Dick Guttman - Starflacker: Inside the Golden Age of Hollywood

Copyright 2015 by Dick Guttman

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, except in the case of brief quotations no greater than 200 words, without prior written permission of the author at .

R Guttman Associates, Inc.

118 S. Beverly Dr., Suite 201

Beverly Hills, CA 90212

www.starflacker.com

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN Paperback: 978-0-9864071-0-9

ISBN ebook: 978-0-9864071-1-6

Cover artwork: John Robertson

Interior Design and Layout: Ghislain Viau

To TCM and Robert Osborne who bear continuing
and loving witness to the great films and the great stars

I am grateful to Ghislain Viau of Creative Publishing Book Design for the interior design and distribution and to Ellen Reid for her guidance. Noted artist John Robertson for his painting, Starflacker, seen in the cover collage.

Gratitude to my wife, family, staff, clients, associates and everyone whose originality graced my life and is celebrated in this book. Notably excepted from these kind feelings are Baby Doc, the Shah of Iran, Generalissimo Francisco Franco and members of the Guatamalan facist junta.

Flack:n. A press agent; a publicist. v. intr. To act as a press agent. tr. to act as a press agent for.

(American Heritage College Dictionary)

Star-flack-er:n. One who acts as a press agent for stars [deriving from the transitive verb flack, to act as a press agent for]

(Monika Robertson)

I thought I would write a book about my friend Warren Cowan who so powerfully shaped our business of independent entertainment publicity. Although he lived 90 years, Warren did not live long enough to tell the tale. My own escapades with the storied stars and the storied press agents of the Golden Age of Hollywood were impatient. They kept lining themselves up for my attention as I outlined the Warren Cowan story. The whole challenging and privileged adventure of being a press agent seemed to be the point, precisely because its been told up to now primarily by writers who found flacks an easy target for satire and disdain.

Instead of speaking for one PR pro, I found myself speaking for all of them, all the publicity guys and gals of my brief 60 years on the job.

PR people lead essentially similar lives. Its just the improbable narrative anecdotes which vary from flack to flack. Here is an introduction to mine and to the rules of the game which Ive recognized along the way. Many of the extraordinary people who enriched my career, people who made you love movies, are gone. I sifted through my experience to provide those stories which allow these remarkable personalities to introduce themselves to you and, in the process, justify the secret, improbable and wild-ride world of PR.

To set the mood:

Somewhere in the 1970s when we were all too young to think of death, at the most vulnerable wee hour of a deep sleep I was awakened by a phone call from an Associated Press writer in New York asking me to confirm a report that Michael Caine had been killed.. automobile accident. It was a Sunday morning, too, when I got the call about Sharon Tate, and so I mumbled, What? It couldnt happen twice. It would, in fact, happen on sad occasion over the years, but Michael I rejected the thought. Maybe I misunderstood. However, he repeated it. Where did this story originate? I asked. Radio station in Long Island. Shouldnt they be getting the story from AP and not the other way around? Whatever, but we need your response or your checking it out. On a hunch, I asked if anyone else was injured. No.. single vehicle accident, no passenger. I can verify right now, I told him, that Michael Caine was not killed in that accident. Yeah? Hows that? he demanded skeptically. Because Michael Caine does not know how to drive, so he doesnt.

A life in PR entails a lot of rude awakenings. With some of them, you actually can go back to sleep.

Within the thousand tales and many more in this writing is one which made it very clear to me why I undertook what proved to be a five year (I have a day job) venture in remembering and evaluating and sharing:

At one point in the wide-eyed year of 1956, I, an ingenuous 23 year old press agent working in Paris on Billy Wilders romantic comedy Love In The Afternoon, arranged for Gary Cooper to be interviewed one evening at the actors Hotel George V suite.

Peer Oppenheimer, the editor of Family Weekly, a major American Sunday supplement magazine of the time, and I arrived at the appointed hour to the apparent consternation of Coopers valet. After a half hour, the door to Coopers bedroom opened and Coop, immaculately dressed for an evening looking like Gary Cooper, super dooper emerged preceded by two tall and gloriously beautiful women dressed as though they were about to step onto the Balmain runway. Gentlemen, Coop said, I apologize. I recall having set the interview for tonight, ignoring that I had prior commitment. Peer, if youll pardon the inconvenience, Id love you and Dick to be my guests for a wonderful dinner tomorrow night, and I promise to make up something that will give you a good story.

Fifty-five years later, Coopers two guests at that epicurean dinner at Calvados compared their recall of the events. The memory was a very warm one for Peer. I was very flattered that Gary knew that I would never reflect in my story the circumstances of the night before, Peer said. He never mentioned it. He trusted me.

Peers remark reminded me that in a time before blogs and Facebook when newspapers, magazines and radio were the sole and blindly trusted intermediaries, a very legit and independent media understood its function as one of the three conjoined sides of the basic triangle of stardom. An important connective tissue of shared society, stardom is compounded of A. stars, B. media reportage of those stars and C. the publics image of the stars. That long periods intense esteem and affection for movie stars, which helped power our optimism through wars and economic woes, was influenced to some degree by PR and by a media focused on building stars rather than exploiting them. To a greater degree, of course, those stardoms were constructed of the qualities and traits the public recognized in each of those stars, and of the dreams they invested in them. The stars did their part with winning and moving performances and by living up to the images and charm quite accurately ascribed to them.

That was it. Thats why I began this writing and continued with it and further continued with it until I was written out. With their wit and scalawag ways, those Golden Age legends illustrate the inner workings and delights of a Hollywood which exists no more. Its a story which was captured as well in the memories of my fellow flacks of the period, the other people who similarly connected those stars to the media and public or protected the stars from them. Far too many of those memories have already been laid to rest with a stone on top to secure the silence. So Starflacker, the crowded recollections of one PR pro, speaks for them all, reflecting the strange but common experiences which entice every press agent through a day or through a career. And heres the driving premise those indestructible, imperishable stardoms we flacks polished and brandished were a national treasure and