THE KINGMAKER

A successor to The Director and one of those schleps from New York to Hollywood and Reuben's to Romanov's which begins with the inauguration of Jeffry Jefferson (former Western-and-who-else-styled film star) as California governor and then fills in the antecedent years. Jefferson shares his story (an unhappy marriage to another star Joanne, as impregnated with gin as a swizzle stick; her Oscar; his other girls) with that of Doctor Irwin Cone who had started out as a medical man until he's been advanced by the "Mob's" nightclub business all the way up to the top of the Talent Corporation of America where he's been presiding ever since. Cone thinks in terms of "packages" and "percents" which is the best way to justify this.