In the fall of 1963, Bestgen and Cussler, with a client waiting list, was thriving, but the partners were bored. Tired of laying out mundane ads, Leo wanted to concentrate on a career as an illustrator. Clive was ready to see if he had the stones to cut it at a major advertising agency. After selling the accounts, office equipment, and furniture, the two men shook hands and set out on their new callings.
Searching the Los Angeles Times want ads, Clive learned that D’Arcy - the agency responsible for the famous phrase, “Coca Cola,” the pause that refreshes” - was seeking a copywriter. The account executive who interviewed Clive asked him if he would be willing to create a sample ad for one of his clients, Aerojet-General, a major space and defense contractor that was branching out into nuclear technology. Clive still remembers the headline that won him the job: “The Spectrum of Nuclear Diversity.”
Clive was soon writing copy for several of D’Arcy’s top accounts, including Budweiser, Royal Crown Cola, Ajax Cleanser, Bank of America, and General Tires. His 110-mile, round-trip commute to downtown Los Angeles provided Clive with lots of time to think. “I came up with some of my best campaigns,” he says. “While I was stuck in those horrendous traffic jams.”
When his campaigns began to win awards and attract new business, Clive was promoted from copywriter to copy chief, and ultimately, to creative director.
Clive’s success in advertising is a testimony to his imagination and creativity, but it also has something to do with the nature of the beast. With no formal training in advertising or marketing, Clive happened to drift into a profession that places more emphasis on life experience than a stack of college degrees. In his insightful book, Advertising, Its Use and Abuse, author Sir Charles Higham describes the “advertising genius.” Although the book was published in 1925, the qualifications Sir Charles set down for the successful ad man are still pertinent: “He must have a knowledge of the psychology of every class; and sufficiently quick perceptions to be able to grasp, if only superficially, the processes and uses of every kind of manufactured article and serviceable idea . . . he must be able to arouse interest on any occasion and for every legitimate end. By virtue of their natural qualities they possess the flair for making known in a manner that arrests attention instantly.”
Sir Charles would no doubt agree, Clive Cussler has flair.
Clive and Barbara’s second daughter, Dayna Gayle Cussler, was born in March 1964. Seven months later, Barbara was hired by the Costa Mesa police department. Working from six in the evening until two in the morning, she filled in for the dispatcher and female prisoner’s matron.
“Before she left for work,” Teri says, “Mom would prepare dinner. When Dad got home from work, he would warm it up and the four of us, with Dayna in her high chair, ate dinner. After supper, we would get into our pajamas, and once we were tucked in, Dad would tell us fantastic bedtime stories. He has always been a fabulous father because he was like a big kid himself.” She laughs, “He still is.”
After the children were asleep, Clive had nobody to talk to. Weary of spending his evenings on the couch watching mind-numbing television programs, he decided to try his hand at writing fiction. “I didn’t have the great American novel burning inside me,” he says, “or an Aunt Fanny who came across the prairie in a covered wagon to chronicle. I just thought it would be fun to produce a little paperback adventure series. I have always been partial to old-fashioned blood-and-guts adventure and wanted to write the same kind of tales.”
Clive grew up during the heyday of pulp fiction and the Saturday matinee serials. The pulps (named for the cheap paper on which they were printed) and serials featured a wide range of larger-than-life heroes, ravishing femmes fatales, fiendish villains, exotic locales, and non-stop action. Doc Savage dominated the pulps. Known as “The Man of Bronze,” Doc combined a mixed bag of talents - surgeon, scientist, inventor, musician, master of disguise, and philanthropist - with a statuesque physique and a steadfast pursuit for justice.
Residing on the eighty-sixth floor of a Manhattan skyscraper, he maintained a fleet of automobiles, airplanes, and boats in a secret hanger on the Hudson River. Aided by a troupe of trusted sidekicks, Doc’s sworn duty, as summarized by his creator, Lester Dent, was to “right wrongs and punish evildoers.”
