This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Aug. 14, 2013 - Ellie Ohrn wrote punch lines and sales pitches for Hollywood stars during a career that saw Remington typewriters give way to IBM Selectrics and radio take a backseat to television.
Mrs. Ohrn, who for more than four decades made her way in what was largely a man’s world, died last month. She was 93.
“She was doing things that women of that era didn’t do and she had fun doing it,” said her niece and recent caregiver, Carolyn Jean Henry, of Columbia, Mo. “She wasn't afraid to take on challenges that many women of her time would have never considered.”
Mrs. Ohrn’s unorthodox life was punctuated by serious illness. It reminded Henry of a famous adventurer who often cheated death.
“She lived her life like Gunga Din,” Henry said. “She was a cool lady and, without a doubt, the smartest woman I knew.”
Mrs. Ohrn, who had survived a breast cancer diagnosis in the 1980s and three broken hips, died July 31 of complications related to Alzheimer’s disease at Columbia Manor Care Center in Columbia, Mo. She had lived most of her adult life in Richmond Heights.
Funeral services will be Fri., Aug. 16 at Bellefontaine Cemetery, followed by a celebration at Mike Duffy's Bar and Grille in Kirkwood.
Mad (wo)men
On her much-used collection of passports, Mrs. Ohrn simply listed her occupation as "writer." There was no indication that after graduating from Washington University, she’d become nationally known for her work as a comedy and advertising copywriter.
While working in local radio during the 1960s, Mrs. Ohrn found her Hollywood connection. She first worked at KXOK radio, then KMOX, where she met wild-haired comedian Phyllis Diller and the dapper Garry Moore, who would become one of early television’s best known comedians and game show hosts. She wrote some of Diller’s self-deprecating but tart humor and many of Moore’s surefire laugh lines.
Moore asked her to move to New York to work with him. “She refused to move to New York or California,” Henry said. “She was a St. Louis girl.”
From her hometown, she continued to make her mark nationally.
At D’Arcy Advertising, Mrs. Ohrn developed a series of humor-infused Budweiser television commercials starring Frank Sinatra and Ed McMahon. One such ad used a Wild West theme, showing Sinatra and McMahon hogtied with cold bottles of Bud just inches out of their reach. McMahon could read the labels, however, and did so aloud, to which Sinatra quipped, “If we ever get out of this, why don’t you become a radio announcer.”
Later, at Ralston Purina Co., Mrs. Ohrn was editor of the Purina Kennel News. In 1977, Ralston bought the St. Louis Blues and the team’s home, the St. Louis Arena. She gave the building its new name, The Checkerdome, to match the dog food maker’s black and white trademark squares. She retired from Ralston in 1989, after more than 13 years.
In her dedication to her craft and the advertising careers of women, she became an active member of the Women's Advertising Club of St. Louis. Beginning in 1959, she served as writer and script chairwoman for the Ad Club's annual gridiron dinner. In 1978, two years after the Women’s Ad Club merged with the Advertising Federation of St. Louis, Mrs. Ohrn was named advertising woman of the year.
Sue Ann Wood Poor, a former managing editor of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat who later joined the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, saw Mrs. Ohrn at the Gridiron dinners performing parodies of world events.
“The ones that Ellie did were always the very funniest, the wittiest,” Poor said. The two became close friends. “She always had the latest joke she’d heard or she made up one.”
The frugal maven
Elinor Jean Henry was born July 11, 1920, in St. Louis, the only daughter and middle child of Frederick M. and Helene Buss Henry’s five children.
She grew up in Webster Groves, later moving next door to where “she lived forever on McCutcheon in Richmond Heights behind the Magna Bank building,” Henry said.
Her apartment was on the third floor and had no air conditioning. It was emblematic of her frugal lifestyle, born of seeing her family lose everything – twice.
“Ellie would never spend a dime of her money because she lived through the (Great) Depression,” Henry said.
Even as she enjoyed many pursuits – traveling, jazz, Scrabble, bowling, bridge, her 5 o’clock martini and golf – her austere ways persisted.
She owned a 1960-something baby blue (her favorite color) Ford Fairlane that she named Funk. When Funk died, she bought a pale blue Ford Fairmont she dubbed Funk 2, which she did not relinquish until it caught fire on a St. Louis highway.
When the blue and white of her golf bag could no longer be discerned, her brother Jim bought her another one. Her response: “What do I need this for; my other one still works.”
“My dad was so angry,” Henry laughed, “but she never used that bag.”
She also never used the gifts she mentioned when prompted: emery boards and inflatable bath pillows. Or the gift cards.
“I found a stack of probably 20 Target gift cards (when she died),” Henry said.
In recent years, Henry finally convinced her to go shopping to buy something for herself. She returned with $3 in goods she’d purchased at Goodwill.
Laugh lines
Mrs. Ohrn met her future husband, Gus A. Ohrn, a musician, at KMOX, where he was a sound engineer. They were married on May 31, 1946; he died on the beach while they were vacationing in Florida just seven years later. She refused ever to visit Florida again.
It was about the only place she wouldn’t go, carrying the same suitcase her entire life, of course. She traveled alone to Kenya, Tanzania, Australia, even communist countries. She believed in walking every day, always taking the stairs and standing on her head for five minutes at night to let the blood flow to her brain.
Perhaps it’s how she came up with the one-liners for which she was famous. Like the one printed in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1996. She is said to have wondered why some political pundit hasn't called (then presidential) candidate Pat a "loose Buchanan."
“We have lost a very original mind,” Poor said.
In addition to her husband, Mrs. Ohrn was preceded in death by her brothers, Thomas Henry, Brian D. Henry, Patrick Henry and James G. Henry.
Her survivors include her stepdaughter, Jean Ohrn Natsch of Sunset Hills, and she was “Aunt Barton,” named by her father for a radio character, to Barbara Carol Baughman (David), Kathryn Helene York, Carolyn Jean Henry (Tim Schild), Patricia Kay Bartlett (David), Thomas Lamb Henry (Margaret), Sarah Helene Henry (Bill Starn), Constance Eileen Dinnsen (Robert), and Jack Douglas Henry (Jeannie).
The bugle with which Mrs. Ohrn "heralded the future" at Gridiron events will be at her services, which begin at 10:30 a.m. on Fri., August 16, at Bellefontaine Cemetery, 4947 West Florissant Avenue, St. Louis, followed by a celebration at noon at Mike Duffy's Bar and Grille, 124 West Jefferson Ave. in Kirkwood.
If desired, memorials would be appreciated to the Alzheimer's Association or the Barkley House, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211.
Gloria S. Ross is the head of Okara Communications and AfterWords, an obituary-writing and production service.