Dean of Hollywood Publicists, 79, Keeps Plugging Away--Honest

Maury Foladare tipped his golf cap, the blue one bearing the logo of the Crosby tournament at Bermuda Run, N.C. Foladare, four months shy of his 80th birthday and a Hollywood publicist for 56 years, isn’t one to let a chance to plug the tourney slip away. And, after all, he’s been on the Crosby payroll since Bing Crosby and the Rhythm Boys were wowing them at the Cocoanut Grove.

It was 1930, Foladare recalled, when he met Crosby. Foladare is an encyclopedia of Hollywood history, a man who not only remembers dates and details but for whom each name evokes another memory, another “Can I tell you a story . . . .”

There was the Louis Armstrong story. It seems a young Armstrong had been making a little whoopee during an engagement in Baltimore and had encouraged two young women to visit him in Los Angeles. To his horror, the women were arriving momentarily--and so was Armstrong’s fiancee, Lucille, who had decided to pay a surprise visit.

“Louis told me, ‘Pops’--he called everybody ‘Pops’--give them $100 apiece and put them back on the train to Baltimore.’ ”

Foladare pulled it off, even though “I thought they were going to claw my eyes out.”

And there was the “King Kong” story. It was 1933 and Foladare, on the payroll of the Fox Theaters chain, had been dispatched to the Pacific Northwest to publicize the classic horror film. “Well,” he said, “I got a big guy and rented an ape costume from Western Costume. I had this big ape walk into the Wenatchee (Wash.) Department Store. This one woman fainted. Later, she sued me and the studio (RKO) for $100,000.” The matter was settled without the studio having to pay.

And then there was the Gary Cooper story. In 1929, as Foladare tells it, he accompanied a “very bashful” young Cooper to San Francisco for the premiere of “The Virginian” at the California Theater. But Cooper refused to go on stage, pleading stage fright. Some bootleg bourbon negotiated by Foladare through a hotel bellhop did the trick. “I got him on stage and he was there for 45 minutes. I couldn’t get him off.”

And the Mario Lanza story. It was 1955 and opening night at the New Frontier in Las Vegas for tenor Lanza, the bad boy of MGM. “He got $50,000 in advance,” Foladare said, “and never came out on stage.” It seems that, as the audience waited, Lanza was in his suite “laid out with champagne, uppers and downers,” as Foladare described the scene.

A frantic Foladare dashed across the road to the Desert Inn, where he knew Jimmy Durante was in the house, scheduled to open in a few days. “Jimmy, you speak Italian, don’t you?” he asked, persuading Durante to try to reason with Lanza. “We had 110 press people there,” Foladare said, but Lanza wouldn’t be budged--so

Durante did the show for him. The official explanation: Lanza was ill. Four years later, Lanza died of a heart attack at the age of 38, a victim of obesity, barbiturates and alcohol.

Later, Foladare was able to return Durante’s favor, in his role as chairman of the board for the Los Angeles County Department of

Adoptions, interceding in behalf of Durante who initially had been considered too old to adopt a child.

Foladare, a native son, wasn’t thinking about a career in show business in 1927 when he took a job ushering at the old Tower Theater during the premiere of the first talkie, Al Jolson’s “The Jazz Singer.” Foladare was a student at USC, thinking of a career as a newsman.

Later, a night job on the Los Angeles Examiner sports desk--at 25 cents an inch--led to a full-time job right out of college, at a whopping $18 a week. When Foladare found out that reporters who had been there for 20 years or longer were getting $29 a week, he figured, “If that’s my future, I better get out.”

He was hired away by Arthur Wenzel, publicist for a group of theaters including the Morosco and the Majestic. “I thought they were a bit off,” Foladare said, “because they hired me for $55 a week.” As it turned out, there was a catch: “I wouldn’t get paid. I’d have to chase them down the street and then I’d get $2 thrown at me. That lasted about five or six weeks.”

