The Man Who Sold America: The Amazing (but True!) Story of Albert D. Lasker and the Creation of the Advertising Century

by Jeffrey L. Cruikshank

  Pepper could exert considerable influence in this area, and the Laskers could exert considerable influence on Pepper, who was up for reelection in the fall of 1944. During the summer of 1944, therefore, Pepper sent two aides to call on the Laskers to discuss hearings on national health issues. At this time, the Public Health Service contained both the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute, which between them controlled about $2 million for research. The National Cancer Institute, founded in 1937, was limited by law to an overall budget of only $700,000, and—amazingly—had only $70,000 to distribute for outside research grants in 1944.9 Mary convinced Pepper’s aides that research should be a much bigger priority in the landscape of federal spending on disease, citing the notably successful wartime OMR campaigns as a case in point.

  After this meeting, Pepper arranged subcommittee hearings for September 17 and 18, which Albert and Mary attended. These hearings generated compelling testimony. Selective Service representatives, for example, revealed that 40 percent of all individuals drafted for service in World War II had been rejected because of poor health resulting from inadequate medical care—an astounding and disgraceful state of affairs in a relatively wealthy country. The subcommittee agreed to pursue the matter more fully, and Congressional hearings were set for December 13 and 14. These hearings ultimately led Pepper to agree to support a draft “National Medical Research Bill.”

  Concurrently, the Laskers were pushing the American Society for the Control of Cancer (ASCC) to raise money for research. During the fall of 1943, Mary and Florence Mahoney paid a visit to Dr. Clarence Cook Little, then director of the Society, and were shocked to discover that the ASCC was spending no money on cancer research.10

  The main role of the Society at that time was educational; it published thousands of pamphlets yearly detailing the “danger signs” of cancer. As noted, the Lasker family had created an endowment for this purpose in the 1920s. Unfortunately, as Mary dryly observed, Lasker had never actually reviewed the pamphlets he had funded, “or some dynamite could have been put in the organization much earlier.”11

  Upon hearing the concerns raised by Mary and Florence about research, Little asked Mary if Albert could be persuaded to join the Society’s board of directors. Mary guessed that Albert would refuse, so she steered Little toward Emerson Foote—partner in the newly established Foote, Cone & Belding—whose parents had died of cancer, and seemed more likely to respond positively to the invitation.

  Foote joined the board early in 1944. He had only limited impact in that first year, although donations more than doubled (to $832,000). But in that seemingly quiet period, Foote and Mary Lasker were laying the groundwork for a full-fledged fund-raising campaign. When presented with the far-reaching plan, Little overcame his reluctance and agreed—largely because the Laskers agreed to fund the entire cost of the campaign. But the Laskers imposed one condition: the Society would have to agree to put 25 percent of the proceeds of the campaign directly into cancer research.

  The first substantial donation to the campaign came on December 1, 1944, from the Lever Brothers Company. This was a result of Albert Lasker’s behind-the-scenes maneuvering growing out of the July sale of Pepsodent. Lasker agreed to relinquish his Pepsodent holdings on condition that Lever Brothers make a $50,000 corporate contribution to the Society for each of the succeeding five years.12

  Mary, meanwhile, was pushing for changes of her own. The organization’s name—the American Society for the Control of Cancer—had always struck her as weak. (The “control” of cancer, she thought, implied that the Society wasn’t interested in a pursuing a cure for the disease.) With Emerson Foote’s strong backing, therefore, she persuaded the Society to change its name. Thus was today’s American Cancer Society (ACS) born.13

  By May 1945, the money was pouring in—to the extent that the treasurer of the ACS complained to Mary that he wasn’t prepared to deal with the unprecedented flood of contributions. These successes brought with them an unanticipated benefit: when Albert Lasker realized that the revamped Society had an opportunity to make a real difference in the medical field, he became passionately interested in its affairs. He joined the ACS board, and began exerting his influence in the broadcasting community to get several groundbreaking cancer-related programs on the air.

