Sexual Identity and Gordon Bowen, Pt. 4: New York, New York II

The Lives and Lies of Gordon Bowen

Gordon Bowen entered New York’s advertising scene as the hot new recruit of Ogilvy-Mather, poached from Bonneville Communications, which Ogilvy’s managing director Jeffrey Woll said “had the best reel in America.” Bowen had made a name for himself stealing content created by others for his reel, as Curtis Dahl noted in his testimonial in Bowen’s divorce.

We soon figured out he never did anything. He was a brilliant strategist, but at creative, nothing.

Dahl was initially taken with Bowen, and he recounted telling his wife Gordon Bowen was the most Christian man he’d ever met. He quickly realized that Bowen’s stories about taking homeless men to breakfast were lies gmerely designed to cover for Bowen’s tardiness and absenteeism from work. Dahl then experienced Bowen’s dishonesty firsthand:

I had won a Cleo for a spot I had done called, “The Good Samaritan.” And another piece I did, “Water Fight,” won a Bronze Lion at the Cannes Film Festival. Gordon had nothing to do with that, but he’ll claim he did that spot and he took them both and put them on his reel for Ogilvy and Mather to get the job.

Gordon Bowen’s career defining trait was stealing ideas and credit for the work of others in order to secure new employment when previous employers caught on to his dishonesty and incompetence. He had secured his job at Ogilvy with a reel of stolen content created by other Bonneville employees, after his power play against Dick Alsop failed. According to Dahl, Bowen had submitted an expense report with Lynn Dangel’s moving charges after she had followed him from Chicago to Salt Lake. When Dick Alsop realized this, he had the evidence he needed to get rid of the man who was trying to get rid of him.

He took his four loyalists, Lynn Dangel, Kevin Kelly, Parry Merkley, and Tom Pratt with him to New York. The initial fanfare quickly dissipated. Jeff Streeper, Gordon’s coworker at Ogilvy and Mather, described him as a backstabber and pathological liar. Streeper cited Bowen’s unauthorised use of Curtis Glade’s credit card. Tom Pratt told the same story, alleging that Bowen had used Pratt’s credit card to check into a hotel after claiming he had lost his card, only to charge additional items to the card.

Bowen quickly fell into every pattern he’d followed at prior jobs. He sowed division among his subordinates at Ogily, resulting in a confrontation with Kevin Kelly and James Bogner in a car. The two men confronted Bowen about his deceit, making it clear that they were aware of his tactics and unafraid to confront him. According to Bogner, “he began shaking and eventually admitted to his behavior.” From that point forward, Kelly, Pratt, and Bogner would check with each other to verify that Bowen wasn’t lying.

Bowen soon identified those with sexual identity issues, gravitating towards Ogilvy employee Augustan Burrows, a gay man who worked on Gordon’s team. Burrows complained to James Bogner that Bowen repeatedly invited him to his home to read scriptures, and he felt that Bowen was using his spirituality as a ploy to enter into a sexual relationship with him. Bowen was his boss, and Ogilvy was Burrows’ first job.

According to Kevin Kelly, Bowen wrote a letter to Ogilvy secretary Jeff Carrier filled with sexual innuendos and spiritual allusions, consistent with Bowen’s lifelong blending of his sexuality and his religious beliefs. The amalgamation of the two would result in yet another episode of exposure, and Bowen would handle the matter the way he always did: he wrote a check for $247,000 to his bishop, which was confirmed by Bowen’s secretary Michelle Avantario.

Bowen’s time at Ogilvy was marred by the same issues that had typified his tenure at Bonneville: he played his subordinates against each other, he stole credit for creative work from his coworkers, and he repeatedly engaged in sexually inappropriate conduct with co-workers and subordinates.

Ogilvy, however, needed to refresh its advertising campaign for American Express. In the Seventies, Ogilvy had coined the “Don’t Leave Home Without It” catchphrase for American Express’s travelers’ cheques, but in the mid-Eighties, the campaign needed an update. Ogilvy had pivoted from advertising travelers’ cheques to linking the Don’t Leave Home Without It campaign to the credit card itself, by enlisting celebrities like Stephen King in a series of commercials where they asked “Do you know me?” and then flashed their American Express cards.

American Express became a source of cachet for its cardholders, and the company was eager to further the image of exclusivity. In 1987, Ogilvy and Mather delivered perhaps the most legendary slogan in all of advertising history: Membership has its privileges. Amex was no longer a credit card, it was a solution to its cardmembers’ problems that ushered them to the front of any line.

Bowen and his team had delivered for Ogilvy’s biggest client, and Bowen was now a legend in the advertising community. Despite his seeming inability to arrive at work on time or consistently attend meetings, and his less than optimal relationships with coworkers, Gordon Bowen had arrived. Despite the fact that he made substantial amounts of money, he was constantly behind on bills. While his professional life appeared to be at a pinnacle, Bowen’s personal life was in shambles. His home was broken into at least twice, in 1987 and 1989, and the issues that had plagued him in Salt Lake City and Chicago continued in New York.

