Evan Stark

The one thing I remember most about Roy Grace is the fun we had working together.

No matter what the problem we were given, we always came up with an answer.

I remember, when we were working together at Doyle Dane, and also at Gilbert, Grace & Stark, we never failed to come up with an answer, even it wasn’t the right one.

I remember that when we worked at DDB, another writer told me that he’d always see Roy and I walking the office and talking and laughing, sometimes with other creative people and other times to ourselves. What puzzled him was that even though we were always just strolling around, whenever there was a screening of new work, Roy and I always had a spot on the reel.

One of the things that saddened us was that when we were working on Alka-Seltzer, we lost the account while Roy and I had 2 new spots finished, but they’d never be seen. And we also has 2 more storyboards that were already approved, but they never were produced.

Another situation that rankled us was the Schick account.

Roy and I did a storyboard with a woman shaving and Susan Calhoun served as the woman shaving. The copy said “If what you’re seeing bothers you, it shouldn’t.  Because it doesn’t bother her either. She’s shaving with a Schick Super Chromium Blade to show you how comfortable it is for her. And if it doesn’t bother a woman like her, it shouldn’t bother a man like you. Schick. The most comfortable a shave a man can get.”

When we showed it to Bill Bernbach, he said it was terrific. Unfortunately, just after we’d shown it to Bill, he called in Ed McNally, the Account Supervisor on the account and he told Bill it was all wrong, so Bill called us back in and told us to go back and do some more thinking.  At that point, Bob Levenson, the Creative Director, told us to lay back and he would go up and tell Bill how terrific he thought the spot was. As it turned out, we learned that instead of praising our thinking, he tried to come up with solutions of his own. We learned that from the Account Executive who was there and was bothered enough by Bob’s treachery to fill us in.

Eventually, we did a spot we both liked and which Bill like also, but it never ran. I don’t even have a copy of that spot, but Roy may have.

Here’s another thing Roy may not have mentioned, but when we were together at G,G&S, I was the only writer, but besides Roy there were two other Art Directors and I did some work with both of them.

Eventually, I got exhausted by new business meetings, writing on our actual accounts and the rest of the work I had to do and I told Gilbert that we needed another writer and he gave us enough money to hire a junior writer, but he didn’t work out. So I told  Gilbert we needed a more senior writer to help out.

At that point, Roy asked me if there was a writer at Doyle Dane we could hire and I told him that Diane Rothschild was the best young writer there, but I wouldn’t hire her because I wasn’t sure how this agency was going to make it. Maybe that influenced Roy and maybe he never even thought about that later after we both left.

Anyway, enough already, but I have one more story you may not have heard about.

This was when we still had the Alka-Account and Roy and I were assigned to write a TV spot for Alka-Seltzer Plus.

Alka-Seltzer Plus was Alka-Seltzer plus an antihistamine and a decongestion. So Roy and I decided to wire a spot with a guy in his underwear on a huge block ice and, sitting in a club chair, his wife wearing a fur coat and finally, it was snowing outside. An ordinary scene, right?

Well, the guy on the ice was holding up a glass with fizzing tablets and his wife is saying “Evan, how long do we have to keep going on like this?” And he says “Until I can catch a cold Priscilla, and see whether this Alka-Seltzer Plus really works.”

He then explains what is in that fizzing glass. “These little guys are the antihistamines and these other fizzing fellows are the decongestions. He then goes on with  his explanation and she complains and asks how long he’s going to go on and he says “Until I have ah-c-c-c-coco-cold at which point he sneezes and she shouts “Now Evan, now!!” So there you have the spot.

Well, Roy and I had trouble with the director and we told him this guy is a nut case and you’re not treating him that way. The Director says I see him as a professorial gentleman and that what I’ve been shooting. So at the lunch break, Roy and I spoke to the studios producer and told him about our problems and after the lunch break, we got what we wanted for the spot.

When we saw the dailies the next day, we realized we had a spot that was like two different but we put it together and showed it to Bill Bernbach and Joe Daly, the President of the agency.

After we screened the spot, Bernbach said he had problems understanding some of the dialogue and could I change some of the words… to which I replied “Change some of the words?” and Bill said “Evan, you’re the writer, you have a typewriter, change some of the words.”

To which I replied “Change some of the words”, and Bill was getting very angry with me until Joe Daly cut in and said “Evan can’t change some of works. They’re speaking on camera and if you change some of the words, it wouldn’t go with the lip movements.” So then Bill asks me “Is that so? “ And I say yes. And that's why the spot never went on the air. 

One more thing. I can’t draw, but Roy could draw anything I wanted him to. So one day, we were asked to do an Alka-Seltzer ad about the product being good for hang-overs, but we couldn’t use those words, so I asked Roy if he could draw a picture of a guy whose head is shaped a Champagne Glass and whose head a cork and Roy drew exactly that.

Then I asked him to draw a different head of a guy whose is shaped like a whiskey glass and the headline I wrote for the ads was “I’ll take Alka-Seltzer or death, whichever comes first.” We showed it to Bob Gage who got it right away, because he was a big drinker, but he said we should show it to Bernbach because Seagram was a big client. Bill liked it a lot, but said he should show it to Edgar Bronfman and naturally, Bronfman turned it down and the ads never ran.

-Evan Stark
DDB 1964-1972