AGCA Abbot Award

The Abbot Award, named after early entrepreneur and inventor Ann Abbot, is given by the AGCA every year to an individual who has made a significant impact on the game industry. (Previous recipients include Jim Prentice of the Electric Game Company, Robert Whiteman of Bettye-B, and Douglas Bolton of Cadaco Ellis). This year's recipient is Lynn Pressman, former president of Pressman Toy Company, and still a compelling voice in a business now run by her son, Jim.

Her husband, Jack Pressman, founded the company as J. Pressman & Co. in 1922 (making it the oldest family-owned game company in the United States), and they married in 1942.

When he became ill around 1953, Lynn Pressman began to take over the company's operations. After her husband's death in 1959, she became president, a post she held until 1968 or '69 when the elder of her two sons, Edward, assumed the presidency, and Ms. Pressman became chairperson of the board.

During her period at the helm, she may have been the only female present of a major game company. Her tenure includes many firsts: She claims to be the first person to package a children's doctor's kit in a doctor's black bag, the first beauty kit in a hat box, and the first toy dentist set, and was one of the first to produce children's barber sets. She said she was one of the first to use an artist from the world of fashion to design game boxes, and one of the first to use product ideas from the workshops of noted inventor Marvin Glass. Lynn Pressman was one of the first in the industry to use television to promote a game.

Many Pressman games are marked with the inscription,

"A Lynn Pressman Original," and she is, unequivocally, very original. She will share her stories, anecdotes, and insights with us at this year's AGCA Convention, in Kent, Connecticut, at the

Saturday night dinner, September 21. It will be our pleasure to have her with us, and it is our privilege to be able to honor her.

Robert Whiteman, successful entrepreneur. product developer and licensor, began his career as a concert violinist. He played at the White House at age 10, and went on to form the New York String Quartet. A graduate of the Julliard School of Music, which he attended 1943 through 1947, he studied marketing at Columbia University in 1948.

A year later he founded a TV production firm, and worked as a producer for NBC in New York. Whiteman, who owned the shows "The Great Merlini," "Fun with Felix," and

"You Can Do It Too," produced and directed 26 films for TV.

Whiteman created one of the first games to be based on a TV game show, BREAK THE BANK, and then MASQUERADE PARTY, marketed by the company he started in 1954, the Bettye-B Company (combining his wife's name

"Bettye" and his own initial for "Bob"). He created the first three-dimensional vacuum-form board games, ROBIN HOOD, B.T.O. (Big Time Operator), and Ellery Queen's TRAPPED He is the creator also of the hit toy based on "The Addams Family," "The Thing."

One of the licensing industry's pioneers, Whiteman controlled merchandise licensing for the movie studios and independent TV producers on a worldwide basis in 1955.

Whiteman has managed the licensing rights to "Ripley's Believe It or Not!" for over 40 years, creating products and negotiating agreements in all fields from motion pictures, radio, television, and videocassettes, to newspaper syndication, books, magazines, toys, games, corporate tie-ins, premiums, and so forth. He was the licensor for the RIPLEY'S BELIEVE IT OR NOT! game invented by AGCA founder Bruce Whitehill and produced by Milton Bradley in 1984.

In 1969 Whiteman bought the Liberty Library Corporation, which published Liberty magazine from 1924 to 1950, and was at one time America's second largest magazine in terms of circulation (3 million copies per week). As the sole owner of Liberty, he controls over 17,000 literary properties and 50,000 pieces of art. Many major movies have come from the pages of Liberty, such as "Double Indemnity," "My Man Godfrey,"

"Sergeant York," and even "Mr. Ed the Talking Horse."

Whiteman also owns the Yale University Press series The Pageant of America, currently under development as a television series, and encompassing videocassettes and books.

Robert Whiteman was born in Savannah, Georgia in

1925. He and his wife Bettye have been married for 44 years and have three grown children and five grandchildren. He resides in Rye, New York, where he spends the bulk of his time in the licensing field with Ripley, Liberty, and the Pageant of America.