  One of these was the popular nationally syndicated radio show Fibber McGee and Molly, which—on April 28, 1945—aired a precedent-shattering show with an explicit cancer theme. The program focused on Fibber’s concerns about his friend Charley, who feared that he might have cancer but was afraid to bring up the subject. Bluntly, the show delivered messages that had never before been heard on the radio: Cancer isn’t a thing that will go away if you close your eyes. Cancer isn’t a disgrace; it’s a disgrace to think it’s a disgrace. The broadcast ended with an appeal to send money to the American Cancer Society to fight the disease, asserting that “the more money you give, the fewer lives cancer will take.”14

  This first campaign ended in the summer of 1945, having raised just under $4.3 million in donations, of which $960,000 went directly into research. The Laskers understood that this was only a start—but they also knew that such an outpouring of support would put pressure on Congress to begin funding cancer research, and medical research more generally.

  In 1946, Mary learned that veteran West Virginia congressman Matthew Mansfield Neely was introducing a bill calling for $100 million for cancer research. She immediately pushed Albert to convince the ACS to support the bill, which by almost any measure seemed a huge leap. Up to this point, the ACS had raised a total of $10 million in new money, of which $2 million was targeted for research, so the prospect of $100 million for research seemed almost fantastical.

  The bill got through the House of Representatives, and Claude Pepper brought it to the Senate floor in the summer of 1946. It died there, stymied by a series of parliamentary blocking maneuvers, but its near success convinced the Public Health Service (PHS) that Congress might be willing to fund medical research at a significant level. This led the PHS to request $14 million for cancer research in fiscal 1948. The approval of this PHS budget, although little heralded at the time, represented the first sizeable federal government commitment to the fight against cancer.

  Another of the Laskers’ medical interests was mental health.

  Mary’s passion for this field stemmed in part from friendships with legendary psychoanalyst Franz Alexander and famed American psychiatrists (and brothers) Karl and William Menninger. In the late 1930s, Alexander asked her to join the board of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, which he had founded in 1932. After her marriage to Albert, she convinced him to help support a study in 1941 and 1942 on how psychoanalytic techniques might be applied more widely; the couple also supported three psychotherapy council meetings organized by the Institute for Psychoanalysis. These proved a disillusioning experience for Mary, who was appalled when the doctors involved fought bitterly among themselves about controversial new ideas in the field. “These men,” she later lamented, “who were expected by lay persons to have such great understanding of themselves and others, didn’t always seem to me to have been thoroughly analyzed.”15

  Disillusioned but not discouraged, Mary readily agreed when longtime mental-health activist Blanche Ittleson asked her in 1942 to become a member of the National Committee for Mental Hygiene (NCMH). At the time, this was the only nationwide voluntary mental-health organization, and—like its counterpart in the field of cancer—its members lacked basic organizational and fundraising skills.

  In early 1945, Mary convinced Dr. George Stevenson, head of the NCMH, to suggest the idea of a “National Mental Health Institute” to the PHS. Meanwhile, she also manipulated the media adroitly. She fed information on the sorry state of the nation’s mental health to Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter and columnist Thomas L. Stokes, who published a powerful article that was syndicated in newspapers across the nation. Representative Percy Priest, Democrat from
Tennessee, publicly demanded that the PHS draft a proposal to remedy the situation. The National Mental Health Act, authorizing a National Mental Health Institute, was passed in June 1946, and signed into law by President Harry Truman on July 7. It was the first major piece of federal mental-health legislation in almost one hundred years.

  The NCMH provided only minimal support to Mary Lasker and her fellow activists during the congressional campaign; at that time, the organization’s mission (like the early mission of the American Cancer Society) focused principally on publicizing mental-health issues rather than advocating for research in the field. In frustration, Mary resigned in 1949 and founded a new organization, the National Committee Against Mental Illness (NCAMI).

