From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor - Jerry Della Femina [4]
In the 1930s, everybody figured Adolphe Menjou was your typical advertising man. They dumped Adolphe Menjou by 1940 and then we had Melvyn Douglas. Remember him? There was a difference between Menjou and Douglas. Menjou was superficial; he knew nothing about it. Douglas knew nothing about it, and didn’t care either. Sometimes Menjou looked like he might be worried about losing a big account. But Douglas, like he spent most of his time in those movies screwing Rosalind Russell. So he couldn’t care less about losing the account. All of those movies were the same. Scene one, you pan up a New York skyscraper with some of that hokey New York music, then the camera moves into the elevator of the building. Douglas walks into the building, the elevator starter says, ‘Good morning, Mr. Suave,’ and the elevator door slams shut. Next shot you see the elevator floor dial moving up to 18. Douglas gets off the elevator, walks through the office, and the next thing you know he’s screwing somebody. It’s strange, really crazy. That’s what advertising was like in the movies. And Douglas never had real problems, but he was in advertising – he was the symbol of the guy who was in advertising.
Clark Gable. A beautiful guy. Played the hero in The Hucksters, the guy who bails out the tough soap account – although the book was modeled after George Washington Hill of the American Tobacco Company.
The Hucksters must have pulled in a lot of guys off the street into advertising. There was the image. Gable’s main concern was getting laid every hour on the Super Chief between Chicago and the Coast. The movie had something going for it.
Then the image changed to Randall. He’s slick and suave. Underneath, he’s like a shell. He’s terrible. Down deep Randall is really a very shallow guy. The real business is much closer to Wally Cox because Cox, unlike Randall, shows fear. Cox is real; you see him. I’ve dealt with guys like Cox.
I know a guy at a very large agency – I’ll call him Jim – who’s got courage. Pilot, World War II. He couldn’t fly in America in 1940 because he was only seventeen years old so he went and joined the Royal Canadian Air Force. Bright, and a lot of courage. He flew in the Battle of Britain, the whole thing. Gets out of the service and doesn’t know what to do. He’s still a kid because he enlisted when he was eighteen. Anyhow, Jim goes to work for a small advertising agency because it seems like a glamorous thing to do. He’s still courageous and bright, then. And as he grows older he gets scared that he might lose his salary, his expense account. The higher he goes, the more frightened he gets. The guy now is a frightened little man, and today he’s only someplace in his forties.
I once asked him what happened between the time that he was shooting down planes and now, when he is a terrified account executive. He looked at me and said, ‘Well, for one thing, the Nazis never tried to take away one of my accounts.’
The average person who sits and watches Tony Randall perform ought to be around a large, bad agency when the big account is pulled out. Nobody cries the first day. What happens is an announcement comes around that says, ‘We regret to announce …’ The next thing that happens is that the president of the agency says, ‘Screw them. They were never any good in the first place.’ That’s the unofficial attitude. They might even break out the drinks and everybody is talking: ‘We’re better off without them. We never needed them and now we’re really going to pull in the new business.’ It’s a very interesting thing to watch. As the account guys are talking they start to break off into little groups. Immediate bravado. ‘Hey, we got rid of those sons of bitches. I’ll never have to put up with that bastard again. And his wife is a drunk.’ Then they break off into even smaller groups.