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Speaker 1: This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class, a

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Speaker 1: show for those who can never know enough about history.

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Speaker 1: I'm Gabe Lucier, and in this episode, we're taking a

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Speaker 1: wide eyed look at the work of Douglas Lee aka

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Speaker 1: The Sign Came. He was the man behind the dazzling

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Speaker 1: signs that illuminated Times Square and other urban centers throughout

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Speaker 1: the mid twentieth century, and the outsized impact he left

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Speaker 1: on modern consumer culture can still be seen today. The

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Speaker 1: day was April twenty eighth, nineteen thirty seven. The first

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Speaker 1: animated electric sign was installed on Broadway in New York City.

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Speaker 1: A forerunner of the modern digital build board, the sign

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Speaker 1: featured two thousand light bulbs that could turn on and

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Speaker 1: off in sequence to depict a cartoon scene. The sign's

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Speaker 1: four minute spectacle included a prancing horse and a ball

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Speaker 1: tossing cat, the motions of which were rendered through the

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Speaker 1: careful coordination of blinking yellow bulbs. The animal antics played

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Speaker 1: out on the side of a building right there in

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Speaker 1: Times Square, providing a free cartoon show for the man

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Speaker 1: in the street, provided, of course, that he didn't mind

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Speaker 1: a few ads in between. Although photographs of the original

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Speaker 1: sign are sadly lost to history, we at least know

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Speaker 1: a fair bit about the team who brought it to life.

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Speaker 1: The sign itself was designed by renowned graphic artist Dorothy Sheppard,

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Speaker 1: and its electronic animations were provided by Felix the Cat

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Speaker 1: Master animator Otto Mesmer. The project's mastermind, however, was advertising

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Speaker 1: executive Douglas Lee. He was an Alabama native, but had

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Speaker 1: discover covered his knack for sales while attending the University

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Speaker 1: of Florida. While enrolled, he bought all the advertising in

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Speaker 1: the school's yearbook on credit and then resold the ad

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Speaker 1: space for a profit. The scheme earned him about five grand,

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Speaker 1: enough to convince him to drop out of college and

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Speaker 1: get into the sales game full time. Lee made his

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Speaker 1: way to New York City in the early nineteen thirties

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Speaker 1: and got to work setting up his business. His first

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Speaker 1: success came in nineteen thirty three, when he secured the

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Speaker 1: right to install a sign at a busy intersection in

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Speaker 1: the Bronx. Lee was then able to persuade the Saint

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Speaker 1: Moritz Hotel to put up a billboard on that site.

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Speaker 1: His pay for leasing the space was fifty dollars a

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Speaker 1: month and a free room at the hotel for one year.

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Speaker 1: That was enough to give Lee a foothold in the city.

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Speaker 1: The money paid for his meals at the local automat,

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Speaker 1: and the lodging gave him a Central Park South address

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Speaker 1: to use on his stationery. It seemed to do the

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Speaker 1: trick too, because later that same year, Lee signed a

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Speaker 1: deal with A and P Coffee to advertise its brands.

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Speaker 1: The idea that sold them was a fifteen foot wide

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Speaker 1: sign shaped like a cup of coffee with actual steam

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Speaker 1: rising out of the top. It was installed at the

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Speaker 1: southeast corner of forty seventh Street and Seventh Avenue, a

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Speaker 1: highly trafficked area where it was sure to attract a

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Speaker 1: lot of attention, both for A and P and for

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Speaker 1: Lee himself. Pretty soon, other companies wanted their own oversized

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Speaker 1: ads with eye catching gimmicks, and Lee was all too

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Speaker 1: happy to oblige. In the years ahead, he put up

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Speaker 1: those kinds of signs, dubbed spectaculars, all over Time Square. Then,

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Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty seven, he debuted an innovation that would

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Speaker 1: go on to define the nighttime landscapes of mid century

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Speaker 1: American cities. The animated electric sign to design and direct

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Speaker 1: the characters and moving graphics for his new kind of ad,

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Speaker 1: Lee enlisted the expertise of cartoonist Auto Mesmer. He had

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Speaker 1: been out of the cartoon game since nineteen thirty when

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Speaker 1: the studio that produced his Felix shorts went belly up. However,

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Speaker 1: Mesmer's career got an unexpected second act after Lee approached

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Speaker 1: him to work on a new form of animated advertisement.

