I am saving these links and obituaries here so as not to ever lose track of these two creative souls and their Christmas research.
As xkcd says, "Christmas . . . is our most meta holiday. . . . All our Christmas stories now are about discovering the 'true meaning of Christmas'. . . and then sharing it with others. At some point, that quest itself became the true meaning."
for sharing your lifelong quests!
John "Jock" Elliott
Advertising executive & Christmas Collector
Author of Inventing Christmas
January 25, 1921 - October 29, 2005
Written by Maxwell MacLeod
Novembr 30, 2005
For The Guardian
Jock Elliott, who has died aged 84, was arguably one of the most significant advertising account managers of the 20th century. He was a driven, focused charmer, whose drive took the firm of Ogilvy and Mather virtually from scratch to annual billings of $2bn, with more than 300 offices worldwide. His charm led him to buy the Fingal's Cave island of Staffa for his wife Elly's 60th birthday, then hand it over to the National Trust for Scotland.
Christened John, but known in the trade as Jock, he was primarily enabled by being the close friend and colleague of the legendary advertising creative David Ogilvy, who often admitted to being similarly dependent on Jock, describing him as the keel of the company.
Jock had started slowly. He was born into a wealthy New York family, but his father lost much of his fortune in the 1929 Wall Street crash. Jock gained a scholarship to Harvard, where he dodged half the lectures, then joined the US marines during the second world war. Passing out well up the list, he was seconded to a safer berth in the US navy, where he spent most of the war on the battleship Pennsylvania, achieving the rank of sky commander, the officer in charge of air defences, by the age of 22.
Demobbed in 1945 with the rank of major, he took his first advertising job with the then small agency, Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborne, where, after a not very successful stint as a copywriter, he moved into management and became its youngest director. He stayed with the company (now BBDO) for 15 years.
Jock's big break came in 1960 when Ogilvy appointed him manager of the lucrative Shell Oil account, which Ogilvy's firm had just acquired. He outshone Ogilvy as an administrator, and, within five years, Ogilvy had handed him control of the American branch of the organisation, and then of Ogilvy & Mather International. He was chairman of O&M International from 1975 until 1982, when he retired with the title of chairman emeritus. In his 22 years with the organisation, he trebled the billings of both divisions of the advertising giant.
As a team, Jock and Ogilvy's shared success was phenomenal, picking up accounts for IBM, American Express and Shell, among many others. Their talents complemented each other: Ogilvy was the genius, old Fettesian sophisticate; Jock the hardnosed marine major who knew the stench of poverty, spoke plainly and put in long hours.
At the heart of his talent was the ability to show affection while maintaining an impartial sternness. He really liked people, and they knew it. He also had huge admiration for creative people - something rare in administrators - recently causing shivers round the industry by observing, "Big ideas are so hard to recognise, so fragile, so easy to kill. Don't forget that, all of you, who don't have them."
Jock's second career was largely in Scotland. He had fallen in love with Grey Walls, the tiny, luxury golf hotel on the sea near Edinburgh, and had a whim to buy a highland estate. In the event, he and Elly - they had married when he was 21 - settled for a tiny cottage in a remote glen, which Jock said had brought him more fun than any estate. He bought her the island of Staffa for a few days, just so she could say she had been its laird. Shortly afterwards, he made a deal with fishermen on Ulva that he would buy them a fishing boat if they would act as his marine chauffeur for 10 years. The arrangement was enjoyed by both sides for much longer than that.
His other hobby was Christmas. Over the years, he would apologise for his silly habit of collecting books with the word Christmas in the title. Then, in his 70s, he revealed his 3,000 strong collection in exhibitions at Harvard and New York. In 2001, he produced a book about the festival, Inventing Christmas, and concluded the dedication to his wife by wishing her a Merry Christmas. She survives him.
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George D. Meredith
Influential Ad Man & Christmas Collector
Author of When what to my wondering eyes . . .
August 7, 1940 - January 5, 2023
Published in the East Hampton Star
January 19, 2023
George D. Meredith, a co-founder and creative director of Gianettino & Meredith, a New Jersey advertising agency, died at home in Springs on Jan. 5. He was 82 and had been in declining health.
Mr. Meredith was an influential copywriter and creative director who created and oversaw memorable campaigns for WNEW-FM, ShopRite, Benjamin Moore, Welsh Farms, Chevrolet, Kiwi Airlines, and countless others. He served on the boards of Unity Concerts, Bloomfield College, the Whole Theater Company, and the Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey, and helped found the Yogi Berra Museum there.
His first job after moving to the East Coast in 1969 was for Force, a marketing agency, as editor of the program that was passed out at New York Giants football games. This was followed by work at Keyes Martin, where he rose to the position of creative director. In 1976, he and Ron Gianettino founded Gianettino & Meredith, which, over its first 10 years, was built into the largest independently owned advertising agency in New Jersey.
