Mom, The Mettlesome Manager

Kallen is always pitching something. Walking through a hotel lobby in Atlantic City or Las Vegas, she works the room like a presidential candidate. No hand is unshaken, no baby unkissed. One of her favorite public relations stunts was executed in 1982 when she got Hearns to appear on The Family Feud TV show. (Hearns's kinfolk KO'd fellow boxing champ Milt McCrory's clan.) "Mom's mind thinks publicity," says Brad. "She doesn't think normal thoughts."

Kallen's smoothest sales pitch came a few years back when her Porsche 928S got a flat tire in inner-city Detroit on a hot summer afternoon. She was approached by four young toughs who caressed the chrome and purred, "Nice ride, Mama." Thinking quickly, Kallen replied, "Didn't I see you at the fights last week? I work for Tommy Hearns." The quartet quickly provided free roadside service, jacking up her car and putting on the spare.

Kallen is equally happy hobnobbing with hoods, hotel maids and high-profile celebs. She gets chain letters from Goldie Hawn. When she ran into Donald Trump and Maria Maples at a recent fight in Atlantic City, she proposed a potential movie project called The Jackie Kallen Story, with guess who as the lead? Yup, Marla. Then there was the following exchange:

DONALD: "I think as a manager that Jackie's aggressive, honorable and smart. She really cares for her fighters. She's a great representative for the ladies."

MARLA: "Not just the ladies, Donald, everybody in the sport."

JACKIE: "The check's in the mail."

Through the twice-weekly column she still writes for The Oakland (Mich.) Press, Kallen has met enough stars to fill an astronomy tome. Among her highlights were a dinner with the Rolling Stones in 1964 and one of the last interviews with a strung-out Elvis Presley in 1975.

Despite her connections, she doesn't see herself as famous ("Geez, I'm not Madonna, I'm not Cher"). Still, during a recent trip to Los Angeles she was spotted at Spago spouting stuff like "Oliver Stone is a cuddly little teddy bear" and "Soupy Sales is so terrific, you know, he and I both adore The Love Connection."

As for herself, Kallen lists her ultimate media goal as appearing just once in PEOPLE magazine.

It's 1:15 a.m. Fourteen hours have passed in Atlantic City, and Kallen has worn out everybody in the entourage except her two sons, whom she drags, one on each arm, through the Trump Plaza casino. The rest of her day has been just like her morning, only much, much longer. She has chatted up 852 people (a ballpark estimate), bought a birthday gift for her niece and sequined pumps for herself, befriended a Haitian cabbie, dropped Spanky off at the doggie hair salon, won a bundle at the craps table...and then there's all that boxing stuff. "A lot of women my age are content going to the mall or playing tennis, but that's not me," she says. "You know, I think I do more in a day than most people do in a month."