One of creators of "daisy ad" in '64 dies at 84

NEW YORK — Tony Schwartz, a self-taught, sought-after and highly reclusive media consultant who helped create what is generally considered to be the most famous political ad to appear on television, died Saturday at his home in Manhattan. He was 84.

His daughter, Kayla Schwartz-Burridge, said the cause was aortic valve stenosis, involving the narrowing of the heart's aortic valve.

Of the thousands of television and radio advertisements on which Mr. Schwartz worked, none is as well-known, or as controversial, as the so-called "daisy ad," made for Lyndon B. Johnson's presidential campaign.

Produced by the advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach in collaboration with Mr. Schwartz, the minute-long spot was broadcast Sept. 7, 1964, during NBC's "Monday Night at the Movies." It showed a little girl in a meadow, counting aloud as she plucks the petals from a daisy. Her voice dissolves into a man's voice counting downward, followed by the image of an atomic blast. President Johnson's voice is heard on the soundtrack:

"These are the stakes. To make a world in which all of God's children can live, or to go into the dark. We must either love each other, or we must die." (The president's speech deliberately invoked a line from "September 1, 1939," a poem by W.H. Auden written at the outbreak of World War II.)

Though the name of Johnson's opponent, Sen. Barry Goldwater, was never mentioned, Goldwater's campaign objected strenuously to the ad. So did many members of the public, Republicans and Democrats alike. The spot was pulled from the air after a single commercial, though it was soon repeated on news broadcasts.

It had done its work: with its dire implications about Goldwater and nuclear responsibility, the daisy ad was credited with contributing to Johnson's landslide victory at the polls in November. It was also credited with heralding the arrival of ferociously negative political advertising in the United States.

Mr. Schwartz helped develop advertising campaigns for hundreds of political candidates, most of them Democrats, among them Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. He also was known for creating some of television's earliest anti-smoking commercials.

Anthony Schwartz was born in Manhattan on Aug. 19, 1923. He was reared in New York City and Crompond, N.Y., near Peekskill.

Besides his daughter Michaela Schwartz-Burridge, who is known as Kayla, Mr. Schwartz is survived by his wife, the former Reenah Lurie, whom he married in 1959; a son, Anton; a brother, Lasker, known as Larry; and one grandchild.