While at Keyes Martin, he created the ShopRite “Can Can” campaign, with ads featuring a French can-can line and a jingle that became a decades-long earworm for residents of the Northeast. Gianettino & Meredith gained its first client when WNEW-FM turned to it as the rock radio station struggled against the rise of disco. Inspired by the poet Ted Joans, who spray-painted “Bird Lives” throughout New York City after the death of Charlie Parker, Mr. Meredith pitched “Rock Lives” to the station manager at the time, Mel Karmazin. It was adopted as WNEW-FM’s slogan for the next 20 years.
In 1992, when Kiwi Airlines was founded by pilots of the recently defunct Eastern Airlines, it turned to Gianettino & Meredith to market its low-cost flights. According to his family, “When they explained to Meredith their desire to employ nonprofessional actors to save money, Meredith protested and in jest said, ‘I’d do it before I’d let you do that.’ Their unexpected, eager reply was, ‘You would?’ ” And for the next seven years his voice was heard on the company’s droll radio campaigns.
He was inducted into the Advertising Hall of Fame of New Jersey in 1987. He retired in 2002, after 35 years in the business.
Mr. Meredith was born in Milwaukee on Aug. 7, 1940, to George Wade Meredith and the former Carol Catcott. The following year, his father was drafted into the Army. Between all the places his father was stationed and his restarting his career after the war, the family moved a lot when he was a child. In high school he got involved in theater and played varsity basketball and baseball. For two years he pitched for the University of Arizona in Tucson on a baseball scholarship. When he decided he wasn’t going pro, he transferred to Florida Southern College and earned a degree in English.
In 1964, Mr. Meredith moved to Bloomington, Ind., with his first wife, Ruth, to attend graduate school at Indiana University. The couple had a daughter, Hilary. In Bloomington, he met the woman who would be his second wife, Elizabeth Lee, who is known as Beth. She replied to a help wanted ad that Mr. Meredith “would later call ‘the best ad I ever wrote.’ ” When they married in 1969, he gained a stepdaughter, Lisa. Their son Sean was born soon after and they later adopted another son, Daniel.
“Ever passionate about arts and culture,” Mr. Meredith “was an avid collector of books and photography,” his family wrote. Together he and his wife also collected ceramics, art glass, and sculpture. They had a sizable collection of work by artists with ties here, among them Elaine de Kooning, Eric Ernst, Dan Christensen, Audrey Flack, Donald Kennedy, Joe Zucker, Hans Van de Bovenkamp, and Randall Rosenthal.
A music lover, Mr. Meredith was a regular at the Stephen Talkhouse in Amagansett, telling The Star in a 2014 interview, “I don’t know if we’d live here if it wasn’t for the Talkhouse.”
He curated three exhibitions of his collections that were exhibited at the Track 16 Gallery in Santa Monica: “Author! Author!” in 1996, a survey of photographic portraits of writers; “When What to My Wondering Eyes” in 1998, featuring Christmas art and literature, and “Table Turners” in 2003, with album covers designed by “artists who hardly ever did album covers.” The latter was also exhibited at John McWhinnie @ Glenn Horowitz Bookseller in Manhattan and Innersleeve Records in Amagansett. His portraits of authors were shown at the Grolier Club in Manhattan and at the Montclair and East Hampton public libraries.
In 2004 he donated his Christmas collection to the library at Penn State University.
In 1978, he and his wife bought a house on Springs-Fireplace Road, where they spent summers and weekends, splitting their time between Springs and Montclair. They moved to Springs full time in 2009. Not only a collector of photography, he also enjoyed it himself and could often be spotted exploring Springs with his camera in his 1973 red Mustang convertible.
Mr. Meredith is survived by his wife, two daughters, Lisa Stewart of Hewitt, N.J., and Hilary Meredith of Atlanta, and two sons, Sean Meredith of Los Angeles and Daniel Meredith of New York City. He also leaves six grandchildren, Bailey Stewart, Molly Stewart, Charles Meredith, Helene Meredith, Ansel Meredith, and June Meredith, and a sister, Cindi Davenport of Marietta, Ga.
George Meredith: Collector Extraordinaire
Written by Christopher Walsh
May 6, 2014
For The East Hampton Star
George and Beth Meredith are collectors of paintings, sculpture, books, photography, and more. Above, Mr. Meredith discussed the artists represented in their extensive collection, in which local artists are emphasized. George and Beth Meredith are collectors of paintings, sculpture, books, photography, and more. Above, Mr. Meredith discussed the artists represented in their extensive collection, in which local artists are emphasized.Durell Godfrey Photos
A visit to the Merediths’ house, in Springs, is akin to stepping through more than a century’s worth of culture. The collections are smaller now, mostly donated or sold. But the stories and experiences cannot be diminished, and George and Beth Meredith have a surplus of all of the above.
A visit to the Merediths’ house, in Springs, is akin to stepping through more than a century’s worth of culture: Art, photography, books, ceramics, and sculpture are on display both inside and out. A wealth of South Fork artists is represented, as are, in rare, exquisitely rendered portrait photography, demigods of literature, music, sports, and more.
