Stanley Marcus

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Stanley Marcus
Born	April 20, 1905
Died	January 22, 2002
Education	B.A., Harvard University, 1925
Occupation	Former CEO of Neiman Marcus
Spouse	Mary "Billie" Cantrell, 1932–1978 (her death); Linda Cumber Robinson, 1979–2002 (his death)[1]
Children	Jerrie, Richard, Wendy
Parents	Herbert and Minnie Marcus

Stanley Marcus (April 20, 1905 – January 22, 2002) was an early president (1950–1972) and later chairman of the board (1972–1976) of the luxury retailer Neiman Marcus in Dallas, Texas. During his tenure at the company, he also became a published author, writing his memoir Minding the Store and also a regular column in The Dallas Morning News. After Neiman Marcus was sold to Carter Hawley Hale, Marcus initially remained in an advisory capacity to that company, but later began his own consulting business, which continued until his death. He served his local community as an avid patron of the fine arts and as a civic leader.

He received the Chevalier Award from the French Legion of Honor,^[2] was listed in the Houston Chronicle's list of the 100 most important Texans,^[3] and was named by Harvard Business School among the greatest American Business Leaders of the 20th century.^[4] The Advertising Hall of Fame notes: "Stanley Marcus was among the most important figures in the history of American retail merchandising and marketing. Through his many innovations, he transformed a local Dallas clothing store into an international brand synonymous with high style, fashion and gracious service."^[5]

Contents 1 Personal life and retail career 1.1 Early years at Neiman-Marcus 1.2 The war years 1.3 Taking the helm 1.4 Stepping down 2 Civic leadership 3 Legacy 4 Awards and honors 5 See also 6 Notes 7 Additional references 8 External links

[edit] Personal life and retail career

Marcus was born in The Cedars, Dallas, Texas, the son of Herbert Marcus, Sr., who later became a co-founder of the original Neiman-Marcus store with his sister Carrie and her husband, Al Neiman. Stanley was the first of four sons born to Herbert, Sr., and his wife, the former Minnie Lichtenstein; the pregnancy indirectly led to the eventual founding of Neiman-Marcus, as Herbert Sr. did not feel the raise he was offered by Sanger's, where he was a buyer of boys' clothing, was sufficient to support a family and decided to become self-employed.^[6] Returning from two years spent in Atlanta, Georgia, establishing a successful sales-promotion business, the Marcuses and Neimans used the $25,000 made in the sale of that business to establish their store at the corner of Elm and Murphy. Given that the family's other option for the money was to invest in the then-unknown Coca-Cola Company, Marcus loved to say that Neiman-Marcus was established "as a result of the bad judgment of its founders.".^[7] In his memoir, Marcus recalled his parents as affectionate and even-handed in their attention to each of their children.

One of Stanley Marcus's first jobs was as a 10-year-old salesman of Saturday Evening Post, bringing him into the family's business tradition from a young age.^[8] He attended Forest Avenue High School, where he studied debate as well as English with teacher Myra Brown, whom he later credited with much of his early interest in books.^[9] He began his university studies at Amherst College, but on finding that traditions preventing Jews from joining clubs or fraternities drastically curtailed his social life, he transferred to Harvard University after the first year.^[10] At his new school, he became a member of the historically Jewish fraternity Zeta Beta Tau, later rising to become the group's president.

While living in Boston and pursuing his chosen major, English literature,^[11] Marcus began a lifelong hobby of collecting rare and antique books. To finance his pursuits, he began The Book Collector's Service Bureau, a mail-order book service, beginning with a letter of introduction sent to 100 homes. The venture proved so successful that for a time Marcus considered entering that line of work full time, concerned that entering the retail business might curtail his freedom of expression in politics and other areas of interest; his father persuaded him that he would always be granted the liberty of his own views, and pointed out that retailing was more profitable and thus would allow him to amass a large book collection that much sooner.^[12]

[edit] Early years at Neiman-Marcus

After receiving a B.A. degree from Harvard in 1925, he began his career at the retailer that same year as a simple stockboy organizing inventory, but upon beginning in sales, quickly outstripped other sales staff.^[13] He went back to study at Harvard Business School in 1926, leaving after one year to participate in a massive expansion of the retail operation in Dallas.

