"Spectacular"

Eleven years ago an enterprising University of Florida student named Douglas Leigh bought all the advertising space in the college yearbook for $2,000, promptly resold the space for $7,000. In 1930, when he was down to the last $9 of this fat profit, he arrived in Manhattan to hunt a job. Though modest, soft-spoken Douglas Leigh hoped to work for Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn. he was unsuccessful, instead landed a job with General Outdoor Advertising Co., Inc., for which in three years' time he became a top-notch salesman. But dis gruntled by a long string of Depression salary cuts, he quit the job in 1933, sold his old Ford for $150 and used the money to start a business of his own. In Times Square last week--a little over five years later--he snapped a switch to light his latest advertising creation, a mammoth animated cartoon for Old Gold cigarets.

A candid cameraddict, Douglas Leigh used to tramp along Broadway taking pictures of possible sign locations. Then he would concoct novel advertising schemes, take his propositions to prospective clients. Soon his company, Douglas Leigh, Inc., became famous for such dis plays as its Kool cigarets penguin who winked 3,000 times an hour, its A. & P. coffeepot that emitted actual steam, and its Ballantine's Beer & Ale clown who pitched quoits. In five years the company has erected $1,000,000 worth of electric signs around Times Square, its assets have ballooned to $500,000, and its 28-year-old Alabama-born president has been dubbed the "Sign King of Broadway."

Sign King Leigh's real success dates from the day he got exclusive U. S. rights for 17 years on a moving picture-type of outdoor sign invented by Kurt Rosen berg of Austria--the electric animated cartoon. Although he has now eight ani mated "spectaculars" (as the trade calls them), on Broadway, his Old Gold display is by far the most ingenious and costliest ($27,000) of them all. Lit by 4,000 feet of neon tubing and 4,104 electric bulbs that flash off & on under photo-electric impulses, the advertisement, designed by Cartoonist Otto Soglow, runs steadily for five minutes, automatically repeats itself, resembles a Walt Disney cinema short. The cartoon shows two elflike characters making love, smoking cigarets, blowing smoke rings ; it will have a different theme every two months. Located at 43rd Street and Broadway, it is a half-block long, two-and-a-half stories high, uses electricity sufficient to illuminate a city of 5,000, will cost P. Lorillard & Co. $5,000 a month.

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