John Nicholas, 87
John G. Nicholas, an advertising executive and producer whose credits included the first television commercials for the Ford Mustang, died of congestive heart failure on Sunday at Greenwich Hospital in Greenwich, Conn.
Mr. Nicholas, who was 87, had owned a house on Cove Hollow Road in East Hampton since 1965, where he and his and family loved spending summers, his daughter, Victoria Nicholas Donovan, said.
“They were mini-movies,” Ms. Donovan said of her father’s car commercials. “They shot on film. They did helicopter shots over very dramatically created sets, all made from scratch. He really was behind the camera. He learned the craft.”
John Nicholas was born on May 26, 1928, in Manhattan to Joseph Nicholas and the former Elizabeth Gallagher. He grew up there, graduating from Haaren High School, a building that is now used by John Jay College.
He enlisted in the Navy in 1945, intending to take advantage of the G.I. Bill to become the first in his family to go to college upon completion of his service.
“Because he was such a good stenographer,” his daughter said, “they sent him to work with naval officers in the office. He had to take dictation and was really good at it. Officers loved him because he smoked and drank with them and made them look good because he knew grammar well.” The Navy sent him to China aboard the U.S.S. Repose, a hospital ship, and then to Alaska aboard the U.S.S. Navasota.
After his honorable discharge in 1949, he earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from New York University, graduating in 1954.
The following year, on Oct. 28, he and Janet Stremezki married. They had met in the advertising department at the Remington Rand typewriter company, Ms. Donovan said. “To make it even more romantic,” she said, “they not only worked in the same area, he proposed to her via interoffice mail. I still have the envelope.”
The couple eloped, “jumped on the subway and got married at City Hall,” she said. Mrs. Nicholas died in 1994.
Mr. Nicholas’s career took him to J. Walter Thompson in Manhattan, one of the top agencies in the world, and Compton Advertising, a New York firm that was acquired by Saatchi and Saatchi in 1982. At the former, he produced elaborate commercials for both Ford automobiles and Firestone tires.
“Ford and Firestone were his big moments,” Ms. Donovan said. “He traded that for more basic stuff like Crisco and Duncan Hines” at Compton Advertising, she said. He also loved to read and travel.
The family moved to Bronxville, N.Y., in the mid-1970s. After Mr. Nicholas’s retirement, they lived in East Hampton for several years, after which Mr. Nicholas returned to Manhattan, where he was a member of Our Lady of Peace Catholic Church. He also belonged to Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church in East Hampton. From 2013, he was a resident of the Sarah Neuman Center in Mamaroneck, N.Y.
In addition to his daughter, who lives in Manhattan and East Hampton, Mr. Nicholas is survived by two grandchildren.
A funeral will be held on Saturday at 9:45 a.m. at the Church of St. Joseph in Bronxville, followed by burial at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Valhalla, N.Y.