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IN SEARCH OF THE SONS OF BARNUM

Reading the transcript of the Jay Bernstein interview I found this moving moment when the legend contemplates his professional and personal loneliness. “I had a conversation with Michael Moore a while back. I said to him you are like me. We run on compliments. We fill our tank with compliments from people. We have what…

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In Search of the Sons of Barnum

The Church and various religious groups have always created brilliant copy, and the film and theatre business have benefitted from outraged clerics who find inoffensive theatre shows too sexually explicit for words. This is not a modern phenomenon. The first Church offensive against the fun brigade was in the 1920’s. Clerics in the U.S. were…

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In search of the Sons of Barnum

I received a call late last night from Steve Jaffe in LA who told me that Jay Bernstein, the legendary publicist, died on Sunday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre in Los Angeles, after a massive stroke. He was 69. Jay Bernstein was the flamboyant Hollywood personal manager, best known as the “star maker” who launched Farrah…

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In Search of the Sons of Barnum

In the late 1920’s an organisation for the Preservation of American Musicians was set up to protect the ‘live’ performance, due to burgeoning fears that the rise of the radio and record industries would put thousands of musicians out of work. Apparently, musicians felt under such a threat that the organisation employed Larry Neive, a…

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'Yank in tank'

Next stunt for ‘Yank in tank’ is going to be breathtaking Scotsman – … Mark Borkowski, a British showbiz publicist, said he believed Blaine had been bruised by his London reception, but predicted the illusionist’s latest stunt … http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=640942006

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In search of the Sons of Barnum

Great press agents have all been touched by madness. This letter by Richard Maney, one of the great Broadway publicists, was sent to George Bernard Shaw has a resonance in the 21st century. “There are over sixty theatrical press agents in New York, most of the fine sober and reliable as so many Congressmen. This,…