Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do (23 page)

It was fun doing publicity for strippers. I got fantastic space for a girl named Babette Bardot. A college professor did a study of strippers. We announced that Babette was going to do a study of college professors, to find out what
their
hang-ups were. She wrote to the SEC asking permission for a public offering to sell stock in herself. She said she had exposed her assets very fully. We got quite a bit of space with that letter. I decided there’s a direct relationship between sex and our economy. So I sent a stripper down to Wall Street. She said the economy’s getting better because they mobbed her.

From strippers I got into a thing called Roller Derby: Hell On Wheels. By mistake we were booked in the same arena with a revival meeting. I tried to make a compromise—to have them go in jointly: Hell On Wheels and Save Your Soul. No go. I started getting into more conventional PR. I’ve handled accounts from Indonesia to U.S. Steel.

During the first World’s Fair I handled the Iceland Pavilion. We were opening the pavilion. I looked over the commissioner’s speech: how much dried herring and goose feathers they import to the U.S. each year. I said, “This won’t get you in the papers.” So I added a line. This was at the time of the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis. So I said, “Here’s to the Reykjavik-Washington Axis. Iceland is prepared to send troops any time to defend Washington. (Laughs.) We hope Washington feels the same way about us.” That got in all the papers. It was forgotten for about two years. Cordell Hull gets a call one night from the
Mirror,
“Did you know the U.S. has a treaty to defend Iceland from the Germans?” Hull said, “What the hell are you talking about?” The
Mirror
had a headline about it. The Washington Treaty was based solely on my little publicity release.

Your ego affects the economics to publicity. I once handled Billy Daniels. I handled him when he was at the bottom of the ladder and when he was at the top. He said, “I’d like to make a new deal with you—pay you five percent of my income.” He’s getting four thousand dollars a day for ten days. My God, five percent of that is two thousand bucks. Great. But guys told me, “Billy Daniels! He hasn’t paid his last six press agents.” I said, “You don’t understand. I’d rather not get two thousand dollars from Billy Daniels than get seventy-five bucks from a guy who pays me.” It’s the
idea
that you’re making two thousand dollars. That’s part of the magic, the lure of the thing.

I didn’t really start making any money until I went to an analyst. He said, “You gotta come five days a week.” I said, “I can’t afford to.” He said, “That’s the first problem we’ll solve.” He went into the reasons for my not making any money. Being a publicity man is a confession of a weakness. It’s for people who don’t have the guts to get attention for themselves. You spend your whole life telling the world how great somebody else is. This is frustrating.

My dream was to establish a star, and from then on I would be taken care of. I would always get paid. The truth is: it’s psychologically important for stars to get rid of people who helped them get where they are. The client is the child and the press agent’s the parent. The child has to grow up and leave the nest. It’s part of living. They’re unknown, they need Eddie Jaffe. When they’re known, they need Rogers and Cowan, who never dropped a coat in all the years they handled stars. They hold the client’s coat. One reason they get the business is they get their client on the Hollywood party list. People have different needs at different times in their careers.

I was hired to cover maybe forty radio shows. The guy said, “Cover the ‘Phil Baker Show.’ ” “What do I do?” He said, “You be the first guy there after the show’s over and you say, ‘Phil, that was great.’ God help you if somebody gets there ahead of you.” That’s part of being a press agent for stars. That’s what they need. They can afford it. And they’re paying for it.

A gangster said, “I wish you’d help me. The papers are botherin’ the hell out of me.” I said, “Who’s clean in your family?” He said, “My brother-in-law. He lost his arm and leg in the war, works as a clothing presser, and makes twenty-five bucks a week.” I said, “Make him the official spokesman. They won’t bother you. Your big danger is one of the mob will push a photographer and you’ll have a picture in the paper.” “How will we avoid that?” I said, “Very simple. Hire a Pinkerton. If anybody’s gonna push a cameraman, the guy’s in uniform. They can push. They’re not a mob.”

Punishment by publicity is more serious than punishment by law. If you were indicted tomorrow for a crime, the punishment through publicity is more severe than any jail sentence you might receive. Everybody has a lawyer, but very few have a public relations man.

I used to work for John Jacob Astor. I got a call from his lawyer saying he ran over somebody. So I called all the papers and said, “This is John Jacob Astor’s press agent. I got a great story for you. He just hit a woman crossing the street.” They said, “Why don’t you get lost with that shit. He gets enough space.” They didn’t play the story at all. I tried to make them think I wanted in, so they didn’t put it in.

I spent most of my life learning techniques that are of no value any more. Magazines, newspapers—print. I’m not oriented to television as I was to print. The biggest impact today is TV. This has helped reduce the need for press agentry. A client will come to me and say, “I want to be a star.” In the old days, maybe I’d get her in
Life.
Today on the Carson show you could get more attention than I could have gotten her in a year. As press agentry becomes part of a bigger and bigger world it becomes more routinized. It’s a mechanical thing today. It’s no longer the opportunity to stunts. They don’t work any more. Much of what I’ve been doing all these years is not as potent as in the old days.

Most guys in my category have eight, ten clients. If you have less, you’re in trouble. You can’t depend on one or two, no matter how much they pay, ‘cause you can lose ’em. One day I lost three clients that were paying me each over twelve thousand dollars a year. I lost Cinerama, Indonesia, and the Singer Company. This is thirty-six thousand dollars a year. I had years I made a hundred thousand. There’s a law of making money. You never regard it as something temporary, and you live up to the scale. But in this work, you don’t build anything. If I had a little candy store and I built it up to a bigger store, I might have sold it for a quarter of a million dollars. Who do I sell my clippings to?