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Speaker 1: Mesmer was perfectly suited for the job, as the main

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Speaker 1: requirement was to think up silent visual gags for black,

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Speaker 1: silhouetted characters to act out. He had plenty of experience

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Speaker 1: in that department from his years of working on the

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Speaker 1: Felix shorts, and while technical advances such as synchronized sound

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Speaker 1: and color had made his cartoons seem too antiquated for

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Speaker 1: the movie screen, his high contrast black and white imagery

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Speaker 1: looked cutting edge on an electronic sign. As a result,

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Speaker 1: Auto Mesmer got to continue working in his classic style

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Speaker 1: for another thirty five years, all the way up to

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Speaker 1: his retirement. As for Douglas Lee, he continued dreaming up

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Speaker 1: new interactive features for his signs, many of which became

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Speaker 1: fixed of times Square and of City centers outside of

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Speaker 1: New York. One of his most famous creations was a

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Speaker 1: camel cigarette ad that hung on the Clarage Hotel on

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Speaker 1: the southeast corner of forty fourth Street and Broadway from

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Speaker 1: nineteen forty one to nineteen sixty six. The smiling man

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Speaker 1: on that enormous sign would puff out real five foot

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Speaker 1: wide smoke rings every four seconds. The chain smoking effect

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Speaker 1: was achieved by a piston driven diaphragm the collected steam

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Speaker 1: from the hotel and forced it out through a small

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Speaker 1: hole in the front of the billboard. The design was

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Speaker 1: so popular that it was reproduced in twenty two other cities.

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Speaker 1: But if smoking wasn't your thing, which was unlikely in

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Speaker 1: those days, Lee had other mechanical marvels to draw your eye,

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Speaker 1: like the sign he created for Super Sud's detergent. It

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Speaker 1: pumped out three thousand giant soap bubbles every minute. People

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Speaker 1: genuinely looked forward to seeing what kind of dazzling new

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Speaker 1: display Lee would come up with neck next. Even though

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Speaker 1: they were meant as advertisements, many people saw Lee's signs

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Speaker 1: as their own form of entertainment, with the product on

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Speaker 1: offer playing second fiddle to the medium itself. Some even

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Speaker 1: viewed Lee's ads as an equalizing force in a capitalist society,

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Speaker 1: a way to inject some glitz and whimsy into the

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Speaker 1: lives of folks who couldn't afford to go to the

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Speaker 1: movies or see a Broadway show. For example. Here's how

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Speaker 1: Robert Selmer described Lee's work in a nineteen forty six

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Speaker 1: article for Time magazine. Everybody talks about the man on

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Speaker 1: the street, he wrote, but nobody does anything about him. Nobody,

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Speaker 1: that is, except Douglas Lee, who dazzles him with neon lights,

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Speaker 1: showers him with soap bubbles, fascinates him with animated cartoons,

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Speaker 1: blows smoke rings over his head, and belabors him with

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Speaker 1: candle power. Lee's creative talents continue to find an outlet

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Speaker 1: in advertising all through the nineteen fifties and sixties. By

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Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies, though, he had moved on to lighting

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Speaker 1: the entire exteriors of buildings rather than just the signs

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Speaker 1: that adorned them. One of his specialties was designing dramatic

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Speaker 1: lighting displays for the summits of skyscrapers, including the Empire

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Speaker 1: State Building. In nineteen seventy six, he convinced the landmark's owner,

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Speaker 1: Harry Helmsley to go all out for the nation's bicentennial

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Speaker 1: celebration by displaying red, white, and blue lights all along

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Speaker 1: the top of the tower. The stunt was so well

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Speaker 1: received that the Empire State Building continued to use multicolored

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Speaker 1: lighting displays to mark all sorts of occasions, a tradition

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Speaker 1: that still carried on today. Over the years, Douglas Lee's

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Speaker 1: signs have slowly disappeared from city skylines, replaced by a

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Speaker 1: sea of led screens and vinyl billboards. That new generation

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Speaker 1: of sign spectaculars may not seem as charming or inventive

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Speaker 1: as Lee's pioneering displays, but in the best cases, they

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Speaker 1: still serve the same purpose, providing illumination and entertainment to

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Speaker 1: whom whatever happens to look their way. As Douglas Lee

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Speaker 1: once said, quote from the beginning of time, darkness has

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Speaker 1: brought on fear, lighting lifts the spirits. I'm Gay, Bluesier

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Speaker 1: and hopefully you now know a little more about history

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Speaker 1: today than you did yesterday. You can learn even more

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Speaker 1: about history by following us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram

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Speaker 1: at TDI HC Show, and if you have any comments

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Speaker 1: or suggestions, feel free to pass them along by writing

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Speaker 1: to this day at iHeartMedia dot com. Thanks to Chandler

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Speaker 1: Mays and Ben Hackett for producing the show, and thanks

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Speaker 1: to you for listening. I'll see you back here again

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Speaker 1: soon for another day in History class