Hidden Talent: The Emergence of Hollywood Agents 9780520944749

Table of contents :
Contents
Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments
1. City of Agents: The Power of Place
2. Revenge of the Agent: Myron Selznick
3. A Percentage of Power: Small Agents
4. Charisma and Contracts: Charles Feldman
5. Numbers and Niches: Boutique Agencies
6. Sealing the Deal: The Contract Industry
7. My Man Myron: Power and Persuasion
8. What Made Myron Run?: The Whole Equation
9. Tall in the Saddle: Agents in the Producer’s Chair
10. The Deal Factory: New Fortunes in the Forties
Epilogue. The Corporate Era: Changing Channels
Abbreviations
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

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Hidden Talent

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The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Lisa See Endowment Fund in Southern California History of the University of California Press Foundation.

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Hidden Talent The Emergence of Hollywood Agents

tom kemper

University of California Press berkeley

los angeles

london

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University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2010 by The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kemper, Tom. Hidden talent : the emergence of Hollywood agents / Tom Kemper. p. cm. Summary: This is a history of Hollywood agents as they rose in the studio system in the late 1920s and early 1930s up through the 1940s, demonstrating the central role they played in the classical Hollywood period. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-520-25706-1 (cloth : alk. paper) isbn 978-0-520-25707-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Theatrical agents—California—Los Angeles—History—20th century. 2. Theatrical agencies—California—Los Angeles—History— 20th century. 3. Motion picture industry—California—Los Angeles—History—20th century. I. Title. PN1993.5.U65K36 2009 338.4'7791430979494—dc22

2008054360

Manufactured in the United States of America 19 10

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This book is printed on Natures Book, which contains 30% postconsumer waste and meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper).

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Contents

List of Illustrations

vii

Preface

ix

Acknowledgments

xv

1. City of Agents: The Power of Place

1

2. Revenge of the Agent: Myron Selznick

25

3. A Percentage of Power: Small Agents

53

4. Charisma and Contracts: Charles Feldman

73

5. Numbers and Niches: Boutique Agencies

104

6. Sealing the Deal: The Contract Industry

124

7. My Man Myron: Power and Persuasion

144

8. What Made Myron Run?: The Whole Equation

164

9. Tall in the Saddle: Agents in the Producer’s Chair

197

10. The Deal Factory: New Fortunes in the Forties

217

Epilogue. The Corporate Era: Changing Channels

239

List of Abbreviations

249

Notes

251

Selected Bibliography

275

Index

279

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Illustrations

Figures 1. Myron Selznick, Joan Bennett, and Loretta Young

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2. Leland Hayward

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3. Ivan Kahn

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4. Edward Small’s pictorial review, The Link

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5. Irene Dunne, Charles Feldman, and Claudette Colbert

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6. Claudette Colbert and John Stahl

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7. Paul Kohner

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8. Myron Selznick’s agency office plan (1938)

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9. Carole Lombard, William Powell, and Gregory La Cava

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10. Myron Selznick, Rosalind Russell, Loretta Young, and Merle Oberon

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11. Vivien Leigh, Merle Oberon, and Laurence Olivier

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12. Randolph Scott, John Wayne, and Marlene Dietrich in The Spoilers

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13. Lauren Bacall in The Big Sleep

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14. Charles Feldman, Marlene Dietrich, and Kay Kyser

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15. Cary Grant, Merle Oberon, Charles Feldman, and Bert Lahr

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16. Charles Feldman and clients

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17. Jules Stein and Bette Davis

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18. Leland Hayward, Lew Wasserman, Jules Stein, Nat Deverich, and Taft Schreiber

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19. William Morris Agency ad

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Tables 1. Performance of Leading Agencies for Supporting Players, March–May 1935 2. Parallels between The Lodger and Shadow of a Doubt

47 189

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Preface

This is a history of Hollywood agents as they rose in the studio system in the late 1920s and early 1930s through the 1940s, demonstrating their central role in the classical Hollywood period. I began this research as an inquiry into the otherwise unexamined work (at least in serious academic studies) of the talent agent within the film industry. I followed the standard conception of film history on this issue, by academics and popular writers alike, that agents became powerful only around the 1950s with the formation of Music Corporation of America (MCA) and then surged when International Creative Management (ICM) and Creative Artists Agency (CAA) were founded in the 1970s. I envisioned my project as a more rigorous investigation of the big agents, big deals, and big myths of the 1970s, with some background investigation of the 1950s. When I dipped into 1930s Hollywood to see what agents (if any were around) were doing, I expected this research merely to inform the introduction to my work. Instead, I was surprised to find—in a vast amount of archival sources—the substantial and crucial work performed by agents in the earliest stages of modern Hollywood film production. My discoveries became this book. A subsequent book will cover the 1950s to the 1970s. I was also surprised to learn that agents arose from within the developing studio system. One might think that Broadway agents simply followed the money and moved west, like pioneer prospectors, mining the new revenue stream of Hollywood. In fact, few Broadway agents made such a transition, and they play only a minor role in this history (I mention Broadway agents briefly in chapters 1 and 3). Instead, my history begins in Hollywood studios of the late 1920s. Crucial to my argument here is my conception of Hollywood as a business world embedded within a social network (and vice versa). This may not ix

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be big news, but it adds an important perspective to understanding the business, which, in the case of agents, cannot be extracted from the social culture in which it is rooted. In this conception of the Hollywood social-business nexus, my project has been strongly informed by recent work in economic sociology. A wide, evolving, and heterogeneous field, economic sociology can nonetheless be defined as the study of how markets remain deeply and internally structured as social systems. Classic business texts by Alfred Chandler and Michael Porter also added greatly to my understanding of competitive operations in an industry. In all these cases this theoretical work provided a strong foundation for describing the strategies of an agent, but it remains a background theme. I decided to spare general readers the dry detour through academic theory. In my own work the influence of economic sociology appears most readily as I describe how agents harnessed social connections as part of their economic appeal. When I argue that agents sold their interpersonal connections, I mean literally just that, as an observation about how this particular social world and business structure intersected.1 Moreover, I describe and dissect the ways individuals cultivated reputations within the social systems of the Hollywood market and how these reputations were tied to larger industrial structures. In other words, I demonstrate how individual reputations—social “personalities”—developed within systematic practices. In this spirit I outline how particular agents carved out identities for themselves through the routine relationships they established by means of and within the studio system. Individual reputation, then, is systematic; it is institutional; it is, more or less, industrial. As a more recent practitioner of economic sociology argues, individual reputation arises from “configurations in which there emerge identities from networks of continuing business relations.”2 Harrison C. White’s formulation here, despite its clunky prose, rings true with Max Weber’s definition of charisma and my own perspective on agents in the studio system. As I argue, different agents came to have distinctive reputations through the systematic frameworks and practices of this industry. Thus I argue that industry, the vast agglomeration and coordination of standard practices, rules, and organizational structures, forces seemingly immune to and overwhelming of individual expression, actually aids and abets the construction of a persona. Since I occasionally use the phrase “social connections” to describe the business relationships harnessed by agents in their work, I need to clarify both the meaning and the limitations of this phrase. On the one hand, the phrase captures the real sense of routine interactions that developed through regular commercial exchanges. On the other hand, these exchanges remained commercial and the social relationships were therefore always

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contingent upon the needs of the business; the social dimension will not trump a bad deal. In this regard I should address what one early reader of the manuscript deemed “the Jewish question,” which this reader linked directly to my argument about the embedded nature of social exchanges in the business of Hollywood. By social connections I am suggesting that commercial contacts by business practitioners (real individuals) worked simultaneously as social relationships and vice versa. Practitioners then relied on these relationships as much as they did other forms of information about the economic market. These social connections were not deep or fixed but, rather, fleeting and loose. Drawing on a relationship established through earlier business dealings (which is what I mean by social connections) streamlined certain practices in an economic market. But that relationship had to remain contingent upon the particular needs of a specific market situation (such ever-changing conditions as, in the case of the film business, audience taste, the piecing together of a functioning team for a production, specific budgets, and the like). To ascribe these relationships to tribal loyalty would not only mean stepping into difficult terrain but also would miss the conditional quality of these relations (as with all such connections in any market). Why, for example, did the Jewish agent Charles Feldman succeed so strongly with Zanuck (who was decidedly not Jewish) and Jack Warner when Jewish agents like Sam Jaffe failed? In this light, a shared religion is a plainly weak explanation for the social networks embedded within Hollywood business relationships. And unpacking the larger, related concerns about coreligionists is, at any rate, another project (for example, Steven Carr’s work in Hollywood and Anti-Semitism or even Neal Gabler’s An Empire of Their Own). My work builds upon the major contributions to our understanding of the studio system offered in works by Tino Balio, David Bordwell, Douglas Gomery, Thomas Schatz, Janet Staiger, and others (see the bibliography). In general, the classical Hollywood studio system has been defined as the operation of “a consistent system of production” organized within five to eight major studios that dominated the commercial film business in the early 1930s through the 1950s (and into our own era, in some versions).3 All these authors more or less agree that with the transition to sound in the late 1920s and early 1930s, the studio system solidified into a complex, concentrated, and integrated network of practices and relations.4 As I demonstrate, this consolidation coincided with the emergence of talent agents. In this sense agents represented a vital component of the complex conduct of classical Hollywood. However, what I am describing here is another perspective on the operation of the studio system, one in which the system extends symbiotically into

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what I call a syndicate of agents, managers, and advisers. This agency syndicate operated in contrast to top-down models of the studio era. In the fairly standard model of the classical studio system, decisions came down from on high, whether from the moguls at the studios or the owners in the studios’ New York business offices. My work does not necessarily negate this model, but it suggests some of its limitations. It expands on the model in a way that, I think, shows a greater understanding of business management. For example, while a number of scholars of the studio system have drawn on the work of the business historian Alfred D. Chandler, they have missed, I think, an important part of his argument. In The Visible Hand, a history of the managerial revolution in U.S. business in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Chandler offers historians of the U.S. film business an exemplary template for analyzing managerial logic and networking. Chandler’s work presented a model for outlining the structure of studios and their various divisions, from marketing to development to production, distribution, and exhibition, all coordinated through modern managerial procedures. Here these historians miss an important part of Chandler’s argument, namely, that managerial logic was dispersed outside corporations as well.5 Managers in production and distribution made decisions that considered the health and stability of the market and steady transactions as much as they considered the interests of owners. My book explicates the dissemination of managerial duties in classical Hollywood through the agency syndicate. The studios performed more efficiently by tapping this agency syndicate to streamline processes like hiring and selection—attending contests, acting as talent scouts, trolling theaters, and dealing with talent agents. This dispersed managerial syndicate made informed decisions (ruled by the logic governing the business: the star system, current box office trends, and so forth) that narrowed the pool of applicants, thereby controlling the flow of information to studio executives. Making key decisions within this syndicate gained reputations for agents, which fed their power in the system. These reputations drew talent to particular agents, thereby fuelling their influence. Building reputations like this fed into the regular relations agents established with studio executives. In this way the management of the production stream in this business—producing films—was often distributed outside the studio walls. If my book complements the classic histories of the studio system, it is intentional: agents are part of the core of this period’s business practices. The history presented here is not a sideline narrative, but rather one that needs to be integrated into this earlier work. Any section of any of the standard histories of classical Hollywood that deals with a particular film production or

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creative personality could easily be expanded to include the role that an agent played in those events. This book focuses directly on such transactions in specific cases. These cases should not be read only as exceptions. They should be read as examples of standard practices, as excavations of dynamic forces that have been generally overlooked in histories of the business enterprise of making films in the 1930s and 1940s. While I cover some unique deals here, I do not present them merely as exceptional, like the strong percentage deal MCA won for Jimmy Stewart in 1949 on Winchester 73 (a moment often rendered as pivotal in many histories but one that I upend). Instead of discussing the role Feldman played in John Wayne’s or Lauren Bacall’s career, I could have picked Feldman’s work with clients like Tyrone Power or Clifton Webb or, for that matter, any number of other agents and their clients. The 1930s and 1940s offer a rich trove of insider documentation of agency practices. At my disposal were the exhaustive internal office files of the two leading agencies—those of Myron Selznick and Charles Feldman— and rich collections from their competitors: Sam Jaffe, Paul Kohner, Edward Small, Ivan Kahn, Samuel Morrison, and others. Working with the internal office material as I do provides insight into the strategies used by agents, the role of consultation with their clients, the logic behind agents’ relationships with various clients, agents’ routine interactions with studios, agents’ competitive strategies, and other insider perspectives. I end the book in the period often thought to mark the rise of agents, when corporate agencies were supplanting agencies built around the personality and connections of one or two individuals. The rise of these corporations marks the end of my history here for they more or less ossified certain agency practices that remain to this day. Most of the strategies developed in the 1930s—packaging; assigning agents in a single firm to a particular studio; contractual guarantees of story approval; percentage points and freelance deals—were used by the corporate agencies in the 1950s. Moreover, the late 1940s were a time of change in the media landscape. Television became a significant outlet for the leading agencies, all of which split their companies into divisions that specialized in various media: television, movies, radio, and Broadway. The Hollywood film business was relegated to a corporate division; for the corporate goliaths television was where the big gold deposits were. Still, while new challenges confronted talent agents in the 1950s and 1960s, their overall game plan, their practices, procedures, and strategies, had been established in the 1930s. This book lays out all these principles and practices.

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Acknowledgments

I’d like to thank my “agent,” Dana Polan. Dana inspired, encouraged, challenged, and shepherded me through almost every stage of this project. But such crucial and diligent stewardship was only a small part of what he did for me. Dana provided me with the greatest gift a teacher can offer: how to ask new questions. Answers remain inert. But asking questions offers a constant source of inquiry and intellectual renewal. In that sense he continues to inspire almost every facet of my scholarly and intellectual life, from teaching to research to writing. While I claim to be president of the Rick Jewell Fan Club, I imagine that I’d have many competitors for that title. At any rate, Rick inspired me as a student so many years ago that I greatly appreciated his close reading of this manuscript. Elizabeth Daley was an ideal reader: literate, informed, and sharply discerning. She alerted me to potential problems of tone and pushed me to broaden the scope of the project. I truly value her continuing support for my work. Thomas Doherty offered a thorough critique of an early draft (as an anonymous reader for the University of California Press before we met). Since I have such great admiration for his work (and often used it as a model for my own), I especially prized his comments. I also am grateful for the enthusiasm of the two anonymous University of California Press readers. My project covers a lot of ground, and the reviews of these scholars were crucial. At UC Press I am deeply indebted to Mary Francis for her interest in this project at a very early stage and her patient and assured guidance, as well as that of Lynn Meinhardt. A single, spontaneous conversation with my brilliant colleague Tom Laichas helped to clarify my research and my overall goals, particularly for xv

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chapter 1. In this regard and many others, I owe much to the community of the Crossroads School for Arts and Sciences in Santa Monica, California. I draw constant inspiration from the students, and the support of the administrators, teachers, and the campus community at large means a great deal to me. It is difficult to put into words the impact Crossroads has had on my scholarship and my life. In particular, I would like to thank Roger Weaver, Bob Riddle, and Liz Resnick for help with research trips and conferences, as well as their overall support for my work—and how it inspires and informs my life as a continual learner, part of the Crossroads philosophy. Two former students, Casey Baird and Paul Perez, provided assistance on the project, and I thank them. Lutz Bacher generously shared an interview he conducted with Paul Kohner many years ago for Bacher’s own nuanced work on the studio system. Inspiring conversations with Emily Carman about her work on actresses and contracts in the 1930s both corroborated my suspicion that this was fertile ground for research and alerted me to other material significant for my project. When I first called Caroline Cisneros at the Louis B. Mayer Library of the American Film Institute to gain access to the Charles K. Feldman Collection, she asked who I was interested in. “Feldman,” I replied. “Yes, I know,” she said. “But who are you interested in?” “Charles Feldman,” I said again. “Feldman?” she exclaimed with some delight. “No one is ever interested in him. They usually just want to see his clients.” That’s when I knew I was on to something. Caroline, who is also a fan of Feldman’s, made it a delight to spend many, many weeks in that sunny library. I owe so much to my great friend and intrepid scout Barbara Hall at the Margaret Herrick Library at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Her imagination, no less than her knowledge, guided my research. She opened up crucial archival resources for me, both literally and figuratively, as she granted me access to rare files and came up with creative angles on available resources. My other great friend there, Val Almendarez, guided me through material, provided me with hitherto unavailable documents, and often calmly explained ideas that I should have thought of long ago. I truly appreciate their crafty professionalism and friendship. Finally, I also thank Jennifer Romero, as well as the academy’s wonderful staff, for their help. At the Warner Bros. Archives, housed at the Univeristy of Southern California, I am beholden to the wonderful counsel of my first host there, Hayden Guest, about how to access material and for his inspiring discussions. More recently, Emily Carman and Curator Sandra Lee provided great assistance. I thank the ubiquitous Ned Comstock at USC’s Cinematic Arts

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Library. I am grateful for the wonderful staff at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin and for the center’s generous research grant for my return visit there. The staff at the Berlin Film Museum was especially helpful during my visit there, as was the staff, closer to home, at the UCLA Performing Arts Special Collections library. Twentieth Century– Fox gave me permission to peruse old studio files. Valerie Yaros, historian at the Screen Actors Guild, made some key documents available to me, and I appreciate her strong support of historical research. Friends and family—too many to name—cheered me on and tolerated my distractions and fitful fixations. At the top of this hill stands Jordan Hoffman. On a long hike one day, Jordan graciously lent an ear as I brainstormed topics, finally winding my way to this one. He’s a trouper and a true friend. My mother and father, aside from raising me in a house that fostered a love of art, pop culture, and ideas, provided steady baby-sitting services, giving me crucial time to finish the book and giving much joy to Jack. Finally, my own family: Alison, green eyes, you changed my life. My sons, Jack and Dash, bookends to this book and loves of my life: I dedicate it to you.

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1. City of Agents The Power of Place

In 1930, as suddenly as a swarm of locusts, talent agents descended on Hollywood, infiltrating every crevice of the studio system. Headlines screamed in terror. Industry players demanded action. Editorials called for reform. “More rank impositions,” one besieged critic raged, “are practiced by agents than by all other classes of people who make their living on the outer boundary of motion picture activity.”1 Articles and pamphlets proffered tales of supposed underhandedness, “semi-legal trickery,” racketeering, and double dealing by these newly arrived tricksters. Agents belonged to that strange new breed of businessmen that included advertising pitchmen, real estate agents, loan sharks, investment bankers, and stockbrokers, a flourishing species driven, according to the venomous analysis of Thorstein Veblen, solely “to get something for nothing.” Brokers made their money by offering services to business through a mediation function, contributing nothing of tangible value to industry since, Veblen declared, their “driving force was not an imperative bent of workmanship and human service, but an indefinitely extensible cupidity.”2 Hollywood agents suffered from similar suspicions. As traditional skills and measures for evaluating efficacy vanished from markets dominated by deal-making and -brokering services, anxieties arose around the importance of distinguishing reliable advice and mediation from fast talk and ballyhoo. Comparable concerns arose around agents and their seemingly sudden descent upon Hollywood, a business itself maturing into a reliable market, one recently backed by banks and Wall Street investors. To quell these suspicions Hollywood agents, like most other brokers, needed to persuade clients of their trustworthiness in order to win their business. In a profession lacking established rituals or forms of accreditation— 1

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apprenticeships and guilds—issues of credibility and deceitfulness operated as both criteria for an agent’s salesmanship and marketability as well as grounds for interrogation and indictment. Agents sold themselves on their “character,” building their business as intermediaries in transactions and negotiations by calling on previously established relationships. Regulating and containing these relationships, in addition to exposing character traits, represented the key strategy of assault for their detractors. To the talented, agents promised special access, the capacity to make contact with higher entities, to turn commonality into valuable commodity, to turn promise into deliverance. Agents claimed secret knowledge and private passwords, guiding and granting entrée to producers and studios; they understood the grammar of power and could translate any Hollywood aspirant’s prayers into reality. They could make a star. To their adversaries, agents represented craven Hollywood hucksters, fleecing producers of millions and preying on the pools of newcomers, talented and untalented, that were spilling into Hollywood. In this view the chicanery of agents threatened to contaminate the rational business methods that supposedly governed the burgeoning studio system. Both portraits draw from a colorful genealogy of American opportunists, grifters, self-promoters, and peripatetic prophets, from Melville’s “ConfidenceMan,” an antebellum con artist who appears different to various characters, shape-shifting through each scam as he plays on the trust he elicits from his victims, to P. T. Barnum, the great huckster of entertainment who heightened the audience’s sense of wonder through oratorical artifice and linguistic trickery, to Wall Street churners who accumulated commissions by convincing patrons to buy and sell stocks—a rich U.S. soil teeming with hustlers who, as one recent historian claims, represent the very drive and soul of the national character.3 Hollywood agents, no less than contemporary advertising men or con men, sprung from this hustling tradition. No mere queer creation of the phantasmagoric commerce and culture of Hollywood, agents, then, were allAmerican creatures. Closely related to this origin story—in fact, passing through its very core—another conflict, one about interpretations and institutions, erupted in regard to the Hollywood agent. In the early 1930s agents militated for their own branch within the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the official organization of the industry. In calling for admission to this institution, agents sought legitimacy and recognition of their role in the studio system, comparable in importance to the roles of other academy members, such as producers, directors, and studio executives. At the same time the

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academy launched its own investigation into “the agent problem,” an inquiry resulting in a proposed “Codes of Practice” for agents. Editorials. Committees. Investigations. Regulations. Codes. It seems as if no one noticed agents in Hollywood until 1930. What were agents? Where did they come from? What role did they play in Hollywood business? These questions arose with urgency at this moment, and these questions are the questions of this book. They provide, then, a fertile starting point for this history. The intensity of the criticism, the scrutiny, and, perhaps even more important, the apparent failure to spot and recognize agents until 1930 reflect the significance of the historical changes underway in Hollywood. Delving into this issue reveals the role, function, and implicit power of the agent within the classical Hollywood system. This analysis, in turn, reveals both how agents positioned themselves within Hollywood business operations and how studios contested the position, presence, and agency of agents in these dealings. Examining the conflicting and uneven development of agents offers an alternative to more traditional, monolithic conceptions of the classical Hollywood era, foregrounding significant power shifts that predate the postwar fragmentation of the studio system. Furthermore, these institutional power struggles circulated within a formative period of the studio system’s maturation into an oligopoly, a time characterized by some important issues and struggles: close public scrutiny of Hollywood’s monopolistic practices and its division of labor; controversy about the academy’s strategic involvement in the National Industrial Recovery Act (1933); and clashes between management and creative personnel. All these issues radiated through the debates about agents. Yet beyond the embattled, shocked rhetoric in the articles and public forums—the academy debates and committees, the hearings held by the National Recovery Administration—in the industry, agents carved out a space for themselves in Hollywood’s daily workings. Agents did so not only despite the institutional forces working against them but through and within these very these battles. Signs of the growing hostility to talent agents surfaced most blatantly in the early 1930s in the weekly and sometimes daily exposés about agents in film industry journals. Bearing scaremongering headlines like “Grafting Flesh Peddlers,” these articles conjured up images of carney exploitation and financial instability. Agents, with their focus on deal making and bargaining, smacked of the kind of unruly and reckless scheming that this maturing industry was supposed to have left behind in the 1920s. As a corrective, articles and editorials called for reform and “the institution of some

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City of Agents

sort of a code of ethics” to vanquish “the evils that exist under the present agent system”—a proposition that anticipated the motion picture academy’s own proposal three years later.4 The May 10, 1930, issue of Film Spectator, for example, featured a cover story entitled: “Pay Agents Only for What They Do”: The question of what to do about agents is still without an answer. It is admitted that an artist has a perfect right to employ someone to represent him in a business way, and we will have agents as long as this right is practiced and recognized. It is obvious, therefore, that we cannot settle the agent question by cutting off the heads of all the agents.

Lacking recourse to the guillotine, the studios resorted to medieval tactics nonetheless, pulling up the gates and exiling agents from their kingdoms. Stories of studios’ banning agents from their lots—always a temporary measure—surfaced almost weekly in the early 1930s. On July 15, 1932, for example, Variety reported that Fox had barred the leading talent agent Myron Selznick and his company from the studio lot as a response to alleged unethical practices in several transactions. Fox claimed that its efforts to land Zasu Pitts had resulted in a confirmed deal but that Selznick had abruptly changed her weekly salary, denying Pitts’s services until the studio agreed to the new figure. Likewise, Fox’s efforts to contract John Cromwell upon his release from Paramount derailed when Selznick intervened and set the director up at RKO. These articles painted a contentious relationship between agents and producers, as both sides battled for control of talent. Both the industry discourse and the practices of the studios, then, positioned agents as unnecessary forces. Industry journals consistently characterized the agent as a redundant yet unjustifiably powerful force in the marketplace. Why, for example, one article asked rhetorically, should a star like Jean Hersholt, with a proven track record, with an already established artistic reputation and salary, require an agent?5 If agents touted the individuality of their clients—distinguishing their saleable personalities or skills—they also challenged the notion of talented individuals’ standing out on their own, unique, pure, and unassisted. Perceived as leeches, undeserving of the commissions earned from the labor of others, agents seemed chimerical courtiers in the commerce of culture. As the controversy about agents raged, studio executives locked agents out, usually with publicity, thereby painting a picture of commercial charlatans and tricksters. Through the dialogue between muckraking journalism and studio actions, industry discourse and practices worked together in a shared paradigm governing (or attempting to govern) the actions of agents. At the same time, while

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thoroughly embedded within the film business, agents used these challenges to articulate their utility to both clients and studios.

The Emergence of Hollywood Agents Of course, agents didn’t suddenly invade Hollywood. The subsystem of agents evolved with the studio system itself. The alarmist articles about the growing influence of Hollywood agents reflected a real increase in the number of talent agencies that were sprouting up in Hollywood in the late 1920s. In 1925, for example, fewer than twenty talent agencies listed their services in industry directories; of this group, at least six were merely publishers of talent directories and not genuine agencies. But by 1933 Film Daily Yearbook listed more than sixty Hollywood talent agencies (and nearly twenty more in New York). This spike in the numbers of agents was directly related to the maturing of the film business in the late 1920s. Heretofore a risky hodge-podge of ever-changing alliances and prone to bankruptcy or litigation, the film business consolidated into a smaller number of larger companies. A series of mergers, wherein production companies acquired distribution companies and theater chains (and vice versa), settled the business into five to eight major corporations. Vertically integrated—controlling significant percentages of distribution and theatrical exhibition, as well as production—these companies produced roughly 80 percent of the films released in a given year. The studios’ stranglehold on the exhibition business owed largely to their acquisition of key theaters in major markets, forcing independent theaters to vie for the big releases and agree to strict deals from the studios (for example, limited screening times and agreeing to book films in blocks, that is, to buy batches of five to thirty or more films from the studios). As the film industry became concentrated in Hollywood studios, with integrated distribution firms demanding steady product from the production divisions, talent agents stepped in to serve business functions that had become overlooked during the expansions of the studios. Indeed, when the studios attempted to internalize the process of scouting and managing talent, they encountered a number of obstacles, primarily cost and conflicts of interest. For one thing, managing a wealth of talent, let alone hunting for incoming artists, entailed a tremendous expense. Contracts would need to cover actors’ idle periods, a pricey proposition.6 For another, an in-house studio-run talent agency could not guarantee fair play during the negotiation process, for the studio, very likely in practice, and certainly in

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perception, would always maintain its own interests over those of talent. Variety described this latter proposal as one “operated by and for the benefit of studios under studio control and eliminating outside agents.”7 Thus, from an overall market standpoint, independent agents made more sense. Through their commissions agents absorbed the costs of scouring the field for and on behalf of talent while maintaining a contractual commitment to their clients’ interests. Why did talent deal with agents? Like all brokers, agents offered a service, increasing the rewards earned by their clients in return for a percentage of the reward. Trust came from the contractual agreement that an agent gained only when the client did, or at least that was the theory. Furthermore, the abilities that established an agent’s worth—to open studio gates, contact studio executives and producers, to know which doors to knock on—were in demand by actors, writers, and directors. An established agent could perform all these functions and in that sense streamlined the process for incoming talent (while also performing gate-keeping duties for producers). Agents acted as trustworthy guides to getting work in Hollywood (and, for this very same reason, quacks, confidence men, and embezzlers fleeced thousands of newcomers as well).8 Similar pressures pushed the industry to organize the Central Casting Corporation in 1925 to deal with the influx of extras into Los Angeles and the scandals arising from the many lost aspirants.9 The very exigency to construct such a turnkey mechanism, a guidance office, a managerial department, a selective steering bureau, parallels the practical and industrial need—dealing with the hordes of Hollywood hopefuls—that was served and exploited by agents. However, most agents had interest in only the more ambitious artists who were seeking leading roles or writing and directing credits. Representing new artists promised greater rewards than placing extras and gave rise to the surge in talent agencies in the late 1920s. This network of agents was part of the social grid of classical Hollywood. Most agents hung out their shingles in Hollywood proper because it was central to all the studios, where the agents made their daily rounds of meetings.10 Beverly Hills drew in a number of agencies as well since the young city offered lower taxes as a way of attracting new businesses. The geographic location of the agencies supported frequent and spontaneous meetings with executives and clients on the studio lots or lunches at neutral restaurants. Like any supplier to industry, agents forged regular relations with their buyers. However, agents sold unique products that required much more frequent discussions with buyers, since a client might change interests or could require a stronger pitch to fit into a particular project, or a studio could modify its production slate. A routine rendezvous involving an agent

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and client or studio executive facilitated important swaps of information. An exchange performed, for example, in the informal setting of a restaurant, within the speculative and contingent manner of gossip (the latest information about artists and projects or hypothetical explorations of combinations of clients on particular projects) could subsequently translate into serious deals. Serious deal making relied on free-form explorations; on casual, uncommitted conversation; and accurate, up-to-date reports. At lunch or over drinks an agent could take the temperature of a client or producer before the real brokering heated up. Other industries called this research and development; Hollywood called it lunch, even if no less important exchanges and explorations occurred in these meetings.11 The relative absence of agents in Hollywood in the early 1920s suggests a general perception that the movie industry lacked the elements required for an agency to thrive, namely, central organization and predictable business strategies and operations. Indeed, the William Morris Agency, a Broadway institution since the 1890s, more or less steered clear of the movie business until 1928, when it opened a Hollywood office; it then struggled for the next decade to gain ground in the film business. So the emergence of agents, their alarming “arrival” on the scene in the late 1920s, coincides with the maturation of the Hollywood studio system. Agents’ presence goes part and parcel with the process of the corporate organization of the industry as one governed by the logic of the firm, wherein companies sought to consolidate multiple transactions under one roof.12 The contestation regarding the role of agents stems from efforts to define the proper balance of the firms and how or in what way their logic would operate or govern the business practices of this industry—essentially a conflict about the “free agency” of talent. In this sense the early battles about agents’ power in the 1930s represent industrial growing pains as the various components of the business struggled to establish places for themselves within the expansion and stabilization of the business.13 Of course, talent agents came with a storied past, almost as old as vaudeville, where they performed an important administrative function. Acting as a representative for talent, agents served the constantly varying programs in clubs and vaudeville venues, large markets that often changed acts every night, by managing bookings and keeping track of an act’s commitments. This market demanded strict scheduling logs (agents kept substantial books on their clients’ commitments) and almost daily contact with employers. Very likely the steadiness of work in New York and the eastern markets in the 1920s, as well as the demanding surveillance of the programming and the timetables alone, kept many Broadway agents from

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exploring the Hollywood market, even while the salaries commanded by movie work grew.14 A quick survey shows that the agents who emerged as leaders in Hollywood in the late 1920s and early 1930s sprang from within the film business.15 Before their careers as two of the leading Hollywood agents of this period, Myron Selznick and Charles Feldman, for example, had already established themselves within the business, the former as a producer (under his father’s famous company) and the latter as a lawyer handling contract negotiations for talent. Likewise, Leland Hayward cashed in his studio background in public relations and production when he moved into the agency business in the late 1920s. Mike Levee started as a prop man in 1917, became a founding partner of Brunton Studios in 1920, and sold the company to Paramount, where he then worked as a senior executive. He next became vice president of First National, before finally opening his Hollywood talent agency in the early 1930s. Before Nat Goldstone established his own flourishing agency in 1932, he worked at Universal under Carl Laemmle, as did Ivan Kahn, who set up a relatively successful agency in the late 1920s. Zeppo Marx worked with his famous brothers before establishing his own agency in the early 1930s. The Hawks-Volck Agency played off the fact that its main partner was the brother and representative of the director Howard Hawks. Before H. N. Swanson’s career as an accomplished literary agent, he worked as an executive at RKO, and he exploited his contacts there in his new enterprise (some of Swansons’s early letters soliciting clients for his agency were written on RKO stationery). Edward Small alternated between producing and working for his talent agency in the 1920s, and Bert Allenberg began his Hollywood career as a business manager for film talent in the 1920s before joining forces with Phil Berg in 1932 to establish one of the major talent agencies of the 1930s, a close rival to Selznick and Feldman. And the list goes on. Industry statistics confirm that the leading talent agents grew with (and within) the evolving studio system. By the early 1930s four agencies represented the majority of members in the motion picture academy.16 The Selznick-Joyce Agency represented 87 academy members (23 actors, 37 writers, 27 directors); Collier and Flynn represented 22 (18 actors, 3 writers, 1 assistant director); the Edward Small Agency represented 20 (8 actors, 5 writers, 7 directors); and Phil Berg represented 15 (8 actors, 1 writer, 5 directors).17 Granted, many major stars managed to not join the academy; nonetheless, these statistics offer a useful barometer for measuring the significance of an agency. Note that the owners of these four agencies arrived in the agent business through positions in the industry, with each of these

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founders coming from other areas of the Hollywood infrastructure. By contrast, outsiders like New York’s William Morris or Leo Morrison (a Broadway-based agent who moved to Hollywood at this time) counted few to no academy members among their clients. That Broadway agencies found such difficulty penetrating the Hollywood market illustrates how important early social connections proved to be for the leading agencies. In all the cases described earlier, the agents forged significant business and social relationships within the industry before emerging as full-fledged talent representatives. Agents like Goldstone, Small, and Berg tapped connections from their business dealings in previous incarnations, thereby overcoming through their working relationships with producers the barriers of entry that Broadway agents found difficult or insurmountable. How agents developed their businesses and sold their services explains why so many of the leading agents developed out of other roles in the studio system. Budding talent agents needed to sell themselves to two markets: prospective clients and their prospective employers. The barriers of entry for agents—the costs and obstacles of establishing a business—were almost nothing in terms of cash outlay: clerical personnel, a steady working phone number, and some business clothes (some less successful agents worked without offices, though few survived this way).18 To a large degree, then, the keys to entry for agents remained almost entirely social—connections to important executives at studios—and perceptual—the appearance of, in the eyes of potential clients, associations with important studio executives. Successful agents, then, built themselves around social networks, establishing connections to talent and to the major studios. The latter depends to a strong degree on the quality of talent gained through the former. But even in pursuit of talent, studios relied on regular contact with trusted, proven individuals (agents who had steered them to capable or winning talent in the past), so that ties to talent alone might not guarantee entry to a studio for a novice agent. Convincing talent that she or he needed a particular representative depended on the agent’s capacity to demonstrate some special “in” with important studio executives. In this regard agents sold their charisma, a peculiar set of skills or prowess that was difficult, if not impossible, to quantify in the traditional sense of services (for example, the mathematical acumen sold by an accountant with degrees and licenses and demonstrable practice or by a carpenter, whose labor skills were easily measured in performance).19 One way that agents sold their charisma was by circulating their list of clients to studio executives, the trade press, and within industry gossip. Agents readily stitched their names to stars in articles in Variety, and they

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drew in new clients through their association with established ones. Agents placed ads in trade papers linking themselves to stars and other talent. Both Edward Small and Myron Selznick, for example, produced pamphlets touting their various clients; other agents, like Charles Feldman, frequently took out ads listing their prominent clients in particular productions. Film industry directories also published lists of licensed agents, and these publications served as guides for incoming talent.20 By the time agents became more or less accepted components of the industry in the 1930s, studio executives even steered incoming agentless talent (in those rare cases) to agents to avoid any accusations of unfairness in negotiations (for example, David Selznick and his executives at RKO frequently tipped off his brother about unsigned talent). By advertising their associations, both to talent and to studios, through prominent deal making or client lists, agents created an aura for themselves that translated their business connections into pecuniary value. The skirmishes between studios and agents—as with so many of the battles of the 1930s—essentially erupted over stars. In the teens and early 1920s the star system arose largely as a form of product identification and differentiation, a role that stars continued to serve in the maturing studio system. A star’s market value promised to reduce the risk of financing a production because a star was believed to guarantee some certainty in boxoffice returns, even if this relationship magnified salaries. Yet stars represented more than a strong indicator of potential returns. As a studio’s most visible assets, stars lent prestige to a studio. Moreover, as studio operations grew into the more complex “Fordist” synchronization of large monopolies, stars lent stability to annual production planning—because the stars remained under studio contract, studio executives could plan their annual budgets around the release of a certain number of star vehicles. For example, stars allowed studios to leverage slates of films (selling “blocks” of twenty to thirty or more films), tethered to one star’s release, for sale to exhibitors. In other words, for certain theaters to receive a star’s film, they had to buy several of the studio’s other films. In this sense the star provided both box-office value and the ability to sell less desirable films to exhibitors—a certainty that the devious machinations of “star-raiding” agents threatened to destroy. Controlling and curtailing the movements of stars involved Ptolemaic charts that carefully balanced a star’s availability with the diverse but unrelenting production needs of the studio’s annual release schedule, a slate that itself was tied to their release calendar for theatrical markets. Stars, then, factored into all aspects of production and studio operations, which allowed for

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the possibility of streamlining production practices, so that, for example, studio writers could generate screenplays with specific stars in mind, and studios could buy and prepare projects confident that appropriate stars remained locked in their stable. The alleged star raiding by agents—luring stars to break their contracts and re-sign at other studios—threatened not only the loss of the capital of stars (and that bankable box office) but also their usefulness in integrating the different practices of the studio, thereby destabilizing the studio’s vigilant, crucial computation of its assets and personnel. Given the tremendous importance of the star in networking the integrated spheres of studio operations, studios invented a slick, secure form of ensnaring a star’s servitude: “the option contract.” Such a contract ran anywhere from one to seven years, with many in the latter range. Studios held the option to review and renew the contract at certain intervals, but the talent held no right to refuse or review the contract once it was signed. Since these contracts overlapped—studios retained multiple contracts, all containing various deadlines—studios had to keep track of as many as one hundred contracted assets. As Universal’s Eugene Zukor explained: “Let’s say you had a Gary Cooper contract that calls for $250,000 [a salary renewal]. We have to notify Cooper by three o’clock tomorrow afternoon. We have another contract that comes up for decision by noon tomorrow. As for today, we have several writers’ contracts that have to be signed or else those people are going with Fox and MGM. We have to call their agents within the hour.”21 Agents waited to pounce on these expiration dates, and as a contract approached its terminal date, the ticking clock set off a flurry of activity. To ward off the pillaging agents, as Zukor noted, the studios developed an accounting system simply to track their complex network of overlapping contracts, countering potential offers by timing their own with calculation. Still, this option contract would seem to eliminate or greatly diminish the necessity of agents. Indeed, that remained part of its intent. On the one hand, the option contract represented stability, guaranteeing regular employment and salary to actors, often stipulating specific salary increases at each renewal, a promising prospect for the notoriously nomadic existence of creative professions. On the other hand, the contract represented a form of indentured, if starlit, servitude. Since only the studio controlled renewal rights, salaries remained fixed, often in the face of box-office success, and the studio tacked on any absences to the end of the contract, a practice that sometimes amounted to one- or two-year extensions (and fairly frequent litigation). Still, as many agents noted, their clients often preferred the security of a long-term contract to the more lucrative but risky rewards of a freelance career.

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Nonetheless, the option contract left room for agents to practice their craft. Agents renegotiated salaries at certain review periods or following the escalating box-office success of their clients. Within reason and moderation studios often willingly rewrote contracts to appease their stars and major directors. In addition, agents frequently negotiated such terms as the required or limited hours of reporting to the set, publicity, dressing rooms, and even tea breaks. The notorious practice of studio “loan-outs,” where studios leased their contracted talent to other studios, often at a profit to the original studio (frequently splitting a percentage of this profit with the client), served as an arena for negotiation for agents. Studios, albeit with some caution, proved amenable to loan-outs since this practice put otherwise expensively idle talent to use and potentially increased or broadened the appeal of the studios’ properties. It also provided a sense of freedom for the actors. As an agent from this period explained: I have secured for a number of my clients contracts which permit them to play in one outside picture a year, on terms which they negotiate independently. Usually such permission enables the artist to appear in some favorite story or work for some favorite director, and the novelty of an interlude on a different lot breaks the monotony of constant association with too-familiar faces.22

Loan-outs, in this sense, alleviated some of the restrictions or oppressiveness in option contracts and, at the same time, carved out a space for the action of agents. As early as the mid-1920s, studios had discussed pooling their regulation of talent through a central booking office (a variation on the industry branch that managed extras) that would act as a studio-run agency for actors.23 The cooperative venture that managed the turbulent pool of extras limited access to the major studios and stifled the competition of extras’ booking agencies. Producers and the Academy of Motion Pictures both floated the concept of a similar centralized clearing house for actors as well, to be run either by the studios or the academy. Actors and agents balked, yet studios continued to discuss the idea, especially as the number of independent Hollywood agents grew. And rumors—mostly unfounded—persisted that the studios had conspired to freeze salaries by refusing to use actors who failed to renew contracts with other studios. The idea of a central booking service gave some credence to such cartel theories, as did the Big Five Agreement, wherein the studios agreed to support and deploy the same sound technology in the late 1920s. Both examples show how studios, nominally and normally competitive entities, could, at least provisionally and periodically, set aside their competition and coordinate and consolidate their behavior to stabilize the health

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of the industry at large and strengthen their overall power. Star raiding— when studios courted stars whose contracts were nearly up or when the studios encouraged stars to break their contracts—was the most blatant example of studio competition and a strong, if still contentious, strategy for agents in the 1930s. Production companies often found it more profitable to employ known talent and to secure individuals by offering them higher salaries because, in the words of one industry observer, “competing exhibitors, desirous of acquiring the services of such talent, induced the breaking of existing contracts.”24 Even if the threat of a lawsuit forestalled reckless or flagrant disregard of contracts, agents and actors gambled on counteroffers as a way of renegotiating existing contracts. In 1931 producers developed an agreement that ostensibly addressed the issue of star raiding.25 Under the terms producers vowed to notify each other of all offers to talent and limited negotiations to a thirty-day window around contract expiration dates. Both the indeterminate nature of the time limit (how would agents know of approaching terminal contract dates?) and the mandatory reporting of competitive offers would effectively disempower agents. The agreement offered studios a way of controlling this competition, for all the studios would retain knowledge of counteroffers and actual salary figures. Likewise, in the late 1920s the Academy of Motion Pictures presented itself as a collective negotiating agency but one designed, financed, and run by producers.26 Agents and their clients vociferously attacked these plans, for in both these failed proposals producers’ access to information and control of the “market” for talent undermined the competitive power of talent, thereby all but eliminating the need for agents.

Agents and the Academy As a countermove, in 1931 a number of leading talent agents formed the Artists’ Managers Association with the aim of defending their presence and purpose in the industry and to negotiate with the producers’ association on such issues as studios’ barring agents from their lots, the proposed central booking office, and talent raiding. After extensive quarrels the negotiations died, and the talent agents switched tactics. Now the agents, as a body, sought official entry to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.27 Established in 1927 as a central organization moderating the expanding empire of Hollywood, the academy’s ostensible role as a neutral mediating body for issues such as technical standardization, artistic recognition, and labor negotiations barely masked its antiunion agenda. So while the academy

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gained power in Hollywood, it remained controversial, particularly for artists, many of whom viewed it as a pawn of the producers. Still, the talent agents clearly recognized the academy’s growing power, even if it remained more symbolic than real. The agency problem grew more disconcerting late in 1932 when academy officials discovered that agents had convinced California politicians to introduce a bill in the state legislature that would exempt agents from the control of the California Labor Commission, the division that supervised all employment businesses, from maids to temporary-job services to talent agencies. The state labor commissioner granted annual licenses to talent agencies, and the commissioner supervised the contracts between agencies and talent. Talent agents wanted legislation that would remove them from such direct surveillance and create a separate sphere for their line of work. That this legislation would nonetheless involve contractual supervision and legal standards went unnoticed by the academy and other industry representatives. Instead, many Hollywood insiders considered this political gambit on the part of agencies an effort to extricate themselves entirely from supervision and responsibility.28 In December 1932 the academy’s board of directors developed a response. Internal academy memos reveal that at the monthly board meeting, much discussion focused on a recent increasing source of friction with agencies, the studios’ practice of barring agents from their lots and the attendant press coverage. Acknowledging that agents were the only important industry figures excluded from the academy, the board authorized an investigation “designed to bring about a Code of Practice to govern the relations of agents, their clients, and the producers.”29 Surviving internal notes from these meetings delineated a number of issues in need of exploration, among them: Complaints by Agents: •

Studios barring various agencies at different times and the inconvenience to agencies and potential loss to clients

•

That studios use the threat of such barring as a weapon in negotiating

•

Agents forced to go to court to collect commissions

•

Producers acting as agents

Complaints by Producers: •

Agents overloaded with clients, thus failing to serve their interests

•

The “excessive zeal” of agents whose demands “set up an artificial barrier between the artist who wants to work and the producer who wants to engage him.”

