The Fame Game

Rare book

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Nothing prepared Fred Apollo for what he would experience during his twenty-five-year career as a talent agent at the famous William Morris Agency in Beverly Hills, California where he worked with legends in the latter half of their careers like, Katharine Hepburn, Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis and Mae West, as well as with artists from the start of their careers such as Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, Sonny and Cher, Bobby Darin and Phyllis Diller.Not his years as an altar boy while growing up in the small town of Methuen, Massachusetts, nor his years in the military service coordinating camp shows for overseas troops, and certainly not during his years as a USC student. His actual preparation began when he started at the bottom, which is the mail room, where every other agent before him started from the time the Agency was formed in 1898. Like most successful agents he worked an average 60-hour work-week in order to keep the Fame Game alive for the clients. His odyssey as told here in amusing anecdotes takes him from the mail room to talent account executive and television packager. He was responsible for the sale of innovative television series, like Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour, and countless TV Specials starring Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley and movies made for television.