Ad salesman Stu Goldman loved movies and celebs

For years, Stu Goldman was a top advertising salesman. Even when he suffered a heart attack four months shy of his 77th birthday, he still was selling for the King County Journal newspapers.

But Mr. Goldman wanted more out of life. He loved the movies, loved Hollywood, loved the excitement of talking to celebrities. So he learned to bridge the worlds of advertising and movies.

And for three decades he would leave his modest home on Phinney Ridge, take a bus to the airport (he never owned a car) and fly to New York and Los Angeles on press junkets to chum around with famous people.

"In the Yiddish vernacular, he was a schmoozer," said Rob McQuiston, Mr. Goldman's friend and vice president of Terry Hines & Associates, a Seattle-based film-promotions company. "He talked his way into all of these things."

Mr. Goldman died of a heart attack Sept. 3. He was 76. He had no family in Seattle, and his friends here knew little about his life history.

"He was kind of a mysterious guy," McQuiston said.

Mr. Goldman told friends he had moved to Seattle from Minneapolis with his wife when he was in his 20s, said Sandy Payson, executive retail-advertising director for the King County Journal newspapers. He liked Seattle, but his wife did not, so she moved back to Minnesota and he stayed here.

When McQuiston met him in 1974, Mr. Goldman was selling ads for Outlook, a small newspaper in suburban King County. From there, he became editor, ad salesman and movie columnist for Fun Magazine, a free weekly tabloid that ran movie and music listings for theaters and clubs around the Puget Sound region.

Fun grew to a weekly circulation of 120,000, which gave Mr. Goldman the chance to pitch his services to major Hollywood studios such as Warner Brothers and MGM. The studios in turn began inviting him on all-expenses-paid press junkets to screen upcoming movies. Mr. Goldman was thrilled to be interviewing the top stars.

"I was a big fan of Barbra Streisand, and he told me how he'd interviewed her," said Elaine Stickles, Mr. Goldman's friend and manager of the Renton Village Cinema. "I think he just liked the excitement of Hollywood."

In return for access, Mr. Goldman never wrote a negative review, even when he didn't like the movie.

In a 1982 interview with The Rocket, Seattle's former alternative weekly, Mr. Goldman said, "You take care of those who take care of you, is the way it works — one hand washes the other."

Mr. Goldman also reviewed movies as host of a series of shows on local public-access TV stations.

Mr. Goldman's friends remembered him as an upbeat, caring man. He would befriend young people and become their mentor, showing them how to use cameras and video-editing equipment to produce his weekly television shows.

"I would help him out because I want some experience in that business," said Leko Mam, 26, who produced Mr. Goldman's latest show, "It's a Wrap." The show appeared on cable-access channel 77 on Thursdays. "I learned a lot of stuff from him."

Mr. Goldman's social life revolved around movies. He organized a group called the Seattle Reel Viewers Club to screen movies for Hollywood studios before they were released, and every year he invited his friends to his house for an Academy Awards night party.

"We went to his free screenings a few times, and he greeted my wife and children as though he'd known them for 30 years," said Mike Stevens, a sales vice president for King County Journal newspapers.

"He just had a huge, golden heart."