Clive Cussler Read online

  The “mean old lady” commercial was so successful, Clive went on to produce a series, featuring well-known character actors from film and television, including: Mike Mazurki, one of Hollywood’s outstanding tough guys; Charlie Dell, best known for playing Nub Oliver on Evening Shade; Joe E. Ross, the rotund Gunther Toody of Car 54, Where Are You; LaughIn’s Dennis Allen; and Ted Knight, the pompous news anchor on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. “Character actors,” Clive states, “are the finest people in the entertainment business. They’re professional, incredibly cooperative, and a pleasure to work with.”

  In addition to several Clios (advertising’s answer to the Oscars) and International Broadcasting Excellence Awards, Clive’s commercials were prize winners at both the Venice and Chicago Film Festivals. Winning awards of this caliber is a major accomplishment for a writer working in New York, Chicago or Los Angeles, but Clive was bringing home the gold in a market inhabited by clients with small budgets and even smaller imaginations.

  In 1972, Hull/Mefford merged with a Boulder agency owned by two women, Mary Wolff and Jan Weir. Jack Hull left for a job with Empire Savings Bank, and the agency’s name was changed to Mefford, Wolff & Weir. Having been elevated to vice president and creative director, Clive was making $17,000 a year and driving a company car.

  Clive’s creative team included art director George Yeager and assistant art director Errol Beauchamp. Yeager, who studied graphic design at the Carnegie School of Fine Arts, worked in Pittsburgh before moving to Denver. “When I was hired,” Yeager says, “Jack Mefford, myself, another art director, the production manager, and a secretary were located in one office. The writers worked in another office.” Shortly after he arrived, the secretary asked Yeager for his portfolio, explaining it would be sent over to the other office and reviewed by the writers. A few days later, Yeager was stunned when a tall fellow strode into his office, tossed his portfolio on his desk, declared, “Worst stuff I’ve ever seen,” and stalked out. “I’m thinking,” Yeager says, “Who the hell is this fool,” and was starting to get mad when the secretary, who had been watching everything, laughed and asked how I liked meeting Clive. The whole thing was a typical Cussler set up.”

  Yeager remembers Clive as, “A hard worker who made everything look easy. He was a great teacher, a good friend, and a wonderful family man. At the office, he always made us feel like we were part of the process and respected our input. At home, he was always building something or working with Dirk on his car.”

  Errol Beauchamp graduated from North Texas State, (now the University of North Texas). “The three of us,” he recalls, “Clive, George, and myself would eat lunch together, go drinking after work, and attend events organized by the advertising community. Clive was older than we were and always acted as our champion with management. If he thought we weren’t getting decent benefits or deserved a raise, he would tell them to take care of us because we were the guys doing the real work.”

  Both Yeager and Beauchamp agree Clive had little patience with anybody he thought was not pulling his weight. During one especially hot spell, the window-mounted air conditioner in Clive’s office broke down. He reported the problem to the office manager, but several days went by, and it had not been fixed. “I walked by Clive’s office,” Yeager says. “Clive was sitting there, calmly typing away, wearing nothing but his underwear. Word soon got around, and everybody found an excuse to walk by and sneak a peek.”

  Clive was offered the position of Mefford, Wolff & Weir’s executive vice president in early 1972. “I appreciated their faith in me,” Clive says, “but I politely turned them down. Management has never interested me. Creative was what I enjoyed, and creative was where I wanted to stay.”

  Shortly after Clive turned the offer down, the agency hired Mel Warren, an account executive who had been working in New York. From the moment the two men met, they took an instant dislike to each other. “To this day,” Clive says, “I can’t explain it. He would come in the room, and the hair just stood up on the back of my neck. Mel did have one talent. He was good at corporate in-fighting. I wasn’t.”

  The animosity between the two men can be traced to the “creative revolution” in advertising. Where the account executive once reigned supreme, creative directors were now the agency stars. Famed ad man David Ogilvy referred to his creative directors as “trumpeter swans.” Clive was still wearing a suit, but his hair was longer, and he was sporting a neatly trimmed beard. In his office, he installed wooden beams on the ceiling, draped cloth in swooping whorls between the beams, and positioned lights behind the cloth.