Saturday movie serials were divided into ten or fifteen episodes, each running approximately twenty minutes. Episodes would always end with the hero in a perilous situation, a cliffhanger, with no apparent avenue of escape. This guaranteed the youthful audience would return the following Saturday and plunk down another fifteen cents to watch the hero somehow manage to stay alive until the next climax. Popular serials during the 1930s and 1940s included Flash Gordon, Dick Tracy, Secret Agent X-9, Captain Marvel, The Green Hornet, and Don Winslow of the Coast Guard.
Searching for a writing style to emulate, Clive gravitated to the work of bestselling novelist Alistair MacLean, the author of H.M.S. Ulysses, The Guns of Navarone, Where Eagles Dare, South by Java Head, and Ice Station Zebra. Clive considers MacLean to be “the master” of the genre and credits the writer for the format and success of his first books.
One critic described a MacLean plot as, “A hero, a band of men, hostile climate, a ruthless enemy . . . The pace of the narrative consists in keeping the hero or heroes struggling on in the face of adversity.” MacLean’s heroes are calm, cynical, multitalented men who, in their single-minded quest to complete the mission, are pushed to the limits of their physical and mental endurance.
McLean provided Clive with an archetype, but, with one exception, he did not use his characters in more than one book. In an effort to discover the secret of sustaining an ongoing cast of characters, Clive analyzed Edgar Allan Poe’s Parisian detective Auguste Dupin, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, Herman McNeile’s Bulldog Drummond, Raymond Chandler’s wisecracking Philip Marlowe, Mickey Spillane’s hard-boiled Mike Hammer, and Ian Fleming’s dashing James Bond.
“I used my experience in marketing to design my protagonist,” Clive explains. “What would be different about him? What can I do that nobody else has done? Since James Bond was really hot, I knew any similarity to him would be a dead end. I was also determined not to write about a private detective, cop, or secret agent.”
Clive drew upon his real-life diving experiences and fascination for the sea to create a marine engineer working for the fictional National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA) who is, according to Clive, “Cool, courageous, and resourceful - a man of complete honor at all times and an absolute ruthlessness whenever necessary.” Having created his hero’s identity, Clive had to give him a name.
Flipping through an encyclopedia, Clive came upon an entry for William Pitt. “Pitt the Elder,” as he was known, served as England’s prime minister during the 1700s and is considered the architect of the British Empire. In his book, The Adventure Writing of Clive Cussler, Wayne Valero explains, “‘Pitt not only has a nice ring to it, he [Clive] also wanted a one-syllable name because it was easier to say something like, ‘Pitt jumped over the wall,’ rather than ‘Shagnasty jumped over the wall.’”
Having settled on Pitt, Clive needed an equally strong first-name. “Pitt’s first name was right there in front of me,” Clive says, “sleeping in the crib. My desk and typewriter were in my son’s room, and Dirk likes to tell the story how he fell asleep listening to the sound of my typewriter.”
Laboring nights and the occasional weekend for three years, Clive finished writing his first novel, The Sea Dweller (later published as Pacific Vortex) in 1967. On the opening page, he introduces the character who has gone on to entertain millions of readers in a series of bestselling novels featuring state-of-the-art technology, sojourns to the past, dastardly villains, classic automobiles, and beautiful women. The non-stop action is set against the world’s oceans and the search for sunken ships and the secrets they embrace in their underwater graves.
. . . A six-foot-three-inch deeply suntanned man, clad in brief white bat
hing trunks, lay stretched on a bamboo beach mat. The hairy, barrel chest that rose slightly with each intake of air, bore specks of sweat that rolled downward in snail like trails and mingled with the sand. The arm that passed over the eyes, shielding them from the strong rays of the tropical sun, was muscular but without the exaggerated bulges generally associated with iron pumpers. The hair was black and thick and shaggy, and it fell halfway down a forehead that merged into a hard-featured but friendly face.
Dirk Pitt stirred from a semi-sleep, and raising himself up on his elbows, stared from deep green glistening eyes at the sea. Pitt was not a casual sun worshipper; to him, the beach was a living, moving thing, changing shape and personality under the constant onslaught of the wind and waves . . .
Even the most stalwart hero needs a sidekick, and Pitt’s is Al Giordino, a character based on Clive’s air force partner-in-crime. Providing a stoic and burly contrast to Pitt’s lean sophistication, Giordino made his first appearance in chapter fourteen of The Sea Dweller.
