One of Jim Moran’s publicity stunts involved the actress Ann Blyth taking a bubble bath before the eyes of photographers in Los Angeles for the National Association of Inventors. Blyth had just made a debut in the movie “Mr Peabody and the Mermaid” and had won an accolade for playing the mermaid. Moran thought she would be a natural choice for the bubble bath photocall. Blyth always made headlines: in 1954 at the Academy Awards, she famously sang “Secret Love”, a Doris Day song from Calamity Jane when she was 7 months pregnant. In the 1960’s Blyth wasn’t lazy at…

The Hollywood studios were always extremely frustrated by poor reviews. Today, film production companies aren’t giving reviewers the opportunity to slate their multi million dollar offerings before release; instead they are encouraging comment from random everyday internet users. Snakes On A Plane is the most current example of how a film can get hyped to success by “blogging”, thus disabling all the film critics. In the 1940’s there was a host of Hollywood studio million dollar movies that were totally slated by the East Coast film critics. As a result, big investment films went into decline. Russell Birdwell was responsible…

Jim Moran was the publicist responsible for selling fridges to Eskimos when he famously teamed up “Refridgerator” with American Airlines. American Airlines virgin flight to Alaska needed publicity as well as “Refridgerator’s” first Ice Box. Moran organised the transport of the ice box on the first flight to Alaska, which brought about the publicity stunt to sell fridges to Eskimos. The first sale of a fridge in the U. S. was actually a milestone in the history of modern household management. At first, the appliance was no more than an exotic luxury item, so Moran sought to bring it to…

All my recent Hollywood publicist research has led me to the much-talked-about Hollywood myths. Over the years of movie publicity, a plethora of myths exists. A young intern at the Academy Library in Los Angeles, who I met on my last trip, has written to me having found some interesting information on a lady named Mary Mayer, who was the unit publicist for a time on the movie “The Wizard of Oz”. Mary Mayer had attested to the astonishing truth (according to her and the cinematographer, Hal Rosson,) that the coat chosen for the character “Professor Marvel” was actually found…

Veteran publicist Frank Liberman was born in Manhattan on May 29th 1917, and educated at Cheshire Academy in Cheshire, Conneticut. He graduated from Lafayette College in Easton, PA, in 1938 with a BA degree. His career in public relations began at Warner Bros’ home office in New York City, following a year’s service on the New York Daily News as a copy boy. He was transferred to Warners’ Chicago office as a field exploitation publicist. He enlisted in the U.S. Signal Corps an d, after graduating from Officer Candidate School, served as a public relations officer with the Army Pictorial…

The more I research the life of the actress Tallulah Bankhead, the more I realise she must have been the nemesis of every Hollywood publicist in the 1930’s. Bankhead started her career on the stage and had a publicist, Jimmy Julian, by the time she was 16. He was the publicist responsible for launching her career which he did by submitting numerous press releases to the NY press and finally got her picture in the paper.

Reasons why, over the ages, people have employed publicists, include some poignant moments in the history of Hollywood. At the time when Zsa Zsa Gabor was married to George Sanders, a momentary event put the “writing on the wall” for their marriage when the couple were taking a walk in Hollywood. A group of teenagers noticed them, recognised Zsa Zsa, ran up to her begging her for an autograph.

I have had a bag full of emails from publicists all over the place with their views on the history of PR. Reflecting a piece in today’s Express on “friendly bacteria” I was interested to find a stunt by a German publicist named Wolfgang Zeilman. Zeilman was responsible for hyping the talents of a German gynaecologist called Zikel, by creating a moniker “the Zikel System”. In the 1920’s this referred to a system that allegedly represented an epoch making innovation in the area of rejuvenation therapy. Alongside the direct injecting of patients with the glandular secretions of living animals, Dr…

A boring and monotonous modern day PR gimmick used by the many stalwart agencies around London these days is the peddling of research results. Occasionally, these do have an impact and a point, but the more credentials PR presentations I see, make me realise this is the only way people know how to generate a tiny two word plug for their client. The history of publicity shows that this research tool has often been used to generate column inches, but if you look back at Paul Macnamara’s career, one could see that it was integrated to create a 360 degree…