Author: Andy

The Zsa Zsa Affair   

Thinking back it didn’t seem that long between meaningful events in my life; my twelfth birthday just after our arrival in Canada in 1939, quickly learning English, and then running away from home at 15 to pick tobacco, which during the war paid more than managers were making in industry. Another two blinks and we’re in the 1950s and I’m in New York producing commercials on the Jackie Gleason Show. 
And then, just as quickly, I find myself walking the streets of Manhattan, looking for a job, dead broke. 
Fast forward another three years and I find myself entering Marty Ransohoff’s office in Hollywood with Zsa Zsa Gabor on my arm.  
The room was filled with young agency producers and Zsa Zsa dug her nails into my arm as she whispered like a frightened child, “I don’t know any of ziss people.” 
“But they all know and adore you, Darling,” I assured her in a paternal voice. 
In minutes, of course, she was seated on a tall stool, surrounded by enthusiastic admirers, sharing bon mots as only Zsa Zsa could.  
Now, let’s see…where should I start this story?
Well, the lunch with Zsa Zsa and Ransohoff and company took place in the summer of 1961. Let me back up a couple of years to a dramatic period.  
After walking out of Benton & Bowles followed by little Paris & Peart where they were willing to give me anything to stay, I found myself in a recession; at least a Madison Avenue recession.  
I had somehow managed to keep up my spirits while job hunting. In New York there was always so much going on. It was easy to get the feeling that something great was just around the corner. 
I had a wife and two young sons and a delightful but always hungry dog. We lived in Queens at the time. Each day I would take the subway into Manhattan with 30 cents in my pocket. Subway tokens were 15 cents.  The 30 cents got me into town and home. I would skip lunch and when I needed to make phone calls, I would drop in on friends at ad agencies to use their phones.  The ad world (Madison Avenue) was bordered by 42nd Street, 57^th Street, Third Avenue and Sixth Avenue, all reachable by foot.
Early in 1960 I toiled as a writer-producer at L.W. Froehlich & Co., in Manhattan, a strange outfit which was classed as the world’s biggest ethical pharmaceutical ad agency.  That experience was good for a book by itself. 
I was 32 by then and had already had more careers than men who retire in their seventies. I had been an actor in theater, radio and TV, sold real estate and paper products, worked on farms and as a stevedore, slaved in a tire shop, and gloried as a DJ and announcer in four radio stations. 
I had written and sold radio plays while in high school, TV scripts when TV arrived.  I had worked for J. Walter Thompson, the world’s biggest ad agency, been a one-man radio copy department at Young & Rubicam in Toronto and then Radio-TV Director at Stewart-Bowman-Macpherson.  
After moving to New York I worked on the Jackie Gleason Show at Bryan Houston, Inc., and as a writer at the advertising agency, Benton and Bowles. 
I took the job at Froehlich as a recession move because I had walked out of two good jobs in a row and right into a recession.  By the time the Froehlich ‘opportunity’ came along I had been out of work for nearly six months, the longest such period to that date. That kind of whittles down a man.  I would have taken any kind of job, including sweeping streets, before this one came along.
The Froehlich agency served pharmaceutical and medical accounts. All their advertising went into medical journals.  This is why the word “ethical” came into their classification.
They had done an effective job in medical journals for a line of Johnson & Johnson pediatric medications which prompted J&J to give them the TV campaign on this line and, since they had no TV writers or producers on staff, Froehlich hired me to handle this business. 
I found myself in a suicidal mood the first week in that job.  They had given me an assignment to write a medical film based on material I couldn’t begin to understand. 
If at that point someone had told me that soon I would be directing-producing Zsa Zsa Gabor in a commercial and exchange Hungarian endearments and go into a partnership with her, I would have told them they were insane.
Well, life in showbiz and on Madison Avenue is unpredictable and seldom dull. 
