Can I Go Now?

Even the brightest star is occasionally eclipsed by a moon. Sue Mengers was a moon . . . Kellow is the first to pull back the caftan, to consider what really made Mengers Mengers. He has made a specialty of forceful showbiz women—previous subjects include Pauline Kael and Ethel Merman—and she fits easily into that pantheon . . . [Mengers] came of age as the moving pictures, and seemingly the world, burst into Technicolor. Kellow vividly renders this time of alliterative rat-a-tat names begat of the typewriter—Boaty Boatwright, Freddie Fields, Lionel Larner, Maynard Morris—and restaurants that treated regulars like family: Downey’s and Lindy’s and Sardi’s . . . [a] reflective and soulful book

Alexandra Jacobs, The New York Times Book Review

To call Sue Mengers a ‘character’ is an understatement, unless the word is written in all-caps, followed by an exclamation point and modified by an expletive. And based on Brian Kellow’s assessment in his thoroughly researched Can I Go Now? even that description may be playing down her personality a bit. Gutsy, pushy and savvy, Mengers was the take-no-b.s. power agent for many of Hollywood’s boldest bold-faced names in the late 1960s and the ’70s . . . Can I Go Now?—a title inspired by something Mengers often said to cut short conversations—offers plenty of dishy, inside-’70s-Hollywood stories, including tales from those soirees at her Beverly Hills home . . . Kellow doesn’t shy away from highlighting her negative traits as well, qualities that often worked at odds with her strongest attributes

Jen Chaney, The Washington Post

Picture Joan Rivers with less of a filter, bulldozer-setting ramped up to 12, shpritzing venom alongside comic abuse. Imagine that, and you’ll start to get a vague idea of the lioness named Sue Mengers . . . [Kellow’s] book is immensely readable and full of dish

Scott Eyman, The Wall Street Journal

Super-agent Sue Mengers handled some of the hottest stars in Hollywood . . . Brian Kellow’s new biography,Can I Go Now? derives its title from one of her favorite ways to end a phone call. As one of the most powerful agents in Hollywood for two decades—Time magazine described her as a ‘cross between Mama Cass and Mack the Knife’—Mengers was uncensored. She also was a skilled negotiator. And a trail blazer for women in the male-dominated field

Susan King, The Los Angeles Times

Mengers was the first woman to amass the sort of power she did, representing Barbra Streisand, Gene Hackman, Michael Caine, Candice Bergen, Ryan O’Neal, Mike Nichols and so many more. But Mengers, as this insightful, often hilarious and celebrity-filled book relates, was a mass of contradictions

Larry Getlen, New York Post