Through the newspaper job, he had met a number of press agents and, in 1930, Foladare had an offer to become publicity director of the Paramount Theater at 6th and Hill streets, where part of the job would be booking vaudeville acts to run with the films.

Meeting Bing Crosby

It was through the Paramount connection that he met Crosby, who with the Rhythm Boys was doubling nightly at the Cocoanut Grove and the theater. That was a year before Crosby went solo on CBS radio and the road to superstardom.

Through their long association, Crosby frequently led Foladare on a merry chase. “He was a very nice man, but he didn’t like publicity,” he said. “Often, I’d set up an interview and then I’d find out Bing had gone out the back way and left us there. He couldn’t say no, but he would leave everyone in the lurch.” Foladare was searching his memory for funny stories about Crosby, with whom he traveled extensively, but concluded, “Bing was not a very funny guy.”

In the last 10 years of Crosby’s life (he died on a golf course in Spain in 1977), he “mellowed,” agreeing to publicity for benefits where he was performing, Foladare said. But many of the singer’s good deeds went unnoticed, he said, recalling how Crosby picked up the hospital and surgery bills for one of his gag writers who had fallen on bad times. (His association with the family continues as Crosby’s widow, Kathryn, retains Foladare as publicist for the annual golf tournament).

The Crosby association has spanned almost half a century, with Foladare handling television and personal appearances as well as 60 motion pictures.

“It enabled me to make a lot of money,” Foladare said matter-of-factly.

But for Foladare, this was not an extraordinary client-publicist relationship. Consider that Foladare was with Ozzie and Harriet Nelson for 32 years, with Armstrong for 33 and is now in his 41st year as publicist for Danny Thomas.

Danny Thomas’ Beginnings

Foladare first saw Thomas at Chicago’s 5100 Club, where Thomas was a stand-up storyteller making $50 a week. Foladare figured Thomas, who’d begun his career in 1934 singing on a Detroit radio station, was a comer. So, when Thomas came to the West Coast in about 1940 to work with Fanny Brice on radio’s “The Baby Snooks Show,” Foladare introduced himself. “I said, ‘I’d like to do your publicity.’ He said, ‘OK, let’s try it for a while, kid.’ We shook hands and that was it.”

On reflection, Foladare said with affection, “Danny Thomas did more for me than anyone. I met all the stars through Danny.” Later, Thomas in partnership with Sheldon Leonard (T and L Productions) became producer of such TV smashes as “The Andy Griffith Show,” “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and “Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.” The publicist for all those? Maury Foladare.

And it is Foladare who each year coordinates press coverage for the gala fund-raiser for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., founded by Thomas in 1962. This year’s event, a celebration of Danny and Rosemarie Thomas’ 50th wedding anniversary, was an intimate sellout affair for 800-plus friends at the Century Plaza Hotel, with entertainment by such stars as Sid Caesar, Tony Martin and Bob Newhart. The net, with additional large donations: close to $2 million.

St. Jude is close to Foladare’s heart--he serves on the board of directors--and he delights in re-telling the story of how more than 40 years ago a struggling entertainer named Danny Thomas, married and with a child (Marlo) on the way, wandered into an empty Catholic church in Chicago and picked up some literature about St. Jude, saint of the sick and homeless. Thomas, son of a devoutly Catholic Lebanese immigrant family, made a vow that, if his fortunes turned, he would do something to help those people.

It wasn’t long before that happened. At the 5100 Club, Foladare recalled, Thomas was discovered by the William Morris Agency, which got him $2,500 a week at New York’s Martinique, then $7,500 a week at the Copacabana. Remembering his vow, Thomas turned for advice from Cardinal Samuel Stritch, Archbishop of Chicago, who suggested that he go to a poor section of Memphis and build a hospital where needy children would be treated free. Today that hospital is a seven-story facility with an annual operating budget of $62 million, and a second hospital will be built soon.

Foladare does have one regret about the Thomas association. “I didn’t pay any attention to Marlo,” he said. “I didn’t think she would make it.”

