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All Rogues. Charles Greenough Mortimer was born in Brooklyn, the son of a brilliant but unbusinesslike inventor father and a sensible, businesslike mother, who is still alive at 86. A stout boy who learned to fight early because his playmates called him "Fatty," he was an only child and one of a long string of Charles Greenough Mortimers. "I made the mistake once," he says, "of tracing the Mortimers back to England. I got as far as the one who seduced the wife of Edward II and I stopped. They were all rogues."
Mortimer went to Stevens Institute, but left before graduation. He became a baking-powder salesman for R. B. Davis Co., was made head of sales at 22. His next stop was the Madison Avenue advertising agency of George Batten Co., where he worked on the Sanka account, pulled his weight alongside such later advertising stars as Ted Bates, William Benton (former Senator from Connecticut) and Chester Bowles. When Batten was sold to the agency that later became Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborne, Mortimer went over to Postum, got a job as an assistant ad manager for Sanka and Calumet. Not long after, he confided to a friend: "I want to spend the rest of my life here. And some day I'd like to be president."
Scramble for the Top. Mortimer took the advertising and marketing route upward at General Foods. He became vice president in charge of advertising in 1939, vice president in charge of marketing in 1947. One of the company's postwar problems was frozen foods. General Foods had carried the burden of the industry for years without making a penny of profit, but World War II shot the industry's business up to 1 billion Ibs. in 1945. Suddenly the get-rich attractions were so strong that fly-by-night outfits rushed out poor-quality products, gave frozen foods a bad name with the public. Result: the "Great Blood Bath," in which dozens of companies folded. General Foods confidently rode out the storm, turned the profit corner for good as the public regained confidence in the industry.
Mortimer moved on the board in 1950, jumped to executive vice president in 1952. The top job was now in view, but Mortimer got hot competition from two company rivals. Chairman Francis was behind Mortimer, recognized that the company needed a strong merchandising man to lead General Foods into the future. When Mortimer became president and chief executive officer, his two rivals left the company.
A Thousand Yards from Work. To be closer to his work, Mortimer built a nine-room house about a thousand yards from the company building in White Plains, N.Y., dubbed it "Done Commuting." He is devoted to his family, seldom brings his briefcase home or does business entertaining there. He and his wife Elizabeth (everybody calls her "Jerry") were married 32 years ago (his first wife died in childbirth), have a married daughter Mary and three sons: Charles Greenough, 33, and John, 30, both married and working in advertising, and Lee, 19, a sophomore at Denison University.