The Fixers: Eddie Mannix, Howard Strickling and the MGM Publicity Machine

This book is a real page-turner. Certainly one of the more eye-opening accounts of the Golden Age of Hollywood. It serves many purposes.It is first of all a history of the Golden Age of Hollywood. The book has a difficult time getting started, though. It begins with a history of the movie industry, from the very beginning. And when I say “from the beginning,” I mean it. Literally from the late 19th Century. The history proceeds further and travels along with the careers of Eddie Mannix and Howard Strickling.This is not an ordinary history of Hollywood. From this rather laborious beginning, I literally could not put this book down. This history is told through the media manipulations and interventions of Mannix and Strickling to preserve the public image of MGM’s biggest stars. Eddie Mannix and Howard Strickling were the Hollywood “fixers.” If there was a problem with a major star — an unsavory personal fact, a drug dependency, an arrest, a death, a sexual deviancy, an unwanted pregnancy, a DUI, literally any PR problem that could tarnish the star’s image — they fixed it with the press, and if needed, law enforcement. This usually involved some degree of advanced public relations, such as issuing phoney press releases or some other form of disinformation, but frequently involved the transfer of cash to public officials or the private parties affected, hiding guilty parties, or whatever it took to handle a potential scandal. It is a form of media manipulation not widely found in the celebrity world nowadays, although their techniques are regularly practiced on a daily basis by the government.To give you an idea of how smooth these fellows were, consider an incident from the life of Clark Gable. In 1933, Clark Gable, very drunk, hit and killed a pedestrian on Sunset Boulevard — and then drove away. He called Strickling in a panic. Strickling contacted and hired Jerry Giesler — a celebrity lawyer, who deserves a book about his own legal career, and who successfully defended Error Flynn in his statutory rape case — and spirited Gable to the high desert, ordering him to stay put for a while. Mannix arranged the settlement of the personal injury claim of the private party. The private party’s family was paid off; they were paid $400,000.00 in 1933 dollars. Mannix could not fix it with the D.A., however; it was, after all, vehicular manslaughter. So he had a straw man take the blame instead. According to the arrangement, whoever took the blame for the accident would be guaranteed a life-time salary from MGM. The fall guy submitted to an inquest, and, fortunately, perhaps not surprisingly, the fall guy was not found criminally liable. Still, after all was said and done, the fall guy took an extended European vacation until things calmed down, only to return to an illustrious career in Hollywood. Brilliant! These guys were smooth operators. The name of the “fall guy”? John Huston. Coincidence? Gossip? There are no newspaper accounts of a traffic death involving Clark Gable, — nothing. But there were newspaper reports of a traffic death on Sunset Boulevard with the same date and time Gable ran over the pedestrian, identifying the guilty party as John Huston by name.This is only one of the many, many inside stories in this book. You see, this is the other way this book may be approached. This book can be considered as containing nothing but gossip, or being the ultimate insider look into the Golden Age of Hollywood. The book mentions well-known, notorious, episodes in Hollywood history, and offers completely credible inside glances of what was really going on in the background. For instance: Fatty Arbuckle. At one time he was more well-known than Charlie Chaplin. History records that he was involved in a murder trial in San Francisco and it is generally accepted that he was set up. This book delves deeper in the story. Fatty was led for public slaughter by the Hollywood moguls who essentially abandoned him by failing to provide back-up or public support. Their reason? The Hollywood moguls felt that he had earlier “extorted” into giving him an enormous salary against their intentions. Or Francis X. Bushman. A film star essentially unknown today, but very successful in his heyday. He was ostracized by the Hollywood elites because he very publically carried on an affair with a drop-dead gorgeous eighteen-year old, an act which outraged the conservative sensibilities of Louie Mayer. Mayer was apparently jealous.There have been some reviews that have disparaged this book because it contains “Hollywood Gossip.” This may or may not be true. The author declares that the contents of the book have all been verified and confirmed by corroborating sources. Indeed, there are approximately twenty pages of footnotes. As with any insider book such as this one, however, some degree of gossip mongering is unavoidable, because the written record is a sanitized version of the real events. This is a casualty of the types of problems Mannix and Strickling fixed. The types of problems Mannix and Strickling fixed consisted of sordid, salacious, real-world problems of real persons who happen to be professional actors. This book lifts the veil of celebrity and takes the real look at these celebrities.But even if it is all just “gossip,” so what? C’mon now, admit it. Don’t you, the reading public, really WANT to read gossip? Isn’t that what we want to read? Isn’t gossip more interesting than the “truth,” which can be variable and itself dependent on whomever is telling the story?This is the ultimate insider book. This is an engrossing and gossip or not you will be glued to the pages.

