True, he was buried with a cell phone in his hand. But despite that modern touch, Warren Cowan’s death, at 87, signaled the end of an era.

If celebrity is a commodity in Hollywood, then Cowan was one of its pioneer traders. (View slideshow.)

Rogers & Cowan, the company that he and Henry Rogers started in 1950, remains one of the powerhouse imagemaking outfits in town. (It was bought in 1987 by Shandwick, which is now a subsidiary of the Interpublic Group of companies.)

Cowan’s life spanned the rise of the celebrity publicist. Every powerful flack in town started out at his firm: Pat Kingsley was his secretary; Alan Nierob and Paul Bloch—who were among the pallbearers at his funeral—fetched his coffee.

The consummate Hollywood P.R. man, who in recent years had announced other passings (most recently Joey Bishop’s) to the world, received his sendoff at a standing-room-only service in May at Mount Sinai Memorial Park in Los Angeles.

Eva Marie Saint read a statement from longtime client Paul Newman, who praised Cowan for bringing an “uncommon dignity” to his work. Among the mourners, more than one person remarked, were the ghosts of those whose press Cowan had finessed, among them Lucille Ball, Gary Cooper, Judy Garland, Cary Grant, and Frank Sinatra.

Cowan invented the modern Oscar campaign in 1944 by leaking a story about Mildred Pierce’s “promising” Academy Award chances when the film was just three weeks into shooting. “If we don’t have anything to publicize, let’s create it,” he once famously said. Cowan founded his last firm, Warren Cowan & Associates, in 1994. He learned he had melanoma only three weeks before he died, and the tireless P.R. man spent part of his final day with his staff gathered around him: He wanted to make sure everything was ready for an event honoring Wayne Newton.