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That the interference of the agent tends to break down the personal relationship and feeling of mutual loyalty between the studio and the employee.

Complaints by Talent: •

Feuds between agents and producers hurt clients

•

10% commission

•

Firing agents made difficult by convoluted contracts

How the committee might mediate these issues was the real challenge, particularly since problems concerning contracts always entailed potential legal disputes and in fact were governed by state law. From the start, then, the committee faced both speculative issues (what realistic alternative could it develop for the arbitration of contract disputes outside existing state laws?) and intangible problems (how could a code address issues like loyalty and “excessive zeal”?), even while it dealt with more transparent problems (commissions, producers acting as agents, and the specific wording of contracts). This review issued from an overall retooling of the academy, which was seeking to become more of a mediator in the marketplace than a body serving only the producers. In fact, the academy announced that this agency code would be “the first Code presented for the approval of the membership under the new by-laws.” That the “agent problem” represented one of the first issues that the revamped academy tackled reflects the perceived magnitude of this issue within the industry. The academy drafted several people to serve on the committee. B. B. Kahane, an RKO executive, would prove the most zealous in his pursuit of the agency problem. The directors Frank Capra and Lloyd Bacon, the actor Robert Montgomery, the producer Jesse Lasky, the cinematographer Lee Garmes, and a handful of others joined Kahane for the first meeting on April 20, 1933. That gathering reiterated most of the concerns first raised in board meetings. But surviving memos and notes from the second meeting on May 1 reveal how the committee shifted the language governing its discussion of these problems to a focus on responsibility and behavior. The committee divided the agency problem into three areas: the “responsibilities between agent and artist,” “practices” between agents and producers, and “conditions involving all parties.” This last area basically covered the playing field—contracts, arbitration, and negotiation—and the discussion of the first two areas—responsibilities and practices—would generate rules governing “fair play.” This relegated most of the earlier issues expressed by the board to a kind of foundation level: contracts, arbitration, and negotiations represented the primary conditions that gave rise to the

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more significant problems between producers and agents. So the committee redirected the discussion to focus on regulating behavior by defining responsibilities (of agents and producers) and their practices. Under responsibilities the committee explored: •

The services agents promise to render to their clients

•

The duration of these promised services [a responsibility stated in the contract]

•

Commission rates [again, a contractual issue]

•

Conditions for transferring a client’s service from one agent to other agents within an agency [an issue related to the growing size and organization of agencies]

•

Grounds for the cancellation of contracts30

That the academy would include contractual issues here as well as commission rates shows how the committee members reconceived—or attempted to reconceive—the agency problem as one that transcended strictly monetary or legal issues. The committee read contracts at their purely axiomatic level as renderings of responsibility, as codes of commitment by both parties to more abstract principles, for example, promises of services rendered, and of principles guiding commitment (duration) and cancellation (on certain grounds). Plucking these principles—promised services, duration, grounds for cancellation—from the contracts and treating them as general levels of responsibility allowed the committee to place them more in the realm of ethics than of strict contract law. With this maneuver the committee claimed these principles as codes that might fall under the regulation of the academy. From this new perspective the committee could develop its own codes distinct from state law or general practices. These new codes, in turn, would empower a more localized—in terms of the industry—force of regulation. Reframing the issue in this early meeting in terms of a discourse about responsibilities, practices, and conditions would prove crucial in the ultimate drafting of the committee’s proposal. The committee met at least seven more times during the next three months. In the process it interviewed industry representatives, held meetings with selected agents, organized forums of discussion with agents, and gathered documents such as standard agency contracts. It consulted with the Los Angeles Department of Labor Statistics, corresponded with New York’s Actors Equity (the union for Broadway actors), pelted California’s State Labor Commission with questions, and consulted with a state assemblyman. Agents, meanwhile, used the review to revitalize their demand for inclusion in the academy. On April 22, 1933, the leading agents Phil Berg, Ruth

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Collier, Myron Selznick, Arthur Landau, and others notified the academy that they had elected Collier and two other agents to serve on the agents committee of the academy. But, they added: “It is our understanding that either subsequent to the establishment of a Code of Practice or prior to such establishment, we will be invited to membership in the Academy, the conditions of such membership to be worked out.” Aware of the importance that the academy placed on this issue, the agents struck a warning blow here, linking their participation to a guarantee of admission. No record exists of the academy’s response. Internal committee meeting notes show that Frank Capra and others expressed concern that the imperiousness of their mission had failed thus far to make an impression on agents, which may have been an early indicator of the efficacy of the code they planned to produce. To be fair, internal memos reveal that the committee took seriously many of the problems and objections raised by agents at various meetings, as transcripts from the follow-up committee meetings demonstrate an effort to address such concerns. Moreover, the conflicts that pitted talent against producers offered no simple division into warring factions. Agents and talent found an ally in the academy, for example, in regard to salary control and competition. The academy objected to any form of arbitrary caps on salaries (as proposed by the studios), arguing that contests between actually competing employers, not secret agreements or other subterfuges, presented the only fair and practical method of arriving at compensation. On July 29, 1933, the academy committee released its “Code of Practice” for agents. The proposal claimed to counter and contain what the academy dubbed “cases of racketeering, double-dealing, arrogance, failure to live up to obligations, semi-legal trickery and the feuds between producers and agents which have caused loss to artists, agent, and producer alike.” Striking as its tone the search for equal justice, the report insisted that the code’s twenty-three sections would also protect the honest agent. An outline of the “Evils and Abuses Aimed at by the Code” led readers into the committee report itself. Aside from such egregious if exaggerated offenses as one-sided contracts, excessive commissions, the collection of unearned commissions, or the neglect of the artist’s interest by the agent, the code sought to outlaw the following abuses: BETRAYAL OF TRUST. The Code establishes as a condition of the validity of the agent’s contract in advising the artist the artist’s interest and benefit shall be the sole consideration. LOSS TO THE ARTIST THROUGH AGENTS BEING BARRED FROM STUDIOS. The Code undertakes to make impossible in the future any

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renewal in the long feuds which have invariably damaged the interests of the studios, the agent and all the clients of the agent affected. IMPROPER EFFORTS BY ANY PRODUCER TO DEPRIVE THE ARTIST OF HIS RIGHT TO REPRESENTATION BY HIS AGENT. One of the strongest clauses in the Code states the principle that in all negotiations the artist is entitled to the advice and counsel of his agent, and that the artist may have the agent accompany or represent him. ASSIGNMENT OF A CONTRACT WITHOUT THE CONSENT OF THE ARTIST. The Code makes it clear the contract is for the personal services of the agent and his associates on behalf of the artist and that the contract cannot be transferred or assigned without the artist’s consent.

Each precept regulating the conduct of agents was designated as one that protected the free movement of talent within the marketplace or was carefully balanced by a clause constraining the behavior of producers—a kind of chess game. In addition to confirming the generally agreed-upon 10 percent commission for agent’s services, the document outlined the services rendered by agents: a. To use his best efforts to further the professional interests of the Artist, to develop the personal abilities and increase the earning power of the Artist and to obtain and maintain for the Artist a favorable and valuable professional reputation. b. To plan for the future work of the Artist and to seek out and confer with those who may employ or recommend the employment of the Artist. c. To negotiate for and endeavor to procure employment on favorable terms for the Artist in the fields of employment designated in this Contract. d. To promptly inform the Artist of all offers for his services and all inquiries received by the Agent with regard to the Artist’s availability for employment. e. To examine any and all proposed employment contracts and to give business advice as to their advisability. f. To attend any and all conferences between the Artists and Producer or prospective employer when requested by the Artist.

This part of the document represented a fair degree of realism. By the early 1930s agents more or less defined and practiced their craft by exercis-

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ing all the principles listed, rendering their inclusion in the proposed code more or less a formality, if not a redundancy. In this sense, as much as the document aspired to control and contain agents, the final draft also officially recorded practices by agents and their clients, as well as commonplace transactions in the Hollywood market (negotiations and contracts). Moreover, the notion of a free market required the existence of something like the agent. The very existence of agents confirmed the free-market values that shaped and defined the business: the right to bargain, the right to sell to the highest bidder, the right to climb the ladder based on talent and proven success. Such values buoyed the very business and rationale of an agent. Agents defined themselves as serving the advancement of an individual’s career within a competitive marketplace. Producers could not deny this aspect of an agent’s identity. How, then, could they contain agents? Normative boundaries required some sort of authority, some sort of supervening source of legitimacy. Ethics and standards of practice offered such a form of control. “Ethics” promised a form of self-regulation that still allowed the market to appear to be a free and open space. Thus the code offered a regimen, one appropriate and calibrated to the work of the industry, seeking to harmonize the various forces in the marketplace. As a document outlining the limits set on individuals within a business, the code was an example of how business practices demand players to occasionally sublimate their individual drives and profits for the overall good of the marketplace.31 That promise of selfregulation still had at least one major practical problem: how to enforce it. With the code more or less in its final form, the committee speculated on different approaches for getting it into practice. The most immediate—the strategy the committee’s members would launch within the week—sought to enforce the code through agreement by its members (including its corporate members, the major studios). That still left out a sizable portion of the industry. In this sense the committee continued to show interest in shaping a standardized labor contract from the perspective of the code so that these principles could more or less fall under the authority of the California State Labor Commission. Finally, the committee sought to slip its code into one of “the fair practices codes” being developed in Washington, D.C., by the National Recovery Administration. By the end of the summer academy executives met to discuss strategies for ensuring the code’s passage. An internal memo labeled “AGENCY CAMPAIGN” listed a number of potential strategies, including gathering announcements from agents—“if any,” the memo limply added—who favored the code. Following the public release of the code, the memo suggested that the academy encourage its members to “furnish grievances

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against agents as basis for test suits and for action by labor commission.” In this regard the academy would prompt members with a special letter attesting to the organization’s willingness to assist with agency problems. The academy entertained the idea of publishing a list of all lawsuits filed against agents. Finally, the memo suggested that “if necessary,” the academy could “line up some paper . . . to start expose of agency situation in Hollywood.” No record exists to determine whether or how far the academy pursued this last strategy. The August 21, 1933, edition of the Academy Bulletin boasted that the organization had received a flood of letters, telegrams, telephone calls, and personal messages supporting adoption of the agents code. Yet the September 5 issue warned that some agencies were fighting an unscrupulous campaign against the code’s ratification. This notice was drowned in the chorus of approvals quoted in the bulletin, which added that the code needed only 35 more votes for ratification. The September 26 issue proclaimed the code’s overwhelming approval. How the academy would put it into effect, however, remained the most important question. With its concern for fair play and its plea for chivalry, the academy’s “Code of Practice” for agents strikes a quixotic tone, particularly as it was in no way legally binding. Yet this curious document represents more than an amusing anomaly. That Hollywood business leaders recognized the agent problem as one of behavior revealed an important point underlying the work of agents, which amounts to social networking and persuasive campaigning on the behalf of talent. Directly limiting such tactics would limit the freedom of the market to allow for and measure the distinctive success of talent. By framing the regulation of agents as a code of ethics linked to principles supposedly developed from experience and consensus (the committee of erstwhile ethicists and its advisers), the market appears to remain axiomatically free yet is controlled by ties to transcendent forces like virtues and fair sportsmanship. However, the document had no muscle. In effect, agents still had to convince potential clients that they would be faithful representatives.

“Agents Sock Producers”: The New Deal Makers and the New Deal The debate about agents coincided not only with intensified journalistic scrutiny of the industry, and with the academy’s own official reviews but also, and perhaps more important, with President Roosevelt’s New Deal. In

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March 1933 the newly elected president declared a four-day national bank holiday, to stop more panic withdrawals, as part of his attack on the Depression. Three months later Roosevelt created the National Recovery Administration (NRA) to rehabilitate industry and labor relations. As part of this process, the NRA drafted codes of fair competition to govern industries and trades, inviting leaders from management and labor, as well as owners and bankers, to contribute to their formation. NRA field representatives scouted and scrutinized various industries and established compliance boards and branches to oversee the new codes. In addition to generating reports on an industry—based on research and interviews—the NRA fielded testimony through hearings, in which representatives from diverse areas described the current conditions of the industry, offered suggestions for stabilization, and recommended additions to the NRA codes. The NRA spirit and its goal of returning industries to healthy, productive states naturally fed into the debates about agents and the rhetorical strategies used by the Academy of Motion Pictures. Producers tactically deployed NRA discourse as a way of demonizing agents as wildcards who inflated salaries to unhealthy levels and destabilized the economic equilibrium that Roosevelt’s bank moratorium was attempting to establish. As representatives of talent, if not exactly labor organizers, agents were embroiled in the studio-driven efforts to curtail the exorbitant salaries of key talent. Thus the studios’ attacks on agents—banning them from studio lots and publicizing these exiles, as well as the various proposals of intensified and disempowering regulation—represented one part of their general strategy to disenfranchise labor, from curtailing the salaries of stars (the primary domain of agents) to weakening organization in the crafts area. In a certain sense the disputes about agents really amount to a maturing oligopoly’s efforts to stabilize production financing, to control studio assets, primarily key talent, and to regulate salaries, thereby making them predictable. Given the national scope of this bureaucratic endeavor, officers of the NRA moved surprisingly fast. The NRA was officially established in June 1933, soon after passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act, and government representatives popped up in Hollywood by the end of the summer. But the industry began drawing battle lines long before NRA inspectors descended on Hollywood. Agents, producers, writers, directors, actors, theater owners, and others jockeyed for position, launched attacks, and lobbed accusations at one another almost daily in the pages of the Hollywood Reporter and Variety. Proclaiming its “vital connection with practically every phase of the industry’s affairs,” the academy sought to act as the official referee for the NRA’s research into the film industry. In

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response, the newly formed Screen Writers Guild, and the budding guild of screen actors, teamed with agents to oppose the academy’s involvement, claiming that the institution leaned too much toward producers’ interests. For its part the academy dubbed the guilds radical organizations and accused them of using “guerilla warfare,” stirring discontent and suspicion among their members. As the academy became more involved with the NRA’s activities, more and more actors publicly quit the organization, and by October directors were threatening to join them. Instead of gaining power by cozying up to the NRA regulators, the academy managed to mobilize and strengthen the opposition, inspiring stronger pushes for unions by writers, directors, and actors. By October 1933 the academy faced extinction. Internal academy documents reveal that its special agents committee targeted the NRA process as a way of slipping its “Code for Agents” into the NRA’s final code of fair competition for the motion picture industry. When word got out, agents protested to the press and in meetings with NRA representatives, repeatedly objecting that the academy did not truly represent them. Still, NRA officials remained skeptical of agents throughout their research and on their trips west relied on producers as guides to the wilds of Hollywood. B. B. Kahane, the RKO executive who led the academy agents committee, escorted the NRA’s Sol Rosenblatt—dubbed “Rosy” in Variety reportage—on his initial field excursions to Hollywood, no doubt influencing him to target agents during his first close reviews of the industry—as Variety declared, “Agent Question Headache for Industry Big Brains.” Then came the counterpunch, as Variety observed, “Agents Stall Rosy,” a frontpage banner headline that followed months of battles: “Agents Sock Producers,” “Code Cripples Agents,” “Pact Socks Percent Boys.” Each headline led readers into fairly convoluted articles on the intricacies of the proposed NRA codes dealing with agents, most following the pattern of recommended codes and compromises displayed in the academy debates. An internal NRA study, which compiles the information collected during the NRA’s review of the film industry, was published in November 1935; it discussed problems in regard to agents, despite their firm position in industry practice.32 Divided into sections covering production, distribution, and exhibition, the study first outlined the data pertinent to each arena and then closed with a section in each that was labeled “Unfair Trade Practices.” Here the document concluded, “The problem of salaries of stars and the activities of agents are the only two significant trade practice problems which may be clearly allocated to the production division of the Industry.” The NRA recognized that production centered on a relatively small group of personalities, namely, actors, directors, writers, and technicians “who have become

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known through advertising, publicity, and other methods.” Their removal from a project would seriously disrupt production until a studio found or developed a suitable replacement. The NRA summary confirmed (and conformed to) the industry logic governing the importance of a certain tier of talent, hitching productions to the employment of these individuals and the steady flow of productions to their contracted guarantees of performance. Yet the document acknowledged that long-term contracts failed to solve the problem of star raiding, since producers, given the weight accorded stars in the exhibition arena, could easily resort to enticing stars to break contracts for more lucrative offers. While studios could match such overtures, the very prospect “produced psychological effects which tended to decrease the quality of the stars’ work and in extreme cases rendered them worthless.” The NRA then officially singled out talent agents as a key problem in this industry. More important, it acknowledged that agents practiced in an arena—the negotiation for salaries and labor conditions—that had escaped regulation by the NRA. If producers sought to exploit the regulatory climate of the NRA review to rein in agents, this program ended up both validating agents’ presence in the marketplace and rendering them immune from extensive governance. Agents notorious—agents victorious. In the end the NRA hearings secured the role of the agent in the studio system. While the testimony by Kahane and others, motivated by a desire to mitigate the power of agents, scathingly tarnished them by questioning their role, the NRA ultimately recognized the need for such agents and stabilized, even confirmed, their function in the studio system. Thus Roosevelt and the Screen Actors Guild refused to recognize the original NRA proposal (which had been drafted by academy representatives and the producers), a rejection widely noted in the industry press as a victory for agents and their clients. In 1935, when the Supreme Court declared the National Industrial Recovery Act unconstitutional, enough work had been done in the press, in public forums, and with the academy that agents had staked out a permanent position in the industry. They had gone head to head with producers, studio bosses, and government officials and emerged with a stronger sense of identity. Despite scandalous tales of enticing talent and escalating salaries for their spoiled stars, agents contributed one form of stabilization to industry operations as a whole, for agents provided a way of organizing, navigating, and trafficking transactions with incoming talent. In this sense the battle between agents and producers represented more of a dispute about who would control the negotiations and transactions with talent than about the necessity of such activity. Moreover, legal, political, and economic policy

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supported the role of the agent, as did a general sense of business ethics and essential services to the needs of talent and producers in the growing and fast-paced studio system. Agents became ensconced in Hollywood not only through negotiations with state officials, federal representatives, and industry leaders; the engrained business connections and routine practices, and the utility of talent agents to film production, carved out a fixed role for them. Put another way, the material pressures of production demanded that producers and studios continue to do business with talent agents, a subsystem of practitioners that grew with and served the studio system.

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2. Revenge of the Agent Myron Selznick

For Myron Selznick, the leading Hollywood agent of the 1930s, the decision to embark upon his career “ruined his life,” his sister-in-law reported. “He loathed every minute of it.”1 This sweeping summary by Irene, daughter of veritable Hollywood royalty, Louis B. Mayer, and wife to Hollywood’s reigning independent uberproducer, David O. Selznick, offers a serene, even weary, yet no less trenchant perspective on Myron’s brilliant career. Myron’s triumphant bravado and brinkmanship deal making seethed with an estranged loathing, a streak that was expensive not only for producers but also for his personal life. Chafing at the outsider status of Hollywood agents, he fought for official recognition from the motion picture academy, even while he openly mocked the insipidity of Hollywood culture. His only pleasures as an agent came from escalating salaries to absurd levels; he found no satisfaction in his aid to artists, his leveraging of their success, or his contributions to their careers. In his merciless negotiations Myron alienated producers and even many of his clients; he rudely relished the power and fortune of his victories by grotesquely spilling cash, owning a fleet of cars, and imbibing biblically. Yet such decadence only left Myron hollow and bitter. Hardly casting a shadow in the light of his brother’s glaring achievements as a producer, Myron felt cheated of his own success, despising the very business that fueled his drive for power. Examining Myron Selznick’s working relationships with his associates, as well as his personal contacts with industry leaders and clients, offers a rich, in-the-trenches perspective on the everyday practice of agents and their credos in the classical Hollywood era. This biographical perspective brings out the complex details of the hustle and humdrum activity typical of the Hollywood agent. Selznick’s relationships with his clients, the principles governing his business, and his dealings with the major studios demonstrate 25

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how the studio system actually functioned through a diffused operational network, in contrast to the monolithic models offered up in standard histories of this period with their singular emphasis on the vertically integrated studios. That Selznick’s business operations occur at the outer rings of this system testifies to the growing organizational complexity of the film business in the early 1930s. Excavating the layers of Selznick’s office practices, procedures, and routines shows how this industry functioned through relationships and networks as much as through internal management within the major studios. At the very least, Selznick’s operation merits examination because individual practices as much as institutional policies—those set by the National Recovery Administration or the academy—shaped the emergence of agents. Through Selznick’s story we see the specific strengths and strains of Hollywood agents’ social networking and its role in the film industry. Selznick’s persona arose from within and through the operations of this organized economic activity; indeed, his personality—his knack for striking deals; his muscular bargaining style; his power—sprang from the bureaucratic system he constructed for his office and the synergistic relations it forged with the studios. This biographical perspective parallels, then, the ways in which personality worked within industry structures. Born in 1898, when the Selznick family lived in Pittsburgh, Myron grew up under the spell of a highly ambitious father, a classic American hustler playing any angle to turn a profit. By the first decade of the new century, Myron’s father had moved his wife and three boys to New York to open “the World’s Largest Jewelry Store,” which promptly closed within a year.2 By then Lewis Selznick had recognized a growth industry in the emerging film business. Unstructured but sprawling into the city’s every open nook, mostly old storefronts hastily converted into small theaters, New York’s film industry teemed with opportunity, a hurly-burly market that Lewis could quickly step into and start buying and selling goods, namely, films. He entered the distribution end of the business in 1912, purchasing films from producers and leasing them to theaters. When he expanded into production, Lewis discovered much more formidable competitors. Such strong competition, coupled with Lewis’s profligate spending on his productions, led to the company’s demise in 1923, when he finally declared bankruptcy. Although they were unaware of it at the time, Myron and David, then young teens, found early tutelage in the film industry as their father dragged them to business meetings and later put them to work in the company. Myron started in the lowest position, as a film inspector, “the dirtiest job you could possibly hand anybody,” according to his brother.3 As a film inspector Myron would search for tears, examining the returned films

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rented out to theaters by rubbing his fingers along the entire print. Although four years younger than Myron, David took a much more active role in his father’s work. As a precocious teen working part time, David dashed off prodigious memos critiquing films—the kind of memo that would make him notorious as a hands-on producer—and alerting his father to notable films, promising talent, and interesting trends. Following the bankruptcy of their father’s company, Myron and David scrambled for work in the film business and even participated in a yearlong venture called the General American Radio Company (selling radios) before that fizzled.4 For a short spell Myron established his own production company, bankrolled with $25,000 in seed money from Lewis. Myron scouted talent and distribution deals in California and convinced the rising star Olive Thomas to sign with the company. The newly formed Selznick Pictures Corporation signed a distribution deal with Famous Players–Lasky (later known as Paramount Pictures), and Myron managed film productions for the next few years. As a producer Myron was, according to his brother, “alternately completely cool and completely excitable, always ‘snotty.’”5 While none of Myron’s productions survive, film reviews from the time period indicate their rather generic nature, with plots, situations, and production values that seem dated even by the standards of the early 1920s. Indeed, the Selznick Distributing Corporation, a new company founded to reorganize Lewis Selznick’s finances and, it was hoped, to pay off debtors following the bankruptcy, provided the main support for Myron’s production company. When the bankruptcy eventually swallowed Myron’s new company as well, he left for California, where he landed briefly at Pathé’s cheap westerns division but quickly found himself out of work again. David eventually secured a position at MGM in 1926. Although the brothers were living off their New York reputation and were not yet established in Hollywood in the late 1920s, they exuded confidence. They shared a place at the Villa Carlotta, an apartment complex in Hollywood (their parents lived in a nearby apartment stuffed with remnants of their New York success—sable coats, rugs, and tapestries). Myron and David remained close in their early years in Hollywood, constantly partying together and double dating—so close that, to David’s future wife, they seemed an inseparable team. Myron, alternately taciturn and brutish, disparaged David with taunting, barbed jabs but only “enough to keep everyone from suspecting that he completely adored him,” Irene said. She noted that the brothers “shared an air of defiance and a lack of conformity which both fascinated and frightened” her.6 And yet “Myron’s act was incomplete without David.” While David’s untamable reserve of energy galvanized his

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rise as a production executive and mesmerized Irene, she found Myron’s bravado awkward, for he spoke like a big shot—but a former big shot—and he refused to compromise. He also failed to find any real direction. To Irene, Myron came across as a brooder, while David channeled his energy outward. Though four years older, Myron admired his little brother, followed his advice, and burned with festering envy. Selznick family lore paints a picture of Myron the agent as operating his business in strategic revenge against his father’s enemies, those studio heads like Adolph Zukor and Louis B. Mayer whom the family blamed for driving Lewis out of the business. David claimed that Myron preserved a checklist “almost scientifically” of all his father’s enemies, “keeping tabs as to how much he has cost them. In the cases of several . . . the amount has run into millions of dollars.”7 No doubt, this image lends an aggressive edge to Myron’s activities (David’s comment, in fact, comes from a letter to a magazine editor who was writing an article—never published—about Myron in the 1930s). However, the revenge scenario, aside from misrepresenting Lewis’s culpability in his own demise—he was a terrible businessman— fails to explain Myron’s improvisational approach to the industry in the mid-1920s, as he experimented, like any hustler, with different positions— distributor, producer, radio salesman—before trying out his agent act. In the pell-mell atmosphere of early Hollywood, hucksters like Myron shifted from distributor to producer to salesman and back again. In fact, Lewis and Myron explored an early agency venture together. In 1927 Variety reported that father and son planned to form the Artists’ Booking Bureau, an enterprise consolidating the handful of small West Coast agencies.8 The article quotes Lewis as suggesting that studio casting directors gave too little consideration to agents; this shows that Myron’s father recognized the opportunity for agents in the emerging studio system, a hunch his son would confirm in his own entrepreneurial venture later that year. Like most successful braggarts, Selznick could claim an exact birth date for his career.9 The fable begins in 1927. Having lost out on a number of adventures in the production arena, David was now gainfully employed at MGM. He and Myron, who was out of work, shared their Hollywood apartment with an old family friend, the director Lewis Milestone. One day Milestone complained to Myron about an upcoming interview with a studio executive. In his desperation to secure a job, Milestone feared that he would fall into his typical habit of agreeing to a low salary. Myron dared Milestone to allow his friend to accompany him to the meeting as his agent. Myron asked Milestone what salary to shoot for, and when Milestone told him $750, Myron agreed and made Milestone promise to keep quiet during

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the negotiations, especially if the asking price dropped. At the meeting Myron immediately took an aggressive stance, berating the executive about working conditions and the respect owed to the director. Myron then laid out the conditions: $2,000 per week or they walked. A flabbergasted Milestone kept his word and said nothing as Myron continued to haggle and fight. Milestone left the meeting with a contract for $1,500 per week, double his going rate. Moreover, as David O. Selznick’s biographer points out, “Myron’s 10 percent—earned in an hour—was what David made in a sixday, fourteen-hour-a-day week.”10 Regardless of the veracity of this origin story, the scene provides a revealing portrait of Myron Selznick. There is, first, the rather willful reluctance, the kind of languid intelligence that effortlessly condescends to tackle a problem, almost announcing the unworthiness of the affair even while displaying rigor, if also some diffidence. Then there is the element of machismo in the story, of bullying the negotiation to its breaking point, until the opponent collapses and concedes total victory. With this comes the sense of one-upmanship and an almost reckless, pugilistic approach to negotiation. Less evident but present in every version of this story is the sense of aimlessness: Selznick begins as a roommate casually engaging in a conversation leading to a proposition and emerges as a professional. That Selznick rolled out of bed one day and became an agent is very unlikely. But the sense of disdain for the profession laced through this narrative says something about Selznick’s overall discontentment with his agent role. He always regarded his work as something beneath him; he always characterized his creativity with contracts as a form of trickery and always viewed his negotiations more as deviltry than diplomacy. Selznick’s story about Milestone also betrays the common myth of an artist’s lack of financial savvy or indifference toward the quotidian world of business, both traits seemingly exposing the artist’s vulnerability, a cliché that survived even in the calculating culture of Hollywood. Yet the Milestone fable contains a germ of truth. Retaining agents to fight financial (and other) battles certainly relieved artists of some of the inevitable confrontations with their employer and allowed them to focus on other difficulties more pertinent to their creative role and contributions to productions. This value of their charismatic advocacy is how Selznick and agents in general sold their services to clients. Family stories, gossip, and this Milestone tale all depict Myron as a particularly strong advocate for his clients. Advocacy remained a contractual component of his work, of course. Yet through these stories and gossip and the particular emphasis they placed on his personality, Selznick developed a reputation that distinguished him in the agency market.

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According to his surviving daybook, by February 1928 Selznick was already checking up on some contracts.11 The first few months list appointments with studio executives and potential clients, and dates to follow up on contracts. These daybooks also reveal that Selznick had failed to register his business with the California Labor Commission, a sign, perhaps, of the quick pace of Selznick’s shift to the agency business. Then, late in 1928, the name of the New York agent Frank Joyce, who had a modest client list, begins to appear in Selznick’s appointment book. Selznick approached Joyce to discuss a potential partnership, for Selznick knew that actors and actresses would provide his fledgling business with more leverage and higher commissions. According to his brother, Myron Selznick sought Joyce out because Myron despised handling actors.12 But Selznick had many more tactical reasons for the partnership because actors and actresses paid the highest commissions and provided the best opportunity to demand percentage points on films, a practice Selznick would begin exploring in the early 1930s. Furthermore, Selznick’s daybooks reveal numerous meetings with actors before Joyce appears in the register. The partnership with Joyce, then, signaled Selznick’s commitment to the agency profession and a strategic way of quickly gaining a client list while continuing to expand as a new business. The date when Selznick finally officially registered his business as an agency—March 26, 1928—is significant.13 First, Selznick obviously started making deals before his status as an agent became certified, thus lending some veracity to the legend of the Lewis Milestone meeting. Second, and more important, the date shows that by 1928 Selznick had fully committed himself to this endeavor. After more than a decade of hustling in and through various positions in the movie business, something had clicked. By 1928, Selznick surveyed the burgeoning industry on the coast and isolated the real potential in becoming an agent. Selznick’s experience in the movie business lent him a sense of leverage and competitive edge, particularly through his long list of contacts with studio executives, producers, and talent. Selznick knew what studios wanted, what they needed, and, more important, what they could afford.

The Selznick-Joyce Agency: Structure and Operations Selznick took to his new enterprise with forceful determination, loudly declaring his principles to the press and to his staff. He vowed to represent only the most important people—major players, directors, producers, and writers—in the industry, a position regularly repeated in internal office

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memos. Striking a combative posture from the start, Selznick claimed to remain totally independent of the studios. “INDEPENDENCE,” an advertisement for his agency in the early 1930s declared, “must be the insistent demand of the agency faithful to its clients’ trusts.”14 In another ad he promised clients, with a classic huckster’s pompous, even pedantic, rhetoric, that he would deliver higher salaries: The dictionary defines “EXORBITANT” as “beyond proper limits.” “THE MOST” that a corporation “CAN PROFITABLY PAY” is not beyond proper limits. “THE MOST” is therefore equitable, and not “EXORBITANT.”15

Selznick’s advertising took an adversarial tone pitting agents against the studios, a risky stance to take in relation to one’s market, since, after all, agents served as gatekeepers in supplying studios with talent. But regardless of the agents’ dependence on the studios and on maintaining diplomatic relations with them, attracting talent remained crucial to the agency business. So Selznick’s posturing, however bold and polarizing, served a strategic need for his operations: billing his services as favoring the artist attracted clients and developed their trust in Selznick. From the start Selznick built the agency around the full spectrum of Hollywood talent, managing actors, directors, writers, and even producers. A few other early agencies followed this strategy, but all paled next to Selznick’s connections to key talent and to the studios. Featuring directors like Lewis Milestone and William Howard, writers like Ben Hecht and Gerald Early, and actors like Zasu Pitts and Ruth Chatterton, Selznick’s prominent client list distinguished his agency. To draw attention to the agency’s collection of key cinematic craftspeople, its panorama of talent, Selznick published a pamphlet that presented his operation as a one-stop powerhouse for production planning—indeed, the pamphlet’s list of clients reads like the roster for a ministudio.16 Under “actors” appeared the names of Fred Astaire, Gary Cooper, Kay Francis, Katharine Hepburn, Charles Laughton, Carole Lombard, and Fredric March, among a dozen others. Writers like Maxwell Anderson, Robert Benchley, Gene Fowler, Ben Hecht, the Mankiewiczs, Dudley Nichols, and Casey Robinson stood out from more than twenty on that list. William Wellman, John Cromwell, George Cukor, and Lewis Milestone led the respectable list of directors. Perhaps most significantly the pamphlet listed the producers and studio executives represented by the agency (which negotiated their studio contracts): Monta Bell, Merian Cooper, Ben Hecht, Arthur Hornblow, Lucien Hubbard, Charles MacArthur, Kenneth MacGowan, David O.

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Selznick, and Walter Wanger. “The only organization,” the pamphlet’s cover boasted, “with the experience, integrity, and thorough knowledge, requisite to management of such an array is”—and the type dropped to the bottom of the page in bold, stylized letters—“the Selznick-Joyce Agency.” Selznick drew more publicity through the deals he racked up in the first few years of his operation—none more spectacular than his “raid” of Paramount in 1931. In a single day, January 12, three of Selznick’s clients— William Powell, Ruth Chatterton, and Kay Francis—deserted Paramount and simultaneously signed contracts with Warner Bros.17 Headlines in Variety, the industry trade paper, exploded, depicting the deals as total effrontery, acts of betrayal, of war, and potential signs of an unstable market dominated by unruly agents and unregulated talent.18 These headlines fed Selznick’s notoriety and garnered a strong, if slightly unsavory, reputation for the agency, then barely two years old. Signing these contracts in one fell swoop signaled a bold, crafty, and aggressive persona, shaped by exactly the kind of values Selznick advertised to clients. Indeed, the drama surrounding the event signified the arrival of a new star, a new celebrity, namely, Myron Selznick, whose traits, persona, and media attention all came in tow of these deals. For all the fireworks set off by the deal in the press, the “raid” did not come without warning. With Powell’s contract coming up for renewal, Selznick had initiated negotiations with Paramount chief B. P. Schulberg months earlier, in the fall of 1930, insisting that Powell deserved at least $6,000 a week in light of his growing popularity. Schulberg blanched and dared Selznick to explore this figure with other producers. In Ruth Chatterton’s negotiations Schulberg stuck to the same intransigent stance, refusing to go higher than $4,500 a week. Selznick then approached Warner Bros., a studio desperately in need of stars that could handle dialogue in light of the new era of sound on film. Moreover, Warner Bros. needed actors like Francis and Chatterton to round out its stable of performers. Selznick persuaded Warner to offer $100,000 per picture for Powell and $8,000 a week for Chatterton. That the industry at large recognized Warner’s need for this breed of talent lent an even greater appreciation of Selznick’s calculating nature. If the deals seemed crass, they retained a sense of methodical scheming in tune with industry trends, an important sign for an agent’s reputation. Still, for all Selznick’s adversarial stance pitting him against the studios, and for all the public arguments and hostile statements by the two studios, a fair amount of cooperation occurred behind the scenes. All three clients completed their obligations at Paramount before moving on to their new contracts. Warner Bros. even loaned Kay Francis back to Paramount for

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Figure 1. Myron Selznick consorts with clients Joan Bennett and Loretta Young, ca. 1940. Courtesy of Photofest.

Ernst Lubitsch’s Trouble in Paradise the following year at the rate of $4,000 per week (her Warner contract netted her $3,000 per week). Nonetheless, this spectacular deal making, its brazen and aggressive tactics, solidified Myron Selznick’s position as a trail-blazing agent. In 1929 Selznick and Frank Joyce formally incorporated their partnership. Selznick also maintained a separate business enterprise, Myron Selznick, Inc., to handle contracts of those clients whose relationship with him predated the merger with Joyce.19 With commissions from such clients as Lewis Milestone, the writer Casey Robinson, Sam Hirschfeld, and his brother David, among others, this dual arrangement allowed Selznick to write off his cars, entertainment expenses, and his salary through this other company. In 1933, for example, Myron Selznick, Inc. alone pulled in about $230,000 in commissions for Selznick. But the partnership with Joyce and its larger client list necessitated a more complex operation with a larger employee roster. From the start the agency brought in enough business to support high salaries for its owners. Within a few years of setting up shop, they paid

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themselves $120,000 a year, a significant measure of the scale of this service industry that clearly displayed the salience of the agency business in early 1930s Hollywood. On top of their salaries, in 1930 Frank Joyce and Myron Selznick granted themselves a $10,000 bonus at the end of the year. One year later this bonus increased to $50,000. Commissions readily covered the salaries of the agency’s growing staff, which was slowly expanding beyond twenty employees. By the early 1930s, for example, the 10 percent commissions earned from William Powell alone amounted to $750 per week and roughly $30,000 per year, enough to cover the salaries of a field agent and an executive agent. A typical writer brought in commissions of about $20 to $26 per week, or approximately $1,000 to $1,500 a year. The renowned mystery writer Dashiell Hammett, for example, brought in about $30 a week in commissions, enough to pay—just barely—the office boy. Commissions on the director George Cukor brought in about $350 per week, close to the average for a reputable director and more than enough to cover the salary of the agency’s story editor, who earned about $250 per week. The salaries of the agency’s field men ranged from $100 per week (for a new man) to $300 per week on average.20 Field agents operated as scouts, reporters, and general vacuums of information. They monitored details of studio contracts for their clients (checking up on options, surveying provisions, new assignments, and other details), socialized with some clients, kept tabs on potential deals, fielded calls, and pursued new clients. A field agent held the responsibility of staying abreast of production trends with studio executives, keeping up with planned productions for opportunities for clients, scheduling clients in job openings, and handling general issues with the studios for clients (concerns about costumes, makeup tests, screenplays, or proper credits). At the same time these field men maintained contacts with scouts for new promising talent—theater owners, literary agents, and producers. But a big client—a Laurence Olivier or a Katharine Hepburn—was first courted and handled by the executive agents. Selznick might travel to New York or England to meet with star clients, dine with them, and then throw a party for them at his Hollywood home, thereby selectively introducing a client to producers, directors, and Hollywood intelligentsia—a kind of debutante party for talent. Then Selznick would disperse his field men to their assigned studios to gather news about important projects for the client, to drum up interest in the client among producers and studio executives, and to negotiate prospective deals. Field agents would shoot off interoffice memos reporting on these meetings and deal points. Selznick or one of the executive agents then perused these memos and always dictated the parameters of the deals dis-

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cussed by field agents (for example, insisting on a certain base salary or certain working conditions); even the executive agents usually cleared their proposals with Selznick. Selznick or one of the executive agents would then follow through by contacting the important client, over lunch or dinner or by phone. This organization generated and maintained tremendous activity. Even in the early 1930s the movie business had developed a reputation for being telephone crazy. Selznick was rarely in his office—and this was long before his alcohol-induced absences of the late 1930s—as he preferred to work out of his beach house, which featured twelve telephones in nine rooms, including a direct line to the office. Four operators at the office switchboard, on rotating shifts, allegedly handled 10,000 incoming calls on some days and 15,000 to 18,000 outgoing calls. A 1930s article claimed that a telephone company clocked 550 outgoing calls in six hours.21 Such anecdotal puffery— disseminated in stories on the agency—created the impression of a kind of modern busy-ness, a nonstop regulation of information and service to the agency’s clients. To land in the position of selling a client, that is, to set up a bargaining situation between a client and a producer, agents needed to gather information that would lead to sales, that would gain leverage in the negotiation process, and that might isolate a potential buyer. At one level, then, the agency business operated (as is true today) essentially as an information exchange. Agents kept tabs on a client’s contract and the properly allotted and scheduled payments from the studios, as well as other promises (hours and working conditions). By tracking new projects at studios, the availability of certain roles, and the desires of producers, agents gathered information that might help a client. For example, through a studio secretary or an executive, an agent might have learned that a particular producer had expressed interest in working on a comedy or a musical—valuable information to an agent, who then tipped off his client or pitched an actor (or both actor and director) to the producer as central elements around which to build such a story. All this activity and supervision—trolling for tips, collating information, evaluating material and reports, reconciling information with ideas about their clients—represented a kind of corporate exchange of gossip that held promise, prophecy (where a client’s future might lie), and exchange value (trading tips for other tips), for such information often proved valuable. That Selznick recognized this dimension of the agency business—information exchange—comes through in the structure and operation of his agency, for he organized a careful system of gathering, managing, and dispersing information.22

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Paper, binders, and files codified and signified various categories of information, marking both the performance of a certain task and facilitating the retrieval of data.23 Memos summarized client meetings, and agents dispersed this information to the entire staff with mimeographed copies— color coded, no less; blue memos signaled, for example, the closing of a deal. A single binder surveyed all the agency’s clients with a page- by-page itemization of client contracts. Agents updated this book only when a contract officially started or ended. To expedite and simplify information retrieval, the client book omitted, for example, details of discussions or negotiations; these could be found in a client’s folder, in memos circulated previously as interoffice communication, or in notes from discussions at the weekly staff meetings. The streamlined approach of the contract book allowed agents to easily track the agency’s clients in terms of their availability, upcoming commitments to productions, and rest periods. In addition, the agency maintained client contact lists that recorded— time, date, topic—conversations between agents and clients. Pooling information represented only one goal of this contact list. More significantly, the imperative driving the contact list sprang from the personal service component of the agency, which stressed nurturing clients with regular (and regulated) attention, as revealed in a typical memo: “When Mr. Selznick left for Europe, he gave me a note about certain clients whom he wanted contacted quite frequently. One of these is Zoe Akins–particularly because of the Volck situation [another agent was splitting the commissions from this writer-client]—and I notice on the contact list that she has not been seen for three weeks.”24 As this particular memo indicates, maintaining regular personal contact with the clients sustained the personalized relationship sold by agents, an especially significant task in the face of competition from other agents. This personal connection, the phone call that establishes contact with the client, that reassures the client of the agent’s dedicated, diurnal, and steady concern, results from a calculated and calibrated corporate organization as much as or more than a personal relationship. Selznick knew the importance of developing these connections, of personalizing the “strictly fiduciary relationship” (as typically characterized in contracts), so he built a modern organizational system—index cards, contact books, secretaries—to sustain this dimension of his business. To maintain efficiency and consistency throughout his agency, Selznick outlined a blueprint for its operations. This document reveals how Selznick ran his Hollywood organization in precise detail as well as the logic governing the practices:

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Immediately upon receipt of a memorandum of a new deal, a STARTING NOTICE should be made out; and in case of completion of an engagement by a client, a CLOSING NOTICE should be made out . . . and should be in sufficient detail as to leave no doubt as to what the deal actually is. . . . A CARD INDEX record should be kept of all clients’ Studio contracts, the original contracts to be kept in the vault. A record of clients’ engagements is also kept in an alphabetical ring binder in the American office. Make up OPTION EXERCISE CARDS for chronological index file on all options to be exercised on client’s contracts, and advise the field man covering the particular Studio a week in advance of the date that option is to be exercised. CLIENTS’ LISTS AVAILABILITY, REGULAR AND PRIORITY. All lists should be checked weekly with notes to the staff on any changes. CHECK WITH STUDIOS at least once each week on all clients as to whether they are working; and also check periodically any bonus, percentage or royalty deals.25

