Frederic Wakeman (1)

Frederic Wakeman's social satire about the advertising world just at the intersection between the end of World War 2 and the beginning of the post-war boom was one of the best-selling novels of 1946.There were, evidently, plenty of fiction readers around willing to see the world through the lens of quick-witted cynicism.

The year is 1945. The war is still going on, but with its outcome by now a foregone conclusion. Our man Victor Norman is back home from his stint as a radio propaganda/public relations man in the Army. His self loathing, due to the fact that his 4F status has kept him out of a combat role, is doing battle with his instinct for self-presevation and advancement, and he wangles himself a high-level job at a New York ad agency whose principle client is a soap manufacturing company run by its autocratic and sadistic owner. Norman's advantage is that he really doesn't give a damn. Plus, he's generally the cleverest person in the room, able to out-strategize clients, bosses, co-workers and potential opponents. But that cynicism and lack of engagement is also Norman's fatal flaw for the lack of self-respect and despair is always riding just below the surface.

The writing in this novel is very sharp and the reader is generally engaged and often amused, though the satiric, not-quite-real-life qualities of the story are always apparent. The whole production is a warning shot across the bow of American culture: Wakeman is telling us that, while of course there was nothing new about hucksterism, consumerism was coming for America and it was coming hard, with the mass-media of radio at that point leading the way. The reader remains interested in how all of this is going to work itself out for Norman. Will he give in to the pressures of prestige and wealth and allow himself to tumble into the spiritual black hole of the Ad Biz, or will something occur to show Norman another way?

Unfortunately, at least for me, the final quarter of the book includes a plot development that, while mostly believable, is rendered in an entirely overwrought manner, explaining to me why this book is essentially unknown to us despite its popularity in the late 40s. Still this novel was very much worth reading, I thought, as an interesting time piece. Also, for the most part, it was an enjoyable reading experience for me.… (meer)

1946. Vic Norman is an adman who hates the business. but is good at it. He handles a high-profile account's radio advertising, the Beautee Soap Company. It is very Mad Men like even though it's the forties during the war. The war is omnipresent and television hasn't taken over advertising yet. It's really a romance with the war and advertising as a backdrop. He falls in love with a married woman he meets on the train. Her husband is away in the army. It is a really sweet love story. I was a little disappointed with the way it ended. I liked the writing most of the time. It was very thoughtful sometimes, not all action. It also had some strong nostalgia points for old Hollywood and New York. He works in Radio City and looks out at the skaters on Rockefeller Center from the office.… (meer)

As a child of eleven, I was caught up by the full-page ads and widespread publicity for a popular movie, The Hucksters, with an all-star cast: Clark Gable, Deborah Kerr (in her American debut), Ava Gardner, Sidney Greenstreet, Aldophe Menjou, Keenan Wynn, and Edward Arnold. It dealt critically with the advertisers of Madison Avenue. A child then, I did not get to see the movie until years later when it came out on videotape; I read the book, largely out of curiosity, even more recently. But somehow, just from the advertising and reviews, from early on I knew the story, I was fascinated with the characters, I was both charmed and repelled by the world of these “hucksters.” Somewhere, deep in my consciousness, I knew that I was—or, at least, wanted to be—a huckster myself.

Apparently the novel grew out of a radio play. A recent study of advertising and consumer activism from 1935 to 1947 calls it a “radio spoof that skewered eccentric sponsors, neurotic account executives, commercial radio, and grating radio jingles.”

When I did read The Hucksters by Frederick Wakeman (Rinehart, 1946), I realized that this may have been one of those rare occasions when the film improved on the book upon which it was based. Hucksters—and we all fill the role from time to time—must sell themselves as well as their products and they must not mind being glib, manipulative, even deceptive in doing so.

