Career
Born in New York City on December 19, 1921, Stone served in the United States Army Air Forces during World World War II, where he enlisted in 1942. Stone was hired by a management consulting firm in 1946, after leaving his military service. In 1951, he was hired by the American Broadcasting Company, where he ultimately was named as vice president and general manager of WABC-television, the network"s flagship station in New York City.
He was hired by the National Broadcasting Company in 1959, where he became general manager of the television network and president of the National Broadcasting Company radio network.
The Radio Corporation of America Corporation named him to serve as chairman and chief executive of Hertz in 1972, moving him over National Broadcasting Company, which was also owned by Radio Corporation of America at the time. In his tenure at Hertz, he grew the company"s revenues from $21 million to $200 million by the time he left the firm in 1978.
Stone was behind the decision to make O. J. Simpson the feature of the company"s television and print advertising, in a series of well-known television commercials, including one in which he leapt over rows of seats in an airport, running through an airport terminal trying to get to his Hertz rental car, while a woman yelled, "Go O.J. Go!". Stone had been looking for a celebrity spokesman who would be a change from those who just talked at the camera.
Many of the commercials in what started as a $12.6 million advertising campaign were run initially during telecasts of football games, with the slogan "The Superstar in Rent-A-Carolina".
Columbia Pictures hired him in 1978 as its chief operating officer, overseeing the studio"s television division until his retirement in 1983. Stone died at age 87 on January 28, 2009 at his winter home in Boca Grande, Florida due to heart failure. Stone"s first wife, Mary Elizabeth Lee, had died in 1966.
