Controversy Erupts: The Life of Joe Fitz
The advertising business lost one of its great legends May 7 when Joe Fitz-Morris, founding editor of DM News and Advertising News of New York, died at age 89.
Fellow editors had one question when they heard the news: How would Fitz-Morris have played the story? He certainly wouldn’t have wanted anything mushy.
A self-invented man in the American grain, Joseph Malcolm Morris was born in 1918 in New York. He graduated from high school in 1934 and served in the Pacific Theater in World War II.
At war’s end, the 27-year-old infantry captain found himself managing Tokyo’s Imperial Hotel, where senior U.S. officers were billeted during the occupation. One night, he upheld American honor by drinking a Russian general under the table.
Episodes like that became the basis for
