User:JSFarman/sandbox/Pat Kingsley

Pat Kingsley
Born	Patricia Ratchford 1932 (age 91–92) Gastonia, North Carolina
Nationality	American
Occupation	Publicist
Years active	1954 - 2009
Employer	PMK
Spouse	Walter Kingsley (divorced)
Children	1

Pat Kingsley is an American publicist. A founder of PMK, she influenced the practice of celebrity PR, shaping "not only stars' images but also entertainment journalism." Once regarded as one of the most powerful people in Hollywood, she represented actors including Marilyn Monroe, Doris Day, Matthew McConaughey, Natalie Wood, Robert Redford, Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson, Tom Cruise, Frank Sinatra, Jodie Foster, Lily Tomlin, Sharon Stone, Candice Bergen, Mary Tyler Moore, and Sally Field over the course of her career.

Career

Fontainebleau Hotel, NBC, Rogers and Cowan

At 21, Kingsley moved on to Miami Beach. With the help of a high school girlfriend, she was hired to work in the publicity department of the just-opened Fountainebleau Hotel. She was primarily assigned to the television shows that were broadcast live from the hotel, including The Colgate Comedy Hour. Learning "the power of the pencil," she frequently picked up bar tabs for celebrities and members of the press visiting the hotel.

In 1959, after living briefly in New York (where she worked for NBC), Kingsley moved to Los Angeles. She was promoted to a position as a publicist at the PR company Rogers and Cowan after working as agency founder Warren Cowan's secretary. Her first three clients were Doris Day, Natalie Wood and Samantha Eggar; she said her primary responsibility as a new publicist “‘was to keep people at bay with Doris.” She planted stories in the press but was uncomfortable with the gossip columns of Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons; although considered vital, she avoided their coverage.

Pickwick PR, PMK

Kingsley married a New York-based television executive in 1967 and returned to New York. In 1969, following the birth of her daughter, she founded Pickwick Public Relations with Lois Smith, Patricia Newcomb, and Gerry Johnson. She said it was a "great time to be in the business," noting that as the studio system ended, and actors no longer worked exclusively for one studio, the PR business changed: "The studios weren’t doing personal PR work anymore. Everybody was on their own, and independent publicists were gobbling up the major stars." Pickwick had approximately 15 clients when it was founded, including

A liberal activist with anti-nuclear and pro-environmental leanings, she helped unleash a flood of contributions from celebrities and Hollywood executives with her early endorsement last year of Democratic presidential contender Michael S. Dukakis.

Notes and sources

After she suffered a stroke, Sharon Stone said she heard the voice of Kingsley saying kind things to her.” This is great - illustrates the kind of relationships she had with her clients

2001 - PMK merges with HBH to become PMK/HBH.

Tom Cruise

Kinglsey represented Tom Cruise from 1992-2004. Her most high-profile client, , Vanity Fair wrote that they “‘could almost finish each other’s sentence.’” Kingsley was often credited for Cruise's ascent to superstardom. Like most of her clients, she protected him from negative coverage; Kinglsey dictated the media narrative.

Cruise fired Kingsley after she advised him to stop talking about Scientology. He replaced Kingsley with his sister, Lee Anne DeVette, who was also a Scientologist. During the year she represented him, Cruise took a "massive hit with the tabloids," who focused heavily on “his failed relationship with Cruz, his growing romance with Katie Holmes...and his Scientology practice.” Cruise later hired Amanda Lundberg, who was once part of Kingsley’s team.”

In 1975, Kingsley contacted her then-client Lily Tomlin about an opportunity to be featured on the cover of Time if she would “‘come out.’" (Tomlin shared this incident during a 2019 interview conducted by Ellen DeGeneres on her show.) Tomlin stated, “‘It was a hard decision to make, so I fell down on the side of probably -- after what you [Ellen] went through -- probably good sense.’” Due to the fact that she wanted to be recognized in Time for her acting accomplishments, Tomlin regretted not accepting their offer. (This is great but paraphrase rather than using quotes and keep the focus on Pat!)

19xx-200X: PMK/HBH merger, Tom Cruise, XXX, XXX

Kingsley stepped down from her management position [at PMK/HBH] in 2007. She continued to serve as a consultant for two years.

