Working With CC Goldwater Made PR Feel Like Running a Yacht Club
Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this article:
How a high-powered Manhattan PR firm in the 1980s navigated celebrity clients, corporate giants and city campaigns.
Why hiring CC Goldwater brought unexpected political depth and star-studded connections to the agency.
What it was like to operate at the intersection of media, politics and glamour during PR’s golden era.
Yes, exercising our fondest memories helps keep them fresh and vivid in our minds, which is why I often recall highlights of my star-filled years in the Big Apple during the roaring 1980s after I left NBC and my role as vice president and assistant to then-CEO Fred Silverman.
That’s when I started TransMedia Group, and my PR firm was then courageously headquartered in that ever-vibrant town that has so much difficulty sleeping, Manhattan.
Let me share with you one of my star-filled memory workouts at a time when my firm had a client roster sparkling with celebrity clients whose reputations were entrusted to me and were now mine to enshrine even brighter.
Besides arranging publicity for movie stars like Elke Sommer and promoting Kathryn Crosby’s book about her fabulous life with Bing, I would publicize boat parades featuring Bob Hope and star-studded Bing Crosby celebrity golf tournaments hobnobbing with celebs like NFL coach John Madden, no relation.
Also in my publicity crosshairs then was still America’s largest company, AT&T, and I even represented the City of New York, casting TV star Mr. T as the pitchman for fair housing in the city, where I had my own apartment and cadre of publicists, some of whom were themselves celebs.
One of them was an attractive young gal from Arizona whose grandfather was a U.S. senator who became the Republican Party’s candidate for president of the United States, Barry Goldwater. Ironically, in later years, she would stand up at the Democratic National Convention and nominate Barack Obama for president. She always called them the way she saw them as the most fit to lead our country.
To have CC Goldwater working for you during the day, and then at night she’d be out on a champagne and caviar date at posh nightclubs with one of the sons of Prince Rainier of Monaco, who married one of my favorite film stars, Grace Kelly, made me feel at times more like the commodore at a yacht club than a CEO of a PR firm.
CC would go on to produce a documentary film about her grandfather titled “Mr. Conservative: Goldwater on Goldwater,” exploring Barry Goldwater’s life and career, from his time as an Arizona senator to his tumultuous presidential campaign in 1964, losing decisively to Lyndon Johnson.
Goldwater’s film features interviews with notable figures such as Hillary Clinton, John McCain and others, providing a personal and historical perspective on Goldwater’s considerable impact on American politics.
Lyndon Baines Johnson, also known as LBJ, was the 36th president of the United States, serving from 1963 to 1969. A Southern Democrat, he became president after the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
