In Memoriam

Friday, May 16-------Warren Cowan, 87, one of Hollywood's most influential press agents who represented a who's who of A-list stars during a seven-decade career, has died of heart failure and cancer at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. 

Cowan began working as a publicist while still at student at UCLA. One of his first clients was actress Linda Darnell. In 1950, he became a partner with Henry Rogers in the firm Rogers & Cowan, which grew to become the largest public relations agency in Los Angeles. Its clients included such stars as Danny Kaye, Kirk Douglas, Frank Sinatra, Tony Curtis, Shirley MacLaine and Elton John.

Among his legendary achievements, he helped the then out-of-favor Joan Crawford win her sole Academy Award for her performance in MILDRED PIERCE (1945) and represented future President Ronald Reagan, who was all but washed up in Hollywood, become host of the television series "General Electric Theater", which made him a household name and cemented his future reputation as the "great communicator".

In 1988, Rogers & Cowan was sold to British conglomerate Shandwick, and six years later Cowan set up a new company, Warren Cowan & Associates. Even though many of the stars whose careers he guided had faded from the scene, he continued to introduce new personalities to Hollywood, including Italian actor Roberto Benigni, who surprised all the pundits when he won the Best Actor Oscar for his performance in LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL.

Cowan was a fixture of classic Hollywood and did not feel comfortable in today's "say-anything" press atmosphere, where the private lives of celebrities are open game for snoops and papparazzi. "The most important part of my work was to show loyalty", Cowan once said in an interview. "That quality is all but lost in today's Hollywood, and it is much the worst for it." Amen. Goodnight, Mr. Cowan.

Sandy Mandelberger, In Memoriam Editor