At Froehlich I took a substantial cut from my previous salary but, when unemployed, that is no consideration.  After a while, however, when one tires of tightening the belt, one starts to look around for better income. 
Most creative people at Froehlich kept their resumes in circulation. Froehlich tended to pick up people in trouble or on the way down for a fraction of their former earnings, knowing from experience that on average they would stay on for two years saving the company meaningful money.
Married women didn’t work in those days. I had to carry the whole load. I went after a number of jobs at my level without landing them.  Then I started looking for bigger stuff.  I noticed a display ad in the New York Times for a TV producer in a Boston ad agency.
An advertisement that size would get a lot of notice, I reasoned. It could be expected to draw a great number of applicants.  I decided to answer it with a brief, polite, but rather arrogant cover note along with my resume and I asked for a good deal more than many others might ask for.
Numbers here are important.  I had been making $8,000 per year at Froehlich, down from $12,500 in my previous job. I ended my cover note to the advertiser in Boston with “If your budget covers a salary of $20,000 plus, I would deeply appreciate an interview at your convenience.” 
Here I was talking of $153,000 in contemporary dollars.
Though I used the phrase “at your convenience,” I explained that due to my responsibilities, I could only meet before 9 a.m. or after 5 p.m. There are many subtle and polite ways to make one sound important.
To my delight they responded, giving me an appointment at a nearby hotel the following week.They had taken a suite of rooms and when I arrived a few minutes early before 8 a.m., there were already several other applicants waiting in the outer-room.
When I was asked in, I found three men waiting for me. They were the company’s president, the executive VP and the VP of marketing. The latter was a lightweight and unsure of himself; the president, a plump, culturally-deprived bumpkin, and the exec VP struck me as a ‘rounder;’ sharp, cynical and decisive.  They were all Jewish.
I don’t know what possessed me but I fancied myself as a standup comic facing a small audience in a Jewish Catskills resort. A normal Madison Avenue presentation with acceptable deportment didn’t seem right for the moment. I hadn’t planned this.  I hadn’t planned any particular approach.  I played it by ear and now responded to my assessment of the audience.
I played it Jewish.  I used my hands.  I threw my arms up and said, “Gentlemen, I don’t want to waste your time but I think we made a big mistake here. I’m afraid I’m not your man.  You see, I’m a writer and then a director and then a producer, and I intend to keep it that way. For $20,000 you can get a heavyweight producer with Hollywood experience!”
God knows where these words came from but they came out of my mouth and the expressions on the faces of my little audience encouraged me.  I felt in charge of that meeting. This wasn’t me facing them; it was Milton Berle or even Jerry Lewis but in a serious moment talking “Gescheft.”
One of them held up his hand as a student might in a classroom, “We didn’t write the ad right,” he said, “We are looking for a creative director.”
“Ah,” I responded with a big breath, then in a benign way continued with my reverse psychology, “That’s interesting but that’s too bad because when it comes to print advertising I just don’t qualify.  Sure I’m great with headlines and copy but I know little about photography and illustration or print reproductive processes. A good creative director needs to be seasoned in all of this.”
“No, no, no,” protested another one of them, “We don’t have any print.  It will be all TV and some radio!”
Here I had them selling me instead of having to sell myself to them.  Now I took a big breath and smiled widely, “Oh, well, you are talking about an ‘air-media’ creative director. That’s wonderful.  Here I’m your man!” 
They broke out in laughter with relief and we shook hands all over again as if we had all made a great discovery together.  
This sort of scene could never have taken place if I had been interviewed by a single man. Their number put them at a disadvantage. In numbers, executives tend to become half people, relying to a degree on each other in terms of reactions and making decision.  Had one of them taken the lead with the other two acting as subordinates, I might not have been able to take the role of host-entertainer. But Sackel, the president, had no leadership qualities and Schiff, who did have some, deferred to Sackel. I, on the other hand, acted as a free agent and was able to simply follow my instinct.
