The Fifties

by David Halberstam

His face would grow grimmer and grimmer, and finally he would ask, “Who did this one?” Some poor assistant designer would finally be forced to admit that the idea was his. “Well, the next time I come in I don’t want to see it because it’s no damn good.” Off he would go for lunch, but beware the poor designer who did not act immediately on such a warning, for Earl was sure to come back in a few hours to check whether the offending sketch had indeed been taken down. If it had not, he would rip it off the wall. Another specialty of his was to peer over a working stylist’s shoulder and say rather casually to the claque that arrived with him from the design committee (this sycophantish semicircle was known by the designers in the studio as “the magic crescent”), “Don’t you fellas agree if we raise that one thirty-second of an inch from one end to another, it’ll look better?” He was suggesting several hours more work for something that no one would notice.