  Earl Beauchamp laughs, “I always felt like I was walking into a cocktail lounge. That office was pure Clive. He had star quality. Not only was he responsible for the agency holding onto their important clients, he was hiring movie stars and winning major awards. All of the attention Clive received really got on Mel Warren’s nerves.”

  Warren had been working at the agency for three months when he scheduled a meeting. George Yeager remembers, “None of us could believe it. Mel announced none of the work produced by Clive and myself was good enough to enter in the Denver Advertising Federation’s (DFA) annual awards show.” Founded in 1891, the DFA is the world’s oldest advertising club. Nicknamed the Alfalfa Club, in honor of the plant introduced in Colorado in the late 1800s to feed livestock, the organization’s awards were called, “Alfies.”

  After the meeting, Clive showed up in Yeager’s office. Visibly upset, he flopped in a chair. “I had never seen him so upset,” Yeager says. “The two of us had been freelancing, and Clive told me, ‘The hell with Warren. We should split the entrance fee and enter our freelance work.’ I was just as mad as Clive and told him to go for it.” On the entry form, Clive listed the agency name as, “Armpit, Tonsil & Groin.” When the DFA contacted Clive, they informed him his “agency” had won several “Alfies,” but they would not be allowed to use the bogus name because it would demean the organization.

  At the awards dinner, Clive and Yeager, wearing sunglasses and smoking big cigars, played their parts to the hilt. “When we were called up to accept our awards,” Yeager says, “everybody in the room, including us, couldn’t believe it when they announced the winner was the ‘Yaeger & Cussler Agency.’” For the remainder of the evening, Jack Mefford, Mary Wolff, Jan Weir, and Mel Warren were besieged with questions regarding Denver’s award-winning new agency. Although Clive tried to explain it was simply a misunderstanding, the majority of those present assumed the two men had opened their own agency on the sly and planned to walk away with Mefford Wolff & Weir’s best accounts.

  During the next few months, Clive assumed the brouhaha was forgotten until, busy planning a new campaign, he was summoned to Jack Mefford’s office. “Jack fired me,” Clive says. “When I asked him why, all he could mumble was some crap about my two-hour martini lunches and showing up late for work. Mel Warren had been looking for an excuse to torpedo me and the mix-up with the DFA awards ultimately gave him what he needed.”

  As he cleaned out his desk, Clive looked around the agency. “The nice new offices, the awards hanging on the walls, all because of my hard work,” Clive says. “After that experience, I swore I would never work again for someone else.”

  A few months after Clive was fired, Peter Lampack called with exciting news. Pyramid, a paperback publisher, had purchased Catch a Teaser By The Fin for $5,000. With a new title and a cover price of $1.25, The Mediterranean Caper was published in November 1973 and sold a respectable 32,000 copies. More good news followed when Caper was nominated for an Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America as one of the five best paperback original novels of 1973. Although he lost out to Will Perry’s The Death of an Informant, the combination of his first published book and the nomination provided Clive with “a much-needed shot in the arm when the skies were gray.”

  Clive received another shot in the arm when Dodd Mead bought Hermit Limited for $5,000. When the publisher requested a photograph to be used on the book�
��s dust jacket, Clive was not about to send them “a retouched ten-year-old photograph of myself, in my study wearing a smoking jacket.”

  Shortly after receiving the request, Clive and Barbara had dinner with Richard and his wife, Kate Lentz, who was a talented photographer. She was thrilled when asked to do the shoot and arrived at Clive’s house on Saturday morning. Clive changed into his wetsuit, and they walked over to the golf course that backed up to the Cussler’s house. Much to the astonishment of several nearby foursomes, Clive waded into one of the ponds located between the fairways and struck several poses while Kate shot a roll of film.

  Now called Iceberg, the book was published in September 1975 and sold 3,200 copies. Clive’s dedication reads, “This one is for Barbara, whose enduring patience somehow sees me through.” On the dust jacket, Clive emerges from the water like a modern-day Poseidon. Readers never knew the photograph was staged in a four-foot deep water hazard in suburban Denver.