“So darling,” the last of the genre--that was one newspaperwoman’s description of Maury Foladare. “Sweet,” another concurred, noting that a mention of a Foladare client in print without fail elicits a real thank-you note, hand-written, often accompanied by flowers.

He is, perhaps, a delightful anachronism, with a reputation as a straight shooter. “I never wrote a phony story in my life,” Foladare will tell you.

Fortunately for him, many of his clients were what he called “homebodies,” honest-to-goodness Ozzies and Harriets who rarely became involved in scandals. “I loved all those people,” Foladare said, reeling off names and places from the show-biz past--Billy Gray’s Band Box, Gene Austin (“My Blue Heaven” sold 4 million records), Frank Morgan (the “Wizard of Oz”), Jack Haley, Noah Beery, Jack Teagarden, Jack Carson, Rudy Vallee, Judy Canova, Andy Devine, radio’s “One Man’s Family,” “I Love a Mystery” and “Sgt. Preston of the Yukon.”

Keeping Busy

Pushing 80, a milestone he expects to celebrate Jan. 6 at a party to be given by the Masonic Press Club, which he founded, Foladare is “not looking for work.” He has Thomas and St. Jude, Kathryn Crosby and the Bing Crosby Golf Tournament, the Hollywood Wax Museum, writer-producer Andrew J. Fenady (“Chisholm”) and the Union Plaza Hotel in Las Vegas, where a show opening is reason enough for Foladare to take off for a weekend with a press person or two.

But you’re not likely to find Foladare in the casino. Gambling is a vice he abandoned about 30 years ago. And therein lies a little story, of course. . . .

Ed Gardner, who created radio’s “Duffy’s Tavern” in 1940 and played Archie, the Brooklyn barkeep, during the show’s decade on network radio, was “having a tough time making the transition” to the era of television, as Foladare tells it. His ace in the hole was a million-dollar deal to produce three minor movies, tax-free, in Puerto Rico. “He would pay me $5,000 a week to do publicity,” Foladare said, “but I’d have to go to San Juan to collect.” So, every other weekend, Foladare flew to San Juan, picked up a $10,000 check--and headed straight for the Chase Manhattan Bank branch there, which was open Saturdays. “I’d cash it and I’d come back with no money because the Caribe Hilton had gambling,” Foladare said. “I’m so ashamed of myself. . . .”

Still, he didn’t swear off gambling until one morning in 1955 when he was awakened at the Sands Hotel by a call from the management, asking him to stop by on his way out. It seems that Foladare had dropped $4,500 the night before at the gaming tables--”and I couldn’t pay the IOU.”

At his zenith, Foladare oversaw a staff of 15 publicists working out of the old First Federal Bank building on Highland Avenue and was grossing $10,000 to $20,000 a week. He laughed and said, “I didn’t realize it wouldn’t last forever. I’d go into a bar and buy drinks for 15 or 20 guys. They wouldn’t know my name if they heard it. That was stupid.”

Hollywood was in its heyday, and so was Foladare. At night, the stars came out--Ciro’s on the Strip, the Little Trocadero, Earl Carroll’s “Vanities” (a Foladare client). “I stopped going to parties several years ago,” Foladare said. “When you’re pushing 80, you’ve been to a lot of parties in your time. It’s all the same thing.”

Out on the Town

He was thinking back to the ‘30s, to the time he spent in New York as a publicist for Paramount--”We’d go down to the after-hours clubs in Harlem, to the Apollo to see Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday. Most of the clubs in Manhattan closed at 4, but in Harlem they were open until 6. I just wonder how I’m still around.”

Today a reed-thin Foladare pretty much limits his imbibing to diet colas. Eight years ago he had quadruple-bypass surgery. “My heart stopped beating during the angiogram. My wife made me save money from then on.” (Betty and Maury Foladare were married 14 years ago. His first marriage ended in divorce during his high-living days--”I guess she couldn’t take it.”)

