Marcus Stanley

Harold Stanley Marcus, known for decades in Dallas as “Mr. Stanley,” was born on April 20, 1905, in The Cedars area of Dallas, Texas, and died in Dallas on January 22, 2002, at age 96. He became one of the defining figures of American luxury retail as president of Neiman Marcus from 1950 to 1972 and chairman of the board from 1972 to 1976. The store had been founded in 1907 by his father, Herbert Marcus Sr., his aunt Carrie, and Abraham Lincoln “Al” Neiman, and Stanley Marcus helped turn that Dallas clothing store into an international name associated with fashion, high style, and attentive service.

His family story was woven into the store from the beginning. Herbert Marcus Sr. had left Sanger’s after deciding that his raise was not enough to support a growing family. After two years in Atlanta building a successful sales-promotion business, the Marcuses and Neimans used $25,000 from its sale to open the store at Elm and Murphy. The other option for the money had been investing in the then-unknown Coca-Cola Company, a choice Stanley Marcus later liked to describe with dry humor as Neiman Marcus being founded “as a result of the bad judgment of its founders.”

Marcus was drawn early to selling, language, and books. At age 10, one of his first jobs was selling Saturday Evening Post. At Forest Avenue High School, later James Madison High School, he studied debate and English, and he credited teacher Myra Brown with much of his early interest in books. He began college at Amherst, then transferred to Harvard after social restrictions against Jewish students limited his life there. At Harvard, he studied English literature, joined Zeta Beta Tau, and became its president. He also began collecting rare and antique books and ran a mail-order book service, The Book Collector’s Service Bureau.

After earning his A.B. from Harvard College in 1925, Marcus entered Neiman Marcus as a stockboy organizing inventory, then moved into sales and quickly outperformed other staff. He studied for a year at Harvard Business School in 1926 before returning to Dallas during a major expansion of the business. In 1932 he married Mary “Billie” Cantrell, who worked in the Neiman-Marcus Sports Shop until retiring in 1936 after the birth of their first child, Jerrie. Twins Richard and Wendy followed two years later. After Billie’s death in 1978, Marcus married Linda Robinson, a longtime Dallas Public Library librarian, in 1979.

At Neiman Marcus, Marcus introduced many of the ideas for which the store became known. In 1938 he created the Neiman-Marcus Award for Distinguished Service in Fashion, which led to the Neiman-Marcus Exposition, a fall fashion show held annually from 1938 to 1970 and later from time to time. He hosted art exhibitions in the store, offered weekly fashion shows, and created the annual Fortnight event, which highlighted a different foreign country for two weeks. He also established the Neiman-Marcus Christmas Catalogue, famous for extravagant “His and Hers” gifts such as airplanes and camels. Through it all, he often repeated his father’s rule: “There is never a good sale for Neiman Marcus unless it’s a good buy for the customer.”

Marcus was also a writer, civic leader, and patron of the fine arts. He wrote the memoir Minding the Store and a regular column in The Dallas Morning News. After Neiman Marcus was sold to Carter Hawley Hale Stores, he first stayed on as an adviser, then began a consulting business that continued until his death. He received the Chevalier Award from the French Legion of Honor, was named by the Houston Chronicle among the 100 most important Texans, and was included by Harvard Business School among the greatest American business leaders of the 20th century. His words still resonate because they come from a practical belief in patience, taste, service, and trust between seller and customer.