Issue #57 – Tuesday, June 11, 2019
Posted by Denny Hatch
The 11
Mentors Who Changed My Life.
Who Changed
Yours? An Invitation...
At
age 15, DH wrote a press release for this play.
The week was SRO.
Evelyn Lawson
When I was 15, I wanted to be in the theater. In
the summers of 1950 and 1952 I worked as an apprentice at the Ivoryton
Playhouse in Connecticut. There I struck up a friendship with Evelyn Lawson, a
heavy drinking, heavy smoking ex-Ziegfeld Follies chorine in her 40s who did
publicity and P.R. for the theater. I asked her about what she did.
“Publicity and public relations is the business of letting people in on
what you are doing,” she told me. “I write news releases about upcoming plays
and send them to the local newspapers. If they print my release, people will
read it and buy tickets to the show. In effect, publicity is free advertising.”
“How do
you get them to print it?”
“Editors
are lazy. Give them something they can use and they’ll run it, rather than
going to the trouble of writing something themselves."
Fast
forward to the end of summer. The Playhouse signed up an extra show—Dream Girl—starring Judy Holliday who
that year had won the 1950 Academy Award for the Best Performance by an Actress in the film Born Yesterday. This was a big deal for the theater.
For Evelyn, it
was a pain in the ass. She was tired from the hot summer (no air conditioning
back then) of hard work and wanted to get back home to Cape Cod.
When I
offered to write the release, she jumped at the opportunity to (1) foist the
work off so she could drink and smoke and (2) maybe get her jollies by
mentoring a 15-year-old kid about what she did for a living.
Evelyn
taught me about headlines, generating excitement in the lede graph, dropping in
fascinating tidbits of information and gossip about the play, the author, Judy
Holliday’s career and, of course, the urgency to order tickets before they sold
out.
Under
Evelyn’s guidance, I wrote several drafts on the clunky old Remington office
typewriter.
When approved by Evelyn, I laboriously retyped it
on waxy purple stencils, affixed each page to a black ink-soaked mat and
hand-cranked 20 copies of each page on the primitive office-duplicating
machine.
To
finish the job, I waited until the ink dried and then collated, stapled and
folded the two pages; typed addresses on 20 envelopes; licked envelopes and
stamps; and mailed them at the post office.
I was
thrilled to discover the Middletown
Record printed my release verbatim! Even
more thrilling, Dream Girl was SRO
all week.
At age
15, I had acquired a marketable skill that I have used throughout my 60-year
career!
Evelyn
Lawson changed my life!
U.S. Army
The
U.S. Army was founded 244 years ago. After graduation from Columbia College, I
served as a draftee 1958-1960. In the private sector, only Proctor & Gamble
has a mentoring system equal to that of the Army.
Following basic training at Fort Dix, NJ,
I was stationed on Governor’s Island in New York Harbor. The Army gave me
skills I never would have had in civilian life as a recent college grad:
• Wrote press releases for the Public
Information Office (PIO).
• Produced and wrote a weekly radio
program featuring the Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra stationed in Germany for
WQXR in New York.
• Did publicity and promotion for Armed
Forces Day, New York, 1960.
• Wrote, produced, directed and narrated a
documentary film for the New York National Guard on its training facility at Camp Smith, Peekskill, NY.
Okay, the U.S. Army was not a “mentor” in
the usual sense of the word. But during three centuries, it has a tradition of
mentoring. Officers and enlistees must continually work with and train those
men and women serving under them.
In my case, I was handed various
assignments and mercifully used common sense and did not screw up.
In spite of all the Mickey Mouse chores (K.P., prisoner watch, cleaning latrines, I loved the Army; it gave me boundless confidence
that I was not the dumb-ass kid my parents believed I was.
Quick Takeaway
I flat-out
believe the two-year draft should be reinstated and every kid—whether after
high school or after college deferments—should serve the country somehow. Opportunities: military,
teaching aide, Peace Corps, hospital or agricultural assistant or interning for
a corporation or non-profit organization.
Chances are two years of work in the real
world with a government salary and health care will give them one or more
lifelong marketable skills, work history and references for a job well done.
This is a hell of lot better scenario than moving
in with—and mooching off—their parents after graduation spending two years
whining about how tough it is to find a job before starting off flipping
burgers at MacDonald’s.
Ash Green
When I got out of the
Army in 1960, my first job was making $60 a week as a book publicist for
Prentice-Hall in Englewood Cliffs, N.J. The company was a major publisher of
all kinds of titles—nonfiction, self-help, biographies, business and
salesmanship books and an occasional novel.
My boss was a young socialite with the unlikely
name of Ashbel Green, who went on to become a renowned and beloved editor at
Alfred A. Knopf/Random House.
My main assignment was to write press
releases on new titles to accompany the pre-publication copies of the books
being sent out to book reviewers. The purpose was to excite reviewers so they
would want to write about this new book—either as a listing announcement or,
ideally, with a full-dress review.
A successful publicity release captures
the reader’s attention. The headline and copy must make the book sound so
irresistible it is immediately placed in the reviewer’s “A” pile of titles
likely to get coverage.
