The Fame Formula: How Hollywood's Fixers, Fakers and Star Makers Shaped the Publicity Industry

The Fame Formula is a gripping study of the forgotten lives, and broken dreams, of the creators of the publicity industry - men who stepped out of the circus life carrying the legacy of P.T. Barnum and applied it liberally to vaudeville and the movies. Starting in the early twentieth century with Harry Reichenbach and Maynard Nottage, whose love of creating bizarre stunts for their clients sometimes outweighed their interest in money, The Fame Formula also reflects how the industry changed, and was changed by, society.The book shows how, in the hands of notorious Hollywood fixers Eddie Mannix and Howard Strickling, publicity agents Russell Birdwell, Warren Cowan, Henry Rogers and more, this freewheeling, anarchic industry became the corporate behometh it is today.