Jim Mahoney is perhaps the most famous Hollywood executive you’ve never heard of, at least until now.
Hollywood problem solvers, sometimes referred to as “fixers,” have been idolized by popular TV shows, but Mahoney is a man who lived it.
Few people alive today have enjoyed such background prominence in entertainment history as Jim Mahoney. From Gable to Hope, from the Bee Gees to Sinatra, McQueen to JFK, Mahoney promoted or represented many of the biggest names from Hollywood’s Golden Age and beyond.
His best-selling book is filled with previously unknown backstage stories from celebrities ranging from the Ratpack to the Rolling Stones.
Mahoney visited the Seal Beach Yacht Club this past week to answer questions from a room packed with residents anxious to hear first-hand stories from his book, “Get Mahoney! A Hollywood Insider’s Memoir,”
With an unlit cigar in one hand, Mahoney sat like a King at court, almost like a character from his living saga from Hollywood’s memorable era as he answered question after question from his role as acted out on the stage of life.
Mahoney’s date with destiny was foreshadowed early in his life.
He grew up in Culver City, a stone’s throw from Culver City Studios, a 40-acre parcel famous for early “cowboy” movies and eventually blockbusters like Gone with the Wind.”
“My biggest skill was the willingness to listen,” said Mahoney, whose knack for creating news and finding stories is legendary. Though he “fixed” many situations for dozens of clients, he said studios had real “fixers” for the hard stuff.
If his story were not so well documented, it would read like an unbelievably big-budget movie. He spent years working with the top management of MGM before Frank Sinatra stepped in and put Mahoney on a path to public relations superstardom.
Mahoney’s life is one of irony and destiny.
Ironically, he grew up near Culver City Studios, never realizing that he would one day represent the world’s biggest stars.
Now 96, the backlots were almost profitable for Mahoney.
He began making money as a young boy by buying cookies and soft drinks for a nickel, then walking onto the Culver City backlots, and selling them to actors and extras for a quarter.
“I was able to save $100 doing that,” he said during an interview with ENE this week, “which was a huge amount at that time.”
His second major irony was as a teen, watching the massive fire during the “Atlanta burning” scene from “Gone With the Wind” at the Culver studios near his home. Just shy of a decade later, it was none other than Clark Gable, one of the film’s stars, who would provide Mahoney’s entry into the Hollywood elite.
“My dad was an interior decorator,” said Mahoney, “and a very good one. He made a good living. One Sunday, he asked me what I was doing, and I told him where I was going,” said Mahoney.
“No, you’re not,” said the elder Mahoney told his son. “You’re coming with me.” Mahoney said his dad told him.
By then, Mahoney was now a young man enrolled in USC. He agreed to ride with pops to Encino, where Clark Gable, now one of the world’s biggest stars, had recently purchased a 20-acre tract in the San Fernando Valley and wanted to hire Mahoney’s dad to fix up the place.
Gable’s mansion was deep inside the property, and Mahoney remembers the ‘voice box’ at the gate where visitors had to check-in. “That was the first time I ever saw anybody speak into a box” to obtain entry, said Mahoney.
While his dad was inside the mansion during their business, young Mahoney was left to speak with Howard Strickling, then head of public relations at MGM.
“He asked me what I was majoring in (at USC),” said Mahoney. “I told him girls. He laughed. Howard liked that.”
When Gable returned with his dad, Mahoney said Strickling suggested he might give the young Mahoney a PR internship at the studio. Gable said, “if you hire him, I want him to handle me,” Mahoney said Gable told Strickling.
And with that, the magnanimous career of Jim Mahoney was underway.
In the late 1940s, Gable was the most famous leading man in American cinema, and Mahoney cut his teeth at MGM with the megastar’s support.
Thus began a 50-year career that is chronicled in his Hollywood insider’s book.
After a brief stint in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, in which he recieved a Bronze Star, MGM not only welcomed him back but gave him a promotion.
Part of his role at the studios was to handle public relations for its biggest films, and the iconic talent that starred in them.
One day, said Mahoney, he was assigned to get Ava Gardner to the airport where she was catching a flight to star in “Mogambo” with Gable and Grace Kelly. Gardner was then married to Frank Sinatra. When he arrived at her home, Mahoney said the limo waited outside and she invited him in to “get a drink at the bar.”
Mahoney said as he fixed the drink, “I heard a voice from behind me say ‘Who the hell are you.’”
“That was my introduction to Sinatra,” he says wryly.
Mahoney eventually left the studio to take a job with a major columnist where his job was to hang out at all studios, nightclubs, restaurants, etc. with all the stars to drum up stories. Mahoney was expanding his influence and growing his network.
Mahoney fatefully reunited with Sinatra when he was married to Debbie Reynolds and through another ironic twist of fate, he finally became a close friend of the Chairman of the Board.
Then with Sinatra’s help, he took a job working for Sinatra through Rogers & Cowan, arguably, the largest entertainment PR firm in the country, and later, with Frank’s help, formed Jim Mahoney & Associates, later to become Mahoney & Wasserman.
Recalling that fateful night when Sinatra urged him to go out on his own, Mahoney said he walked into an Italian restaurant with his wife Pat. Sinatra was there along with Ratpack member Peter Lawford, and their wives, and Sinatra invited them to join them.
During the conversation, “Frank told me to come see him in the morning, so I did.” Mahoney said Sinatra asked him “How long you’re going to be in that hokey business?”
“I told him until something better comes along,” said Sinatra.