Our instincts are often much more effective than the best-laid plans of mice and men (which often go astray)  
I recall reading about a young boy in a German concentration camp during WW II.  He found himself in a room with a group of adult prisoners when the guards came to take them to the ovens.  His instinct prompted him to grab a brush and a pail of water which he had seen in a corner and he began to scrub the floor.  When the guards came in to round up the men, one of them shouted to the kid to do a better job of scrubbing in the corners.  This move saved his life.
It was his instinct that directed him to this seemingly foolish ploy which separated him from the group destined to be murdered.  The guards assumed that some other guards had ordered the boy to do some cleaning and thus left him behind.
My instinct as a performer had worked with my little audience whose decision to take me on could change my life. 
With a receptive audience, I found myself sharing anecdotal experiences in media going back to my pioneer TV days with 90 second commercials produced for $125 including talent and agency commission.  And feeling confident and having a Jewish audience I was prompted to go further. 
I held up a finger and said, “If I may, I would like to tell you a little joke about a Jewish soldier in the U.S. Army. It relates to our meeting here and our possible association.”
They raised receptive eyebrows and I continued, “Lenny Levine may have been the worst soldier Captain Murphy had ever encountered in their camp in the Deep South.  Lenny hadn’t been able to learn how to stand at attention, how to turn properly, how to hold a gun; he was just hopeless.” 
      “A big, bull of a man, a redneck sergeant, said, ‘Captain, let me have the little Yid for fifteen minutes, I can make a soldier out of him.’ The captain said, ‘now don’t you lay a hand on that little feller,’ and the sergeant assured him he wouldn’t hurt him.”
“He then took Lenny around to the back of a building. A few minutes later the sergeant brought Lenny back to the Captain, giving Lenny a series of orders, ‘Tenshun, right face, about turn, present arms!’”
“Lenny executed them to perfection. The captain was stunned. ‘Sergeant, I see no mark on that little feller. What did you do?’ 
The sergeant smiled and responded, “I said, ‘Lenny, now here’s a gun.  This is your own gun. You’re now in business for yourself!’”
Sackel, Schiff and the marketing veep burst out in laughter and I now pulled up a chair to face them.  I said, “You see, I’m a lot like that Lenny in the army.  I’ve gone into a number of jobs where I worked as if it had been my own company, cause that’s how I work, but it was rarely that I was shown meaningful appreciation.  So what I’m looking for is a sense that I’m in business for myself.  I want stock options because I hear that Lestoil, which owns you, will be going public.”
They became very quiet and looked at each other.  They seemed deeply impressed.  It may have been this request that clinched the job.
On leaving, as I passed out through the waiting room, I noticed to my shock that it was filled with applicants. Moreover, one of them happened to be Al Hansen, a former supervisor at Bryan Houston, Inc., the dear man who had hired me for my first job in New York.  
Hansen would have been ten years older than I with far more experience.  It was evident that he was on his way down. That depressed me on his behalf and the volume of competition gave me worry.
I had gone so far out on a limb at the interview that I decided to continue in that vein with an unusual follow up note of thanks for the interview.  
These types of notes are usually written out of politeness and as a reminder. They are supposed to be brief.  I, however, made mine a whole comedy show that seemed endless.
Brevity is supposed to be the soul of wit but there are times where outrageous verbosity will get so much attention that it crowds out others who are competing for the same attention.
I started my letter with thanks for their time. Then I added that I realized, of course, that the job had attracted a great number of applicants and that I had seen many of them in the waiting room as I left our meeting.  I asked if they had noted, however, how many of these applicants had shifty eyes and suspicious behavior. 
Then I confessed that, of course, I am not without fault – and from there on I got into a tongue-in-cheek comedy routine labeling my actual strengths and virtues as my weaknesses and faults. 
I said that I had been accused of being too hard a worker, coming to work too early and staying too late in the evening; that I had been accused of being too stingy with company money, refusing to spend a dime more than needed on corporate credit cards, etc.  
