Product Description

Eddie Mannix and Howard Strickling are virtually unknown outside of Hollywood and little-remembered even there, but as General Manager and Head of Publicity for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, they lorded over all the stars in Hollywood's golden age from the 1920s through the 1940s—including legends like Garbo, Dietrich, Gable and Garland. When MGM stars found themselves in trouble, it was Eddie and Howard who took care of them—solved their problems, hid their crimes, and kept their secrets. They were "the Fixers." At a time when image meant everything and the stars were worth millions to the studios that owned them, Mannix and Strickling were the most important men at MGM. Through a complex web of contacts in every arena, from reporters and doctors to corrupt police and district attorneys, they covered up some of the most notorious crimes and scandals in Hollywood history, keeping stars out of jail and, more importantly, their names out of the papers. They handled problems as diverse as the murder of Paul Bern (husband of MGM's biggest star, Jean Harlow), the studio-directed drug addictions of Judy Garland, the murder of Ted Healy (creator of The Three Stooges) at the hands of Wallace Beery, and arranging for an unmarried Loretta Young to adopt her own child—a child fathered by a married Clark Gable.

Through exhaustive research and interviews with contemporaries, this is the never-before-told story of Eddie Mannix and Howard Strickling. The dual biography describes how a mob-related New Jersey laborer and the quiet son of a grocer became the most powerful men at the biggest studio in the world.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #495951 in Books
• Published on: 2004-11-29
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 325 pages

About the Author
E.J. Fleming is also the author of The Movieland Directory (2004) and Hollywood Death and Scandal Sites (2000). He lives in Barrington, Illinois.

Customer Reviews

EJ Got It Right!
The Fixers is one of the best books I've ever read. I've reread it a few times and each time I find it more riveting. EJ Fleming is right in what he's written about Eddie Mannix and Howard Strickling. I've known people in the industry and they agree, this book is a must read and all true. Variety earlier this year raved about it. It's worth the buy!

A LONG WAIT ........
I have been waiting 30 years for this story to be told - now that I have read it, there are some things that probably should have remained in the dark, if only for memories sake! The author did a superior job of researching his information and presenting it in an unbiased fashion- weighing in when he felt it necessary to lodge his own conclusions. As a long time student of this period in Hollywood with a large library of books to support it, I haved learned many of these "secrets" in my travels through the non-fiction world that has been available through the years but I must admit that there were some unpleasant surprizes in this book that had only been hinted at in others and many times, incorrectly. If the movie "Hollywoodland" had not traversed the George Reeves murder so thoroughly, this telliing would have mined a lot of clues by itself. In "The Fixers", many a rumor has now been put to rest.

Mediocre at best - a missed opportunity!
Initially I enjoyed reading the book although I did find the author's style of writing a little annoying. However I quickly became concerned about the level of research the author had conducted for each scandal that was discussed. In some cases it seemed to be fine and quite well thought out, for example his take on Clark Gable's involvement in a couple of road accidents and then at other times he seemed to rely solely on another persons' book for his research. The worst example I came across which really irritated me was his take on the death of Thelma Todd, the extent of his research seems to have been that he read Hot Toddy and has taken it as Gospel. I have read Hot Toddy and it had no list of references to help prove that Thelma Todd was murdered in fact it read like a completely fictionalised biography. From this point on I noticed just how often the author made reference to other people's books for his research and I began to think that this book was little more than a cobbling together of all the racy and interesting gossip from lots of other books. To be honest this wouldn't have bothered me as I quite enjoy reading a real hatchet job of a book about film stars, reading all the gossip and comparing books about the same person. However I don't think that this was what the author set out to do and I feel cheated that he didn't look more closely at each story and assess them properly which is what I thought he was going to do, comparing different takes on a scandal or piece of gossip and then giving his own opinion and research.

Considering the book is about Strickling and Mannix they do not really come across as the main focus of the book. I don't feel that I know much more about them than I did from reading other Hollywood books. There are very few pictures of them, in fact the best one of each of them is on the cover. There are no personal pictures of them with their families or of their wives. There are quite a few pictures in the book but they are all standard black and white pictures and seem to be stock photos of the big Hollywood stars. I know what they look like! I would have liked to have seen photos of the other people that were involved in the scandals or pictures taken at the time the scandal occurred. For example why talk about Lila Leeds' beauty and not bother to include a photo?

The book was very expensive for what it was.