  Clive’s modest success provided a boost to his confidence, but it was not good enough for the bean counters at William Morris. Peter Lampack recalls, “It was right around the time when computers were beginning to be utilized, and our entire business was put on line.” The computers determined 90 percent of the company revenue was being generated by 10 percent of their clients. Since computers were very large and very expensive, they were considered infallible and management decided to eliminate the bottom 50 percent of their client base. They were, after all, nothing more than freeloaders.

  “My boss told me Clive Cussler wasn’t going anywhere,” Lampack says. “I was wasting my time and the company’s money. It was time to dump him. I said, no way. Not only did I like Clive personally, I had a great deal of faith in his work and knew he’d catch on with the right book. I might have been a little green, but I had what I thought were good instincts.” Fortunately for Clive, Lampack’s track record persuaded management to back down and allow him to continue to represent Clive.

  Clive’s Titanic manuscript arrived at Peter Lampack’s office in late June 1974. After reading the novel, Peter Lampack agreed with Clive. Titanic was a great story and his best effort to date. Dodd Mead held the option on Clive’s next book. Anticipating a quick sale, Lampack was taken completely by surprise when Margaret Norton, the editor who worked on Iceberg called to tell him Titanic had been rejected. Norton liked the book, but Dodd Mead’s management felt the manuscript was overly long, making the book too expensive to print. Clive remembers the letdown after being informed of the publisher’s decision. “Oh, the shame of it. Rejected by my own editor and publisher. It was me against the world, and once again, the world was winning.”

  Lampack did his best to take the sting out of the rebuff. “I told Clive, as I tell all my clients,” he says, “my first thought is not the sale. It’s more important to find the publisher that will ultimately do the best job.” Now free to talk to other publishers, the agent submitted the manuscript to Putnam and Viking. He thought his best shot was Putnam since Clyde Taylor, the company’s president, was a good friend. “Clyde,” Lampack says, “had a really good sense for commercial books.” Taylor liked Titanic but thought the plot was far too complicated. He would be willing to make an offer, but only if Clive would agree to simplify the story. Clive and Peter decided to “tuck the offer in their pocket.” The agent would continue to shop the book, but it they got the same feedback, Lampack could always come back to Taylor and work out a deal.

  Meanwhile, at Viking, the manuscript was read by Corliss “Cork” Smith. Viking has always tended to be a literary house, but Smith, who operated as a consultant and editor at large, was much more commercial in his orientation. His writers included first-rate names including Muriel Spark, Thomas Pynchon, Jimmy Breslin, Calvin Trillin, and Jeffrey Archer. When asked about his uncanny ability to pick winners, Smith explained, “I have a good nose for vanguard fiction. I handled all the sports books, and I have a golden touch with commercial crap.”

  After reading Titanic, Smith went to see Allen Williams, Viking’s editor in chief. The book, he informed Williams, was a winner, and Viking would be crazy not to publish it. He even went so far as to suggest Titanic would probably become a bestseller. Viking immediately contacted Lampack, who recalls, “They made all the right noises, offering us a $7,500 advance, with minimal changes to the manuscript. I don’t know if it was Allen Williams or Tom Guinzburg [Viking’s president] who suggested changing the title to Raise the Titanic!, but we accepted the offer and the rest is history.” Clive was elated, but he had no idea the sale to Viking was only a harbinger of much bigger things to come.

  Graham Davis, a senior editor with Macmillan in London, happened to be in New York on business. He went to dinner with a friend who worked at Viking. When the friend told Davis about Raise the Titanic!, not only did the idea of raising the ill-fated liner grab Davis’s interest, the subject appealed to his Britishness - the Titanic had sailed under the Union Jack. Davis read the manuscript on the flight back to London and immediately wanted to purchase the British paperback rights, but discovered Lampack had offered the rights to Nick Austin at Sphere, a small London imprint. Macmillan put in a higher bid, and Sphere countered. A bidding war broke out, and Sphere aced Macmillan, paying $22,000 for the rights, a healthy sum for a British paperback publisher in the 1970s.