All this tabulation, bureaucratic calculation, and categorization echoed the growing complexity of the industrialization of the film business. Selznick stressed such efficiency for good reason, since new deals or opportunities could surface as the studios or producers developed projects, and agents needed to know which clients could fill slots. An average day in the agency’s office—typical for Selznick’s operation and for most of his competitors’—involved agents’ keeping tabs on their clients and monitoring their availability.26 New deadlines cropped up, and progress had to be tracked on new deals, ongoing negotiations, and discussions with studios, producers, and clients. Take, for example, June 30, 1933. In the regular morning meeting the staff ran through key clients and projects. Myron reminded the agents that David O. Selznick remained an important agenda item. Myron wanted to know all the significant stories for David and charged his team to submit stories that would work as vehicles for Metro contract players. The agency staff members batted around Adolphe Menjou’s name for projects. They discussed details of a Leslie Howard–Gaumont Film deal. Another writer-client, Zoe Akins, had made a deal with Gaumont involving an outside agent without consulting the office and muddled the details. She offered to pay two commissions, but Selznick’s agent rejected this proposal, so this complication required action. Staffers also were looking for work for the writer Samson Raphaelson. They were exploring prospects in England for Fay Wray, Leo McCarey, and Pat

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O’Brien—mainly because of the better tax deals that working abroad might offer these clients. Katharine Hepburn would start work at RKO on Bill of Divorcement in a little over a week, with director George Cukor at the helm, so these two clients did not require immediate attention; the production would keep them employed for a few months.27 Key points and issues from these meetings subsequently shot throughout the office in various memos. Given the circulating memos, blue mimeographs for contracts, the client contact sheet, and the client workbook, an agent could pinpoint for months at a time the almost daily schedule of anyone on the agency’s list of more than one hundred clients (and growing). All these meetings and memos, in their coordination and synchronization, supported the service philosophy governing the enterprise. Agents considered themselves part of the modern people business. In their own fashion Hollywood agents adhered to the principles outlined in Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, the bestseller derived from the author’s popular early 1930s pep talks.28 With chapters entitled the “Fundamental Techniques in Handling People” and “The Big Secret of Dealing with People,” Carnegie captured the spirit, beliefs, and aspirations informing the new enterprise of mediation and brokering—the business scorned by Veblen. Indeed, Carnegie characterized much of modern business, perhaps none more than the work of agents: “The fine art of getting along with people in everyday business and social contacts.”29 Agents’ work frequently spilled into leisure time, usually evenings. Agents arranged dinner meetings with clients, lunch meetings—naturally—and even golf. Thus a valuable meeting on potential deals or a simple discussion of a client’s career plans might occur during a phone call, at a Saturday evening gettogether at the agent’s home, or on a golf course. Indeed, Selznick encouraged a few of his agents to join a golf club for business reasons. These agents, in turn, wanted the office to buy them a car so they could ferry clients to golf outings in the New York metropolitan area. Furthermore, they explained that a company car would help them scope out summer stock shows (theater outside New York) and make an impression on the clients they were so diligently courting. For example, an agent told Selznick that he wanted to see Sylvia Sidney in a summer show, an important fact noted in his memo since he still had “hopes of signing her to the Selznick office.” As these memos show, Selznick sanctioned activity that transformed personal relations into opportunities for business deals and networking. As the charismatic leader of the agency, Selznick kept a steady eye on this socializing and inquired regularly about details, memos reporting on key discussion points, and gossip circulating through the office. After all, the

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agency was built around Selznick, as its namesake (Joyce remained a quiet partner) and leader, and the promise of his personal representation drew in clients. In this sense, as the agency grew more bureaucratic, Selznick had to maintain cohesive and consistent standards for how agents engaged with clients. Thus one agent reported to Selznick: “I am switching seeing Harwood [a client] after dinner tonight until tomorrow morning on my way in. Helen and I are going to Zoe Akins’ house for dinner. After dinner I am going over a lot of matters with her that she wants to discuss with me, including sale of her plays.”30 Furthermore, the agent explained that their dinner would include reviewing some key points that remained unclear in Akins’s MGM contract, all in the hope that she would sign the MGM contract that night. Reports like these kept Selznick informed of details, personal and professional, about his clients, a task fully in line with the social dimensions of this service business. In other words, bureaucracy served the personal relationships of the agency’s leader and his clients. Similarly, agents developed steady relationships with particular studio executives that helped to streamline agency activity as well as the production process. In other words, Selznick assigned particular field agents to designated studios: one man covered MGM; another maintained regular contact with RKO and Columbia; another canvassed Warner Bros., and so forth. These agents then pooled their reports so that one agent handling a specific client could alert another agent to a development at another studio, then turn over negotiations to the agent handling that specific studio. Studio executives stayed abreast of the availability of agency clients and looked for attractive projects from writer or director clients. These working relationships fostered cooperative practices between the agency and studio executives that revealed their shared interest in discovering new talent or placing established talent in appropriate roles. Agents borrowed screen tests from studios and would send screen tests to studios (the agency maintained a regular file of such transactions). Such logistics also required strict maintenance of the shared client’s notebook, with the entire office outlining start and finish dates for all the clients. These steady relationships formed an almost conspiratorial syndicate between the agency and production executives. Hunt Stromberg, an MGM executive, for example, practically vowed wholesale allegiance to the agency’s clientele; in 1933 a Selznick agent reported that Stromberg “gave me sworn promises that he would always give us and our people, first consideration when he had to go outside the lot.”31 Stromberg, an old Selznick family friend, had worked as an assistant to David at MGM and before that as a publicity director for Lewis Selznick. Myron and Stromberg remained

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regular gambling partners, and the agency file for Stromberg is stuffed with memos about collecting debts, often as postscripts to regular business memos. Social connections blended with business connections. These regular relations between agents and studio executives made business sense. Interfirm contacts set up a routine exchange of ideas and news (about new clients or new projects) and helped to streamline hiring, preproduction, and production planning. These stable transactional networks supported any changes in the “programming” (the planned productions, the planned casting) through immediate contacts and the flow of communication. These agent-studio meetings illustrate how this industry actually functioned through a diffused operational network as much as through concentrated management within the major studios.32 Despite Selznick’s inflammatory oppositional rhetoric, despite his posture as an opponent of the studios, Selznick (and many other talent agents) forged strong routine relationships with studio executives, a mutually beneficial and reinforcing network. The relationship with Stromberg exemplifies the reciprocal advantages in this symbiotic syndicate. Dealing regularly with specific studio executives was an efficient way to sweep the studio circuit for new opportunities for the Selznick agency’s clients. By the same token, regular meetings with agents—at least those with desirable client lists—streamlined production practices like casting, fishing for screenwriters, and scheduling. A typical meeting between Stromberg and a Selznick agent explored projects and prospects for both sides, as revealed in a memo on talking points from 1934. The memo lists writers, actors, actresses, and directors from the agency’s stable, reviewing their recent productions, their upcoming availability, their strengths and interests. Both parties, Stromberg and Selznick, managed to address their own interests while exchanging news and information about upcoming projects and the schedules of both available talent and productions. In one conference, then, Stromberg surveyed more than twenty Selznick agency clients and almost as many projects. Stromberg productions with Selznick agency clients included 1933’s Prizefighter and the Lady and Penthouse, both with Myrna Loy, the latter written by Dashiell Hammett, and many more through the end of the decade, with 1939’s The Women, featuring clients Norma Shearer and Katharine Hepburn and directed by client George Cukor. Producer-client Monta Bell made 1930’s Behind the Make-Up with clients William Powell, Fay Wray, and Kay Francis, from a screenplay by client Howard Estabrook; Laughter, made the same year, featured client Fredric March and was written by client Herman Mankiewicz. The associate producer and client Kenneth MacGowan oversaw director-client George Archainbaud’s 1932 film Penguin Pool Murder; writer-client Ben Hecht’s

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1933 Topaze; 1933’s The Great Jester, written by client Samuel Ornitz; director-client John Cromwell’s 1933 film Double Harness, featuring clients William Powell and Ann Harding, and, the same year, Cukor’s Little Women, with Hepburn. David O. Selznick regularly hired Cukor and his agency stablemates Gregory La Cava and Wesley Ruggles at RKO, along with Hepburn and Fred Astaire. The list goes on and on. Of course, the agency needed to balance considerations of art and culture with the demands of bureaucracy and economics. In this regard Selznick constructed a template to guide negotiations for his agents. Selznick’s office memo, titled “IMPORTANT POINTS TO WATCH FOR IN STUDIO CONTRACTS,” militated for the client’s maximum control over her or his craft. In addition to compensation issues, Selznick alerted his agents to pay attention to some of the following points: •

Define duties of employee

•

Lending clause [the client’s power in determining loan-outs]

•

Six-day week

•

Billing [where and how the client’s name was listed in the film titles and advertising]

•

Limitations on the number of pictures assigned to client

•

Story approval33

Selznick insisted that his agents press for the removal of the lending clause (“when possible”). At the very least Selznick frequently negotiated stipulations wherein his clients split their earnings on loan-outs with their employer. Another memo made it clear that Selznick wielded such demands with a degree of selectivity and realism. A Cukor or Hepburn (both “important clients”) might gain story approval at a certain stage in their career, while a lesser star or director would not: •

In the case of important clients, every effort should be made to obtain STORY APPROVAL for the director or artist, as the case may be. This is very seldom granted, but in important cases it should be insisted upon.

•

DIRECTORS SUPERVISING CUTTING: We should always stipulate in contracts at least two weeks for cutting whenever we make a deal for a Director to supervise the cutting, and we should give the producer the right to close Director [complete the production] when the so-called “rough cut” is completed.34

That Selznick included such militant guarantees for clients’ creative control in his instructions for the general management of the office confirmed how

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much these principles shaped his general philosophy and practice as an agent. The right to approve or reject stories gave clients much more control over their careers and their artistry. Story approval allowed talent to develop a star persona or to craft new dimensions in artistic practice. For directors, such approval might allow expansion into new genres or the opportunity to work on projects driven more by personal interest than studio assignment. This policy served the agency as well in deepening its service value to the client and perhaps attracting other clients in pursuit of such creative latitude. Selznick turned a profit only by collecting commissions for the agency’s services. His organizational blueprint therefore stressed keeping a detailed ledger of commissions receivable and collections. He insisted that “a report should be made . . . on all accounts that are over sixty days old.”35 Selznick’s files brim with memos regarding overdue payments and chasing after commissions owed. When possible, therefore, agents tried to sign contracts wherein the studio sent paychecks directly to the agency, allowing it to deduct its commission before forwarding the remaining salary to its client. But many clients refused this option. Clients often mishandled their finances, allowing commissions owed to reach suddenly insurmountable debts. This frequently resulted in lawsuits; then, somewhat reluctantly, the client paid the money owed on commissions. According to his files, Selznick sued the writer Samson Raphaelson three times for uncollected commissions, and Raphaelsom left the agency three times but nevertheless repeatedly renewed his contract with Selznick. By 1932 Selznick’s business network, its complex interrelated operations and surveillance, extended all the way to New York and London. Selznick created agency branches in both cities. Securing these franchise offices allowed Selznick to stake out access to new clients. These divisions represented a key competitive advantage over rival agencies. Such exclusive or primary access also solidified relationships with regular buyers, who counted on the agency to channel new talent to them from these cities. In New York Selznick created a partnership with Leland Hayward, gaining a distinct edge in access to talent from the stage. In London Selznick set up a British beachhead for scouting talent that proved equally crucial in the agency‘s success. Hayward began his association with the agency business in general in 1927, when he secured a job at the American Play Company, a New York enterprise that sold stories, books, and plays to producers and publishers.36 Having worked as a press agent and a talent scout for various studios in the 1920s, Hayward convinced the company to strengthen its division—run by Hayward—that sold its properties to the studios. The company operated as

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Figure 2. Myron’s man in New York, ca. 1935: Leland Hayward joined forces with Selznick to stake out early access to East Coast talent. Courtesy of Photofest.

a kind of wholesale exchange for stories; it did not handle writers in the sense that an agent would, that is, finding work or guiding their careers. In 1932 Hayward became a legitimate agent when he set up his own office, an operation partially financed by Selznick, and officially associated himself with Selznick’s agency. Hayward had befriended Frank Joyce in New York and had associated with the Selznick brothers and their friend Lewis

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Milestone back in Hollywood in the 1920s. In addition to obtaining financial support from Myron, Hayward struck a deal with his former company. In exchange for the 33 percent of the American Play Company stock that Hayward still held, the company allowed Hayward to retain all his clients. This move gave Hayward—and Myron, for the company advertised itself as an affiliate of Selznick-Joyce—immediate leverage as an agency since Hayward’s clients by marriage now included Edna Ferber, Dashiell Hammett, and George S. Kaufman, among other leading writers, and stars like Henry Fonda, Katharine Hepburn, Helen Hayes, Fredric March, James Stewart, and Fred Astaire. Hayward’s connections to the theatrical world of New York helped enormously in gaining such clients for Selznick’s Hollywood operations. While the allied partners split commissions on their shared clients, the arrangement bolstered Selznick’s client list and added immeasurable prestige to the Hollywood firm. While Leland Hayward provided access to potential New York clients, the establishment of Selznick’s London office in 1933 proved crucial to the company’s success in the next decade. Fritz Lang, Robert Donat, Alfred Hitchcock, Laurence Olivier, and Vivien Leigh represented just a handful of the important clients that Selznick’s London contacts sent to Hollywood. The London office gave Selznick a strategic advantage in scouting and negotiating with creative talent before other Hollywood companies. Even in the case of foreign stars who had already popped up on Hollywood’s radar, Selznick’s London office developed close relationships with the artists early in the process of their Hollywood negotiations—and Selznick’s name possessed an impressive power for attracting talent. Selznick founded his agency’s London branch by hiring a few British agents who dealt regularly with the Selznick-Joyce Hollywood office and folding them into the new satellite agency operation.37 Although the British office represented clients in Britain, and, more important, sent them to Hollywood for work, it remained under the vigilant governance of the Hollywood branch. In fact, the British office modeled itself directly on the U.S. operation, following a precise map of its every component, practices, and its structure (outlined by Selznick)—from the procedure for calling clients to the card index file (of all agency contracts) to its accounting forms and the templates for agency transactions (for recording calls to clients), calendars, and index cards. Selznick visited the office intermittently and worked directly on complicated deals (tense negotiations, for example, between clients and producers) and clients—the actor Robert Donat, for instance—by sailing to London at key moments in the deal making. Selznick also sent his Hollywood agents to London for extended periods,

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both to assist in running the office and to monitor and maintain continuity with the Hollywood headquarters. Selznick’s notes show that he had to manage his employees as much as he did his clients as numerous memos from this period reveal his dealings with personnel problems in London. Like any manager, Selznick needed his employees to comprehend and practice the agency’s business codes without requiring constant supervision; he wanted his employees to absorb the agency’s principles into their practices. In a memo discussing Selznick’s principles for contracting talent, Selznick scolded Jack Votion, one of his U.S. operatives in London: “With reference to yourself and Harry, you both have temperaments and moods which I do not understand, and I am asking you both not to worry me with personal fights, internal politics, et cetera. You are both working for your own advancements and the ultimate good of the Company. We manage ‘primadonnas’—not employ them.”38 Selznick brought Harry Ham back to the Hollywood office, but Jack Votion remained in London, despite, in the words of a British agent, his “somewhat excitable temperament.” Dealing with such dispositions could not interfere with dealing with and for clients, nor could micromanaging negotiations. This bureaucratic vigilance in regard to his own agents, both the details of their work and the quality of their performance, sprang from the desire to maintain a cohesive and coherent manner, a “personality,” in the agency’s operations. Since the agency offered personal service, Selznick had to ensure that this aspect remained consistent, that it did not fluctuate too much with and through individual personalities. Its employees had to be made to understand that the agency could not provide assistance while hampered by internal acrimony. Selznick was the agency’s personality; only his strengths and skills defined the agency. To ensure that his employees could handle the daily affairs and negotiations of their clients, the company both promoted employees from the lower ranks and (frequently) hired agents from within the industry, usually from the executive pool at the studios: Reeves Espy, for example, moved over from RKO and Sam Goldwyn Productions. Albert Kaufman jumped from an executive berth at Paramount to become vice president and general manager at the agency. Hiring from within the industry cut down on the learning curve and was predicated on the new employee’s familiarity with the production process, studio personnel, and the negotiable parameters of contracts and salaries. An outsider—an actor’s lawyer, for example—might fail to comprehend the seemingly ridiculous and exorbitant ceilings for Hollywood salaries as a tactic in the bargaining process, let alone possess an understanding of such potential issues as the significance of overseeing the

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editing of a film or negotiating certain additional weeks of production, important points for artists seeking to maximize the practice of their craft. Selznick’s affiliate offices in New York and London, his impressive roster, and his strong social connections distinguished his agency from the competition. By the mid-1930s approximately one hundred talent agencies served the Hollywood film industry. They too functioned through regular meetings with studio executives (even if they were not as well connected as Selznick), with varying numbers of field agents and office staff (far more taxing and costly for smaller agencies) and a variety of clients. Most of these companies served clients who held small parts in films or wrote or directed some of the standard fare turned out by studios. Selznick could count only a handful of these operations as strong competitors for the talent occupying the higher levels of the movie colony’s caste system; Charlie Feldman’s company, Schulberg-Feldman, certainly offered the strongest competition, with Joan Bennett, Charles Boyer, Claudette Colbert, and Irene Dunne already among the young agency’s one hundred clients; Berg-Allenberg was growing with clients like Wallace Beery, Walter Huston, and Melvyn Douglas among its forty or so clients; the Edington-Vincent company counted Cary Grant, Ralph Bellamy, Dolores Del Rio, Marlene Dietrich, and Tallulah Bankhead in its client collection; Collier, Weber, and Todd retained only a few clients with studio contracts and handled mostly bit players who signed weekly contracts for supporting roles; John Carradine, Ruth Donnelly, and Robert Graves were probably the biggest stars in the Hallam Cooley agency’s stable, but the company’s eighty clients held a fair amount of studio contracts, even if, like the agency’s actors, these were for secondary roles; with more than 150 clients the William Morris Agency spilled over with talent, but only Paul Muni could be called a Hollywood star at this point, particularly since James Cagney left the agency very early in his career, and Mae West’s career proved fleeting and fading. Morris’s other clients struggled for short-term studio contracts in supporting roles. Another Broadway transplant, Leo Morrison, handled almost one hundred clients; except for Spencer Tracy, Leo Carillo, and Buster Keaton, Morrison’s clients worked in short-term supporting roles or, like the young John Wayne, alternated between supporting roles in the occasional big studio film and starring roles in B-movies. Nat Goldstone handled a number of supporting players with studio contracts but counted no real stars on his client lists in the mid-1930s.39 Many of the smaller agencies made do by managing the careers of bit players, banking on the steady employment that studios offered with minor supporting roles. Once a studio ran out of contracted talent in casting a pro-

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Table 1. Quarterly Performance of Leading Agencies for Supporting Players, March–May 1935 Agency Al Kingston Hallam Cooley Small-Landau O’Reilly-Mann Tom Conlon Edington-Vincent Zeppo Marx Beyer-MacArthur Bernard and Meiklejohn William Morris

Weekly Client Contracts

Total Jobs

24 19 14 12 13 11 10 10 9 7

36 22 19 16 14 17 16 12 10 13

Source: Agency files, box 7, Academy Archives, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Los Angeles.

duction’s starring roles (or made deals for loan-outs with other studios or sought the small handful of leading freelance stars) and some of the stronger supporting roles—a fair number of character players held studio contracts—the studio needed to fill out a film’s smaller roles with “day players,” in industry parlance. These players signed weekly and sometimes even one- or two-day contracts for a film production. This process guaranteed steady work, even if it involved a great deal of hustling and juggling in terms of auditions and traveling from studio to studio. About 20 percent of the talent agencies handled at least 70 percent of the day players in the mid1930s. But cornering this market amounted to a monopoly of monotonous labor for these agencies with generally minimal returns. Table 1 shows the quarterly performance of the leading agencies that handled supporting players in the studio system.40 Al Kingston, Hallam Cooley, Small-Landau, and O’Reilly-Mann clearly dominated this business practice. But the numbers also reveal the amount of labor expended on landing contracts for these clients. The William Morris Agency landed about two weekly contracts for each player; Al Kingston scored twenty-four weekly contracts, sixteen of which were for single clients, with the remainder comprised of clients who booked two or three weekly jobs. The remaining eight agencies wrangled only about two or three jobs for clients during this period.41 Similar patterns emerge with the other agencies.

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In other words, in all these cases agencies expended effort and organizational resources for each job but for minimal returns, since these weekly contracts usually brought in commissions of $50 to $100 at best (and one-day contracts paid far less). Handling bigger stars with stronger commissions could buttress the labor lost on maintaining weekly contract players. While Selznick’s client list placed his company among the handful of large agencies at this time, the sheer number of leading players it contained distinguished the office to a far greater degree than mere quantity—stars like Gary Cooper, Katharine Hepburn, Miriam Hopkins, Myrna Loy, Fredric March, Maureen O’Sullivan, and William Powell; and star directors like Lewis Milestone, William Wellman, and George Cukor. Selznick consistently dropped clients who showed little promise of landing strong, lucrative contracts. He also generally avoided handling day players and rarely dealt with weekly contracts except in the early stages of a client’s career (his leading rival, Charles Feldman, also generally avoided day players).42 If agencies like William Morris and Leo Morrison held more or equal numbers in their stables, these agents squandered time, as Selznick knew, on scores of clients for minimal returns. The charisma of Selznick’s big stars drew more clients to his agency. For a Laurence Olivier, for example, a rising star in England, landing representation by Selznick added a luster to his persona, a certain degree of power by association. And when Olivier’s star power grew, his success fed the power of the agency. The agency even gained from Olivier’s direct efforts of persuasion in bringing stars like Vivien Leigh and Robert Donat into the company’s fold. The smaller agencies had to be on guard against the magnetic draw of Selznick’s agency, whether directly from Myron and his marauding agents or simply from the gravitational pull of the sizable and respectable agency’s appeal.

A Percentage of Powell William Powell’s career offers a perfect illustration of how agents worked in the early 1930s, how they labored for their clients, and the role they performed in the larger network of the studio system. Selznick didn’t shape Powell’s persona, and he didn’t create Powell from scratch. But he placed Powell in good positions, pulled him out of bad ones, and combined him with other strong talent to emphasize and complement Powell’s artistic abilities. In so doing, Selznick participated in the transactions—bargaining, trading, and studio production planning—offered by the system. All this

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work paid off in immediate commissions and an enduring business relationship with an indebted client. Powell had graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, and this training evinced itself in Powell’s poise, precise diction, and controlled, even dignified, countenance. Yet since 1925, when he first signed with Paramount, the studio had cast Powell in about eight films a year, mainly as a villain. When he first approached Powell, Selznick vowed to negotiate for better roles and more control of his material in addition to a much higher salary. With his brother, David, in a major executive position at Paramount, Myron landed Powell in a number of heroic leading roles in the late 1920s. Powell’s theatrical training proved particularly effective in strong parts after the studio completed its transition to sound film in 1929. Moreover, David worked with screenwriters to tailor characters for Powell’s persona. Street of Chance and For the Defense, both completed in 1930, created commanding characters for Powell that contributed to each film’s boxoffice success and the actor’s growing popularity. In fact, Myron’s client John Cromwell directed the two films, which costarred another client, Kay Francis. Cowriters on For the Defense were two of Selznick’s leading writerclients, Jules Furthman and Oliver Garrett. That same year Photoplay magazine ranked Powell as the top star in the nation. Myron’s aggressive bargaining on Powell’s behalf had allowed him to break with Paramount and effectively establish new terms for his contract. Although he struggled in his two years at Warner Bros.—a period marked by the studio’s general strains as a result of the lingering Depression—in 1934 Powell brought his new contract terms—and salary—to MGM, where he scored two hits in Manhattan Melodrama and The Thin Man, setting up a string of successful films from there on. Powell’s accomplishment once again reveals the significant role that social networks played in buoying and even defining the power of a successful agent—for who produced Powell’s successes in Manhattan Melodrama and The Thin Man? Hunt Stromberg, Selznick’s old pal and client. Of course, Powell’s headline-stealing deals and his triumphs gained publicity for Selznick’s agency, attention that benefited the agency in other ways. Powell’s success illustrated how serving certain clients could draw new clients to the agency. The promising young actress Carole Lombard, Powell’s wife, was so impressed with her husband’s deals that she later signed with Selznick’s agency (after her contract with agent Zeppo Marx expired). Thus groundbreaking deals gained more than increased salaries or greater autonomy for clients; these deals generated publicity and new clients for the agency.

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Selznick himself showed no real personal interest in shaping his clients’ performances or offering creative advice, but he respected the unique properties of his clients; after all, these creative expressions, built on novelty and individuality, made his clients valuable commodities. In the case of William Powell Selznick set up the conditions that allowed for Powell’s creative evolution. Balancing culture over commerce in this arena did not mean giving up money; in fact, this choice remains economically driven, if only at a more insidious level. Gaining greater control of their careers made clients all the more beholden to Selznick as an agent. Bargaining for story approval or directors’ right to edit their production helped to define the role and necessity of the agent in contract negotiations. While the codes of the National Recovery Administration (NRA) or the academy provided a bureaucratic definition of the agent’s function in the film industry, through his practice Selznick established the foundations for Hollywood agentry, and with each addition this structure grew more complex and solid. Their profession born out of an aggressive fight to maintain their position in the industry, organizing talent in opposition to the producers, Selznick and other agents now could see themselves as integral components of the industry. While Selznick won for artists a taste of control of their career and participation in production, he left no doubt as to who had gained them this freedom, thereby assuring and even creating the need for his business. The increasing artistic control seen in Powell’s contract (and those of Hepburn, Cukor, Chatterton, and others) paved the way for the kinds of deals Selznick would strike in the later 1930s. More important, these arrangements embedded agents in a complex web of transactions and negotiations and loaded contracts with dense allusions and tangled prose that required an army of agents to decipher and amend. Increasing the number of negotiable points in studio contracts expanded the power of artists and made the agent ever more indispensable in negotiations. Agents prided themselves as experts in the arcane area of interpreting contracts, finding new meanings in their hidden clauses. Agents could now bill this skill as a selling point. Certainly, Selznick’s reputation grew as clients and the industry press touted his prowess at finding new points to negotiate and new meanings in the language of contracts. For all Selznick’s oppositional stance to the press, his depiction as an unruly force in the trades (for example, with the Warner Bros. “raid”), and his pugnacious personality, he achieved his reputation within the system. He gained a distinction by working with, against, or twisting certain aspects of the business, inserting himself into the bargaining between talent and studios, and organizing a productive system within his agency to sustain the

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regularity and efficiency of negotiations and transactions. Through such a bureaucratic system Selznick’s status grew and the studio system gained as well. Studio executives relied on Selznick’s knowledge and the prestige of his agency as a competent and reputable thoroughfare for talent. As these executives grew more assured of Selznick’s abilities and especially the strength of the agency’s client list, they formed normal, habitual relations with Selznick. So Selznick developed a certain trust that fed word of mouth about him and his agency: Selznick had special connections to important producers and studio executives. Selznick’s agency operations demonstrated the relationship between individuality and the organized, continuous function of the studio system. For one thing, Selznick’s reputation or power developed through the accretion or accumulation of relationships tied to the studio system. Selznick forged and banked on his long-standing relationships with executives and producers like his brother, David, Hunt Stromberg, Kenneth MacGowan, Walter Wanger, Monta Bell, and others. Myron constructed a managerial system of information exchange, relationships, and surveillance built around steady relations between his field agents and designated studio executives that mirrored and buttressed his own important connections. Maintaining charisma required Selznick’s vigilant preservation of these steady relationships and led to and reinforced his office structure and procedures. A second but no less important relationship between Selznick’s power (which was more or less true for several of his competitors) and the film industry sprang from innovations in the studio system in the early 1930s. The rise of talent agents, minor and major, systematic developments to which Selznick himself contributed and that he harnessed in no small way, increased Selznick’s power through the conspicuous deals he struck. These systemic innovations, the ways agents were gradually noticed, organized, and ultimately validated in the systemwide network of Hollywood (the academy review; the NRA review; the establishment of talent guilds) cemented a crucial role for Selznick to magnify. In this way, the sustained and controlled flow of organized social relations and of institutional frameworks in the Hollywood studio system relates to and even informs the development of Hollywood agentry. In March 1935 Frank Joyce died after a long illness. This left the agency solely under the command of Myron Selznick, already its well-known and conspicuous leader. If his persona drew attention to the agency and gave it definition, then the business would now function entirely under the spell and whims of his personality. While this more focused leadership made the business vulnerable to the exigencies of Selznick’s alcoholism and potential

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instability, its leader retained a powerful reputation in 1935. That same year rumors hit the industry trade papers that Myron Selznick was negotiating to buy out Universal Studios.43 For several months Selznick met with banks and studio executives in an effort to arrange new financing to purchase the studio, at the time in the midst of a major reorganization. For unknown reasons these plans never panned out. Still, Selznick’s serious position in these negotiations, and the sober reporting on the plans in the industry trade press, offered testimony to the strength of his position in the industry at this time. Prospective mogul or leading talent agent, Myron Selznick was a major player.

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3. A Percentage of Power Small Agents

Myron Selznick’s successful strategy in staking out a position in the industry—his exploitation of his deeply embedded social connections and business affiliations—stands out all the more strongly when contrasted with the efforts of Ivan Kahn and Edward Small, two minor pioneering agents who were operating independently in early Hollywood. In practice these agents followed many tactics similar to Selznick’s in tapping established ties and ingrained business relations for both clients and potential employers, and their overlapping strategies illustrate the rules and principles governing industry practice and the work of agents therein. The limitations of Kahn and Small, however, underline the distinctive merits of Selznick’s enterprise. No less driven than Selznick, these two agents, if not lacking the canny calculation that impelled Selznick’s efforts, certainly lacked his deep relationships in the industry, networks developed before he set up his agency. To say that Hollywood worked as a business dependent upon social relations offers no profound revelation, but exploring the material relationships that fueled the agency business offers tangible proof of this truism. Ivan Kahn’s career also illustrated the way knowledge and skills, tested and accrued through the talent agency business, overlapped with other professional arenas in Hollywood. In fact, the easy transition that both Kahn and Small made to studio executive positions underscores the fluidity of the network joining these sectors of the film business. Certain underlying principles governed their negotiations: both agent and producer had similar values that they used to determine which stories were salable or which talent was commercially promising. Such information capital— the “knowledge” of star appeal or hit films—is evident in the early careers of Kahn and Small, their roles as agents, and their eventual graduation into work as studio executives. 53

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Ivan Kahn stepped into the movie business through ancillary avenues in the burgeoning Los Angeles film industry in the early 1920s.1 A native of Los Angeles, Kahn worked in his father’s successful candy and novelty company in the early teens. Aside from a minor encounter with Charlie Chaplin, who in 1915 contracted with the company to exploit his image by putting it on candy boxes and by producing mechanical Chaplin toys, Kahn steered clear of the film business until after his return from World War I. Kahn then held a series of entertainment-related jobs, trying his hand at producing (with a series of short films entitled Kahn Kid Komedies), as a script reader for Pathé studios, and as an assistant director at Universal, until finally settling in at his own extras booking agency. Although booking extras provided a steady income, it proved to be far less lucrative than Kahn had envisioned, so he turned to representing writers and literary properties. In 1925 he acted as an agent on a story owned by Mary Pickford’s company in negotiations with MGM, a term of representation contractually limited to a mere three months. Likewise, Jean Cocteau’s French agent granted Kahn the right to represent the writer’s work to U.S. studios for two years. Kahn struck out in these cases and others. Thus writers proved equally weak as a source of commissions for Kahn. Based on these early returns, the agency business did not look promising. However, Kahn envisioned his extras agency as a platform from which he could stake out early relationships with potential stars.2 Lacking the connections of a Myron Selznick, Kahn surveyed the pool of hungry aspirants in the waves of extras seeking film work and by scouting small theaters in search of actors, a resourcefulness that proved rewarding in an industry still establishing itself. Kahn’s transition to representing players—actors and actresses earning billing in a film’s credits—proceeded patiently, cautiously, and strategically. While maintaining his extras booking agency and simultaneously handling picture rights to books and plays, Kahn represented a small, select pool of actors, peddling them as potential leads. For example, late in 1925 he pulled Sally O’Neil from his stable of extras and squired her to the studios for three months. When that tactic did not work, he turned to an independent producer—always much more approachable than the established studios—who placed her in a small role in a film. Landing a film part, however minor, distinguished the actor as something more than amateur, lifting her above the fray rapping at the gates of major studios. This move allowed Kahn to parlay O’Neil’s assignment into notice from an MGM director, who agreed to test her for the studio, which subsequently signed her to a contract.3 In 1927 Kahn replicated this game plan—namely, garnering studio interest in a client by gaining its executives’ attention through an

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Figure 3. Kahn-Man: pioneer agent Ivan Kahn. Courtesy of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

independent production—when he picked Luis Antonio Damaso Alonso from a crowd of extras. Kahn quickly got this energetic actor a screen test. Encouraged by Kahn, the actor renamed himself Gilbert Roland (Alonso was a John Gilbert fan).4 Kahn’s inexperience led to Roland’s first assignment at MGM. In his negotiations with the studio Kahn thought that he was signing the actor for an acting role; only after settling the deal did

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Roland discover that the studio really wanted him to double on stunts for its star, Roman Novarro. Despite this mishap, Roland stayed true to Kahn. To drum up studio interest in Roland, Kahn once again turned to an independent producer, B. P. Schulberg, who signed Roland to a five-year option contract, which was subsequently transferred to Famous-Players-Lasky (Paramount) when the studio hired Schulberg as a producer. At the new studio Roland embarked on a series of pictures with Clara Bow. Kahn hawked clients to independent producers largely because he lacked clout with the major studios. Through a lucky merger in Roland’s case, Kahn now represented a star at a major studio. Just as Kahn plucked potential stars from the connections he established with extras, so he trolled for other talents in the invisible lower ranks of the industry. For instance, Kahn spotted Don Alvarado while he was working as Valentino’s lighting stand-in—someone who literally stood in place on a film set while the technical crew readied a shot and calibrated the lighting, thereby excusing the star from such tedious labor.5 Kahn convinced Alvarado that he could secure work for him as an actor and made good on the promise, quickly placing Alvarado in a number of small roles leading up to Raoul Walsh’s Fox production of The Loves of Carmen (1927), featuring Dolores del Rio. That same year Kahn signed Alvarado with Feature Productions, an independent company working through United Artists. Within a few years of setting up shop, Kahn had made a name for himself in this niche market. When film industry journals like Motion Pictures Today wrote of his clients, the articles could legitimately tag a new player as “one of Ivan Kahn’s latest discoveries,” such was the agent’s growing reputation.6 Kahn himself focused attention on his new role, taking out small advertisements in the industry trades: Ivan Kahn Just Signed Don Alvarado Long Term Contract United Artists7

By August 1927 the prominent film industry journalist Louis Jacobs had confirmed Kahn’s reputation as a discoverer of stars, declaring, with some exaggeration, that “almost a dozen of the big names have him to thank for lifting them from obscurity.” The article noted that Kahn did not aspire to manage established talent but instead “elected to seek in the highways and byways for possible talent of an unusual order.”8 Of course, Kahn’s station

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in Hollywood, his lack of connections to the world in which “established talent” circulated, forced him to take this strategic path. Kahn himself offered a less romanticized perspective on his activities. He recognized that even his own “discoveries” had passed through an elaborate process of selection before they reached him: “So many people have gone into the preparation of that person, the teacher who gave the first word of encouragement . . . the photographer who made many sittings in the belief that he had a camera face. So how could a talent scout say he did it all? He is merely the contact link in the long chain.”9 Kahn’s demystifying perspective on the myth of discovery showed a cogent analysis of the network of scouts in all their various guises and how they operated in a kind of loose correspondence, sharing values about the proper look of a star, diction, and balance of personal idiosyncrasies. This knowledge arose through the exchanges and transactions in which the network’s various practitioners—agents, scouts, acting coaches, teachers, choreographers, producers, and directors—were engaged. A scout learned to identify talent only by judging players by the standards suggested by directors or producers, on what had sold before, on information gathered from rejections, on the success of certain current or recent stars. Kahn displayed equal analytical skill in identifying his own role as one contact point or as one part of this chain. However, he sold himself short in that, in his own business enterprise, Kahn strategically identified a crucial contact point—the extras seeking work—and exploited it with savvy and skill. Kahn displayed equal modesty when describing his greatest discovery: Lew Ayres, whom Kahn spotted dancing in the lobby of a Hollywood hotel. As Kahn explained, even Lew Ayres “had done work with bands, so someone had spotted his spark for the public before I asked him if he wanted to be a movie actor.”10 Kahn took Ayres to one of his few studio connections, an executive at Pathé, Kahn’s old employer. Pathé signed Ayres to a contract but dropped him after six months. In the meantime Kahn drew on another old family friend, Carl Laemmle Jr., the son of the head of Universal Studios. Kahn knew that Universal had just purchased the rights to the novel All Quiet on the Western Front, a project he tied to Ayres’s talents in selling the actor to the studio. Responding to Kahn’s pitch, the younger Laemmle set up an interview for Ayres with the film’s dialogue director, who suggested Ayres for the leading role.11 By 1930 Kahn maintained a small staff to run the agency. He confessed that he found it difficult to juggle diverse clients: “I have been so busy with my players that I found it impossible to continue handling a story department.”12 He brought in Jonathan Smith as an assistant agent and Harry

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Green as a partner who took 4.5 percent of incoming commissions, less expenses, a salary that amounted to approximately $200 a month (some months $150, some $300). William Gordon handled the switchboard, learned the ropes quickly, and, owing to his remarkable memory, came through with excellent casting suggestions. By the mid-1930s, with greater pay and job security beckoning at the studios, Gordon jumped to various casting director positions. That he was able to use an agency, even a minor one, as a springboard to a production position demonstrates the fluidity of the networking between studios and agencies. Having established his reputation, however minor, Kahn had found a spot for himself in the industry’s general approach to transactions for talent. In this regard studio executives “worked” for Kahn as well. To take one example of a fairly common practice, a Warner Bros. executive brought Olivia de Havilland to Kahn while she appeared in a small part in Max Reinhardt’s production of A Midsummer’s Night Dream at the Hollywood Bowl. The executive asked Kahn to represent de Havilland, then only a minor actor, to lend a measure of fairness to her negotiations with Warner Bros., which wanted her for the film version of the play and for a long-term contract.13 Kahn’s role in these negotiations illustrated the synergy that developed between agents and studio executives, as well as, by 1935, the studios’ acceptance of the role of agents, even minor ones, in everyday industry operations. Yet de Havilland’s growing success also underscored the limitations of Kahn’s agency. By 1934 Kahn’s agency commissions brought in a yearly total that barely topped $30,000.14 Annual commissions paid by most of his clients for the year came to much less than $1,000 each, some less than $100, with the bulk of the agency’s receivables shouldered by one client, Lew Ayres, whose healthy Universal contract brought in $15,000 a year. According to agency records, Joe E. Brown, a relative star at Warner Bros., delivered only $1,700 in commissions between March 1934 and August 1935.15 In other words, the agency’s yearly income amounted to less than one-fifth—to be conservative—of what the leading agents Myron Selznick and Charlie Feldman paid themselves and less than some field men (who worked for salary) made in Selznick’s office. For all this activity, the relentless monitoring of small theaters and extras, as well as the modest staff expansion, by the mid-1930s Kahn was still struggling. This made his clients ripe for raiding, a prospect that the small agency in fact seemed to invite. Thus Leland Hayward purchased de Havilland’s contract from Kahn only a year after he had signed her to a seven-year agency agreement in 1936. Hayward paid Kahn $9,500 for her contract, a large sum

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for an agency that was averaging $30,000 to $40,000 a year.16 Hayward’s proposal offered immediate returns for the agency that outweighed the gamble inherent in relying on future commissions. Hayward, as it turned out, earned more than $40,000 in commissions from de Havilland for the six years she would otherwise have paid Kahn.17 Kahn followed the same path with de Havilland’s sister, Joan. Through his modest theater connections Kahn landed her—under the name Joan St. John—in a small stage production, and Kahn and his associate Harry Green convinced Jesse Lasky to see the play. Lasky signed her to his independent production company at Paramount for $150 a week in March 1936.18 Lasky then promptly sold her contract to RKO, with Kahn just as quickly selling her representation contract to Zeppo Marx’s agency (after changing her stage name to Joan Fontaine, she left Marx a few years later for the Selznick agency). In 1937, after more than ten years of wheeling and dealing on behalf of his clients, as well as hawking contracts and clients to other agencies, Ivan Kahn negotiated a deal for himself: he took a position as a talent scout at Twentieth Century Fox, working under Lew Schreiber and Darryl Zanuck. His talents as a scout in the agent field translated readily to the demands of his new studio position, which required the same job skills—the ability to assess talent—and the same connections—stage managers, theater producers, managers, and other agents. According to surviving records, Kahn even brought some scouting files from his agency to his new Fox office and later hired his former employee, Billy Gordon, as Fox’s executive casting director. In his new position, much as he had operated as an agent, Kahn sent his assistants to theatrical productions and compiled their notes, updating them periodically and thoroughly, case by case, in an annual survey for the studio’s records.19 Of course, Kahn still maintained close ties with agents in his new position. Kahn’s notes (which survive in studio files) reveal that he consistently contacted agents after coming across new talent as, for example, with Jeanne Crain in 1942: “This girl’s mother called me today and said she expected to sign an agency contract with Walter Kane [a talent agent]. I then spoke to Walter and explained we made a test of her about eight months ago and asked him to keep us informed as to how things develop with her. He said as soon as he signed her, he would keep in touch . . . so we would have the inside track if there is any further interest.”20 The goal was not to beat agents to signing talent. No one would sign a studio contract without an agent. Rather, studios scouted talent in competition with other studios; agents could act as allies in this regard. This trade of favors, information, tips, and talent strengthened the ties between studio executives and agents.

