Give Me Two Minutes of Your Reading Time: A Tribute to Gene Schwartz
(Direct, Nov. 6, 1995) An acquaintance who knew him only as a big-time art collector once asked Gene Schwartz, “Do you work for a living?”
A good question, given that Gene seemed to be rich with no visible means of support. But he rarely discussed his work because these society types wouldn’t have understood. So his New York Times obituary mentioned his art collection and his memberships on various museum boards, but barely reflected that he made his mark writing raging junk-mail headlines like, “She Fled the Hospital when the Doctor said ‘Cut Her Open.'” “How to Develop Psychic Dominance Over Others,” and “Super Potency at any Age,” and was a certifiable lunatic.
Gene himself admitted he was a little odd-at least in print. “The copywriter is the person who looks at things that other people don’t see,” he once said. “As a result, the copywriter writes in a way that’s strangely fascinating…offbeat…and somewhat crazy.”
Too true. And by the time he died at age 68, Gene Schwartz had written more over-the-top copy, sold more products and provided more sheer entertainment than any two copywriters combined. And if you don’t believe it, give us two minutes of your reading time and we’ll prove it (as Gene wrote in an ad).
First, a little history.
Though he was born in Butte, Montana, and carried a part of that town within him all his life, Gene Schwartz was at heart a Manhattan sophisticate. He came to the big town in 1949 to write the Great American Novel, and found himself working as a messenger for the Huber Hoge mail order agency.
Within a year or two, he was copy chief, and in 1954 he started his own mail order firm, Eugene Stevens Inc. He offered vitamins, tranquilizers, potients and industrial products, many developed in the in-house research lab and all on the up-and-up, according to Andi Emerson, who worked for Gene for a few years and calls that period “the most fun time of my life.”
It was indeed an inspiring era, judging by the copy that survives.
As we sat in her Greenwich Village office drinking coffee recently, Andi, founder of the John Caples awards and herself a mail order legend, pulled out a frayed yellow newspaper ad from the Sept. 23, 1956 edition of the New York Journal American: “Here is the Tablet Doctors give Their Wives to Reduce!”
The body copy reads like something out of a Terry Southern satire: “After 27 years of research! After thousands of Reducing Miracles performed in doctors’ offices! Now you can lose UP TO 33 POUNDS — SO QUICKLY THAT YOUR FRIENDS WILL GASP IN ASTONISHMENT — without starvation diets, without a single hungry moment, without even giving up the foods you love!”
“His headlines were just fierce,” Andi commented, turning to another clipping, from 1958: “Now! The Miracle Gas-Saver that Europe Couldn’t Hide!”
Among the curiosities in Andi’s Eugene Stevens file are several copies of a magalog titled, “Car Digest,” which featured how-to articles on auto care and offered a variety of products — sort of an early-day infomercial in print. Each opened with an introduction by Gene, using the name Eugene Stevens. Why Stevens? Because in those days, “You couldn’t be Jewish and you couldn’t be a female,” Andi said.
But the real gems were to be found among his space ads and mailing pieces of the period:
“Give me a One Evening and I’ll Give You a Push-Button Memory”
“Now a tranquilizer Pill without a Doctor’s Prescription! Released to you for the first time!”.
“Full-Grown Trees — One foot tall.”
Emerson’s favorite came in a number 10 manila envelope headed, “Inside this package…A WIRE NAIL THAT CUTS THROUGH ARMOR PLATE!
“Yes! Inside this package is a common 20 penny wire nail – but a wire nail that cuts through armor plate as though it were made of wood!”
“They said you couldn’t sell metal hardeners by mail,” Andi laughed. “But we did — to GE, and many others.”
The firm pulled in maybe $4-million a year-big money in those days. “We were the biggest,” Emerson said.
But it couldn
