Flack Be Nimble

A plastic bottle-cap salesman just home from the Orient was telling an odd tale in Manhattan last week. He had been having an expense-account special (bird's-nest soup, aromatic chicken) at Mang Wing-tei's in Hong Kong, when in came "this big, storklike American wearing a black and blue mandarin's costume. He said he was celebrating the Year of the Rat. Irving Hoffman was his name."

The awestruck salesman had seen one of the world's fastest moving landmarks, a man who seems to have no permanent address but is often called "The Human Mailbox," an earth-blanketing pressagent more interesting than many of his clients. Onetime Manhattan p.r. man and for 20 years critic and columnist for the Hollywood Reporter, Irving Hoffman disengaged himself in 1952, began to roam all continents as a sort of gypsy flack. He is or has been everybody's buddy--from Wendell Willkie to Polly Adler, Truman Capote, Pablo Picasso, ferry boat captains, prostitutes, J. Edgar Hoover, the Maharani of Baroda, and countless men of the cloth.

Coke & King Zog. Writing hundreds of letters a week, he touts books and movies (current examples: Moss Hart's autobiography, Act One, and the film version of The World of Suzie Wong). Coca-Cola has bought the Hoffman touch, as have Bulova watches, Gambler Frank Costello, and King Zog of Albania. Sometimes called a "suppressagent" as well, Hoffman collects healthy fees from his clients for keeping material out of the papers. Israeli government officials, for instance, recently proposed to shake the earth with a photograph of Jewish Converts Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe doing a September Morn scene knee-deep in the Sea of Galilee. Hoffman gently said no and Tel Aviv listened.

The man Damon Runyon called "a great document of a tall, loose-jointed fellow" is the son of a Bronx schoolteacher, grew up wearing glasses as thick as soda biscuits because of conical corneas.

In his teens he fed material to Walter Winchell, also showed so much talent as a cartoonist that the Morning Telegraph hired him to illustrate its "Beau Broadway" column. At 22, he began reviewing plays for the Hollywood Reporter, seldom wasted words. Samples: Strange Fruit--"a lemon"; Billion Dollar Baby--"inflation." When one Broadway producer complained that Hoffman was physically unqualified for his job because he "can't see," Hoffman squinted agreeably and said, "Yes, but there's nothing wrong with my nose."

All for Dad. Now 50, Hoffman circles the earth carrying six shirts, five pairs of eyeglasses and 290 lbs. of old letters, news clips, books. Also in his luggage: pad after pad of his "Handy-Dandy Little Giant Nervous Breakdown Avoider," a mail-answering form full of prefab messages such as "Congratulations," "Get well soon," "Let's both forget it," and "You paid me the highest compliment a woman ever paid a man, but I am not worthy of your love." That last item is frequently checked, for Hoffman is fond of women, including girls of all wages. His vision being what it is, he is not choosy. A Hollywood friend says: "If Irving ever regained his eyesight and saw some of those girls, he'd commit suicide."

Utterly devoted to his 83-year-old father, Hoffman recently tried to send him a set of stereo stills of Chinese nudes, sputteringly threatened a lawsuit against Manhattan Postmaster Robert K. Christenberry, who ordered them confiscated. In Hong Kong, plugging Suzie Wong, he also tried to give away a crate of Arrow shirts to refugees from Red China, passed out toys with his longtime friend, Toy King Louis Marx, contributed cartoons to Far East Film News, breakfasted with Old Postman Jim Farley, gave fund-raising tips to Buddhist nuns. "To Irving Hoffman," says Actor William Holden, "life is just a bowl of people."

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