The Face Is Familiar

If You're One of the hundred million or so persons in the U.S. who flips through at least one big-circulation magazine a month, you've almost certainly spotted the guy on these pages a couple of hundred times. But it's 50 to 1 you don't know his name: Lionel Wiggam. He's far and away the highest-priced, most-in-demand male model in America. He has appeared in more advertisements for a greater variety of advertisers than any other man--or woman or child, for that matter--and he earns 40 bucks an hour for doing it. In fact, his front-of-the-camera stints are so sought after that, recently, he appeared decked out in two fiercely competitive brands of dinner jackets (After Six and Linett) in two ads that ran within a couple of pages of each other in the same issue of Men's Wear magazine.

Unlike Commander Whitehead, beavered Schweppesman, and Baron Wrangle, the eye-patched cosmopolite who peddles Hathaway shirts, Wiggam doesn't concentrate on one product alone, possibly because he doesn't sport the jarring characteristic necessary for immediate product identification. In the same issue of any mass-circulation magazine, you're likely to spot Wiggam hawking everything from PJs for dad at $3.95 to chinchilla coats for milady at $40,000. While doing it, he may assume the role of hustling executive, smitten lover, beaming bridegroom, tranquil traveler, satisfied Scotch sipper or carefree collegiate. Wiggam, photographers and ad agencies have discovered, has the unique knack of moving millions of dollars worth of merchandise or services by the simple act of lounging in front of a camera a few hours each week.

For Wiggam, and most everyone else associated with the advertising dodge, the four seasons of the year are crazy, mixedup deals. Because most magazines work months in advance of publication date, Christmas usually begins in July, and the Fourth of July falls sometimes in December. In the dead of a New York winter, Wiggam finds himself with a modeling assignment for swimsuits (you probably saw the ad last month) that means two days location shooting in Sarasota, Florida, expenses paid; on the doggiest July afternoon, Wiggam sweats it out in a Gotham photo studio swathed in a heavy tweed overcoat, club-striped muffler and ear muffs and waving a State pennant (watch for the ad next November). He must be ready at a day's notice to zip off to Europe, the Caribbean or Australia to make a fashion film for a clothing manufacturer. Through it all, he manages to look convincing--and (concluded on page 66)Face Is Familiar(continued from page 48) boom sales--in every ad he's in.

Wiggam makes no claim to being a creative guy--at least not in the ad game. He's not the fellow who comes up with the ideas; he has nothing to do with the conferences involving copy men, layout guys, account execs, media specialists, and others who plot the success or failure of a campaign. What Wiggam does, and does phenomenally well, is (1) manage to look believable in front of a camera and (2) make people want to go out and buy whatever it is he's selling.

Wiggam got into modeling, about four years ago, for a very good reason: he needed dough. He had just returned from a year in Europe, where he tried to write a novel but found it rough going, and was prepared to sell shoes at Macy's to get money to keep up his writing. He told a girlfriend about his plans, a fashion model who suggested he try to get assignments through an agency. Wiggam thought what-the-hell and applied at just the right moment: the agency was hunting for natural male types and took him in. Since the Forties, the trend has been away from the ephemeral, effeminate model who represented a highly stylized picture of masculinity; the trend today is toward people, not models. In front of the camera, Wiggam comes through as just what he is: a pleasant, urbane, likable fellow.

Although most models, men and women, are forced to pound the pavements of New York, lugging composite pictures of themselves in various poses which they leave with photographers, illustrators and ad agencies, work came easy to Wiggam. The first job he landed was for Hans Lownds, a photog who was in need of a model for the Wallachs men's fashion ads.

It was Lownds who helped put him across, who suggested Wiggam stop grinning and give the viewers something a little different. "Don't smile," he suggested, and Wiggam became a new prototype. Now he frowns, looks serious, guffaws, but never smiles in the Wallachs ads. His rates began zooming, and every time he upped his hourly fee another five bucks, other male models waited for the client's howl of anguish. It never came, and their rates went up too, but not as high as his.

