Donald Raymond Wilde

Donald R. Wilde, a playwright and former advertising executive, and longtime resident of Briarcliff Manor, died Monday, April 20. He was 88.

Wilde’s many produced plays included “What Are We Going to Do About Jenny?” with Phyllis Diller in the leading role, which opened in Chicago in 1977 and went on to Israel, Germany and other parts of the world. As many as five of his plays have run at one time (“Sauce for the Goose” currently in Hamburg; “An Unexpected Pleasure” was staged last year in Switzerland), and many have appeared on European television. He liked to describe them as “comedies with a heart” that featured “women [who are] expressive, funnier than men and much more dramatic,” adding, “I know what it is to be a man, so there’s no mystery there.”

For more than 25 years, Wilde was a creative executive at four major New York advertising agencies and associative creative director at SSC&B (Interpublic), overseeing television, radio, and print ads for Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Lever Brothers, General Foods, Martini & Rossi, Lorillard, Chrysler, and Lipton among many other of his accounts. (At one point, he was known as “the man who turned down Farrah Fawcett five times” for Cover Girl; when asked about it later, he answered with a shrug, “How’d I know she’d go through the roof?” He is also credited with the movie slogan “Paul Newman Is HUD”—the first time the verb had been used that way in copy, which Newman himself “reportedly” claimed as a trademark in a 2003 New York Times Op-Ed.)

In addition to serving as a Briarcliff Manor Village Trustee, president of the board of trustees for the Briarcliff Manor Public Library (1998–2002) and president of the Briarcliff chapter of the Rotary Club, he wrote a humor column, “I May Be Crazy, But” for The Gazette and hosted a weekly cable TV show, “What’s Happening in Briarcliff.” His other endeavors included teaching English as a Second Language to refugees through the International Rescue Committee at NYU.

Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1926, Wilde enlisted in the navy in World War II and later attended Denison University on the G.I. Bill, where he majored in theater arts.

He was always, in his words, “in love with language and communication in all its forms.”

He is survived by his wife, Marjorie Lee, his son and daughter, Michael and Julie, and two grandchildren, Jackson and Maxwell.

A memorial service will be held at Waterbury & Kelly Funeral Home of Briarcliff Manor, 1300 Pleasantville Road, on Saturday, May 9, from 2 to 4 p.m.  A reception will follow at Wilde’s residence on Pine Road.

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