Word: mastering
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Carnegie (1835-1919), the son of a master weaver in Dunfermline, Scotland, saw his boyhood paradise torn asunder when his father's skills were rendered obsolete by the power loom. The Carnegies had to emigrate to the foul Pittsburgh, Pa., slums when Andrew was 12. Quick-witted, shrewd and resilient, he survived a Dickensian adolescence that included working as a bobbin boy in a textile mill...
...Steel, the first billion-dollar corporation. This was followed by International Harvester, the farm-equipment trust, and the International Mercantile Marine, the North Atlantic shipping cartel. In fact, Morgan presided over so many large-scale industrial consolidations that he recast the banker's role from that of handmaiden to master of industry...
...master manipulator, and it was generally acknowledged that of all the great actors on the lot--the Barrymores, Spencer Tracy, Lon Chaney, Garbo--L.B. was No. 1. When Robert Taylor tried to hit him up for a raise, L.B. advised the young man to work hard, respect his elders, and in due time he'd get everything he deserved. L.B. hugged him, cried a little and walked him to the door. Asked, "Did you get your raise?" the now tearful Taylor is said to have answered, "No, but I found a father...
Burnett did not originate this conceit. In his classic 1922 study Public Opinion, journalist Walter Lippmann maintained that pictures are "the surest way of conveying an idea. A leader or an interest that can make itself master of current symbols is master of the current situation...
...finally, an entrepreneur unlike any other: Jim Moran, 89, who, until he retired in 1985, reigned as supreme master of that most singular marketing device--the stunt. Highlights: he sold an icebox to an Eskimo on behalf of the American Ice Manufacturers Association. He personally hatched an ostrich egg by sitting on it for 19 days, 4 hrs. and 32 min., on behalf of the 1947 movie The Egg and I. For producer David Merrick, whose Broadway show The Matchmaker needed a little extra coverage, he dressed an orangutan in a chauffeur's suit and set the creature...