Warren Cowan
Company: Warren Cowan & Associates
Title: Chairman
Born: New York, 1927
Education: Bachelor’s degree in English, UCLA
Most Admired People: His parents, former business partner Henry Rogers, clients Danny Kaye, Kirk Douglas, Merv Griffin, Audrey Hepburn
Turning Points in Career: Starting the Oscar publicity campaign and staying in business when Elizabeth Taylor and Frank Sinatra both quit Rogers & Cowan within an hour of each other
Hobbies: “People are my hobby”
Personal: Married, two children, three stepchildren
By ANN DONAHUE
Staff Reporter
An early draft of Warren Cowan’s autobiography is a page-long list of names that reads like this:
“What do Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra, Joan Crawford, Merv Griffin, Audrey Hepburn, Paul Newman, Danny Kaye, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Aaron Spelling have in common?
“I represented all of them.”
At 72 years old, Cowan is the dean of Hollywood publicists. He co-founded Rogers & Cowan in 1950 before selling the firm and starting his own company about 10 years ago. His firm now has 30 employees around the world representing 100 premier clients, including Taylor, Newman, Jack Lemmon and author Sidney Sheldon.
At Oscar time, he did publicity for “Life Is Beautiful” and “Shakespeare in Love,” which won the award for best picture.
Cowan first came to Los Angeles at the age of 15 to attend UCLA. At the time, the university had no communications department, so he spent hours toiling at the Daily Bruin to learn journalism.
Through the years, Cowan has seen Hollywood change from a place where stars were worshipped from afar to an environment in which many celebrities are willing to confess their personal problems on tabloid television shows.
Through it all, Cowan keeps searching for hard-working, talented people to represent. Who’s his favorite client? “My next one.”
Question: Has the business gotten any harder for you with tabloid television and the cult of celebrity in the United States?
Answer: Yeah, I kind of wish it weren’t that way. It was more interesting when you didn’t see your favorite movie star on every show talking about his or her problems. There was much more of a mystique.
On the other hand, with the advent of television and the Internet, it has greatly expanded the playing field. We have so many more opportunities and outlets and possibilities. There are a lot of changes since my early days, but there are a couple of constants as well. For example, in the days when I began, the one common denominator whether they admitted it or not was that every client wanted to be on the cover of Time magazine. I believe that’s true today as well. They still want to be on the cover of Time magazine. We have the cover of the new issue of (Tina Brown’s new magazine) Talk, which we started working on six months ago with Elizabeth Taylor. I’m kind of pleased that Hillary Clinton was on the first cover and Elizabeth Taylor is on the second. I hope to have Paul Newman on the cover in a couple of months.
Q: Is he one of your long-time clients?
A: When I talk about people I admire and look up to, I have to put Paul Newman right up there. He’s a giving person, and he cuts through a lot of the foolishness. He will not accept honors, and he is offered them all the time. He said, “When I reached 70, I decided I had been honored out.” To accept any more was not something he could deal with.
A few years ago I received a call from Bobby Wise, the famous director who was president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He asked where he could reach Paul, so I gave him the telephone number in Chicago where Newman was on location. A little while later, Wise called me back and said I had one strange client. I asked why, and he said he told (Newman) the governors of the academy had voted him a special Oscar and Paul had said he would let (Wise) know whether he would accept it.
So the next day, Newman calls me from some location and said, “Warren, I’d like you to call Bobby Wise for me and I’d appreciate it if you gave him the following message: First, tell him I’ve thought about it, and I would be pleased and flattered to accept the special Oscar. But I also want you to tell him I will not accept the gift certificate to Forest Lawn cemetery that usually accompanies the special Oscar.” That’s typical of him. He has a wonderful sense of humor.
Q: The Hollywood press corps hasn’t exactly been known as the nicest group of people in the world. Is the relationship kind of antagonistic with publicists?
