Who

Once one of the best-known copywriters in the advertising industry, Della Femina is better known these days as a restaurateur and Hamptons fixture.

Backstory

Raised with a learning disability on Coney Island, Della Femina claims he learned to write by reading the New York Post. After dropping out of Brooklyn College and working as a messenger, Della Femina signed on at Grey Advertising. His big-agency career, however, was short-lived. (By his own admission, he was "hard-core unemployable.") In 1967, he founded his own agency, Della Femina Travisano & Partners, where he generated a string of hits over the years—you can blame him for such characters as Joe Isuzu and the singing cat from those Meow Mix commercials—before selling the agency in 1986 to a London-based company for "a lot more than it was worth." (The purchase price was reported to be $29 million; Della Femina reportedly pocketed $23 million himself.) The adman stayed on with the company until the early 1990s, when he left to open restaurants in Manhattan and the Hamptons. He later returned to the ad business with Jerry Inc., which is currently known as Della Femina Rothschild Jeary and Partners.

Currently

Della Femina's firm handles accounts like CB Richard Ellis, Toshiba and Roland Betts's Chelsea Piers, and is now part-owned by the advertising behemoth Omnicom. He also remains involved in the dining biz, although it's a one-restaurant operation these days. While his East Hampton spot Della Femina continues to thrive, a Manhattan location closed soon after its 1999 launch. (As for the Hamptons gourmet food market he founded, Jerry and David's Red Horse, it's now an outpost of Joe Gurrera's Citarella.) Della Femina also owns a free local newspaper, The Independent. His daughter, Jodi, serves as publisher.

In print

His 1970 tell-all about the 1960s advertising scene, From Those Wonderful Folks Who Brought You Pearl Harbor, took its title from a joke slogan for Sony that came up in a brainstorming session. The book became a best seller after a nutty, over-the-top appearance by Della Femina on the Today Show. Della Femina also wrote the 1978 memoir An Italian Grows in Brooklyn, which he's joked was a "no-seller."

Personal

Della Femina has been married to his second wife, TV news reporter Judy Licht, since 1983. The couple has two children, Jessie and James. (Jessie Della Femina is a fashion designer/social scenester and a student at Penn.) The bald lothario also has three children from a previous marriage: Donna, Michael, and Jodi. In addition to an Upper East Side townhouse that he purchased in 1995 for about $2 million, Della Femina has a waterfront manse in East Hampton and a home in West Palm Beach.