He married the former Mary "Billie" Cantrell in 1932; Mrs. Marcus initially worked in the Neiman-Marcus Sports Shop department until she retired in 1936 after the birth of their first child, Jerrie, followed two years later by twins Richard and Wendy.^[6] (One year after his wife's 1978 death, he married Linda Robinson, a longtime librarian at the Dallas Public Library, in a marriage that lasted until Stanley Marcus' own death in 2002.) In 1935 the Marcuses commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to design a home for them on Nonesuch Road, but rejected the eventual design, which included cantilevered steel beams and terraces swathed in mosquito netting.^[14][15] Instead, the couple chose a design by local firm DeWitt & Washburn,^[14] whose creation became a Texas Historic Landmark.^[15] As of 1937, Marcus was one of only 22 Texans to earn a salary of $50,000 or more, according to the House Ways and Means Committee; his father, Herbert, was another, earning $75,000 as company president while vice president Stanley drew an even $50,000.^[16]

Marcus was responsible for a number of innovations at the Dallas retailer. He created the annual Neiman-Marcus Award for Distinguished Service in Fashion, beginning in 1938, which led to the Neiman-Marcus Exposition, a fall fashion show held annually from 1938 to 1970, then periodically thereafter.^[17] He then introduced weekly fashion shows — the first American haute couture boutique to do so^[18] — and made his the first department store to host concurrent art exhibitions not at some off-site museum, but at the store itself.^[19] In 1939, he established the annual Christmas Catalogue, which in 1951 offered the first of its extravagant "His & Hers Gifts," starting with a matching pair of vicuña coats, and going on to include matching bathtubs, a pair of Beechcraft airplanes, "Noah's Ark" (including pairs of animals), camels, and live tigers.^{[5][13][19] [20]}

[edit] The war years

For all his professional emphasis on glitz and glamour, he made another, very different mark on the American fashion industry when he was asked to join the War Production Board in Washington, D.C. on December 27, 1941, less than three weeks after the United States entered World War II. Ineligible for military service due to his age, he instead helped the war effort by championing the conservation of scarce resources normally devoted to fashion trends. He encouraged men to wear drooping socks (to save much-needed rubber that would normally be used for elastic^[10]) and devised regulations for the manufacture of women's and children's clothing that would enable the nation to divert more textile resources to uniforms and other war-related needs:

“	We settled on certain prohibitions, such as lengths, sleeve fullness, patch pockets, ensembles, sweeps of skirts, widths of belts and depth of hems. ... The restrictions we put into effect froze the fashion silhouette. It effectively prevented any change of skirt length downward and it blocked any extreme new sleeve or collar development, which might have encouraged women to discard existing clothes.	”
—Stanley Marcus[21]

Faced with increasing shortages in silk and even new synthetics such as rayon, which seemed likely to create long lines of dissatisfied customers seeking a product in inadequate supply, Marcus created the Neiman Marcus Hosiery-of-the-Month Club, which sent two pair of stockings in fashionable shades to each female charge-card customer, with no membership fees. In his memoirs Marcus recalled, "Many women opened charge accounts just to become members of the club, and in a short time we had a membership of over 100,000, extending all over the country."^[22]

[edit] Taking the helm

In 1950, with the death of Herbert Marcus, Sr., Stanley Marcus was elected president and CEO of the company, with Carrie Neiman as chairman of the board. Neiman died in 1953.

Marcus began yet another Neiman-Marcus tradition, the "International Fortnight," in 1957 as a way to attract customers in the lull between the fall fashion rush and the Christmas shopping crunch. The idea was inspired by seeing a store in Stockholm, Sweden, that was having a France-themed sales promotion, leading Marcus to propose to the French government a sponsorship of an even more elaborate event in his own store. The initial Fortnight included concurrent events of art, symphonic music, and film at other locations around Dallas, with an Air France jet bringing "writers, painters, government officials, models, and industry leaders."^[23] In the years following, the Fortnight focused on various other countries and added related food service as well as items from the relevant country in every department, ending in 1986 with the Australian Fortnight. Other international traditions introduced at Neiman's included Dallas' first espresso bar, brought by Marcus after World War II.^[24]

As a retailer, Marcus believed strongly in making his store into a place where everything a customer needed could be found and, if necessary, brought to the customer's front door. He was said to have helped one customer discover the shoe size of Queen Elizabeth II so as to give the gift of stockings and a pair of shoes.^[25] He personally delivered a fur coat to a St. Louis, Missouri, customer who could not make the trip to Dallas.^[25] Another story often recounted is that of a shopper who, in searching for a present for his wife, said that he was not sure what to buy, but that he would know it when he saw it. In response, Marcus inquired about the woman's clothing sizes and asked the customer to wait briefly. Taking an oversized brandy snifter from a display, Marcus gathered cashmere sweaters of various colors, arranged them in imitation of a pousse-café, topped with a white angora sweater to simulate whipped cream, and in place of a cherry, garnished the concoction with a 10-karat ruby ring, at a total cost of $25,350, which the customer gladly paid.^{[3][26][27][28]}