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Take the case of Kahn’s famous discovery of Linda Darnell. His main rivals came from other studios, and he rewarded an agent by recommending that she sign a representation contract with him. Kahn discovered Darnell while scouting in Texas. Scouting trips through major states had become a common industry practice. An industry report for 1937 disclosed that the studios invested approximately $5 million in their hunt for new talent, canvassing the country by combing university campuses, local talent contests, and little theaters.21 After Darnell auditioned for Kahn in Texas and he identified her as a promising talent, she maintained regular contact with the scout, while she remained at home to finish high school. In February 1938 Kahn was considering bringing Darnell to Fox for a screen test—screen tests generally cost $750 to $2,000, depending on color film stock, length of sound recording, costumes, and lighting. Merely making a screen test, then, represented an important decision for a studio executive.22 In Kahn’s estimation Darnell had earned such consideration, so she traveled to Fox for a screen test that year. Darnell continued to correspond and consult with Kahn as she determined her next moves, seeking his advice, for example, on whether to try out for an RKO-sponsored amateur contest. He told her to go ahead, even though rival RKO promised to offer her a studio contract if she qualified as a finalist. Kahn then convinced Fox to offer Darnell a contract, which she signed in April 1939. He warned RKO that the studio could not take credit for Darnell’s discovery since Fox had sent its screen test of Darnell to RKO when it was searching for talent for its amateur contest. Who negotiated Linda Darnell’s contract with Fox? Jonathan Smith, Kahn’s former partner at his agency.23 After Kahn joined Fox, Smith took over the agency but shifted to financial management. Thus Kahn tipped Smith off about his discovery and passed the promising star along to his former business partner.24 No shady dealings here, simply the exchange value of social connections. Once Darnell signed with the studio, a slew of star handlers took over—makeup specialists, voice coaches, acting teachers—a network of advisers in which agents surely belong. As a studio executive swapping tips and favors with this group of agents and scouts, Kahn acted no differently than his peers at other studios who were forming special relationships with Myron Selznick, Charles Feldman, and others. The Hollywood system thrived on this web of managers and advisers outside the studio walls. Edward Small also became a talent agent after holding several different positions on the periphery of the industry and collecting important, if minor, business connections that he would tap to start his talent agency. Small initially moved to New York as a teen to pursue an acting career but in the face

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of failure quickly shifted his talents to work behind the scenes and offstage.25 He started as an office assistant, hired by his brother, Morris, who worked for Hal Franklyn, who owned both an insurance business and a vaudeville booking agency in 1908. Morris, who had been working for the insurance business, shifted to the booking agency, and set Edward up in the new position. Franklyn’s agency concentrated on small theaters, what the business deemed “store shows,” or storefronts that had been converted to theaters. Two leading agencies on the East Coast, the partnerships of Klaw and Erlanger and of Lee and J. J. Schubert, monopolized the larger eastern theaters. These companies owned theaters outright and held solid connections to theater circuits—strings of theaters in particular regions under the same ownership—up and down the East Coast. Since these larger booking agencies essentially ignored the smaller theaters, booking agencies like Franklyn’s had a niche. Within his first year at Franklyn’s office, Small became a full-fledged vaudeville booking agent. Managing the schedules of both clients and theaters involved almost constant surveillance, with activity peaking on Mondays and Thursdays. On those days booking agents learned whether their clients’ act in a particular theater would work out for the week or weekend and whether cancellations had created new openings. Acts that tanked with crowds and theater managers met with instant dismissal, initiating an immediate search for a new act, both among the agency’s own clients and among newcomers, a chase, of course, always conducted in competition with other booking agents. In addition to scheduling clients’ acts, the booking agent sought out new talent and practically fought off aspirants. The larger booking agencies held connections to theater circuits and could book an act with a theatrical chain, guaranteeing acts a week or even months of bookings as they moved from theater to theater in the circuit. In fact, within another year Small had moved to a slightly larger agency and found himself booking acts in Boston, Norwich, Providence, and other eastern theater circuits. Small’s impatience and ambition drove him to strike out on his own. As Small recalled, “Making money in a hurry was my first concern, and the quickest way to do that was to become a flesh-peddler, line up some vaudeville acts and collect commissions when I sold them to booking offices. Since there was no overhead or investment involved, the commissions . . . went right into my pocket.”26 Agents worked with theatrical booking agencies in order to simplify and streamline bookings. When a vaudeville act, for example, finished its dates in out-of-town theaters, it relied on its agent to keep it working, preferably somewhere in the same general area to save travel

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expenses. Small already possessed an understanding of the ins and outs of this circuit. Moreover, in establishing his new endeavor, Small relied on the connections he had developed with clients in his capacity as a theatrical booking agent. With an office in the same building as Loew’s Vaudeville Circuit, Small also developed important connections there, especially with two of its three partners, Nick and Joe Schenck, and an inactive partner, Adolph Zukor—relationships that would pay off in Small’s transition to the film business. At this point in 1909, Loew’s owned about twenty theaters, with Joe Schenck in charge of scheduling their programs. Small, who was struggling to start his agency, could not resist Schenck’s offer of a job to book acts on the New England circuit, a theatrical chain that was under Keith-Albee’s stranglehold. So Small put his ambition to found an independent talent agency on hold for a few years. When Small returned to his dream of a booking agency in New York in the early 1910s, he altered the scope of his operation. His new plan involved tapping into the growing amount of work for actors in film. With all the New York film studios located outside the city (before their surge into 1920s Hollywood), Small determined that running an employment agency would offer an economical approach because it would cut down on the expenses incurred in searching for work for clients and for talent. But because Small lacked the kinds of powerful business connections to moguls and executives that Selznick commanded later in Hollywood, the studios locked him out, until Joe Schenck got into the film production business as an independent and turned to Small for casting. Working with other independents like Schenck finally gave Small’s business some leverage and steady connections. In these years Small considered his business “an employment agency for actors. Performers would come to me for jobs, just as stenographers, clerks, butlers, or whatever went to employment agencies for work. The actor would pay me five per cent of his salary for a maximum of twenty weeks under the existing labor law.”27 Under this plan Small printed a casting guide categorizing the various actors he represented: “The girl-next-door, the vamp, the homebody wife, the sophisticate, . . . the rugged outdoor heman, villains, fathers, bank-presidents.” Shifting his business to the representation of actors involved reeducating himself, since Small now had to consider factors that rarely came into play in his days as a vaudeville agent—skills like acting and stage presence—and new information like staging and the functions of certain roles in dramatic narratives. Yet for all the enterprising efforts he made in this career shift, Small still ran his company as “a money-and-time-saver for studios,” as demonstrated by the catalog of actors, rather than as something akin to a talent agent, directly push-

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ing for work on behalf of individual clients. Small’s guide followed the format of a department store or mail-order catalog, categorizing its products for a streamlined marketing and shopping experience. It betrayed a rather passive approach to sales, akin to merely fulfilling orders, since Small operated his business more as an indirect supplier, or “stocker,” for studios than as a hustling manager and adviser to talent. Small became something of the modern agent—that is, the career counselor, negotiator, hustler, the agent that would surface most powerfully in the late 1920s—when in 1916 he developed an entirely new philosophical approach to his business. Small described this new angle quite simply: “Personality is a commodity.” He claimed that the idea came to him when he was looking at a chewing gum ad and realized that he could simply replace the chewing gum with an actor or actress: Because people shop for [stars] . . . before they go see a movie, they phone the theatre and ask who’s in it. . . . People are interested in people. . . . The theatre is the only store where you go to buy something, yet you don’t take anything home with you. Nothing except your memories of the picture you’ve seen. The audience doesn’t get anything it can eat or wear or ride home in for its money. Just memories.28

Small’s visionary moment here squares with the new business philosophy sweeping the nation at this time and with agents’ practices as they developed in the late 1920s. Advertising was seen as a modern form of thinking, a new approach to the world and to thinking about and reaching out to others. In its simplicity, in its emphasis on novelty and snappy precision, advertising seemed to distill the contemporary way of living. Using advertising as a kind of inspiration, you could pitch yourself by reducing yourself to a commodity or an essential idea or personality. You could look at your career and its narrative of climbing the career ladder and achieving success as a way of selling yourself. In this vein all sorts of how-to books proffered methods of self-promotion and ways to remold your personality to square with modern commerce. As the cultural historian Warren Susman noted, these books paralleled and even modeled themselves on concepts of celebrity and stars.29 No Hollywood insider in the 1920s would argue with Small’s pithy equation. Small’s recounting of this moment of inspiration—apocryphal or not—aptly condensed the role of an agent nonetheless: honing and hawking personalities as products. It also neatly encapsulated the difference between an employment agency—the incarnation of his earlier business—and that of the talent agency. In this new capacity Small convinced early clients, like the directors Frank Lloyd, John Stahl, and Henry King and performers like Norma

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Shearer and Francis X. Bushman, that their careers demanded something more than a lawyer, who typically handled their contracts. Such persuasion involved demonstrating the necessity of hiring advisers for decisions about appropriate roles or projects, evaluating literary properties as vehicles, or measuring business relationships with producers in terms of an overall career plan. “Lawyers,” Small wrote in his memoir, “with their limited legal minds, could make contracts for performers; I could make careers for them.” Under this banner of the promotion and commodification of clients, Small published a brochure for his agency that repeated his new motto on its cover: “Personality is a Commodity.”30 Small’s eureka moment notwithstanding, the phrase, while not an esoteric equation to other agents or fans, succinctly defined the function of the star. For agents brokered the exchange value of and nourished, marketed, and protected these commodities. The brochure explained the aims, services, and goals of his company—why, in particular, he thought personality was a commodity—and outlined the various departments: business management for stars, artists, directors, and technicians; publicity; the literary department as a connection between authors and producers. To bring new performers to the attention of producers, as well as remind the industry of his clients’ skills, Small also produced a bimonthly publication called the Link, a title that symbolically established the agency as a conduit between clients and producers.31 The publication showed photographs of the clients, provided information about their films, past credits, and personal lives. Rooted in the same mail-order catalog format as Small’s earlier publications, with rows and columns boxing in small pictures of the various commodities (the clients), this new brochure, with its short articles on the clients’ works and lives, was worded more like fan magazines and the promotional prose of the talent agent’s sales pitch. Now Small gave his clients the hard sell, going beyond merely putting them on display. Of Small’s numerous clients in the early 1920s—Norma Shearer, Hedda Hopper, Alice Joyce, Francis X. Bushman, Alma Rubens, Ricardo Cortez— Clara Bow best represented Small’s guiding philosophy, “Personality as Commodity.” Discovered in 1921 when she won a “fame and fortune” contest sponsored by Motion Picture magazine that earned the winner a part in a film, Bow struggled through some small parts and cheap productions. Even so, her image caught the attention of the independent producer B. P. Schulberg, whom Edward Small had befriended when Schulberg worked as a publicity man for the Zukor-Lasky combine.32 Initially, Schulberg used Bow mainly

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Figure 4. A Sears Catalog of stars? Edward Small’s pictorial review, the Link, pitched clients as commodities. It marked a new direction for his agency in the early 1920s. Courtesy of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

as a loan-out, renting her to other studios for $500 a week, which earned him $300 above the weekly salary he paid the actor. In fact, in 1924 all eight of her films were made by other studios. When Schulberg sold his company and himself to Paramount, where he eventually became head of production, Bow continued work in the new studio in films with bigger budgets, such as

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Kid Boots, Mantrap, The Runaway, Children of Divorce, and Hula, as well as many more loan-outs. As Variety observed in 1925, “B. P. Schulberg is probably getting the best break of any producer on the Coast so far as renting stars are concerned. Schulberg several years ago placed Clara Bow under contract, and ever since that time has been renting her out at sums which have netted him as much as 500 percent profit for her services. At present Schulberg is paying her $750 a week and providing her wardrobe, but finds little difficulty in disposing of her services for over $3000 a week.”33 Indeed, Paramount disposed of Bow in fifteen pictures that year. Despite this almost reckless deployment of its asset, at Paramount Bow exploded into a star, particularly with her fifteenth film that year, The Plastic Age. In the 1926 film It, directed by Small’s client Clarence Badger, Bow, already a national star filling the pages of movie magazines, found a vehicle tailored to her commodified personality. Despite its flimsy plot and diaphanous dialogue, It captured the allure of Bow’s spontaneity and sexuality; it also resonated with the gossip that circulated about Bow in the press, which depicted her as a flamboyant flapper, constantly at parties or on the town with a new man. If Small distilled the essence of stardom as salable “personality,” It stands out as a perfect and typical star vehicle. All stars got treated to the narrative build-up, the close-ups, the extra attention doled out to Bow in this film. Only here the film reflexively magnified the discourse surrounding stars by quoting the production’s source material, an article about “It,” that allegedly elusive yet captivating trait that defined standout personalities. From Clara Bow as Bette the toiling, humble shop girl, albeit sparkling with “It,” to Clara Bow as “Clara Bow,” all dolled up and singing and strumming a ukulele for a band of revelers on a yacht, “positively topheavy with ‘IT’” (as the title card points out), the film repeatedly created moments for Bow to become an “image,” as if on a poster or magazine cover, a star posing languorously in the sun or lying on her boss’s office desk. What the source material said of the Bow character’s “magnetic force” could just as easily apply to Bow. And what F. Scott Fitzgerald said of Bow, a flapper “with a splendid talent for living,” readily applied to her character in It.34 Thus It stirs up an exemplary effervescent cocktail of Small’s recipe, “Personality as Commodity,” the rising cult of personality, and star attractions in Hollywood film. But here’s the rub: two agents, Maxine Alton and Edward Small, claimed to represent Clara Bow. Although Bow worked with Badger and Schulberg, two significant contacts of Small’s, his claim remains questionable since it comes from his unpublished memoir. Moreover, Small listed Clara Bow in his agency pamphlet but was cagey about it; the pamphlet warns,

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It is not intended to convey that the Artists herein mentioned are under our personal management. Should the Producer be interested in any of the Artists so listed we, through our SELECTIVE CASTING DEPARTMENT, may negotiate for their services.35

Alton’s claim comes from a fanzine article—equally dubious—from the period. According to Alton, she served as Bow’s emissary on the actor’s first trip to California.36 Alton’s lack of definition as Bow’s agent may stem from the fact that she specialized in handling writers—as billed in her advertisements and in industry guides—and represented even then only a minor force in this niche market.37 That Bow’s agent remains uncertain reveals important information about the status of agents in the late 1920s and confirms that agents were just beginning to negotiate their own place in the general practices of the film business. The role of agents still had not been defined at this time, before they secured a stronger role in the habits and routine of Hollywood commerce and, indeed, before pioneers like Myron Selznick articulated the role of the agent in his own negotiations. If the historical record fails to clarify who can rightfully claim to have been Bow’s agent, by 1926 one point is clear: no agent worked on Bow’s behalf to any significant degree. When Paramount signed a new contract with Bow, her alcoholic, pandering father acted as her representative—much to the delight of the studio—while Bow worked on location. Schulberg and his squadron managed to convince the Bows to agree to the following terms: $750 a week for 1926, $925 a week for 1927, and $1,500 a week for 1928. Even the studio attorneys joined in mocking the starlet: “Don’t let the position of Clara’s signature annoy you [Clara had not signed the document on the designated line]. The remarkable thing is that she did not sign on the back or at the bottom.”38 Paramount’s exploitation of Bow remained an open secret, commented on by industry journalists. Even the New York Times noted that Bow’s $1,500 weekly salary was woefully out of line with the success of her films, especially in comparison with the box-office take of stars who were earning three or four times that amount.39 How Paramount treated Bow and managed her career underscores, by contrast, the significance of Selznick’s strategic innovations and interventions as an agent. All the significant principles that Selznick outlined in his memo “IMPORTANT POINTS TO WATCH FOR IN STUDIO CONTRACTS” were missing from Bow’s contracts as well as from her negotiations with Paramount.40 Selznick’s expansion of the negotiable points in studio contracts redefined the parameters of the commodified talent as well as

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the service provided by—and now, given these new definitions of the agent’s role, necessitated by—the role of the agent. Even headstrong, otherwise savvy stars like Bow failed to gain ground in bargaining for special provisions or details in their contracts in the late 1920s, a failure that only accentuates the innovative approach to contracts outlined in Selznick’s principles. Unlike the contract of Clara Bow, who held no power to determine which roles best suited her talent and her ambition, Ruth Chatterton’s contract with Warner Bros., for example, insisted on stories mutually agreed upon by the actor and the studio and required that only leading directors would work with the star—clauses, in fact, that Selznick inserted in William Powell’s contract as well. While some stars somehow survived dozens of films that failed to fully develop their talents or diminished it through overexposure and weak production values, Selznick knew enough to negotiate in areas like production values, directors, and screenplays in addition to bargaining for increased monetary compensation. Success in this business meant more than merely increasing salary. It meant negotiating for a limited number of productions per year, thereby insuring against the risk of overexposure. Limiting the number of productions generally protected the client from indiscriminate assignment to cheap productions, for, as Clara Bow was finding out, an increase in the number of pictures per year generally entailed a decrease in the amount of time spent on each project. Such haste, in an industry already built on expediting and structuring artistic creation, inevitably diminished the quality of productions. As a counterstrategy to protect the commodity value of their clients, Selznick and other agents like Charles Feldman frequently built certain minimal production budgets into their clients’ contracts. Furthermore, insisting on pricier directors—when possible, insisting on a client’s right to select directors or approve other cast members—ensured a degree of quality as well. A narrow focus on salary— and even this aspect got lost in the case of Clara Bow—missed these important dimensions. By contrast, Selznick not only defined the role of the agent in these interactions but also defined and shaped the kind of discourse that created and refined artists in this industry—and that proved the difference between small agents and big ones and often determined the robustness of a client’s contracts and career. In the early 1920s Small’s business expanded to include a separate division for booking extras and an office in Hollywood, and even though this branch struggled, it lasted well into the 1930s. A small division of the agency provided musical acts to theaters as prologues to the films, until this exhibition practice died off in the early 1930s after the introduction of sound shorts replaced most live performances. Still, while Small’s agency showed

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signs of growth, many of his employees used the agency more as a launching pad for their own careers than as a long-term commitment. Carey Wilson headed the literary division before he moved to Hollywood as a screenwriter; Louis Shurr handled the theatrical division and stage musicals before he set up his own agency in Hollywood. But Small had been dabbling in movie production all this time as well. He produced his first film in 1917, and from the start this dual career drew complaints from his clients about the time it took him away from his agency. In 1932 Small joined his old friend Joe Schenck at United Artists and officially devoted all his time to production, starting with his first film there, I Cover the Waterfront. Small turned the agency over to his brother, Morris, who merged it shortly thereafter with Arthur Landau’s agency. With the addition of Landau the Small agency grew in size.41 More important, Landau brought Jean Harlow and Lionel Barrymore to the company. Landau played an instrumental role in releasing Harlow from Howard Hughes’s independent film company, which produced movies only sporadically, by selling her contract to MGM and gaining her a solid long-term contract, which was lost for all concerned (and commissioned) with her untimely death in 1937. Barrymore, despite the respect he had racked up as an actor, never achieved major box-office stardom, yet he still commanded a strong nonexclusive contract at a $150,000 per film (his alcoholism slowly sunk the contracts down to earth, along with his career). By 1935 a few more marquee names had joined Barrymore on the agency’s client list.42 Robert Montgomery shuffled around at MGM (second fiddle to William Powell, Myron Selznick’s commodity there), as did Johnny Weissmuller (after leaving the William Morris Agency) and Helen Hayes. That studio offered healthy contracts to its stars and accorded them enough assistance and sound management in assigning stories, directors, and casting that Small and Landau hardly felt compelled to amp up their demands for their clients. Others on the client list got lost in the crowd and in standard contracts: Henry Armetta, Alan Dinehart, Madge Evans, and Lyle Talbot (who risked freelance status in the late 1930s and did all right for himself) or directors like Frank Lloyd, Gordon Douglas, and Gregory La Cava (who left for Selznick). The agency developed into a solid midlevel firm. By the 1940s both Morris Small and Arthur Landau had left the agency to pursue careers as production executives. By 1935 more than ninety agencies served the traffic of talent in Hollywood. Some handled fewer than five clients; others, like BergAllenberg or A. & S. Lyons, soon rivaled the major league firms of Selznick and Feldman. Then there were all the agencies that handled the smaller

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players, writers, and directors. These little firms often acted as de facto gatekeepers for the bigger agencies that plucked their talent once these clients showed signs of breaking into the big time. Shoestring agencies couldn’t do much about this. They could promise more personalized representation to the client as a way of countering the courtship of the heavy hitters, but it often meant just losing more slowly. By and large, bread-and-butter agencies like Frank Orsatti’s (he partnered with many agents over the years) handled actors like William Gargan at Warner Bros., Richard Dix at Columbia, and, briefly, Edward G. Robinson, Claire Trevor, and Randolph Scott before they left for bigger agencies. The Sackin Agency counted more than three hundred clients, all of whom were on the lower rungs of studios, people like Alice Ardell at Universal or Fred Cravens at Warner Bros.—if you blinked, you’d lose sight of these clients in any of their films. J. G. Mayer threw around his stellar family name to no effect as an agent; he had a handful of run-of-the-mill clients. Mayer’s insignificant career as an agent proved that it took more than filial or loose social connections to succeed in Hollywood. Making up the rank-and-file of agents were fledgling operators like Minna Wallis, Michael Levee, Frank Edington, Walter Kane, George Volck, and dozens of others. They handled small to medium client lists or survived off one major star. Wallis, one of a handful of female agents working in the 1930s, got her start in the Warner Bros. casting department (Hal Wallis, her brother, joined Warners a little later as a producer), becoming the studio’s casting director by the late 1920s. Myron Selznick and Leland Hayward fronted her $10,000 to set up her agency, and she paid them back within the first year of operation. Errol Flynn, Myrna Loy, George Brent, and Clark Gable were among the constellation of stars passing through her office. Wallis was a sharp operator, as attested to by her promotion of the young Clark Gable, who was eking out a good living in the theater at $350 a week when she ferried the young hopeful out to a Pathé picture: They liked him and I was able to get him $750 for his first picture. They said, “Of course you can ride.” I said, “Of course he can.” When we got outside, Clark looked at me and said, “Minna, you’re crazy! I’ve never been near a horse!” I said, “Well, you’re going to be, starting right now.” We went out to the Valley, where they had a riding school and started him off. He went out there and practiced every day and when the picture was ready, he could ride as well as anybody.43

Wallis followed in Kahn’s footsteps, hitting up small independent productions to jump-start a client’s career. Gable stepped up to a bigger agency (Berg-Allenberg) within a few years but remained a good friend of Wallis’s,

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as did Flynn, who jumped at the chance to sign with Myron Selznick’s firm. To survive Minna Wallis periodically hooked up with bigger operations like the Edington-Vincent Agency and Feldman’s firm throughout the 1930s. Michael Levee, another relative minor leaguer, moved from the executive ranks at Paramount, First National, and United Artists (a position that granted him a founding membership in the Academy of Motion Pictures) to establish his own talent agency in the early 1930s. Working out of his Hollywood home, he managed the early careers of Bette Davis, Dick Powell, Merle Oberon, Paul Muni, and Claude Rains and of directors like Frank Borzage and Mervyn LeRoy—an impressive roster, but many of these clients moved on to larger agencies when their careers took off. Ben Carter managed “colored” actors and actresses (the Academy Players Directory Bulletin, a reference book for casting directors, contained a separate listing for “colored” players) and eventually moved into the acting ranks himself.44 After leaving the Small agency, Louis Shurr got by on modest commissions from the likes of Mona Barrie, Lois Collier, Jerome Cowan, and Broderick Crawford, more footnotes to film history than a client list.45 After stints with Harry Webber and Zeppo Marx, Walter Kane opened his own small agency in 1936, a concern that limped into the next decade. In 1947 Kane attempted suicide (apparently because of an unpaid grocery bill of $632), recovered, and became a Las Vegas talent scout.46 Like the Film Dancers Casting Company or Japanese Players operation, some agencies specialized; they either dissolved or were swallowed up by more general talent agencies.47 Sometimes smaller agencies merged with each other in an effort to save money on overhead and increase the clout of the clients on their list. To take just one example, when he wasn’t shuttling in and out of positions at the Myron Selznick agency, George Volck partnered with William Hawks, who managed a moderate collection of clients at various times. Zeppo Marx joined the Milton Bren–Frank Orsatti Agency, then the Small-Landau enterprise, before striking out on his own. Sometimes, like Wallis or Volck, these minor agents joined larger operations. When Harry Edington took an executive position at RKO, for example, his partner Frank Vincent merged with Feldman, an endeavor that lasted only a few years.48 A relatively small firm could get by with a few major players (or even one) on its roster. Ronald Colman and Hawks-Volck did well by each other, especially on some of the actor’s potent freelance deals. In 1934 the agency cut a deal for Colman with Fox that granted him story approval, $100,000 per picture, and 10 percent of the gross.49 Spencer Tracy, for instance, gave Leo Morrison more punch for his agency, which otherwise had nearly one

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hundred minor clients. The Edington-Vincent Agency oversaw Garbo’s precedent-setting deals at MGM, where she successfully held out for twopicture deals at $10,000 per week.50 The agency attracted such stars as Cary Grant and Francis Dee, and promising writers like Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett, even if the office lacked any strong directors. These firms nonetheless remained vulnerable to raiding. Feldman wanted Grant, writing in an internal office memo in 1936: “It is too bad we slipped up on the Grant matter as he had just signed with Edington giving them four months after the expiration of the Paramount contract which has six months to run to negotiate for him. There is still the faint possibility of getting this man inasmuch as he is not going to sign any long term contract with any producer and is going to free lance.”51 Grant was impressed with Feldman and occasionally leaned on him for advice, even when the actor dismissed agents altogether and relied on his lawyer to hash out details on the strong deals he made in the late 1930s. Generally lacking major stars on their rosters or carrying a few before they were plundered by bigger operations, small agencies had to fight for attention from the big producers. Both Kahn and Small complained that the major studios refused to meet with them. Given the impressive pace of film productions and scheduling, and the risk that was always entailed in gambling on talent, this lack of studio attention comes as no surprise. Why would a studio executive squander time listening to a pitch from Kahn, Small, or lesser lights like Milton Bren or Walter Kane? By contrast, a studio executive meeting with one of Selznick’s agents—or Selznick himself— could cover a number of projects simultaneously, shifting attention from one of the agency’s writers to the availability of George Cukor or William Powell in a single meeting. Numerous memos in Selznick’s files that outline discussion points for meetings with studio executives or producers also list talent from all the agency’s divisions, often as many as twenty or thirty clients. Moreover, a big agency wielded its major stars, writers, or directors as leverage in negotiations, using them to lure studios to the table where the agency could broker a deal for several talents at once. Clout came from the bankable value of clients, which in turn fed the reputation of an agency.

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4. Charisma and Contracts Charles Feldman

Charles Feldman fashioned a distinctive character for the role of the classical Hollywood agent, cutting a sharp contrast with the rather sullen, combative role played by Myron Selznick. Dapper, gregarious, and All-Pro, Feldman sported an expansive demeanor, in both his business dealings and his social engagements in the world of Hollywood. His manner served him well. In an enterprise where reputation counted as much as anything, Feldman’s racked up interest like money in the bank. For if agents serve in the commercial fabrication of individuality, honing their clients into distinctive commodities, then agents also fashion their own sense of personality or character as a way of selling themselves. Agents represent a modern phenomenon not only in the sense that they spring from our era’s complex integration of culture and industry—and this tension circulates throughout the agent’s discipline, balancing the artistic needs of clients with those of business—but also in the sense that agents exemplify the modern practice of marketing personality, of selling one’s self. In this regard Feldman showed a profound interest in developing identities for his clients, tending to and even tailoring their unique talents and their own self-fashioning, whether by molding new roles for them, doting on their individual performances, having screenplays rewritten to better showcase their particular skills, tactically weaving them into packages with other clients, or by generating formal recognition and attention for their proper credit in title sequences and advertising. To accomplish these goals, Feldman constructed his own distinguished persona within the industry: gentlemanly, charming, and learned. Friends called him “Gable” for his rakish resemblance to the star. In all his endeavors Feldman played the courtly diplomat. Even at his most aggressive, a stance he did not shy from, Feldman took a dialectical approach to negotiations, hearing out the opposing side while developing 73

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persuasive compromises or pinpointing holes in the studio’s position that worked to the advantage of his client.1 Unlike Myron Selznick’s career, Charles Feldman’s reveals a contented approach to the agent’s role in the Hollywood marketplace. While the jaundiced Selznick seemed frustrated in the role of embattled agent, Feldman took a cool and integrated approach to his business. Feldman accepted his position as an outsider and enjoyed the spoils of his success and the luxuries it afforded: leisurely hours, discreet dalliances with starlets, and annual continental vacations for sartorial replenishment and high-art shopping sprees (he owned a number of Cézannes). The origins of these rivals partly explain their differing constitutions and levels of contentment as agents. As a lawyer, Feldman had worked on the margins of creative production, whereas Selznick had emerged as an agent after failing in the world of production. Far from viewing the agent as some commercial crusader pillaging the production centers of Hollywood, Feldman held long-time friendships with Darryl Zanuck—later representing the producer when he left his studio position and became an independent—Sam Goldwyn, and Jack Warner, among other moguls, socialized regularly with these studio heads, and frequently vacationed with them.2 The contrast between Selznick and Feldman provides some sense of the lived experience of Hollywood culture, the ways in which social spheres complemented and clashed with the industrial spheres of the studio system. Living as an agent in this little colony required acknowledging one’s distance from the perceived core of power, a position Selznick refused to accept but one to which Feldman adapted with a certain calculated grace, parlaying his social connections into long-lasting and steady success. Indeed, when the members of the agents’ association initiated negotiations with the talent guilds in 1937, they nominated Feldman as their leader, only five years after he had embarked upon his career. Feldman graciously declined, because by then he was far too busy with his successful agency, running almost neck and neck with Selznick’s business.3 In this fiveyear period Feldman, who had a keen legal and analytical mind, carved out new strategies and paradigms for deals that set competitive milestones for other agents. From the start Feldman promoted a limited notion of freelancing by juggling nonexclusive contracts, signing clients to short contracts—two-film deals or two- to three-year studio terms—that allowed his clients to work at other studios simultaneously. No doubt harnessing his legal training, Feldman proved a probing reader of contracts and a writer of nuanced and inventive provisions. This agent understood that contracts represented a process and a dialogue, not a final step, providing a platform for all parties to parse out terms and conditions favorable to each. In Feldman’s

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Figure 5. Charles Feldman (in bow tie at rear) parties with clients Irene Dunne and Claudette Colbert. Charles K. Feldman Collection, American Film Institute Library.

hands contracts became both more flexible and more rigorous, depending on his goals and the interests of his client. In a business dependent on a complex network of contracts—between talent and studios, exhibitors and distributors—Feldman’s career presents an alternative perspective on the so-called golden age of Hollywood, illustrating the numerous exceptions to this era’s adherence to the ironclad option contract. In light of other agents’ combative relationship with the studios and the option contract, Feldman’s achievements remain all the more exceptional.

Setting Up Shop Feldman literally grew up with the film industry in California. An adopted child (born Charles Gold), Feldman moved from New Jersey to California in 1919, when his foster father retired from the furniture business, just as Hollywood began to sprout movie studios. After a year at the University of

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Michigan in 1921, Feldman transferred to the University of California in Los Angeles, where he was graduated in 1925. He then headed across town to law school at the University of Southern California. During summer vacations Feldman worked as an assistant or stagehand at Fox and set his sights on the film business after graduation. In 1927, during his senior year, Feldman passed the bar exam and began practicing law right after graduation. His early clients consisted almost exclusively of actors, writers, and directors who were working in the film industry. Within a few short years of setting up his law office in the Taft Building at the corner of Hollywood and Vine, already a business center for the growing film industry, Feldman counted among his clients Edward G. Robinson, James Cagney, Ray Milland, Joe E. Brown, James Flood, Busby Berkeley, Samson Raphaelson, Spencer Tracy, and many other Hollywood players.4 Feldman often repeated the storied tale of his origins as an agent: after advising a client on the wording of certain conditions to be written into a contract, Feldman charged a cool $5,000 for his services. But with the contracts lying there before him, all the numbers exposed in plain sight and plain math, Feldman realized that the agent involved in the same deal made a 10 percent commission amounting, over the contract’s duration, to $100,000.5 Struck by this discrepancy, Feldman notified clients and friends that he planned to establish his own agency business. Making the transition would prove easy for Feldman, given his thorough knowledge of contractual law. Moreover, he would be using many of the skills he called upon in his legal practice: the capacity to handle arguments, jockey different positions, persuade and negotiate, determine principles and insist on their adherence, and find precedents on which to base his position. Most agents lacked such training, and his skills constituted a competitive advantage. But beyond his legal training Feldman had to prove that he knew the world of film and, in this regard, generate a trust with talent and the studios. Having established a strong social standing and business reputation in the Hollywood community, Feldman still needed to lure clients, and quickly, in order to start collecting commissions and financing his operation. Partnering with an established agent offered a solution. Through one of his legal clients, the actor Gregory Ratoff, Feldman met Felix Young, who had produced a number of projects for Feldman’s other legal clients, such as the director—and the agency’s first official client—David Burton, whose Let’s Fall in Love starred clients Ratoff and Ann Sothern. Young introduced Feldman to Adeline Schulberg, the wife of Paramount studio head B. P. Schulberg. In 1932 Feldman convinced her to join him in his new enterprise.

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Schulberg’s name added some glamour to the agency and suggested close ties to Hollywood’s power elite.6 In fact, in its coverage of the new business venture, Variety dryly identified Feldman’s partner as “Ad (Mrs. B. P.) Schulberg.” The same article characterized a “tea party” at the new offices as “the forerunner of a raid on the ranks of the Joyce & Selznick contract people,” noting that several of the rival agency’s clients showed up at the party, mingling not only with other industry players but also with “wives of picture people socially prominent and figured to have influence with their husbands.”7 While such pithy writing chimes in with the truth that every social event in Hollywood was simultaneously part of a business network, only a few of Selznick’s clients made the leap. The partnership fortified Feldman’s move into the agency business, but Adeline Schulberg spent more time picking out the wallpaper for the Taft Building office, coordinating its interior decoration, and filling the office with antiques and fine fabrics than she did on the business, which left Feldman in charge of agency operations.8 Still, the Schulberg-Feldman Agency continued to grow and draw in new clients, many from Feldman’s law practice. By 1934, two years after the agency was founded, the SchulbergFeldman operation represented the actors Claudette Colbert, Sylvia Sidney, Irene Dunne, and Charles Boyer; the directors Michael Curtiz, Anatole Litvak, and Mitchell Leisen, and the writers Sidney Buchman and Anita Loos, among other powerful players.9 Ann Sothern left Ivan Kahn to sign with Feldman. Ruth Chatterton forsook the Myron Selznick agency to join Feldman’s. Charles Boyer, newly arrived from France, interviewed rival agents Nat Goldstone, Arthur Landau, Frank Orsatti, and Sam Morrison before deciding to employ Feldman as a representative, ignoring the advice of Adolphe Menjou, who encouraged his friend to sign with Selznick.10 All these moves confirmed Feldman’s growing reputation. Indeed, no other agency at the time had met with such rapid success. Following Myron Selznick’s notorious triumphs in the field, a number of industry figures had attempted to establish agency businesses in the early 1930s, but many failed to survive, let alone approach the stature of Selznick’s.11 Feldman’s agency quickly offered Selznick competition, even while the two agents maintained a collegial relationship, often working on deals together when their clients sought each other out for projects.12 Feldman retained a strong respect as well for Leland Hayward, as the two frequently socialized in Hollywood and New York. Feldman’s skills notwithstanding, his social and business connections—if we can make such distinctions in Hollywood—no doubt contributed greatly to his standing as an agent.

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These connections ran deep. In early 1934, when Feldman married Jean Howard (a Ziegfeld showgirl contracted for minor roles at MGM), the producer Walter Wanger stood as the agent’s best man.13 Feldman more or less returned the favor by officially representing Wanger when he left MGM that year to set himself up as a semi-independent producer. Not surprisingly, a number of the agent’s clients turn up in Wanger productions: Rouben Mamoulian directed Wanger’s Queen Christina at MGM in 1933, with John Gilbert; Claudette Colbert and Charles Boyer starred in Wanger’s Private Worlds at Paramount in 1935 (Wanger sculpted Boyer’s role to suit the actor, who signed a contract with the producer); Peggy Conklin starred in The President Vanishes (1934) and Her Master’s Voice (1936); Walter Pidgeon starred in Big Brown Eyes (1936), to name just a few projects from the agent and producer’s long association. As the agency grew, Feldman no longer needed his, by all accounts, rather dilettantish partner. Schulberg had served her purpose in quickly establishing a client list and a certain cachet for Feldman’s enterprise. But she had poor work habits, brought in few of the agency’s new clients, and retained no understanding of business strategy. In 1935 Feldman bought out her share of the agency, partly funding the agency’s reorganization by selling a few of his contracts to other talent agents.14 For example, a rival agency purchased Sylvia Sidney’s contract for $25,000, giving her new representatives the sole right to 10 percent of her future earnings.15 Feldman brought in Ralph Blum, one of his former law associates, as a partner, granting Blum a strong stake in the firm—now renamed the Feldman-Blum Agency—for just more than $100,000. MGM’s Louis B. Mayer, on the executive board of the Bank of America, cosigned the loan that Blum took out to purchase his stake in the agency, an act that certainly signaled the growing status of agents within the industry.16 Mayer’s role in this transaction remained all the more noteworthy since rumor had it that the mogul, lusting after Jean Howard, had banished Feldman from the lot after Howard married him. This executive shuffle or corporate reorganization offers one more sign of Feldman’s growing success. That he could handle such a shake-up and get rid of his well-connected partner attests to the level of confidence Feldman had attained. Another sign was the way he threw money around during this deal. By 1935 Feldman was paying himself a weekly salary of $1,100, a sum deducted from the office expenses before calculating the annual profit, of which Feldman took 50 percent—making his annual salary more than $100,000, surpassing the compensation of many studio executives and closing in on Myron Selznick’s annual take. Blum’s participation in the agency gave him a 25 percent share of its net profits (in addition to a $400 weekly

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salary). Three executive agents worked under Feldman and Blum: Jack Gordean, who had started with Feldman in 1932; Ned Marin, formerly a sales manager for First National Pictures and a producer at Metro; and Al Rockett, formerly in charge of production at both Fox and First National.17 A small platoon of field agents—generally four to six—and an assortment of secretaries completed the office staff. Like Selznick, Feldman assigned each of these foot soldiers to deal with specific studios, targeting and streamlining the flow of information between the studio and the agency, sharing the results with the staff at weekly meetings, and maintaining regular contacts with select studio executives, producers, and clients.18 Even so, the new incorporation papers clearly stated that Feldman shall “have complete charge of the entire business and business affairs of the corporation.”19 Despite the nominal partnership and the hive of executives and field agents handling the diverse needs of the agency’s clients, this operation remained an entrepreneurial endeavor, an enterprise built around Feldman’s personality—his charisma, his energy, and his oversight. This gave definition to the organization, which helped to sell the personal services that attracted clients. It also meant that the agency would progress, stand still, or fall based on Feldman’s decisions alone. Case in point. Feldman protected his interests in the new partnership by granting himself 50 percent off the top of the money received from clients he had personally brought into the business: Simone Simon Ann Sothern Anatole Litvak Rouben Mamoulian Rex O’Malley William Brady Roland Drew Walter Pidgeon Cesar Romero Walter Slezak Jed Harris

Charles Kaufman Joseph Kessell Jacques Thery Edward Buzzell George Stevens Mark Sandrich Al Werker Max Steiner Charles Kenyon Horace McCoy David Vivian

In their negotiations Feldman designated a similar list of clients as Blum’s, though none came close to the promise of some of Feldman’s exclusive clients, like Walter Pidgeon, Rouben Mamoulian, or Anatole Litvak.20 For almost all of 1935 the two partners debated their rights to certain clients and

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the percentages related to their respective client lists—suggesting at various stages a 75–25 split or one by thirds and amply arguing the merits of each suggestion. Almost one year after agreeing to the merger, Feldman and Blum continued to squander time debating petty issues about the rights to Walter Pidgeon, whom Feldman claimed to have signed through his associate Charles Morrison. Frustrated and clearly establishing his legal position, Feldman dictated a letter to his office partner in October 1936, complaining about these problems: One of the main inducements to making a deal with you was to put an end for all time to these repeated demands that you have made upon me. The method of achieving that result was your own invention and idea, but when it comes down to closing you want to wipe that feature of the situation out of existence—which certainly leaves me without confidence in any assurances you might give me that the 2/3rds-1/3rd deal would be final and for all time.21

Feldman’s memo goes on at length, rehearsing the various scenarios for splitting commissions. These debates between Feldman and Blum added a level of sluggishness to the company and exemplified some of the problems in merging two smaller enterprises. Each party sought to curtail the risk of increased overhead by ensuring that little of this additional expenditure and profit sharing would impinge on the steady commerce coming from their own established commissions on exclusive clients. This problem would characterize later mergers with Feldman’s operation, but when larger corporate agencies emerged in the late 1940s, their complex structures readily accommodated mergers with little of the internal back-and-forth that squandered time and energy in the Feldman-Blum case. At any rate Blum proved an enervated opponent in this debate, and he remained a background figure in all the agency’s operations. He barely registers a presence in the surviving notes from the agency’s weekly meetings and its interoffice memos, surfacing with any force only when Feldman consulted with Blum on legal details. The agency belonged to Feldman, through and through.

