Ned Tolmach | Advertising executive, 73

Ned Tolmach, 73, a Madison Avenue copywriter who was a founding partner of the New York advertising agency Jerry Della Femina & Partners and later the co-owner of a Northern Virginia antique-furniture business, died Oct. 26 of lymphoma at his home in Great Falls, Va.

Mr. Tolmach's wife, Norma, said her husband's advertising career could have been the real-life prototype for Mad Men, AMC's award-winning TV series about the advertising business set in the 1960s. Mr. Tolmach had a bit more jaundiced view. "About the only thing accurate on that show is that they smoke all the time," he told his wife.

He got his start in the advertising business in 1959 with Fuller & Smith & Ross Inc. in New York. After working in Cleveland for a few years, he moved back to New York to take a position with Ted Bates & Co. and then teamed with Jerry Della Femina and two associates in 1967 to create Jerry Della Femina & Partners.

Banking on the premise that sassy, irreverent humor would sell, the agency quickly became one of the hottest on Madison Avenue.

Mr. Tolmach and Della Femina were the writers among the founding four; the other two were the art directors.

The flamboyant Della Femina, author of the book From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor (1970), was the public face of the agency, whose campaigns included the singing cat for Meow Mix ("The cat food cats ask for by name"), the unctuous, ever-smiling Isuzu car salesman, Forbes magazine publisher Malcolm Forbes as "the capitalist tool," and a spot for the publishing house McGraw-Hill that observed: "Before Hitler could kill six million Jews, he had to burn six million books."

"Early on, Ned demonstrated a knack for being both clever and poignant," former colleague Bill Waites said. "He knew where the common people kept their hearts and emotions, but he also had a sense of style and ingenuity."

Mr. Tolmach later worked as creative director for Compton, Benton & Bowles and for Young & Rubicam in Los Angeles, where his best-known clients were Ernest and Julio Gallo of E&J Gallo Winery fame. As a freelancer, he had a stable of clients that included the City of Miami ("When you have it bad, we have it good") and several cruise lines and tourist destinations in the Caribbean.

He retired from the advertising business in 1983, and he and his wife started Norma Tolmach Antiques, importing furniture from England, Ireland and France.

Ned Stephen Tolmach was born in New York and received his bachelor's degree from the City College of New York in 1955. After serving as a Navy Seabee for two years, he applied for a job in the mailroom at Fuller, Smith & Ross. Because he was wearing a suit, the personnel director decided to offer him an office job. Nine months later, he became an assistant account executive. - Washington Post