Despite his love of such larger-than-life salesmanship, Marcus also maintained the assertion of his father, Herbert, that "there is no good sale for Neiman-Marcus unless it is a good buy for the customer."^[29] Stanley Marcus would sometimes persuade the buyer to purchase a lower-priced item that he considered more suitable, as when a man came in shopping for a mink coat for his teenaged daughter,^[13] and always insisted a customer would be wiser to buy the top quality of a reasonably priced line rather than scaled-down or second-rate versions of an expensive product.^[30]

[edit] Stepping down

In 1969, Marcus recommended to the board of directors that the company merge with Broadway-Hale of California in order to have enough capital to expand. Neiman's subsequently became a subsidiary of Carter-Hawley Hale, Inc., and Marcus accepted a position as corporate executive vice president and director of CHH.^[31][32] During his time as leader of the store, he had doubled annual profits and nearly tripled annual sales. He retired as Chairman Emeritus in 1975, turning over the store to his son, Richard C. Marcus.^[33][34]

“	Running those poor steers back and forth in the heat is ridiculous…. What they ought to do is put the steers in the convention hall and run the delegates.	”
—Stanley Marcus On Dallas' efforts to project a Western image for the Republican National Convention, The New York Times, August 28, 1984}[35]

Despite retiring officially from the company, Marcus continued to be closely involved as an advisor even through the final weeks of his life.^[36] He established a sideline as a retailing consultant, maintaining regular business hours in his offices at Crescent Court for more than a decade and offering advice locally to luxury car dealership Sewell Corporation and hotelier Rosewood Corporation as well as internationally to such businessmen as Mohamed Al-Fayed of Harrods.^[24][34] Called on to consult for Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos, the 94-year-old businessman recalled arriving in his customary expensive tailored suit to discover 300 casually dressed employees: "I took off my coat, my necktie and my shirt, down to my T-shirt. And then I said, 'Okay. Let’s talk.' I couldn’t have planned it better. It broke the ice. I was on stage for two hours."^[37]

[edit] Civic leadership

During his lifetime Marcus was well-known for cultivating the arts and for defending even unpopular political causes. He introduced art exhibits at Neiman-Marcus as well as providing corporate sponsorship of artwork elsewhere in the city, and cultivated an extensive private collection. He helped found the Dallas Opera^[33], helped save the Dallas Symphony from a financial crisis^[33], and served as chairman of the board for the Dallas Museum of Fine Art (now the Dallas Museum of Art).^[38]

While serving as museum chair, Marcus was once called upon by Fred Florence, then chairman of a major local bank, to explain his inclusion of "a lot of Communist art" he'd been told would be included in an upcoming DMFA "Sports in Art" exhibit, co-sponsored by Sports Illustrated and United States Information Agency as a fund-raiser for the 1956 Olympic team. Asking Florence to indicate which pieces were being questioned, Marcus dismissed each claim one by one: "I don't know how anybody could think hitting a baseball was communist," Marcus said when shown "The National Pastime," by Ben Shahn. His response to William Zorach's "Fisherman" was similar, as he shook his head and remarked, "I don't think too many people think fishing is communist either." Marcus followed up by going to local newspapers The Dallas Morning News and the Dallas Times-Herald and getting the publishers of both to agree that they would not stand for censorship in the arts.^[38]

In organizing a 1952 exhibition of abstract art, Marcus lured local leaders to the show by two means. First, he solicited the donation of art from the collections of David Rockefeller and his brothers, along with those from other noted national business leaders. Second, he requested that the donors personally write letters of invitation to their Dallas colleagues, feeling that the otherwise suspect art would benefit from the imprimatur of respected figures known for their fine taste. His efforts were rewarded by a numerous and appreciative turnout for the show.^[38]

Marcus used his public-relations skills once again when Dallas was labeled "City of Hate" following the November 22, 1963, assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy. An early supporter of Kennedy's run for the presidency, Marcus had tolerated the closing of several customers' accounts when he announced his support for the candidate in the 1960 elections.^[39][40] In fact, he had cautioned that Kennedy's visit be reconsidered in light of the city's earlier poor reception of Adlai Stevenson and Vice-President Lyndon Baines Johnson.^[39] In Kennedy's memory, Marcus arranged to have 500 hand-typeset and bound copies printed of Kennedy's scheduled speech at the Dallas Trade Mart, of which the first copy went to Kennedy's widow, Jacqueline.^[41] The following New Year's Day, 1964, Marcus took out a full-page advertorial in The Dallas Morning News titled, "What's Right With Dallas?"^[42]

