Adwoman
The popularity of AMC’s new series MadMen has taken me back in time to my near ten years in advertising all around the world. In London, 1965/1966, I worked for J. Walter Thompson in Grosvenor Square in a huge rambling Edwardian building. I worked for Sir Peter Hoos who typified many English ad agencies who hired old Etonians and Harrovians because of their social connections rather than any skills they might have. Sir Peter was in the public relations division which was a new and burgeoning profession in the 60s. No one really knew what it was all about except for the odd American who would be sent over from Madison Avenue to bang them all into shape. Sir Peter and I shared one large, drafty office and he would say “If that door is tight shut, my cock’s a kipper.” He could be relied on to say that at least twice a day.
From there I went to Stratton & Wolsey in Knightsbridge and worked for Michael Gilchrist, a three-pack a day, three-martini lunch fop who even though married, I was sure was gay. He and I hated each other. I disliked him because he was physically unclean. His fingernails were always dirty and his fingers were stained with nicotine.
There was a gap when we went to Germany in 1967. In 1969 we were sent to Tokyo.
I got a job with McCann Erickson Hakuhodo. I worked for the Japanese vice president Koji Oshita. His main claim to fame was that he had been to Harvard Business School. He kept a Harvard Business School cup and saucer on his desk. It was stolen at least once a week so he had a box of replacements in the closet behind his desk. He was in the habit of getting completely shitfaced at lunchtime and would come back with his face bright red. Japanese are allergic to some enzyme in alcohol and do not tolerate it well.
We had some pretty colorful and talented creative people: Denzel Smith, Greg Birbil, Fred Charrow, and Tak Shibata. The movie “Lost in Translation” with Bill Murray totally nailed my McCann Erickson experience. It was exactly like that. Our building was haunted and people reported working late seeing a young Japanese school girl wandering the halls. A young Japanese schoolgirl had in fact committed suicide by jumping off the roof. We were intermittently struck by earthquakes. In fact, in Tokyo, there are many a day but you might not feel them. Anyway, the building would roll and rattle and we would decide whether to stay put or leave.
We returned to London and in 1971 I started work for Wasey Campbell Ewald for George Playfair, who was general director. He was 48 years old. He was married to a woman who had MS. He was a heavy drinking sort of guy and one Christmas gave me the entire contents of his liquor cabinet. He drove out of the mews in his chocolate-brown Rover (which I had chosen) right into the side of a double-decker bus. The bus driver was tight too so they decided to go on their separate ways.
I suppose the best thing I can say about Waseys is that it is there that I met both Dick Thomas and Carolyn Buckley who would become lifelong friends. Near George’s office, there was a dead-end sort of hallway and people hung out there waiting to be interviewed or given assignments, collecting packages, whatever. One day I spotted this red-haired fellow in a sheepskin shearling coat that matched his hair and round tortoiseshell glasses and chain-smoking filterless cigarettes. I recognized that he was American. I got him an interview with George Playfair and he hired him to do our public relations. Dick was living with Lin, an editor and they had an English sheepdog named Mr. Wooley. They would go on to get married, buy a house and have a daughter, Molly who just became a doctor and whose wedding I attended last year.
As for Carolyn, she was 19 at the time. She spent all her time on the telephone crying with her mother and various friends about her hapless relationship with a young naval lieutenant. She worked for the creative director within our department. One day George Playfair asked me to take her out to lunch and try to explain to her what role a secretary played in our office. So I bought brown-bag sandwiches and took her to Hyde Park. As gently as I could, I pointed out that filing was not just dumping a whole ton of paper in a drawer and closing it. She seemed impressed. My partner Bill Laws and I went up to Scotland to get our dog out of quarantine and when we came back, she was gone. She had been sacked.
In the meantime, Bill was offered a job back in Tokyo with BICC to head up their Asian office and so I gave in my notice and off we went back to Japan. There would be another long gap while I worked for IBM Japan for legal counsel Michel Berthier. He was 6’ 7” tall and had dual nationality French/American. More on him later.
In 1974 I left Tokyo and moved to Rome. There followed six and a half years of being a travel coordinator for an architectural firm. It was in Rome at Banco di Roma standing in line to make a withdrawal that I spotted Carolyn Buckley in the next queue. That is how we rediscovered each other. More on that later.
In 1980 I moved to Boston and got a job with what would prove to be my last ad agency: Hill Holliday Connors and Cosmopoulis. We were on the upper floors of the all-glass Hancock Tower, famous for its great 16’ pane windows just popping out for no apparent reason. We had a pub in house on the 37th floor and a direct line to Grill 24 across the street. It was carpeted in green throughout because as Jack Connors was wont to say “It was the color of money.” I was office manager and because of my incredibly terrible experience dealing with Jack Connors, it would be my last foray into advertising.
In 1981, we returned to Rome and that would begin my career in the legal field. More on that later too.