The man’s phone was always ringing. Whether it was Jean Harlow, panicking that her lover William Powell had knocked her up, or a security guard reporting that he had removed a loud-mouthed Spencer Tracy from a bar, or even Marlene Dietrich freaking out after discovering John Gilbert’s dead body – Howard Strickling was the guy to call.
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Strickling was the head of publicity for MGM and thus “handled” any potentially scandalous matters for the studio’s stars. For about three decades, from the 1930s through the 1960s, Strickling worked with MGM’s general manager, Eddie Mannix. Together, they kept the carefully selected image that MGM had built for its movie stars. It was all about appearance, after all. So, at the end of the day, anything that could possibly damage that image had to be “fixed.”