Mr. Meredith was co-founder, president, and creative director of Gianettino and Meredith, for many years the largest independently owned advertising agency in New Jersey. Unhappy at the agency they had worked for, he and Ron Gianettino established their own firm with “$3,000 and no accounts.” Mr. Meredith did, however, know Mel Karmazin, the broadcasting executive who was then head of the New York rock ’n’ roll radio station WNEW. “I went in and said, ‘I’d like your business.’ He said, ‘You’re welcome to it. I don’t advertise.’ ”
Just a week later, however, Mr. Karmazin called Mr. Meredith with an urgent request. WNEW had a trade deal with The Village Voice and needed an advertisement on very short notice. Gianettino and Meredith commissioned an illustration, added a pithy tag line, and a memorable ad for an upcoming broadcast of a Grateful Dead concert was born. “It changed my life in a lot of ways,” Mr. Meredith said, “because that made Mel decide he wanted to spend money on advertising. It led to a lot of other business. A lot of our ads won awards, and we got a lot of publicity for them.”
Of an estimated million words written, the adman said he was famous for exactly two. “In 1979, one of the stations, WKTU, converted to disco. For the next 13 weeks, they blew the ratings through the roof, and WNEW’s ratings were cut in half, I would say. Mel got into a panic.” Mr. Karmazin, with the late, legendary D.J. Scott Muni also on the line, summoned Mr. Meredith to their offices. “After we hung up, Scott called me back: ‘Get here. Mel’s talking about changing formats.’ ”
Before the calls had ended Mr. Meredith was at work. “When Charlie Parker died, a couple of poets in the Village went all over town spray-painting ‘Bird Lives.’ And I literally wrote ‘Rock Lives’ at that moment. I got there and had a big piece of cardboard that said, ‘Disco sucks.’ I said, ‘You can’t say this, but you can say this.’ I turned it over and it said ‘Rock Lives.’ They bought that, and that was their theme for some 15 years.”
His long experience in advertising, with its essential qualities of aesthetics, graphic design, and succinct messages, clearly played a part in the appreciation he brings to his and his wife’s extensive collections.
In 2012, part of Mr. Meredith’s immense LP collection was featured in “Table Turners: Album Covers by Artists Who Hardly Ever Did Album Covers” at Innersleeve Records in Amagansett. The exhibition had been staged a decade earlier, however, at what was then the largest gallery in Los Angeles, Track 16, owned by a friend, the comedy writer Tom Patchett. “I did it in New York, too,” Mr. Meredith said of an exhibition at John McWhinnie @ Glenn Horowitz Bookseller on East 64th Street.
Track 16 also staged Mr. Meredith’s “When What to My Wondering Eyes . . . ,” an exhibition of secular Christmas-themed art and literature from a collection he believes is the world’s largest. “That was a huge show and got lots of publicity,” he said. “The show was beautiful. It was a unique opportunity when you own something like that — you’d like people to see it.”
The collection was later sold and donated, in stages, to Penn State University. A show featuring portraits of authors was exhibited at Manhattan’s Grolier Club, the society for bibliophiles and graphic arts enthusiasts, where he is a member. Mr. Meredith’s collection of portraits numbers, by his estimate, 1,000 — many acquired through chance encounters and opportunities. The oversized prints offer rare depictions of the likes of Thomas Wolfe, James Agee, Isak Dinesen, Allen Ginsberg, James Joyce, Henry Miller, George Bernard Shaw, Tennessee Williams, and a young J.D. Salinger. “That’s really rare,” Mr. Meredith said of the Salinger, “because he didn’t let his picture be taken after this.”
Jazz musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, Miles Davis, Sara Vaughn, and Mr. Parker, then 19, are pictured, along with baseball legends including Sandy Koufax, Jackie Robinson, Don Drysdale, and Duke Snider. Also depicted is a youthful Senator John F. Kennedy on the campaign trail and a portrait, by the late Bert Stern, of Natalie Wood. “Of all the photographs, it’s my favorite,” Mr. Meredith said. “Natalie Wood, as beautiful as could be.”
The Merediths’ house is a veritable museum of visual art, with an emphasis on local artists. Elaine de Kooning, Eric Ernst, Dan Christensen, Audrey Flack, Donald Kennedy, David Gilhooly, Joe Zucker, Hans Van de Bovenkamp, and Randall Rosenthal are but a fraction of the names represented. Even the late Zero Mostel is here: “He was a painter before he was ever an actor,” Mr. Meredith said.
A rare Andy Warhol print is prominent. “This is a printed proof, and there were 30 others printed. Every one of them, the colors are different. I lucked into this piece at an auction.”
One striking portrait is a photograph of Picasso by Gjon Mili, a pioneering photographer who used stroboscopic light to capture multiple actions in a single image. “He spent three days and shot over 300 pictures of Picasso,” Mr. Meredith said. “But this is the best one, I think.”
The Merediths’ appreciation of culture extends to popular music, and on summer nights they might be found at the Stephen Talkhouse in Amagansett, rubbing shoulders with fellow patrons like Mick Jagger and Jon Bon Jovi. “I don’t know if we’d live here if it wasn’t for the Talkhouse,” Mr. Meredith said. “We’d have to go to Manhattan every time we wanted to see and hear the people we love.”
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