Of his surgery, he said, “I was pretty sick for a year,” but his longtime clients were there for him. “You know, not one of them ever stopped sending me a check.” He thought about that for a moment and decided, “Somewhere along the line I did something right.”

Maury Foladare had not run out of stories. There was the summer of 1950 when Harold Lloyd, then the Shriners’ imperial potentate, needed a gimmick to publicize the group’s national conference here. Foladare came up with a beauty contest and attracted entrants from six counties. The contestants’ pictures appeared in a newspaper and right off, Foladare said, “I got a call from Howard Hughes, who wanted the girls to have lunch with him over at the studio (RKO). He wanted to give them all a screen test.” When the entourage arrived, Hughes didn’t show up; rather, his right-hand man, Walter Kane, did. “I introduced him to all six,” Foladare said. “He said, ‘Which of these girls are married?’ ” Three raised their hands; those three didn’t get screen tests. The others? Well, Foladare said, “We never heard from Howard Hughes.”

Parsons and Hopper

Songwriter Jimmy McHugh (“Sunny Side of the Street”) was a Foladare client. “He loved publicity,” said Foladare, whose greatest coup for McHugh was getting him on the cover of Life magazine. And, Foladare said, columnist Louella Parsons loved McHugh. One of Foladare’s jobs was covering for McHugh when he was doing the town. “Louella would call me all the time and say, ‘Where’s Jimmy tonight?’ He had her conned, right to the very end.”

It was another era. If Parsons or Hedda Hopper mentioned a film Foladare was publicizing, it almost went without saying that they, in turn, would be remembered by him. He would arrive at Parsons’ house bearing gifts and “I’d have to fight my way inside” over the stacks of packages.

Nor were big-time radio writers and performers oblivious to remembrances from non-sponsors. “They’d do a joke on ‘The Jack Benny Show’ about Bulova watches,” Foladare said, “and there would be three dozen watches the next day. We had watches coming out of our ears. If Benny said, ‘Rochester, bring me a bottle of bourbon,’ we’d get five cases of bourbon. Benny came to realize what was going on but he went along with it because the jokes (written by Foladare clients Bill Morrow and Ed Beloin) were good.” All in all, he said, Benny was “an easygoing guy,” not, he noted, like Rudy Vallee, who would “really let his musicians have it” if they hit a clinker during audience warm-ups for “The Rudy Vallee Fleischmann Hour.”

Foladare recalled names past and present, clients all. Morton Downey, Les Brown and His Band of Renown, songwriter Gus Kahn (“I’ll See You in My Dreams”), songwriter Nacio Herb Brown (“Singin’ in the Rain”). As if it were yesterday, he recalled the world premiere of Mary Pickford’s first talkie, “Coquette,” in 1929 at the United Artists Theater at 9th Street and Broadway. “She was so small,” he said. “It was raining cats and dogs and I remember Fairbanks Sr. (who was then her husband) picking her up with one arm and carrying her in.” Foladare was publicist for the film, which won Pickford an Oscar.

Former publicity men Bill Thomas and Bill Pine formed a production company in the ‘40s and started grinding out low-budget quickie films like “Swamp Fire” (1946) and “Power Dive”

Reagan Not a Client

One of their films was “The Last Outpost” which starred Ronald Reagan and Fleming. Another, “Hong Kong,” featured the same co-stars. Reagan was not solicited as a client. A mistake, Foladare conceded.

To the “new guys,” who by definition are the publicists who “started in 1940 or 1950,” Foladare is something of a legend. Why, they weren’t even around when the old pros like New York’s Harry Reichenbach were whomping up stunts. Foladare was remembering an animal-picture premiere at Manhattan’s Rivoli and how Reichenbach called the Astor Hotel and made a reservation in the name of “Mrs. Vanderbilt.” Then, he said, “He marches this lion on a chain up to the lobby. He made Page 1 all over the world. You don’t do that today.”

Foladare figures he’s been lucky. Somewhere along the road, he said, “I must have made some connections.”