(FORTUNE Magazine) – JERRY DELLA FEMINA is no enfant anymore, but he is doing his best to be terrible again. Once a renowned member of advertising's class of '67 -- the young, urban guerrilla admen who set up agencies that year on the premise that sassy humor would sell -- Della Femina seemed to have lost his zip. His agency, Della Femina Travisano & Partners, went from one of the hottest on Madison Avenue to one of the pack. ''Jerry seemed to go into semiretirement and he lost a lot of creative people,'' says a friend. In retrospect Della Femina was his own best critic. ''By the time you're 35,'' he said at 32, ! ''you've burned up all your ideas and your legs have started to go.'' Now 50, Della Femina is struggling to come back, hoping to prove he's got an idea or two left and some life in those old legs after all. It's not that Della Femina is down and out. Last year he sold his agency, which had billings of nearly $200 million in 1986, to London-based Wight Collins Rutherford & Scott PLC for $29 million, netting $23 million for himself. Under terms of the deal, Della Femina still runs the agency and can receive up to $15 million more over the next five years if profits increase according to an undisclosed formula. That incentive, along with the desire to prove he can still make copy sizzle, has galvanized him. There is a new challenge too. Revenue growth in the ad business has slowed sharply in recent years, squeezing profits for everyone. To get back the magic, Della Femina is reverting to the formula that launched him. His timing looks good. After a decade of warm and cuddly patriotism in ad copy, consumers might be ready for some hard-edged cynicism. Della Femina's copywriters turned out the zany and popular Isuzu automobile commercials. He also stirred a controversy with ads for LifeStyles condoms, and he set the fashion world a-titter with copy for a men's cologne called Perry Ellis that used the phrase ''f--- you.'' Della Femina is a burly, bald man with a manner so gentle it almost undermines his reputation for flamboyance. But he does have the adman's gift for clever gab. (''My fear of flying is exceeded only by my fear of losing a 15% commission,'' he says. ''I fly a lot.'') He gossips about himself: ''I'm a hypochondriac with imaginary stomach ailments.'' And about others. Pointing to a couple across a restaurant, he says, ''Word has it that he spent time in prison and that the lady is a call girl.'' Sometimes in his reach for a hard- hitting line, Della Femina skips the humor. For publisher McGraw-Hill, he wrote a corporate ad that began: ''Before Hitler could kill six million Jews, he had to burn six million books.'' RON TRAVISANO, who left the firm two years ago to run his own film studio, says his former partner likes to scribble little notes in meetings and send them around the table while serious talk drones on. Once, according to Travisano, the agency was meeting with the manufacturer of Esquire shoe polish and Ty-D-bol toilet cleaner. ''I've got an idea,'' said a Della Femina note. ''We'll package them together for people who don't know s-- from Shinola.'' Another missile proposed a slogan for a hemorrhoid medicine: ''Kiss your hemorrhoids goodbye.'' Some friends think Della Femina's success came too easily for his own good. ''Jerry talks great copy, so he doesn't work any harder than he has to,'' says old friend Shep Kurnit, chairman of Kurnit Communications. His management style can be inattentive until deadlines approach. Della Femina puts it this way: ''My management skills are not as good as they should be and not as bad as people think. I'm pretty laissez faire, more towards Reagan than Carter. Heaven knows what's happening on my watch.'' Della Femina acquired his talent for the tart line growing up on the streets of Brooklyn, the son of a press operator for the New York Times. He dropped out of college and spent seven years doing odd jobs. ''I was a messenger for the New York Times and First National City Bank, a shipping clerk, a waiter, and a soda jerk. I sold bathrobes at Gimbels and toys at Macy's. But I always tried to make something of it. As a messenger I carried 50 pounds of canceled checks over each shoulder and I'd curl them on my way to the subway to build my biceps.'' A Heavyhands walker before his time. While he skipped from job to job, Della Femina concocted mock ads that he submitted to agencies looking for copywriters. ''I wrote the copy and used pictures cut from photography magazines,'' he says. ''I had the best photographers in the business working for me.'' He got his first copywriting job in 1961 with the old Daniel & Charles Agency. Della Femina made his mark with an ad for Talon zippers. A tiny baseball catcher approaches the mound to tell the pitcher, who looks barely out of diapers, ''Your fly is open.'' He became the chief public defender of his generation's irreverent creativity. The year he opened his own agency, Della Femina published a tattletale book entitled