Show Business: Rally Round the Flack, Boys

Her face and figure are unfamiliar. But this week, when the black-haired, violet-eyed beauty strides across two pages of the movie trade papers, dressed in nothing but a wet white silk shirt, Hollywood will get the word. "R.B."—the modest monogram on the shirt's breast pocket—tells it all. Russell Birdwell, Hollywood's busiest huckster, is on the job. After a brief dry spell trying to direct pictures (The Girl in the Kremlin, Flying Devils), and a few months of promoting such inanimate products as automatic laundries, "the Bird" is back at his appointed task: fabricating movie myths and...