  News of the sale quickly spread through the New York publishing grapevine. Executives, editors, and agents were asking each other “Who the hell is Clive Cussler?”

  Convinced this sudden interest in the mysterious Clive Cussler might actually lead to something, Clive set into motion a scenario he calls, “One of my craftier moves.” First, he called Lampack and asked if it would be possible to buy back the rights to The Mediterranean Caper. “It was almost too easy,” Clive says. “Peter contacted Pyramid. The book was out of print, and they signed over the rights without asking for a penny.” Now setting his sights on Iceberg, Clive learned Playboy Publications had offered Dodd Mead $4,000 for the paperback rights. Lampack urged Clive to forget about the rights since the author’s share would be $2,000. Clive not only told Lampack to turn Playboy down, he wanted him to call Johnathan Dodd, director of subsidiary rights at Dodd Mead, and offer him $5,000 for the exclusive rights to Iceberg. “Peter,” Clive says, “went ballistic. He told me I was crazy. If you can get them for free, fine, but authors do not buy back their rights. He also pointed out I would be paying them $3,000 more than the $2,000 I would get from Playboy.”

  Clive told Lampack, in no uncertain terms, to offer Dodd $5,000. Two hours later, the agent called Clive: He had a deal. There was, however, a problem. “Barbara and I had all of $400 in the bank,” Clive says. “We might have tried to call our folks, but they would also think I was crazy.” Barbara, now working at Memorex in downtown Denver, went to her credit union. They were willing to give her a loan, but not for the full $5,000. Clive was able to scrape together the balance by putting up the family’s 1969 Mercury station wagon as collateral.

  In his haste to cement the deal, Clive mailed the check before his deposits cleared and the check bounced. “I was devastated!” he says. “Momentum was building on Raise the Titanic!, and Jonathan Dodd could have used the bounced check as a reason to cancel the deal. But true gentleman that he was, Jonathan honored the deal when my check cleared.”

  While Clive was busy securing the rights to his earlier books, the buzz generated by Raise the Titanic! during the spring of 1975 convinced Lampack he could secure the best deal if he sold the U.S. paperback rights at auction.

  Before the arrival of the auctions, hardcover houses would send manuscripts to paperback publishers they thought might be interested in the book. After all the bids had been received, the rights were awarded to the highest offer. Everything changed in the 1960s when mass market profits began to surpass those of hardcover editions, leading to lucrative auctions of paperback rights. Today, prospective buyers are notified of the auction dates well in advance and the agent (or publisher) will us
ually set a floor price “to get some money in the hat.” As the auction heats up, directors of subsidiary rights stay up late, studying the profit-and-loss statements in an attempt to predict how many copies they have to sell before upping their bid. A misstep can end a career.

  Held in June 1975, the auction for Raise the Titanic! attracted a premier lineup of paperback houses, including Bantam, Pocket Books, Avon, and Dell. For almost a week, Lampack fielded calls in his office as the bids came streaming in. On the morning of the final day of the auction, Clive and his family were in Colorado having breakfast (an unwritten publishing rule stipulates authors should not attend an auction). After the kids left for school, Barbara finished getting ready for work. “Just before she walked out the door,” Clive says, “I told her, ‘when the bidding gets to $250,000, you can quit your job.’ I know people don’t believe me, but I was truly being facetious.”

  After his customary morning walk, Clive sat down at his typewriter and attempted to concentrate on the work at hand, but his mind kept wandering - a group of strangers 2,000 miles away were involved in a guessing game that would have a major impact on the rest of his life. At ten o’clock, the phone rang. Lampack informed Clive that Bantam had prevailed with a winning bid of $840,000. Clive recalls little of the rest of their conversation, but he remembers calling Barbara. When she answered, he simply said, “Quit your job” and hung up. While Barbara walked into her boss’s office and gave two weeks’ notice, Clive tried to come to grips with what had just transpired.