The Man Who Seduced Hollywood

April 15, 2013
Greg Bautzer was freshly graduated from law school in 1936, when he decided he wanted to become a Hollywood celebrity lawyer (at a time when there weren't four or five celebrity attorneys for every actual celebrity). He did it, too, almost immediately forging a profitable relationship with Twentieth CenturyFox chairman Joe Schenk. As Gladstone tells it in this unusual take on Hollywood's golden age, Bautzer cultivated an image as a dashing, eligible bachelor, an image designed to gain him maximum exposure in the high-flying circles where he hoped to find clients. The strategy worked, as over the years, he numbered some of show business' biggest players among his clients, not to mention the world's most famous recluse, Howard Hughes. Bautzer got so big that he is widely considered to have single-handedly masterminded Kirk Kerkorian's hostile takeover of MGM in the late 1960s. In his time, he was as famous, as widely photographed, and as talked about as many big-name celebrities. This is a very good book about a very famous man who is now, sadly, almost entirely forgotten.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)