. . . Giordino held his hands aloft and stretched. He was short, no more than five feet four in height, his skin dark and swarthy, and his Italian ancestry clearly evident in his black curly hair. Complete opposites in appearance, Pitt and Giordino were ideally suited to one another: one of the primary reasons why Pitt had insisted that Giordino became his Assistant Special Projects Director.
The plot kicks off with Pitt discovering a communication capsule containing pages from the logbook of the Starbuck, a missing nuclear submarine. The last time the sub was heard from, it was in the Pacific Vortex, an area near the Hawaiian Islands with the same ominous reputation as the Bermuda Triangle - thirty-eight ships have vanished in the Pacific Vortex since 1956. The search for the answer to the missing ships leads Pitt into a life-and-death struggle with Delphi, a giant madman with “bestial yellow eyes.” Convinced the world is headed for nuclear destruction, Delphi has been praying on Pacific shipping to finance an underwater fortress where he plans to avoid the apocalypse. During the attack on Delphi’s lair, Giordino sacrifices his pinky finger, jamming it into the barrel of a gun to save Pitt’s life.
In 1966, D’Arcy merged with another agency, Johnson-Lewis. Based in San Francisco, Johnson-Lewis had recently landed the prestigious Bank of America account, and after the merger, it was obvious to everybody at D’Arcy, including Clive, Johnson-Lewis’s management was now calling the shots. “Dan Lewis was put in charge of our office,” Clive says. “The guy was a jerk. We were working our hearts out, picking up new accounts for D’Arcy, winning all kinds of awards, and Lewis sacks thirty-two of us simply because he wanted to bring in his own people.”
Job hunting again, Clive interviewed with J. Walter Thompson and was offered a senior creative position on the Prudential Insurance account. The job not only offered him an opportunity to work on a prestigious account, he would be taking home $2,500 a month (roughly $223,000 a year in 2016 money). Clive was on the verge of accepting the job when Barbara showed him a classified ad she cut out of the local newspaper - the Aquatic Center dive shop in Newport Beach was seeking a retail clerk, a job paying $400 a month. Puzzled, Clive asked her what she had in mind. “If you’re determined to write sea stories,” Barbara replied, “don’t you think you should go to work in a dive shop?” Barbara was undoubtedly more concerned with her husband’s health than perpetuating Dirk Pitt’s future adventures. The stress of Clive’s job, plus the grinding daily commute, would not only end up taking a toll on him, it was bound to impact his family.
“Barbara never pushed or inspired me,” Clive says. “She certainly wasn’t my inspiration. I never let her forget what she said when I first began to write - ‘Don’t get your hopes up. Nothing will ever come of it.’ Barbara may have read Mediterranean Caper, but she never really liked my books. She didn’t have to. What Barbara did, which in the long run was much more important, was take care of me.”
Curious, and with nothing to lose, Clive interviewed with the owners of the dive shop: Ron Merker, Omar Wood, and Don Spencer. After hearing a brief summary of his employment history, Merker blurted out what all three were thinking. “Mr. Cussler, don’t you think you’re a little overqualified?” Clive explained he was writing a series of novels focused on diving and working in the shop would provide him with the research he needed to make his plots ring true. Clive’s cause was bolstered by Spencer, a commercial photographer who labored in Hollywood before following his dream.
There were three Aquatic Center dive shops: Newport Beach, Laguna, and Santa Anna. Clive arrived at the Santa Anna shop during the summer of 1968, and immediately began to shake things up. On the large marquee sign in front of the shop, Clive replaced WET SUITS 20% OFF with KEEP AMERICA GREEN - BAN LOBSTERS FROM THE HIGHWAY and DIVERS DO IT DEEPER! A surplus aircraft belly tank, painted fluorescent orange and filled with bikini-clad mannequins, was installed on the store’s roof. Another mannequin, also outfitted with a bikini, was positioned in front of the store where “she” could be seen by driver’s approaching from both directions. Clive recycled old air tanks gathering dust in the store room. Painted candy apple red, a vivid color favored by hot rodders, the tanks were en vogue with younger divers, and the store had a hard time keeping up with the demand. A month after he was hired, Clive was promoted to manager. Within six months, the store’s sales had increased by 20 percent.
