Tribute: Cruel Friday

Legendary copywriter Bill Jayme dies at 75

OF ALL THE GREAT COPYWRITERS who wrote direct mail, none was funnier or more biting than Bill Jayme.

For example, he helped launch The DeLay Letter, a direct marketing newsletter, by asking: “If your boss's zipper is undone, should you say something or just keep on smiling?”

Then there was his impertinent lead for Utne Reader: “Utne rhymes with chutney.”

But Jayme, who died of emphysema on Friday, May 18 at age 75, wasn't just trying to amuse people. “The point [of the DeLay copy] was that what any boss really values most is an employee who speaks up,” he said in one of several interviews conducted in 1997 and 1998. Anyway, the goal was to be “not funny but lighthearted.”

Yes, and there was another purpose: In 40 years of creating direct mail packages, Jayme and his partner, designer Heikki Ratalahti, sold millions of subscriptions, and helped put many periodicals on the map.

An Army veteran and a native of western Pennsylvania, William North Jayme graduated from Princeton in 1949 and promptly moved to New York. He worked at a number of odd jobs, including messenger for Young & Rubicam, and sold a script to the Studio One TV show. In 1951 he joined Time Inc.'s circulation department, working for copywriter Frank Johnson, who died earlier this year.

“I couldn't get a job in edit, so they put me down in circulation and I found I was good at it,” Jayme said. “I found it was fun to write something and know for the first time if it was good or bad.”

On Jayme's first day on the job, he literally couldn't find his way to the men's room, and was helped by copywriter Millie Strelitz.

“Around two in the afternoon, she said, ‘Do you have a problem sitting down for a long period of time? You seem very antsy.’ I said, ‘To tell you truth, I wish I had gone to the bathroom.’ I was embarrassed to ask a woman where the men's room was. That was the charm of that era.”

But Jayme quickly made an impression on his bosses, and on his literate audience. One of his first letters, “Cool Friday,” celebrating the 15th anniversary of Life magazine, was still being mailed well into the 1960s.

Dear Reader:

It was a cool Friday in November.

Plymouth offered their newest model for $510 — in an ad that also reminded you that you could tune in on Major Bowes' Original Amateur Hour any Thursday from 9 to 10.

Loyalists and Rebels were fighting in the outskirts of Madrid — while many U.S. citizens were preparing to celebrate two Thanksgivings. Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne were at the Shubert, ambling through “Idiot's Delight” — and a few doors down the street, a pillow-padded Helen Hayes was appearing as “Victoria Regina.”

Asked how the piece originated, Jayme said: “Out of my brain. Life was having a birthday, and we needed a letter to use as a hook to get people to subscribe. I went down to the public library and sat there with a lot of bums in the reading room, with my head sunk in this viewer, and rolled these scrolls about what was going on, like the price of the car, taking notes on the ads — sort of setting the scene.”

Was that really his first letter? The files show that he had written another one about events that year:

It was the craziest summer…

A man in Germany took to hatching baby chicks on his navel…

Some Idaho citizens laid out a town 10 miles long and 1 foot wide…

A Pasadena duckling beat the rap on an eviction notice and became a television star…

An American family turned down a British inheritance of two manor houses and $270,000 to remain in Cuyahoga Falls.

Yes, a lot of amazing things really did happen in this summer of 1951 — and your friends who take LIFE saw as well as read about them…

What was the logic behind such copy?

“It was leisurely, something you can read aloud after dinner,” he said. “It conveyed warmth and it conveyed charm. We tried to reward the reader for his reading time. You might mention if the magazine was going to cover food, and print a new recipe for Boston baked beans. There'd be little jokes, little conversational things. I still find myself automatically cutting stuff out to put in a letter.”

In a 1997 conversation Jayme recalled another typical mailing piece for Life. “The whole front page was reddish autumn leaf, and copy was printed over that,” he said. “The copy would say, ‘It's autumn, and isn't life wonderful? The smell of roasting marshmallows in the air, woolen clothes against your skin, first snowfall, the smell of turkey cooking…”

But Jayme was not easy on fellow Time Inc. personnel. Frank Johnson recalled in an interview that Jayme was “terribly articulate and very insulting to practically everybody.” In a 1997 interview, Joan Throckmorton recalled Jayme meeting Nick Samstag, who intimidated people, at a Time Inc. party. “Samstag — that's ‘gatsmas’ spelled backward,” Jayme said.

After several years of writing for Life and Fortune, Jayme jumped to CBS, where he headed promotions for three years. Then he did a stint at the McCann-Erickson ad agency — and hated it.