In the beginning of 2009, Nikki Finke from Deadline stated that Kingsley was “tired of the whole PR scene.” The necessary responsibilities associated with being a successful publicist for the best in the business (“‘The travelling. The handholding. The awards season.‘“) had finally taken a toll on Kingsley. She mentioned that she wanted to work on charitable causes when she left PMK/HBH. Jimmy Carter’s Habitat for Humanity was one of the charities Kingsley mentioned that she wanted to get involved with. Kingsley was the recipient of the 2009 Les Mason Award.

Personal life

Kingsley lives in Los Angeles. In 1968, she married a television executive, Walter Kingsley. They had one child together, a daughter named Janis. She has a son named Ethan. Pat and Walter divorced in 1978. He died in 2010.

In a 2013 interview with journalist Stephen Galloway from The Hollywood Reporter, Kingsley talked about her “growing” spiritual “doubts.” She was concerned about her “mortality” at the time. The issue was exacerbated by “her loss of faith.” At one point in her life, Kingsley “read the Bible every day” and “even taught Sunday school in her 20s.” She stated that she now doesn’t “‘know that there’s somebody out there waiting to welcome me into the pearly gates.’” She is “‘more and more thinking that maybe this is it and there’s nothing afterward.’”

These are just notes + refs etc.

In Cannes and Los Angeles, Two Hollywood Old Guard Publicists Flex Their Muscles - A sign of things to come? May 16, 2016 | New York Observer, The (NY) Author/Byline: Oliver Jones | Section: Arts & Entertainment 1077 Words n those days, a reporter could not so much as look askance at Tom Cruise or Jodie Foster, two prominent clients of Ms. Kingsley's, without both the reporter and their publication being threatened with a complete freeze out, not just to the stars in question but to Ms. Kingsley's entire glittery client list.

Things began to shift around the turn the century. Editors like Us Weekly's Bonnie Fuller discovered the effectiveness of bypassing the gatekeepers who were always saying no to them anyway and relying almost exclusively on paparazzi and unidentified sources to keep the celebrity news machinery greased. (Not uncommonly, these entities were one and the same.)

One could point to Mr. Cruise's firing of Ms. Kingsley in 2004 over his increasing desire to discuss Scientology during promotional interviews as one of the events that helped to supercharge the new celebrity economy.

Netflix series - "Who was Dodi Fayed, Princess Diana's boyfriend on The Crown? The son of billionaire Mohamed Al-Fayed led a luxurious life ... and had that historic whirlwind romance shown on Netflix's hit series" - they hired Pat

November 19, 2022

South China Morning Post: Web Edition Articles (Hong Kong)

Lexile: 1550, grade level(s): >12

Business of Cruise Control

More info

-- attrib Showbiz 411 - "Pat Kingsley protected Tom Cruise from the media. She was a pioneer in her industry, the person who brokered her A-list clients for her smaller clients. She had power and control over journalists, and if you fucked with Tom Cruise, you fucked with her entire client list Tommy Davis had taken it upon himself to run the operation after insisting that Tom fire Kingsley. Tommy had a folder of “intel” that he had collected of Pat Kinglsey’s entire history. There were copies of financial records and other sensitive information, and photographs revealing private details of her life that Davis felt could be damaging to her if there was any backlash to Cruise after he fired her. He called it a “dirt file" https://www.showbiz411.com/2020/07/27/leah-remini-says-in-unpublished-manuscript-that-tom-cruise-scientology-lackey-tried-to-blackmail-superstar-hollywood-publicist-pat-kingsley

A liberal activist with anti-nuclear and pro-environmental leanings (LAT High)

(mostly photos)

- not a great source

Kingsley was 34 and working in Los Angeles for Rogers & Cowan when she married Walter Kingsley, a New York TV executive nine years her senior back to New York to get married, gave birth to her daughter, and within two year

n 1980, Kingsley was divorced, living back in Los Angeles and partnered with the rival Maslansky Koenigsberg in PMK (All LA Times 1997)

Tom Cruise, Robert Redford, Al Pacino, Jodie Foster, Lily Tomlin, Jack Nicholson, Sharon Stone, Doris Day, Natalie Wood, Candice Bergen, Mary Tyler Moore, Jack Nicholson and Sally Field.)

- Howard Strickling when he was MGM head of publicity

Kingsley is regarded as the woman who rewrote the rules governing Hollywood P.R. She was the first to demand cover stories, the first to elevate publicists themselves to the ranks of star. ess agent Pat Kingsley specialized in keeping things quiet, though she began her career doing quite the opposite: in the early 1960s, planting stories with the press.

