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"Who is Gloria Stavers?" Brian Epstein asked as he glanced at the piece of paper I had passed across my desk to him with her name and New York phone number on it.
I told him: "I'd like you to wine and dine her while you're in New York. She's an exceedingly influential lady with a lot of power in the teenybopper magazine field." Epstein was flying to New York immediately after the Beatles' appearance on the Royal Variety Show and the time was right for him to consolidate the groundwork I had recently laid with Gloria Stavers.
Towards the end of 1963, when our planning for The Beatles imminent invasion of the USA was in its early stages, I hoped to make Gloria Stavers my secret weapon by pursuading her to spearhead the battle with a big burst of editorial coverage. She was editor-in-chief of 16 magazine, arguably America's strongest monthly publication aimed at youthful pop fans. Unlike many of her competitors, Stavers seemed to take an almost sisterly interest in the stars she promoted on her pages, often personally writing her own interview-based feature articles on the ones who impressed her most.
Stavers was tall, attractive, elegant, dynamic and sophisticated. She was not the sort of Gloria you would dream of calling Glo. As we got to know one another, I saw her as the archetypal New York businesswoman of the day; sexy, in total control, accustomed to living splendidly, working hard and getting her own way. She had zero tolerance for incompetence and carelessness, frequently yelling the "f" word at blundering staff who made grammatical errors or failed to check facts -- in an era when few women swore so colourfully. The word her French publisher used to describe her to me was formidable. As I got to know her I discovered that Gloria had a heart of gold that could turn to steel in an instant if she felt threatened or betrayed. She was a sort of grown-up supergroupie who had her own idols, heroes and heroines -- and enemies -- in the entertainment world. She became the very close friend of stars she admired, but she quickly dropped those who fell from public favour.
Gloria's offices were at 745 Park Avenue, not a million miles from the plush Plaza Hotel where so many of New York's visiting stars used to stay. Born in North Carolina she gve up a well-paid modelling career to work as a subscription at 16 magazine where she rose to become editor-in-chief in 1958. Her special flair was to pick out and nurture the careers of new names, rising stars who were mostly dishy male teenagers. She would predict fame for her latest favourites and then help them to achieve it by giving them valuable ongoing publicity via the photo and feature pages of 16. She demanded that her "discoveries" should be talented, ambitious and good-looking. After that, once she believed in the potential of a band, a singer or a TV newcomer, she would work wonders for them by giving them the type of concentrated editorial exposure that money can't buy. I knew from my research that past issues of 16 had given plentiful picture publicity to barechested beefcake including Paul Revere and the Raiders, Paul Anka, Bobby Vee and Bobby Rydell, as well as the obvious names like Elvis Presley and Ricky Nelson. Stavers used just the right approach to beguile her adolescent male interview subjects, flirting with them to precisely the right extent but no more. Her enemies called Gloria a ruthless prima donna, but with a monthly circulation usually exceeding a million copies, and a readership of young and impressionable female fans, Gloria Stavers was someone whose friendship any wise PR man would wish to foster by all means.
When I first phoned her from London, a haughty-voiced aid told me firmly: Miss Stavers doesn't take calls from publicists she doesn't know. May I give you to one of her assistant editors? Refusing to be put off, I persevered: "Please tell Miss Stavers that I'm ringing from London and I represent The Beatles." Seconds later the lady herself came on the line: "Congratulations on your success at the London Palladium." Only days earlier The Beatles had scored their publicity triumph when Fleet Street announced the outbreak of Beatlemania in the wake of the group's well-received appearance on ATV's Sunday Night At The London Palladium. That Gloria Stavers had picked up on our London newspaper coverage so quickly impressed me. It confirmed my feeling that the woman was extraordinarily professional at her job, keeping her eyes on the international pop scene as well as home-grown US talent, and I was pleased to know that our press stories on the birth of Beatlemania were reaching the right people on the far side of the Atlantic. It emerged much later that Gloria was friendly with a New York showbusiness and divorce attorney named Nat Weiss, who represented the London empresario Larry Parnes and was to become Epstein's friend and business partner in Nemperor Holdings in 1965. I imagine that she used Weiss as her eyes and ears on what was going on in the European entertainment industry. "I hear some good things about your four boys," Gloria went on, giving me the perfect opening. "Then let me tell you a lot more."
She said: "You have a cute English accent but it's not Liverpool." I replied: "It is, you know, I was born and raised on Merseyside, but much of the accent has worn off since I came to live in London." I had intended to make this a short introductory phone call but we talked for well over 30 minutes. She asked about each of The Beatles in turn, about Brian Epstein and about the so-called Mersey Beat sound. I promised to airmail a press pack to her containing our latest set of photographs, a bundle of recent press cuttings including show reviews and a pile of biographical data on John, Paul, George and Ringo. My way of wooing Gloria Stavers was not merely to ply her with publicity materials, but also to offer her exclusive articles from time to time, each by-lined by a Beatle, or one of the group's two road managers. We agreed to stay in touch and I arranged to keep her posted regularly with news updates on the group, especially their first trip to America. She said: "I'd like to meet you all when you're over here." I told her that Brian Epstein would be in New York quite soon, bringing his new signing, Billy J Kramer, with him and staying at the Regency Hotel on Park Avenue. She said "What a good choice!"
I believe that the substantial volume of editorial space Gloria Stavers gave the Fab Four to coincide with their US launch was of significant help to us and to Capitol Records, assisting us to fast-track the group to the top of the charts after the initial success of the single 'I Want To Hold Your Hand'. Having helped to speed up the group's widespread acceptance by the American public, her fanzine's heavyweight coverage over the following several years sustained their peak popularity in the long periods between their annual coast-to-coast summer concert tours. Under the signatures of Neil Aspinall and Mal Evans, and with their collaboration, I wrote numerous columns for 16, billed as "exclusive from Liverpool, England", during the touring years and afterwards and we kept the publication well supplied with the newest and often exclusive photographs. Stavers produced special issues to mark each of The Beatles' feature films and she was given VIP media treatment as a photo-journalist during the shooting of Help! on location on New Providence Island in the Bahamas. At her first interview with the boysshe breezed into their room like an eagerly-awaited Hollywood celebrity and announced: "Hi! I'm 16." Although she was clearly thiry-something, Ringo replied: "You don't look 16, you look much younger."
Under Gloria's charismatic control, 16 retained a marvellous Peter Pan-like disregard for the adult world, seeing everything through the rose-tinted spectacles of a pony-tailed teenage girl -- Bobbysoxers, as the Americans used to call them. While its readers reached and passed through adolescence, 16 was the perennial teenage publication waiting to serve the next generation of pony-tailed pop fans. Paul McCartney was aware of 16 even before The Beatles went over to America and he knew it had a good reputation among US Beatle People: "We knew we needed to be in it although we thought of it as Cutesville on ice." Paul remembered Gloria as being very dignified , very professional, and totally businesslike. He said: "She inspired respect from all of us."
("John, Paul, George, Ringo & Me" by Tony Barrow, Thunder's Mouth Press 2005)