Madden Mischief

Memories are just like our bodies needing exercise to keep them healthy, fit and fresh, so they’ll stay vigorously vivid longer in our minds, hopefully to the very end of those fantastic events we call our lives.

This is why I often recall highlights of my star-filled years in the Big Apple during what for me were the roaring 1980’s shortly after I left the Peacock Network, NBC where I was a high-ranking, proud as can be, peacock.

I had just concluded a most climactic part of my network TV career as vice president, assistant to the president, who was then the ever-pulsating CEO Fred Silverman.  I was now heading for a starring role as president of my own, soon to become a paramount PR firm, TransMedia Group.

When I started my public relations firm, it was then courageously headquartered in that ever-vibrant city that has so much difficulty sleeping–Manhattan. 

Above you see me happily beside my late beloved wife Angela, about whom I wrote a heartfelt book, giving it the same title as the smash hit romantic comedy-drama TV series “The Love Boat” starring Gavin MacLeod as the captain that I once promoted when I was the PR director at ABC.  Angela was a smash hit herself, giving me such wonderful offspring as Angel, Andrew and Adrienne.

Beside her in the picture is Kathryn Crosby, once a dear client of the PR firm I started when I left 30 Rockefeller Plaza where I had a private office with my own personal secretary eight fabulous floors above the famous skating rink where I’d fall on my a__ask me not where! 

So, let me now share with you one of my star-filled memory workouts at a time when my firm had a client roster that sparkled with celebrity clients whose reputations were entrusted to me, mine to enshrine even bigger and brighter.

Besides arranging publicity for movie stars like Elke Sommer and promoting Kathryn Crosby’s book about her fabulous life with the ultimate crooner, Bing, I publicized boat parades featuring comedian Bob Hope and star-studded Bing Crosby celebrity golf tournaments hobnobbing with celebs like NFL coach John Madden, whose giant hand would swallow mine when we met at Pebble Beach.

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 their pitchman for fair housing in the city, where I had my own apartment and a cadre of publicists, some of whom were themselves celebs. 

One was an attractive young gal from Arizona named CC 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.  CC always called them the way she sees them as most fit to lead our country.

Wanting to double-check some of the facts in this story, as time can sometimes cloud them in our memory, I went looking for CC to interview her and found her just a few days ago vacationing in Lisbon.  

There she was, sounding still fresh as the proverbial daisy and after just a few seconds talking to her my mind returned to that oasis we all have in our brains, the past.  In her case, it struck gold.

To have CC Goldwater working for you during the day, and then at night she’d be out on a champagne/caviar date at posh Manhattan nightclubs with the son of Prince Rainier of Monaco, his princely dad then married to one of my favorite film princesses, Grace Kelly, made me feel at times more like the commadore at an exclusive yacht club than a CEO of a PR firm in Manhattan.

CC would go on to become a film producer, one 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 President John F. Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, following Kennedy’s abhorrent assassination.

Goldwater’s film features interviews with notable figures such as Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and others, providing a personal and historical perspective on the considerable impact her grandfather had on American politics.  Lyndon Baines Johnson, known as LBJ, was a Southern Democrat who became the 36th president of the United States, serving from 1963 to 1969 after that terrible assassination.

I remember it like it was yesterday!

Tom Madden is still doing memorable PR, only now with his daughter Adrienne Mazzone as president of TransMedia Group today headquartered in Boca Raton, FL.  When he’s not making clients happily richer and more famous, he’s writing books and his weekly blog at www.maddenmischief.com.  Today he is happily married to his beautiful Brazilian wife Rita De Cassia Pierotti-Madden.