A: I don’t think you can generalize. Most of the press has a job to do, and most of them are fair, I think. A lot of them are out to find the most negative things they can, and you have to deal with that the best you can. They’ve written some very unpleasant stories about Eddie Fisher and his new book. I just spoke to Elizabeth (Taylor) and said, “Why don’t we answer this?” She gave me a quote, which I distributed, and it ran everywhere.
You talk to the clients. Most of them are pretty sensible, and they know what they want to do. Sometimes you make recommendations and sometimes you talk it out with them.
Q: How do you get a story out to the media?
A: I like to create news, make news happen that is logical. I am responsible for the first celebrity sports tournament. Many years ago I handled a director named Frank Borzhge, who had been an Oscar-winning director. I remember saying to my partner that Frank doesn’t have anything going now. I don’t know what to write about him. What does he do? And Henry (Rogers) said that (Borzhge) played golf every day. Soon I made the Frank Borzhge Invitational Golf Tournament. I learned so much from that little tournament how many stars are jocks.
To this one-day tournament came Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire, Mickey Rooney and many others. The second year we got Marilyn Monroe to be the scorekeeper. I also arranged for Frank Sinatra to land on the first tee in a helicopter, get out carrying Bing Crosby’s bag, and caddy for him. It was all fun and made for good coverage.
Q: How is business now as an independent?
A: My late partner and I sold Rogers & Cowan about 10 years ago to a British conglomerate. When I left, almost $1.5 million in billing left Rogers & Cowan. I had a two-year, non-competition clause, but many of those clients waited for me. It’s been very gratifying. The business now is much larger than I had wanted it or intended it to be. I was going to open a small boutique, but it hasn’t turned out that way.
Q: How did you create the first Oscar campaign?
A: I was handling Joan Crawford, who had been called box-office poison by the theater exhibitors. She got a movie at Warner Bros. called “Mildred Pierce.” To try and help her, I wrote an item and gave it to a columnist, who to my amazement printed it word for word. The item said something like, “The top brass at Warner Bros. is jumping with glee at the performance of Joan Crawford in ‘Mildred Pierce.’ They say she’s a sure contender for the Oscar.” Now, they ran that, and I thought, if I say that over and over again and the performance is actually there when the picture comes out, people will think of her in terms of Oscars. We took out the first Oscar ad in the trade publications. That was the beginning of what now is a multimillion-dollar series of Oscar campaigns conducted by every studio, every producer, every actor.
Q: What would be your first step if you got a client who was an up-and-coming actress? How would you get her name out there?
A: First, I think, why is this person coming to us? What is this person’s problem? It’s not necessarily a problem, but it’s almost as if you’re going to a doctor. There’s something wrong with your shoulder and you want it to be corrected. With most of the clients who come to us, I have to figure out who is the target audience. If it’s a young personality, it’s invariably to help them get jobs or to get better jobs. If you were to come to me, I would say, how do I get (your) name known to everyone? I would try to reach the producers, directors, casting agents, heads of studios. It follows that stories in the Hollywood Reporter are more important than a big spread in the Cincinnati Post.
On the other hand, if we’re handling a television show or a movie, we want to reach as many consumers as we can, so we approach it differently. Sometimes you use the tabloids, believe it or not. For two years we arranged for Jenny Craig to write a column in the National Enquirer answering questions on lifestyle, health, diet and so on. There are two dozen talk-show possibilities, and all of them have big audiences. Some of them are more prestigious than others. I have clients who look forward to being on shows like “Inside the Actors Studio” and others that are glad to be on “Dateline” or “20/20.”
Q: How are you paid?
A: Almost invariably it’s a monthly retainer. I don’t have contracts, and I contend that if a client is unhappy, they shouldn’t be with me. We have a general retainer of about $40,000 a year and expenses above that. We will take on projects, and that’s a different financial arrangement depending on the length of time and so on.
Q: How do you decide whom to represent? Do they come to you,, or do you go to them?
A: I think it’s a little of both. Most of them are referred through attorneys or managers or other clients. I try not to be seduced by money. I try not to take on clients when I’m not sure what to do for them.
