Milton Ebbins, 96, Show Business Guru
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Milton Ebbins, a well-connected show business manager who was a liaison between Hollywood and the Kennedy White House, died Friday of a heart ailment at the Motion Picture & Television Fund retirement community in Woodland Hills, Calif. He was 96.
Ebbins was a well-liked Hollywood insider who directed the careers of actors, musicians and comedians. For more than 30 years, he was the personal manager of actor Peter Lawford.
Through Lawford, who was married to Patricia Kennedy, a sister of John F. Kennedy’s, Ebbins became a favorite of JFK’s and a frequent guest at the White House and on Air Force One. At Kennedy’s 45th birthday party in 1962, Ebbins gave Marilyn Monroe a push onstage at Madison Square Garden as she went out to sing her sultry version of “Happy Birthday.”
He was a Zelig-like figure who was present at many celebrated events — he stayed at the White House after Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 — and was a masterly storyteller who was often quoted in Hollywood biographies because of his encyclopedic knowledge of Hollywood lore. Far from being a loose-lipped tattletale, Ebbins was a trusted adviser who shepherded the careers of artists as diverse as jazz bandleader Count Basie, comedian Mort Sahl and teen-age actress Patty Duke.
It was Ebbins who helped Lawford assemble Rat Pack – Frank Sinatra, Lawford, Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin and Joey Bishop – to film “Ocean’s Eleven” in Las Vegas in 1960. Ebbins served as a link between Hollywood and the White House and accompanied Monroe to the New York dinner party where she first met the president. He said Monroe sneaked past photographers in a red wig and kerchief.
Ebbins was born February 20, 1912, in Springfield, Mass. His father was a tailor who once hand-delivered a specially made coat to Theodore Roosevelt at the White House.
After briefly attending Amherst College in Massachusetts, Ebbins got his start in show business as a trumpeter, bandleader and songwriter. By 1940, he had left the stage to be the road manager for Basie, whom he called “the nicest man I ever met.”
Ebbins later managed the careers of singers Billy Eckstine, Sarah Vaughan and Vic Damone and actress Elizabeth Montgomery, the star of the 1960s TV comedy “Bewitched.”
Ebbins continued to counsel show business personalities throughout his life and at the time of his death was developing a multipart series on the Kennedy assassination with actor Bill Paxton for HBO.