  NCAMI began life with little more than the Laskers’ money behind it (and a total budget of less than $80,000 per year). But it soon began exerting an influence far beyond its size—a process that intensified in 1953, when nationally celebrated writer and mental-health activist Thomas “Mike” Gorman signed on as executive director of the organization. Working as a team, he and Mary began demanding that more federal dollars be spent researching mental illness. “It is probably safe to say,” wrote one observer in 1970, “that no comparable expenditure of funds has ever resulted in as much research-fund allocation [as the Laskers’ investment in NCAMI].”16

  Mary and Gorman soon encountered a dismaying lack of interest among health professionals in mental-health research, especially in the area of new drug development. Some of that skepticism could be found even within the volunteer ranks of NCAMI. “Too often,” Mary later recalled, “the people who were on the Council, the professionals, were interested only in the psychiatric aspects of mental illness, and didn’t conceive of the idea that it could be based on any chemical disorganization within a person.”17 Mary herself became so convinced of the potential of drug therapies that she attended a conference on drug use in 1953, where she heard the first reports about the effect of Serpazil and Thorazine on schizophrenic patients. She immediately phoned Dr. Nathan Kline, research director of the Rockland State Hospital in New York. Kline agreed to run some experiments with Thorazine among his eight thousand patients, and the results led to a revolution in the management of mental illness.18

  Even in the face of new evidence, however, many analysts remained extremely skeptical. In fact, one member of the NCAMI resigned from the Committee because he felt that the NCAMI was advocating drugs too strongly. Dr. Robert Felix—head of the National Mental Health Institute—at first weighed in against the use of drugs in the treatment of mental illness. At Mary’s and Gorman’s insistence, however, he established a psychopharmacology testing center within the National Mental Health Institute. Over the next several years, as the evidence of the effectiveness of drug therapies mounted, Felix himself became a convert to the use of psychoactive drugs.

  By 1963, the funds for the National Mental Health Institute had increased to more than $143 million, thanks in large part to Gorman’s and Mary’s efforts.

  Better than most philanthropists, the Laskers understood how to use their wealth and influence to fight for social causes. But they also drew on Albert’s fortune to enrich their life together and to pursue hobbies not open to ordinary people.

  Soon after their marriage, Albert rented (and later purchased) CBS founder William Paley’s spectacular seven-and-a-half-story New York City townhouse at 29 Beekman Place, overlooking the East River. Later, at Mary’s insistence, he also acquired a farm near Millbrook, New York, comprising 410 acres of rolling green hills, fields, and forests. “I enjoy the quiet,” Lasker wrote of the Millbrook estate. “I have now reached the grand old age where I like to be away from excitement.”19 Typically, Lasker (with prodding from Mary) made his own local excitement:

  We are building two houses at our farm, one a gardener’s cottage and the other a guest house, and supervising these operations has really kept me occupied. These architects, contractors, and workmen can think up more double talk than anyone could imagine, and the net of all this double talk is that there is a double delay on whatever they are doing, and a double price for their not doing. By the time our houses will be finished, I think I will have lost the capacity to enjoy them, but it is going to be very lovely.20

  Mary also gradually interested Lasker in the world of fine art. She knew that her husband was not interested in paintings, but some months after their marriage, Mary attended an auction in the hopes of buying a Renoir, and convinced Lasker to go with her. What ensued surprised them both:

  I went to the door of the sale with Albert and he said, “Well, I’ll wait for you out here,” and I said, “Oh, why don’t you come in?” “Well,” he said, “It will take too long.” I said, “No, come in, sit with me.”

  Well, then, there were no chairs, so he sat behind me, and I bid for the picture and when I stopped bidding at $10,000, I heard two other people bidding and I looked around and one of them was Albert. He bid up to $25,000 against [prominent New York art dealer] Paul Rosenberg. He didn’t know who he was bidding against, and then he got frightened because he had never bid for a picture in his life before and he thought maybe he had gone mad, so he stopped bidding at $25,000. And we didn’t get the picture; Mr. Rosenberg got it.21

  Rosenberg won that skirmish, but Albert was hooked, and he started to visit Rosenberg’s gallery. “How long has this been going on?” he asked Rosenberg on that first visit.22 Eventually, Albert bought the Renoir (“Young Girl in a Boat”) that he had been bidding on at the auction, as well as a second (“Flowers and Cats”) that Rosenberg had, for the then-staggering price of $105,000.

