His women were tens, his guns were .38s, and his collection of jewel-encrusted walking canes numbered in the hundreds. For nearly 50 years, Jay Bernstein was a Hollywood fixture, owning one of the most powerful PR firms in Hollywood, making stars of Farrah Fawcett and Suzanne Somers, and producing dozens of television films and series.
Future Hollywood insider Jay Bernstein was born outside — way outside — Tinseltown, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, on June 7, 1937. But Bernstein, helped by his pals the Rat Pack, eventually found his way from the mailrooms of Hollywood to owning a top agency that represented over 600 A-List stars in the ’60s and ’70s. Bernstein’s creative PR stunts made him as famous as his clients, such as paying women to throw hotel keys at Tom Jones and having Entertainment Tonight host Mary Hart’s legs insured by Lloyd’s of London for one million dollars.
Bernstein died, with Farrah Fawcett by his side, in 2006 after suffering a stroke. Starmaker is Bernstein’s own behind-the-scenes look at his life — the life of an outrageous Hollywood personality, and the stars who surrounded him. It is a true Hollywood memoir, written in Bernstein’s voice by his closest confidante Larry Cortez Hamm.