She worked with Frank Sinatra, she helped Marilyn Monroe's cat give birth. She was the main publicist assigned to Doris Day and Natalie Wood. And after a few years she emerged, as Warren Cowan, now in his eighties, puts it, 'a top publicist'.

the most powerful woman in Hollywood. Sh techniques are legion and legendary - believing overexposure to be one of the prime risks of celebrity, she will drastically curb the number of interviews her clients give, she'll demand that her stars appear on the covers of magazines or not at all, that they have the right of veto over writers and photographers, that they get copy approval, and often she herself will be present throughout the interviewover?'

with Joan Crawford and Charlie Chaplin Pat Kingsley wa s born Patricia Ratchford in 1932 in Gastonia, N.C.he elder of two children late teens, Kingsley left home for the all-girls Winthrop College but dropped out after two years and began to roam around the country with an itch to wander, first moving to Atlanta, where she worked as a secretary for a plywood company; then to Reno, Nev., where she lived with her aunt and uncle; and on to Miami, joining the publicity department of the recently opened Fontainebleau hotel (tons of bio info)

In a 2013 interview with journalist Stephen Galloway from The Hollywood Reporter, Kingsley talked about her “growing” spiritual “doubts.” She was concerned about her “mortality” at the time. The issue was exacerbated by “her loss of faith.” At one point in her life, Kingsley “read the Bible every day” and “even taught Sunday school in her 20s.” She stated that she now doesn’t “‘know that there’s somebody out there waiting to welcome me into the pearly gates.’” She is “‘more and more thinking that maybe this is it and there’s nothing afterward.’”

Kingsley demanded magazine covers in exchange for access to her biggest clients. She approved or rejected writers assigned to magazine stories, once vetoing seven writers for a Rolling Stone cover story on Tom Cruise. Regarded as one of the most powerful women in Hollywood, she was known for playing hardball. She believed that overexposure was not

Ms. Kingsley's most discussed triumphs was placing her client Matthew McConaughey on the cover of Vanity Fair at a time when he was almost unknown. The August 1996 article hailed him as a major new star, although Mr. McConaughey has still not emerged as one. s. Kingsley, Tom Goldstein, dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, said: She's changed the rules. And although it may be to her credit as a publicist, it is not to the general well-being of journalism as a field and those who are consumers of journalism. There's a feeling that favorable coverage is traded in some fashion, but what the audience isn't let in on is the secret.

And she's not above playing hardball, holding magazines virtually hostage. She has had the agency withhold clients from publications when she didn't like the writers assigned. She has waged boycotts against several magazines, including Rolling Stone and People, when they bumped PMK clients off their covers. She has demanded written guarantees of covers before providing access to a client. Most recently, PMK clashed with Allure when that magazine published unauthorized computer-altered photos of PMK client Mira Sorvino. (from LA Times)

represented actors, including Marilyn Monroe, Doris Day, Natalie Wood, Robert Redford, Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson, Tom Cruise, Frank Sinatra, Jodie Foster, Lily Tomlin, Sharon Stone, Candice Bergen, Mary Tyler Moore, Sally Field and others.<j

Second graph should be about her influence on PR and her power (these are the basics) Pat Kingsley protected Tom Cruise from the media. She was a pioneer in her industry, the person who brokered her A-list clients for her smaller clients. She had power and control over journalists, and if you fucked with Tom Cruise, you fucked with her entire client list

Kingsley restricted the media's access to her clients. She lamented the advent of Twitter and the influence of celebrity bloggers such as Perez Hilton. "You lose control so quickly," she said. “Publicity in my day was all about control.” She represented Tom Cruise for (X) years; she rejected fourteen writers the magazine suggested before approving (X) to write a cover story.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2005/sep/25/marketingandpr.features

e media had started asking about his Scientology, which he claimed had cured his dyslexia. Hired Pat - kept him out of the tabloids - she had journalists sign contracts covering questions before doing an interview - she would threaten Kingsley was adamant about keeping Cruise out of the tabloids. At press junkets, she demanded that journalists sign contracts swearing not to sell their quotes to the supermarket rags. She insisted interviewers destroy their tapes after his segment had aired. Sh kept the media on track through threats re: access - she was litigious

External links

• NPR interview