Quite.
The pictures alone — dozens of ’em — attest to the fact that Newman might have to one day be the first guy on his block to undergo a full elbow transplant.
After 76 years, his elbows have to be practically rubbed to the point of disintegration.
There he is with Jim Henson. Charlton Heston. David Carradine. Stephen King. Ron Howard. Gene Wilder.
Cheech and Chong.
Chewbacca.
Roddy McDowall and Kim Hunter in full-blown Cornelius/Zira/“Planet of the Apes” makeup.
“I need to figure out a way to get my life together,” Newman complained as he rifled through photos, clippings, stills and God knows what else in his Springfield basement.
Out came a hand-written thank-you letter dated Aug. 26, 1968 — from Stanley Kubrick.
Out came Newman’s old business card.
“Sanford Newman, press representative, MGM.”
As in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Louie B.
The lion.
The stars.
“MGM,” Newman explained, sitting sidesaddle in a recliner, legs over the arm, “was the royalty of the motion picture business. You were above the A-list. You were in a world the likes of which you’ll never see again.”
Sanford “Rik” Newman — a Cleveland native who came to Springfield in the early 1970s as ad director of the locally based Chakeres Theatres chain — was part of a bygone era.
Granted, when he was based out of Chicago in the late ’60s as Metro’s Midwest publicist, that era was in its final throes.
MGM itself was in its twilight.
But the stories he can tell offer a stark contrast to today’s multimedia universe, where the people behind the scenes could just as easily be working for a bank.
A gimmick
Before he was promoting movies and movie stars, Newman was promoting strippers.
“I was promoting anything,” he joked.
He still has a few of their old 8-by-10s — another difference between then and now; strippers had their own glossies — tucked away in a photo album, including one from the “world’s tallest exotic.”
She stood 6 feet 8 inches.
“The movie industry at the time was all gimmick,” Newman said. “It wasn’t just a TV ad. It was showmanship.”
When he wasn’t escorting Telly Savalas around the Midwest to promote “The Dirty Dozen,” he was doing his best to get press, any way he could, for the studio’s latest picture.
For the Milwaukee opening of “The Fearless Vampire Killers,” Roman Polanski’s 1967 horror satire, Newman stuck Miss Wisconsin in a casket for a photo op.
The press bit.
In another photo, two staffers for the Milwaukee Journal look on, amused, as a young woman bearing plastic fangs casually drinks blood from an IV.
It was actually just cherry soda.
For the film’s Chicago opening, Newman placed a woman in a store window wearing Bela Lugosi’s cape from “Dracula” and, if you could make her laugh, you won two free tickets.
A young critic named Roger Ebert, new to the Chicago Sun-Times, gave the stunt a more positive review than he did the actual movie.
A different time
“We used to do all kind of stuff,” Newman said.
The reasoning was simple.
“To get people wanting to see films,” he said. “You don’t have people like me anymore.”
While working for Chakeres to promote the original 1974 version of “Gone in 60 Seconds,” Newman arranged to have director/actor Toby Halicki steal the Dayton police chief’s car.
He cleared it with the department’s public relations person, only that person apparently never informed the police.
Halicki was arrested.
The story ended up above the fold on Page 1 of the Dayton paper.
Direct hit.
“On the movie page, you’re fighting other people,” Newman said. “Off the movie page, I own it.”
’Twas indeed a different time.
“Movies were king,” he said. “TV was a dirty thing.”
But then movie publicity became increasingly geared toward the tube.
“We were a dying breed,” Newman said. “Our job was to get the film seen by people outside the movie pages. TV wasn’t the answer. If you had a horror film, would you promote it on ‘Beverly Hillbillies’?”
For a guy like Newman, a first-generation American Jew, the movies had been an escape from the slums — a shelter from insults during World War II.
“Louis B. Mayer had an idea of what America was,” Newman said, “but there was never a St. Louis like the one he created in ‘Meet Me in St. Louis.’ ”
As a Jew, he believed he only had three possible occupations to choose from — he could be a milkman like his father, he could run a clothing store or he could enter show business.
“I wasn’t going into the rag business. I wasn’t going in the milk business,” he said. “I had to figure out a job where I’d never get a callous on my hand.”
After serving on a submarine in the Navy in the early ’50s, Newman entered Ohio State University to study journalism.
It was at OSU, as entertainment editor for The Lantern, that a vague invitation went out to the Columbus press corps — a major studio was having a press luncheon for a major personality.
“They didn’t say who,” Newman said.
Because they wouldn’t say who, Newman recalled, nobody showed up. Except him.
It was Alfred Hitchcock, promoting “North by Northwest.”
“Talk about luck,” Newman said.
They just sat and talked.
His big break
Newman’s presence endeared him to MGM’s press rep, who later got him a job at a theater in Baltimore to gain experience in advertising.
It was there, in 1966, that Newman thought about paying his parents a visit — but he didn’t want to have to pay for the trip home himself.
So 20th Century Fox sent him to the World Science Fiction Convention in Cleveland with a print of a new movie it didn’t know how to sell, “Fantastic Voyage.”
The screening was a success.
In fact, the ad director of the Ford Motor Co. was in attendance, Newman said, and even created a whole campaign around the movie — “Take a fantastic voyage in a Ford.”
Newman had just scored his big break.
Summoned to Chicago, Newman became just one of six MGM press reps in the country, an incredible job that ended almost as soon as it started. It was over by 1969.
These were the final days of MGM as a powerhouse.
He took Lee Marvin on tour to promote “Point Blank.”
“I didn’t think I was ready,” Newman said. “I had never bought TV time or radio time. I was playing everything by the seat of my ass. I didn’t know what would work.”
He found himself at a complete loss with Kubrick’s 1968 masterpiece “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
It was no fault of Kubrick’s.
“He was a nice guy if you could talk to him on his level,” Newman said. “He didn’t want you to go gaga over him. He saw everybody as being an individual, and he wanted you to be an individual. He talked to you honestly.”
But his movie was like nothing else before it.
“People would come out of the screening,” Newman said, “and they didn’t know what they saw.”
The movie became a hit, though, but not because of anything Newman did.
“ ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ became a success,” he said, “because people would get in the front row with their bong pipes.”
Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0352 or amcginn@coxohio.com.
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