INTRODUCTION TO THE HOLLYWOOD JUNGLE

A couple of years ago, I was in a clothing store across from Morton's Restaurant, the famous celebrity watering hole and eatery in West Hollywood. It was near dusk on a beautiful, Indian summer day. I was killing time before a dinner engagement, watching the pretty girls and shopping for nothing when a woman's voice called out, "Jay!"

I looked; it was Kathy Hilton of the hotel Hiltons.

Back in the nineties, when I was married, my wife and I used to double-date with Kathy and Rick. We'd meet them for dinner. My wife was a social climber and it meant everything to her to be able to tell her friends, "Oh, the Hiltons joined us last night at Spago," as if the Hiltons gave a damn.

The relationship between the Hiltons and the Bernsteins was brief. I was married for about thirty seconds. Meanwhile, Kathy and Rick, once a noted couple on the social circuit of Beverly Hills, Manhattan and other hotspots of media interest, had succumbed to age and maturity: they were known now as the parents of Paris and Nicky.

Kathy and I chatted a moment about old times, of which neither of us remembered much, and then she said, "Jay, why don't you manage Paris?"

I hardly knew who Paris was—this was before her sexploitation video—and what little I knew about her came from the scandal sheets, which meant I knew nothing. She and her sister were yellow-journalism fodder because they were rich and their name was Hilton.

"What's Paris up to?" I asked.

Kathy gave me an update. Paris had done this and she was going to do that. I was intrigued. My claim to fame was managing entertainment careers, optimizing the potentials of would-be stars. I had three criteria garnered from decades of experience: 1) a client had to have talent, 2) she had to have a physical quality that appealed to me personally, and 3) she had to have a vehicle, a platform from which a career could be launched.

Suddenly Kathy said, "Paris! Paris! Come here!"

Paris came. She was not a naturally beautiful girl, but she had exotic features that were somehow attractive.

"This is Jay Bernstein, the starmaker," explained Kathy. "He created Farrah Fawcett and—"

"I didn't create anyone," I interrupted. "I guided them through the showbiz jungle. I took them from a level six to a level ten." It was my pat explanation, partly true, partly false.

The truth was, in my prime I had a Midas touch. If I said to someone, "This one's gonna be a star!" they didn't argue with me.

What I said, however, was unimportant, because Paris was in her own world. I watched her. She puffed a cigarette like an automaton. Her blue eyes darted about, often to her own reflection in a big mirror on the wall, as her mother spoke.

I had no idea if Paris had talent, but talent is only one ingredient in the recipe for stardom. She was like a nervous bird fluttering her wings; not a beautifully plumed cardinal or blue jay, more like a sparrow. Her attention span was so short she could hardly finish a laugh. She had no redeeming quality that appealed to me. What she had was a television reality show, a vehicle. Unfortunately, reality shows seldom showcase star appeal; they are dumbing-down endeavors, reaching for the lowest common denominator of an audience.

Kathy kept talking. Paris kept smoking and looking at herself in the mirror. Her resumé sounded as empty as a vacuum. She reminded me of Zsa Zsa Gabor, whom I had represented many years before as her publicist. Zsa Zsa had been married to the Hilton, Conrad, Paris's great-grandfather. But Zsa Zsa had never been a star, only a celebrity famous for being famous.

While Kathy kept talking, Paris fluttered her wings and flew away. She wasn't interested in being managed; in her mind she was a star already. Just read the tabloids. Her name was Hilton, and that seemed enough, along with her inheritance, to sustain her image.

I bid Kathy adieu and went on my merry way. I never knew if she was just being friendly or if she was serious about my managing Paris's career, but it made no difference. I didn't think Paris had what stardom required. She was certainly no Farrah Fawcett. In her prime, Farrah had gained icon status—a role model recognized around the world. Through unbelievably hard work and self-sacrifice, Farrah had become a star fixed luminously in the firmament. I suspected Paris was more of a comet, coming and going from time to time, but still no more than a flash in the sky.

Farrah ...

Her name always came up. At its birth, Farrah-mania swept over the entire world like nothing seen since Elvis or the Beatles. From her beautiful blue eyes to her long, golden feathered hair, pearly white smile and sweet demeanor. She had a drop-dead gorgeous figure and possessed the type of over-the-top sex appeal that was fresh, exciting and internationally contagious. Women wanted to be her, and men wanted to marry her, not just sleep with her. Even the young actors and wannabes of the nineties and beyond were aware of Farrah, and this in an era when the longevity of a star seemed to rarely exceed Andy Warhol's proverbial fifteen minutes.

As her personal manager, I put together all the things I had learned along the way to finally do what I had originally come out here for—to be involved in creating Hollywood heroes and heroines.

There had been a time when the names Farrah Fawcett and Jay Bernstein were synonymous. And Suzanne Somers was often mentioned in the same breath. Farrah and Suzanne. I had created them, so it was said. Those were tough days, halcyon only in retrospect—my clients and I seemingly pitted against the world.

But there were many others. William Holden and Susan Hayward. Nick Adams and Robert Conrad. Sammy Davis, Jr., and Aretha Franklin. Robert Culp, Gig Young, Dionne Warwick, Angie Dickinson, Tom Jones, Peter Fonda, Charlotte Rampling, Linda Evans, Catherine Hicks, Tatum O'Neal—six hundred in all, spanning four generations of show business. And ultimately all of them had fired me. My glib explanation for termination was simple but true: "I took them where the air was rarified, they became deified, and then I was nullified."

Fired six hundred times, but I'm still smiling. In most cases I accomplished what I set out to do. I did it by replacing an effete studio system that collapsed in the 1960s—when one man had to assume the role of two dozen specialists the studios no longer provided. For my clients, I became head of wardrobe, style and fashion. I took over publicity for them when the studio publicity departments switched from promoting stars to promoting movies. I guided careers as Harry Cohn, Louis Mayer and Darryl Zanuck had once done as moguls of their respective star factories. None of it was easy, but I did it, and no one can take away my accomplishments.

I was a maverick by necessity, not by choice. Had I not been, people never would have heard of Farrah Fawcett and dozens of other names. Some established stars would have continued to run in place, never advancing. To my clients I was Sir Lancelot; to studio and network executives I was Darth Vader. In the early years it was not easy to be a split personality. I wanted to be popular, loved by all. Then I realized that Hollywood was divided like any industry: it was management versus...