  Over the years, Albert became more and more interested in art and also increasingly knowledgeable. Although his collecting started on the relatively conservative ground of Renoir, he soon became more adventurous, building up an extensive but discerning collection of works by Degas, Monet, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Chagall, Dalí, and many other notable contemporary painters.

  Mary continued to buy paintings as well, supplementing Lasker’s collection with her own more eclectic tastes. On one occasion, their aesthetics clashed: Mary bought a Picasso—“Still-Life with Fishes,” a Cubist work depicting three dead fish on a table—to which Lasker took a violent dislike. The painting wound up being hung in an out of-the-way corridor in the upper reaches of Beekman Place, with a sign prepared by Albert affixed to the back: This picture belongs to Mary Lasker and is not to be thought of as part of the Albert Lasker collection.23 Albert occasionally would make his way up to the sixth-floor hallway, study the work closely, grunt with disapproval, and then turn it over to make sure that his disclaimer was still attached.

  And yet he bought other Picasso works, and understood and admired them. When the wife of a Hollywood studio head challenged him to say exactly what he saw in Picasso’s strange shapes and colors, he had a ready answer: “Don’t you understand that after the camera was invented and there was no more need to paint with fidelity to nature, artists began to paint how they felt about nature—really the color of their feelings about it?”24

  Increasingly, Albert’s favorite was Henri Matisse, whom he saw as the successor to Renoir and as the artist to “bet on.” Matisse favored the kinds of bright colors, sharp contrasts, and dazzling depictions of daylight that appealed to Albert’s eye and on a deeper level probably helped combat Albert’s depressive tendencies. As Matisse himself wrote: “What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter, an art which might be for every mental worker, be he businessman or writer, like an appeasing influence, like a mental soother, something like a good armchair in which to rest from physical fatigue.”25

  Albert considered his visit with Matisse—at the artist’s studio in Nice, in 1949—one of the highlights of his life.26 Youth and aging were a dominant subtext of the visit. Albert, then sixty-nine years old, told the artist that he wished he were a little younger; Matisse, then eighty, assured Lasker that he was “still a child.�
� And when Albert asked him who the greatest young artist of the day was, Matisse replied, “Moi.” After Lasker died, Matisse did preliminary sketches for a memorial window for him, but died before finishing it.

  The “Lasker Collection” of almost two hundred oils, watercolors, and etchings, sketches, and sculpture remained intact until 1971, at which point Mary sold several of the Renoirs and Mirós when she moved from Beekman Place to a smaller apartment. “They didn’t look good here,” she told the New York Times, “and I wanted to be able to give away the money.”27 The rest of the collection—including the forever-offending Picasso—was left by Mary to the Lasker Foundation.

  In the last decade of his life, Albert Lasker had two experiences that reminded him of a lesson he had learned a quarter-century earlier: that although a relatively secular Jew, he nevertheless had a Jewish identity.

  The first episode caused him to sever his relationship with the University of Chicago. Lasker, himself only a high-school graduate, believed strongly in education, and was a strong proponent of the University, dating back to his gift in support of medical research in the 1920s. In 1929, the University recruited the thirty-year-old dean of Yale Law School, Robert M. Hutchins, to serve as its president. Early in the Depression, Hutchins made common cause with Lasker in raising money for the relief of Chicago’s destitute. The young president came to enjoy the company of the seasoned ad man—likening him to Yellowstone Park’s geyser, Old Faithful: a “bizarre and overwhelming, but predictable, force of nature”—and in August 1937 asked Lasker to join the University’s board of trustees.28 Lasker, flattered to be invited into this exclusive bastion of Chicago’s overwhelmingly Gentile power elite, happily accepted.