(3 of 4)
McDonald's was flabbergasted. Through its attorney, former Health, Education and Welfare Secretary Joseph Califano, it warned newspapers that the ad was "riddled with error" and that further publication of such ads without corrections "would have to be considered malicious."
Undaunted, with few exceptions, major newspapers ran another Sokolof ad in July. This one was headlined MCDONALD'S, YOUR HAMBURGERS STILL HAVE TOO MUCH FAT! AND YOUR FRENCH FRIES STILL ARE COOKED WITH BEEF TALLOW. The ad noted that Burger King and Wendy's were also culpable and reported an Advertising Age poll revealing that 38% of Americans who saw Sokolof's first set of ads had decreased their patronage of fast-food restaurants. It also pointed out that laboratory tests conducted for the New York Times had confirmed the accuracy of those ads.
Fast-food resistance began to crumble under the assault. By the end of the month, Burger King, Wendy's and finally McDonald's announced that they were switching to healthy vegetable oils for cooking French fries. And they began working harder to develop leaner burgers. "The dominoes have fallen," Sokolof said. "I couldn't be happier. Millions of ounces of saturated fat won't be clogging the arteries of American people."
Sokolof, born in Omaha in 1922, has always enjoyed center stage. Starting tap-dance lessons at age six, he soon won first prize at a children's talent show. He still recalls the drill. "Left, right, shuffle, shuffle, tap, tap," he says, his body swaying with the remembered rhythm. At nine, he made the first of his many career changes, taking voice lessons and singing at weddings and bar mitzvahs. After high school, he took to the road for four years as a vocalist with a succession of bands, performing in ballrooms and nightclubs across the country.
But by the time he was 21, Sokolof says, "I realized that life wasn't just hats and horns." Returning to Omaha, he went into business with his father, who owned several liquor stores and bars. In his late 20s, Sokolof turned to building houses, one or two at a time, on speculation.
Around that time, in the early 1950s, when dry wall was rapidly replacing plaster in new houses, one of Sokolof's employees arrived at work with two cartons of corner bead, the metallic strips used to join dry wall at a corner. "I looked at the price," Sokolof recalls, "and thought, 'My God! That's really high.' " After checking the cost of steel and the fabricating technique, he decided he could undercut the only two national companies producing the bead.
He bought a $15,000 machine, rented a building for $75 a month and went into business. "I made the product, went out on the road and sold it, and came back and did the invoices." Offering the corner bead at a few dollars less per 1,000 ft. than his big competitors, Sokolof began turning a profit by his second month of operation.
It was all uphill from there. Today Sokolof's privately held firm, the Phillips Manufacturing Co., has 120 employees and two Omaha plants that specialize in producing various dry-wall channels and metallic building studs. Profits from the company and some shrewd stock investments have made Sokolof a wealthy man, with a fortune that he admits is "well into eight figures."