I really stretched the comedy and took a chance that the humor will find them chuckling over the four or five pages.
They never mentioned this letter after they hired me and I forgot to ask what their reaction had been. Now, nearly half a century later, I have no idea if it worked or not.
Oh, there was more drama, actually, quite a bit more, before we consummated that relationship. And jobs in relatively small companies are relationships.
They had called me at home from Boston and asked me to fly up for an interview at Lestoil’s headquarters in Holyoke, Massachusetts.  I flew to Hartford, Connecticut, and they had a car pick me up to drive me to Holyoke. 
Oddly, today I can’t recall anything that transpired during that meetings in Holyoke, except for the drive from Hartford which was charming.  We passed tobacco farms and plants that were shaded by long rows of white cotton.  I’d lived on a farm in my teens and, in fact, had run away from home at 15 to pick tobacco in Canada’s tobacco belt around Delhi, Ontario, which is why tobacco growing and harvesting had always meant something to me.
I had called the manager’s secretary at Froehlich early in the morning to say that I wasn’t feeling well and would not be coming in. 
When I returned the following day, Jim Rowland, a copywriter whom I had saved from getting fired and who had shared my office, looked at me oddly and said that Neil Brandt, the head of our department, wanted to speak with me.  Jim and a young account man on our floor were the only ones in whom I had confided about taking the day off for the interview in Holyoke.
When I entered Neil’s office, he looked distant and unusually uptight.  He said he knew of my trip the previous day. Then he added, “We will no longer need your services.” 
He gave me an option to resign, in which case I would get no severance but, at the same time, there would be no record of having been fired.  
“Or,” he added, “You can chose to be fired and get severance, in which case there would be a record of your having been fired.” 
“Thanks,” I said, “I’ll take the severance and the record.”
Back in my office my brain started racing.  I called an agent and told him I was actively looking for a job.  Then I called Boston and got hold of Ralph Schiff, the EVP.  Without telling a lie, but making it sound as though I had received another offer, I said, “I hate to pressure you but something has come up and I’ll need a prompt decision from you fellows.”
Ralph said, “Oh, my God, I meant to call you first thing in the morning.  We decided ten minutes after you left yesterday.  We want you but we need you right away.  We can’t wait two months.”
During our meetings I had told them that if they picked me I could make myself available in two months to be fair to my current employer who deserved two months’ notice.
Ralph wanted me to come out the following weekend and then come permanently as fast as possible after that.
At this point, I wasn’t going to give away the fact that I was immediately available, and besides, I wanted a few days to prepare myself for the move, so I said, “Look, let me pull a few strings and juggle a few things here.  I won’t come out on the weekend, but I’ll come in two weeks to stay permanently.” 
He was delighted and that ended this drama.  I thought.
Minutes later, Stanley Kohlenberg, the pleasant young account executive just down the hall popped in to see me.  Stanley worked on the Helena Rubinstein account thus I’d never worked with him but I used to bump into him at the water cooler and we just hit it off.  
It turned out that Stanley had just received a call from a slightly mad ad man named Kates who was at National Export, a marginal ad agency which handled small accounts in Latin America.  I happened to know of them because I had had an interview there when I first came to New York some seven years earlier and I even recalled the names of their president and exec VP.
Kates raved to Stanley that he had also applied for the Boston job and had just learned that I had been given the job.  He was livid.  He said I was unqualified for it and that he would fix me because he knew the chairman of Lestoil, etc., etc.
I racked my brain and recalled that I had once met Kates, as well.  During my unemployment period I had befriended Wilbur Streech an animation producer who had a small studio on 52^nd Street.  Since I was calling on agencies for a job, Wilbur had suggested I try to concurrently represent him and get him some production work for commissions. In that capacity I had called on Kates at National Export.  I recalled him vaguely; dark hair and eyes, overweight, socially awkward, but friendly.
