The Rare Bird

A Manhattan magazine editor once wired Miami Beach for a colorful story on the bustling resort business. Back came a disillusioning reply from the Florida resort's own pressagent, Steve Hannagan: "Business is lousy." The editor got no story, but he helped spread Steve Hannagan's fame as a rare bird among the shrill jays of pressagentry; he was regarded as "an honest pressagent."

As such, he became the best known in the U.S. to newsmen, and his Manhattan firm of Steve Hannagan Associates made millions getting the public better acquainted with such clients as Miami Beach, the Union Pacific Railroad, Coca-Cola, Owens-Illinois Glass, the Indianapolis Speedway and 30-odd others. It was Steve Hannagan--a pressagent with an unabashed circus flair--who made the bathing girl a stock shot for the American press, and who persuaded newspaper readers that Prizefighter Gene Tunney was really a Shakespearean scholar.

Common Sense. His methods worked because they were simple. "All you need in this business, " Hannagan liked to say, "is newspaper training and common sense." Stephen Jerome Hannagan had both. At 14, he broke in as a $1-a-week part-time cub on his home-town Lafayette (Ind.) Morning Journal. He was campus correspondent for the Indianapolis Star during two years at Purdue, became pressagent for the Indianapolis Speedway, and the daredevil exploits of its racing drivers. Impressed by Hannagan's zip and Irish charm, Publisher Roy W. Howard took him to New York to work for the United Press, later set him writing N.E.A.'s Broadway column. Flamboyant Steve quit after four years to go back to work for the Speedway's owner,Millionaire Carl Fisher, who was also trying to develop Miami Beach.

Hannagan showed him how. He operated his own news agency, wired out bulletins of legitimate news, never let anyone forget where it came from. Sample : FLASH JULIUS FLEISCHMANN DROPPED DEAD ON THE POLO FIELD HERE THIS AFTERNOON DON'T FORGET MIAMI BEACH DATELINE. He combed Miami Beach high schools for pretty girls, made tabloid editors happy with pictures of them romping in bathing suits beneath the palms. Union Pacific sent him out to look over the site of an Idaho ski resort it planned to name Ketchum after the nearest town. Snorted Hannagan: "The columnists will soon be cracking 'Ketchum and fleece 'em.'" As he felt the warm sun, Hannagan said: "Call it Sun Valley." Soon his bathing beauties were wearing skis. Hannagan hauled out trainloads of celebrities (e.g., 20th Century-Fox's Darryl Zanuck, Author Ernest Hemingway and Crooner Bing Crosby), knowing that if they liked it others would follow. Zanuck especially liked it; he even made a movie called It Happened in Sun Valley.

Three Lives. Steve Hannagan spent money as fast as he made it. He liked good living, was a fixture at Manhattan and Florida nightspots, where twice-divorced Hannagan was oftenest in the company of Cinemactress Ann Sheridan. In work & play, he traveled at such a pace that one friend said: "He lived three lives. When Hannagan flew to Africa it was, as usual, on business (for Coca-Cola). There, last week, his speedway pace caught up with him. At 53, in his hotel room at Nairobi Kenya, Hannagan died of a heart attack. In tribute, spoke Roy Howard: "No training, however good, made Steve the way he was. He was a natural."

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