Charles Luckman Biography
THE THOMAS AND DOROTHY LEAVEY CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF LOS ANGELES RESEARCH COLLECTION
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Charles Luckman
during the Lever Brothers years, 1946-1950 |
CHARLES LUCKMAN PAPERS (CSLA-34)
BIOGRAPHY
The boy wonder of American business in the late 1930s and the 1940s, and then a leader in the field of architecture, Charles Luckman—an only child—was born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1909. Following graduation from Kansas City’s Northeast High School in 1925, and a stint in a Kansas City junior college, he took a job as a draftsman in an architect’s office in Chicago. He then enrolled in the University of Illinois in 1927, where he graduated with a degree in architecture in 1931. There he met his future architectural partner William Pereira, a great architect in his own right.
Lacking professional opportunities in architecture because of the Great Depression, Luckman entered the business world, joining Colgate-Palmolive-Peet as a draftsman in the advertising department in 1931. That same year that he married Harriet McElroy (1908-2003). (The couple’s three children were Charles, Jr.; James; and Steven.) Luckman then transferred to sales. He achieved impressive gains in the sales of his company’s soap on Chicago’s South Side, which earned him a reputation as a superb salesman and set the stage for a remarkable rise in the business world.
His progress at Colgate led to an offer from Pepsodent, which he joined as sales manager in 1935. Among his initial accomplishments was an agreement with retail druggists, who had been threatening a boycott over pricing of Pepsodent toothpaste, which served as a price-loss leader for some discount chains, thereby undercutting prices at independent drug stores. To prevent a boycott, at a National Association of Retail Druggists convention, Luckman, with the blessing of his company, offered a $25,000 contribution for the passage of a fair trade act, which would allow the wholesaler to set prices for products, thus eliminating the use of some products as price-loss leaders. In 1937 Congress passed the Miller-Tydings Fair Trade Act.
Luckman’s continued to promote successfully Pepsodent to customers throughout the United States. He claimed to know over 35,000 druggists in the United States by their first names. Such effective salesmanship resulted in Luckman's rapid rise through the Pepsodent hierarchy, becoming vice-president in charge of sales in 1936 a year later his picture was on the cover of the magazine Time as the “boy wonder” of American business. In 1941, Luckman was promoted to executive vice-president, and in 1943 came the crowning achievement of the presidency. By that year Pepsodent had the largest sales of dentrifice in the United States. His salary was the remarkable sum for that time of $100,000 per year, and he also held ten percent of Pepsodent’s stock.
Luckman, if nothing else, had a keen understanding of advertising and worked closely with advertising agency of Lord and Thomas, under leadership of the man considered the father of advertising in the United States, Albert Lasker. Perhaps the best example of this is how the name and person of comedian Bob Hope became irrevocably linked with Pepsodent, which, in 1938, became the sole sponsor of his radio show on NBC. Luckman’s role in Hope’s association with Pepsodent was to have Hope plug "irium" (really only a foaming agent) as the ingredient that set Pepsodent apart from other toothpastes.
The next major step in Charles Luckman’s career occurred in 1944, when Lever Brothers acquired Pepsodent for ten million dollars. Luckman continued as president of Pepsodent and became a vice-president of Lever Brothers, which was the United States branch of the international corporation Unilever. In 1946 he was named president of Lever Brothers in the United States, replacing its long-time president, Francis Countway. He was now the head executive of one the country’s largest corporations, and one of the country's the youngest head executives as well. This feat again earned him a place on the cover of Time (1946). Among his accomplishments there, many of them controversial, was the transfer of company headquarters from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to New York City.
Luckman was also involved in significant public service. He served on President Harry Truman’s “President's Committee on Civil Rights,” which evaluated the state of human rights in the United States (1947). Luckman chaired Truman’s “Citizens’ Food Committee,” charged with conserving American grain supplies, so that the savings could be used to feed desolate post-war Europe.
Charles Luckman became a well-known commentator, through numerous public speeches and articles in such magazines as Collier’s, on important issues in American life. Most notable was his plea for peace between labor and management, and the need for the latter to adjust to a changing world. A key figure behind this public outreach of Luckman was undoubtedly Benjamin Sonnenberg, a noted press agent in New York City. Within Lever Brothers, Thomas Gonser served as Luckman’s public relations official.
In a move that was headline news, Luckman resigned from Lever Brothers in 1950 after a meeting with the directors of Unilvever, the parent company. The exact reason or reasons for his departure remain unclear, but Lever had failed to equal its rival Proctor and Gamble in such areas the marketing of synthetic detergents, and by 1949 Lever Brothers was in the red.
Luckman would return to his old profession, architecture, after his resignation, answering the invitation of William Pereira, his fellow architecture student at Illinois, to join his Los Angeles based firm. Luckman’s renewed interest in architecture was stimulated in part by his instigating the building of the Lever House, the corporate headquarters in New York City. The ground floor of the twenty-six story tall skyscraper was open, with landscaping and fountains, an unusual design for its time. That it was one of the first steel and glass skyscrapers added to its novelty and perhaps stands as Luckman’s greatest contribution to American architecture.
The Luckman and Pereira firm was highly successful, and among its many accomplishments were the CBS Television City in Hollywood, the Hilton Hotel in Berlin, the Disneyland Hotel, the “Theme Building” at Los Angeles International Airport, and United States military bases in Spain.
In a disagreement over approaches regarding architectural and marketing practices, Pereira and Luckman split in 1958. Luckman then formed Charles Luckman Associates (CLA), which proved to be hugely successful. By 1968 the firm was one of the country’s five largest, with offices in New York, Los Angeles, and Phoenix. Its architectural accomplishments included the Madison Square Garden in New York, Boston’s Prudential Center, NASA’s manned flight center in Houston, and countless projects in Los Angeles, including the Los Angeles Zoo and what is now Macy’s Plaza. In 1968, Charles Luckman’s second son, James, became president of the firm, while he became chair of the board. That same year CLA merged with Ogden Corporation, a union that lasted until 1973.
Luckman had his architectural critics. Reflecting his strong business background, he marketed his firm as one that would design projects to suit the client’s tastes and needs, rather than create designs based only on the vision of the architect. In honor of this unusual approach to architecture, American Management Association awarded him its highest honor in 1982, the Henry Laurence Gantt Medal for “distinguished achievement of management as a service to the community.”
Luckman’s public and private service was considerable. An active supporter of public education, he served on the California State Board of Trustees from 1960 through 1982 and was twice chair of the board. Notable during this tenure was his strong stand against the campus unrest of the 1960s. He also established teaching awards at different universities. Besides this educational service, Luckman served as president of the Los Angeles Ballet and as chair of the board of UCLA’s Brain Research Institute.
Charles Luckman retired from Charles Luckman Associates in 1977, although he remained an active presence there. The firm was reorganized as the Luckman Partnership, with son James as president, a position he held until his retirement in 1991. Charles Luckman died in 1999, in Los Angeles.
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