Percentages of Power: Nonexclusive Contracts Feldman’s creative reconstruction of the studio contract system stands out as one of his most distinctive tactics as an agent. Like Myron Selznick and a small handful of the leading agents in the early 1930s, Feldman recognized percentage participation in a film’s profits or grosses as way to increase his clients’ remuneration, and he worked steadily to achieve such contractual

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promises for his more prominent clients. More significantly, Feldman made it almost a philosophical prerogative to push for short-term contracts or single-picture deals, a status that Hollywood regarded as “freelancing.” For clients in demand from the studios freelancing clearly offered a stronger potential bargaining position since the talent could more easily parlay recent successes. But freelancing entailed a higher degree of risk than longterm contracts since a loss at the bargaining table could result in a loss of work for a period of time. To practice such a strategy involved convincing clients as much as it did the studios. Many of Feldman’s clients opted for the security of long-term contracts.22 Michael Curtiz, for example, remained a staff director for Warner Bros., even after he logged major commercial hits like Captain Blood (1935) and The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). Ann Sothern shuffled through substandard programmers—and standard contracts—at Columbia and RKO (often paired with the Feldman client Gene Raymond); when she left these studios in 1937, after severing her relationship with the agent Ivan Kahn to go with Feldman, and fretfully flirting with freelancing, Sothern settled for another long-term contract at MGM, a deal that provided steady work and income well into the next decade. Warner Baxter stuck with his Fox contract and his loan-outs to Warner Bros. and MGM and found himself, at about $280,000 a year, reaching the highest levels of star salaries. Other clients failed to achieve the kind of success that offered leverage in bargaining for freelance deals or multiple contracts. Actors and actresses like Edward Arnold, Doris Kenyon, and Cesar Romero (after he left the Orsatti agency) made do with run-of-the-mill studio contracts, acknowledging their modest star status. Nancy Carroll and Marian Marsh signed standard studio contracts with Columbia; so did Frances Drake and Elissa Landi at Paramount, Paul Kelly at Fox, and Steffi Dunna at RKO. More names more or less lost to film history; more people who knew their place in the Hollywood scene. They were joined by solid clients in other crafts, directors like Mitchell Leisen, James Flood, William Seiter, and Norman Taurog or writers like Sidney Buchman, Herbert Fields, and Waldermar Young. All strong talents, they remained content, especially as their careers waxed and waned, with the stability offered by steady and contracted studio work. But like his rival Selznick, Feldman worked with a number of freelancers, or, more commonly and accurately, clients who were working with overlapping and nonexclusive short-term contracts. Feldman’s innovation came in his construction and promotion of nonexclusive long-term contracts. In other words, Feldman signed certain of his clients to short-term studio

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contracts—two to three years—that nonetheless allowed them to work on other productions within the contracted period. He then signed the client to another studio under a similar nonexclusive contract for the overlapping period. This strategy gave the client more freedom in selecting roles—story approval always factored into Feldman’s more robust contracts—by increasing the pool of potential projects, since a client could now select from properties at numerous studios. Overlapping contracts also entailed increased surveillance by the agency, which had to constantly check with the various studios about starting times and potential schedule conflicts for productions, as well as evaluate roles and material, an added duty that validated and amplified the very need for an agent. Indeed, almost every new practice introduced by agents more or less simultaneously generated a new validation for their role in the industry. In Feldman’s case his maneuvering of short-term contracts defined his character and distinguished his agency. Agents sold their reputation, after all, and Feldman earned his through his deft, even daring, handling of nonexclusive contracts. Take Claudette Colbert and Irene Dunne as key examples of Feldman’s strategy. Both cases certainly reveal the level of autonomy that stars could achieve in the studio system. Feldman’s intervention and innovation in the careers of both women also clarify the nature of certain aspects of an agent’s performance. No simple Svengali here, Feldman acted more as a career engineer, networking to find opportunities that would allow talent to flourish. While Feldman offered astute, detailed advice about scripts or acting, and he acted increasingly in that capacity as the 1930s came to a close, he shaped the careers of Colbert and Dunne by getting them more creative control and by enlarging and strengthening their contractual powers. Feldman’s ingenious work with contracts enabled both Colbert and Dunne to open up the range of their personas and thereby the opportunities and remuneration available to them within the Hollywood studio system. Feldman can’t claim to have discovered these stars or to have sculpted their screen images. But he advised them, collaborated with them, refined and expanded their images, and vouchsafed degrees of self-determination in the production process for both clients. Colbert likely came to Feldman as a result of his initial merger with Ad Schulberg, for the actor was already under contract to Paramount in 1932 for five pictures in one year at $2,500 a week. That contract, in fact, shows up in the agency’s files only months after Feldman officially partnered with Schulberg.23 A Broadway star in the 1920s, Colbert made a number of pictures at Paramount’s New York studios before moving to Hollywood in the

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early 1930s. She garnered respectful interest from film producers and magazines for her sly beauty, knowing looks, and graceful countenance. Her screen performances showed off her coltish charms as well as her strong stage experience, and the studio acknowledged Colbert’s professionalism and her promise by steadily casting her in its releases. In fact, from 1929 to 1933 Colbert appeared in more than twenty films, hardly the kind of pace that allowed an artist to concentrate on refining her technique or characterizations. Jumping from lesser Ernst Lubitsch fare like The Smiling Lieutenant, to corny dramas like Secrets of a Secretary, His Woman, and The Wiser Sex, Colbert never managed to break out of minor starring roles or costarring gigs during this period. Even while the studio’s premier director, Cecil B. DeMille, cast her in overcooked spectacles like The Sign of the Cross, Colbert had to fight for more interesting dramas through loan-outs like I Cover the Waterfront, independent producer Edward Small’s 1933 film for United Artists. Colbert’s performance in the film drew some good notices, but her character demanded a subdued performance that did not call upon all of Colbert’s skills. When he took over as Colbert’s agent, Feldman negotiated a new oneyear contract with the studio in November 1933 for $50,000 per picture and, more important, established Colbert’s right to work on outside pictures.24 That provision proved crucial to Colbert’s subsequent career and produced immediate results. One of those outside pictures was It Happened One Night, for which Feldman negotiated a $50,000 salary for the actor, almost a sixth of the film’s total budget. This film minted Colbert as a bona fide star. Released in early 1934, It Happened One Night generated an overwhelming response from audiences and theater owners. Within a few months theaters that had booked the film for two-week runs were rebooking it for longer engagements. By the end of the year the film was fifth on the annual list of top grossing films. But, as Variety noted, and everyone in the industry knew, this ranking was somewhat misleading since the film, a Columbia production, lacked the exhibition resources of the major studios, which allowed hits to linger in their studioowned theaters. Everyone knew that It Happened One Night was truly the film phenomenon of the year. Colbert justifiably captured much of the credit and an Oscar for her performance. Indeed, Colbert’s role in the film allowed her to show off all her skills— the timing, looseness, irony, and her ingenuity, all honed in her theatrical work. A four-week production schedule did not differ from the steady pace Paramount put her on throughout her film career. But Frank Capra’s improvisational approach to staging, his habitual consultation with actors,

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and his interest in creating offbeat characters meshed perfectly with Colbert’s abilities. As the surviving memos and contracts show, Feldman made Colbert’s role in the film possible through his creative contract juggling. This also allowed Colbert to be selective about the roles she accepted. The very month that production began on It Happened One Night, and as Columbia excitedly touted to exhibitors the pairing of Clark Gable (on loan from MGM) and Colbert, Feldman concocted a nonexclusive contract for the actor that allowed her to work on two more pictures with Columbia at $50,000 each. Feldman’s Columbia contract granted Colbert the right to approve stories and directors; it stipulated in advance her approval of Frank Capra, Frank Borzage, and Lewis Milestone. As it turned out, Colbert did not work with either Borzage or Milestone (nor did she work with Capra again)—appropriate projects and scheduling prevented such pairings (Feldman was also courting Borzage at the time, but the director felt morally beholden to his current agent). Writing her approval of these directors into the contract gave Colbert a symbolic stature and established her standards, as partially measured by budgets and directors, for her agent and the studio. In the midst of all this bargaining, and before the Capra film took off at the box office, Feldman also negotiated a new Colbert contract at Paramount in early 1934, committing the actress to six pictures in two years, with some room for expanding on this time frame. More important, the contract allowed her to perform independently in one Warner Bros. film, two films at Universal specifically for the director John Stahl—the target of a Feldman wooing campaign at the time (Feldman won him over within a few months)—and one for Columbia. Under the Paramount contract Colbert would receive $6,000 weekly for the first fifty weeks of the first two years. However, the contract noted, “Colbert shall receive at the end of each picture any amount that must be paid to make her salary for that picture $100,000.” This contract also stipulated that she would work only with directors within the highest salary brackets, thereby guaranteeing certain production values for the films, particularly in combination with her own salary. If Colbert canceled any of her outside pictures—a decision held only by Colbert—the contract granted Paramount the right to make a picture but only if it increased Colbert’s salary to $10,000 per week. Furthermore, when Colbert went to work for Universal on Stahl’s Imitation of Life, she received $65,000 plus 2 percent of the gross receipts for her six weeks of work on the picture; the same terms applied for her Warner Bros. picture. In each of Colbert’s contracts—for Paramount, Universal, Columbia, and Warner Bros.—Feldman inserted a clause granting Colbert the right to approve of stories. This gave Colbert autonomy in developing her range as

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Figure 6. Charles Feldman clients Claudette Colbert and director John Stahl, 1934. Courtesy of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

an actress, and it more or less obligated Feldman and his staff to stay on top of a variety of projects at the various studios. In this regard in 1935 one of Feldman’s associates wrote to his boss: Lubitsch has approached her to do BURLESQUE but she has not committed herself, as she feels the same as I do, namely, that the part would be a perfectly

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wonderful one for a girl on her way up but that it would not help Claudette at all. For her next vehicle, she is very anxious to have an important story, a serious dramatic effort but with no businesswoman angle. However, stories of this caliber do not seem to be hanging on Paramount’s tree. If you can find one in New York—God bless you!25

This memo shows how much Colbert relied on her agency, in addition to the studios, to smoke out good stories for her. Feldman and his associates consulted with Colbert in evaluating projects and determining suitable roles, keeping in mind not only her particular skills and attributes but also the ways in which roles did or did not contribute to the narrative of her career. In this light, the memo reveals how Colbert and her handlers sought a vehicle that would set up some sort of contrast or distinction with Colbert’s recent roles. Note that the agent evidently scanned available projects at Paramount and then looked for other sources. Such a tactic becomes possible only through the strategic deployment of nonexclusive contracts, even if it also creates a new duty—and simultaneously a rationalization—for the agency. Furthermore, Feldman’s contracts for Colbert gave her the power to control these situations and to assess material in terms not only of a particular script’s promise but also its impact on her overall portfolio of performances—the shape of her career. Feldman and Colbert wielded these provisions with discrimination and determination. During the first year of the deal Colbert turned down at least four stories from Warner, but at least four as well from Paramount.26 In fact, Colbert’s deal impressed even the normally impervious Harry Warner, who chided Feldman that he was beginning “to believe that the Colbert contract is just a myth.” When they finally settled on a suitable project for the star (a Joan of Arc biopic—what else?), Feldman worked out a provision wherein both he and Colbert would be allowed to sit in on censorship meetings with industry officials. While Feldman and Colbert agreed to abide by the decisions of the censors, this contractual provision provides some sense of Feldman’s negotiating power and the clever ways in which he carved out a consulting role for his clients on studio productions (this on top of Colbert’s determination of directors and stories). Merely sitting in on such meetings may seem passive, but it showed how Feldman discovered byways of autonomy for his clients in the crevices of contracts, in dark corners overlooked by his competitors. As the rejected stories piled up at Warner, much to Harry Warner’s consternation, Feldman arranged a complicated package for Colbert as a substitute project. Feldman promised the director Anatole Litvak and the actor Charles Boyer, both clients, to Warner Bros. for a story that Litvak found

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interesting, an odd little comedy called Tovarich set amid Bolshevism, royalty, and the Russian Revolution. Feldman tied Litvak’s contract expressly to delivering a Colbert picture and gave the studio the option of cancellation or substitution (assigning the director to another picture) should Colbert fail to come through.27 In fact, responsibility for coordinating these talents and the project itself fell entirely to Feldman, who promised the studio that he could deliver Boyer on loan—for a lofty $100,000—from Walter Wanger (Colbert and Feldman must have held some persuasive power, since internal Warner Bros. notes reveal that studio executives felt Boyer was wrong for the role; Colbert’s contract trumped their doubts).28 As executives assured one another at the studio, “Feldman . . . at all times insisted that he could control all 3 parties, and see that they all get here at the same time.”29 Per Colbert’s request Feldman also worked out Paramount’s loan of the cinematographer Charles Lang to Warner Bros. for the production, as well as Paramount’s Travis Benton, Colbert’s preferred costume designer.30 For such extensive and productive activity—the planning, creative decisions, consultations, and contributions, all circulating outside the studio walls, so to speak, mostly in the province of Feldman’s command—Warner Bros. paid Feldman well but indirectly, through commissions. Those commissions on this single film—from Colbert’s $150,000, Charles Boyer’s $100,000, and Anatole Litvak’s roughly $75,000—amounted to more than $32,000; some small agents counted it a lucky year to clear double that amount. However impressive the arithmetic, that the film’s key creative equation, the “packaging” of talent, came from clients in Feldman’s firm reveals the diffused syndicate of managerial operations in the classical Hollywood industry, granting the agent a creative role in the filmmaking process. This project reveals the far-reaching tentacles of the Hollywood “system.” Stars and their advisers stretched outside the studio gates, making decisions—managerial and creative—that greatly contributed to and shaped studio productions. Colbert proved a willing accomplice. She teamed up with Feldman’s client Mitchel Leisen on three Paramount pictures: Midnight (again shot by Charles Lang), Arise My Love, and No Time for Love. Feldman’s writerclient Claude Binyon became one of Colbert’s favorite screenwriters, scripting Gilded Lily, The Bride Comes Home, and I Met Him in Paris for her and doctoring other roles to suit her persona. Writer-client Sidney Buchman scripted her 1935 film She Married Her Boss (part of her Columbia deal). By 1938 Colbert was pulling in $150,000 per picture as well as a percentage of the gross and found herself among the highest-paid actors in the film industry, taking in $426,944 for the year.31

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Irene Dunne followed a similar career path. With a sophisticated background in opera and musical education, Dunne landed in a successful run of musical comedies in New York in the late 1920s. A Hollywood talent scout spotted her, which led to a relatively strong contract with RKO in 1930 at $1,000 a week.32 “That was before I got an agent named Charles Feldman, who was a marvelous, marvelous agent,” Dunne recalled. “I thought when I came out here I was smart enough to handle my own career and I soon found out I wasn’t.”33 When he took over as Dunne’s agent in 1932, Feldman renegotiated her contract. Within a year Feldman had arranged a new contract for Dunne, doubling her weekly earnings while also getting her a 25 percent of the gross receipts. This contract also granted Dunne the right to select stories—from three submitted by the studio—and her director—from two submitted by the studio.34 That first year, in a page out of the Claudette Colbert playbook, Dunne worked with John Stahl on Universal’s Back Street, a 1932 melodrama that scored with audiences; it was a successful loan-out that Dunne subsequently parlayed into increased cachet back at her home studio. RKO now targeted melodramas for Dunne, films like The Silver Cord, Ann Vickers, and The Age of Innocence, projects that Dunne approved in terms of stories, characters, and directors. None of these films qualified as a breakaway hit, but their box-office strength provided enough ammunition for Feldman to negotiate more vigorous provisions for his client. Thus for RKO’s 1935 film Roberta Feldman convinced the studio to grant Dunne, on top of her salary, payments of 15 percent of the gross once the film recovered twice its costs. RKO billed Dunne ahead of her costars Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers (testament to the clout of the star and her contract), and in the months following the film’s release, Dunne received a steady income from her percentage: July August September October November December 1–15 December 15–31

$8,700 $7,000 $3,500 $5,900 $28,600 $24,600 $21,27035

Thus Dunne made more through her percentage deal on this film than she did from her salary. More significantly, Dunne’s growing stardom gave her enough confidence that Feldman was able to convince her to go freelance. In 1935

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Feldman negotiated a nonexclusive contract for Dunne with Columbia that ran concurrently with her new nonexclusive RKO contract. The latter studio offered her $65,000 to $75,000 a film, while her RKO contract specified $125,000 per film in 1936. In 1935 Feldman also added a one-picture-peryear nonexclusive contract with Universal to his juggling act of Dunne’s various contracts. The percentages that Feldman negotiated for her and his other clients, especially when coupled with nonexclusivity, contributed to a client’s sense of freedom in selecting projects, for the additional income, often disbursed over years, allowed his clients to reduce their overall output. While Dunne’s Roberta money rolled in, her nonexclusive contracts allowed her to work again with John Stahl on Universal’s Magnificent Obsession, for which she received $100,000 and percentage points. In fact, 1935 marked something of a turning point for Dunne’s career as her selectivity increased. The last year Dunne worked on four films was 1934. Thanks to Feldman’s diligence on her behalf, Dunne dropped to a steady two films per year. In other words, by escalating the salary for his client, Feldman gained greater creative control both in selecting projects and roles for Dunne. Commercial calculation served artistic craftsmanship, freeing Dunne’s sense of selectivity. These nonexclusive contracts also allowed—indeed, required—Feldman and his staff to evaluate projects in terms of Dunne’s overall career. Feldman’s internal office memos and phone logs reveal that Dunne consistently consulted with her agents about projects. In 1936 William LeBaron discussed Dunne with Feldman for his production of Carrie. LeBaron told Feldman that the film would represent an “important picture,” likely garnering the actress an Academy Award.36 But Feldman advised Dunne not to take the role, since it would come so soon after her serious work in The Age of Innocence and Magnificent Obsession. Instead, Feldman pushed comedies like 1936’s Columbia offering, Theodora Goes Wild. Pushed and pushed. Dunne remained unimpressed with the screenplay, written by the Feldman client Sidney Buchman. Despite Feldman’s repeated efforts to persuade Dunne to take the role and this turn in her career—a turn that had worked well for Colbert in expanding the range of available roles—Dunne remained unconvinced that comedy would suit her talents. So unconvinced she fled to Europe for a strategic two-month vacation. But Feldman lured Dunne back, and she credited her agent for persuading her to take a turn in the slapstick farce.37 Quite a turn, for her career now expanded into comedy from melodrama and musicals. More contracts. More provisions. More options. Dramatic actress. Musical performer. And now, topnotch comedienne—in fact, for Theodora, an Academy Award–nominated comedienne. The film’s success led to roles sculpted for Dunne’s idiosyncratic

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brand of comedy, screwball but always in control of a discerning but empathetic intelligence. The next year the Feldman client Jerome Kern developed Paramount’s High, Wide, and Handsome expressly for Dunne—it showed off her singing and comedic timing—and directed by Rouben Mamoulian, another client; then, later that year Columbia’s The Awful Truth, written initially by the Feldman client Vina Delmar and directed by the Selznick client Leo McCarey, with Dunne’s approval led to another academy nomination. In 1939 Dunne balanced yet another comedy, Paramount’s Invitation to Happiness, written and directed by the Feldman client Claude Binyon, with a melodrama, Universal’s When Tomorrow Comes, in which Dunne was paired with the Feldman clients Charles Boyer and John Stahl. In addition to juggling the complexity of scheduling Dunne with her various studios and their own production schedules, her agents had to take a diplomatic approach to balancing the star’s commitments under her nonexclusive contracts. In the end these contracts usually entailed further bargaining. In this regard Feldman frequently butted heads with Columbia’s studio head, Harry Cohn, who, to take one exemplary case, pressed the agent in 1938 to commit Dunne to a starting date for her next picture at his studio. Feldman reminded Cohn of his client’s commitments: a. Miss Dunne’s starting date under present RKO commitment is September 15, 1938. b. Immediately following this production Miss Dunne is to appear in a Paramount picture to be directed by Wesley Ruggles [Invitation to Happiness] c. Miss Dunne is to appear in a John Stahl production for Universal Pictures Corporation immediately following her Paramount commitment [When Tomorrow Comes]38

All this coordination, this push-pull persuasion, back-and-forth negotiation, in October 1938 was necessary simply to secure a start date on a Columbia picture the following February. Feldman the matchmaker. Feldman the production planner. Feldman also resorted to duplicity. In this dispute with Cohn, as Columbia continued to press Dunne to commit to a start date, Feldman informed the studio early in 1939 that Dunne did not like the script after all. Feldman expressed concern to the studio executives that, with three Dunne pictures hitting theaters, a fourth picture might mean overexposure for his star. Studio executives ignored these concerns and squeezed Feldman and Dunne to commit to a date. Finally, Feldman informed the studio in July that “Miss Dunne is ill and physically incapable of rendering her services

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until several months from now, exact date of which will have to be determnined by her physician Dr. Ronald Cummings.”39 B. B. Kahane, then the vice president of Columbia studios, blanched at this excuse, sensing a common tactic of feigning illness to get out of a project. Kahane insisted that a doctor chosen by the studio examine Dunne. When Dunne finally acceded to this request, and the doctor “found no indication of illness,” Kahane fired off an angry missive to Feldman. The executive stressed that the studio’s distribution network depended on a certain schedule of films and that the lack of a firm date from Dunne would disrupt Columbia’s overall schedule. Kahane did not need to explain the intricacies of the relationship between production and distribution to Feldman. But this little lecture worked as a threat to Feldman, an indication of the financial investment and value represented by stars not only to single films but also to the studio’s general business operations.40 Feldman countered with a new tactic on behalf of Dunne: he pointed out her objections to the script. Still, if licensing his clients with a creative role in the development of projects gave them a degree of power, it also allowed them to make mistakes—at least in retrospect. For by July 1939 the project Columbia was pushing Dunne to consider was the lead role in Howard Hawks’s His Girl Friday, a remake of The Front Page. As Feldman noted to Kahane: Some time ago while Miss Dunne was working at Universal she came to your studio on a Sunday at your express request and . . . looked at the old picture The Front Page. Prior to looking at this picture and discussing it with Mr. Hawks, Miss Dunne did tell me and I, in turn, did tell Mr. Briskin that Miss Dunne did not care very much for the woman’s part in the old story.41

In this undone deal the joke ended up being on Dunne. Hawks approached the project by completely overhauling the woman’s role—changes that reassured Dunne somewhat but failed to convince her. The part went to Rosalind Russell. Granted, Dunne’s decision here remains easier to fault in hindsight; nonetheless, it reveals the autonomy that Dunne exercised within the studio system. In 1939 Feldman paired Dunne with Boyer for RKO’s Love Affair, and, at least initially, her contract stipulated that Mark Sandrich or George Stevens, also Feldman clients, would direct her; Feldman and Dunne amended this provision to allow Leo McCarey to direct her on this film, for which Dunne commanded $150,000.42 Between her various contracts, then—discounting her share in the gross—Dunne took home well more than $200,000 per year, on projects she played a significant role in determining. In the early 1940s

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Feldman worked out single-picture deals with MGM and Fox for Dunne, while she continued to work with Universal and Columbia. On My Favorite Wife, her sole film for 1940, Dunne received percentage shares in January 1941 totaling more than $16,000; in February more than $22,000; and in March more than $8,000, all in addition to her regular salary. Indeed, in a 1938 survey Dunne placed third to Colbert’s first-place finish on the list of top incomes, tallying $405,222 for the year; right below her another Feldman client, Boyer, took in $375,277, with Feldman client Warner Baxter sitting comfortably a few notches below at $279,807 for the year.43 These rankings are notable in that Boyer and Baxter, and even Colbert (on occasion), failed to crack the top ten stars in popularity, as gauged by exhibitor polls, whose ranks included Clark Gable and Shirley Temple in the late 1930s. Clearly, star power did not readily and automatically translate into comparable salary rankings, a disconnect suggesting other forces—spirits like Feldman and Selznick, for example—at work behind the scenes. How did Feldman conjure such magic? He banked on the general uncertainty surrounding movie productions, the need to guarantee some sort of return on the investment in production. The age-old belief in Hollywood was that stars offered such certainty. With nonexclusive contracts, with freelance deals, Feldman could position his clients within this belief, so long as they qualified as genuine stars—the rankings were not, after all, scientific—and the projects seemed suited to the star persona. A Clark Gable or Shirley Temple, although in the top ten of salaries, could not play this game, yoked as both were to long-term contracts. Feldman’s dexterity with contracts showed that the storied prison of the Hollywood studio system and its exclusive long-term contracts was less confining and pervasive in practice. Certainly contracts created a stifling atmosphere for creative artists and led to numerous clashes with studio management in terms of both creative decisions and salaries. These contracts, however, proved far less monolithic than they often are depicted in historical surveys of this period. The culture industry didn’t disappear from this perspective. The agent remained concerned with commerce and how it figured in decisions about artistic practice. In fact, contractual logic ruled both sides here. Both parties—producers and agents—remained committed to a commercial enterprise. Certain contractual issues that seem entirely monetary—like percentage points or gross income on a production, guaranteeing certain minimal figures for production costs, or even stipulating the salaries of key contributors—in fact contributed to a sense of artistic control. These factors granted clients more freedom from some of the commercial pressure that came from working in an industry built around main-

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taining a steady flow of product. Feldman’s nonexclusive contracts broadened the creative parameters for these artists by expanding their field of potential projects. Colbert and Dunne both looked back on the 1930s and their careers less with a sense of nostalgia for some golden age marked by a simplicity and uniformity (such traits always characterize nostalgic visions, no matter what their focus) and more with a sense of control of their careers, thanks to the creative contractual solutions conjured by Feldman.

Of Fame and Font: The Ordinary Business of Hollywood Political Economy, or Economics, is a study of man’s actions in the ordinary business of life. Alfred Marshall

Of course, dealing with daily life in the agency business entailed a large degree of routine. Not all deals broke new ground or sparked dramatic battles with the studios. Not all clients were worthy of such crusades. Not all clients commanded studio attention. Not all clients even demanded much agency attention. Keeping the agency afloat also involved consideration of mundane details on behalf of big clients and small. Many small issues required attention. Even many small clients required attention, at least for as long as the agency gambled on them. When the agency deemed that the cost of attending to a client outweighed its eventual commission, the agency’s focus shifted, always in favor of the bigger clients or promising newcomers. Sizing up two cases, the actor Gene Raymond and the director George Stevens—related only by their obsessive concern about the size of their names in credits, certainly not in the size of their careers—will suffice to illustrate how clients factored into the ordinary business of agency life in the 1930s. To set the stage for this dramatic comparison of font size and fame, it is necessary to provide a sense of the background scenery, the general atmosphere of Feldman’s business, beyond the striking deals he established for artists like Dunne and Colbert. In contrast to the workaday ethic fueling the studios, powerful agents—like Myron Selznick and Charlie Feldman—set their own leisurely hours. A melancholic diffidence characterized Myron Selznick’s aloof approach to office hours, while an aristocratic insouciance colored Feldman’s casual daily schedule. A typical day for Feldman saw him fielding a handful of calls from his home in the morning, perhaps while

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reading a screenplay by the pool or enjoying a leisurely English breakfast on his patio. Like as not, he was wearing finely tailored cashmere sweaters and pants, purchased during one of his lengthy twice-a-year European vacations. He might meet a client for lunch and then stroll into the office in the afternoon to handle some business. Feldman typically coordinated an evening or weekend party that, in Hollywood fashion, involved strategic introductions (a writer-client and a director-client or an actor-client), discussions, and gossip. Feldman coordinated screen tests for clients like Dunne, checking on their costumes and makeup for certain roles. Writers called to check up on the progress of certain scripts, information that provided good opportunities for negotiating roles for Feldman’s various nonexclusive clients. A selective survey of his secretary’s telephone records from a typical period—just a few examples from a month in the summer of 1935—reveals a variety of business matters outside the usual issues of contracts and deals: 6–29—Dunne to report Universal for silent test. 7–2—Called Nancy Carroll—she was asleep—left message—when can she see Mr. Stahl this PM with you. 7–5—Kelly called Miss Dunne to be at Bullock’s Wilshire at 10:30 today—I advised she out of town per your arrangements with Stahl. 7–9—Called Kohner re [Dorothy] Arzner [the director] . . . [writerclient] Breslow called—wanted to know when he started at Fox—told him 4–18–36. . . . Mr. Stahl wants to talk to you [Feldman] right away. . . . Gregory Ratoff dropped in. 7–25—Gene Raymond called—wants clause RKO to approve story to be done on outside.44

Feldman’s agency often coordinated its clients’ wake-up times, managed their personal appearances (at department stores, for example), and arranged business meetings between its clients (to synchronize their creative efforts as well as, of course, the agency’s commissions). Feldman balanced this mixture with grace and tenacity, never too exasperated or too senior to handle minor details on behalf of his clients, even if he delegated select tasks to field agents. Feldman handled certain clients personally—stars like Dunne and Boyer, and even top camera operators like Karl Freund (whom he represented in his aspirations to become a director)—and on their behalf Feldman spoke directly to studio heads like Harry Cohn, Carl Laemmle, Sam Briskin, and, of course, his friends and frequent travel companions, Jack Warner, Sam Goldwyn, and Darryl Zanuck. Mishandling or losing track of any of these details could prove deadly for the agency. A slip on such seemingly humdrum matters as personal meet-

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ings or minor contract issues might lead to a client’s dismissal of the agency’s services. See, for example, the last item in the sample phone logs— the query from the client Gene Raymond. Raymond had called to question the efficacy of the agency because he felt that it had failed to protect the size of his billing in film titles. Raymond, who had arrived in Hollywood in the early 1930s, sold himself as an all-American leading man after a string of fairly successful seasons on Broadway. His first few films failed to draw attention to these qualities, and some critics found Raymond’s mail-order handsomeness to be rather bland. While fan magazines built up his promise, his top-billed performance in RKO’s 1933 Flying Down to Rio was outdone by the show-stealing costars Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers—RKO subsequently built a series around these two—and that did not bode well for the rising-star narrative that the agency was using in Raymond’s publicity. Raymond blamed Feldman for much of the downturn in his career.45 First, Raymond complained that he had embarked on his RKO contract with an unimportant picture. Then, when Love on a Bet came along, Feldman convinced Raymond to work on this potentially successful film with his directing client Leigh Jason. Raymond thought that he should use the lowbudget film, which met with box-office success, to lobby for a starring role, but Raymond felt that the agency had failed to parlay his achievement into better roles. Worse, on Raymond’s subsequent film, Bride Walks Out (1936), RKO had failed to deliver the billing size promised to him. Feldman assured Raymond that he would get top feature billing with his name in type the size of the title on Count Pete, another comedy for the Feldman client–producer Edward Kaufman and costarring another client, Ann Sothern. Before the studio released this picture, Raymond expressed his frustration with the agency in a conversation with one of Feldman’s associates, who explained to his boss that Raymond’s “only reaction to the entire situation is that he has bad management.” Feldman then instructed another agency foot soldier to call Sam Briskin, an executive at RKO, who informed the agency that the studio would not change the billing on Bride Walks Out. Briskin also denied telling Feldman that Raymond would get any special billing on Count Pete. Briskin refused to make any definite promises about the billing, although he acknowledged that in all probability Raymond would get the billing that he desired. That Raymond faced a renewal on his agency contract in the next few months very likely spawned these rueful ruminations about the limitations of his representation. That his career had failed to live up to its hype likely contributed to his skepticism about Feldman as well. So when Feldman sent one of his agents out to the RKO set to discuss Raymond’s extension of his

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agency contract, Raymond told him “that on thinking the matter over since discussing it with [Feldman] the day previous he had come to the decision that he had been more or less unhappy with the office for the past few months—mostly on account of the billing situation.” Raymond again blamed the agency for his lack of substantial billing on films. He could not understand, for example, why Barbara Stanwyck received such substantial billing “while he had to suffer with what he received.” In discussing this matter with Raymond, Feldman discounted the importance of billing on a picture, a dismissal Raymond resented and one belied by Feldman’s common stipulation of such matters in his contracts. In fact, Raymond’s contract did not guarantee any specific billing, leaving Feldman with no negotiating points on this matter. As Feldman noted to his staff, only a chivalrous gesture on the part of RKO would change the billing. Raymond’s accusations betray an element of mistrust of the agency, a suspicion not entirely unwarranted. Like any agent, Feldman always weighed negotiations in terms of the relationship with his client and the long-term relationship with studio executives. Feldman believed that clients were better off handling some matters without an agent, whose intervention might stir the resentment of studio executives. As Feldman explained to his fellow agents, sometimes the artist “should take care of a particular problem himself, for it may hurt the status of the artist with the particular studio if the agent comes in and makes a simple matter look like a monumental one.”46 Measuring the monumentality of various issues was a matter of assessing the potential damage to the client and the agency and how a complaint might affect regular transactions with the studio. In dealing with Raymond, Feldman rhetorically positioned the client’s status as the agency’s main concern, but Feldman no doubt considered his own relationship to the studio in evaluating the importance of various clients’ requests. Before Feldman’s delegate left the set, Raymond told him that he wanted to defer signing the extension until the final preview of Count Pete to see whether he would receive the billing that he thought had been promised him. When the titles of the film—now renamed Walking on Air—spilled onto the screen, Raymond’s name came after the star’s—and after the title. Apparently resigned to a modest career, Raymond swallowed his font size and signed an extension with RKO—and with Feldman’s agency; the actor eked out a decent living playing supporting roles for another twenty years. The lesson here is that agents did not treat all clients with the same zeal. Agents reserved their more aggressive tactics for clients whose careers promised greater payoffs, both in commissions and in long-term commit-

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ment to the agency. Storming the studio barricades on behalf of a mediocre client merely for a short-term gain—additional salary or bigger billing— risked diluting the bluff for bigger clients. Here the notion that agents represent clients falls short of total representation, for agents also represent themselves as fulfilling a transactional component, a certain regularity— supplying goods to steady buyers—in the studio marketplace. On this side of the equation agents needed to maintain a certain consistency. Raising the stakes for a client represented a genuine demand in the sense that the agent was seeking tangible results in contracts—higher salaries, percentages, and many other issues—but it also marked a certain symbolism: raising the stakes signaled to the studio that the agent deemed a client to be important—a George Stevens, for example, versus a Gene Raymond. Feldman zeroed in on the director George Stevens as a client with promise, and therefore deserving of time, energy, and bullying, even if the agent had to harass the studio about the size of Stevens’s credits in movie titles and advertising. In fact, no other client in Feldman’s files showed such a persistent concern about the size of his name in advertising and titles, with Stevens himself often measuring the size of his name in out-of-town advertising and drawing Feldman’s attention to the discrepancies (Stevens even attempted to hold independent theater advertising to the contractual obligations outlined in his studio deals). Feldman’s alertness to such matters represented only a small example of the ways he developed Stevens‘s reputation as a director. A comedy director mainly specializing in slapstick humor when he signed with Feldman in 1936, Stevens shortly evolved into one of Hollywood’s master directors (with a reputation for almost stultifying seriousness by the 1950s). Surely Stevens’s talent and aspirations pushed him into new genres as much as Feldman’s own important and even crucial scheming. Nonetheless, Feldman proved an apt steward of Stevens’s career, forging not only new deals, more commanding salaries, and profit percentage points but also ensuring public and industry recognition of Stevens’s name—in properly sized type, of course. By 1932, having directed a handful of Laurel and Hardy shorts, George Stevens was with the Milton Bren–Frank Orsatti Agency.47 Like many Hollywood agents in the late 1920s Orsatti, a former real estate agent for the likes of Louis B. Mayer and the theater mogul Sid Grauman (Orsatti also ran liquor during Prohibition, with occasional forays into prostitution, according to some rumors), secured his position through contacts in the film business.48 Orsatti transferred these business relationships, largely with Mayer’s help, to managing actors, pouncing on their influx into Hollywood in the late 1920s by brandishing his limited connections to studio executives. But

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Orsatti’s agency never approached the success of his rivals’. Stevens, in turn, continued to work on modest short films. In May 1933 Stevens found himself stranded by Universal Studios’s temporary halt to production, as the struggling company sought to reorganize its finances. Stevens jumped to RKO, a studio always desperately in search of talent. RKO signed him to direct six short subjects—his specialty at Hal Roach Studios—with the promise of directing one feature in the future. But Stevens was looking to expand his range as a director and made the Bren-Orsatti agency contractually obligated to find him an outside picture. A May 23, 1933, letter from Bren to Stevens confirmed this new arrangement: “In the event that we fail to secure a feature picture for you, away from RKO, in the first six months of your new contract with them, our contract with you is null and void.”49 This stipulation shows that Stevens possessed ambition early in his career, such that, when he ended up with Feldman, their relationship could be viewed as a partnership built on an artist’s aspirations, a fact to keep in mind while tracing Feldman’s role in escalating Stevens’ status and expanding his opportunities. Stevens renewed his contract with the Bren-Orsatti agency in 1934. But the agency’s staff was always in flux, an instability that did little to serve its clients. That same year Zeppo Marx became an Orsatti partner; then, in the middle of the year another partner, Milton Bren, went solo and took Stevens with him. By then Bren had already locked Stevens in to a long-term contract with RKO, one that gave the director $750 per week for the first year; $1,000 per week for the second year, gradually escalating to $2,000 a week by the fifth year—a rather standard studio contract and hardly an impressive achievement by his agency (it contained no stipulations regarding the director’s credit size or position in the titles, and no control of story selection).50 Frustrated by his studio contract and tethered to a small, unstable agency, Stevens stood out as a client ripe for stealing. Feldman pounced. In early 1936 Feldman convinced Stevens that he could secure the director much better terms at RKO. Feldman purchased Stevens’s Orsatti contract for about $5,000 (the record shows some conflicting figures on this deal) based on a negotiated proportion of Bren’s future commissions on Stevens’s earlier RKO contract.51 Taking over Stevens’s representation, Feldman vowed to at least double the young director’s salary. Feldman also promised to obtain for Stevens—as written into his agency contract—“a new, different, substituted, modified, and/or revised” contract with RKO within three months.52 True to his word, Feldman immediately pelted RKO’s Sam Briskin with demands for an increase in Stevens’s salary. The agent was convincing: RKO jumped Stevens’s salary to the level set for the following year in his original

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contract. Feldman continued to lobby RKO on Stevens’s behalf, and, of course, Feldman consistently reminded Stevens of these efforts. Covering himself, Feldman reminded Stevens that he had no alternative but to accept most of the terms of his current contract. Stevens regretted signing a longterm contract, which his former agent Bren had worked out with RKO. Feldman, of course, sympathized with Stevens’s apprehension about longterm contracts. Nonetheless, he convinced RKO to further increase Stevens’s salary less than a year after Stevens signed with Feldman. Under the terms of Stevens’s original contract, he would have received $1,750 per week for half of the year and $2,000 per week for the second half. Feldman got RKO to jump Stevens to a weekly salary of $2,250 for the second half of the year—skipping three steps in the original contract—and raise his next annual step $2,500 per week. Feldman was motived to secure such favorable terms for Stevens as the agent had stipulated in his agency contract that Feldman would begin collecting commissions only after the director surpassed $2,000 a week in salary.53 Having made a genuine artistic leap into more serious fare with 1935’s Alice Adams, a commercial success that briefly resuscitated Katharine Hepburn’s career, and Annie Oakley, a hit for Barbara Stanwyck, Stevens’s status helped make Feldman’s strategy a success. Unlike more pusillanimous agents such as Milton Bren, Feldman renegotiated even long-term contracts based on his client’s recent performances. Now Feldman could pressure the studio to reconsider its relationship with a director who was delivering solid hits. With each of Stevens’s subsequent successes, Feldman drew RKO to the table to negotiate new demands. Within two years, after the hit Swing Time, the bomb Quality Street, and the modest hit A Damsel in Distress, Feldman had persuaded RKO to grant Stevens producer status— as the film’s title sequence duly noted. By 1939 Stevens’s strained relationship with the studio snapped. Stevens felt hampered by the material at RKO and frustrated by his recent experiences on Gunga Din, a commercial success rendered nearly unprofitable because it had run over schedule and over budget. For Stevens the film marked the end not only of a stressful and exhausting production, punctuated by constant interference by RKO executives, but also the end of almost continuous studio work since 1935, the last year in which he took four weeks off. When Stevens wrapped production and editing on Gunga Din in February 1939, he took his contracted four-week vacation—and never returned. RKO responded by stopping payment of Stevens’s salary, prompting a war of letters with Feldman. Feldman pointed out that not only did Stevens have a vacation owed him by his contract but also that he continued to

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work, reading and evaluating scripts, even while he spent time away from the studio. With a climate in the industry shifting towards greater control by directors through independent productions and an increasing number of producerdirector deals, 1939 and 1940 did not spell out a fortuitous time for RKO to tamper with an already independent-minded George Stevens. Moreover, with Feldman’s preference for freelance deals and single-picture deals over studio contracts, Stevens had found a business associate willing to buck the studio system. Certainly, Feldman and Stevens had wanted to get out of the RKO contract for years. In March, after weeks of arguing with RKO about its failure to pay Stevens’s salary, the agent regrouped and flirted with terminating Stevens’s contract altogether. Feldman’s partner, Ralph Blum, a lawyer himself, explained that they could use this impasse strategically if “George elects to treat their failure to pay as a breach of their contract with him and elects, in view of such breach, to terminate his contract with them.”54 The two lawyers explored this position with a great deal of caution. Blum himself had pulled such a move years earlier with his client Constance Cummings. In that case the courts had ruled in Cummings’s favor against Columbia. However, Columbia had countered by informing the other studios that it planned to appeal the decision and that it “would hold any studio which employed her strictly accountable in damages.”55 Only Darryl Zanuck at Twentieth Century Fox had balked at this gambit, but even then Zanuck had cautiously employed her on only a one-picture deal (and then only after his lawyers had thoroughly reviewed the case). A fear of lawsuits—a tacit conspiracy in its own way—kept other studios away from Cummings. In Stevens’s case, as Feldman saw it, the director might succeed in turning RKO’s failure to pay into a successful breach-of-contract case, but that risked entangling Stevens in a web of legal moves that might intimidate other employers, which might yield a situation as frustrating and confining as Stevens’s contract. Instead, Feldman continued to berate RKO to reinstate Stevens on the payroll. By mid-April 1939 Feldman had succeeded. RKO agreed to pay roughly 70 percent of Stevens’s salary for the time he had taken off. The decision to avoid the hassles of a lawsuit meant that Feldman and Stevens, while still seeking to achieve independence, sought to do so on their own terms. Feldman’s files show that, throughout these battles with RKO in 1939, he continued to shop Stevens’s name around for outside pictures and to gauge interest in the director. According to the agent’s files, for example, Warner Bros. contacted Feldman with Stevens in mind for Sergeant York;

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and Columbia and Goldwyn also showed interest, which Goldwyn had been doing for two years.56 In other words, Feldman kept Stevens’s name in circulation, while they waited to see what would happen with RKO. Once back at RKO, Stevens cranked out the rather generic Vigil in the Night, which promptly bombed at the box office. Still hounded by Feldman to give his client a higher salary and better working conditions, RKO, no doubt tallying the costs on Gunga Din and the losses on this recent film, and still stinging from its earlier battles with the director, now freed Stevens from his contract. One year earlier Feldman and Stevens had chosen not to call the studio’s bluff and now that decision paid off. RKO released Stevens with no strings attached, so Feldman could shop the director free of legal burdens. By April 1940 Feldman had made notes for an independent arrangement with Columbia, a two-picture deal at $100,000 per picture. Based on the preliminary draft of the contract—Feldman always wrote drafts early in the process as a point of reference for the often protracted discussions he held with his clients and the studio executives—Feldman bragged to Stevens, “Frankly, on its face, as you will note, it certainly hasn’t the shocking and objectionable features of studio contracts.”57 Stevens was in New York while Feldman was working on the deal, but it looked promising. In fact, Stevens expressed confidence in Sam Briskin—Stevens’s former ally at RKO had moved over to Columbia—and in Columbia’s chief, Harry Cohn. However, even after six years with Feldman, Stevens didn’t fully trust his agent. According to the director’s files, before he replied to Feldman, Stevens asked another New York agent, William Dover (formerly with Fox’s finance and story departments), to look over Feldman’s notes on the deal and the rough draft of the contract. Dover complied only after Stevens assured him that his consultation would remain in complete confidence, particularly because Dover occasionally did business with Feldman (and shortly joined Feldman’s firm as an associate).58 Fortunately for Feldman, Dover thought the deal looked sound. He added only that the contract should make some sort of reference to film budgets, a factor that could affect the outcome of Stevens’s projects (an uncharacteristic oversight on Feldman’s part). Dover understood—as Feldman did—that the director was looking for a deal that would allow him to expand his influence and autonomy as an artist, in addition to its potential remunerative rewards. Stevens sent Feldman a letter expressing his great pleasure and confidence in signing with Columbia. The letter to Feldman about the deal also reflected the director’s nimble number-crunching skills—fancy financial footwork from a filmmaker who once directed Fred Astaire:

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I believe I should be shown a schedule of what the contract states to be “negative cost as computed and determined in accordance with the method and system now employed.” One dollar in cash spent becomes $1.33–1/3 overhead, and at the 1.7 ration of return the dollar originally spent becomes $2.27. In other words, if I spent $500,000 in cash on the picture, not counting overhead, which is not much when you consider my salary and that of a few top personalities, I would have to gross $1,133,333 before there would be any overages. I would then get 15% of every 70 cents on the dollar grossed in excess of above figure when taking into consideration the 30% distribution charges.59

Simple translation: Stevens pointed out that Columbia’s 30 percent distribution fee would severely cut into his potential share of the profits. In other words, Columbia took 30 percent of the receipts as a charge to its own productions (or joint ventures such as this one), attaching an additional cut for itself on top of the shares promised Stevens, percentages that kicked in only after Columbia had recouped the cost of the production. Stevens’s memo to Feldman displayed the director’s canny understanding that percentage deals were tricky propositions when the studios controlled distribution and frequently added all sorts of charges to the cost of distribution, which was then subtracted from the film’s grosses before distributing profits to participants according to their percentage stake. Stevens demanded to know how Columbia planned to structure the distribution charges: “They agree to furnish statement of negative costs on conclusion, but I should have an idea of schedule at outset so I can intelligently gauge myself.” Like his rival Myron Selznick, who was also making his clients’ percentage deals more precise in their wording (mainly by negotiating for a percentage of the gross, a cut of the monies collected before cost deductions), Feldman worked to protect clients from the creative bookkeeping of studio distribution costs, but here Stevens led Feldman’s eye to these details. Stevens signed the contract with Columbia the next month. Free of RKO, Stevens embarked upon a career typical of a powerful Feldman client, jumping from studio to studio, taking more control of the production process, packaging projects with other Feldman clients, and eventually setting up an independent production company. Had Stevens stayed with Milton Bren and Frank Orsatti, he might have made $80,000 in 1938 under the original RKO contract that Bren had negotiated back in 1934. Under the deal engineered by Feldman with Columbia, in 1940 Stevens earned $200,000, plus a share of the profits on two films. Furthermore, Stevens earned greater control in selecting his material and in the artistic construction of his work. For Columbia, Stevens made Penny Serenade with Irene Dunne; Feldman had brought the screenplay to the director’s attention expressly as

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a Dunne project in 1939. In fact, Dunne’s contract for this film stipulated George Stevens as the director.60 Between his two films for Columbia, Stevens directed Woman of the Year at MGM, bringing in an additional $90,000 (on a short shooting schedule). He then made The Talk of the Town, or, more accurately, George Stevens’ The Talk of the Town—his name not only in appropriate font but now above the title. Indeed, billing was not too petty an issue for this client. For example, Feldman drew MGM’s attention to a breach of contract in Stevens’s billing on the marquee and in ads for the film’s premiere run in New York. MGM did not own Radio City Music Hall and therefore had no real responsibility for the advertising. Still, loyal to his client, Feldman urged the studio to pressure the theater. The contract called for Stevens’s billing to be 66 percent of the size of stars’ and of the title’s, but the font on Radio City’s ads was quite a bit smaller than this figure. In a letter to his agent Stevens pointed out that “the New York advertising indicates by comparison the size of my contribution to the production of WOMAN OF THE YEAR is of singularly less importance than my contribution to previous productions.”61 Feldman then relayed this information to the studio, even though it had no say in the theater’s independent advertising. As these interactions suggest, Feldman did not limit close readings to contracts and scripts but also scrutinized advertising text and film title sequences. For clients like Gene Raymond, the position and size of one’s credits was not a trivial matter. Feldman’s dismissal of Raymond’s concern about this issue, compared with his rapid and rigorous response to the equivalent concerns of George Stevens, Claudette Colbert, and Anatole Litvak, among other major clients, reflected Feldman’s own sizing up of the relative worth of his clients. Feldman’s creativity with contracts, the degrees of creative autonomy, provisions, and freedom he gained for his clients, did not exist apart from the studio framework that constituted the film business in the 1930s. Rather, his creativity was a creature of this network of social relations and organization. As a pioneer, an early entrant in the agency business, Feldman, like Selznick, harnessed his existing business connections, set up his firm and forged steady relationships with key industry clients, and capitalized on these connections. His operational network—the field agents; interfirm relations; solid, substantial client list—placed him in a position, in terms of both status and leverage, that allowed him to exercise his supple contractual imagination and his legal skills in deciphering and revising contracts, a practice that, in turn, solidified his reputation with clients and studios alike and set up situations that allowed for further innovations.