“The areas I go to now are blue-collar and Southern white suburbs—lower-middle-class white. My customers now are mostly honkies.
(
Laughs
.)
A honky is someone who is anti-black and he moved to the outskirts of town to get away from the Negro. He hates all change, all progress. When his wife says, ‘Bring some shirts for my husband,’ I bring him three striped shirts with long collars. He becomes furious. ‘What the hell do you think I am, some hippie plink? I don’t wear shirts like that.’
(
Laughs
.)
Save your white shirts, they’re cnmin’ back.”

 

I’m an offshoot of the old peddler. He bought a few things, went out in the country with a horse and wagon and sold it. His customers didn’t have cash, so they paid him in eggs. Many times people would say, “I can’t pay you anything,” and he’d say, “You’re good for the money, I’ll come every month or so.”

Later on, as we become friendly, they have more confidence in me. They ask me to bring them things, electrical appliances, household gadgets. If they want larger items—if a customer wants to buy a kitchen set, table and four chairs, she goes to the store, she picks it out. The price is given to her, say $150. It’s sent out and I’m billed for the cost of that. I pay the bill and collect it from her. I’m connected to the places that I bring the customer to.

A lot of these people need me. They need me psychologically. My wife has said, “You give your customers a hell of a lot more than I get. I go to the store, I get a surly clerk, I get a miserable manager.” I go to these people, I say, “Hello, Mrs. Smith. How’s your husband. How’s your daughter-in-law?” I call her up, I tell her an off-color joke once in a while. Most times you sell your personality.

If I’m really an enterprising entrepreneur, I see she hasn’t got an Osterizer, I see she needs drapes, curtains. Or that her sofa’s falling apart or that her carpet’s wearing out. Or that I’m sitting in a broken chair. Or it’s cold outside and I know she’s the type of a person who doesn’t shop on Michigan Avenue, and she hasn’t bought her winter coat. I observe these things if I’m to be successful in this business. I’m successful, I believe.

She’s paying well, she’s down to fifty dollars. You see she hasn’t got a four-slice toaster. So you bring it in. “Here.” Sweeten up the account. “We’ve got these beautiful toasters in. You’ve got a big family, six kids. How do you make toast for ’em?” She says, “I had one and I had trouble with it.” Which is more truth than poetry, because many of these electrical appliances just fall apart.

If the toaster’s twenty-nine dollars, now she owes me seventy nine—plus tax. Her payments haven’t gone up. I’m just holding her for another three weeks. So I’ve got eight weeks of collections, eight ten-dollar payments. If she’s slow in paying, I don’t sell her anything. I’m trying to get out from under, to get what she owes me. If they’re good customers, I want to keep’em buying, continually owing me. The worst thing that can happen is for a good customer to pay up her bill.
²⁰
Ach!! That’s terrible! You can’t ever get in to see her again. She pays you up for a reason: she doesn’t want to buy from you any more.

 

 

The better it is.

 

 

No. She’ll wind up paying $150 for that. When she buys on time, she pays one and a half percent carrying charge. This is all over, Sears, Ward’s —it comes to nineteen percent a year. It’s very difficult to figure out compound interest. It could drive you crazy.

You work on recommendations. You have a customer you get along with very well. She says, “Why don’t you call on my nextdoor neighbor? She likes my drapes.” I’m gambling. I gamble on a person’s outside. I know nothing about their character. I gamble on what other people have told me. I have many losses.

I gave a bill to a collection lawyer this morning. She owed seventeen hundred dollars. I bought the account, discounted at ninety percent. I paid the man seventeen hundred less $170. That was four years ago. She was supposed to pay this out at the rate of twenty dollars a week. Lately she won’t answer the door. She’s called me a few choice names. She capped it off doing the worst thing she could, “You dumb Jew, I’m gonna give you two dollars a week and that’s all.” I threw the check she gave me and I said, “Forget it,” and I walked out. I remembered that famous quote: “Free at last, thank God, I’m free of you, at last.” (Laughs.) She used to make me sweat for this money—terribly. Used to make me feel in the position of a beggar.

I hate to collect. Collecting is a terrible, a horrible thing. I’ve always deprecated it. I know my children look down at it. To them it’s demeaning, it’s exploitive. So naturally I’m defensive about it. Actually, I just hate it. The people who say, “Boy! I’d like to have my husband have a job like that, go around collecting money all day long.” I said, “I wish to hell your husband had a job like that! Give me a factory job instead of knocking on doors!” The strongest thing on me—I haven’t got a muscle on me—is my knuckles. I can put that door through. From knocking on doors.

I’ve told my wife many a time, “When I come home at night, no matter if we’ve had a fight, come to the door and say, ‘Hi,’ and kiss me. Whatever you say after that, it’s okay.” Because all day long I knock on doors and say, “This is Dick” or “Mr. Mann,” and all I hear is “Aw, shit!” I hear it through the whole house. (Laughs.) Can you imagine what happens to you, hearing this all day long? “Aw, shit!” Nobody loves a collector. They love a salesman. When you sell the merchandise, the honeymoon is on. But it’s over when you come to collect.

I don’t call people in advance when I visit. I start calling about fifteen minutes to eight. I get many people bitching about coming too early. I have to, because I have a lot of work. People who pay me on my account, I ask them if there’s anything else they need: curtains, drapes, anything. I bring it to ’em the next week or two weeks, whenever I call. I finish about five. Saturday, I get up at six thirty and come home eight, nine at night. Another week, I sit down and make deadbeat calls. It’s a miserable thing. My family used to leave the house when I made these calls. I could wind up throwing the phone against the wall. It’s very, very discouraging.