Tinseltown Troubleshooters
Some have argued that Shakespeare’s Friar Lawrence may have been the original “fixer,” working on behalf of Juliet, whose boyfriend Romeo has just killed her cousin (Ooops!). Trying to avert a bloody gang war between the Montagues and Capulets, Lawrence comes up with an elaborate scheme which had the two young lovers faking their deaths.
SPOILER ALERT: it doesn’t work.
Still, in setting a precedent that would become a glorious tradition in literature and film, the slippery go-between Lawrence manages to dodge the blame.
The Shamus Game, of course, is chockfull of similar so-called fixers. Troubleshooters. Go-betweens. Public Relations Experts. Private Eyes. They know where the bodies lie. Sometimes literally. And no place is more full of them than in the image-conscious film industry.
The original Hollywood fixers like W.T. Ballard’s Bill Lennox and Robert Leslie Bellems’ roscoe-toting Dan Turner were on the side of the angels for the most part, saving the reputations of producers, directors, screenwriters and various actors and actresses in distress. They cleaned up messes, restored reputations, hid scandals, revealed the true killers and kept the star-making machinery running smoothly. They were the fixers, the troubleshooters, the crisis managers. They were guys knocking on doors, taking down names and pulling the shades. They were the good guys.
At least in the pages of the pulps. In real life? Not so much.
Their job was not just to find out whodunnit, but to cover it up.
Fixers like Eddie Mannix and Harry Strickling kept secrets secret, toned down or totally erased various scandals and potential career-destroying and bothersome facts, including unwanted pregnancies, homosexuality, affairs, abortions, suicides, ODs and everything else, up to and including (it was rumored) homicide.
Eventually, fiction caught up with reality, and it often became more and more difficult to look upon the fixers as “the good guys.”
But here are some of them. You decide…
- Bill Lennox by W.T. Ballard
- Dan Turner by Robert Leslie Bellem
- Jerry Banning by Eustace L. Adams
- Tony Key by Steve Fisher
- Freddy Otash by James Elroy
- Eddie Mannix by Ethan and Joel Cohen (Hail, Caesar!)
- Ray Donovan by Ann Biderman
- Mae Pruett by Jordan Harper
- Dash Fuller by Nick Kolakowski
FURTHER INVESTIGATION
- Fixers
Of course, Hollywood doesn’t have a monopoly on sleaze. Not be a long shot. There are plenty of other industries and other nasty bits of business that need to be sorted out, cleaned up and ultimately buried. Here are some of them — and their area of expertise. - City of Angels, City of Dicks
Los Angeles Eyes
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. And that was the Hollywood sign, circa 1973.
