but the adjective most commonly used to describe Jules was “responsible,” and wasn’t responsibility the closest thing to respectability, the commodity Jules longed most to attain? Jules Liebling was not used to hearing himself called civic-minded, and he found he thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

  Passing him in the corridor a few weeks after the Christmas ad’s appearance, Bathy Sachs greeted him with a wink and an “I told you so.”

  The competition was more than envious. It was furious at the way Ingraham’s and Jules were being extolled. But since Jules had effectively preempted the anti-drunk platform, there was nothing they could do about it. (“Fucker’s walking around like he’s Jesus Christ,” muttered one rival.) The competition could do no more than wince as, guided by the knowing hand of Bathsheba Sachs, the words responsible and trustworthy began appearing with increasing frequency in Ingraham’s advertising copy, and the slogan for Ingraham’s V.S.O.P. became “The Only Scotch You Can Always Trust,” and other labels became touted as “A Trusted Brand from the Trusted House of Ingraham.”

  Jules began receiving letters from teachers, saying that they were incorporating the text of the Christmas ad into their lectures to young people on substance abuse. One letter from a fourth-grader said, “My teacher says that when I’m old enough, and want a drink of whiskey, I should always ask for Ingraham’s because they want to save people’s lives and not make people drunk.” “Let’s offer this kid fifty thousand dollars if he’ll let us use this as a testimonial,” Jules suggested, only to be reminded that federal laws prohibited the use of minor children in liquor advertising. Instead, he had settled for having the letter framed and hung prominently on his office wall.

  A woman from Montana wrote to Jules to say that she had stitched the words from the Christmas ad into a sampler, and sent him a Polaroid photograph of the result, asking Jules if he would be interested in buying it. Another wrote asking for permission to set the words from the Christmas ad to music. Indeed, the public response to the ad was so resoundingly positive that Jules began wistfully to suppose that he might be considered for the Nobel prize.

  Nor was the Christmas ad the only important or innovative touch that Bathsheba Sachs managed to apply to Ingraham’s advertising. From repeal through the 1950s, an unwritten rule of the liquor industry was that no woman could be shown drinking in a liquor ad. Women could appear in illustrations, but only as background figures, and never with glasses in their hands, and most certainly never to their lips. No federal regulation dictated this. It was simply a gentlemen’s agreement within the industry itself, and as a result, all liquor advertising was aggressively masculine in tone. Again, over Jules’s objections—what he and others in the business feared most were changes that might bring about further
government controls—Bathy succeeded in producing a series of Ingraham’s ads that actually depicted women enjoying the cocktail hour. The general public scarcely noticed this revolutionary step. But the reverberations from the “women’s campaign,” as it became known, were profound within the industry itself.

  Typically, of course, Jules Liebling never thanked his wife’s sister for any of her contributions to his company and its prestige—not even when, in the quarter following the publication of the famous Christmas ad, Ingraham’s sales figures rose fourteen percent above the corresponding quarter the year before, and Ingraham became the industry’s acknowledged leader. To Jules they were always “my advertising campaigns.”

  “How are the children?” Bathy asks Hannah now, sipping her martini.

  “Oh, much the same,” Hannah says with a sigh. “Ruthie came by Carol’s on New Year’s Eve with a most inappropriate young man. I just hope she’s not planning to embark on another of her marital adventures. And Cyril is—just the same. Slouches to annoy me.”

  “And Noah?”

  She frowns. “Noah is a good boy,” she says. “He’s always been a good boy. Noah works hard, and does a good job for the company. It’s just that he’s so—stubborn. He’s always been stubborn. I’m trying to work on that stubborn streak of his.”

  “You don’t suppose he could have inherited that from his mother, do you?” Bathy says with a wink.

  “He’s so headstrong and determined.”

  Bathy laughs softly. “We certainly don’t need any more headstrong and determined people in this family, do we?” she says.

  “I gave him a nice raise this year. That should satisfy him.”