Today, Wiggam pulls in $360 a week, net--not much, admittedly, but Wiggam earns it in one 11-hour working day. The other six days he does exactly what he wants to do: bang out plays. He has just sold one to be produced on Broadway shortly by Roy Newbert, Jr. and Chandler Cowles, whose most recent venture includes the current smash, Hotel Paradiso. It is called Prime of Life, and Anne Baxter is ogling the lead. Wiggam has also sold an option on another play of his, titled Siren Song.

Chain-smoking, bourbon-and-soda fan Wiggam has been writing--short stories, poetry, plays and movie scripts--ever since he was 13 and traveling the country with his father, who put on boxing exhibitions with a traveling burlycue show. Wiggam was intrigued by the sights and sounds, promptly sat down and knocked out a 1000-word short story about--logically--the peregrinations of a stripper. He called the composition Thick Ankles.

After reading it, his high school teacher grew red-faced, and suggested that Lionel put it away until he was a little older. The budding author listened in silence, then tramped down to the corner candy store where magazines were sold, decided that his yarn was a natural for Breezy Stories and sent it off. Back came a check for $78.

During the next 10 years, which included stints at Northwestern University and Princeton. Wiggam piled up a list of credits that included 30 short stories (sold to Harper's, The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, et al.), 200 poems, four movie scripts (including Smash-Up, The Very Thought of You and Tap Roots), in addition to four plays.

Bolstered by a hefty bankroll from these sales, Wiggam in 1951 decided to take off for the Riviera on his stab at writing a novel. And Wiggam, who had penned plays, short stories and film scripts in a breeze, bogged down on his book. As a release, he wandered into the casinos: at Monte Carlo, he figured out an unbeatable system and dropped all his cash trying to make it work.

Today, thanks to the money Wiggam has saved from modeling, he owns a pre-Civil-War house in Stone Ridge, some 70 miles from Gotham. To this house--complete with brook and four acres--he comes weekends in the winter and six days a week in summer, to write and relax. While in Manhattan, he lives in a two-room walkup in the East Sixties.

One harried adman voiced what is probably a general Madison Avenue attitude toward Wiggam. He out-earns Wiggam 10 to I but can't find time to enjoy any of his ulcer-inducing pelf. One day, when he put a grudging Ok on a new ad featuring Wiggam loafing in a hammock--as he does in fact at Stone Ridge--he said, "I ask you, how lucky can you get? Imagine making a comfortable income--and having the time to get some good out of it--just for looking like people, for god's sake! This is difficult?"

Wiggam, who seems to have a lock on the business of looking like people, for god's sake--for money--doesn't think it's difficult at all. In fact, he's the first to admit that incognito anonymity is nice work if you can get it.

Above: model Wiggam with ads.

Below: playwright Wiggam with producers Roy Newbert, Jr. and Chandler Cowles.

Wiggam on assignment for Wallachs. With him is fashion photog Hans Lownds, who put him into the big time with admonition, "Don't Smile."

Above: "Are my wings on straight?" Wiggam gets a set of trade mark appendages adjusted before shooting time.

Below: one of a hundred pix that will be taken for client, Wings Shirts. Wiggam earns 80 bucks for two hours' work, pulls a fast clothing switch, then scoots off for next assignment.

Above: running five minutes behind schedule, Wiggam in white tie and tails at high noon waits for taxi at midtown Manhattan intersection. His one-workday-a-week is frantic series of wardrobe changes, cab trips and quick cigarettes between camera stints.

Taking his leisure at his lushly-foliaged, pre-Civil-War house near Stone Ridge, New York, Wiggam has a chance to unwind, entertain friends, work at his writing, swim in a nearby private brook, go horseback riding and forget about the pressures of modeling. During the summer months, he spends six days a week here; in winter, he drives up over weekends.

Above: Wiggam polishes a third act revision for his new play, Prime of Life, tentatively scheduled for an autumn opening on Broadway.

Above right: budding actress Edna Rae, one of Wiggam's close friends and dates, takes a look at the manuscript inside his Stone Ridge house.

Back on a modeling assignment in Manhattan, T-shirted Wiggam kids around with top femme model Anne St. Marie during a shooting sequence for Helena Rubinstein cosmetics. The completed ad, with no kidding involved, was slated for 10 mass-circulation magazines.