If you happened to be walking through Times Square one spring day in 1978, you might have been surprised to see Eartha Kitt parading down Broadway on the back of a camel.
It was a stunt designed to generate publicity for "Timbuktu," a mediocre musical she was starring in — and it worked. The next day, all newspapers ran a photo of Kitt on her camel.
The maestro behind the stunt was Josh Ellis, a junior executive at Solters & Roskin, Broadway's leading press agent at the time. Ellis went on to handle press for some of the biggest hits of the 1980s — "42nd Street," "Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music," "The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby," "Big River" and "Fences."
He pulled off all sorts of stunts, managed egos and learned the art of spin from the master — legendary producer David Merrick.
From those experiences, Ellis has fashioned a one-man show, "Call My Publicist! The Starry Education of a Broadway Press Agent." Directed by Gretchen Cryer, it will play the York Theatre April 8 as part of a series of readings of new works.
Ellis plays himself.
I always wanted to be a theater critic, a theater press agent or a Broadway star … I chose to be a press agent. But when you get a subscription to Variety for your bar mitzvah, you pretty much know the arrow is pointing in that direction. - Josh Ellis
"I always wanted to be a theater critic, a theater press agent or a Broadway star," he says. "Through process of elimination, as I describe in the show, I chose to be a press agent. But when you get a subscription to Variety for your bar mitzvah, you pretty much know the arrow is pointing in that direction."
Growing up outside Philadelphia, Ellis memorized box-office grosses the way other kids memorized sports scores. He saw every show that came through town on its way to New York.
"Most of those shows are 50 years old," he says. "But I can remember 'Ben Franklin in Paris' with Robert Preston better than I can remember what I saw last week."
Merrick loomed large in his life. Ellis loved seeing the producer on late- night talk shows and reading about his exploits in the papers.
As a press apprentice, he worked on "Mack & Mabel," which Merrick produced in 1974.
"On the first day of rehearsal, Merrick was introducing the actress who's going to play Mabel, and it's not the actress in the press release I'm handing out to reporters," Ellis recalls.
Merrick had fired the actress, Marcia Rodd, and replaced her with Bernadette Peters. But he didn't bother to tell his press agent.
In his show, Ellis recounts adventures with Yul Brynner ("knew how to manipulate the press"), Carol Channing ("nobody gave a better interview") and Claudette Colbert ("taught me how to light actors for photo shoots").
"These people were my teachers," he says, "that's why the subtitle is a 'Starry Education.'
And everything they taught me is still applicable. We read about the Kardashians. The fact is, the Kardashians have press agents. The President of the United States has press agents. Even Pope Francis has a press agent. They call him the 'President of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications.' But what do you think that is? A press agent! The whole point is to get your message across and get it out first. The tool kit is exactly the same. I just happened to have applied it in the theater."
Press agent Josh Ellis
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