jay/day

I just love when people write to me and include photos and miniature bios which help me (and everyone) add another little fragment to the history of the Jay years. Here's a great email from Mary Beth Neal Garber ....

I suppose there are thousands and thousands of us, really. People who ricochet through C/D, people who thrived there. Did you know that John Amos, the actor, once did a stint at Chiat/Day as a writer? It was in the days of Mel and Mel (Mel Newhoff, Mel Abert, and Tom Burr -- Abert/Newhoff/Burr of the 70s and 80s). Paul Keye and Mario Donna peopled the Olympic Blvd offices -- of Keye/Donna/Perlstein fame in the 70s and 80s.

I was one of the founding group of employees (as were Mel & Mel, Tom, Paul and Mario, and Hy Yablonka). We opened the doors in October 1968 with the merger of Faust/Day and Jay Chiat & Assoc.

I was, at one point, the entire media department. We actually won the American Honda Car account with a three person media department and a computer (one of the first of its kind -- would you expect anything less from Jay?).

Penny Wright (now Cunningham) and I were most of the media department until I left in mid 1971. Mike Zuckerman replaced me, then Dave Platt. Penny stayed for some time, then transferred to San Francisco when Chuck Phillips opened the office there.

Jay stayed in touch with me over the years. I probably have some of the last video ever shot of him. I won one of those industry award things in 2000 and he sent me some footage to be included in the "ain't she great" reel. It was full of Jay zingers, as expected. Jay always could deliver insults that felt like hugs.

Thank you for being the collector.

Another fun aside -- when I left C/D, my husband's and my best friends were Lee and Ilene Clow. Lee was my husband's partner (they were juniors) at a local ad agency. I kept telling him he'd love working at C/D, and i kept telling Hy he'd love Lee, but that Lee's book was not really reflective of how good he was.

Hy finally agreed to see him, called me and said he saw the promise in the guy, but he just wasn't ready for C/D. So Lee, his friend Blake Hunter and my husband created a campaign called "Hire the Hairy". Eventually Hy capitulated and hired the hairy Lee (must have been the cake shaped like a TV set with Lee's picture on it that Ilene baked that did it).

Here's a picture of me from a series done by one of the trade mags on me. (I'm president of the Southern CA Broadcasters Assn.