Publicist Milt Kahn, 66, Still Has Basketball in His Veins

Milt Kahn is a publicist. He has worked for Joan Crawford and Chuck Norris and many others. Kahn loves to get somebody’s name in the paper. Kahn knew he’d make it in Los Angeles as a publicist when, as Kahn explains, “A guy hired me and gave me his coffee shop as the client. I got all my meals at this coffee shop. It was called Chez Paulette. One day right after I was hired, Marlon Brando was in the shop and had a fight with his wife. I gave the item to Louella Parsons. Chez Paulette got in all the papers. That was the beginning of my career as a publicist.”

Milt Kahn is also a basketball player.

Kahn, 66, still plays full-court games three times a week. He plays with guys 30 years younger than he is and he beats them with his outside shooting. Shooting is a learned skill. It takes patience and perseverance. “Same skills I learned in basketball translated to my career choice,” Kahn says. “Patience and the willingness to fail again and again and to never give up.”

Kahn lives in Santa Barbara and has his own agency. He grew up in Brooklyn, a playground gym rat who used to shoot hoops at Brighton Beach with Sandy Koufax, wearing sandals. Kahn’s story is similar to so many kids of his time. His mother died when he was young, his father lost the family savings in the Depression and was never the same.

Was it escape or salvation? Kahn isn’t sure but knows that the best part of his day was the always part he spent with a basketball in hand.

“It just seemed natural for me, growing up in Brooklyn, the New York City playgrounds, they were all over the place,” he said. “I’d wander around the schoolyards watching guys play and when I was six or seven, I started shooting baskets. I just fell in love with the game almost immediately.”

Kahn was good enough to start for the varsity at James Madison High in Brooklyn as a sophomore. Kahn also had a big mouth, something he would find useful.

When teachers and coaches went on strike when he was a junior, threatening the cancellation of the basketball season, Kahn made his first move as a publicist.

“I used to read the Sunday Magazine in the New York Times and there were always ads for private schools and prep schools and military schools. I sent out my own resume, advertising my basketball skills and miraculously one responded.

“It was in Greenwich, Conn., and I got a scholarship for one year. Room, board, the works. I was a 6-foot-2 guard and I averaged 22 points a game for Edgewood School. We once played in a tournament in White Plains, got to the championship game against Irving School of Tarrytown. We won 66-65 and I shot 12 for 12 from the field.”

When we begin to wonder what sports is about, this is a good reminder. A 66-year-old man who remembers with more happiness than anything about one, big victory when he was in high school. Going 12 for 12 from the field can still make a person feel good 50 years later.

“Those feelings you get from moments like that, you never forget,” Kahn says.

Kahn says that he began to believe his own publicity. Instead of going to some of the smaller colleges like Lafayette or Lehigh which recruited him, he went to Syracuse. “By my sophomore year,” Kahn says, “it became apparent I wasn’t going to play at the varsity level. I love the game so much, too much to spend all the time practicing so that I might get to play 30 seconds in a game.”

Kahn was eventually drafted by the Army and went to Korea and became a star on the 8th Army team. He played with Dan Finch, an All-American from Vanderbilt, had a great time, missed any fighting and came home to finish his degree at Ohio University, where tuition was $80 a semester and where he found a great playground basketball system.

“More and more I realized how basketball just sort of molded my life. It was always a presence,” Kahn says.

After graduating from Ohio University, Kahn got a job in New York at the William Morris Agency, didn’t fit in, thumbed a ride to Los Angeles and found himself a pickup game again.

“I’d go down to Venice, to Roxbury Park in Beverly Hills,” Kahn says.

“There hasn’t been a day in my life where I’ve missed playing ball, even if it would just be to shoot around for a couple of hours. It’s a great game, basketball. In basketball you have to be creative in finding ways to win. You have to be that way in life too.”

When the Lakers moved to Los Angeles in 1960, Kahn got season tickets immediately. “I had ticket number 111 at the Sports Arena and became friends with Elgin Baylor,” Kahn says.

“I’d go to Echo Park and play with Elgin and some junior college kids.

“Larry Friend, who used to play with the Lakers, and Wayne Rogers, the actor from “M*A*S*H,” would play on our team. We had some great pickup games.”

Now Kahn plays with youngsters, dot.com guys, entrepreneurs, flat-bellied men who think they can take the 66-year-old. Then Kahn swishes a three-pointer and another and then he might beat them up the floor too.

Is there any grand purpose to Kahn’s story? Not exactly. It is only a gentle reminder of how sports is a part of so many lives, how it does make a difference, how a sport can be worth pursuing even when you don’t get paid in anything but memories.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com.