Gordon Bowen needed to regain control of his life, and he began to see a therapist by the name of David Lee Hamblin. Hamblin lived in Portchester, New York, and he was completed his requirements for a doctorate in clinical psychology at Cornell Medical Center in White Plains, New York. Bowen lived in Hartsdale, New York, five minutes away from the LDS meetinghouse where David Lee Hamblin taught seminary for teenage Latter Day Saints. According to Hamblin’s daughters, their father met Bowen in New York and carried his association with Bowen forward another 20 years even after Hamblin lose his license to practice psychology for sexually abusing his patients.

Hamblin had little to offer beyond three young daughters under the age of eight and a shared proclivity for sexual impropriety, and an alleged membership in the LDS Church of Satan. The Hamblin girls explicitly alleged that members of the Church of Satan routinely attended ordinances at their home on 77 Touraine in Portchester. The Hamblin children were forced to perform sexually for the assembled CS members night in and night out, in addition to suffering daily sexual abuse from their parents. The Hamblin girls painted a picture of CS activities that routinely carried on into the early morning hours as the adults held ritualistic orgies, and then left to go home and get ready for work.

Gordon Bowen was known for falling asleep on commercial shoots in front of clients. In all likelihood, between his proclivities for male escorts, gay men, homeless men and boys, and boys imported from Utah to New York, Bowen was exhausted trying to balance a personal life defined by sexual depravity with a professional life that often demanded 14 hour days from advertising executives. He had to navigate the pratfalls of a life where disputes erupted into property damage, as was the case when teenage boys in Bowen’s neighborhood broke into his house and destroyed his furniture while smearing feces on the walls.

Bowen was at the pinnacle of his profession and at the nadir of his personal life, with a reputation as a creative thief, homosexual predator, and unethical man. His personal life bled into his professional relationships over and over again, as he solicited his subordinates to come to his home for sex, and as he solicited men like Kevin Kelly to share beds with him. His secretary Michelle Avantario claimed that Bowen had young boys staying at his home, and one of those boys, a 16 year old, waited for Bowen in the cafeteria at Ogilvy. When she asked the boy why he was waiting for Bowen, the boy told her that Gordon had promised him to pay to fix his teeth if he would stay with him.

Gordon Bowen was not a discreet man. His coworkers knew what he was, and yet he seemed immune from consequences. He was not reported for having teenage boys stay in his home, and he was never seriously disciplined for his workplace indiscretions and foibles. He was a known quantity who would have been fired if he were anyone else, but Gordon Bowen moved through life without touching the ground. The reasons were unclear, but the only limits that Bowen seemed unable to overcome were the rules around his expense account or the loss of a client.

When American Express left Ogilvy and Mather, Bowen was left without an account to justify his salary or his position. The team that had quickly followed him to Ogilvy and Mather from Bonneville seemed unwilling to jump ship a second time.

Bowen did what he had always done: he made a reel consisting of the work of others, and he applied for a new position.¹ According to Adrian Pulfer, Bowen had enlisted him to develop a new campaign for American Express after his wife died. Bowen had told Pulfer that the campaign was backed by Ogivly, but when Pulfer contacted Ogilvy, he was told that they knew nothing about the campaign. He had incurred $70,000 in costs, and he had no way of recouping those costs.

Pulfer claimed he was terrified that he would have to sell his home and his studio, but when Bowen was hired at Young & Rubicam, Pulfer was contacted and asked to sign over ownership of the American Express campaign in exchange for a check covering his costs. Yet again, Gordon Bowen had stolen credit for the work of another associate, but he had also secretly worked on an American Express campaign while at Ogilvy that he would use to secure a position at Young and Rubicam.

Pulfer also claimed that Bowen had sexually assaulted him while they were sharing a bed.

During the night Gordon reached his arm over my body and attempted to fondle my genitals. I was groggy from sleep and I just pushed him away. Later he did this a second time and I was more forceful…It was clear this was intentional on his part as he had to reach across my body to do it.

Stan Wunderli corroborated Pulfer’s story in his own affidavit, claiming that Pulfer was visibly upset and looked angry the next morning. Wunderli claimed that Pulfer had told him that Gordon Bowen had made sexual advances to him while they were in bed together. This would be a consistent pattern of behavior for Bowen, whose stepson would allege that Bowen had attempted to fondle his genitals while they were sharing a bed. Ken Kenitzer, a young model who stayed in Gordon’s apartment while Bowen’s stepsons were also living with him, testified in his affidavit that Bowen had sexually assaulted him as well.

In all, at least five men accused Bowen of sexually impropriety. Kevin Kelly, Adrian Pulfer, Ken Kenitzer, and both of Bowen’s stepsons all alleged that he had been sexually inappropriate with them after insisting that they share a bed together. Bowen’s secretary Michelle Avantario related the story of her boyfriend returning to Bowen’s apartment to let him know that his keys were still in the door, to which Bowen replied “I was hoping you’d come back and rape me.”

Bowen faced no criminal charges or professional repercussions for his conduct. It was a pattern that would reoccur time and time again at his next two professional stops.

Next: Part 5: New York, New York III

1. Kevin Kelly claimed he discovered that Bowen had stolen his commercial on honesty for Bowen’s reel, which was used to secure employment after he left Ogilvy and Mather.