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Feldman’s success, and that of his colleagues—Myron Selznick, Leland Hayward, and Arthur Lyons (Lyons handled Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray, and Jean Arthur at various times)— masked the high degree of risk in the agency business. The struggles and failures of small agents tell us as much or perhaps even more about this occupation than do the smooth operations of Feldman’s rise to power. While the agency business remained a service industry, it was also a vocation marked by chance, debt, compromise, and loss. Even those rare and short-lived agents who cut their overhead to nil—those working out of their home or even their car—gambled away working hours on the promise that future commissions would pay for the uncompensated time they were putting in now. The stories of some of these small agents reveal this sense of risk poignantly and sometimes pathetically. So while Feldman secured his dominant position in this trade, a number of smaller agents—like Sam Jaffe, Paul Kohner, Harold Swanson, and many lesser lights—struggled not only to land clients in jobs but also to keep their business afloat. Surveying the careers of these small-time agents begs the questions of why and how they existed and subsisted at all. Given the publicity about the grand social and professional connections to studio moguls and stars commanded by the likes of a Charles Feldman or a Myron Selznick, one might wonder why these two dynamos alone did not monopolize most or all of the Hollywood talent pool. Yet the very size and success of these two leading agencies left room for the smaller operators. Small agents distinguished themselves more or less on the very modest measure of their own businesses in comparison with those of the major talent agencies. In other words, the smaller scale of humble hustlers defined their very distinction and their strategic allure to prospective clients. As competitors within a 104

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service industry, these small agents hawked the personal dimension that the larger agencies, according to this sales pitch, could not guarantee. Small agents promised greater attention to their clients and greater focus. From this perspective small agents would always subsist alongside larger agencies—equally true today—since the visible size of the more impressive leaders could always be reframed and exploited as a mode of distinction by boutique agencies in their own competitive strategy. Also, some talent agents specialized in directors or writers (usually the latter) as a way of distinguishing their services both to clients and to the studios, a business tactic that acknowledged market focus and differentiation. A fairly common industrial practice, this strategy “rests on the premise that the firm is thus able to serve its narrow strategic target more effectively or efficiently than competitors who are competing more broadly.”1 Moreover, with the great and steady influx of talent into Hollywood, smaller agencies frequently acted as gatekeepers not only for the studios but also for the larger agencies. As in the case of Olivia de Havilland and her agent Ivan Kahn, small agents often lost or sold off their clients to the larger shops when a career heated up. Finally, dozens of small agencies, strategically or not, ended up managing bit players and character actors, many of them in the lower echelons of studio talent but nonetheless racking up steady, if modest, paychecks. Sam Jaffe represented the kind of agent who made a virtue of the small size of his business, spinning his small-scale operations into a saleable solicitation: a pledge of greater personal service.2 Jaffe went into business for himself in 1936, after briefly partnering with his sister Adeline Schulberg and Feldman. Like his more impressive competitors and his old agency boss, Jaffe got his start in the movie business, working first as a messenger at Paramount’s New York division, under his brother-in-law, the general manager B. P. Schulberg, and eventually moving up to production manager in the late 1920s. When the studio reorganized its business structure in 1932, following its financial problems in the Depression, Jaffe moved to RKO and Columbia before settling down with his sister at the Feldman offices in 1934. In venturing out on his own, Jaffe took a few clients with him. He convinced Joan Bennett, with whom he had worked closely, that she would receive more attention from his smaller agency. In haste, Bennett dismissed Feldman without, as they say, reading the fine print; her contract with Feldman was solid, so following arbitration and negotiation, Bennett’s commissions, amounting to about $6,000 to $8,000 a year, were paid to Feldman for a number of years, even while Jaffe served her as an agent.3 Still, despite the lack of payoff, snaring Bennett embodied Jaffe’s strategic angle in his solo venture by selling personal attention. More typically,

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Jaffe approached out-of-work talent and offered to represent him or her. “That’s how I got clients,” Jaffe acknowledged in an oral history interview, explaining that he went after them “at a point when they were unproductive or idle.” He confessed, “I didn’t feel I could get a client if he was working and happy and doing well; there was no need to change.” Here, then, we have the humble Sam Jaffe—a decidedly different breed of hustler from the more confidant, even arrogant, leaders like Selznick and Feldman. Despite his diminutive approach and the pocketsize office (Jaffe, a secretary, and an assistant), Jaffe’s business connections remained fairly strong. For example, he placed Bennett under contract with the independent producer Walter Wanger, whom Jaffe knew from their days at Paramount. While Jaffe, unlike his rivals, could not command meetings with studio heads—“I didn’t see Zanuck,” he explained with some resentment, “Charlie Feldman would see him but I didn’t see him”—Jaffe could still meet with their midlevel executives—like Steve Trilling at Warner Bros. or Lew Schreiber at Fox; only at small studios did Jaffe meet directly with studio heads or key executives, the counterparts of Harry Cohn at Columbia or Sam Briskin at RKO. But as Jaffe noted of Feldman and his relationships with Zanuck and Warner, “he saw them socially, so he had an advantage. . . . I couldn’t do that. I mean, they wouldn’t accept me that way, and I never tried.” Jaffe knew his place, and he played his game from this position with caution and modest calculation. Jaffe added a number of clients to his roster during the next few years, stable if almost invisible clock punchers like Helen Twelvetrees, Victor Varconi, Elizabeth Young, and, best of all, Ralph Bellamy, who garnered an Academy Award nomination for his supporting role in 1937’s The Awful Truth. Jaffe’s agency served about thirty of these supporting actors, names lost to history and probably to many audiences in the 1930s, a modest roster to be sure but one generating enough steady commissions to support a few workaday agents on Jaffe’s staff, each of whom canvassed particular studios, divvying up the industry in the same fashion as Feldman’s and Selznick’s field agents.4 In 1939, perhaps in an effort to bolster business, Jaffe partnered again with his sister Ad Schulberg (this was after she and Feldman split). This new venture—they renamed the office Schulberg-Jaffe—lasted barely half a year as the office struggled to pay rent and could not afford insurance. From Jaffe’s perspective Schulberg failed to bring in any clients and only weighed down their already modest enterprise with added overhead and expenses. After agreeing to dissolve the partnership, Schulberg turned around and sued Jaffe for her half of the stock and interest in the company, demanding $10,000 as

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a settlement, money Jaffe did not have at hand. The resulting agreement forced Jaffe to pay her $200 a week for the next year. Still, ridding the agency of this deadweight—Schulberg, her secretary, and her assistant—freed Jaffe to reorganize his operation. He promoted Mary Baker to executive agent; she had been a literary agent with Leland Hayward’s company and had joined Jaffe’s operation a few years earlier. Jaffe gave her an equal stake in clients she brought in and handled—largely writers, given her background (her husband, and client, was a minor playwright and she relied on her social connections to the New York literary world). In 1939 this amounted to a list of just more than twenty writers, all with only minor credits. Jaffe’s affiliation with Humphrey Bogart exemplified most of the defining traits of the undersized agency’s style: his appeal to clients who wanted greater professional attention; his strategy of picking up talent in weaker moments of their career; and the caution with which Jaffe operated in his negotiations with studios. Mary Baker introduced Bogart to Jaffe in 1937, while the actor still had a contract with Leland Hayward, and arranged a lunch meeting at which Jaffe sold himself to Bogart: “You need somebody to look after your interests. Leland Hayward doesn’t do it.” Blunt, flat, but apparently effective and accurate. Bogart—not yet the Hollywood icon of lore—was then bringing in only $750 per week on his Warner Bros. contract, which meant that Hayward naturally focused on more promising and monetarily rewarding clients like Fred Astaire, Katharine Hepburn, and George Cukor. Rumor had it that, unless a client made at least $3,500 a week, Hayward would not return her or his calls.5 With Hayward shuttling back and forth between New York and Hollywood, Bogart felt abandoned, forced to deal with the studio on his own. With the conventional pitch of the small agent, essentially offering more reliable and personal services, Jaffe convinced Bogart to leave Hayward. Also working for Jaffe in this equation was that he was a West Coast agent and could go into the studio front offices and negotiate directly. Tellingly, when the agents’ association convened to arbitrate Bogart’s transfer of agents, Hayward appointed Feldman as his representative, and Jaffe turned to two agents from William Morris, which was still struggling to set up a beachhead in Hollywood. Lacking capital to buy Bogart’s contract outright, Jaffe worked out a deal with Hayward to split commissions for twice the time remaining on Bogart’s agency contract (about four years). Of course, this meant Jaffe’s cut from Bogart’s paycheck would bring in only about $37 a week to the agency, which failed to cover even a secretary’s weekly salary. While Jaffe deserves some credit for targeting Bogart as a promising client, the agent played his game prudently. Even when Bogart began to

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draw stronger roles and greater stardom, Jaffe advised Bogart to stick more or less with standard studio contracts and avoided any of the more aggressive renegotiating tactics used by Feldman or Selznick (recall that both agents cooked up robust contracts for a number of their clients at Warner Bros., a studio notorious for its intransigence in negotiations). Although Jaffe’s character, his pent-up but pintsize personality, may have played some part in this caution, the agency’s lack of clout and its vest-pocket client list hardly made it a player forceful enough to bully studios or persuade them to offer incentives. Why would a studio budge with an agent it did not need to deal with for other prominent clients? Moreover, Jaffe maintained that long-term contracts were impermeable and unbreakable, with little to no possibility for renegotiating, even while Feldman and Selznick diced and minced contracts practically under his nose. In Bogart, Jaffe picked up a commodity with an erratic record, someone who moved in and out of pictures in various capacities, whether starring in pulpy productions like Black Legion or San Quentin, B-films like Crime School or The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse, or costarring in mainstream fare like Bullets or Ballots, always below the bill and below the salary of stars like George Raft and Edward G. Robinson. In Bogart, Jaffe also acquired a property with only intermittent bursts of drive; certainly he was frustrated, but the result was a festering resentment, not a willingness to fight. Studio executives were slow to figure out what critics noticed in Bogart, a simmering energy coiled in a cool but tense countenance. Jaffe acted slowly, too. Only the associate producer Mark Hellinger’s intervention won Bogart better roles, in Hellinger’s productions of The Roaring Twenties and High Sierra. Still, the year Jaffe took over as Bogart’s agent, he achieved a salary increase for his new client, lifting Bogart to $1,100 a week, still below the going rate for actors of his status, and reaching $2,000 in the sixth and seventh years, but still with no say over loan-outs, scripts, or casting.6 And unlike Feldman and Selznick clients who were slowing down their production pace in the late 1930s, a practice afforded by greater earnings and certain tax benefits from amortization, Bogart appeared in eight films that year, after five in the previous year. Even when Bogart got good notices for certain roles, Jaffe resisted stepping in to fight for better projects. Furthermore, unlike Feldman, Jaffe could not get to Jack Warner himself; to reach him, Jaffe had to go through the production executive Steve Trilling, who then relayed the messages to the studio chief.7 For another thing, all of Jaffe’s moves as an agent were predicated on his belief that studios retained absolute control of contracts. Jaffe displayed few signs of having an imagination like Feldman’s.

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After High Sierra, marked by Bogart’s attention-getting performance, the studio assigned him to one of his usual treadmill roles in Bad Men of Missouri. Bogart refused to report to work, sending a note back with the script: “Are you kidding—this is certainly rubbing it in—since Lupino and Raft are casting pictures maybe I can.”8 In addition to capturing his fitful bitterness, Bogart’s exaggerated and sour perspective on his colleagues’ contracts revealed the competitive value in an agent’s attention to contract nuances, an active cause that escaped Jaffe’s notice. These two actors, clients of Myron Selznick’s and Arthur Lyons’s, respectively, while lacking complete story or casting approval, nonetheless had better contracts than Bogart did. The sour star would have welcomed their limited work schedule as well as Raft’s salary.9 But Bogart’s catty remark, the way he enviously imagined the contractual power granted to other artists, betrayed a sensitivity to the kinds of deals inked by Selznick, Feldman, and other leading agents who carved out more empowering contract points—story approval, limited work schedules, director approval—for their clients, and this note reveals that Bogart sensed that possibility. On the other hand, Bogart’s comment shows how cannier agents drew in new clients—at least those hungry and aggressive enough to insist on more powerful representation—through their deals, bolstering their agency’s reputation along with their client’s creative control. When Jaffe finally negotiated a new contract for Bogart in early 1942, with two years left on Bogart’s original deal, the agent clearly sensed a stronger bargaining position in light of the actor’s recent success in The Maltese Falcon, All Through the Night, and Across the Pacific, films constructed around Bogart’s new star persona. That Warner Bros. treated these meetings as an opportunity to extend the relationship with its “new” star comes out in the studio’s initial offer of a seven-year contract that, its pronounced leap in salary notwithstanding, remained otherwise standard fare. In stark contrast to the freelance deals sprouting all over town or the limited-pictures and per-picture salary contracts making headlines for other stars, Jaffe and Bogart countered Warner’s offer with another seven-year contract at a straight but guaranteed $3,000 per week, with no increments. This counteroffer actually added up to an overall seven-year figure lower than the studio’s initial offer. Indeed, further negotiations “settled” the figure at $2,750 per week, with no raises, for seven years. During the life of the contract, then, Bogart would get $110,000 less than the original Warner Bros. offer.10 But Jaffe missed more than simple math here; he missed the basic arithmetic of power in these contracts, since his new deal for Bogart contained no reference to the actor’s screen billing—and no say in role or story selection, areas that would remain problematic for Bogart and the studio.

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Figure 7. Agent Paul Kohner, late 1920s. Courtesy of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

In his nuanced study of Bogart’s artistry the film historian Robert Sklar sums up the actor’s career to this point with some frustration: “It seems quite possible that the delay in Bogart’s stardom was due not entirely to the obtuseness of Warners executives, but also to his own deficiencies as a negotiator or in presenting himself as a performer deserving of special consider-

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ation”—an accurate and convincing assessment.11 Of course, the blame, at least most of it, belongs to the deficiencies of Bogart’s professional negotiator, his agent, Sam Jaffe. Like Jaffe, Paul Kohner made up for his company’s limited share of the market by distinguishing his services, except in this case not only in terms of size and personal attention but also by courting a particular clique or niche. In this way Kohner used the business strategy of “differentiating the product or service offering of the firm, creating what is perceived industry wide as being unique.”12 This “unique” angle, revealed in a letter from Kohner, related directly to his background. Kohner came to Hollywood from Bohemia and eventually landed a post in publicity for Laemmle’s Universal Studios. Laemmle had promised a job to Kohner when he interviewed the mogul for a Bohemian film journal that Kohner’s father owned, and Laemmle set the young film fan up in Universal’s New York office, alongside William Wyler (a Laemmle relative), who remained Kohner’s lifelong friend. Kohner and Wyler translated press releases to French and German before both transferred to Universal’s Hollywood plant. Subsequently, Kohner became head of Universal’s European productions based in Berlin, working on more than two dozen films in the space of a few years, before returning again to Hollywood. Once back at the Los Angeles studios, Kohner supervised more than fifty foreignlanguage films for Universal, thirty additional films in English, as well as the first group of Universal’s Spanish-language films, including Dracula (shot in Spanish at night on the same sets as the Bela Lugosi production). Kohner quickly established a respectable reputation as an amiable sort within Hollywood’s émigré culture. From Universal Kohner moved to minor production executive positions at MGM and Columbia, until, in 1937, his own representative, Frank Orsatti, asked him to join his firm as a talent agent.13 Orsatti’s suggestion sparked the scheme for Kohner ‘s own independent agency, an endeavor he outlined in a December 1937 memo to a business associate from his production days (an overseas agent who represented writers and stories). Kohner planned to cash in on his association with European filmmakers and the social and business channels he had developed as a studio executive: Sometime after the beginning of the new year I shall open offices in Hollywood as PAUL KOHNER, INC. I am capitalized with $100,000, and being the only European agent of importance in Hollywood I believe that within a very short time I shall be able to build up a phenomenal business. I don’t need to tell you that in the past eighteen years I have been an agent more or less, except that I never derived any financial benefit out of

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promoting and selling other people, stories, plays, etc. I don’t have to tell you that I have the finest connections imaginable, that I know every studio head and big producer out here intimately, and that my European background, my knowledge of European affairs, European people and their mentality, ideally qualify me to make a success of this enterprise.14

Note what Kohner explicitly offers for sale here: his European heritage, his filial and familiar links with Europe and its manners, and his social connections (“the finest . . . imaginable”). Not a quirky business plan for agents. In fact, this was a plan rooted in the very logic of this enterprise: agents sell their access to talent and employers through tangible relationships. Lacking the resources of the major agencies, the deeply rooted and regularized business relationships with studio heads and deep-pocketed client lists in the firms of Selznick, Feldman, or Berg-Allenberg, and without their large support staff, Kohner isolated a particular niche—European filmmakers of all sorts—as a kind of corporate identity: the European-talent-thoroughfare, the Continental special talent agency. Things didn’t work out this way. Surviving documents reveal that Kohner had in fact raised only $30,000—if that—in operating capital to develop an office and run an organization during the start-up phase of his business. Moreover, his “silent” partners were close friends, the director William Wyler and the producer Joe Pasternak. A letter from Kohner’s lawyer, Mark Cohen, to Joe Pasternak at his Universal Studios office revealed that Wyler and Pasternak each had committed $10,000 to Kohner’s business in early 1938, which gave each a one-third stake in Kohner’s new venture.15 In his agreement with these two partners, Kohner limited his salary to $300 per week during the first two years of the company’s operations and thereafter to a sum agreed upon by the partners. Even with his friends’ generous investment, Kohner struggled through the early years, especially as some of the seed money drained away. That funding would barely cover two years of his salary, let alone that of staff and rent—at $250 a month—for his office space. Indeed, Kohner initially ran his business from home before moving to an affordable office on Sunset Boulevard. In fact, Kohner took out loans against his house—“very much in need of this money,” he wrote to his financial adviser—and remained delinquent on his taxes until 1941.16 While Selznick and Feldman worked with annual grosses in the millions, Kohner failed to crack $50,000 in his first few years of operation—take 10 percent of that number and you get a good idea of his troubles.17 He managed to retain a small staff, but most of these agents came and went; their weekly salaries of $30 or $40 offered little incentive to remain. Family and friends comprised much of the ever-shifting office staff; Kohner’s brother

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worked there briefly, as did William Wyler’s aimless brother (Kohner owed him back salary for a short period). Even old friend Carl Laemmle Jr., cast adrift following the reorganization of his father’s studio, clocked some time at the agency before moving on to other pursuits.18 The constant turnover hardly allowed Kohner to develop the kind of regulated and routinized office structure that propelled and streamlined the top agencies. More significantly, Kohner’s European angle never panned out as a viable form of distinction for his agency. Too vague. Too uncertain. Kohner’s continental pedigree gave him no clear competitive advantage in Hollywood, and he greatly exaggerated his connections to the reigning movie moguls. Nor could he rely on international talent to sign with him when other Hollywood agencies offered similar services. For example, Kohner chased after Marlene Dietrich with his European-angle sales pitch but she signed with Feldman. She even had to send Kohner an admonishing telegram in early 1939—only a month after he hung out his agency shingle—reprimanding him for misrepresenting her and clearly instructing him to “discontinue all activity on my behalf.” Kohner’s rationalizing, withering response to Dietrich constituted a sketchy defense since he confessed that he spoke only to Pasternak on her behalf, a doubly troubling sign given the lack of transparency in Kohner’s financial relationship to Pasternak.19 While he landed a few European clients, many used only Kohner’s generous guidance through the immigration process before signing with another agent. In fact, a young American writer, John Huston, turned out to be Kohner’s most important client, almost single-handedly sustaining the agency at various times in its history. Huston possessed enough drive and energy to push his own career forward and enough Old World chivalry and integrity (and indifference to financial affairs) to stick with Kohner after the director became famous and powerful. A contracted writer at Warner Bros. in 1937 with strong aspirations to direct, Huston came to Kohner at a pivotal moment in his career, having just racked up strong writing credits on High Sierra and Jezebel. No doubt Wyler, who had befriended the dynamic writer, led Huston to his old friend’s agency. Indeed, Wyler’s own machinations played a stronger role in landing Huston his debut film as a director, The Maltese Falcon, than any ministrations by his agent (Wyler allowed Huston to direct a scene in his 1938 production of Jezebel, and Huston consulted Wyler on his preparations for The Maltese Falcon). That Kohner continued to feature Huston as a writer, not a director, on his 1942 client list confirmed the agent’s marginal role in Huston’s ascent to the director’s chair.20 Thus Kohner had lucked out and landed a big client. A bigger problem, however, remained in Kohner’s lack of legal acumen and business savvy.

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Dedicated and devoted in providing his services as an agent, Kohner remained befuddled and often overwhelmed by legal and financial details. Such deficiencies represented more than an annoying handicap; they held structural ramifications for his business and affected Kohner financially. Kohner’s strong reliance on legal advice cut into his own potential earnings. He split Huston’s Warner Bros. commissions, for instance, with Mark Cohen, the lawyer he and Huston shared. By contrast, Feldman, Selznick, and the larger agencies held lawyers on retainer so that clients need not complicate transactions with multiple advisers—or involve lawyers who might be due a share of the resulting commissions. Moreover, Feldman and Selznick possessed the knowledge and skills, as did much of their executive staff, to perform a good deal of the contractual work—the close readings, the translation of jargon and tangled wording, the line-by-line revisions, the scrutiny for precedent—before they sought a lawyer’s inspection, saving valuable time—and dollars. By contrast, Kohner constantly consulted with Cohen about contractual details. In one case—the very month Huston submitted his Falcon screenplay to the studio—in May 1941 Kohner wrote to Cohen: “This contract must be studied very carefully because I am very much afraid Warner Bros. are trying to put things over on us.”21 Bewildered, Kohner noted that the latest contract—many versions had already been exchanged—contained no provisions about Huston as a director and other details, matters that Kohner somehow had missed in earlier drafts. In the end Kohner served Huston well here but did so at a cost to his own potential commissions. These additional legal consultations taxed time better spent not only on other concerns but also other clients. Given Kohner’s uncertainty, it is no surprise, then, that in these early years he hedged his bets, showing some lack of confidence in his new agency business. For instance, he sought to establish a company that would buy the remake rights of French films (the younger Laemmle, although he too was struggling for work, turned down Kohner’s proposal to partner on this endeavor, indicating its lack of promise).22 And Kohner continued to seek out production deals, shopping various literary properties in this regard. Aside from his commissions, John Huston helped the agency by convincing his father, Walter, to leave Leland Hayward and sign with Kohner—a big acquisition since the veteran character actor brought with him both a strong reputation and a commanding salary (about $2,000 a week). The acclaimed star of pictures like Gabriel over the White House and Dodsworth, Walter Huston accounted for more than half of Kohner’s commissions from actors in 1940 and 1941, boosting the agency’s take by almost 20 percent.

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By the end of 1941 Kohner finally could afford to become a “regular member” of the agents guild (one had to bring in more than $50,000 to achieve such a status). According to Kohner’s accounting records and agency statistics, Huston and Wyler alone represented a significant amount of the commissions coming in.23 Wyler had signed a limited contract with Kohner, employing the agent as a representative from June 1939 to October 1940 while retaining Leland Hayward as his primary representative. Under this agreement Kohner earned 5 percent of Wyler’s income, and 10 percent of Wyler’s “weekly compensation in excess of the sum of $2500 per week, and not exceeding the sum of $3650 per week”—a complicated equation but a lucrative one for a small agent like Kohner, given Wyler’s recent contract ($150,000 per year) with Goldwyn—arranged by Hayward—which also added 10 percent of each film’s profits to the director’s take. But Wyler allowed his limited contract with the Kohner agency to lapse, convinced, even though all had gone well, that business and friendship made for a potentially troublesome combination.24 Needless to say, since commissions from directors represented such a large proportion of his monthly income, when Wyler and Huston left for wartime duties—both became documentary filmmakers—Kohner’s income took a dive. To balance the books Kohner went after juvenile actors and actresses during the war years, but this strategy too failed to pan out. Meanwhile, in 1942 two promising émigré directors, Julian Duvivier and Robert Siodmak, severed their relationship with Kohner for business reasons.25 Duvivier, the director of the hit French import Pepe le Moko (1937), had struggled to land work in Hollywood (even though Hollywood remade his film almost shot for shot in Algiers) and represented no big catch when he granted Kohner a short-term agency contract. But in less than a year Duvivier signed with another agent. Siodmak had used Kohner’s services for about a year, after Feldman had failed to give Siodmak the attention he felt he deserved. Ever chivalrous, Feldman had permitted Siodmak to fish around for other agents. In the process Siodmak pitted Kohner against Nat Goldstone, an ambitious young agent with a growing client list. The director granted each agent limited windows of representation at specific studios. Goldstone won the race, setting the director up at RKO. When Siodmak cancelled his contract with Kohner, the agent acknowledged the filmmaker’s decision by humbly pleading, “I know you realize that I have been instrumental in establishing you as a director here in Hollywood, and I do hope that you will give me the opportunity to work further for you, and that you will first let me know if you contemplate signing with another agent.”26

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To succeed as a specialty operation, an agency needed a niche, a hook, an angle, and the skills to deliver on the pitch. It needed a Harold Swanson. “Swanie,” as his clients called him, established a model boutique business. He had a solid plan from the start and stuck to it: focus on writers—find them, serve them, build them up in Hollywood. Swanson’s plan would fuse his strong connections to the literary world, which he had established in his earlier career as an editor, with his experiences in Hollywood as a production executive in the early 1930s. In 1922, right out of college and already a published writer, Swanson had founded a modest national magazine in Chicago that, owing to his hustle, quickly began publishing stories and pieces by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Noel Coward, Robert Benchley, and Alexander Wollcott, among others—an impressive short list of the 1920s “Smart Set.”27 This experience gave Swanson solid, enduring relationships with New York’s leading literary agents, especially as the magazine achieved the largest national newsstand circulation in its genre and price point during the next eight years. Swanson’s editorial position and the success of his magazine also drew attention from Hollywood. In 1931 David O. Selznick persuaded Swanson to join RKO, where he remained for three years as a production executive. Swanson first concocted the idea to start his own talent agency after Selznick left RKO in 1933. Before he gave notice to the studio, Swanie went to New York and pitched his idea to the leading literary agencies. His plan was to operate as a thoroughfare for their writers in Hollywood, selling stories, novels, and the writers themselves, and splitting the commissions 50– 50 with the respective agencies. “The big New York agencies were so enthusiastic about the idea that they almost scared me,” Swanson recalled. “Their pattern,” according to Swanson, “had been to try one West Coast agent after another, with results that were either uneven or downright bad.”28 Swanson determined that an exclusive arrangement with a West Coast agent, contracted with specific New York agencies, could create a more efficient and profitable portal for literary properties and writers. In October 1934, while still at RKO, Swanson cheered on one of his potential partners about his burgeoning enterprise: NOTE TO AROUSE YOUR CUPIDITY: MGM just signed Rachel Crothers at $6000 per week, 10 weeks guarantee, highest price for writer’s services yet. I’m telling you, the bull market for writers hasn’t started yet. Instead of directors getting $50,000 to $75,000 per pictures, it isn’t entirely out of reason to expect that the writer will be in that position in a few years.29

Like his big-time competitors, Feldman and Selznick, Swanson recognized an opportunity in the otherwise invisible subsystem of agents who were

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serving the studio system. Swanson understood how much the studios relied on these agents to scout talent—only here he isolated a specific segment within the system to stake out a service business. Swanson had put great thought into his entrepreneurial endeavor. He had been earning $35,000 a year at RKO and figured that his agency would require at least four partners to maintain a profitable flow of literary properties, writers, and commissions. As his planning neared completion, Swanson tallied up the numbers and wrote to his New York partners. “There are sixty-nine writers I think will be mine when I open. I mean, that many topnotchers. The tentative list I just compiled shows twenty of them came from your list, twenty from Ober’s and twenty-one from Pinker’s. I was astonished at how evenly balanced you three were.”30 Thus, before he officially branched out into his new venture, Swanson secured a key component of his business plan by convincing a handful of the biggest New York literary agencies to sign deals with him: Harold Ober’s, George T. Bye’s, and Curtis Brown’s. When Swanson returned to Hollywood, he gave notice to RKO, paid six months’ advance rent on a Sunset Boulevard office, bought some furniture, and brought his RKO secretary with him. He was in business faster than a Mae West wisecrack. Swanson wasn’t alone in recognizing the need for an agency specializing in writers. As early as the 1920s, a number of businesses set themselves up as gatekeepers for the story ideas thrown at film studios by amateurs and professionals alike. Most of these services operated as clearinghouses, if not outright scams, charging fees to register stories (supposedly for copyright protection), to evaluate stories (for a fee), or simply to forward a story to the studios, with no guaranteed contacts.31 Still, a number of agencies— Feldman, Selznick, Small-Landau, Berg-Allenberg, Edington-Vincent, and others—set up story divisions, and a smaller number managed writers exclusively. Confident and calculating from the start, Swanson still kept an eye on his competitors, even as he mocked a Hollywood literary agent in a note to one of his New York partners: Dave Warner is flopping all over the place. He sold two Faith Baldwin stories since he has been organized, one to Universal and one to Wanger. That dates back to December, so that may explain his going into the Hoffman-Schlarger office [another talent agency]. The only reason they took him in is to get the outlet of the Curtis Brown material. They are a small time general agency handling actors, directors, etc.32

In another letter Swanson informed his source of a struggling literary agent who “was with Zeppo Marks [sic] handling the story department until Zeppo gave him the greased chute. He has now gone into business for himself, but

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I do not think he will be much competition.”33 No mere boast, for Swanson followed a serious, realistic game plan, informed by both his own sharp film and literary experience and a rigorous business strategy. Moreover, Swanson had established some firm ties with key studio executives, and he promoted these connections when he contacted New York literary agencies. Take the following letter, for example: I had a long talk with David Selznick last night. . . . He told me in front of his assistant that he expected to do more business with me now that he is going to have his own production organization than any other writers’ agent here. The reason is that he is going to get young writers, inexpensive and medium priced ones rather than the very expensive ones he has been using heretofore. He told the assistant that any time I came to see him about writers, to be sure that I got in right away (Dave is swell and I know he really means this).34

Swell. Swell for Selznick. Swell for Swanie. Swell for his sales pitch. This memo explicates the structural components—the formalized relationships established largely by trust and reputation—forging the core of the agency business. The trust came through regularized transactions and experience. In this case Selznick trusted Swanson as a literary agent for the very reasons Selznick had initially brought Swanson to RKO: his past work as a literary editor, an instinct for stories, an astute assessment of writers, a sophisticated understanding of literary form and the Hollywood market. These factors— the scouting by agents for talent and the subsequent meetings with producers—materialized or gave rise to the more visible thoroughfare between talent and their employment on productions. All that comes through in this memo. And more. Perhaps the most revealing aspect recorded in this document is in the way that Swanson sells his connections. Swanson is hawking the exchange he had with Selznick as a way of promoting his agency. Why did the New York agents need a Hollywood go-between? Given that each major studio maintained an executive board in its New York offices, why didn’t this branch handle literary purchases? Swanson’s success demonstrated the dispersed managerial coordination that characterized many components of the Hollywood studio system, a network centered ultimately in the studios but operated by both central command posts and decentralized field managers who had the power to make decisions in line with studio policy. In other words, while studio executives and managing producers (or even studio story editors) remained answerable to the executive boards, they still performed management tasks—buying literary properties or hiring writers—on their own. The discussions in Hollywood between Swanson and the producers, directors, and story editors on the studio lots made sense in terms of the geography of Hollywood, site of the key

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creative participants closest to the problems and solutions entailed in production (unlike the more general decisions supervised by the New York offices). Agents like Swanson were literally closer to the day-by-day decisions entailed in studios’ churning out forty or more productions a year. A producer might change interests based on market trends or the whims of a desired player or director, and Swanie could pick up on the alteration at a lunch or studio meeting and shift his sales pitch accordingly. In fact, Swanson’s service meshed perfectly with the dispersed managerial logic through which major corporations function, that is, not through constant top-down surveillance and instructions but by making known the general principles and directions—in this case, the pursuit of hit films—to other managers: studio heads, producers, story editors, directors, and even agents, figures outside the corporation who nonetheless served its interests by the promise of a share in the spoils (commissions). Swanson articulated this logic with characteristic wit that nonetheless revealed the business and social structure ruling the film business in Hollywood: I believe there can be no question about the value of letting me submit for the first time all of your material directly to the studios here. If you merely dump your stuff in a routine fashion on the desks of the Eastern story editor, much of it never sees the Coast, and in this crazy picture business we must play every long shot to the hilt. Coupled with that is the attitudes of the West Coast that people in the East are merely stooges who sit in Twenty-One all day drinking aperitifs. The Eastern synopses are usually only half a page long, and they are gone over in a manner that would break your heart if you saw the selective process here.

Here Swanie emphasizes the personal angle he brought to selling a story or writer and underscores the significance of meeting directly with studio producers to develop the pitch with nuances, sharper perspectives on the material (or writer) and how it could work within that season’s characterization of a hit film (in “this crazy picture business”). Direct dialogue, as Swanie implies, facilitated this process more fully than East Coast bureaucracy. More important, Swanie goes on to point out that many of the story editors on the coast were angling to move up to producer status and therefore were hungry for material that would give them this shot. “Don’t forget the Western story editor wants to be a producer some day. He does all he can to see the company buys the stuff which comes from the West Coast.”35 In this regard studio heads shared their managerial goals with agents. In other words, the studio system—managing a studio’s contracted talent within the demands of contracted release dates of films in the annual

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production cycle—relied upon the agency subsystem by dispersing information about a studio’s goals to outsiders, namely, agents. Both parties would be rewarded in such cases, demonstrating how agents cooperated with businessmen in the market. Case in point: Twentieth Century Fox scouting roles for its contracted player Tyrone Power. Darryl Zanuck, the head of Fox, alerted Swanson (and, no doubt, any number of other agents) to the studio’s managerial decisions, which Swanson relayed to his New York partners: Zanuck has been very much worried about his big white hope, Tyrone Power. He feels he has been in too many sissy, Robert Taylor roles and he wants to get him in a mussed up, he-man part. I have been trying to sell him HIGH TENSION by Haines but Zanuck told me he would prefer to have a prizefight story. Julian Johnson got KNOCKOUT and sent it to him. I saw Zanuck’s memo to Johnson which said: “I think this is the best of the prizefight stories you have shown me but it still isn’t what I want.” Suggest you put this on a reserve list in case we can’t find anything better.36

Studio heads, producers, and story editors shared this information with Swanson and other agents because both parties were rewarded if an agent found a solution, an example of how markets rely on cooperation as much as competition. Even at the studios, management was dispersed in various ways, sometimes obviously through a studio head like Zanuck, sometimes through story editors, producers, or directors. At Columbia in the mid-1930s Swanson dealt with Sam Briskin, a supervising production executive, rather than the studio head, Harry Cohn. As Swanson explained to a New York partner, “Sam Briskin has really more power than Harry Cohn because he can read. In most cases he tells Cohn what to buy.”37 The autonomy accorded to studio producers, story editors, or directors varied from lot to lot. Swanson dealt with Arthur Hornblow and other studio executives at Paramount. Sometimes Paramount allowed its story editor, Manny Wolfe, to sign writers. Supervising producers or even directors also made managerial decisions—on their own or sometimes by taking their case to the studio head—that enabled them to deal directly with agents like Swanson. In fact, by Swanson’s estimate MGM had purchased half its properties for one business quarter through Swanson’s setup, which did not go unnoticed by the studio. MGM had leaned so strongly on this outside source to fill its production slate that the studio proposed a formal deal that would give the studio first access to and first refusal on all material produced by Swanie’s clients.38 RKO floated a similar plan to Swanie. In both cases the arrangements would have involved steady sales for the agency. It would also involve sacrificing its competitive edge and the service it provided to writ-

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ers: finding the highest bidder in the market. That sacrifice would have cut right into the integrity and sales value of its organization—so Swanson refused. Unlike, say, a Paul Kohner, who never seemed secure or confident in his specialty business plan, Swanson stuck to his guns. For example, when one of his agents continued to dabble in other arts, Swanson let him go, as he explained: “He was a nice, pleasant person but he wanted to be able to plug an actor occasionally and that is against the rules of this agency.”39 To succeed as a niche business the operation needed to sacrifice leads that could have confused the identity of the firm; being distinctive required maintaining the firm’s definition within the marketplace, even if it meant sacrificing short-term gains. Other agencies, big game hunters like Selznick and Feldman, managed actors, directors, and even writers. From a competitive standpoint, Swanson’s success depended upon a clear identity for his agency: Swanson managed writers. Period. As with the big agencies, like Selznick or Feldman or Berg-Allenberg, Swanson’s more focused operation required rigorous attention to the flow of information. During the first month of operating his Hollywood literary outlet, Swanson reminded his New York partners of the importance of strong coordination: I hope you will soon put into effect a system whereby I will automatically receive copies of everything you have just placed with a book or magazine publisher or play producer. In other words, I want, as soon as anybody accepts them, copies of books, stories, and plays. . . . Unless I can get the above and keep getting it, our whole system will break down.40

One year later he repeated the warning to another partner: “If we are going to corner this writing business, Harold, we have to get organized.”41 Swanson pushed for organization because a sloppy or lazy approach to this networking could result in the loss of a sale or confusion. One of Swanson’s rivals fell into an embarrassing trap as a result of a lack of coordination. In August 1938 Metro barred Harry Brandt from the lot. “I think,” Swanie wrote one of his partners, prefacing the parable with a little lesson, “this is a fine example of lack of co-ordination between the East and West offices of an agency.” Brandt had arranged West Coast representation for his writers and material through Collier Young (briefly with the Myron Selznick office). The lack of coordination surfaced when Young sold a story to Metro for $22,000, only to discover that Brandt had sold the same story to SIP for $10,000, and the same thing had happened at Fox, which barred Brandt as well. As Swanie noted in the same letter, “When an agent pulls off a terrific

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deal for a client and then gets barred, it is a badge of honor.” This case was a badge of shame. Swanson added that this “would give Zanuck more satisfaction than anything he heard outside of the fact that Shirley Temple’s temperature had dropped.”42 For all the laughs the lesson remained clear: coordination, organization, clear communication, and central administration remained crucial in this business, as much as literary tastes and creativity. In addition to establishing a specialty outfit, Swanson sold the personal attention that such a niche operation promised to writers. According to Swanson, “The big talent agencies had little interest in servicing their clients and did not have enough foresight to carry their writers from a low salary to several thousand a week. These oversights on their part made it easier for me to operate.”43 Not entirely true but true enough. From the horse’s mouth, then, here was a clear definition of the competitive strategy deployed by boutique agencies: homing in on a particular segment of the market—in this case, writers—with the logic that a smaller, more individualized firm will provide stronger service in this niche. Here, at least, Swanson, unlike Kohner, made a tactical reading of the market and the industry and built on his literary background. More important, Swanson solidified his network of connections early on by setting up committed partnerships with the leading New York literary agencies. And Swanson stuck to his plan and delivered, gradually gaining writers like Richard Sherman, Edgar Wallace, and, in the 1940s, Charles Bennett, Raymond Chandler, and James Cain.44 In this regard Swanson tapped his studio contacts for information and spun it off to his clients, sending them a regular memo tauntingly titled “Studio Story Needs”: Paramount: Robert Sisk wants a football story. They want a musical for their young people and an occupational picture on order of “Manpower.” Warners: They want a Raft and a Lupino; also a “Claudia” set up for Olivia DeHaviland.45

He channeled this information to his New York literary agent contacts as well: Fox have now put on a heavy drive for properties. . . . You can expect to see several story buys within the next month. . . . Fox wants a Ronald Colman very badly. They also want a Shirley Temple with music. . . . They also need a [Warner] Baxter badly.46

These memos illustrate how Swanson’s business served its clients and the studios, passing on information, fertilizing the creative work of his clients, and potentially steering their literary efforts to realistic studio targets.

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Within the first year of his operation Swanson met his financial expectations. His contracted agents in New York began racking up split commissions with Swanson. By 1936 one of his New York partners wrote: “Congratulations on leading the field among Hollywood agents”47—an enthusiastic exaggeration offering a testament to Swanie’s success within this niche market. Swanson demonstrated how a boutique agency was run. He established a successful spot in the subsystem that served the studio system. In fact, Swanson’s focus and success prove how crucial this subsystem was to the overall industry, as the studios relied so strongly on reputable agents like Swanson to fulfill functions essential to their operations. An important dimension of Swanson’s competitive strategy was its recognition of the dual markets served by agents: clients and studios. According to Swanson’s strategy, studios would come to rely on his agency when seeking literary properties or writers. Here the relationships Swanson established with the leading New York literary agents paid off again so that studio executives turned to him as a conduit to the New York publishing market, for new writers or new properties, early signs of trends, or insider tips from the publishing grapevine. Swanson’s game plan, billing his specialized services as a literary agency, sold its distinction to the studios and then, as well, to writers, a mutually reinforcing strategy: As he gained more writers, he became more of a specialist to the studios, and as he became more of a specialist to the studios, he increased his appeal to writers—a textbook model of specialization.

