Publisher claims that chat shows are keen to appease Hollywood's golden couple
By Guy Adams in Los Angeles
Sunday, 1 August 2010 - The Independent
Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are accused of using their influence to silence Morton
When Andrew Morton took a typewriter-shaped hatchet to the Royal Family, he was on every chat show in town. When he explored the private lives of Tom Cruise and Madonna, TV feasted on every prurient revelation. But now he has written a book that might upset Angelina Jolie, Hollywood's most influential shows are ignoring him.
The British writer's unauthorised biography of Jolie hit the shelves of America's bookstores yesterday, promising all the usual intimate details about the life and many loves of the film industry's current Queen Bee. After a launch which made headlines in everything from the literary pages of The New York Times to the news section of The National Enquirer, it promptly soared to the top of the best-seller lists.
Yet even though Morton's biography – called, simply, Angelina – is now one of the celebrity world's hottest topics, and the book's launch was moved forward three days after internet rumours about its content went viral, the biggest entertainment shows on US television have conspicuously had nothing to do with it.
No one can be exactly sure why Extra, Access Hollywood, Entertainment Tonight and The Insider all decided to forgo opportunities to carry out their traditional interview with Morton, whose revelatory tome about one of the most talked-about figures in showbusiness is sitting at number one in the list of biographies in the Amazon online sales charts.
Nor is it possible to work out what persuaded the producers of all four of the major network shows – which usually lap up celebrity controversy – to instruct their news teams to ignore the fallout from Morton's widely reported claims that (among other things) Jolie once had a fling with Leonardo DiCaprio, and spent two years of her childhood being raised by nannies in a Los Angeles service apartment.
John Murphy, the publicity director of Morton's publishers, St Martin's Press, has a theory, though. After staff at three of the TV shows refused to return his calls (and the makers of the fourth booked Morton and then cancelled at the last minute), he's come to the conclusion that they have been intimidated into ignoring the launch.
More at The Independent.
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