ADVERTISING: The Cat’s Meow

From the pages of newspapers in New York, Los Angeles and Newark last week peered a most unusual cat. Topped by a high-style Emme hat, clenching a long cigarette holder suavely in its mouth, it purred a typically catty message: “I found out about Joan. That palace of theirs has wall-to-wall mortgages. And that car? Darling, that’s horsepower, not earning power. They won it in a 50¢ raffle.” The most important fact about Joan was how she managed to dress well “on his income.” She shopped for her clothes at Manhattan’s Ohrbach’s, a low-budget department store with branches in Los Angeles and Newark, which has been trying to build up a high-fashion reputation with striking prestige ads (TIME, Sept. 6, 1954).

Produced by the Manhattan ad agency of Doyle Dane Bernbach, Inc. and written by a 35-year-old bachelor girl named Judith Protas, the ad immediately drew hundreds of requests for copies. The greatest compliment came from Madison Avenue, where admen paid their respects by posting the Ohrbach’s ad on their own bulletin boards. Said Walter Palmer, retired vice president of Manhattan’s Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn: “A masterpiece.”