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Lasker was more than an adman; he liked to buy into small companies and make them big. He bought a one-third interest in Pepsodent and with Charles Luckman boosted it to a top place in U.S. dentifrices with his advertising razzle-dazzle. When the company was sold to Lever Bros., Lasker got $2,500,000. He invested $1,000,000 in International Cellucotton to persuade its president that the press taboo against Kotex ads could be overcome. Lasker overcame it by talking women's magazines into carrying ads saying Kotex was a boon to women and before long newspapers began carrying the ads also. His interest in Cellucotton added to his millions. He early saw the potentials of radio advertising, and for Pepsodent created two of radio's most famous shows (Amos n' Andy, Bob Hope).
Sunday Squash. Lasker's boundless energy spilled over into boxing, golf, baseball, politics. It was Lasker who started Jack Johnson on the way to the world's heavyweight championship. Later, as part owner of the Chicago Cubs, after the great "Black Sox" scandal, he proposed the reforms that made Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis baseball's czar. He helped elect Harding, who got him to take on the vast job of liquidating World War I's war-shipping fleets. He worked both himself and his employees hard. Ex-Lord & Thomas Employee William Benton recalls that he joined a squash club for exercise, but managed to get in only five games—"all on my way to work on Sunday morning." Like Benton, many of Lasker's proteges set up their own agencies and made their fortunes.*
Lasker's zest for the advertising business diminished after his first wife's death in 1936. In 1942, after remarrying, he astounded the advertising world by suddenly bringing Lord & Thomas, the most famous name in the business, to an end. He turned over his accounts to three young deputies—Emerson Foote, Fairfax Cone and Don Belding.† Having given away his agency, Lasker set about giving away his fortune as well. With his wife, Mary, who had long been interested in medical research (TIME, Aug. 30, 1948), he set up the Lasker Foundation to fight heart disease, rheumatic fever, cancer. Last week, at 72, Albert Lasker died of cancer.
* Erwin & Wasey's Charles Erwin and Louis Wasey, Young & Rubicam's John Orr Young, Hilton & Riggio's Peter Hilton, Sherman & Marquette's Stuart Sherman and Arthur Marquette, M. H. Hackett, J. M. Hickerson, Duane Jones, etc.
† The successor agency still survives as Foote, Cone & Belding, although Foote has left the firm, is now a vice president of McCann-Erick-