Energy. Ambition. Love. Grace. PART II: AMBITION
In celebration of Cherie Mason: an exemplar of the Opera House mission to use the performing arts to create excellence in all the way we perform our lives.
Part II of a 4-part series on the life and
distinguished career of Cherie Mason, based on a 2016 interview with Judith
Jerome, founding co-artistic director of Opera House Arts.
AMBITION
Cherie ended up in a rooming house in Lewiston, Montana. “It
was a little tiny sheepherding town. Right smack in the center of the state. In
fact the true geographic center of that state was in the kitchen sink of a lady
I got to know there. She was proud of that.
“I worked like mad. I had five different shows. I had a news
show. I had a woman’s talk show; I invited mothers to bring their babies, and
little ones, and I let them be on the radio. They liked that a lot. And I
obviously had a show in which I did readings, like poems or short stories. “I
would say: Oh hello, welcome to Cherie’s Partyline! That was the name of one of
the shows. And then with a little extra energy I’d bring a snack to the
engineer, who was on all night. I’d take him a sandwich or something.
“It was a brave thing to do for a woman alone, and in an
area that felt to me practically uncharted—I mean I didn’t even really know
where I was.” She’d just gotten on the bus and gone, walking through doors as
they opened for her.
Cherie hadn’t been in Montana a year when Anni called again.
The Dean of the School of Journalism at Northwestern was trying to reach her.
Cherie had minored in journalism and had written several well-regarded papers
on advertising, as part of her coursework. Anni said: “This is a job with an
advertising agency. It’s not radio.” A small Detroit company, with an even smaller
budget, had applied to the university, looking for graduates who might be
willing to train, to learn the ropes of copywriting. The Dean said to Anni, “If
Cherie’s still around, I think she should look into this.” And Cherie said, “Whatever
it is, I want it.”
“So I took the bus again from Montana to Detroit,
Michigan—it was Christmas—to interview in this little tiny advertising agency:
W.B. Doner. I mean they had a couple of regional accounts, but nothing much. I
didn’t know what a copy writer was, but I could figure it out pretty fast. So I
said yes, yes, I’ll take the job.”
Back in Montana the manager at the radio station was
furious. “Because of course I’d drummed up a lot of business—because I sold
time, too [ads on the radio]. I’d run around to all the little shops and sell
time. I was a ball of fire.” As if we didn’t know. But sweet as it was in
Montana, it was not her place. “So I said, I’m sorry, but I’ve got to get back
to the Midwest where I live.
“I got on a train this time, not a bus. With a few pennies
in my pocket, and a bad cold. I can remember that morning I left on the train.”
It was February. “I think it was five in the morning and Montana at five in the
morning is something to see. I was standing, waiting for the bus to come—it was
late, of course—and it was freezing, freezing!—and I said, I am on my way to Detroit!
On my way to a new job!”
Who would have expected this turn of events? But it was the
1950s; advertising was coming into its own and was full of itself. Like the
tech world today, it was the place where energetic, ambitious people made their
mark. The move to Doner was propitious and perfectly timed, and it would launch
Cherie on the path that would use her remarkable energy for the next decade and
more.
“I was at Doner for 3 or 4 years. And I really did learn the
ropes, the advertising ropes from them. The agency was small, but they had high
standards, and if you had the energy and the interest you could do a lot of
different jobs. If the agency had something that needed to be done—why would I
go home at night and just read a book? I’d rather stay around and talk to the
people in the art department. I was mad about everybody in the art department,
how they made the ads, the drawings. And then of course there was a broadcast
section of the agency.” Cherie wasn’t doing the broadcasts herself, but her job
was to write commercials for the radio. In that sense, “it wasn’t much
different than being in Montana.” Her focus was from the beginning on the
spoken word. “I never fancied myself a print writer. I just didn’t go that direction.
And for some reason at ad agencies they divided the departments. If you were a
print writer you were a print writer. If you were a broadcast writer you were a
broadcast writer.
“I always had ambition—do more, make more money. I became
attractive to agencies in Detroit and Chicago, who were always looking for
people who were bright and creative and inventive. Several approached me and
wanted to hire me, but for some time I didn’t feel like leaving Doner. I was
afraid to leave a paid job, one that was secure, for some pipe dream.
“But then I got an offer from Don Nathanson with Weiss and
Geller, in Chicago, and they had the Toni account, you know, the Toni Home
Permanents? And that was a big account. And they were looking for a woman
writer. So I did a couple of scripts for them, and they hired me. And that was
a big breakthrough.
“Then Weiss and Geller went belly up and everybody lost their
jobs. But we were taken up, most of us, by another small agency,” run by Earl
Ludgin (who happened to be Ken Mason’s step-uncle). I went there with a lot of
experience and just worked and worked—they had some very important accounts.
And then McCann Erickson got on the wire—and now we’re into the big time.
Because McCann Erickson had offices all over the world. And they had an office
in Chicago. And they wanted me.”
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| On a photo shoot for Helene Curtis |
It was a big decision. “I thought it would be too demanding,
and I didn’t know if I was up to it. But I did it, I went, and it was
successful. I became the first woman vice president in that office, ever. And
so then I was on everybody’s list. I was getting a lot of requests.” She was,
in fact, Vice President of Copy, and then, together with the VP of Art, was
named Creative Director at the agency.
