Ventures with the World of Celebrities, Movies & TV

Leaving corporate America, Hubert Doyle ventured alone over to England to pursue a writing career and landed in public relations with celebrities, movies and television. His friendship with Fred Astaire provides the centerpiece for this trip back to a world encountered over six eventful years beginning in 1969 in London. Astaire at 70 rarely danced, but he still had moves that could make you catch your breath. Style. Grace. Elegance. And the Debonair One played one mean hand of gin, even while distracting his opponent by regaling him with tales of his halcyon days. What would follow from his work with Astaire provides a colorful and lively account into the world of such notables as Mick Jagger, Julie Christie, Bing Crosby, Muhammad Ali, Dame Edith Evans, Burt Reynolds, Telly Savalas, Sarah Churchill, Burt Bacharach and more. Hubert Doyle was born and reared in Pennsylvania's anthracite coal country in the small borough of Mount Carmel. After graduating from high school there, he served four years in the U.S. Navy. Then, on the GI Bill, he attended Temple University in Philadelphia, where he received his degree in journalism and literature. His chief claim to fame during that time, he says, is that he was "more famous" on campus than fellow student Bill Cosby. "As editor-in-chief of the university's daily newspaper, our policy was to by-line editorials as well as news stories, so every day my name was all over the paper. Cosby was then doing the coffee house circuit trying to make a name for himself." Doyle adds, "I'm obliged to admit that Bill has since surpassed me in fame and fortune." After graduation from Temple, Doyle worked in newspaper and PR-related jobs for six years, then left Philadelphia to "seek my muse" in London. It is on experiences during his six years residence there from 1968 to 1974 that this book is based. In '74 Doyle moved to Los Angeles, where he has lived ever since "writing screenplays that don't get produced." A novel he wrote about a young-at-heart pair of old-timers on a daring crusade to bring to public attention the "uglification" of the country's beauteous vistas by billboards and the like won a nation-wide competition for Best Novel conducted through Writers' Digest. It never saw publication because publishers, almost in unanimity, declared that "people don't read books about old people." Nonetheless, Ventures in the World of Celebrities, Movies & TV is in a sense the author's second venture into like territory, for the subjects of his memoir are all now "old people," or many dead. However, in these pages nearly all are young and vital and are notable talents, many household names. And, indeed, many of them are still entertaining us today some 40 or so years later.