Julian Koenig

And Ernie and I spent the day together, driving around and lunch together. Ended the afternoon in the lobby of the hotel I was staying in, the Beverly Hilton. He was not allowed past the lobby because he had short pants on. And then he went off to go to a party that night. And on his way home, there being a rainstorm, His car skidded and went into a pole and Ernie killed himself.

I was on a plane back to New York and learned about it the next morning. So, unfortunate incident, but certainly memorable for me. And lo and behold,

I wrote an ad, Lois.

And I wanted to print it in the New York Times as a book review, a public service book review.

I assume if I had a different personality, I would say I know what I've done. and those dear and near to me know what I have done or not done, and let it go at that. But I'm a fallible fellow, and obviously with ego of his own, and I resent being burgled.

Advertising is built on puffery, on... at heart, deception. And I don't think anybody can go proudly into the next world with a career built on deception, even though, no matter how well they do it.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

I invented thumb wrestling.

But we needed another wrestling, and I invented thumb wrestling with the same rules as a hockey puck face-off. One, two, three, go.

It was, yeah, it was just a devastating moment.

I want popularized shrimp in America.

Then, back in New York, I patrolled Broadway and on Viro asking for shrimp. Shrimp, shrimp! More. And in this way, talking it up, I popularized shrimp. No question about it.

Well, I'm not making any claim on the industry.

You have a character in a play, of course, but it wasn't in common usage as he's a character.

I had just shifted it, adapted it. Though Norman Mailer thinks that he developed it, I take precedence.

In my instance, the greatest predator on my work was my one-time partner, George Lois, who was the most heralded and talented art director, designer. And his talent is only exceeded by his omnivorous ego. So where it once would have been accepted that the word would be we did it regardless of who originated the work. The word we didn't evaporated from George's vocabulary and it became I.

And a year or so later, or a couple of years later, Ron Holland, a friend of mine, came running into my office to say, George is upstairs with a Japanese editorial writer. They're doing an interview with him. And he's claiming a Harvey Probert chair ad that he wrote it. So I call George down to my office and remonstrate. That's what men do frequently with him. And he says, I never said that.

I would never say that. And he went back to his office. And a little while later, Ron comes bursting into my office saying, George said, I told that son of a gun I had to get off.

Told me where to get off. So that was really the start of it.

And none of that ever happened, as described by George. He didn't ask me for a matchbook. He didn't slide it under the leg of a chair and say, I've got the ad. None of it is true.

His is a marvelous story. George is a talented storyteller with a vivid imagination. The only thing that could exceed it would be the truth.