How I
learned to read a book and write
a two-page
press release in two hours.
In my final months at
Prentice-Hall, I could be handed the galleys of a non-fiction book and produce
a two-page press release in two hours flat.
Six or more sets of galleys were printed.
These were two-foot-long sheets of raw type printed out before the book was
turned into pages.
Sets of galleys were distributed to
management, sales, the author, editor and proofreader for final editing,
corrections and changes. I got the sixth set.
My job was to highlight the most
compelling elements of the book in order to make the reviewers’ job easier.
I developed a kind of system for
speed-reading, enabling me to gobble up those long galley proofs. I spent some
time on the introduction, foreword and first chapter to see where the author
was going.
Thereafter, I would carefully scan every galley
sheet. When something caught my eye, I would slow down and start reading. If a
section seemed usable, I would circle it, turn the page sideways and move on.
It would take roughly 30 to 45 minutes to
know what was in the book. I would mark up all the stories, characters, pithy
quotes and observations to grab the reader’s attention and maybe, with luck,
make news.
When I finished the book, I would have 15
to 25 sideways galley proofs, whereupon I would carefully read over what I had circled.
The release would begin to take shape in my mind and I would start writing. The
finished release was essentially “the best of…” and filled with the juiciest
goodies.
Writing a column
is easy. I just sit down at the
typewriter,
open a vein and bleed it out, drop
by drop.
—Red Smith (1905-1982), Sportswriter
Because I had done the research, I did not
have to “open a vein and bleed it out, drop by drop.” I had plenty of material
to work with and the writing came easily.
My measure of success? That came when a
reviewer put his byline on my publicity release and ran it as his own review.
This happened more than once.
How Ash Green Changed My
Life
At age 83, with lousy
eyesight, I no longer read newspapers with their dreary “gray walls of type”
and tiny printing. Instead, every morning I hit the iPad and skim/read three
news sources a day (which I pay for): The
New York Times, Washington Post and Apple News. And I watch CNN, MSNBC and Fox News.
I will not listen to podcasts. They are
voice driven. If it gets boring, I have no way of scanning ahead to find more
red meat.
Nor do I read clunky printed books that
take up space and often weigh a pound or more. My book reading entirely is on
Kindle—in my opinion, the greatest technological advance in the printed word
since Gutenberg. Think of it! I can carry a library of up to 3,500 books in my
jacket pocket and I pay roughly half what “book lovers” pay for a print title.
Frank Watts
My
father was the author of more than 40 biographies and history books. His first
editor was a six-foot part Cherokee Indian divorcée and one-time singer with
the Paul Whiteman band named Helen Hoke. If you saw her across the room, you’d
think for a minute she was the great Metropolitan Opera coloratura soprano Joan
Sutherland.
In 1943 Helen married the six-foot tall
son of a Baptist minister from Lawrence, Kansas who made a very good living
traveling the country as a book salesman. On the side Franklin Watts had a one-man book
publishing company.
When Frank married Helen, she became not
only his wife but also his business partner and steered Franklin Watts, Inc.
into becoming a major publisher of children’s books. Their bread-‘n’-butter: THE FIRST BOOK series.
Frank and Helen became great friends of
the family. My parents and the Watts were heavy drinkers. One night my mother
said, “Frank, you have a face like a Toby mug.”
Frank sat for a ceramic artist and had 100
Toby mugs of his puss sculpted and fired as Christmas gifts to his friends,
suppliers and customers across the country to use as pencil holders. The
object: every time they reached for a pencil they would think of Frank and
order more FIRST BOOKS.
In my sophomore year in college, my
mother, stepfather and I were invited to spend with weekend with Frank and
Helen at the cottage they rented on Long Island's Fire Island. We all gathered
for pre-lunch drinks on the roof deck overlooking Great South Bay. Frank had
just poured his third Bloody Mary when I asked, “Frank, what do you think I
should do with my life?”
Frank looked over at me quizzically and
thought for a moment. Then speaking slowly so as not to slur his words he said,
“Denny… you are a great houseguest. You help out in the kitchen. You’re a
terrific bartender. You’re a good listener. People like talking with you.”
He took a big swig of his bloody and
continued: “Denny… You have all the makings… of a … first class… slob.”
My mother’s jaw dropped. My stepfather
shook his head in disbelief. Helen burst out laughing.”
We all looked at Frank and waited.
“What I think you should do with your life
is get yourself 52 really good friends and arrange to spend one week a year
with each of them.”
In 1962 Frank hired me to do publicity for
$90 a week—a lordly $30 increase over my Prentice-Hall salary. In short
order I was turned into a book salesman, going on sales trips with Frank showing
me how it was done. I became a book salesman calling on stores, jobbers and
libraries in cities and territories not on the itinerary of his regular crew of
independent travelers.
At Watts’ company I learned about business
travel, selling and entertaining customers, three-martini lunches and how to
set up a booth and work attendees at book conventions. Here are my favorite
Wattsisms:
•“People love to be sold.”