“It just did,” Mahoney said Sinatra told him, inviting him to come by the studio to see him the next morning.
The next morning, Sinatra welcomed him into his trailer on the studio lot,” said Mahoney.
Sinatra proceeded to offer him an unused office and told him to start representing his restaurants and other clients.
“Take an ad out in “Variety” and “The Hollywood Reporter” announcing your business and send me the bill,” said Sinatra. Mahoney said he took him up on the offer.
Almost immediately, he said Lawford called seeking representation, then others, as Mahoney’s career as a public relations guru exploded and would never look back.
While Gable gave him a start, it was Frank Sinatra’s friendship that gave him a chance to jettison the shackles and go out on his own.
“Frank was one of the most generous people I ever met,” says Mahoney, who spent many years working with the superstar as well as the entire Rat Pack, but also enjoying evenings dining with Frank and his friends.
“He was generous in ways people never saw, but he did things that left a lasting impression,” noting that one of Sinatra’s aides always trailed the star with “stacks of $100 bills for tips.”
With a searing wit and street-smart wisdom, Mahoney methodically grew the opportunity into a global public relations firm based on personal relationships with the biggest names in America, and eventually, across America.
Peter Lawford, brother-in-law to John F. Kennedy, even arranged a meeting with the then Presidential candidate.
Not only after having dinner with Kennedy, Mahoney said “JFK offered me a position,” By that time, he said, “I had young children, and I had a good thing going, so I said no.”
And why not, among the names he’s worked with or handled, including Sinatra, Gable, Gardner, Kim Novak, James Garner, Peggy Lee, Rita Moreno, Lee Marvin, Debbie Reynolds, Sammy Davis, Jr., Yul Brenner, Jayne Mansfield, Tony Curtis, Eddie Fisher, the Rolling Stones, Dean Martin, Bob Hope, Judy Garland, U2, Bob Dylan, Johnny Carson, Jack Nicholson, Sonny & Cher, Andy Williams, Tony Bennett, Vic Damone, Paul Anka and Steve McQueen, among literally hundreds of others.
“I’ve had a lot of fun,” he acknowledges, getting back and forth from Vegas to L.A. on Sinatra’s jet, and the almost nonstop events while in L.A. on behalf of his clients. Mahoney pioneered a professional that preceded today’s celebrity-centric world.
“I did sometimes call myself a ‘sup-press agent,” he jokes.
“My job,” he said in a promo for his new book, “was to keep the sweet smell of success from turning into the foul stench of scandal.”
Of his super famous clients, he said McQueen was perhaps the most problematic. “I gave him that nickname, ‘Mr. Cool,’” said Mahoney, “but he was a real character. He knew what he wanted.”
Mahoney says McQueen refused to ride in any limo unless it was shiny, brand new and a Cadillac. “He was very particular.”
Mahoney also played a role in the kidnapping of Frank Sinatra, Jr., in 1963, remembering having J. Edgar Hoover from the FBI on one line and Sam Giancana on the other, trying to get them to work together to solve the kidnapping. Sinatra’s son was eventually released unharmed.
Mahoney’s son Sean, who worked with his dad’s firm for many years, has also semi-retired and lives in Seal Beach with his wife Cher.
They invited friends to have a one-hour session with his dad at the Yacht Club this week and it went on for much longer.
Sean Mahoney said he and his siblings never knew who would show up at their home for dinner or stop by on a weekend. “My dad and Alan Ladd were very good friends and sometimes Bob Hope would call, we just never knew.”
Even though “Star Wars” is now a multi-billion-dollar franchise, Sean remembers the studio bringing a copy of the film over to their home and asking his dad, “What should we do with it.”
Mahoney’s son Sean, who has worked with several notable projects and personalities himself, including Live Aid, Jack Lemmon, Charlton Heston, and the Bee Gees, said he sees a difference between the old and new generation of celebrity.
Newer stars, he said, “kind of have more of an attitude of entitlement,” so Sean said he eventually drifted away from the business. He now works on his own public relations projects from Seal Beach.
The firm, Mahoney and Wasserman, was eventually sold to a global entertainment pr firm and today, Jim Mahoney is retired to his home at the golf course where he won the 1977 Bob Hope Desert Classic Celebrity Pro-Am.
Mahoney’s beloved wife Patricia “Pat,” who passed away in 2015, was during her lifetime well known in Beverly Hills.
Mahoney and Pat had five children, Jim, Jr., Sean, Michael, Monica and Marilee. Burt Bacharach and Hal David, wrote a 60’s tune called “A House Is Not A Home,” and those lyrics were never so true as when you entered Pat Mahoney’s home.
Nicknamed “Grand Central,” the Mahoney Hollywood home was the destination or meeting place for anyone and everyone who wanted a place “to feel good.” “We never knew who was coming over,” said Sean.
Their neighbor Gene Kelly literally danced and sang in their backyard,” he said, noting that their dad invited everyone from the biggest stars to the guy he met at the market to come over.
Family members say that even in his mid-90s, Jim Mahoney is often seen on his patio, with friends, telling stories like the ones he told residents in Seal Beach during his visit.
Though a modest legend, Jim Mahoney has lived to see Hollywood’s Golden Age fade into his own golden years.
It’s perhaps no coincidence that Mahoney’s favorite spot in his home is sitting near a huge photo of himself, Sinatra, and Normal Rockwell.
Almost a ritual, Mahoney sits, cigars in hand, on the 18th Fairway recalling fond yet fantastically true, memories of the glory days when the mere mention of “Get Mahoney” meant business in Tinseltown.