The dive shop had a phone for information about water conditions. A disembodied voice would drone, “This is the Aquatic Center dive report. The surf is three to four feet; the water temperature is seventy-five degrees, and visibility is ten feet.” Clive became the voice of a salty dog named Horace P. Quagmire, “daredevil darling of the dismal depths.” In addition to water conditions, callers would now be entertained by Quagmire’s jokes, sea tales, and recipes for abalone, along with a list of items currently on sale at the Aquatic Center dive shop. Even today, divers who remember the reports will often show up at Clive’s book signings and ask him to sign their copies, “Horace P. Quagmire.”
When business was slow, Clive would set up his portable typewriter on a card table behind the counter. After a little more than a year at the store, he finished Chase a Teaser by the Fin (later published as The Mediterranean Caper). Definitely more polished than The Sea Dweller, the book opens with an attack by an archaic World War I fighter on a contemporary air force base. Pitt and his NUMA associates, searching for a prehistoric fish called the Teaser, are soon on the trail of an ex-Nazi who is running a vast smuggling enterprise out of an underwater cavern off the coast of Greece. The indomitable Pitt not only thwarts the bad guys, he bags the elusive Teaser.
Having completed his two goals - a second novel and collecting research - Clive realized it was time to return to the real world, and gave his notice. “Working in the store,” Clive says, “was a wonderful experience. I met some very special people and learned what diving was all about.” Although he had been diving since 1953, Clive had never been certified. Ron Merker not only helped him get his card, he selected Clive to serve as dive master on the store’s expeditions to Santa Catalina. Although unhappy to see him go, Clive’s employers wished him well and presented him with an orange-face Doxa dive-watch, a treasured memento he - and Dirk Pitt - still wear today.
Resigned to another advertising job, Clive was not keen about climbing back into the Los Angeles pressure cooker. A compromise presented itself when a friend told him Ralph Yambert & Associates, an agency located in nearby Newport Beach, was looking for a creative director. The shop’s small-town atmosphere would not only reduce Clive’s stress level, working close to home would allow him to spend more time with his family. Yambert was more than happy to score somebody with experience, and Clive was soon back in the saddle, extolling the virtues of U-Haul trailers and Chris-Craft boats.
Even as Clive worked out the plot for his third book, he was questioning if his writing would ever amount to anything more than a hobby. After he finished The Sea Dweller, the manuscript had been sent to a n
umber of publishers. All Clive had to show for his efforts was a pile of rejection slips. The majority were form letters and the few who sent him a personal response informed Clive he was wasting his time - publishers were not buying adventure books. Among his papers, Clive has a page torn out of a Girl Scout calendar. Dated March 13, 1969, he scribbled: “Almost gave up writing today, but talked myself out of it. Had a cup of coffee and pushed on.”
“That note,” Clive concedes, “represents the lowest point in my writing career.”
If he hoped to have any success, Clive knew he had to find an agent.
Clive’s quest to land an agent is a publishing legend. “I’ve been asked to tell the story,” he acknowledges, “more times than Judy Garland sang ‘Over the Rainbow.’”
Clive had been writing and producing television commercials for more than ten years, but his day-to-day dealings were with theatrical and talent agencies, not literary agents. After talking to several colleagues and making a trip to the library, Clive compiled a list of more than twenty prospects with offices in New York, but all the lists in the world would not guarantee success. Convincing an agent to represent an unpublished author can be as difficult, or more so, than finding a publisher.
Clive needed an angle.
Enlisting the talents of one of the agency’s art directors, Clive concocted a letterhead and envelope for the “Charles Winthrop Agency.” “I grew up on Winthrop Drive,” Clive says, “and always thought it sounded classy.” The dignified letterhead featured a classic typeface, printed in black, on gray Strathmore paper. Clive used his parent’s address - they were now living in Laguna Hills - because “it sounded tonier than Costa Mesa.” Clive purposely neglected to include a phone number. Anticipating a prolonged search, he ordered 1,000 sheets of stationery and matching envelopes.