A First Layout and a Warm Welcome at FCB

FCB

It was September of 1954. On the very day I thought I’d had enough art school, I walked across the street from Ray Vogue Schools to 120 Erie Street to the offices of Foote Cone and Belding and applied for a job as an art director with the feeblest of portfolios that contained a chalk illustration of a man’s shoe and string painting. I hadn’t the slightest idea about how an ad was made. To my surprise, I was hired. I started in the mount room, and at six months I was suddenly assigned my first account, Armour Chemicals. I don’t know whether it was out of frustration or just a lark to assign me to a stubborn, difficult client who had refused to approve five previous layouts for a particular assignment, but the head art director, John Bruenig, a roundish, kindly older guy, and Marvin Potts, the bombastic head of the art department, sent me out with a layout pad under my arm and instructions to go to the client’s office and keep making layouts until he bought one. My very first ad assignment ever. I had no idea what I was doing or what was required. I arrived at the Back Of The Yards office of Ed Wilson with a very young account man, Dave Ofner, who later became CEO of FCB, and a young copywriter, Alan Kurtzman, who was no older than myself (eighteen) and who had written the copy for the ill-fated ad to be saved by me. The client sarcastically greeted us with, “Well, well, looky here. If it isn’t Mr. Foote, Mr. Cone, and Mr. Belding.” Not a very good start, but I made a layout he liked and we came home heroes. I worked in the Chicago office for five years on everything from Hallmark Cards to Dial Soap. I was the first FCB art director ever to be allowed to work on a TV commercial. In those days, producers and copywriters made the commercials. When they realized TV wasn’t just radio with pictures, art directors finally got in on the act. The first commercial I did was animated. It was called “Mr. Oops” for Dial liquid dishwashing detergent I liked everyone, and I felt nurtured and respected. I won an art directing award for a Chicago Tribune poster my very first year. It was all very warm and fuzzy and I couldn’t have been happier. IN THE ARMY— NOT

I had just turned nineteen. It was April of 1955. Of course, the army wanted none of me. I fell somewhere between the Korean War and the Vietnam War in eligibility-for-the-draft age and so they were letting people out for any reason at all. When interviewed by the physician, I simply did not pass muster. 4F. It was over in less than three minutes. From the draft board on LaSalle Street in the Loop, I walked back up Michigan Avenue the mile to my office at FCB, sat back down at my drawing board and continued working on a layout like nothing even happened. I threw a party that night for everyone at work with the money that had been collected for me as a going away present. Everyone was very happy I didn’t go; especially Mr. Fairfax Cone, who had big plans for me. “I want you to go to San Francisco and help save the office,” he said. Then he added, as I sat before him awestruck or maybe just dumbfounded in my little Brooks Brothers suit and silk tie, “If you don’t like it, just call me and I’ll send you a train ticket to come home.” You know how most of the rest of that turned out.