INTRODUCTION

For more than 40 years I’ve traveled the world as an international film publicist, acting as father confessor, whipping boy, friend—and sometimes enemy, to Hollywood celebrities.

Here are more than a hundred stories about those travels, some of them funny or whimsical, others tragic or sad. They will take the reader from Cannes to Tokyo, from a royal premiere in London to a film studio in Mexico, from the Alps to South America.

We’re all part of the times we live in and so it was that I became caught in a failed revolution in France, a military dictatorship in Argentina and a cold war “international incident” in Moscow.

These stories have been packaged thematically, not chronologically. It was written this way because this is how I remembered. A story about the handling of a drunken Duke of Windsor would remind me of an embarrassing incident with the Queen of Belgium and another with the Queen of Holland. I was the third person on Cary Grant’s honeymoon with Dyan Cannon, which leads to my own honeymoon with director Stanley Kramer—and without my wife.

Not all the celebrities and film executives in these stories have huge egos. Many are quiet and self-contained or vulnerable and afraid. Others are funny and gregarious. In other words, they’re just people. True, they are people who live magnified lives and are used to having their every action scrutinized. Perhaps the best word to describe the majority of celebrities is “guarded”.

Sometimes they would let that guard down, such as the time I accompanied Omar Sharif to a Hamburg brothel or listened to Lee Marvin make intimate confessions when he fell off the wagon.

This is written with a unique perspective on Hollywood. I’ve worked as an executive at two major studios—Columbia Pictures for nearly 11 years, where I was Director of European Publicity and Promotion, and Universal Studios for five minutes as head of International Advertising and Publicity. I was at Lorimar when it was one of the mini-majors—before that generation of would-be studios over-extended and disappeared or were devoured by real studios, to be replaced by other ambitious independents with deep pockets. From there I moved across town to a television network, CBS, but had nothing to do with television. I was in the theatrical films division, which managed to lose more money in a couple of years than some nations do.

Included in my eclectic résumé are stints as vice president at three Hollywood public relations agencies. One was very small, only two of us during lean times. Rogers & Cowan on the other hand, was the largest entertainment P.R. firm in the world. I even ran my own agency a couple of times. Currently I’m vice president at Weissman/Markovitz Communications, formerly Murray Weissman & Associates, a boutique agency with major clients, including Paramount, Fox, Lionsgate, Miramax, the Weinstein Company and AMC. We served as public relations consultants for Lionsgate on the Oscar-winning “Crash.” I’ve worked as a motion picture peon and as an executive.

During the course of all this I have made my home in London, Paris, Munich, Brussels and, for the past 35 years, California. This potpourri background has given me the insight of an insider and an outsider, a participant and an observer.

Leonard Morpurgo
Los Angeles, 2009