“They had so much review of every word that was written,” he said. “The copy went up to the copy chief, then to the copy vice president, then the copy review board, then over to the client's assistant — some nitwit earning maybe 5 cents a week, and he made changes with his pencil — then to the client himself. Sometimes the only thing remaining that you had written was the name of the product.”

Eager for the freedom to write two- and three-page direct mail letters, Jayme started freelancing in 1959, and in 1962 teamed up with Ratalahti to form their partnership; they moved to California later in the decade. With Jayme writing copy and Ratalahti handling design, they helped launch Mother Jones, Saveur, Psychology Today, New York and many other magazines.

“It's fun launching a magazine,” Jayme said. “You're dealing all the time with some entrepreneur who would just as well be selling soybean futures, who has perceived a niche that wasn't being fulfilled — like one-eyed nuns that had a hysterectomy and had no magazine. The guy wouldn't have a logo — all he'd have was $300,000 which he borrowed from his father-in-law. We'd often be designing the look and creating the raison d'être for the reader, in effect creating the magazine. It was totally up to us.”

In a piece to introduce Worth magazine, the headline on the outer envelope said, “Filthy Rich. Take this test to see if you really want to be filthy rich.”

According to Jayme, the copy was as follows: “You'll be expected to buy premium gas if you're filthy rich. And nobody will ever bring a bottle of wine to your house if you're filthy rich. You'll be expected to go to the opera and sit through the entire thing if you're filthy rich.”

Another Jayme classic was written for Psychology Today: “Do you close the bathroom door even when you're the only one home?” A letter for Bon Voyage (which was never sent) started: “How much extra should you tip when you're planning to pocket the ashtray?”

When Clay Felker started New York magazine in 1968, Jayme concocted a contest in which the first prize was “dinner at Gracie Mansion with [Mayor] John Lindsay so you could tell him how you'd run the city. The second prize was a night on the town with Jimmy Breslin, who was covering the city for the magazine. The prizes all told what New York magazine was going to be about — fun, and totally unique — and had no monetary value whatsoever. The sore loser's prize was a one-way ticket to Los Angeles.”

But such services didn't come cheap. One magazine cited his “friendly rate” of $25,000 for a package.

It was no coincidence that most of the magazines he worked for, from Time to Antiques, were for upscale readers. “I'm in favor of elitism,” he said. “It's how you end up with a Teddy Roosevelt instead of a Bill Clinton.”

But Jayme didn't only work for magazines. He also wrote copy for National Liberty, the direct mail insurance company, although apparently not for policies aimed at non-smokers and non-drinkers. “I did both with great joy,” he laughed.

He also wrote for Gerber Life Insurance Co. “I remember my boss fly-specking Bill's copy and penciling in petty changes in front of him,” recalled DM veteran Pierre Passavant. “Bill cringed at each change in his carefully crafted copy. At one point, my boss said: ‘Don't you think this helps, Bill?’ To which Bill dryly replied: ‘Only if it's making you feel better, Joe.’ He had a gentle way of putting you in your place.”

Jayme also had an outside creative life. According to Passavant, he wrote the libretto for the opera “Carrie Nation,” and wrote at least one children's book, “Know Your Toes.”

Jayme and Ratalahti retired five years ago.

Although he often exhibited a scathing wit, Jayme was known for his personal kindness, and he did have his nostalgic side.

“It was a different world,” he said of the period when he worked at Time Inc. “The computer changed everything. You could show the quality and intimacy now lacking. The most important change is the volume. We could count on people getting one — or two at most — direct mail letters a day. Now they get three or four or eight junk mail pieces. Many are not relevant to them at all.”

Uh, did he say junk mail?

“I don't mind calling it junk mail,” he answered. “There was a time back in the ’30s and ’40s when we were told that you don't call them cops — they're police officers or law enforcement officers. But people called them cops with great affection. They call it junk mail with the same kind of affection.”

Jayme also had a dim view of demographics. “That was invented to get clients,” he said. “Nothing from demographic information is used except in selecting lists, and the lists can, as you know, be wildly erratic. A man orders lingerie from Victoria's Secret, you don't know if he's got a beautiful wife he likes to see dress up, or if he's a transvestite.”

And how did he write? Unlike many writers, Jayme never wrote with a single reader in mind.

“A lot of writers say they pick their Aunt Bessie to write a letter to, or a girl who they met on the bus, but I never picked out one person,” he said. “I wrote for myself. If I liked it, and Heikki understood enough of it to know what we were talking about, that was it. We were fairly arrogant in our approach.”

The bottom line was whether the reader would get through it. “Is it believable?” he said. “Does it sound like it comes from a human being for another human being?”