John Lennon, Ono and more in Hollywood

Do you know what Kim Kardashian’s profession was when she met Paris? She installed wardrobes for celebrities,’ Elliot Mintz – famous publicist and consigliere to stars like Paris Hilton, Bob Dylanand John Lennon and Yoko Ono – confides in me about Italian takeaway and chardonnay. “She was hired by someone to build a big closet for Paris.”

We are in the dining room of his house on Mulholland Drive. Built in 1982, it features a tennis court on stilts (Mintz has used it only four times since purchasing the property in 1991) and tall white walls with lithographs by his favorite artist, Tamara de Lempicka. Jack Nicholson lives twelve driveways away. “He bought that house with him Easy rider money in the 60s,” he tells me.

Mintz, 79, and I have been chatting, gossiping and reminiscing for more than four hours. That’s what he does best: first as a radio host in LA in the late 1960s, then as an entertainment correspondent for KABC in the 1970s, where he interviewed hundreds of notables: from John Wayne to Groucho Marx, from Jayne Mansfield to Salvador Dalí.

To millennials, he is probably best known for his later incarnation as Hilton’s publicist – the naughty man out The simple life who in the beginning dutifully followed the heiress to Hyde every night and made sure she was photographed with Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan. Mintz was in the backseat as the three feuding party monsters shared an SUV ride together – dubbed the “BIMBO SUMMIT” by the celebrities. New York Post.

“Bring them in, take them out with the highest degree of respect, if they were downright drunk or high,” Mintz explains of his duties. “Maybe a little smile for the guy across the street,” he adds, referring to Harvey Levin, whose TMZ The offices at the time were located directly opposite Hyde.

“Then on to parties outside office hours, which we did until five in the morning,” he continues. “I made sure she got home, walked her into the house, made sure the locks were locked, that the cat was there and that the paps were just outside the garage, but not in the garage. I drove her home from Hollywood County after she was arrested. These were exhausting times.”

Amazingly, this is all just a slight detour from the main topic of the conversation, which is Mintz’s new memoir: We all shine: John, Yoko and me (Dutton).

The book describes the beginning of Mintz’s reinvention as a media consultant. It all started in 1971, when Yoko Ono, after a radio interview with Mintz that she said went exceptionally well, began calling him regularly and having hours-long conversations with him about what was occupying her eccentric mind at that moment.

Soon, it was her husband, John Lennon, who called and inquired about an injectable product Mintz mentioned to Yoko that would melt away body fat. Since this was half a century before the Ozempic boom, it was hCG that Mintz was describing: a hormone extracted from the urine of pregnant women. Its effectiveness was vague at best, but Lennon, preoccupied with his weight, didn’t seem to care. However, the needles deterred him from treatment.

The couple then called Mintz daily – sometimes together, more often separately, often in the middle of the night – and engaged him in free-associative, sometimes in-depth conversations. The phone rang so often that Mintz had to install a second dedicated line at his cabin in Laurel Canyon; every time John or Yoko called, a red light came on. Because it was John Fucking Lennon (and Yoko Ono), Mintz found himself unable to ever say no.

They met in person in Ojai in 1972. Over the next eight years, Mintz became the couple’s best friend and most trusted confidant. When the marriage became unstable, he acted as an advisor and go-between. And when John was murdered outside Dakota on December 8, 1980, Mintz stepped in to become both Yoko’s rock and a father figure to the couple’s young son, Sean. Mintz was also called in in the days after the murder to inventory all of John’s belongings, including the former Beatle’s blood-stained glasses. (He still represents Lennon’s estate and has a very close relationship with Sean, now 49, who encouraged him to write the book.)

“I fell in love with them,” Mintz explains. ‘I thought we were married. Not in a sexual way. But we had shared everything.”

After Lennon, Mintz continued media consultations for other major entertainment figures, including Diana Ross and Dylan – against whom Lennon, he says, always harbored a small grudge. “John was just jealous of Bob,” he explains. “Because of the way Bob was perceived, as opposed to the way John was perceived. Bob came out of nowhere and hitchhiked to New York City with a guitar on his back. John became famous for singing ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand.’ They were thought of differently.”

Mintz says, “I live alone. I never have to tell them, ‘My wife is waiting.’ “No, I can’t be with you for the Oscars on Sunday; it’s my child’s soccer tournament, my daughter’s ballet final.’ Or, “No, I can’t talk to you at five in the morning; there’s someone lying next to me.’ I never said that. I took it all very seriously.”

“It’s almost like you’ve taken a religious oath,” I note.

“An oath is exactly what it was,” he says. “It was a promise. So the question arises: was it all worth it?” He takes a sip of his chardonnay. “But do I have the answer to that? Not me.”

This story appeared in the Oct. 23 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.