Having watched “Some Like It Hot” over the Christmas holiday, I was reminded of the controversy between Marilyn Monroe and Tony Curtis. Image wise, Monroe did very well from this film, but Tony Curtis’ publicist put a different spin on things. He reported that Curtis had said kissing Monroe in “Some Like It Hot” was like “kissing Hitler”. This comment fuelled an ongoing battle between the two Hollywood stars. Years later, Tony Curtis denied that he had said anything of the sort and declared that it was all down to his publicist. During the 20th Century, publicists like Harry Reichenbach…

Charlie Drake made most of his money in the autumn of his career in seaside shows and pantomimes. His luck held until the Christmas of 1974, when he was starring in Jack and the Beanstalk at Bradford. As a publicity stunt, he auditioned local girls for one of the parts and Sue Moody, a 22-year-old housewife, was chosen. Three days before the show opened, Equity phoned to say that as Moody was not a member she must leave the theatre at once. Drake would not remove her and was fined £760, which he refused to pay. Equity temporarily banned him…

Cultural engineering proved to be an exciting craft for the Hollywood studio publicists who created endless stories to promote actors and actresses alike. It was reported that Jayne Mansfield made everything in her house pink. She had a pink heart shaped bath installed in her bathroom, along with a pink outdoor pool. She had a bespoke pink heart shaped bed in her bedroom in which she posed regularly for photographs. It was also reported that Peter Sellers of “Dr Strangelove” and “Being There” fame, would only sleep in a bed that faced in the East West position. Lupe Velez insisted…

Marty Weiser, the Hollywood publicist, was famous for his inspired premiere party for Mel Brooks’ cult film Blazing Saddles, which starred Gene Wilder and Cleavon Little. Mel Brooks took a risk when he allowed Weiser to stage this stupendous publicity stunt in a disused Drive In movie theatre. In keeping with the film, which was a pastiche on the old Westerns, Weiser insisted everyone turn up not in cars, but on horseback. The evening itself proved to be fraught for Weiser as nobody turned up on time and the movie producers began to berate him for it being a stupid…

The affable and humorous Theo Cowan, was the UK first PR superstar. Before setting up his consultancy in the 1960’s he was head of Rank film publicity. The film company created the legendary Rank Charm School whose graduates included Diana Dors, Honor Blackman, Petula Clark Sylvia Syms and copied the modus operandi of the Hollywood studio system. Rank recruited pretty – and sometimes pretty talent less – boys and girls aged between 16 and 25, and taught them how to walk, behave and talk properly. Cowan made quite a name schooling the starlets in the ways of the media and…

The Ulster Linen Co., Inc. of New York was noted for being the most reliable source of Fine European Linens in the U.S. The company enlisted Jim Moran to publicise their linens further afield in the Mid and Western States of the U.S. In true Moran style, he organised the world’s biggest ever pillow fight, pre the Guinness book of records which was a great shame as its genius has been lost to time. But Moran staged regional challenges in each capital city of each State and got all the finalists together for the grand fight in Washington. The regional…

The old movie publicists like Nottage and Reichenbach were very clever in creating false back stories for their clients; exotic lifestyles, estranged family members, passions for couture were the foundations for many of these extravagant biographies. Perhaps the most amusing was when fiction became fact in the case of Clara Kimble Smith, whom Harry Reichenbach had falsely reported as being a great lover of bees. Harry claimed that she spent hours visiting beehives, used beeswax to moisturise her skin and enjoyed studying bees from an anthropological angle. Clara was then asked if she would become patron to the U.S. Honeymakers…