The very fact that Kates called Stanley who had nothing to do with that job or with me, indicated that he was unbalanced, but on some remote possibility that he might damage my position, I called Kates and read him the riot act.
I told him that I had made no misrepresentations to the Lestoil bunch and that when they check my references they will find that to be true.  I added that if he, indeed, had a relationship with Lestoil’s chairman and through that damaged my new position, I would first call Madden and Jones, his two bosses to inform them of his interest in the Boston job. Then, while he walked the streets after having been fired, my lawyer would throw the book at him with everything from interfering with commercial contracts to defamation, slander, libel, etc.
Kates went into shock.  He made excuses.  He said he had called Boston to find out about the job and they told him that I had been given it. He said that they had asked him if he knew me and he said he remembered me as a sales rep for Wilbur Streech. He had no idea that I had been an award winning copywriter, etc.  He said he remembered me as slim and handsome.  Didn’t I remember him, he asked; dark and fat?
I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing over his squirming but my anger remained, so I cut him off with, “I’ve been told that you are a compulsive liar and I have no interest in talking to you. All I have to say is that if anything happens to my job because of any connections that you may have, then God help you.”
And with that, I hung up.
An hour or so later, Kates called me and started, “Now please don’t hang up.  Don’t be angry.  Please hear me out. I checked you out at Y&R and they gave you a great recommendation and I called the guys in Boston and told them how wonderful you are….”
“Here you go again with your compulsive lying,” said I.  “Nobody at Y&R in New York would know me.  I worked for them in Toronto.”
“Well, your reputation traveled,” he stammered.
I repeated that I had no interest in talking to him and that he better pray that nothing goes wrong with my new job and then I hung up again.
Later that day, Stanley popped in to see me again.  He’d had a call from one the boys in Boston.  It seems that when Kates called in the morning to find out if he had the job, he had reached Sol Sackel, the agency president.  When Sackel told him that another man got the job Kates had asked who it was that was awarded the job. 
Had Sackel been of executive caliber he would have told him that this was none of his business. But since Sackel was a schlepper, he gave Kates my name and Kates went into a tirade, labeling me as the world’s worst man in the world for that job.  Sackel discounted that as sour grapes and forgot about the call.
After I threw a scare into Kates, he called Boston again, but this time he reached Ralph Schiff, the EVP, whom he told that he had made a great mistake, that he had the wrong Andy Halmay in mind, that this one is indeed a saint and a genius and a delightful man, etc.
Schiff shook his head after that call because he couldn’t figure out what this was all about. Then Sackel walked into Schiff’s office and Schiff told Sackel about this strange call he just had from that crazy Kates, praising Halmay in a ludicrous manner. 
Now, Sackel, a slightly neurotic man to begin with, began to worry.  He told Schiff about Kates calling in the morning and raving about what a bad guy their choice had been.  Now the two of them looked at each other in confusion. 
What in hell is going on?  Did they sign up a monster? 
They recalled that one of their account executives had mentioned that his father, a druggist, knew an account exec at L.W. Froehlich.  They got the name and called the account man whom I knew but with whom I had never worked. When they got him on the phone he told them that there was nothing he could tell them about me (fortunately, too, he didn’t know that I had just been fired) and so he referred them to his colleague, Stanley Kholenberg on my floor who, he expected, would know more about me.
The call was transferred to Stanley. Thankfully, Stanley had all the background on this developing shemozzle.   He pretended to hear about my getting hired by them for the first time.
“By God,” he said to Schiff, “You guys must have given him some great incentive. Andy is our top guy, gets top pay; fantastically creative, a genius in production!  Congratulations, you got yourself a gem.”
That’s how I became Vice President Creative on then America’s biggest TV spot account and started a two-year ride that no other ad man I’ve ever heard of ever enjoyed which included new Wall Street connections and an introduction to the whole Gabor family that I’ll never forget.