John Lennon, Ono and more in Hollywood

Do you know what Kim Kardashian’s profession was when she met Paris? He installed closets for celebrities,” Elliot Mintz, famous publicist and consigliere of stars such as Paris Hilton, bob dylanand John Lennon and Yoko Ono, trust me with Italian takeout and chardonnay. “Someone hired her 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 towering white walls covered with lithographs by his favorite artist, Tamara de Lempicka. Jack Nicholson lives 12 driveways down the street. “He bought that house with his easy rider money in the 60s,” he tells me.

Mintz, 79, and I have been chatting, gossiping and reminiscing for more than four hours. It’s what he does best: first as a Los Angeles radio host in the late ’60s, then as an entertainment correspondent for KABC in the ’70s, where he interviewed hundreds of notable personalities, 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 of The simple life who at first obediently followed the heiress to Hyde every night, making sure she was photographed alongside Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan. Mintz was in the back seat when the three party monsters in dispute shared a ride together in an SUV, known as the “BIMBO SUMMIT” after the New York Post.

“Get them in and get them out with the greatest degree of respectability if they were completely drunk or high,” Mintz explains of his duties. “Maybe a little smile for the man across the street,” he adds, referring to Harvey Levin, whose TMZ The offices were directly opposite Hyde at the time.

“Then we moved on to the after-hours parties, which we did until 5 in the morning,” he continues. “I made sure she got home, I walked her to the house, I made sure the locks were closed, the cat was there and the parents were right outside the garage, but not inside the garage. I took her home from the Hollywood police station when she was arrested. “They were exhausting times.”

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

The book traces the beginnings of Mintz’s reinvention as a media consultant. It all began in 1971, when Yoko Ono, after a radio interview with Mintz that she thought had gone very well, began calling him regularly and engaging in hours-long conversations with him about whatever was preoccupying his eccentric mind at the time.

Not long after, it was her husband, John Lennon, who called and inquired about an injectable Mintz had mentioned to Yoko that was said to melt away body fat. This was half a century before the rise of Ozempic, and Mintz described hCG, a hormone derived from the urine of pregnant women. Its effectiveness was sketchy at best, but Lennon, who was concerned about his weight, didn’t seem to care. The needles, however, deterred him from treatment.

The couple then called Mintz daily (sometimes together, more often apart, often in the dead of night) and engaged him in free-associative, sometimes probing conversations. The phone rang so frequently that Mintz had to install a second dedicated line in his small Laurel Canyon home; Every time John or Yoko called, a red light would illuminate. Being John Fucking Lennon (and Yoko Ono), Mintz found himself unable to 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 difficult, he acted as a counselor and intermediary. And, when John was murdered outside the Dakota on December 8, 1980, Mintz stepped in to become Yoko’s support and father figure to the couple’s young son, Sean. Mintz was also enlisted in the days after the murder to inventory all of John’s possessions, including the former Beatle’s blood-spattered glasses. (He still represents Lennon’s estate and remains very close to 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 between us.”

After Lennon, Mintz went on to be a media consultant for other prominent entertainment figures, including Diana Ross and Dylan, with whom, he says, Lennon 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 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 daughter’s soccer tournament, my daughter’s ballet final.” Or, ‘No, I can’t talk to you at 5 in the morning; I have someone lying next to me.’ I never said that. “I took it all very seriously.”

“It’s almost like you’re taking a religious oath,” I observe.

“An oath is exactly what it was,” he says. “It was a promise. So the question arises: Was all this worth it?” He takes a sip of his chardonnay. “But do I have the answer to that? No.”

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