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6. Sealing the Deal The Contract Industry

Studio contracts were not fixed once and for all in the 1930s. They mutated and evolved during this rapid, complex decade of transformations in the film industry. Following the introduction of the standard studio contract in the late 1920s—hotly contested even then—agents and talent began carving out new contractual provisions and innovative arrangements. These changes began adding up, accruing definition and habitual force in the negotiation process (bargaining for story approval, for example, or for rest periods between productions), establishing models for more aggressive champions of their careers and their partners: more aggressive agents. Contracts grew bulkier and more detailed. By the mid- to late 1930s leading agents had arranged contracts that protected their clients from overwork—limiting the amount of productions—and overexposure; granted them story approval, director approval, and even limited casting approval; granted directors supervision of editing; curtailed their work hours; gained them percentage shares in the financial returns of their films; expanded their clients’ field of options through multiple nonexclusive contracts (à la “freelancing”); won their clients a say in the loan-out process, thereby dispersing some power to the client and agent; stipulated size and position of credits on film title sequences and advertising as a way of emphasizing their clients’ renown, ensuring their continued market value to the studios, and parlaying some of this fame into future deals. Agents achieved such contractual modifications and alterations by tactically exploiting pivotal moments in a client’s career—box-office success or contract expiration; better yet, both—usually through freelancing or when contracts neared their expiration date but also by occasionally rewriting clauses and provisions even in long-term contracts. Star power alone did not guarantee such victories in the negotiation process. Charles Boyer’s con124

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tract, for example, beat out Bogart’s, even if the latter wound up the bigger star. Agents made the difference. Big sluggers like Feldman and Selznick were not entirely alone in striking these new deals. Other agents cooked up hearty contracts or capitalized on precedent-setting contractual developments. With his agent, Victor Orsatti, Edward G. Robinson secured a strong contract at Warner Bros. in 1936.1 The contract granted Robinson role and story approval, the right to work on outside pictures, generous rest periods between productions, approval of any loan-out deals and half of whatever the studio received for his loan-out over and above his Warner salary, guaranteed star billing, and even a nifty parking spot.2 For Barbara Stanwyck agents Zeppo Marx and Arthur Lyons (she switched agents a few times) safeguarded her contracts, ones that rivaled the strength of Feldman’s most nuanced and rigorous work.3 Stanwyck’s 1932 Warner Bros. contract gave her story approval (within a limited time frame) and star billing. Like Feldman—who shared an office building with Marx and remained chummy with him—Marx worked out overlapping nonexclusive contracts for Stanwyck with RKO and Twentieth Century Fox. As with Feldman’s innovative arrangements, these contracts gave Stanwyck a wider choice of projects, enabling her to work on films for Paramount, Goldwyn, and MGM. Joining Feldman’s Dunne and Colbert, Selznick’s Miriam Hopkins and Kay Francis, and Marx’s Stanwyck were free-ranging figures like Ronald Colman and Basil Rathbone, whose agents carved out important freelance deals, single-picture contracts, or nonexclusive multiple-picture arrangements in the mid-1930s. The HawksVolck Agency spearheaded Ronald Colman’s robust contracts as he jumped from studio to studio, just as the Small-Landau firm engineered Rathbone’s freelance deals. In 1933 Hawks set Colman up at Fox Studios for $100,000 per picture plus 10 percent of the gross receipts, and MGM honored the same terms for Colman’s appearance in A Tale of Two Cities.4 Hawks got Fox to ante up 10 percent of the gross receipts for Constance Bennett’s contract as well, gaining her, for example, more than $100,000 on top of her initial $60,000 salary from her share of Moulin Rouge (1934), among other productions. The contract arranged for payments to the Bennett Picture Corporation, an entity that reduced her tax burden.5 Other figures like Paul Muni commanded story approval and control of their working conditions, projects, and the number of production commitments. Bing Crosby’s series of three-year contracts at Paramount essentially gave the singer de facto control of material, since his pending termination dates kept the studio in line (after Crosby left the Small agency, his brother coordinated the crooner’s career). Agents arranged these deals in each and every case, lever-

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aging their clients’ box-office clout and earning them greater shares in the financial rewards of their work, stronger creative participation, and greater degrees of control of their craft. News of these innovative arrangements spread and established parameters for future deals. As early as 1935 Variety drew attention to the industry trend of stars’ shifting to an “itinerant class, doing their stints for four figures, weekly, on one, two, and three picture deals spread over several lots,”6 and it listed the actors and actresses I mentioned earlier. Dick Powell, Cary Grant, Fred Astaire, and others would join these well-paid freelancers by the end of the decade. In addition, more and more directors like Frank Capra went independent or, like John Ford, worked on short-term nonexclusive contracts for independents like Walter Wanger and United Artists and studios like Fox. Still, the run-of-the-mill studio contract, spanning anywhere from two to seven years, remained the most common agreement. Many artists in Hollywood, from character actors and big stars to sturdy directors and writers, remained bound, willingly in most cases, to long-term contracts. After all, most actors or directors could not command the kinds of provisions accorded higher-ranked talent. These contracts contributed to the security of productions, guaranteeing the availability of well-trained craftspeople, and, in fact, abetted the institutional framework that enabled freelancers or stars and directors with potent contracts to bank on their clout and popularity within a system stabilized by a great deal of dependable, normal contracts. Yet even studio contracts remained flexible. Studios frequently rewrote long-term contracts to appease their talent. As an MGM executive pragmatically explained to the studio’s lawyers, a contract could not anticipate the success of a client and therefore required adjustments to ensure the client’s best work: It is the usual practice in our business when an artist [under contract] suddenly achieves great importance to us we either pay the artist some form of bonus or rewrite her contract and pay her more money. This we have found most advisable, if not necessary, in order that we might obtain the best possible work from artists who are progressing quickly. It would be difficult to get good results from a person who had achieved stardom within a short period of time if that person were paid only compensation which is payable to unimportant beginners.7

In other words, the studio willingly renegotiated long-term contracts, a practice more or less replicated at other studios as well. This opened up yet another arena for agents to demonstrate their value to clients. A document from the other side, the agency subsystem, corroborates the studio executive’s memo on the value of rewriting contracts. Here a Selznick agent

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reviews a strategy session with client Ann Sheridan about her Warner Bros. contract: The general plan I am following with Ann, and with which she is heartily in accord, is along the lines of the plan followed in the case of Errol Flynn [also at Warner Bros.]. It will be remembered that after considerable trouble I persuaded Flynn not to instruct us to ask for a further adjustment until after ROBIN HOOD. Anyway, Ann understands the good psychology of going for an adjustment when her market value is rising.8

Both Sheridan and Flynn gained revised contracts and salaries by seeking to renegotiate with Warner Bros. after they had hit films. At any rate, even the most basic contracts retained many meaning, not all related solely to legal agreements. For actors, directors, and writers winning a studio contract was the culmination of their years of work as an amateur or low-level performer. A contract represented, then, a prize, an achievement all its own. This symbolic status alone made a common studio contract an object of desire and value for artists. For an agent securing a studio contract was one of the first steps in building an artist’s career; it was also a test of the artist’s value or utility to the studio. For all the defensive and combative strategies that agents and talent levied against the studios, for all the rhetorical battles waged between talent guilds and the studios in the press, the studio contract served the artists as much as it offered a reliable, guaranteed insurance of service to the studio’s productions. Contracts promised important procedures fundamental to the craft of any major Hollywood artist—writer, director, or actor. Contracts secured substantial budgets for film productions, assuring the contributing artists that they would receive appropriate support for their creative goals and execution. Studio contracts warranted substantial distribution and exhibition of an artist’s work, as well as marketing support, a team of coworkers, and recognition for his or her craft. An artistic endeavor as large and complicated as a Hollywood film production required a complex network of contracts. Efficient management and activation of these contracts presented a tremendous task of coordination, making it no surprise that conflicts often arose between the parties. Stars did not simply seek greater remuneration or artistic freedom in their new contract. They also sought guaranteed conditions—productions, collaborators, working conditions, among many other complex factors— within the intricate system of contractual agreements in the studio system. It is worth reviewing the complexity of these contracts to underscore the necessary functions they ensure for artistic practice in the studio system.

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A studio contract brought with it the assurance that a film would be substantially financed, would be of a certain quality, would gather other talented practitioners, would reach theaters, would attract audiences through marketing—all tangible and contractual factors that potentially bolstered an artist’s career. These factors, and many more, made studio contracts highly attractive, setting aside their monetary rewards. In other words, the recognition and appreciation of Henry Fonda’s artistry depended upon the guaranteed and substantial release of his films in major theaters; upon working on productions that had solid distribution and exhibition arrangements (both usually through networks owned by the production studio). Artistic practice depended upon industry, upon working with collaborators who were at least competent, if not leading innovators of artistic originality; and dozens of other factors. Studio contracts granted these conditions to artists. Take, for example, a clause in a contract negotiated by Feldman for Irene Dunne with Columbia; it is an example of the complex functions implicit in the explicit, if necessarily incomplete, legal phrasing of the contract: “Director must receive $35,000 for last preceding picture or if under contract, $2500 weekly for 40 weeks.”9 Why would Feldman stipulate a director’s salary in his contract for Dunne? Several complex stipulations, more implicit than explicit, rule the logic of this line. For one thing, creative products are always produced with great uncertainty. Nobody knows how a completed film will fare with audiences or how a production will or won’t come together.10 A film’s reception by audiences and how it was produced were of utmost importance to Dunne (or any artist), who could practice her craft as an actress only as the result of numerous conditions: a competent or good director and script, proper budget, talented craftspeople, other actors, and many other contributions. Dunne gained recognition for her craft only by ensuring that audiences saw her work, which studio contracts guaranteed. By stipulating the quality of a director, Dunne and Feldman sought to gain some degree of certainty (in the face of all the other uncertainties and vagaries of artistic production) for Dunne to practice her craft. A director of a certain standing ensured many other factors as well. Very likely, a highcaliber director meant that the film would be allocated substantial production funds, since studios tended to place leading directors on prestige or bigbudget productions (as a precaution, Feldman and other major agents negotiated minimum budgets for their client’s films as well). Certainly, the clause ensured that Dunne would practice her craft with an able or even inspiring collaborator. It also ensured that Dunne’s acting colleagues would be of high caliber. It guaranteed that the film might gain greater recognition by audiences and critics, assuring the recognition of her own work (in this

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regard, strong contracts insisted on certain levels of distribution and exhibition). Moreover, it promised Dunne that her peers in the industry would grant the film more attention, a significant factor in her career’s longevity and an important element for artists, who often valued respect and recognition from their colleagues as much as or more than popularity with audiences. All these factors—and more—were assured or at least addressed by this single line. Multiply this by forty or so, the typical number of lines in a deal memo, and the resulting equation suggests some sense of the complexity—the necessary complexity—of contracts by the late 1930s. Such stipulations—those seeking to control the working conditions (the script, duration of the production, director, specific producer, and other contributing factors) surrounding a client’s particular contribution—became more and more of a possibility, a negotiating point, for talent in the late 1930s, a crucial detail contributing to the flexibility and transformation of studio contracts—and an important detail too easily overlooked by the perspective that studio contracts caged in talent relentlessly. Of course, long before negotiations began between an agent and a studio, the film artist signed a contract with an agency. The duration of agency contracts varied for several reasons. Agents usually pushed for lengthier contracts, while clients aimed for shorter ones. An actor or director did not want to be locked into a lengthy contract before determining whether the agent could obtain consistent and desirable work for the talent. A short contract allowed the client to measure the agent‘s efficacy and terminate the relationship without doing much damage to an actor’s career or reputation. Agents, of course, sought a longer contract to ensure that their hard work on a client’s behalf would pay off when a career skyrocketed. Why didn’t artists spread their odds and sign up with several agents? Signing with two or three agents might ensure more coverage at the studios by various agents, so why not let two, three, or four agents pound the pavement for work and then take the best offer? One immediate answer is that Hollywood was a small town, and the agent’s community represented, as it does in any economic market, an embedded field of routine transactional and social relationships. Playing business colleagues off one another would not go undetected in such a community. Agents picked up on such cases almost immediately. Only when a client forgot about some old deal signed with a minor or distant agent (in New York or London) did grievances arise, settled either in court or through split commissions. Also, studio executives tipped off agents about rivals who were dealing with their clients. More important, the notion of using multiple agents for representation diluted the effort that any one agent might be

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willing to exercise on behalf of the client. In other words, if agents knew that a client had deployed more than one representative, why would they work hard for this client, when any deal could disintegrate if a competing agent secured a more attractive offer? In such a market the best strategy for agents would be to put in minimal effort and play their own odds. Finally, in such a market agents would have to negotiate continually with their clients, in addition to negotiating with producers on their clients’ behalf. If a client, for example, received a better offer from one agent, rival agents would have to persuade the client of the merits of their own deals, squandering time and complicating negotiations. For this reason (and others) agents and their clients absolutely required an enforceable contract between them before even discussing contracts with producers and studios. The very complexity of the negotiations licensed to agents necessitated a fixed rate for commissions. No legal ruling established the rate at 10 percent. Agents were free to waive commissions (a tactic sometimes used to attract clients to the agency, usually for a limited period) or to charge lower rates (agents sometimes charged 5 percent on a short-term basis to pacify an aggravated or out-of-work client). As the California Labor commissioner explained to the motion picture academy in its earlier research on the work of agents: “It is not the province of this office to pass upon the terms of an agreement made between parties possessed of faculties to strike a bargain.”11 In the province of plain English this meant that the commission rate was whatever agents and clients agreed to in their contracts. Most likely, the 10 percent rate became standardized out of habit and necessity, since haggling with each client on every deal would only complicate the negotiations, draining time and energy (and the agent’s efficacy) that more properly went into working out the specific arrangement between the client and the producer. Public hearings like those surrounding the failed academy agency code, or the National Recovery Administration (NRA) review (or the pending talent guild negotiations) helped to cement 10 percent as a convention in the Hollywood market. The agency of certain agents, that is, the power of certain individuals to effect changes or successfully advocate for a client’s autonomy sprang most often from organizational situations that bolstered the agent’s individual power. In other words, institutional frameworks and instrumental practices—the size of the agency and its relationships with studios—surged through particular personalities. As Feldman asserted: The agency having the greatest strength, both in numbers and in personalities [stars], has, as a rule, been able to do more for a client because of the very nature and importance of its business. . . . It has definitely been ascertained

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that the careers of unimportant clients handled by certain agencies in the business . . . have been enhanced to a far greater extent than similar clients who have been with agencies who handle a lesser number of personalities.12

Here Feldman articulates how the leverage generated by a strong client list infused particular agents with the capacity to “do more for a client.” In turn, this enhanced the status and charisma of those agents, which attracted more clients and boosted the agency’s reputation with studio executives. Sam Jaffe’s and Paul Kohner’s struggles confirm Feldman’s argument, as does the success of Charles Boyer, who certainly benefited from Feldman’s substantial client list; recall, for example, the leverage that Claudette Colbert provided, in addition to the trust the studio granted Feldman, in securing Boyer’s Warner Bros. contract. Contrast these facts with the same studio’s dealings with Jaffe and Bogart or Kohner and Huston. While the lesser agents were less forceful, had less impact, and consequently provided less service of value to their clients, the size and structure of their organizations accounted for their diminished returns much more than personality did. Now consider this comparison in relation to the 1936 cases of Bette Davis and James Cagney. In standard histories of Hollywood these examples have taken on symbolic weight as prima facie evidence of the imperviousness of studio option contracts. In 1936 Warner Bros. and Davis fought a legal battle after she broke her contract and fled to England to star in an independent production; Davis lost in court and acceded to a new studio contract, one that still offered no billing guarantees and no story or role approval. That same year Cagney won his lawsuit against Warner Bros. but subsequently returned to the studio after struggling as a freelancer. Certainly, the Cagney and Davis cases demonstrate the rigidity of the studios, the near-impossible conditions for negotiation, and even the poor treatment of stars. But in light of the counterexamples of Claudette Colbert, Irene Dunne, William Powell (and many of Selznick’s other clients), Ronald Colman, Barbara Stanwyck, and even George Stevens, the Davis and Cagney stories also betray poor management, a dimension that is generally elided in most histories of classical Hollywood. In other words, Cagney and Davis were stuck with bad contracts to be sure—but they suffered from equally bad strategy and bad countermoves by their agents. Indeed, both stars fired their agents during their battles with Warner Bros. Cagney licensed his brother to represent him and gained greater control of his career in his new contract: story approval, the right to work on outside pictures, and a strong say in picking his collaborators. Davis hired and fired M. C. Levee and, briefly, the Selznick agency. When one of Feldman’s field agents

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thought to approach Davis at this time, Feldman advised against it.13 He knew when to back off.

The SAG Franchise In 1938, after years of battles between union leaders and studio executives, the U.S. Labor Relations Board recognized the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) as the official bargaining entity for actors. That action certified the standing of other key Hollywood guilds—namely, those for writers and directors—as well.14 Since the status of and rationale for agents remained so closely tied to the role of talent in the studio system, securing relationships with the various talent guilds would consolidate the agent’s official function in the studio system. Thus in 1938 the Artists’ Managers Guild (AMG), the official trade organization for agents (a group formed to facilitate negotiations with the talent guilds), began discussing a franchise proposal with SAG.15 The negotiations led to a ten-year agreement between agents and SAG, and accords with the other guilds quickly followed. More important, as with the public forums surrounding the NRA’s research and the academy’s committee on agents, these negotiations offered a platform from which agents could expand and hone the definition of their craft. Here again agents validated, legitimized, and even constructed a need for their presence. The negotiations began with a showdown, as the guilds obstinately stuck to a proposal for one-year contracts between talent and agent. Harold Swanson joined the organization of about twenty-five agents (reluctantly, for he didn’t want to pay the membership fee) and explained the situation to his New York partners in October 1938: I have been forced to join the Artists Managers Guild. Every agent in Hollywood who does any kind of business (meaning 24 in all) has banded together this week to meet an alarming situation. The Directors Guild, the Screen Writers Guild and the Actors Guild have all tried to throttle agents within the last thirty days. They have tried to put through provisions which are really laughable. For instance, if any writer under contract to me should feel that I am handling too many writers, all he has to do is to complain to their board of arbitration that I have not returned his telephone calls promptly enough, and this means I am too busy to properly service him. . . . If this provision is really made effective, I am going to close my office, lie in the sun and let the rats eat my shoes.16

The formation of this agent organization initially caused friction with other agents in town, those who did not deal with enough clients to wield any

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clout. These minor agents complained to the press and the Labor Relations Board, until finally the AMG opened its doors to them (members had to earn more than $50,000 per year from the business and turn over 2 percent of its income to the guild as a membership fee). The major studios and new talent guilds had battled throughout most of the 1930s. The Directors Guild, for example, pushed for greater control for directors of various phases of production. These negotiations became complicated because of the status of various directors, those, for example, who supervised second unit production (action sequences, for example, that the credited director frequently did not supervise directly) or production supervisors, whose status split their affiliation between producer and director. Agents got entangled in this mess when the producers, in a rhetorical and political maneuver, questioned “the possible conflict between collective bargaining by an organization, and individual bargaining through agents for that organization’s members.”17 In another strange development in the mid-1930s the academy flirted with the concept of a separate official branch for agents. In a letter to several agents dated July 1, 1935, Donald Gledhill, executive secretary of the academy, proposed a voluntary organization for an “Agents Section in the Academy”: As I see it, the functions of the Agents Section in the Academy would be entirely apart from any associations such as have been attempted from time to time in the past. I have not yet submitted this proposal to our officials or Board as I wanted first to be sure of the support of a number of agents who have most to do with the freelance actor contracts.18

That last line betrayed the true reasons for the proposal. The academy, which was still struggling to gain legitimacy as an official industry organization, sought to increase its membership by appealing to freelance actors and secondary players. Gledhill explained that the real purpose of this proposal was to “to mobilize the friendly interest of a number of the agents in advance of some definite move to bring more free lance players into the Academy.”19 The academy thought that by targeting agencies that handled a large number of secondary actors, their agents, once officially part of the academy, could convince these lesser actors to join as well. The plan fizzled out. At any rate, with the recognition of the guilds as bargaining units, the academy finally backed out of labor struggles. The agents’ discussion of the various terms of the proposed agreement with SAG, recorded in detailed transcripts from their October 12, 1938, guild meeting, reveals both how agents defined their role in the industry and how they imagined this role might develop.20

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On the issue of contracts, for example, agents clarified a new definition that underlined the necessity of their services and functions. SAG’s initial proposal limited all contracts between actors and agents to one year, allowing the actor to terminate the contract at four-month intervals if the agent failed to deliver any prospective jobs. All the agents at the AMG meeting objected strongly to this clause, and their opposition demonstrated how agents articulated their services. As the representative for the William Morris Agency explained in a lengthy statement, the one-year limit deprived the actor of “the kind of management which looks ahead over a period of years and plans accordingly,” thereby defining an advisory role for agents. This definition framed agents as career counselors, not merely employment seekers. Furthermore, agents pointed out that the one-year stipulation would encourage agents to sign actors to long-term studio contracts (securing employment) within the year; this incentive would cancel out efforts to procure potentially more lucrative freelance deals that could risk losing the actor during the four-month termination period. Agents rhetorically positioned themselves, then, as nurturing and shaping a career, a process that might entail short-term decisions likely to pay off in the long run of a career. As evidence, the Morris representative cited cases where agents “developed” talent through radio and stage performances for a year or more as a way of working on the actor’s craft before subjecting her or him to studio auditions. The agents repeatedly claimed to have built unknowns into a saleable personality and that their own investment—from the time and skills involved in crafting a personality to waiving early commissions or even loaning money to a client—should be protected through the promise of future earnings. As successful agencies grew, they had to reconfigure their presentation of themselves as a personal services business and deal with their expanding bureaucracy. SAG’s initial proposal betrayed a certain anxiety about the growing structural magnitude and complexity of agencies. In order to strictly enforce the personal services definition of the agent, SAG proposed that agency contracts specify who would handle a client’s business, adding, “in the event that such person or persons cease to be active in said agency, then at the actor’s option he may terminate the contract.” As many agents argued, their organizations or corporations frequently divided studios among their representatives, thereby splitting the representation of clients among many agents. The clause proposed by SAG flew in the face of such practices. The SAG clause addressed the fear that, with increasing corporate complexity, individuals would get lost in a labyrinthine organizational structure, a particularly acute anxiety for actors, of course, who marketed

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their individuality. But this clause would also give individual actors control to essentially dictate the personnel of an agency, for major clients could terminate their contract if an agency decided to fire their specified agent. Still, the notion of specifying a central agent as a client’s general handler or point person seemed reasonable to most agents (without the termination clause), since most agencies practiced such a strategy on an informal basis. The proposed clause (eventually dropped) and this debate illustrated the concern about balancing a corporation’s interests with those of the individual client. The thirteenth article of the franchise agreement revealed a crucial definition of the agent’s role, especially in the studio era when long-term contracts would seemingly eliminate the agent’s services after securing employment for clients. This paragraph argued that the agent’s work extended beyond that of obtaining employment for the client and included representing the client’s interests at the studio (proper roles, proper scripts, working hours, or working with other leading talent) and advancing “the client’s professional interests.” Almost all the agents at the AMG meeting acknowledged that this function highlighted one of the primary duties of their profession. However, in relation to this clause (and some other clauses with similar wording) agents objected to any expectations of their availability on a whim at all hours. Given the temperament of actors and creative types, agents rightly balked at such wording. Feldman’s long response to this clause, in the spirit of agreement, reveals some of the practices of agents in the studio system. For example, Feldman points out how the agent’s job required walking a fine line between representing a client’s grievances and alienating the producer, who, after all, could work with the agent’s other clients and whose relationship must therefore be protected. In the delicate social world of the Hollywood studio system, consistent intervention on the agent’s part could sour the company’s support for the artist. Furthermore, Feldman noted that an agent’s power to represent a client’s interests beyond the level of employment (i.e., demand a tea break, for example, for an artist during production) was limited by the star power of the client: “An agent who represents a great many important artists in the business is able to invoke certain concessions for the artist independent of the artist’s contract with the studio, nevertheless there are a great many other artists for whom the studio will not agree to any concessions or modifications, and invariably resents the intervention of an agent.” Feldman, however, raised a question about this clause, more in terms of problems it might raise in the exceptional case of “packages” than in connection with the fixed compensation percentage. Revealing his keen insight into the variables presented by the playing field, Feldman floated the notion

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that commissions should be allowed to vary in the case of “packages”: “An agent, in order to procure work for the client, may very well gamble and attempt to line up a group of unemployed artists and attempt to dispose of the services of such artists in package form because he has been unable to dispose of the artist as an individual” (emphasis added). In this circumstance, Feldman argued, the agent compensated the talent (usually writers) for their creative contribution to the package or because the talent required money to survive while the agent shopped the package to studios. The agent acted here as a de facto producer, gambling—sometimes with his own money—on signing a deal for the show (and risking losing his own investment). In such cases, Feldman asked rhetorically, “Should the agent in an effort to procure work for these people who otherwise could not get employment, be put in a position where he cannot become an employer of the artist by taking an employer’s independent gamble and becoming entitled to whatever may be a reasonable stipend under such consideration?” This statement is as tangled in melodrama (the monetarily maligned agent) as in syntax (betraying Feldman’s roots as a lawyer). But deciphering its logic reveals a great deal. For one thing, Feldman clearly recognized the power of the package deal, that is, of leveraging a script by attaching the right combination of talent, when the individual elements could not sell a project on their own. For another, Feldman did not see (or, more likely, chose to conveniently ignore) the problem of allowing an agent to act as a producer (as he would do himself). In this situation an agent might be induced to steer his clients into packages whose risk and reward might be more than, say, a short-term studio contract, but whose rewards for the agent would prove far greater than a studio contract. The very possibility of allowing agents to act as both producer and agent would breach the element of trust entailed in their contractual relationship. Hence, the last article in the franchise agreement addressed this crucial question facing agents and clients, namely, the potential of the agent-producer. This clause strictly prohibited agents to act simultaneously as employers of talent. But the article provided an escape clause: SAG would grant special waivers, upon review, for agents to act as producers. This clause strictly defined an agent by specifying that an agent could not act as an employer of talent because this crossed a line. Most agents agreed to this clause, with some suggesting that this stipulation was fundamental to the nature of an agent. One agent even argued that this clause should be written into the AMG bylaws. Those agents who opposed this principle all resorted to similar rhetoric, claiming that limiting the agent in this way ultimately hurt their clients. Feldman, and Jules Stein of Music Corporation of America argued that agents

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often invest money in the development of talent (thereby acting as their employer) or retain talent by paying them until a good deal comes along. In such cases an agent often collected more than the traditional 10 percent. In other cases, Feldman pointed out, agents created production companies in order to employ clients who had been turned down by all the studios. Feldman deflects attention from the rewards offered to the agent in such cases (very likely greater than the standard 10 percent commission) by focusing on the dexterous business dealings created by the agent in service to his client. Shifting the focus in this way blurred the real problem here, namely, the conflict of interest presented by the agent working as or with the employer. With their successful alliance with SAG and the other major guilds, agents strengthened their presence in the Hollywood market. The franchise agreements once again homed in on the issue of character and ethics—that is, specifying procedures and definitions of behavior, services, and even identity (the agent as distinguished from the producer, for example)—as forms for accreditation and evaluation. Agents defined their profession through moments or occasions—the negotiation, the transaction—and through relationships—with the client, with producers—so the ephemeral nature of their profession, a definitive part of their character, raised suspicions. Delimiting the job clearly escaped most, and regulating agents necessarily required defining and confining behavior at certain moments; in turn, the job of the agent changed to meet the demands of each situation. For the immediate representation of a particular talent, agents worked according to a service logic, addressing the needs of their clients and performing intermediary work. For their operations as a multifaceted business structure tailored to the complexity of their market, namely, serving myriad executives at a variety of studios, agents fashioned and refined their function in terms of a transactional network of activities, passing on responsibilities to the nexus of the agency as a whole. Each characterization served different demands of their enterprise, dealing with clients and dealing with studios. Through these negotiations, which were less contentious than the NRA or academy debates but ripe with similar challenges, agents once again fashioned and firmed up their role in the industry.

Coordinating Contracts Myron Selznick responded to the agency-SAG agreement with characteristic belligerence. Still rankled by the debates about the franchise negotiations and embittered by the attacks from the producers, Selznick rattled off a

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caustic letter addressed to the major studio heads, mocking their success and failure simultaneously. Running along the top of the letter, above “Dear Joe, L.B., Darryl, et al,” came the letter’s wildest lines: “AN OPEN LETTER TO THE DICTATORS.” The letter proper began by framing the SAG franchise agreement with the agents as a victory for the producers by relating it to earlier attempts to legislate or regulate agents: You have had few compliments from me, but I really must congratulate you on your maneuvering abilities and on your foresight. You must be having quite a good laugh up your sleeves, or maybe out loud, about the curious behavior of the actors in desiring to license the agents, and I can’t begrudge you the laugh.

Setting aside the sarcasm (since Selznick remained a participant with these studio heads at regular card games), how Selznick could read the franchise agreement as some sort of triumph for the studios, which opposed the formation of SAG and the other talent guilds, made sense only in the context of his thoroughly paranoid worldview. It held no weight in relation to the legal and transactional boost the franchise added to routine negotiations, and the authoritative and political recognition that talent and their representatives gained as a result. When the letter shifted to a boasting and vituperative summary of Selznick’s victorious career as an agent, the defensiveness further betrayed the author’s pugnacious personality: I have told you that I was not interested in your complaints about the millions of dollars I had cost you; and that I intended to continue on my merry way, cooking up schemes in the solitude of Arrowhead, or wherever else I happened to be, to force you to pay the actors and other artists of this business in accordance with the dividends that they brought you. You have been repeatedly maddened by what you termed my businesslike tactics, my absences, the powerful weapon against you of the number of people I was handling, and all the other things which you warned me you intended to change by one means or another. And I have told you in reply that I was working only for my clients, and that they were satisfied with the millions of dollars that I had brought to them through my own perhaps peculiar methods, countless millions of dollars that, prior to my advent on the scene, you had been able to avoid paying them through your systemized and orderly control of the business and through your ability by one means or another to stop dead in his tracks anyone who challenged your supreme powers. I was cheered on in my fight against you not merely by my own clients, but by countless other artists of this business who realized that whether they were represented by my office or someone else, their current compensation and working conditions were due, in very large part, to the fight I had waged and to the standards that I had established for my own clients.

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I must concede that you tried everything within your power to “reform” me. In vain you cajoled me, you “reasoned” with me, you threatened me. You were more successful when you played poker with me than when you barred me or threatened to bar me. I persisted, on the theory that I was your natural commercial enemy, and that my side was that of the actors and other artists, and that my job was to do the best I could for them regardless of how you felt about it.21

Very likely, Selznick never sent the letter, a good thing since the hysterical rant made little sense. In fact, the talent guilds empowered artists—and thereby empowered agents. The mildly vexed negotiations between the guild of screen actors and the agents made it easy to overlook what agents won in and through the franchise alliances with the guilds. These accords established certain fundamental principles for employment and required recognition by the producers. They guaranteed particular working conditions, setting a base of contractual standards on which agents could build in their negotiations on behalf of their clients.22 In fact, Cagney finally settled his case with Warner Bros. immediately after his agent (brother William) met with a SAG official, who suggested a settlement as good public relations for the industry (which William, his lawyer, the SAG leader, and Warner Bros. executives vowed to keep secret from Cagney).23 Contracts depended on a system of reliable and regular economic exchange and negotiation. A contract only formalized, always somewhat imperfectly, the routine relationships established by transactions within a market or industry. Those involving agents—the negotiations for the conditions agreed upon by talent and the employer—came from a system of talent representatives whose interests and duties coincided with particular functions necessary to the studio system: finding talent, coordinating the contributions of talent, matching talent with other talent and with appropriate projects, even finding potential projects (story ideas and literary properties). The franchise agreement between the talent guilds and agents firmed up this network, even if it had already established itself in the daily routine of Hollywood business. For the franchise agreement represented yet another contract, a blanket set of stipulations agreed upon by licensed talent agents and the guilds, which likewise contracted with the studios for support of the guild terms and conditions. Even at the most basic level of organizing, managing, and tracking contracts in this industry, agents served a crucial maintenance function. In any average year in the 1930s the six to eight major and minor studios held more than six hundred contracts with key talent, stars and supporting

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players, writers, directors, and producers. Each contract required negotiation by agents, as well as updating, revision, and monitoring. To top it off, one industry survey calculated that between 1933 and 1939, the major studios loaned to each other about two thousand actors, directors, and writers.24 Even if these loans did not involve some level of negotiation and bargaining—usually handled by agents—they required a diligent accounting, patrolling, and monitoring of contracts. Even at this level—steering contracts, maintaining records, updating files, recording new contractual deals in the loan-outs—agents provided a service in coordinating the trades and loan-outs, let alone maintaining the original contracts. Consider the following casting lists from a select number of Warner Bros. films in the early 1940s: Casablanca (1942) Contract Players Humphrey Bogart Paul Henreid Madelein LeBeau

Outsiders Ingrid Bergman Claude Rains Conrad Veidt Sydney Greenstreet Peter Lorre S. Z. Sakall Dooley Wilson Joy Page John Qualen Leonid Kinskey

Desperate Journey (1942) Contract Players Errol Flynn Ronald Reagan Nancy Coleman Raymond Massey Alan Hale Arthur Kennedy Richard Fraser Karen Verne Harry Lewis

Outsiders Ronald Sinclair Albert Bassermann Sig Rumann Patrick O’Moore Felix Basch Ilka Gruning Else Bassermann Charles Irwin Robert O. Davis

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Henry Victor Bruce Lester Lester Matthews

Watch on the Rhine (1943) Contract Players Bette Davis Geraldine Fitzgerald

Outsiders Paul Lukas Lucille Watson Beulah Bondi George Coulouris Donald Woods Henry Daniell Donald Buka Eric Roberts Clarence Muse Frank Wilson

Air Force (1943) Contract Players John Ridgely Gig Young Arthur Kennedy Charles Drake George Tobias Ward Wood Ray Montgomery John Garfield Bill Crago Faye Emerson

Outsiders Harry Carey James Brown Stanley Ridges Willard Robertson Moroni Olsen Edward Brophy Richard Lane Addison Richards James Flavin

As these lists demonstrate, contract players—for all the internal managerial security they offered to the studios, guaranteeing the service of star talent— required a slew of players outside the studio to fill out the cast in their production. The “outsiders”—as characterized by these Warner Bros. memos— could not command any special conditions or exceptional terms for their services, as could stars like Colbert or Stanwyck or directors like Hawks or

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McCarey. But the services of these outsiders still required the efficient machinery offered by the agency syndicate. In tracking down these players Warner Bros. relied upon routine contacts with agents; in checking for their availability the studio counted on the system of operations (client notebooks, scheduling) provided by agents, as it did for scheduling and for the maintenance of contracts, particularly after conclusion of the franchise agreements between agents and the guilds. For example, M. C. Levee managed Claude Rains, Paul Kohner handled the bit players S. Z. Sakall and Felix Basch, Max Shagrin was Charles Irwin’s agent, Frank Vincent managed Willard Robertson, and so on. Contract players alone entailed complicated coordination of their contributions to particular productions (and, very often, their coordinated contributions resulted from continual negotiations for and revisions of their contracts). To take just one example of hundreds, Paramount rescheduled Hands across the Table more than ten times in 1935, entailing the reassignment of various assets, like Carole Lombard, as well as changing the schedule for her subsequent pictures (as well as renegotiating details of her contract).25 The “outsiders” listed earlier counted upon a regularized form of contact and communication with an “outsider” system—the agency syndicate—in order to ensure smooth coordination and contracting of the creative talent necessary to fill out a production. Davis needed a crew of outsiders, for instance, to complete her work in Now Voyager (or any film production). Holding all those “outsiders” for use on films through long-term contracts was too expensive. Moreover, the agents, by taking on the patrol duties for clients and their scheduling, their contracts, their goals and ambitions, allowed for and maintained a flexibility within the studio system. Thus at this entry level the studios relied upon agents to serve this need, even if this same syndicate allowed powerful innovators like Feldman and Selznick to bargain for stronger contract terms on behalf of their more powerful clients. In 1938 Fortune magazine confidently described agents as fulfilling a crucial managerial position within the Hollywood infrastructure. The agent, the journalistic arbiter of business culture determined, “performs a valid economic service—that in any business as sprawling, loose, and disjointed as show business there must be an intermediary between the possessors of talent and the users of talent.”26 Sprawling. Loose. Disjointed. The agency syndicate made the studio system more concentrated, tighter, and conjoined. By networking with the studios through regular and routine interactions, agents organized the otherwise disorganized. They provided a set of contact mechanisms—client lists, phone calls, routine meetings with studio executives—that concentrated the channels of communication between creative

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talent and studios. Incoming talent—at least those with less stardust in their eyes—knew where, for example, to focus their efforts in gaining entry to the studios: talent agents. And studios turned to agents as gatekeepers to direct the process of weeding out talent or focusing supplicants’ interests and developing them for the system. More significantly, studios relied upon agencies to keep track of talent, fill components of their productions, and aid in managing and controlling the contracts that constituted the development of film productions. Outside and within, loose and linked, the monumental Hollywood studio system, and its vast array of contracts, relied upon another system: the subsystem of talent agents.

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In 1938, to house his growing talent agency, Myron Selznick financed the construction of a luxurious, modernistic one-story office building, a big investment and a conspicuous symbol of his success. One article called it a “showplace in the land of showplaces.”1 Laid out in a circle, with Selznick’s office at the center, and the general work area surrounding the core, the design provoked the writer-client Harry Kurnitz to crack, “All this place needs is an electric rabbit.”2 It didn’t need one. In Hollywood circles everyone knew that Selznick was winning the race; his office was widely recognized as far and away the top Hollywood talent agency. At the time the agency valued its assets at more than $1 million, defining them as resources “exclusive of good will, representation contracts and other intangibles.”3 These latter values, commissions owed on contracts and unofficial affiliations—“good will”—with producers and studios, however “intangible,” if measurable by bankers, would skyrocket the company’s worth many times the specified million in tangible assets. From 1935, the year of Frank Joyce’s death, to 1940, the agency’s operating overhead alone surpassed $600,000 a year, and the payroll grew to more than forty people.4 The agency justifiably claimed to offer its clients “the most extensive and thorough facilities of any agency in the State of California, including legal counsel and accounting assistance and all phases of business and general service,” practices that distinguished the Selznick operation from its competitors and served to increase its clients’ dependence on the agency.5 Increasingly, this legal counsel and business advice structured the very deals that agents struck for those clients carrying serious clout with the studios, namely, major stars and leading directors. And while the talent agency maintained a New York office that covered a select number of stage performers and occasionally negotiated radio deals, such arenas accounted for 144

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Figure 8. The Sweet Space of Success: Myron Selznick designed and constructed a new agency office in 1938, streamlining the flow of information exchange and translating his conception of business operations into a spatial arrangement. Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin.

only about 3 percent of its gross receipts, with 97 percent stemming from film.6 In other words, even with the strong role radio played in American culture and the central role Broadway maintained in theater, the Selznick agency saw no need to expand into these areas. Agencies like William Morris and Music Corporation of America may have dominated radio and theater, but Selznick maintained the competitive leverage he had secured as a pioneer in the Hollywood market. In the late 1930s his agency was still

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home to the top talent in the business: William Powell, George Raft, Myrna Loy, Carole Lombard, Pat O’Brien, Adolphe Menjou, Ginger Rogers, Olivia de Havilland, Loretta Young, Ann Sheridan, Claire Trevor, Fred Astaire, Fredric March, Victor McLaglen, Laurence Olivier, and Henry Fonda, among others.7 Director-clients like Lewis Milestone, George Cukor, William Wyler, Gregory La Cava, William Wellman, and John Cromwell were sought after by studios, as were writers like Ben Hecht, Dudley Nichols, Robert Riskin, and Gene Fowler, all ranking among the highest-paid practitioners in their profession.8 Thus Myron Selznick stood in a prime position to leverage his power—the power of his agency, the power of his clients, and the power that came from their deals. Capitalizing on his industrial-strength clients, Selznick recognized opportunities for new deal models in the evolving Hollywood industry of the late 1930s. His creativity, business acumen, and power were manifested in his push for percentages for his clients, his “packaging” of clients on the same film productions (thereby multiplying the agency’s commissions as well), and his initial forays into developing independent production companies. The number of marketable clients in Selznick’s stable made all three of these major developments possible. A measure of the agency’s vitality can be discerned in the restructuring of its leader’s annual income. By the late 1930s Selznick earned an annual salary of $130,000, in addition to the company’s net profits, which usually came to $100,000 to $140,000 more, placing his total income on par with that of leading studio executives’—indeed, beyond the realm of many of them and beyond that of most of his clients’.9 Changes in the country’s tax laws in 1936—when higher tax brackets cut into the earnings of the wealthy—eventually prompted a reorganization of Selznick’s operations. Because he still had two separate enterprises on the books, Selznick liquidated Myron Selznick and Company (his original agency)—the accumulated earnings of the company would have required the corporation to declare a dividend to Selznick, which would have been taxable at 81 percent (in addition to other complicated taxes related to new revenue acts). By dissolving one company, reorganizing the two as a corporation, and transferring the value to Selznick, he reduced his tax burden to about 20 percent of his income. His accountants estimated that the new corporate structure would save Selznick more than $200,000 in the next five years. Part of the restructuring involved eliminating Selznick’s weekly salary and instead amortizing his percentage of collected commissions (paying him in installments). His accountant explained that the new structure would allow him to “charge off” $207,000 (including the amortization of contracts of

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$100,000) against an income of $108,000, rendering him not liable for income taxes.10 These new tax laws fed into innovations in the deals proffered for Selznick’s clients as well. Thanks to the same savvy advice offered to the agency in its corporate restructuring, many of Selznick’s clients developed new contracts with the studios, in financial frameworks that would lead to changes in the overall business practices of Hollywood—in salary structures, profit distribution, and actual production schedules. In the last arena, for example, many directors and actors cut their workload to avoid entering a higher tax bracket or they dispersed their salary through percentage deals or long-term payments. Likewise, the agency’s business management division encouraged and enabled profligate clients like Errol Flynn, for instance, to establish trust funds to set aside and manage some of his income.11 In another typical case from this period, the business division suggested that Henry Fonda should work on a British production to reduce his tax burden; it also offered advice about his securities and savings accounts. Such personal management and creative accounting dovetailed nicely with the agency’s drive to establish percentage deals for its clients.12 Thus Selznick or one of his agents might negotiate a percentage deal, entailing the stratified or delayed disbursal of funds, whose distribution would be monitored by the business division, which may have suggested such a deal in the first place— a circuitous flow but the agency made money in almost every direction. This concern for tax structures and salary distribution transformed production circumstances as well, since clients considered future taxes when weighing an offer. Most often such a calculation supported a reduced workload for clients as a way of avoiding the higher income tax brackets. By amortizing salary payments—either through dispersed salary distribution (so, instead of receiving, say, $100,000 for a picture, a client received $50,000 per year for two years) or through a percentage of the box office—clients avoided paying higher taxes on their income. Selznick played a key role in encouraging or assisting clients to develop their own production units because they carried certain tax benefits, as did working in England and Europe (through deals set up by the agency’s London office). For example, in 1938 the agency floated a deal to Paramount wherein the studio would fund British productions run by Gregory La Cava and split the profits 50– 50 with the director-client. Because England did not tax profits or capital gains on such income, and the rate in the United States for such income was only 15 percent, the agency’s business division structured the deal it was proffering so that La Cava would split his profits and taxes between U.S. and British residency. Another deal on the table involved a La Cava–Paramount

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British production with Gary Cooper, dividing the profits among all three partners.13 Thus the changing tax laws of 1936 and the agency’s new business division fueled new deal structures, linked clients more tightly to their agencies, and altered some of the general production practices of Hollywood.

