BANKING: Individualist

BANKING Individualist

One trouble with banks is that they all have vacuous names, stone fronts, impenetrable vaults, courteous tellers, identical services. In Pasadena, Calif, the president of First Trust & Savings Bank (assets: $16,331,000), tall, easy, white-haired James S. (for Smellie) MacDonnell, now 62, long ago found a way to kick his bank into the public eye. In 1917, as cashier, he won local fame by writing persuasive ads for the Liberty Loan and Red Cross drives. Since then, as president, he has sporadically taken advertising space in the Pasadena...

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