GET MAHONEY!

A former Hollywood public relations executive tells of a life working among film legends in this debut memoir.

Mahoney grew up in Culver City, California, in the late 1930s, in the shadow of the MGM film studios. Industrious from a young age, he would sneak onto film sets to sell colas to cast and crew members, netting a profit of 2 cents per bottle. He gained a reputation as a “troublemaker” at school but got a break when his father, a painter, took him to a house that he was working on. There, Mahoney met the actor Clark Gable and his friend and film publicist Howard Strickling. The latter later offered the author a job in the MGM publicity department, where he rubbed shoulders with celebrities and ran errands as Gable’s personal gofer. He also gained firsthand knowledge of how the Hollywood establishment dealt with celebrity scandals. After returning from a tour of duty in Korea in 1952,Mahoney built a notable career for himself as a “media fixer”; at one point, he was tasked with advising Frank Sinatra after his 19-year-old son, Francis Wayne “Frank Jr.” Sinatra, was kidnapped. Throughout his career, Mahoney and his company represented many “high profilers,” including Judy Garland and Steve McQueen. Mahoney has an affably efficient descriptive style; regarding MGM studio executive Eddie Mannix, for instance, he writes: “He was good at greasing palms and burying bones, too.” Fans of Sinatra will take particular interest in Mahoney’s behind-the-scenes perspective. Once, the singer/actor asked the author to “get rid of” a drunken gambler who was bothering him. Characteristically, Mahoney’s take is dryly humorous: “I was a war hero, he thought of me as a tough guy. Nothing could have been further from the truth. My specialty was typewriters and bullshit.” This energetic memoir is bursting with other celebrity anecdotes, as when he describes the MGM commissary: “There were Elizabeth Taylor and Peter Lawford and Van Johnson at one table…Marilyn Monroe, Jane Powell, and Ann Miller sat behind them.”

A must-read remembrance for anyone interested in the golden age of Hollywood and beyond.