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A useful round-up

Customer Rating:

I agree with the suspicious reviewer - an Amazon reviewer who calls this book 'pure genius' must be a friend of the author. It's a pleasant enough read and provides a handy history of publicity stunts, many of which are funny. Apart from a bunch of papers by Maynard Nottage given to the author, there is precious little archive research: the author mainly re-tells facts collected by others. It is only concerned with the USA (where they'll believe anything), which implies this industry arose only in the USA. It didn't. In Shakespeare's time theatres competed to drum up crowds. So it's not a history of PR, although the old circus barkers had brains and initiative, which their modern counterparts lack. There is an almost complete absence of context - sociological, political, historical or otherwise. Moreover, there is no critical analysis of what was going on. Borkowski is not Robert Hughes. An amusing story, but an average book.

The Rise and Fall of Hollywood Publicity

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This is a fascinating book if you are interested in the dirty underwear of Hollywood, in how the publicists hid the soiled garments and how they replaced it with shiny new lingerie, which they then hung from the most prominent wires, helping stars, films, studios and, eventually, brand names look rather better than they did in real life. The book most successfully details the lives, peccadilloes, disasters and lies that stuck early Hollywood together with the glue of publicity and goes into most detail about the early stunt-merchants such as Harry Reichenbach and Maynard Nottage, who moved into the movies from vaudeville and the carnival, influenced by the jovial hucksterism of PT Barnum. Their lives, particularly Nottage's, are a definite lesson in the price of fame. Nottage helped create stars, but came to believe his own hype - that he was a great starmaker - and drank himself into oblivion when the rest of the industry refused to believe him, dying in the 1960s, a bitter and lonely old man. According to Borkowski, nearly all of the publicists in the book end up eaten alive by the job or their own hype - they can either stop and vanish, usually in a cloud of bitterness, die young from overwork or keep going until they are wizened and old but still turning up and working. Harry Brand, publicist at 20th Century Fox, retired in the 1960s but was given an office by the studio that he used for most of the rest of his life. It was only the working community there that kept him happy; a rather sad end for the man who rescued Marilyn from public disapprobation after her early nude photo shoot. Out of the work of these obsessional men and women, Borkowski suggests, the modern celebrity industry was born. All these obsessive men and women gave rise to the great vast gas cloud of celebrity culture. Once, he implies, fame was worth having. Now, thanks to people like Jade Goody and Britney Spears and reality TV, the stock of stars in general has fallen. If the science of the actual formula at the end of the book is a little spurious, the thinking behind it is less so. Fame can last 15 months and needs constant replenishing? The more you look at the papers, the more this seems realistic. The science may not hold water, but the more people who know how the machine works, the more chance there is for it to be sabotaged. The book is fascinated with stunts; lighter stuff like people putting lions in hotel rooms, changing plain Janes into vamps, underwater weddings and the like - as well as the darker stuff, the cover ups of murder, abortion, lesbianism. Borkowski soars to theatrical heights describing the early, less dangerous and (slightly less) cruel side of Hollywood but peters out a little when essaying the corporate takeover of Hollywood publicity towards the end - no surprise there, I'd say. The Formula at the end of the book may be a stunt to get your attention but it's worth getting past that and giving the book a go, if only to discover the delightful foibles of Jim Moran, who sat on an ostrich egg for twenty days, hatched the ostrich and adopted it, all to promote a movie called The Egg and I. I doubt you'll approve of many of the people described, but the heights of imaginative artifice that went into promoting the rise and fall of Hollywood make for compulsive reading. It's a compelling, if occasionally flawed, read.

The other reviews are just PR

Customer Rating:

Okay, this is a book about the history of PR. The three reviews before mine are all five star reviews. When you click on the link to she the reviewers other reviews, not one of them has reviewed another book. It's just the friends of the authors, agent, editor, or publisher posting good reviews for this book. Its just PR! I'm actually reading it, and while the history is somewhat interesting, the book does not deserve five stars. It's a 2.5 tops. This would make a good 200 page book. The author stretches out tedious stories to fill chapters. Like I said, I think it's mildly interesting because I know nothing of the history of PR. If you do, you may ant to skip this one.

Fame Formula Review

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This was one of the most interesting and insightful books I have read in a long time. It's not a dull historical chronology of PRs, it's more of an amazing journey through carnivals, circuses, Hollywood and our own mad celebrity crazed world. I had never realised where publicists got their inspirations, and certainly hadn't ever understood the power those Hollywood publicists had to squash stories and keep their stars in and out of the news. It's fascinating to see how people's careers are really maniuplated. We knew it happened, but this book explains the process. I thoroughly enjoyed it and would definitely recommend anyone to read it.

pure genius

Customer Rating:

As with the reviewer above, I've just got my copy of this book - having been looking forward to its publication for some time. This is, quite simply, one of the most engaging, informative and inspiring books on the subject of PR that you could hope to read. It should be a set text for all advertising/PR and media courses - and essential reading for any individual or SME wanting to make a splash for themselves (there are just so many outrageous ideas in here: a real pandora's box). The writing style is - as you would imagine if you've heard Borkowski interviewed on either radio or TV - always accessible, very informed... and extremely funny. He clearly loves his subject and his enthusiasm leaps off the page. I can't recommend this book enough to be honest. There's nothing like it out there. Forget any 'how to' PR manuals - just read this and be inspired by some truly maverick thinking!