Boffo P.R. czar's sale of firm might leave celebrities in lurch.

Is one of Hollywood's most powerful women looking for the exit sign?

For the past few weeks, McCann-Erickson World Group has been negotiating with legendary celebrity publicist Pat Kingsley to buy her Miracle Mile-based agency PMK. McCann spokeswoman Susan Irwin acknowledges that the talks continue, but won't provide any details.

Most likely, the two sides are still wrangling over issues of money, control - and time.

Time is of the essence in the PMK deal because there's a knotty question over how much more of it the agency's principals plan to put in. Kingsley is 67 years old. Her partner Lois Smith is in her 70s and underwent heart surgery a few years back.

Kingsley didn't return calls from the Business Journal, and she has never publicly suggested that she plans to retire. But her absolute control over the agency, and the fact that its roster of A-list movie stars is built on personal relationships between these celebrities and Kingsley herself, has some wondering whether McCann might find itself holding an empty bag once Kingsley decides to call it quits.

"Virtually every important client who has ever set foot in those doors was 'pitched' by Pat. She is really the one responsible for recruiting and signing deals," said the head of a rival Hollywood P.R. agency. "The minute she leaves, I think it will really shake things up."

P.R. firms in Hollywood are nowhere near as predatory as talent agencies, but poaching happens, and it will probably happen the minute a deal with McCann is signed - even if Kingsley commits to stay with PMK.

That's because whenever there is a change of ownership, clients often wonder whether the new managers will have their best interests at heart, and whether they want to be part of a big corporate structure.

"Clients are won in this business based on relationships, not on RFPs (requests for proposals, the first step in awarding a corporate P.R. account)," said the head of another rival agency who wished to remain anonymous. "(Kingsley) is such a lightning rod for business. We have 20 people who are lightning rods, I don't know if that's the case at PMK."

Nonetheless, analysts tend to favor the deal, or are neutral about it. For a company as large as McCann - which is just one arm of the giant Interpublic Group of Cos. in New York- buying PMK wouldn't represent a significant expenditure. PMK has staff of about 40 and is said to generate about $5 million a year in revenues from its two offices in L.A. and New York. No price for the deal has been disclosed.

"There may be a client roster that comes with this deal that makes sense," said David Leibowitz, managing director with Burnham Securities in New York. "Going forward, there is the opportunity (for McCann) to go to various advertising clients and say, 'We have a subsidiary with the following names as clients, and if you like we can offer them the opportunity to promote your product.'"

PMK, is the undisputed czar of movie-star P.R. Tom Cruise, Sharon Stone, Tom Hanks, Demi Moore, Al Pacino, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jodie Foster - if the star makes more than $10 million a movie, chances are good he or she is a client of Kingsley's.

That kind of star power is a major plus for any marketer. Corporations can use Hollywood agencies to stage events linking their products with the glamour of the entertainment industry, a sure way to attract media interest.

Of course, Interpublic is already in the Hollywood business. McCann owns talent agency Industry Entertainment, and Interpublic's Shandwick unit owns entertainment P.R. specialist Rogers & Cowan, L.A. County's biggest P.R. agency. But Industry was recently raided by Michael Ovitz, who convinced two of its top agents to defect to his new management firm, and Rogers & Cowan doesn't have a celebrity roster of PMK's caliber.

So is the McCann deal part of Kingsley's exit strategy? Those who know her say she isn't likely to retire any time soon, because the agency is too much a part of her life. Guests at her daughter's recent wedding say Kingsley held court at a head table surrounded by a few clients and co-workers, but no close friends or family.

It's a stressful life. Hollywood publicists have to deal with just as much aggravation as talent agents, at a fraction of the compensation. Agents take 10 percent of a star's earnings, while publicists are paid a set fee for their services, usually around $5,000 to $10,000 a month.

"Tom Cruise might only be paying (Kingsley) $7,000 a month, but that doesn't mean he isn't calling her up at 2 in the morning and saying, 'I'm worried about my wife appearing naked onstage in New York or something like that," said entertainment P.R. specialist Michael Saltzman. "She doesn't get the same amount of money as the agents, but I'm not sure she gets any less grief."

Kingsley is renowned as the woman who changed the rules of Hollywood publicity. She was the first to demand cover stories from magazines in exchange for allowing her clients to be interviewed - the first publicist to truly recognize that the media needed stars more than the stars needed the media.

Her boycotts of publications that refuse to play by her rules are the source of dread in editorial offices, where many have been willing to accede to her requests to pre-screen articles and TV segments for fear of losing access to the stars - without whom, the titles and shows just won't sell.

Kingsley, a North Carolina native, started out in the P.R. department of the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami in the 1950s, helping to book acts from well-known entertainers and taking care of them when they arrived. She later took a job as a secretary at Rogers & Cowan before forming an independent agency, Pickwick, with Smith and another partner in 1971.

The firm changed its name to PMK late in the decade when she partnered with a rival firm, Maslansky Koenigsberg. Many assume the letters "PMK" are Kingsley's initials, but they're actually the first initial of Pickwick combined with the first initials of her former partners.