If a part of you has often wondered what it would be been like to be around to witness all the glamour of Hollywood's "Golden Days" from the early `30s to the mid 50's, when the big studios like MGM took care of their stars, as Louis B.Mayer always said, like `family` and they lived in fabulous homes, drove the most expensive cars, seemingly carefree...Right? This book takes you inside the Family where you learned of the high price some paid for their place in the Family and the Glamour and Glitz. You'll learn more than you ever knew before about the professional and private lives of Clark Gable, Greta Garbo, Jean Harlow, Joan Crawford, Judy Garland, Cary Grant, Spencer Tracy, Charlie Chaplin and many others. It's an amazing story and a page-turner that you're never quite certain of the ending.Many paid a high price for their place in "the family" though. This book

I was anxiously awaiting the arrival of this book and was not disappointed.The "FIXERS" were two notorious executives at MGM during its heyday named Eddie Mannix and Howard Strickling. While they have often been referred to in many celeb bios and books about the movies, it has often been difficult to pin down what their primary function was within the MGM corporate organization. Over the years, it has often been alluded that they 'fixed' things (i.e., usually scandals involving MGM's talent). However, no one source had ever cited the extent of their involvement in covering up situations which might prove catasrophic had they been publicly revealed. THE FIXERS resolves that gap with great clarity and detail.The book itself is grounded in reality, but manages to take on an almost fictional persona interweaving fact in an intimate and slightly gossipy manner. The author establishes a backdrop for the story by detailing how the movie industry came to be and describing with precision the main players as well as the dynamics which existed within the studio system. Once the ground rules are established, Fleming takes off and discusses the scandals that Mannix and Strickling handled over the 40+ year period they were employed by MGM as well as their 'methods' used. The individual stories range from the well-known such as Judy Garland's drug addiction to the more veiled ones like Paul Bern's "suicide". Fleming even goes so far as detailing the real facts behind comedian Ted Healy's death which have been obliterated over the 60+ years since his death. And this constitutes just the tip of the iceberg. Fleming's only ground rule for all of this is that he does not relate any stories that he was not able to verify via reputable multiple sources.I'm not going to cloud my assessment of this book with more details and run the risk of taking away from the pleasure of reading this book. However, when I finally put this book down I started thinking that this would make a fantastic mini-series on tv or a full length feature in the movies because truth is stranger than fiction.

Amazing revelations about how the studios managed the peccadillos of their stars to preserve studio investments and keep the money tap flowing.......really quite fascinating

For those who have long suspected that Hollywood was the ultimate sin bin where murder, corruption, sexual abuse and sexual deviance were the order of the day, this book will confirm everything you ever heard about The Dream Factory. Author E. J. Fleming goes to great lengths to show how the studio system evolved from the earliest days of silent movies up until the likes of studio bosses such as Louis B. Mayer at M-G-M had total control over their stars and their lives. You think that abortions were something that came along in the 1960's? Think again. As early as the 1920's, the studios were arranging abortions for their biggest females stars and female bit players who were impregnated by male movie actors. The list of actresses who underwent these procedures is staggering. So too are the large numbers of male stars who were out and out drunks and constantly had to be dried out for their next movie role. This books is very well researched and will open your eyes to what really went on during Hollywoods' Golden Age.

Pour moi qui adore l'époque classique hollywoodienne, ce livre était un cadeau du ciel car il s'avère être une mine d'informations sur le Tout-Hollywood des années 1910 à 1960. Ce livre nous dépeint avec passion les premiers balbutiements de l'industrie cinématographique, la création des studios et leur installation à Hollywood, ainsi que l'avènement du star system et les pratiques douteuses mises en place pour le protéger, au travers notamment de deux figures méconnues de la MGM : Howard Strickling et Edgard J. Mannix.Je connaissais déjà certaines de ces pratiques : quelques unes sont décrites dans Une Etoile est Née (la version de 1937 avec Janet Gaynor et Fredric March) - et m'étant intéressée à la vie de Janet Gaynor, j'avais aussi appris ce qu'étaient les "Lavender marriages". Malgré tout, je ressors de la lecture de "The Fixers" abasourdie par le fait que des plans de comm' mis en place par les studios dans les années 30 soient toujours en vogue (nombre de sites internet célèbrent encore le "grand amour" de Carole Lombard et Clark Gable par exemple alors qu'il multipliait les infidélités).J'ai littéralement dévoré ce livre, et je l'ai adoré. Cependant, je ne mets pas 5 étoiles : les enchaînements entre deux paragraphes / histoires sont parfois un peu maladroits, et j'ai également noté deux erreurs de date (l'auteur place la date de naissance de la fille supposée de W. R. Hearst et Marion Davies vers 1934 alors que les sources s'accordent à dire qu'elle serait née entre 1920 et 1923, voire avant 1920 dans la mesure où elle s'est mariée en 1937 / l'auteur s'est aussi trompé sur l'année de la mort de Mayo Methot, il indique 1949 au lieu de 1951). Ce ne sont que des détails mais cela laisse supposer que d'autres erreurs ont pu se glisser...

Its proving to be an insightful as well as fascinating read about the scandals behind the golden yrs of Hollywood.

Un livre incroyablement bâclé et contenant de très nombreuses erreurs factuelles. Il donne l'impression d'avoir été écrit à toute vitesse sans recherche historique de fond, si ce n'est de piocher dans d'autres livres plus ou moins sérieux. L'accumulation de ragots de bas étages et d'invraisemblances historiques rend cet ouvrage peu crédible et pour tout dire carrément honteux. Dommage, le sujet méritait bien plus que ce torchon.