A
news by
yahoofreeshop:If Hollywood has never wanted to hire its own publicist to keep his image untarnished and well removed, it would be Ronnie Chasen.
The circumstances of her death on Tuesday morning – she was found in her Mercedes in Beverly Hills, shot five times in the chest – remain a mystery. But what is clear is the deep sense of loss all in this city feels.
While Ronnie was only 64, he often seemed as though it since day they invented the radio. When we schmooze at the screening or the party press (with me usually try to distract her from the roll of paper about a client I had no interest in writing), she talks about working with George Burns in “Sunshine Boys” or helping to run John Travolta One of his first interviews after he became a TV star in “Welcome Back Kotter. One of her first works in the late 1970′s, was head of advertising for American International Pictures, the legendary B-Movie Factory Sam Arkoff’s. (Her older brother Writer-director Larry Cohen, a cult favorite B-Movie Guy himself, who wrote and directed such low-budget classics like “It’s Alive” and “B.”)
Ronnie knew all the old Hollywood royalty, most of which she presented at one time or another. Its client list includes movie stars, composers and directors, but for me its most interesting client-list producers such as Richard Zanuck, Irwin Winkler, Lee Rich, Bud Yorkin and Arnold Kopelson. They have been clients for decades because they were her friends.
“We’ve been together for 30 years,” Winkler told me Tuesday. “She came to our house every year when we broke the fast on Yom Kippur. Nothing ever discouraged her. She always believed in the people she represented. You could not say anything bad about any of her clients, because they were part of her family. That’s why I feel so awful, because I really feel like I lost a family member. ”
Ronnie was already a legend when I started writing about entertainment in 1980. While the LA Times because it is a telegram that she seemed to know what the stories we did before we actually took the time to implement them. She often felt like she was some kind of hypnotic power over our top editors and writers, though, as I knew her better than it became evident that Ronnie was such a tremendous access and influence to a large extent because it was just a man who would not take no for an answer.
I can not say that Ronnie had hypnotized me, but I would be the first to admit that she was probably convinced me to do more stories on the people I cared about than any other writer. If you said no, she took it means “not now”. If you said, maybe she knew, your decision is already crumbling.
How does she do it? Pure, unadultered salesmanship. As soon as she found even glimmer of interest, she starts calling relentlessly, trying to one corner after another, until she found one that hit pay dirt. It helped that Ronnie was also a stable of large customers who were always in demand, including class actions such as Zanuck and Winkler, who turned out two of the best storytellers in the business.
One story Ronnie did not nag me to do was the column I wrote about a famous Hollywood composer Michael Kamen, who showed that for many years he was secretly suffering from multiple sclerosis. He died a few years after the story ran, but getting to spend a day with the stone, absorbing its surprisingly optimistic outlook on life, was one of the best days of my life doing my job.
When Ronnie called later to thank me for the story, I told her that this time, our roles have changed. I want to thank you, I said. “It was an inspiration just being around him.
This is probably the way a lot of friends Ronnie and customers feel right now. When you were with Ronnie, as you watched her work the room, or bad about the horrible 24-hour media cycle, you know you know that you are in the presence of old-fashioned stars. When it came to show business publicity, Ronnie was the queen, surrounded by fools and pretenders to the throne.......