From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor, a line he once proposed, in jest, to advertise Panasonic. One of Della Femina's greatest talents is spotting (some say creating) controversy, then exploiting it. Last year he acquired a client, Ansell- Americas, which markets condoms made by the Australian conglomerate, Pacific Dunlop. Because of public sensitivity about birth control, most print and broadcast media had declined condom ads for decades. Now condoms are a main defense against AIDS. Della Femina wrote a campaign for Ansell's LifeStyles & brand highlighting the safety issue without ignoring sex. ''I'll do a lot for love,'' says the young woman in the ads, ''but I'm not ready to die for it.'' WHEN the New York Times, Time magazine, and the three principal television networks refused the ads, Della Femina saw the opportunity for some free publicity. After describing the ads as a public service message, he ended up on New York City news programs discussing the controversy. Soon his ads began running on local programs of NBC, CBS, and ABC affiliates and in several major magazines. But Della Femina's tactics created friction with Ansell President John Silverman. Silverman says Della Femina was ignoring the product in his public appearances and refusing to coordinate his appearances with Ansell. ''It was our campaign,'' says Silverman. ''We were paying for it.'' Silverman says he considered firing Della Femina. But before he could take any action, Della Femina quit the account in protest after Time magazine quoted Silverman as saying that AIDS is a ''condom marketer's dream.'' Della Femina drew raves from colleagues. Says Marvin Sloves of Scali McCabe & Sloves: ''Everyone sees us as people with no principles who drink too much. Jerry stood up for his principles at some risk to himself.'' He stirred another controversy last year with his ad for Perry Ellis cologne. A male model with shirt open to the waist tells readers he hates modeling. But he says he likes Perry Ellis cologne so much that he once pocketed a bottle he was asked to use in a modeling session, ''smiled my best f--- you smile,'' and walked out. Della Femina, who created the ad after one of his writers failed to come up with attention-grabbing copy, says he originally spelled out the expletive. Later he thought better of the idea and substituted dashes. Still, it may be the first time f--- you has appeared in advertising. The ad has been published in Esquire, New York Magazine, and GQ. For the Isuzu ads, known as the ''liar's campaign,'' Della Femina exploited the notion that car salesmen exaggerate. In one TV commercial, a salesman with an unctuous voice and facetious smile tells viewers that the car he is selling gets ''94 miles per gallon, city; 112, highway.'' Suddenly a subtitle appears on the screen: He's lying. Thirty-four mpg, city; 40, highway. Then: ''Its top speed is 300 miles per hour.'' Downhill in a hurricane. ''They're selling them for $9.'' Wrong. Prices start at $6,999. ''And if you come in tomorrow, you'll . get a free house.'' House not included. ''You have my word on it.'' The campaign has generated much discussion among admen. ''Della Femina has done a lot of good work,'' says Edward Meyer, head of Grey Advertising. ''But I don't think this campaign will be effective over time. It's a one-joke ad.'' Isuzu won't reveal what, if anything, the ads have done for sales, though Jack Reilly, senior vice president of American Isuzu Motors, says, ''Every time they run, dealers report an increase in floor traffic.'' DELLA FEMINA, aware of his limits as a manager, is once again immersed in the creative side of the business. Louise McNamee, the agency's president, handles day-to-day operations. Referring to the managerial burdens he found so wearisome, Della Femina says, ''Why do we always walk away from what we do best? I'm just a good copywriter.'' And a wealthy one who relishes his climb from modest means. Della Femina is chauffeured about Manhattan in a Jaguar by a former police detective. His favorite restaurant is the elegant Four Seasons. Three years ago he married for the second time. He and his wife, Judy Licht, 41, a reporter for television station WNYW, have an 18-month-old daughter. (He has three grown children by a previous marriage.) The Della Feminas live in a penthouse on Manhattan's Upper West Side and frequently spend weekends at their farm in Westchester County, New York. Now that he has sold his agency -- he says it was time to establish a trust fund for his children -- Della Femina worries less and enjoys life more. He has taken up horseback riding and has recently formed a social group with five male friends (none of them in the ad business) who lunch every Wednesday at the Russian Tea Room. They call themselves the Pelmenys, after a soup dish served only on Wednesdays. ''We talk about everything but business,'' says Della Femina. ''We sound like those guys in the beer commercials.'' An adman to the end.