“He’s Probably Part Artist, Part Businessman, Part Scientist, I Guess”

If you’re interested in advertising, New York City in the ’60s, Mad Men or the subtle levers of the free market, “The Quiet Persuader,” a 1967 installment of the BBC’s Inside America series, is great fun. It profiles Young & Rubicam exec Steve Frankfurt at 33, during the middle of that decade when the industry was flush and fascinating, when TV, the medium in which he excelled, was becoming the center of the ad world. Frankfurt’s work was so highly regarded that he was even hired to create the title sequence for To Kill a Mockingbird and other films. His first wife, Suzie, who also appears in the documentary, was a highly regarded interior designer and a friend and collaborator of Andy Warhol.

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