Chasing the Panther

As a young girl jumping from rock to rock in rural North Carolina, Carolyn Pfeiffer felt a calling she could not articulate but somehow understood: a yearning for something far away. Even as a young girl of ten, she knew that she would never be able to ignore that feeling and not act on it. Within a few short years, Carolyn Pfeiffer left her hometown for New York City, a city filled with opportunity for young women looking to exercise their newly found independence and leave behind the traditional expectation of settling down. Carolyn was quickly swept up in the glamour of the city, where she befriended the wealthy and well-established, including socialite Penny Knowles and a young Burt Reynolds. From New York, Carolyn followed Penny Knowles to London, then Paris and Rome, where the world opened up to her in a way she never imagined. In Rome, Carolyn learned the craft of film, fell in and out of love, and was beset by various tragedies and triumphs that eventually led her back to London, where she and Penny started their own PR agency, and then Los Angeles, where she became one of the first female executives and producers in the film industry. Along the way, Carolyn introduced the world to such illustrious stars as Omar Sharif, Barbra Streisand, Robert Redford, and Robert Altman, among others. Told with cinematic quality, vibrance, and detail, Carolyn’s memoir reads like a true-to-life novel of a young woman discovering her voice, establishing her place in the world, losing everything, and finding herself again.