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Hollywood Spin
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Legendary Careers
Producer Ray Stark, publicist Warren Cowan and AP entertainment reporter Bob Thomas embody the glorious longevity of a bygone Hollywood era.
Wednesday, January 21, 2004
By Richard Horgan
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The death this past weekend of legendary publicist, agent and producer Ray Stark, who passed away in his sleep early Saturday morning at his home in Holmby Hills, was confirmed by another publicist and longtime friend, Warren Cowan, and memorialized the next day in Sunday newspapers across the globe by Associated Press Hollywood correspondent Bob Thomas.
It is a routine that, unfortunately, has repeated itself far too often lately. Cowan and Thomas were also unhappy co-messengers of actor Jack Lemmon’s passing in June, 2001 and the death of comedian Milton Berle in March, 2002.
But consider for a moment the staggering industry tenure of Stark, who was 88 at the time of his death, along with that of 77-year-old Cowan and 81-year-old Thomas (he will be 82 on Monday). Stark is the first man in Hollywood to broker a pure production opportunity for an actor; Cowan invented the “For Your Consideration” Oscar season trade ad; and when Thomas first started covering Hollywood in 1944, directors such as Frank Capra, Howard Hawks and Alfred Hitchcock were still in the early phases of their careers.
“The difference between what I do and the people on the L.A. and New York Times and other organizations is that I’ve known all the people that I write these obits about,” explains Thomas when reached via telephone. The San Diego native currently writes four to five showbiz obituaries a month for AP, many of them premature accounts designed to be at the ready if and when needed. “I’ve interviewed them and sometimes socialized with them, although that was not my bag," adds Thomas. "So I have that advantage.”
And indeed, it shows. In Thomas’s January 18th Associated Press obituary of Stark, he writes convincingly about Stark’s general attitude towards publicity and the media, the satisfaction he derived from being a film industry power broker, and his fondness for art and thoroughbred horses.
Thomas’s obituaries are precise and uncluttered, perhaps closest in tone and subtext to the dispatches of Daily Variety columnist Army Archerd. Interestingly enough, when AP first expanded Thomas’s mailed column shortly after the end of World War II onto its wire service dispatch, they allowed Thomas to hire himself an assistant. The young man he plucked straight out of the Navy was … Army Archerd.
“Stark dealt on a very high level and worked with some very famous people,” suggests Thomas. “I don’t think there’s anybody in his era to compare Stark with. [David O.] Selznick and [Samuel] Goldwyn were of course the epitome of the independent producer, but Goldwyn kind of blew his career by spending too much money and his later pictures weren’t quite as tremendous. But Goldwyn was the original independent producer.”
I had the rare chance to interview Stark last year for another project, although the exchange took place in written form via fax due to his fragile health at the time. He spoke of how his dealings as an agent with Selznick, whom he considered a mentor, and MGM’s Pandro Berman had the greatest formative impact on his subsequent career as a producer.
But there was someone else who greatly helped shape Stark during those early days – Famous Artists talent agency head Charles Feldman. After stints as a news reporter, publicist and New York literary agent, Stark landed at Feldman’s firm, first representing writers such as Ben Hecht and Raymond Chandler, then moving on to a talent roster that included the likes of Ava Gardner, James Mason, Gregory Peck, Tyrone Power and for a brief period, Marilyn Monroe.
“Charlie Feldman was one of the greatest influences on me,” Stark admitted. “He was the most stylish, smoothest man I knew. I had my own style – I was aggressive and persistent. If I believed in something, I never gave it up.”
“With Charlie’s help, I put together a deal that was the first of its kind,” Stark continued. “Kirk Douglas got his own independent production company at United Artists, Bryna Productions, but he had only to star in the first of his pictures (The Indian Runner), not the succeeding ones. It was the first deal that allowed an actor to be a pure producer.”
Intriguingly, one of the most perceptive accounts of Feldman’s charisma was penned in last year’s special “Hollywood” Issue of Vanity Fair (April, 2003) by Peter Biskind, the topic of last week’s Hollywood Spin column. It’s definitely worth checking out if you’re interested in such things and somehow missed it.
| Next to the talent roster of Famous Artists, one of the most impressive accomplishments relating to the post-World War II representation business was the year Cowan, a UCLA fraternity brother of Archerd’s, got five of his Rogers & Cowan clients 1963 Academy Award Best Actress nominations. Although he graciously offered Leslie Caron, Shirley MacLaine, Rachel Roberts, Natalie Wood and the eventual winner, Hud's Patricia Neal, the option of seeking out new PR firms, they all chose to remain with him after he suggested separating them out within the company to various individual publicists.
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“Warren is, if not the last, one of the last old pros in the [publicity] business,” confirms Thomas. “He knows how to deal with the press, he knows how to placate his clients and do the best for them, and they stick with him forever. Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Newman, Kirk Douglas, and so on.”
Similarly, even though Stark had a hand in the production of more than 200 films, ranging from The Night of the Iguana and Funny Girl to Annie and Steel Magnolias, and paved the way for many Hollywood producers that followed, his passing over the weekend barely registered beyond daily newspaper obituaries such as Thomas’s and the Hollywood trades.
| Besides its reflection of Stark's carefully cultivated public image, this quiet acknowledgement is perhaps to be expected in a TV-dominated media world consumed by such zeitgeist entertainment topics as Paris Hilton Sundance sightings, Michael Jackson courthouse proceedings and the fleeting Las Vegas matrimony of Britney Spears. But it also serves to underscore the continuing erosion of a once reasonable collective American consciousness.
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Which brings us back to longevity. The career arcs of Stark, Cowan and Thomas are notable both because they outdistance Hollywood’s transformation from studio controlled publicity town to current free-for-all, and because they embody a simpler, though no less challenging, linear professional world.
In my interview, Stark also spoke of another person who certainly belonged in this elite category, Walt Disney, the subject of a 1976 biography by Thomas entitled An American Original.
“When you talked to Walt you were inspired,” Stark recalled. “He was earthy and swore a bit, which was quite different from the impression people had of him. I would have loved to have done a biography of Walt as he really was, with his great imagination and dedication to the future.”
| Thomas is one of the few reporters with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, which he received in 1988. Others include Hedda Hopper, Louella Parsons, Jimmie Fidler and Jimmy Starr. Stark, although never an Oscar winner for one of his individual films, earned the Irving G. Thalberg Award in 1980. And Cowan has been helping shape awards reaped by others for seven decades now, beginning with that 1945 “For Your Consideration” ad that he and former partner Henry Rogers conceived on behalf of Joan Crawford for Mildred Pierce.
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So the next time one of Thomas’s remembrances crosses the wire, take a moment and pause in deference to a bygone and more calibrated era, when Hollywood’s professional façade was driven by storytelling rather than opening weekend box office estimates. It’s about as plain as the stark contrast between the original It’s A Wonderful Life and its loose 1990 James Belushi remake, Mr. Destiny.
[Every Wednesday, Hollywood Spin takes an opinionated look at Hollywood media, PR and marketing related matters. The author can be reached at rhorgan@filmstew.com and the Hollywood Spin Discussion Board can be found here.]
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