The editorial ad — a Neiman-Marcus tradition introduced by his father in the store's early days — both defended the city against outside critiques and offered more intimate criticisms from one who knew the town and its people well. The message said that Dallas needed to address four areas for community improvement: one, its slum problem; two, its political extremism (called "absolutism" in the text); three, too much attention to physical growth at the expense of "quality" in civic endeavors such as "schools, colleges, symphonies, operas, and museums"; and four, a need to focus less on "civic image" and more on "doing good things and not doing bad things," which he described as "the best public relations."^[43] In a 2003 article on the 40th anniversary of the assassination, Ralph Blumenthal of The New York Times praised the message as "strik[ing] a perfect balance," though he notes the author met not only with support from some, but from canceled accounts and "anti-Semitic attacks" that only increased after an article in Life referenced Marcus' Jewish heritage.^[44]

Following Kennedy's death, Marcus maintained close ties with Johnson and his administration, being considered for diplomatic posts while continuing to run his company^[45] and providing the wedding dresses for both the Johnsons' daughters, personally assisting Luci Johnson in selecting the designer for her own dress and the styles for the bridesmaids' gowns.^[46] After Johnson's retirement, Marcus' invitations were among the few the former president and his wife continued to accept.^[47] Marcus' own daughter Wendy joined Mrs. Johnson's staff for a time in 1963, working under Mrs. Johnson's personal secretary, Liz Carpenter.^[48]

[edit] Legacy

In addition to writing a weekly column for The Dallas Morning News for 15 years, Marcus was the author of multiple retailing-oriented books, including Minding the Store: A Memoir (1974), the sequel Quest for the Best (1979),^[49] and His & Hers: The Fantasy World of the Neiman Marcus Catalogue (1982)^[50] He was a close friend of other writers, including Jane Trahey, an author and longtime advertising copywriter who at one time worked for Neiman Marcus, and historian David McCullough. A television presenter for the public broadcasting program American Experience, McCullough said he once asked Stanley Marcus — "one of the wisest men I know" — what single problem or aspect of American life, if given a magic wand, he would change, to which Marcus replied, "I'd try to do something about television." When asked why, he explained, "Because," he said, "If you could do something about television, think how far you could go to solve all the other problems."^[51]

Marcus was an avid art collector, as well as amassing a collection of masks from around the world. In 2002, the Sotheby's auction house mounted a sale of works from his estate, calling Marcus "an insightful and forward-looking collector and a generous lender whose contributions to exhibitions helped bring notice to the world of Latin American Art during the 40s, 50s and 60s."^[52] The auction house also noted that Marcus had begun collecting at age five (influenced by his parents), but had found his interest in good design vastly deepened by a 1925 graduation trip to Europe, where he visited a famed international exhibition of decorative arts and thus was introduced to the earliest works of Art Deco. The Marcus collections included significant works by Mexican artists Rufino Tamayo, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Diego Rivera, and Rivera's lesser-known friend and colleague Antonio Ruíz; the American sculptor Alexander Calder, and American painter Georgia O'Keeffe. Marcus was friends with Rivera and Tamayo — playing a major role in bringing one of Tamayo's murals to the Dallas Museum of Art — and one of the first board members of the O'Keeffe museum, which honored him at the time of his death with a paid notice in The New York Times that stated "Stanley's generous support, leadership, enthusiasm, friendship and keen artistic judgment were instrumental in the Museum's inception and success. We shall miss him greatly."^[53]

Southern Methodist University hosts a Stanley Marcus collection at its DeGolyer Library in Dallas, including photographs, correspondence, and clippings. The library also houses a collection of more than 8,000 books donated by Marcus, including 1,100 miniature books, many from the press he founded.^[54]

[edit] Awards and honors

• Inaugural inductee, Retailing Hall of Fame (2004)
• First recipient of the Design Patron award, National Design Awards (2001)^[55]
• Inductee, Advertising Hall of Fame (1999)
• Honoree, Linz Award (1995)
• Honorary Fellow, American Institute of Architects (1972)
• Chevalier Award, French Legion of Honor, presented on March 27, 1949, by Henri Bonnet, French Ambassador to the United States^[2]
• Listed, "The Tallest Texans," Houston Chronicle - profiles of 100 key figures in the state's history^[3]
• Listed, "20th Century Great American Business Leaders," Harvard Business School^[4]

[edit] See also

• History of the Jews in Dallas, Texas

[edit] Notes

[edit] Additional references

• Infoplease. Noteworthy Deaths, 2002
• "Farewell to the Merchant Prince", The Dallas Morning News multimedia obituary tribute
• Tolbert, Frank X. (1953). Neiman Marcus, Texas: the story of the proud Dallas store. New York: Henry Holt. 

[edit] External links

• Career Highlights video, from Advertising Hall of Fame

Persondata
NAME	Marcus, Stanley
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION
DATE OF BIRTH	1905
PLACE OF BIRTH
DATE OF DEATH	2002
PLACE OF DEATH