Word: toying
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...addition to collecting culture, Marx is frequently accused by competitors of "collecting" generals. Actually, he has known most of his brasshat friends since they were young officers. His love affair with the military started in the early '30s, when he was able to give a hard-to-get toy-train switch to the late Air Force General H. H. ("Hap") Arnold, who was then a major at Bolling Field. Arnold introduced Marx to General Walter Bedell Smith, now vice chairman of the American Machine & Foundry board, who was then a captain. Said "Beedle" Smith recently: "If anyone had asked...
Marx says he has never received one good idea for a toy from the generals. But Marx was one of the many who kept telling Ike about his political future. "You're on pages one, two and three of every newspaper," Lou told Ike in 1946. "You're the political Coca-Cola." His proudest possessions: an oil painting of the West Point chapel-Ike's first picture-and a portrait of Marx in a frame inscribed "Dwight D. Eisenhower-American-Born...
...owned a small drygoods store and left most of the job of raising young Louis to a German maid. By the time Louis reached P.S. 11, he was known derisively as "The Dutchman." Marx still speaks with a guttural rasp and nurses a distrust for German. On annual toy trips to Germany, Marx hires an interpreter, although, as he admits, "I understand like...
...become a $5,000-a-year man." After a short-lived job with a druggists' syndicate, Marx stumbled "by sheer happenstance" into an office-boy's job with Ferdinand Strauss, whose Zippo the Climbing Monkey and Alabama Coon Jigger (a clockwork minstrel) were the first mechanical toys mass-manufactured in the U.S. Within four years, Marx had been promoted to manage the company's East Rutherford, NJ. plant, and soon afterward he had his first idea for a toy. One of Strauss's products was a toy horn that bleated "Mamma, Papa." Marx amplified the sound effects, redesigned the horn...
...next job, as salesman for a Vermont wood-products company, Marx redesigned a line of wooden toys, and sales soared from 15,000 to 1,500,000 in two years. At the same time, Louis and brother Dave set themselves up as middlemen. Their specialty was to figure out how to cut costs on a 10 toy. Then they would land an order, farm out the manufacturing and pocket the profit. Before he was 21, Lou Marx had served a hitch in the Army, risen from private to sergeant, and, back in civilian clothes, realized his ambition of making...