Myril Axelrod Bennett


Myril Axelrod Bennett was one of the first female executives in the advertising industry.

Biography

She was born Myril Jessica Davidson on April 4, 1920 in Weehawken, New Jersey and was raised in Jersey City. Her father was a dentist who had fled the pogroms of Russia and her mother was the daughter of immigrants. Taking inspiration from her elder brother Bill, she followed his lead and graduated from New York University's journalism program where she edited the student newspaper. After school during World War II, she wrote mental health survey reports for her husband who was in the U.S. Army. After the war, the couple moved to Stuyvesant Town in Manhattan where she worked at the left-leaning, ad-free daily newspaper PM where she worked for then journalist Albert Deutsch and I.F. Stone and later at the newspaper's successor, the New York Star. After both papers folded, she wrote free-lance articles before switching to another male-dominated field, advertising. In 1958, she took a job with Compton Advertising and then moved to Young & Rubicam in 1966 where she served as a vice president. She had a successful career focusing on pitching the qualitative and emotional message in advertisements. She retired in the 1980s although she continued to conduct research for the senior housing industry.
She continued to write under her pen name, Myril Axelrod, until her death serving as a guest columnist for Boston.com's Your Town series.

Personal life

In 1943, she married Joseph Axelrod who worked as a psychologist in the U.S. Army; they had two children, Joan Axelrod Lehrich, and David Axelrod, before divorcing in 1968. In 1970, she married marketing executive Abner Bennett; he died in 1986. She died on January 21, 2014 of heart failure in her home in Newton, Massachusetts. She was buried at the United Jewish Center Cemetery in Brookfield, Massachusetts.