Randoms from a past more chessed than checkered…
- 1974: I leapt into the lifestyle abyss, abandoning a rip-roaring career as a creative honcho in Boston advertising to set up my one-man creative services shop, Baker Advertising, in Marblehead. By conservative estimate, I’ve extended my time aboard by 7.44973 years by playing it my way.
- 1954: Greenwich, wealthiest per capita town in the country, land of 100-acre estates, still popping corks to the Roaring 20s. Though our estate was more the apartment variety, my name somehow-beyond belief found its way onto the elite No- Irish-Catholics-Named-Bob Baker-Need-Apply Vacation Dance list, and I am at the Greenwich Country Club this July evening in my white-jacketed quite-rented tux.
Lester Lanin’s Lindy Hop-and-Charlston specialty band is taking a break and we tuxed and begowned are milling preppily along, when POOF a hush thuds the crowd. All eyes are yanked to the entry to the ballroom. Teen age couple. Knockout-pretty brunette wearing blue-and-white patterned Madras bermudas and light blue short-sleeved blouse. Handsome dark-haired, dark-tanned guy wearing chinos, short-sleeved blue button down, Weejuns, no socks.
What the … !!!
Girl next to me said, “Brookie Hayward … Ken Towe.” (Brooke Hayward, daughter of movie star Margaret Sullavan, former wife of Henry Fonda. The Fondas lived in Greenwich then, too. Brooke later married Dennis Hopper, Pete Fonda’s bike buddy in Easy Rider.)
They come in and mingle. When the band starts up again, they dance. No GCC staff or chaperones at any point approached them and politely told them to get their dress-code-busting butts elsewhere.
We’d all just witnessed the unofficial birth of cool.
- Maybe 2012 or so. A visiting priest at Star of the Sea church in his homily gave himself credit for something and then added: “It’s OK to brag a bit now and then, y’know. Keep in mind the old Irish saying that says, ‘It’s a sad dog that can’t wag his own tail.’”
- Wag: 1968, Best of Show, Boston Art Directors Show: New Hampshire economic development.
- Wag: 1970, named one of “Top 10 Creatives in New England” poll of New England creatives in Ad East.
- Wag: 1971, Best of Show, Hatch Awards, New England’s top creative award — Vermont tourism campaign.
- Wag: 1973, Best of Show, Boston Art Directors Show — Red Cross blood drive poster.
- 1979. Call from Steve Haesche an art director with Jim Mullen at Superfine Productions — Jim would like to meet for lunch at the Boston Yacht Club. At the BYC it’s quite obvious Mullen is a way-hot agency in the making and all they need is a name change to Mullen Advertising and an introduction to the wider Boston ad agency community and beyond — would I help them with some of the people I know in that regard?
I was more than happy to make some calls — to people I knew through my agency days and as a director of the Boston Ad Club, and most especially through the most powerful guy in Boston advertising — and wonderful friend — Jack Connors.
April 11, 1979. I got a hilarious spoof press release from Jim Mullen headlined “Mullen Advertising names Baker Advertising Agency of Record,” which went on to say, “There’s always been something divine about Bob Baker’s work. He even looks a little like Buddha.”
Mullen Advertising went on to become the largest independent agency in New England — most recently folded into Omicron’s $13 billion purchase of Interpublic Group. I have fondest memories of brilliant Steve Haesche and descendant of da Vinci, Jim Mullen.
- Christmastime, 1961. A now-gone New York tradition so redolent of Gatsby it was the title of a 1985 film adaptation of an F. Scott Fitzgerald story — Under the Biltmore Clock. There was an air of romance inherent to suggesting you meet someone under the elegant bronze clock at the Palm Court entrance of Manhattan’s regal Biltmore Hotel.
A meeting I arranged with my beloved Jayne is happenstantially and wondrously evoked by that incomparable chronicler of New York nostalgia, Pete Hamill: “You hurried across the street and your girl was waiting for you under the Biltmore clock, with snow melting in her hair.”
Yes, yes, yes.
Bob Baker’s memoir in progress is New York Kid Outplays Gatsby.
Bob Baker is an award-winning branding and creative services professional who draws inspiration from 1960s New York. He is currently writing a book.
