The Fixer: Moguls, Mobsters, Movie Stars, and Marilyn

Young (Expediton Deep Ocean) and Westphal, a former corporate communications executive, team up for a colorful biography of Fred Otash (1922–1992), “Hollywood’s preeminent private detective” in the 1950s and ’60s. After joining the LAPD in 1945, Otash became “fascinated with the Hollywood power structure” and the city’s “dark underbelly.” Leaving the force in 1955 to become a private investigator, he took on assignments from Confidential magazine, digging up and verifying “scandalous exposés” of Clark Gable, Joe DiMaggio, and other celebrities. Later, he earned a reputation as a prime Hollywood “fixer” who kept stars’ secrets on the down-low, as when he helped Judy Garland through a messy divorce from Sid Luft during the late 1950s. Drawing on Otash’s “museum-worthy treasure trove” of diaries, interview transcripts, and investigative case files, the authors recount such tantalizing exploits as the detective’s surveillance of Marilyn Monroe and her lovers. However, Young and Westphal sometimes lean into cartoonish private eye tropes (“I think you’re fishing,” Otash quips at one point, “and I’m not biting”), and cast a relatively uncritical eye on the detective’s efforts to secure proof of various stars’ homosexuality. Still, those eager for a peek into classic Hollywood scandals will be well satisfied. (Apr.)