The eccentric corporate CEO in the novel is Evan Llewellyn Evans, who has made his millions selling Beautee Soap—well, marketing beauty and selling soap, to American housewives who listened to radio in that decade. To get a good picture of his staff, you have to personify subservience. He explains himself to his prospective new agent: “Mr Norman, people think what little success I enjoy is due to whatever talent I may possess for making the cash register ring—sales and advertising wise. But most of them overlook an equally important part of my philosophy of how to run a business. By that I refer to a single word ‘Organization.’ I pride myself in having built an organization that’s trained to do things right—and by right, I mean just the way I want it. I don’t condone and won’t stand for mistakes.” And just what is a mistake? Anything that Mr. Evans disapproves of, for whatever reason. Of course. ’Nuff said.

Kimberly of Kimberly and Maag is the neurotic account executive. He is responsible for finding someone to be responsible for Mr. Evans’ account. Picture him as the personification of executive subservience. A Mr. Evans wannabe who reports to Mr. Evans.

Then there is Victor Norman, recently discharged from the Office of War Information, back on Madison Avenue. The first thing he knows is how to sell himself: “He looked at his suits, narrowed his choice down to a flannel and a sharkskin. Both suits had cost one hundred and fifty dollars [probably $1500 in today’s terms], and he debated which one better looked the price. He decided on the sharkskin. ¶ A white unhollywood looking shirt, of course. He wanted to look sincere and businesslike. Most of his ties were strictly from Charvet and Sulka and the Countess Mara. Far too loud for a really sincere person. So he put on a plan black knitted one, and finally the shoes he’d bought in London. Those shoes were the goddamnedest sincerest looking shoes in all of New York.” (Yep, I’m fairly sure that, subconsciously, I wanted to be a huckster.)

But Victor Norman has an ounce of honesty in his nature; hence, an ounce of vulnerability. He explains himself to Kimberly honestly: “I don’t like to work, so I work for one reason. To make money. I’m not mixed up about what it takes to make money in this business. Certainly not more than average brains. That’s me too, you know. But a man’s got to look bright, act like a Racquet Club member even if he isn’t, have two to three simple but good ideas a year, learn how to say yes sir all the time, and no sir once in a while . . . . That’s all there is to it.”

So of course he gets the job and the account. And comes up with a soap-selling slogan to center a radio campaign around.

To one of his women, and there are a good many women, he exposes his bitterness: “A man cooks up some fat and presses it into a bar of soap. He perfumes it. Wraps it up fancy. Then he needs a barker to sell this miraculous combination of herbs, roots and berries. So he calls me in to bark for him. But not at him. God, no, dear, not that. So all I gotta do is bark real good and if he starts needling me, I also gotta be careful to keep a civil tongue in his conference room.”

So that’s the story. Mr. Evans makes demands; Kimberly makes promises; and Victor Norman barks. And makes good money doing it.

Of course, there are complications. Women who will (or will) not make commercials. Starlets who will (or will not) sing jingles. Radio comedians who will (or will not) sign on for a contract.

And there is one more complication: a service wife whom he meets on one of his trips to California, caught in a marriage of convenience, with two adorable young children. (For the movie, Clark Gable required that she—Deborah Kerr, of course—be a war widow, thus simplifying the story and the ending.)

Of course, the novel (and the movie) snagged us both ways: glamorize the life of the hucksters; satirize the world in which the hucksters sell—both themselves and Beautee Soap. And watch a hero with an ounce of honesty struggle with a pound of chicanery.

Here’s one of our initial problems: how are we gonna sell Beautee Soap on V-E Day?

Mr Evans: “Now take our music show—we’ll play nothing but fast marches—and we’ll play ‘Happy Days are Here Again’ four times. Repetition—that’s the stuff.”

Pause.

Mr. Evans: “No we can’t do that dammit. This maniac Roosevelt ruined the song.”

But, Mr. Evans, the war is still going on in Japan. Maybe we shouldn’t celebrate too much, the Office of War Information says.

Mr. Evans: “Bunch of damned Democrats. They can’t tell me how to run my shows.”

Well, actually he said bureaucrats. But you get the point.… (meer)