• “Always ask for the order.”
• “Once you have made the sale, like the
Arabs, fold your tent and go home.”
• “When in Doubt, do the obvious.”
• “Corn should be seat-high to the privy
on the fourth of July.”
• “Dealing with a customer is like making
love to a widow; you can’t overdo it.”
Frank Watts was a bear of a boss. I had
worked my way up to become sales manager and had built a list of customers—book
wholesalers, retailers, school and public librarians and was beginning to make
some money.
But Frank owned the business. During the
Depression years of the 1930s, the book sales were so terrible it became the
industry norm to allow any unsold books to be returned for full refund. This
was the only way publishers could be guaranteed of new books getting into the
stores.
Frank Watts’ arch bugaboo was returned
books. Every year on his birthday, Frank would come into the office and snarl:
“Do not wish me many happy returns! There is no such thing as a happy return!”
At one point Frank was so frustrated that
he personally wrote many of my customers blistering letters scolding them for
their sloppy returns systems. Whereupon they stopped stocking FIRST BOOKS and
other titles. As a result, my income tanked. So I quit.
M. Hughes
Miller
When I left Frank Watts, without two
nickels to rub together, I had an idea for a children’s book series and absolutely
no idea what to do with it. I bounced if off a wonderful guy I knew, Hughes
Miller, who had founded The Weekly Reader
Book Club and made a gazillion dollars as president of Bobbs-Merrill as
publisher of the legendary Joy of Cooking
(continuously updated and still in print today after 88 years!).
An old friend of Frank and Helen Watts, he
took pity on me, let me use a desk in his office in the Seagram Building and
spent hours giving me a cram course in how to launch and run a
business—creating a prospectus, cash flow, spread sheets—the information you
spend tons of money for two years getting an MBA. The book series did not get
off the ground. The last time I saw Hughes was at Lüchow's on 14th Street
where he introduced me to his new wife, Mala Powers (18 years his junior). I
was dazzled. She had played Roxane opposite José Ferrer in his 1950 Academy
Award winning performance in the title role of Cyrano de Bergerac.
I loved the guy.
Elsworth
Howell plus Lew, Bob and Ed
In case you
missed this recent post, in 1965 I was offered a job with a book publishing
company. The four guys who ran the company were truly great mentors and
teachers. They did everything they could to make me a success. Those eight
months were truly a life changing experience.
Walter
Weintz
Bob
Teufel
Walt Weintz had two
major clients: Rodale Press and CREEP—The Committee to Reelect the President
(Nixon). In 1972 this funny thing called Watergate happened. On August 9, 1974 Nixon was out
on his ass. So was Walt Weintz. He had the choice of firing me or firing his
son and partner, Todd.
On hearing my fate, I immediately called
Walt’s remaining major client, Bob Teufel and asked if I could pick his brains.
He readily agreed.
Teufel is a lovely guy—an easygoing,
passionate fisherman who was circulation director of Rodale Press. He went on
to become president throughout Rodale’s heyday. After running 3 book clubs and
working as a copywriter in the Weintz agency for four years, I was trying to
decide whether or not to go freelance. Teufel was my mentor for two hours in
the Oak Bar of the Plaza Hotel in 1974. His sage advice dictated the rest of my
career. Bob Teufel’s guidance on freelancing:
• If you are good at what you do—and
have good people skills—go freelance.
• You’ll work harder than you ever have in
your life, make more money and have more fun than you ever imagined.
• If one client fires you, you are
still working.
• The ultimate joy: you can fire clients you don’t
like.
• Spread out your work. If you
promise to meet deadlines too close together, you will miss at least one of
them and lose the client.
• Never rely on a single client or
customer for more than 25% of your total revenue.
• Always make time to sell when you
are busiest. Lining up new business is hard, tedious work—especially if the
sales cycles are long. An individual or company can become consumed by current
projects. Once these are completed, nothing new in the hopper can mean
trouble ahead.
• Always go first class. Customers
and clients like the aura of success. Dress well and entertain them well. Walt
Weintz drives a Mercedes. He takes me fishing on his 58’ Bristol Trawler and
invites me on fishing weekends at the exclusive Megantic Fish and Game Club in
Maine. It doesn’t get any better than that!
Teufel was my last mentor. After that I worked with and for many people who often filled my head (and notebooks) with ideas and concepts. And I always tried to give more than I got.
But by 1974 I was on my own.
An Invitation to Readers...
The most important people in my career were the men
and women who mentored me in my starting out years. They spent time teaching me
marketable skills that I have used throughout my 60-year career. They changed
my life.
This is
not the stuff I learned in school and college. This was on-the-job training.
These are the folks who taught me business, management and creative skills
without which I would be a street bum today in my 80s.
If this
post resonates with you, would you consider sharing memories of your
mentor(s)—the who, what, where, when, how and the lessons taught that made you what
you became.
I would be
delighted to publish your story—either in the Comment Section below or as a
separate post. If you would like me to work with you as an editor, I would be
honored. And you will be honoring those who changed your life.
Give a shout.
###
Word Count: 3070
