A dispute between two of the entertainment industry’s most powerful publicists has stolen a bit of the spotlight normally reserved for their high-profile clients.
Longtime publicity powerhouse Pat Kingsley, 72, and her colleague — and once potential successor — Leslee Dart, 50, parted ways the week before Thanksgiving after several years of uneasy relations.
Normally, publicists stay out of the public eye and are known mostly to the press, whom they use to promote their celebrity clients’ careers.
But the rift took center stage in large part because of the clients represented by the two women. Some left Kingsley’s firm, PMK/HBH, and will presumably follow Dart to her own new agency, which she formed during the weekend.
Those clients include directors Ron Howard and Martin Scorsese, producers Brian Grazer and Scott Rudin, and talk show host Conan O’Brien, among others.
The timing was also a factor, coming during the critical weeks when publicists are promoting their clients for career-making awards, including the Oscars.
A history together
Kingsley and Dart worked together since 1983. Kingsley’s company, PMK, was bought by Interpublic Group in 1999 and merged with Huvane Baum Halls in 2001. Kingsley has represented Hollywood luminaries such as Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Aniston and Al Pacino. She represented actor Tom Cruise until earlier this year when Cruise named his sister as his publicist.
“The conflict was she was not going to sign a new contract unless she was the CEO and I had the job,” Kingsley said, explaining why Dart’s contract was not renewed even though it ran until the end of the year.
Kingsley informed Dart of the firing Nov. 17 and did not want Dart to return to her New York office. Kingsley relented and allowed Dart to personally inform her staff the next day.
“She believed she had an agreement with somebody that I would be retiring and she would be named CEO in January,” Kingsley said. “No one I report to said that to her.”
Dart said she never delivered an ultimatum to Kingsley.
“Since Pat is in her mid-70s, I was simply looking for information on a plan of succession and the timing thereof,” Dart said.
Stars stay loyal to DartMany of Dart’s clients were quick to jump ship, a sign of the intensely personal relationship publicists develop with their clients.
“The relationship is very close because publicists are dealing with that three-letter word — ego,” said Peter Guber, chairman of Mandalay Entertainment Group. “Somebody who is going to be the architect or protector of that is someone who has to have a close relationship every day with the artists.”
One industry executive who spoke on condition of anonymity complained that Dart’s firing was done “with reckless abandon” and disrupted the continuity artists prize, especially during awards season.
“They were here to serve clients and they kind of forgot about that for a minute and thought they were the stars,” the executive said. “That annoyed a lot of people.”
Over the weekend, Dart formed her own agency, the Dart Group, based in New York. Dart’s contract with PMK/HBH prohibits her from soliciting her former clients for one year, Kingsley said.
“I’m excited and optimistic and look forward to continuing the work that has become my passion over the last two decades,” Dart said Monday from her temporary offices in Manhattan.
Dart declined to say which, if any, of her former clients would be joining her new company.
The tussle reflects the greater interest the public has taken in celebrity news in recent years. That scrutiny has shed some light on the mechanics of the publicity engine, which acts both to promote celebrities and control the damage that comes from scandals.
“Just as in the world of politics, the coverage in recent years has tended to focus on the handlers, the spinners, the manipulators and the backstage mechanics,” said Martin Kaplan, associate dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California. “People are aware that there are specialists in publicity and that fame isn’t something that happens accidentally.”