The consensus was that he combined a sense of detail with a gift for grasping the big picture, and that he had a genius for predicting the reactions of consumers. In addition, his vitality and magnetism were irresistible, and he worked fifteen hours a day. No wonder he made Lord & Thomas the biggest agency in the world – for a time. He loathed talking on the telephone, and abominated committees. He never belonged to an advertising club, and avoided his competitors. He resigned several huge accounts out of pique, including General Electric, Quaker Oats and RCA, and after his retirement encouraged his successors to resign Lucky Strike. He had himself driven about in a yellow Rolls-Royce. And, like me, he hated reverse type – ‘if it was natural to read that way, the New York Times would be printed that way.’ He was not shy about conspicuous consumption. His weekend estate outside Chicago had a staff of fifty. The gardens covered 97 acres, with six miles of clipped hedges – compared with only one mile in my garden today. And there was an 18-hole golf course. He once defined an administrator as ‘somebody without brains’, but as an administrator himself, he could be ruthless. In the Depression he cut all salaries by 25 per cent when he was taking $3,000,000 a year for himself, and then, at one fell swoop, fired 50 men and women many of whom had been with him for years. For all his financial acumen, he made at least one major blunder. When his father died, Lasker inherited a lot of Texas real estate. He promptly sold what was to become some of the richest oil land in the world, and a quarter of downtown Houston. That, plus his philanthropies and his extravagance, is why he left only $11,500,000 instead of a billion. He once said, ‘I didn’t want to make a great fortune. I wanted to show what I could do with my brains.’ His emotional make-up was uncomfortable. Gunther, who knew him well, says that he was sensitive and perceptive, and that he had a bubbling sense of humor. But he could be overbearing, intolerant and arrogant, once being heard to say, ‘There is no advertising man in the world but me.’ I don’t think he was joking. His first wife said that he gave her everything except himself He could be bad-tempered, demanding and inconsiderate. And he had three prolonged nervous breakdowns.