Percentages, Packages, and Production Plans Selznick began structuring percentage deals for his clients in the early 1930s. His 1932 memo regarding important points to watch for in studio contracts included profit percentages—but it ranked only twenty-seventh, below such items as “wardrobe” and “commercial advertising.” Still, by the mid-1930s Selznick was crafting box-office percentage points in a number of striking arrangements for a handful of his clients; by the late 1930s such deals increased, and Selznick began implementing key strategies for carving out stronger percentage arrangements within the Hollywood business structure. Charles Feldman’s various percentage deals matched Selznick’s and provided a competitive paradigm for the two agents, as well as reinforcing the potential for such practices on the part of their competitors. Changes in Hollywood business practices supported and perhaps even stimulated these arrangements: new independent production companies; the growing power of labor; and an emboldened studio system that, ironically, allowed for a certain assured flexibility in its operations. Percentage deals often developed in connection with the mid-decade flourishing of independent production companies like those established by the pioneer Samuel Goldwyn, and the newcomers David O. Selznick and Walter Wanger, whose production companies were linked to major studio distribution deals. These smaller companies swapped profit participation for lower weekly salaries, which gave them a way to reduce the immediate costs of acquiring talent by cutting them in on some of the risks and rewards. With the industry revitalized by the mid-1930s, as companies like Paramount and Universal climbed out of their financial doldrums, even the major studios recognized the merits of such percentage arrangements. In certain cases, then, the studios acknowledged the advantages of profit-percentage or short-term picture deals since they allowed the companies to attract talent without spending too much money upfront. This willingness to traffic in new modes of contractual transactions resonated with the general economic and political climate in the United States in the second half of the 1930s. As the economist John Kenneth Galbraith later observed, one lasting effect of the New Deal was the way it imple-

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mented “countervailing power,” that is, its encouragement of labor and small business owners to exercise their power in a way that would restore some equilibrium to the marketplace by countering big business.14 No coincidence, then, that Feldman and Selznick—among other agents—began ratcheting up the number of freelance and percentage deals in this period. It seems that the studios’ executive boards in New York relaxed their hold on talent, aware of the economic benefits to the studio, by approving deals that conceded to some of the demands of their “employees,” the big-name stars and directors. If New Deal spirit alone failed to sway the New York offices, they had other incentives related to the Department of Justice’s impending antitrust investigation of the major studios, which haunted the industry in the late 1930s. In an effort to make the case go away, the major studios eventually signed a consent decree with the government in 1940 that limited block booking (that is, requiring theaters to acquire and show films sight unseen) to five pictures—among other concessions—a practice that played into some of the new production practices, reducing, for example, the releases of major star vehicles (thereby escalating the value of stars). Certainly, conflicts between talent and studios continued during these years, but the “countervailing” trend that emerged in the late 1930s was an increase in the number of innovative deals unveiled by agents. Moreover, with the legal recognition of the various talent guilds as official labor representatives in 1938, both sides, moguls and talent, found all the more reason to amp up their efforts to establish some equity in the industry’s working conditions and, to a degree, its remuneration. Here, the local stories of Feldman and Selznick, their individual achievements, their innovative deals, their in-thetrenches perspective on Hollywood business, rejoin the larger narrative of agents and institutional forces, the dealings with the academy, the NRA, and the Labor Relations Board. In the post-NRA climate Hollywood studios, like many other U.S. businesses, yielded to some demands of their employees— the same period in which Feldman, Selznick, and other agents produced some of their most creative contracts. Some of Selznick’s earliest experiments in this vein came through independent companies. In 1931 he contracted Lewis Milestone, for example, to receive 50 percent of the net profits on Howard Hughes’s independently financed The Front Page. But the film failed to make enough money for the percentages to kick in. Selznick also pursued early percentage deals for client William Wellman and for an independent production partnership—ultimately abandoned—between David O. Selznick and Milestone.15 By the mid-1930s Selznick found more opportunities for percentage deals in independent productions like 1934’s Becky Sharp. The contract that Selznick

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negotiated for Miriam Hopkins guaranteed her $60,000 for eight weeks plus 10 percent of the gross over $800,000.16 In a similar strategy the agency arranged a contract for Hopkins in a theatrical production of Jezebel that granted her 10 percent of its sale price for any movie rights. Thus when Warner Bros. purchased the play in 1935 for $15,000, Hopkins took her cut, if not any role in the film. Other instances of Selznick’s early percentage deals sprang from headstrong talent—Katharine Hepburn, for example. In 1933, her first year with RKO (where Feldman had scored some of his most conspicuous deals), Hepburn, Selznick, and his associate Leland Hayward negotiated an addition to her contract that granted her 12.5 percent of the gross over double the negative cost (for example, if production costs amounted to $175,000, Hepburn would begin to participate after the box office had taken in $350,000).17 In 1934 Selznick and Hayward negotiated a new Hepburn contract that called for a stratified percentage share of the grosses. The contract guaranteed Hepburn six pictures in two years, and she would receive $50,000 for each film. In addition, the contract promised Hepburn the following percentages of the box-office returns for each picture: 5 percent from $600,000 to $700,000; 7.5 percent from $750,000 to $1 million; and 11 percent for everything over $1 million. In later years Hayward negotiated new per-picture salaries for Hepburn that jumped from $60,000 to $100,000 while maintaining the structure for her profit participation. In 1938, after a string of disappointing box-office results, Hepburn and RKO tore up her contract. The Selznick agency continued to negotiate on Hepburn’s behalf as her representatives fought with RKO about the percentage points owed to Hepburn on films not yet released and on re-releases of her earlier work. While Hepburn’s RKO contract failed to completely pay off, this percentage contract developed a strong template for similar deals in the future. Moreover, the agency pursued stronger deals for Hepburn after the severance. Leland Heyward entered discussions with David Selznick about an independent production with Hepburn as Amelia Earhart and Howard Hawks as director. The proposition involved no upfront salaries for Hepburn and Hawks, with the pair taking a 20 percent stake in the net profits.18 This deal failed to pan out, but it showed that Hepburn and her agents didn’t wither away after their RKO experience. In fact, Hepburn gained more control of her contracts for subsequent productions like Holiday (Columbia, 1938) and The Philadelphia Story (MGM, 1940). Fredric March went freelance in the mid-1930s with the help of Selznick’s agency. March had commanded a strong studio contract, giving him additional salary on loan-outs and some say in the process. As a free-

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lancer, March jumped from productions like Hal Roach’s There Goes My Heart (1938), for which he earned $150,000, to Walter Wanger’s Trade Winds (1938), for which the actor traded his usual salary of $12,500 per week (on a six-week production) and 7.5 percent of the gross for a salary of $750,000 and 10 percent of the gross over $1 million. This deal netted March more than $110,000 from his percentage participation, a significant sum. Also, the disbursement of this money in small sums each year kept the actor out of the higher tax brackets, enabling him to keep a far greater part of his earnings for the film. By the early 1940s the agency made it known that March was available for 7.5 percent of the distributor’s gross and a salary of about $150,000 per picture—half upfront.19 March’s deal gave him 12.5 percent of the profits “based on a maximum negative cost of $655,000 (or less), regardless of what the picture may actually cost.” In other words, if the film went over budget, the excess would not eat into March’s percentage share. Contractual stipulations like this one—or, for example, limiting the fees the studio charged for distribution (another cut out of profits)—were required in the innovative percentage deals being worked out by the agency at this time. Such details were necessary once clients swapped their upfront salaries for percentage shares. As Fred Astaire gained more success with his films, Hayward and Selznick negotiated a percentage deal into his RKO contract. In 1936 the studio agreed to rework his contract, increasing his salary to $3,000 per week, with a $10,000 bonus for each completed picture. As a reward for signing the new contract, even though it granted Astaire new concessions insisted on by his agents, he received $50,000 in cash immediately and $25,000 more the following year. More important, the agents got Astaire 5 percent of a film’s take after $1.2 million, 7.5 percent after $1.5 million, and 10 percent of everything over $2 million.20 The new contract allowed Astaire to slow his pace and take greater control of his films (he limited the number of vehicles in which he was paired with Ginger Rogers, for example), choreographing successful productions like Swing Time (1936) and Shall We Dance (1937). Clients like Joan Bennett, Kay Francis, and John Cromwell had Selznick agents juggling nonexclusive contracts, loan-outs, and single-picture deals, all while commanding healthy salaries and some say about their roles. The agency set Bennett up at Paramount for The Texans (at $7,000 per week) and with independent Walter Wanger for Trade Winds (for the same terms), while the agents arranged deals at MGM and Paramount during Kay Francis’s layoffs at Warner Bros., expanding the artistic range of these actresses and their choice of projects. When Cromwell left RKO, the agency

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set the director up at SIP, with the right to take on one outside picture each year. These examples, just a small selection, from major and even fairly minor talents, demonstrate how artists could tap into their successes to carve out levels of creative control—sometimes fleeting moments but other times long-lasting careers of relative autonomy, like Astaire’s or Leo McCarey’s. Directors jumped on the percentage train as well. In director-client McCarey’s 1938 RKO contract the agency carved out a 25 percent share of the profits made by his films. In 1939 the agents added the stipulation that McCarey’s pictures “could not . . . be charged with more than 20% for overhead and 20% for distribution.”21 This clause protected McCarey’s percentage shares by ensuring that RKO would not eat away at the profits by charging its regular rates for distribution (a corporate division that charged the corporation for these costs). These strong percentage deals on McCarey’s Love Affair (1939) and My Favorite Wife (1940) established a strong basis for McCarey’s future contracts. They enabled the director to have greater choice of material and stronger control of his productions, from scheduling to selecting writers to editing. For Love Affair McCarey pocketed 25 percent of the take after the film achieved a net profit of $143,332, and did so again on My Favorite Wife after $208,000, all on top of his salary of $75,000 per picture. Client Janet Gaynor’s 1937 contract for the independent production A Star Is Born gave her 10 percent of the distributor’s gross until the amount reached $100,000. Once the film entered net profits, the contract stipulated that Gaynor would receive 10 percent of the net and capped her take at $50,000.22 Produced by brother David’s Selznick International Productions, the film featured numerous clients in key positions: William Wellman directed, and the cast included Fredric March, Adolphe Menjou—both freelancers at the time—and Andy Devine. In drawing so strongly and singularly on the agency’s clientele, these two films illustrate the diffused network of production planning outside the studio base, intimately linking agents and studio supernumeraries. New arrangements like packaging— using multiple clients from a single agency—and independent productions were cannily linked to the pronounced rise in percentage deals in the late 1930s. However, this cozy casting should not be equated entirely with packaging, where an agent hawks a preconstituted team of clients to the studio. Instead, these films teemed with Selznick clients (as other films were packed with Feldman clients, for that matter) because of the formalized grapevine and regular contact between particular agents and specific studios, the sym-

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biotic syndicate that formed as much a part of the studio system as did the studio’s internal hierarchy of executives and employees. In most such cases an agent might sell a script or director to the studio, and these properties would clinch the deal. Then the agent—in the same meeting or phone call or in a subsequent machine-gun attack of memos—would suggest other clients for key roles in the project. Or, if a studio was looking for a female lead or a screenwriter for a project, the agent offering such prospective clients—regardless of the outcome of the initial deals—might throw some client names out for other available roles or positions on the project. Or, if one of the agency’s regular studio contacts inquired after a hot talent who proved unavailable, the agent then would launch into a campaign to sell another client’s absolute suitability for the role or project. Such sales pitches arose from the interfirm contacts that agencies established by assigning agents to studios, so that individual agents maintained regular relations with particular studios and their executives: Feldman’s, Berg’s, Jaffe’s, and Selznick’s foot soldiers met regularly with executives and producers like MGM’s Hunt Stromberg, Universal’s Charles Rogers, or RKO’s Sam Briskin, with any number of issues, clients, and projects on the agenda. Studios participated in such “narrow casting” because agents and their client lists reduced some of the labor of seeking out and training talent (moreover, they had production deadlines to fulfill). With more independent producers on the scene in the late 1930s and new financial arrangements being spawned in the studios, agents found more sales opportunities for such packaging. That mid-decade classic My Man Godfrey (1936) neatly exemplifies the innovative deals being struck in Hollywood at this time, illustrating how freelancers and agents cut new paths that complemented the so-called studio mode of production. No percentage points here and no package in the formal sense, My Man Godfrey was nonetheless a production pieced together from sources outside its corporate sponsor, Universal Studios, a process facilitated by an agent—Myron Selznick. This coordination supported the percentage deals and packaging that surfaced more regularly in the late 1930s, in Feldman’s offices, in Selznick’s, and with a few other agents. The mercurial Selznick client Gregory La Cava, a freelancing director, held My Man Godfrey together, serving, by contractual arrangement, as director, cowriter, and producer on the film, with William Powell, an MGM loan-out and Selznick client, in the starring role. Powell allegedly would agree to the part only if cast opposite his amicably exed wife, Carole Lombard, another Selznick stablemate and Paramount loan-out. Three

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Selznick clients, then, teamed up, through some complicated deal making, from various positions in the industry, to turn out a dazzling studio film for a company that lacked major stars and an exhibition wing. In aligning these creative forces the studio relied on a diffused managerial network, in this case with its executive entrusting decisions and allocating resources to and through an agent and his client (La Cava’s role as producer). This loose covenant served Universal in that it produced a starladen vehicle that would fill major theaters. In Hollywood math two loaners plus a freelancer added up to a commercial hit for Universal, perfectly illustrating the potency of the symbiotic relationship of agents and producers that constituted an important part of the studio system. With the need for product to fill their theater slates and release schedules, the New York studio offices gamely agreed to such complicated deals as percentage points, limited picture contracts, or even packaging, as with My Man Godfrey, Feldman’s handiwork on Warner’s Tovarich, or any dozen other cases. Indeed, Universal mobilized the stardom of Feldman’s Dunne and Colbert in the same fashion, namely, accessing stars in almost one-off arrangements, pacts that the stars exploited for their own gain, both professional and financial. As one Universal executive characterized the studio’s exploitation of loan-outs: “We at Universal are strong for the trading system. It is necessary for the lifeblood of the industry. It tends to break down any tendency for monopoly.”23 Of course, such trading represented the lifeblood for the “bloodsuckers” too, as Feldman and Selznick knew well. The success of Godfrey galvanized plans to develop an independent production deal for Lombard. The prospect excited Selznick’s brother and his production executives, as David spelled out in an internal office memo: I know that Myron is proceeding with plans to make a picture with Powell and Lombard on a percentage basis. I know, further, that Carole would be very excited about working up a proposition whereby Bill and she would do a percentage picture with us, as costars, possibly in a sequel to MY MAN GODFREY and possibly in some other subject. I believe that we could work out a deal whereby neither Powell nor Lombard received any salary whatsoever and simply took a percentage on the net, and offhand it is my belief that we could afford to give the pair of them 50% of the net, with perhaps Powell receiving 30% and Lombard 20%.24

Myron informed SIP, David’s production company, that Powell would cost $200,000 for ten weeks, topping Metro’s pay for Powell of $182,500 and matching Fox’s (though Fox used the actor for only about six weeks). More important, Myron refused to offer Powell until SIP presented an acceptable story.25 One never came.

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Figure 9. My Man Godfrey: Myron Selznick’s clients at work together, ca. 1936: Carole Lombard, William Powell, and director Gregory La Cava. Courtesy of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

SIP had been courting Lombard for quite some time, at least since 1935 when the actress is said to have told David Selznick that she wanted to work with SIP. David thought she was “on the high road to becoming another [Joan] Crawford,” even if she hadn’t “had a single important picture in her entire career.” In an internal 1935 memo to Jock Whitney, David assured his associate with a wink that “your fellow stockholder, Myron, will do everything possible to swing her toward us if we want her.”26 The line betrays more backroom humor than conspiracy, for when Myron finally negotiated a deal between these two parties, he did everything possible for Lombard. Carole Lombard’s contracts after Godfrey demonstrated how percentage deals arose through interstitial forces, both in terms of contracts and industrial powers (studios willing to pay and play the game). Lombard parlayed her successful turn in this film into a freelance arrangement and eventually a percentage deal that copied and advanced upon the paradigm set in Hepburn’s earlier arrangement. Lombard had struggled to gain ground at Paramount, as the studio tried out different roles for her in the first half of

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the decade—glamour, drama, and comedy—and occasionally loaned her to various studios. Lombard’s leading roles in Paramount’s Hands across the Table, for example, or the loan-out for Twentieth Century displayed her widely recognized knack for comedy, but neither of these films took off in a major way, although no one in Hollywood doubted her talent. Lombard’s renewal date on her Paramount contract, however, coincided with her success on My Man Godfrey. So, with a solid hit and an Academy Award nomination, Lombard, as Selznick knew, could strike at this opportune moment. Lombard entertained proposals from all the studios. That year Selznick arranged a new deal for Lombard with Paramount, for three pictures at $150,000 each, and the following year with David O. Selznick for three more at $175,000 each.27 And, like Feldman, Myron Selznick added another studio, Warner Bros., to Lombard’s overlapping contracts, one that granted her $150,000 for a single film.28 Lombard’s freelance status gained her greater say in selecting roles and creative collaborators, and in the production process, as well as more time to concentrate on her performances, in addition to her greater remuneration. Expanding on the comedic abilities she honed in Godfrey, Lombard embarked on more screwball roles in Nothing Sacred, a David O. Selznick independent production with agency comrades Fredric March and William Wellman, and True Confession, at Paramount, both in 1937, then, Fools for Scandal at Warner Bros. in 1938; in 1939 Lombard moved into two romantic dramas, Selznick’s Made for Each Other and RKO’s In Name Only, both directed by client John Cromwell. These roles came after career-planning conversations with her agents about the need to follow her string of comedies with some dramatic roles.29 In working out these freelance deals, Lombard placed great trust in Myron. An SIP executive noted, for example, that “Lombard will not move on her contract until Myron gets home.”30 In fact, Lombard pressed Clark Gable to sign with Selznick, claiming that “Myron was the only agent with guts enough to fight producers” and that Gable’s agent, Phil Berg, was in the pocket of the MGM studio executive Eddie Mannix.31 When she broke through in Godfrey in 1936, Lombard had appeared steadily in five pictures a year; subsequently, she reduced her workload, while increasing her pay and autonomy, to one or two pictures a year. As with Feldman’s adroit bundling of contracts for clients like Colbert and Dunne, Selznick’s negotiations enabled Lombard to pace out her productions, facilitating her increased freedom in determining projects and finessing her own creative work. As always, freelance status entailed the risk of measuring salary in relation to recent commercial rankings. By 1939 SIP’s Nothing Sacred showed

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an eventual loss of $350,000, and the gross from SIP’s Made for Each Other would reach only $200,000.32 Initially, SIP proposed a percentage share to entirely replace Lombard’s upfront salary on the next production, demonstrating how these deals had become attractive options for studios (reducing some risks in financing productions). David agreed to pay Lombard $25,000 to get out of the contract, after back-and-forth battles with Myron. Myron then negotiated directly with the head of RKO to rework her contract there. The new contract illustrated Myron Selznick’s experience with complicated contracts and cutting new paths for his clients. It gave Lombard (and her publicist, as contracted) control of publicity, rewrote the sections dealing with foreign receipts to protect Lombard, and arbitrated the amounts collected for Lombard if her films became part of a block-booking package. While she dropped her salary to $100,000 per picture, the new contract made up for the dip with a large increase in percentage points. Lombard would receive “50% of the distributor’s gross after RKO reached 1.7 times negative cost until she receives additional $50,000” (for this reason, some sources report her salary here as $150,000). The new contract also included a pairing with client Alfred Hitchcock (on Mr. and Mrs. Smith), earning Lombard “10% of the distributor’s gross from 1st dollar to $1,500,000 and 5% thereafter.”33 Because the studios released films through their own distribution networks, Selznick and his team recognized that the key to realizing the revenues for his clients’ percentage deals meant specifying a percentage of the distributor‘s gross, as spelled out in the new Lombard deals. Arranging only a share of the overall gross allowed the studio to bury some of its gains in its distribution division (the studios covered the costs of their fully owned distribution divisions by charging them off through an inordinately large percentage of each film’s earnings); by specifying a percentage of the distributor’s gross for his clients, Selznick avoided such Hollywood math. For example, on RKO’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith, in addition to her $10,000 weekly salary, Lombard collected 10 percent of the distributor’s gross until she reached $150,000, when she would receive 5 percent of the gross thereafter. RKO’s balance sheet dated April 27, 1944, showed that the film earned $1,311,855 in three years of release. Lombard’s share, then, amounted to $131,185. Under the arrangement in previous deals, where she only took a percentage of the overall gross, Lombard’s percentage receipt came to $4,519 for 1939’s In Name Only. Thus going after the distributor’s gross became the high prize in Selznick’s negotiations of percentage deals in the early 1940s. The agency kept this tactic in mind as its agents capitalized on La Cava’s success with My Man Godfrey by cooking up an independent production

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unit, financed by RKO, for its director client. In this case the trick lay not so much in dealing with studio financing or with distending studio control over production but in studio control of distribution. First, Selznick’s agency negotiated a 50–50 split of stock ownership between RKO and La Cava. RKO would finance the productions, stipulating that La Cava would direct three pictures in two years. RKO handed almost complete authority for the joint venture to La Cava, consulting only on approval of the original story (but not the script), budget, and leading players. La Cava wanted his production company to function in his own building, as Cecil B. DeMille did at Paramount. RKO acceded to the agency’s demands, from percentage shares to production office housing.34 Again, taxes played a formative role in the genesis of La Cava’s company. In addition to guaranteeing a percentage of the profits and a moderate weekly salary, the contract stipulated a $5,000 expense account for La Cava, which was exempt from taxation. As one agent explained to La Cava, “Through the formation of your own company you will have the advantage of the Capital Gains Tax after your company is in existence beyond eighteen months.”35 Such deals lent some security, in the guaranteed disbursement of funds, to a freelance career, vulnerable as it was to the flux of boxoffice success. In the next few years La Cava directed Stage Door—Leland Hayward brokered the sale of the play—with coclients Katharine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, and Adolphe Menjou, and 5th Ave Girl with Rogers. Yet another twist on an agent’s services comes through in Selznick’s work with Lombard and others at this time. Selznick spearheaded the use of personal publicists by his clients. Through her close ties to the Selznick brothers, Lombard became a client of Russell Birdwell, the legendary Hollywood publicist.36 Birdwell had concocted a radio show for Hunt Stromberg to draw attention to his independent production company. When the Selznick agency picked up Sylvia Sidney as a client, for instance, it employed Birdwell to put a positive spin on the challenges confronting her career in the early 1940s. After striking out with Paramount and MGM (the latter told the agent politely that “they had too many actresses on the lot who could play the roles suitable for Sylvia”), Selznick’s field agents consulted with Birdwell to find a way to advance Sidney’s career. “I have now worked out in detail,” the agent noted, “the campaign on Sylvia Sidney.” It involved Birdwell’s strategically planting gossip items about Sidney’s creative decision to keep a foot on the stage while selectively considering work in film, suggesting greater autonomy on Sidney’s part. While Sidney toured the country in theatrical work, she pelted the agency with inquiries about film roles, all to no avail.

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The Deal around the Corner Topping the innovative deals that Myron Selznick had brokered in the late 1930s was the announcement that he would establish his own independent production company. Selznick sent Hollywood-style shock waves through the industry—or, at least, Selznick’s publicist did, for these headlines served to draw attention to Selznick’s power—when news of his production plans first hit the press. “Share-in-Profits Production Plan Rocks Hollywood” claimed the front page of the July 31, 1938, entertainment section of the Los Angeles Examiner; the story went on to detail Selznick’s “bombshell” announcement that he would head a series of producing units, the first a partnership with Ernst Lubitsch. It was the “talk of the town, from the extra branches to the front offices,” according to the Examiner. “Everywhere you go you hear nothing but talk of Selznick’s revolutionary plan to pay his stars, directors, and writers a percentage of the profits accruing from their films.”37 In its timing and hyperbole the article reeks of a hyped-up public relations piece. But Selznick and Lubitsch were indeed pursuing a production partnership, shopping their proposal to Walter Wanger—through his deal at United Artists— and to David’s company. According to internal office memos, the independent producer Samuel Goldwyn was “hot and heavy” to work out a production deal with Myron and Lubitsch.38 Myron and Lubitsch slotted a story titled The Shop around the Corner as their first production and hired Selznick client Samson Raphaelson—Leland Hayward worked out the contract—to write the screenplay, paying him a paltry $1,000 a week, a pittance offset by the promise of 5 percent of the gross after Lubitsch collected his first $50,000 from the profits. “Independence” did not come cheap, without risk, or without the studio system. Lubitsch’s healthy Paramount contract—he received more than $260,000 from the studio that year—allowed the director to gamble. When the financing failed to materialize, Lubitsch jumped at an offer from MGM to direct Garbo in Ninotchka. Even here, tactical negotiating came into play. Lubitsch agreed to a healthy contract for directing the film (with great creative latitude) only by attaching The Shop around the Corner to the deal (Lubitsch made $40,000 simply for turning over the property, for which he would also collect a directing fee). Following his quick stint at MGM, Lubitsch returned to independence, forming Ernst Lubitsch Productions with the independent producer Sol Lesser. Lubitsch retained 50 percent of the stock.39 Selznick was also pursuing package production deals in partnership with his clients Carole Lombard and William Powell. In a 1938 interview with the gossip columnist Gladys Hall that was arranged by Russell Birdwell, Lombard boasted of the new deals in the works:

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Figure 10. Middleman: sister-in-law Irene Mayer Selznick and clients Rosalind Russell, Loretta Young, and Merle Oberon surround Myron Selznick at one of his parties, December 1939. Courtesy of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

It’s a grand idea, this idea of Selznick’s. It’s pioneering. It’s what should have been done from the beginning. For the Lubitsch Company is the first of a series of units to be formed by Selznick in partnership with stars, directors, writers, all of the creative talent forming units. And all of us will be on a profit-sharing basis, accepting no salaries. We’ll be in partnership with our producer. If any one of us makes a smash hit we’ll get paid accordingly. If any one of us falls down on the job the profits will fall down on us, too. And that’s the way it should be.40

That each of these deals fell apart may owe something to Selznick’s erratic focus on his business in the late 1930s, a period characterized by an increase in his alcoholic bouts and fitful struggles to stop drinking.

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The very changes driving the agency’s new deals led to confusion— who’s the agent? Who’s the producer? Myron’s dealings with David did not help the growing confusion in this regard. For instance, Myron’s heavy investment—$200,000 in 1935—in David’s company certainly raised questions about his dealings with SIP and whether Myron could serve his clients with integrity and impartiality.41 In the face of the 1938 SAG agreement with agencies that forbade agents to hold financial interest in production companies, Myron obtained a special waiver from the guild to maintain this key investment, allowing him to earn, for example, almost $80,000 in early 1942 from his shares in Gone with the Wind alone (in fact, Myron remained the largest single stockholder in the film)—not counting his commissions from clients George Cukor, Vivian Leigh, and Olivia de Havilland, among others. By this time Myron had earned about $630,381 from his holdings; thus his interest in the production company represented a significant portion of his financial wherewithal. (In 1943 Myron also provided more than 30 percent of the initial financing for Hunt Stromberg’s independent production company).42 On the one hand, Myron’s relationship with David made him attractive to talent, since it signified the agency’s close ties to leading moguls, the sibling representing, after all, one of Myron’s numerous powerful connections. On the other hand, in moments of tension clients— as seen in some of the examples that follow—questioned the integrity of this relationship. While such questions surfaced at the start of Selznick’s career, when coupled with other agency problems arising late in the decade, they began to seriously affect the agency’s relationships with its clients. In the agency’s explorations of independent production setups for La Cava, for example, the director initially expressed skepticism about working with Myron Selznick. According to Myron’s associates, La Cava had heard talk among other directors, and even actors and actresses, about Myron’s compromising deals for them to accommodate his brother. La Cava insisted that if he went into a producer-director setup, it would have to be without David. “I do not know myself if there has been much talk about your connection with David among other people,” a field agent dealing with La Cava wrote to his boss, “but it seemed from La Cava’s conversation that McCarey had some feeling about the matter. Of course, all this has to be discounted as it is coming from La Cava who, although he is feeling like a new man, has periods of depression and yesterday happened to be in one.”43 La Cava’s mood must have swung, for later that year the headlines carried news of the ultimately unrealized La Cava–Lombard-Selznick proposition; however, La Cava’s initial doubts testify to the suspicions circulating among Selznick’s clients.

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To be fair, Myron’s agents—and Myron in particular—could be, and were, extremely difficult and demanding deal makers when it came to bargaining with David’s company. From the record of memos exchanged in relation to their respective clients and employees, Myron and his company consistently pelted David and his executive Dan O’Shea with demanding propositions and deal-breaking dares regarding salaries and working conditions. Some of this contentiousness surely sprang from the brothers’ rivalry and indeed from a certain resolve to be particularly intransigent in the ambiguous and potentially controversial arena of negotiation. But this tension also sprang from the conflict inherent in the agent-producer relationship, which in many ways determined the distinct sets of values that each brother brought to the table—business was business. In fact, David consistently complained that Myron’s company overcompensated in an effort to appear disinterested. David fired off a barrage of accusations whenever trouble arose in their negotiations. In a typical note, from 1943, David accused Myron of sticking him “for the highest price ever paid for Carole Lombard on any deal you or anybody else ever made for her, either before the pictures she did for me, or after them. In fact, it was one of the laughs of your own staff and of everybody else in town as to the extent to which you stuck me on Carole Lombard and on others, including Freddie March, whom I also paid the highest price he has ever received in his career, either before or since.”44 In the same memo David complains that his company “discovered to our horror” that Myron had sold them a director at a price much higher than other studios had offered: “Metro had turned him down at less than half of what we signed him for.”45 The exaggeration here is more revealing of the sibling tension than the real numbers. But it remains difficult to measure the effect of these exchanges, even if they tap into the psychic reserve of family. The deals fell into place like so many other deals, with some concessions made by both parties. All the complex arrangements that Myron devised and championed for his clients practically made him a producer. Indeed, David felt that Myron always harbored a desire to return to film production, despite his pronounced success as an agent, and the industry at large seemed to share David’s view. United Artists’ Grad Sears pestered David about getting Myron to produce for UA through an independent company partnered with one or more key stars or directors. In a 1942 memo to Myron, David noted—fully aware, of course, of Myron’s bouts of inactivity stemming from his alcoholism—that “you could interest yourself to whatever extent you pleased actively or inactively.” David implored his brother to consider the proposition: “I think it would be splendid for you to get back into pro-

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duction . . . and I think you would get some fun out of it as well as proving that you still know more about producing than anyone else in the business except myself.” David’s claims that Myron envied David’s success in production echo through this letter (“even if you didn’t make a quarter out of it I think you would get a boot out of getting back into production and being active”), as does David’s concerns for Myron’s deteriorating health (he closes the letter: “I do hope you will take a few vitamins and get up enough energy to go to work on this”).46 Despite the agent’s grand announcements to the press and the possibilities of partnerships with clients, Myron Selznick’s interests remained elusive. More and more of his memos from this period originated from his Lake Arrowhead retreat or in phone messages relayed through his office, greatly delaying the communication process, and far from the heady, speedy atmosphere of the telephone-crazy office of the 1930s. David complained about these delays—as did many clients—in a number of memos concerning Myron’s production plans. As early as 1938, for example, David’s attempts to set up a meeting between Myron and Sam Goldwyn derailed mainly because Myron didn’t show up. Myron’s reclusive episodes only increased in frequency during the next few years. These frustrations suggest a certain languor and disdain buried in Myron Selznick’s character or perhaps were symptoms of advanced alcoholism, or both. Despite his acumen as an agent in navigating deals for his clients within the creative and commercial demands of the studio system, his own memos fail to give any evidence of a creative drive on his part. Such concerns may have been evident in his conversations with studio executives and clients, but no testimony exists about this side of Selznick. Documents surviving from other agents at this time—those from Feldman, Jaffe, Swanson, or Kohner, to name only a few—show steady signs of artistic advice in their discussions with clients, as do the memos of many of Selznick’s field agents. None of Selznick’s creative handiwork of this sort survives in his files, if any ever existed. Exactly what drove Selznick’s flirtations with independent production companies remains difficult to ascertain, his brother’s testimony notwithstanding. As an erstwhile packager or in orchestrating independent production deals, Selznick evinced an acute analysis of the new financial structures made possible in the changing landscape of Hollywood. Since many of these arrangements more or less put him in the producer’s chair, Selznick may have seen it as a natural step to formalize his activities under the official name and status of a producer. But if any creativity sparked these endeavors, he failed to reveal this in his memos.

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What Made Myron Run? The Whole Equation They were all running. Sammy was just a little bit faster, that’s all. Budd Schulberg, What Makes Sammy Run?

All of Selznick’s headline-worthy deals, those inspired by and fostering new managerial approaches, the radical new production arrangements, complicated percentage deals, personal production plans, tensions, conflict, and confusion did not distract from the daily business of his agency, which was providing tactical advice, administering contracts, and facilitating employment for more than a hundred clients. The agency continued to fish for new clients; it continued to deal regularly with studios on standard transactions and ordinary contracts. Humdrum matters like option dates, tax advice, and minor loan-outs, as well as negotiating production start dates, proper credit, and roles continued unabated while Selznick struggled with his personal issues and with major clients. Four agency clients—an actress, an actor, a writer, and a director—and the wheeling and dealing on their behalf, the day-to-day chores of running a service business, from the late 1930s and early 1940s—provide a sense of the frantic juggling required to maintain this full-service business operation. The twists and turns of case studies also reveal the complicated details that surfaced in the daily life of an agency that was dealing and negotiating with clients as much as with selling their talent. The endless hustling comes through in these stories but so do the compromise and sacrifice protecting the agency, its reputation, and that of the clients. Most certainly, Selznick’s accelerating alcoholism represented one of the agency’s biggest problems at this time, even if the operation appeared to run smoothly. The examples of these four clients (keeping in mind that these narratives overlap and run almost concurrently) offer a sense of the profound relevance of agents to the flow of the studio system, tense and tedious attention to detail, complications and calculations demanded by the enterprise itself, particularly in the endless proliferation of memos and documentation, and debates about deci164

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sions, consultations, and computations. Each client’s story, moreover, provides a window into the competitive edge maintained by Selznick’s agency through its London office, by scouting green talents and signing them before their competitors, particularly in the late 1930s as British talent jumped from a sinking national industry. As newcomers to Hollywood, and therefore essentially “untested” in the marketplace, these four clients could not expect to be rewarded with many of the innovative contract provisions enjoyed by the agency’s leading clients at the time, even if some of the newcomers nonetheless retained a degree of control over their careers. These clients retained a fair amount of autonomy, mobility, and choice, resisting some practices and refusing certain roles and projects. Dozens of routine deals circulated through the office daily even as it spun big deals with big clients and some major deals for new clients; all while tending to its own business (its reorganization, for example, and new tax deals) as well as Selznick’s personal demons.

Serving the Studio: Vivien Leigh Navigating the career of Vivien Leigh required the usual business acumen but also a strong measure of discretion, as plotting early career moves for the actress required synchronizing her activities with those of her lover and Selznick client, Laurence Olivier, not least because both were married to other people. Nonetheless, Leigh’s relationship with Olivier aided her career: as soon as his career heated up, the agency’s Hollywood office embarked on an intensive campaign to find a role for Leigh. How the agency managed to land her Oscar-winning role in Gone with the Wind reveals as much about an agent’s cooperation with studio interests as it does about managing clients.1 As early as 1935 the Hollywood office showed interest in Leigh and asked its London branch to “send any film or cutouts” (pictures) of her. But this interest intensified when Olivier began attracting attention and work from Hollywood studios. Thus in August 1938 an interoffice memo sounded the alarm: Would like to suggest that everybody contact their various studios regarding the possibility of an immediate assignment for VIVIEN LEIGH. As you know, Samuel Goldwyn wants badly LARRY OLIVIER to come over and play the lead in WUTHERING HEIGHTS, but evidently he will not come unless some kind of an arrangement can be made for Vivien Leigh. We have already cabled our London office to try and get Larry to persuade her to accept the part they want her for in the Goldwyn picture.

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Getting both clients hired for Wuthering Heights would offer the neatest solution. However, a follow-up memo made clear that it might not be the easiest solution: The Goldwyn Company . . . has offered Vivian Lee [sic] the part of Isabella in Wuthering Heights. This is a good part but she rejected it saying that she is only interested in playing the part that Merle Oberon has. Goldwyn is still ready to give her the part of Isabella if she will play it and providing, of course, that Olivier plays Heathcote [sic].

Further memos suggested pressing Olivier to convince Leigh to take the lesser role. But Olivier agreed with Leigh that the part was not good enough for her. Leigh then authorized the Selznick agency to negotiate a $2,500 per week salary, with seven weeks guaranteed, $200 a week in living expenses, and round-trip transportation. This offer never made it to first base with any of the studios. Cecil B. DeMille expressed interest in her for Union Pacific, but Leigh again refused to consider any role but the lead. DeMille backed off. Leigh instructed the agency to explore any upcoming Max Reinhardt pictures, but the agency convinced her—and was correct—that Reinhardt’s production plans remained too uncertain. Meanwhile, Olivier called the office daily about finding a picture for Leigh. In December, Universal expressed interest in her for its Bing Crosby picture This Side of Heaven. At the same time the agency deployed one of its clients, Bill Wellman, to convince studio executives to cast Leigh in his current production, Beau Geste. All these possibilities failed to pan out. But in November a Selznick agent, James Townsend, suggested floating her by David O. Selznick for Gone with the Wind “since David is interested in Olivier.” Leigh caught the Queen Mary by the end of the month. Within a few weeks Leigh watched Atlanta burn. For more than two years David had conducted a national search, accompanied by hysterical publicity, for the perfect actress to play Scarlett O’Hara, the firebrand rippling through the pages of Gone with the Wind. In early December 1938, only a few weeks after Leigh arrived in the United States, David continued to search for his leading lady, even as he started production on some key scenes in the film, primarily special effects shots and long shots—in particular by filming the burning of Atlanta (a public relations spectacle in and of itself)—that could be woven around the still incomplete cast. That night, according to legend (but one confirmed by most of the historical record), Myron brought Vivien Leigh to the set. A few years after the film was released, David wrote a short magazine piece about discovering stars and described how Leigh ended up in the role:

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When [Myron] introduced me to her, the flames were lighting up her face and Myron said: “I want you to meet Scarlett O’Hara.” I took one look and knew that she was right—at least as far as her appearance went—at least right as far as my conception of how Scarlett O’Hara looked. Later on, her tests, made under George Cukor’s brilliant direction, showed that she could act the part right down to the ground, but I’ll never recover from that first look.2

A memo sent by David to Irene on December 10, 1938, the day after he met Leigh, corroborates the story: Myron rolled in just exactly too late, arriving about a minute and a half after the last building had fallen and burned and after the shots were completed. With him were Larry Olivier and Vivien Leigh. Shhhhh: she’s the Scarlett dark horse, and looks damned good.3

Never one to act on impulse, David actually considered Leigh in a select group of finalists: Paulette Goddard, Joan Bennett, and Jean Arthur, all of whom made further screen tests along with Leigh. Within a month David announced to the press that Leigh would be his Scarlett, and filming commenced only weeks later. Selznick’s agency had to work out for Leigh a leave from her contract with the British producer Alexander Korda. The agency continued to work for her even after signing her for Gone with the Wind and bringing her to Los Angeles with her lover—Olivier was at work on Wuthering Heights by now. In February 1939 Leigh phoned the office to complain about the director George Cukor’s dismissal from the film. One of Myron’s key executives, Sig Marcus, listened as she claimed to be “very disheartened and very discouraged” with the film. After complaining about the cinematography, late working hours, David’s aloofness, new script, and her recent costumes, Leigh stated the real reason for her call: she “wanted to be released” from the film. Flabbergasted, Marcus used his best efforts to persuade her to make no hasty decisions. He impressed upon her the need to consider the overwhelming problems with the production that David was facing and asked her to be patient. Here the agent worked as a counselor. Marcus got her to reconsider working with the new director, reminding her that she was merely afraid of the unknown, “that she had no reason for maintaining that Cukor was better than Fleming—at least until she had had experience with Fleming.” Persuading Leigh to maintain her commitment to the production, of course, meant protecting the agency’s 10 percent commission. It also meant protecting their client’s reputation, as well as the agency’s. Such stability remains crucial to a service industry since studios relied on the agency to

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Figure 11. Trifecta: three clients on Myron Selznick’s couch. Vivien Leigh, Merle Oberon, and Laurence Olivier partying at Myron’s house, December 1939. Courtesy of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

provide them with reliable employees. Dealing with clients who were unhappy with the production they were working on required balancing the merits of the client’s complaint with its long-term ramifications. An agent who interfered with a production every time a client complained risked losing the trust of steady employers. So Marcus calmed Leigh and “advised her to have a frank talk with David and explain to David all her fears, worries, and concerns in the hope that David would put her into a better frame of mind.” Marcus hung up with Leigh, immediately phoned the SIP executive Dan O’Shea, and relayed all the actress’s frantic conversation. O’Shea told Marcus to “take a suppository and relax,” then communicated the information to David, who promised to call Leigh. Marcus then called Leigh back and explained that David had been wrapped up in problems (information he gleaned from O’Shea) and reassured her of David’s devotion to her. In this case the agent worked with the producers to avoid a potential disaster. On Friday Marcus tried to get an update from O’Shea, but he knew only that David and Leigh had spoken, trusting “the ‘trouble’ has blown over.” Blown over. More or less. It returned one day later; in an interoffice memo another agent drily noted: “Vivien Leigh called me on the telephone

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about three in the afternoon and asked me if her contract with Selznick International prohibited her from flying.” Bewildered, the agent asked Leigh where she intended to fly; she informed him “she thought she would go to New York until they resumed shooting on the picture.” Trouble. The agent explained that he had heard that shooting would resume later that week, leaving no time for a trip to New York. But this shortly led to another discussion of her apprehension regarding the overall production, with Leigh telling the agent that “taking the part in the first place was a serious mistake.” His wit still intact, the agent blithely reassured her that he would look up “the flying clause, if any,” in her contract and call her back. The agent immediately phoned O’Shea at David Selznick’s office and relayed the problem. When the agent called Leigh back, he explained that the production would resume in just a few days and that, at any rate, she could not leave town. He did not tell her that he had talked to O’Shea. Working in consultation with producers, then, these agents negotiated their client’s complaints and contributed to maintaining a smooth production. Leigh’s demands and complaints from then on were limited to wardrobe issues and requesting that the agency use its influence to get her a portable dressing room—which was no trouble at all. A new problem arose one month later. John Glidden, a British talent agent, claimed to represent Leigh and declared himself shocked to learn that Leigh had signed with Myron’s company. He insisted on his 10 percent for the Wind contract or at least a split commission. Upon further investigation Selznick’s British office agreed that Glidden could rightfully claim official representation. This complication was not uncommon. Creative talent often signed with agents for certain windows of representation (say, work on film exclusively), then forgot about such deals and signed with another agent. Such confusion frequently resulted in complicated lawsuits or, as in this case, split commissions. After numerous efforts at fighting off Glidden or searching for a loophole, Selznick acquiesced and paid Glidden half the agency’s 10 percent on Leigh’s earnings until January 1942. The week after the Atlanta premiere of Gone with the Wind, Vivien Leigh appeared on the cover of Time magazine, and so did Myron Selznick, at last in his proper place: under Vivien’s photograph, the caption read “To Dave and Myron, Vivien Leigh.”4 The cover story repeated the dramatic moment of Leigh’s discovery, her face aglow in the burning of Atlanta. After winning the Oscar in February 1940, Leigh turned her attention to her SIP contract and to her agency. She made demands on both companies that complicated the already tense relationship of Leigh, her representatives, and the production company. She insisted on a salary increase and the right

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to confer with the writers and producers during the writing of a script, a clause that was in Olivier’s contract with Warner Bros. Leigh’s relationship with Olivier magnified such complications, as did the couple’s desire to balance work in Hollywood with theatrical work back in England. Hence, David Selznick sounded anxious and apocalyptic regarding Leigh’s desire to return to England in the middle of World War II: Myron and Sig saw me . . . Olivier came to see me afterward and said that he was sorry that I had spoken to Myron and Sig before he saw me. I told Olivier (and Myron later) that I didn’t know whether I would ever give an adjustment, but if I did, I would do it in my own good time and wouldn’t be blackjacked as to when it would be or what it would be, and I certainly was not going to take a chance on increasing my losses through raising a salary when I expect salaries in this business to tumble. I expect the picture business to go to pieces. On top of that, I think it is a ridiculous time to do a play and to go to England, and when they are talking about going to England on a boat, which sounds like a suicide pact to me.

To complicate matters, Leigh hired a lawyer to negotiate an extended leave of absence from her Hollywood contract so she could return to England for a stage production. Privately, even Leigh’s lawyer laughed with Myron about her demands, but SIP, which didn’t have enough film projects for Leigh at that moment, finally agreed to a seventeen-week leave. Leigh’s complications with contracts, as well as her desire to rewrite contracts and take more command of her career, came to a head one December evening in 1940 in a meeting with Myron, Leigh’s attorney, and two of Myron’s associates. Leigh made the general statement that her SIP contract paled next to the one she had with Korda—a loaded statement since her former agent had worked out the Korda contract. When Myron explained some of the comparative details, Leigh acknowledged that the SIP contract was fine in all respects—except the monetary provisions. Yet even from this perspective, Leigh “further admitted that her salary with Korda was 350-pounds per week on a ten-week guarantee ($17,500 figuring the pound at par), while her salary with David Selznick momentarily is $35,000 for twelve weeks.” But Leigh still was not pacified, and she revealed what likely inspired her overall discontent: she said she probably would not have signed the SIP contract had she known Myron was a stockholder in his brother’s production company. Myron shouted, “That’s a goddamned lie!” and stormed out of the room. That left the lawyer, Leigh, and Myron’s associates to hash out her issues. Myron finally returned and suggested to Leigh that if she felt the agency was failing to do everything possible to get her an adjustment from David, she might ask her British agent

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to come over and handle the negotiations. Leigh backed away from this suggestion and left matters in the hands of Myron and his agency. Leigh’s case, however much rooted in her particular personality, demonstrates the varying degrees of power that talent retained in choosing or refusing roles. Driven by a perception of the market and her own talent, a player might dispute, usually through an agent, a role’s appropriateness or the quality of a particular production, but such disputes shared a system of values with the studio, even if reconciliation proved difficult in many cases. Here the agent played a role in representing the client’s objections while realizing certain accommodations and solutions beneficial to the studio. In particular, while agents contractually represented the interests of their clients, the role of the agent, who essentially served as a liaison between studios and talent, frequently was in a much more compromised position—in this case, the agent was working with the employer to reconcile a potentially disruptive force (namely, client Leigh) on a production. Here a set of interests aligned to pacify Leigh: the agency’s investment in its client’s future (stability and earnings); the studio’s investment in meeting commitments at each step of the production process; and the client’s commitment to a career. Disputes obviously arose when these interests were in conflict, but such problems resulted less from major philosophical differences than from different interpretations—which director would better serve a film? How to define a commercially viable project? Who would retain the final word on a screenplay? As in the case of Vivien Leigh, finding common ground often fell to the professional mediator, the agent, who was facilitating not only schedules and planning but also reputations, all while juggling the interested parties’ different points of view.

Courting Clients: Robert Donat The Selznick agency’s courtship of the great British actor Robert Donat, like its wooing of Vivien Leigh, owed much to the strategic competitive edge provided by its British office, particularly in the late 1930s as the British film industry struggled and its talent jumped ship. This example also reveals the occasional ambivalence on the part of clients regarding agency commissions and is a good example of Selznick’s persuasive skills, both with clients and with their employers. Donat, a rising star in British film and theater, was smart and imaginative, as well as petulant, impulsive, and arrogant, traits that made him a combustible client. Selznick had to negotiate with Donat as much or more than he did on his client’s behalf. The story of

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Donat is a good example of the energy the agency devoted to pursuing a client and to the client’s career, an effort that in this case paid off with an Academy Award.5 The agency took note of Donat in 1934, when it cabled its London branch to “keep after” the actor, who had made waves in theater and in a few films. Selznick’s London representatives pointed out that Donat unofficially retained two minor British agents, easy targets for the larger agency. In the long run only Donat’s apparent mistrust of agents and business dealings in general would present a real challenge. Korda, the eminent British producer, had cast Donat in a supporting part in 1933’s The Private Life of Henry VIII with Selznick client Charles Laughton, who won an Oscar for his role in this international commercial success. In 1934 and 1935 Donat followed with starring roles in Edward Small’s U.S. production The Count of Monte Cristo and Hitchcock’s British production The 39 Steps. Both films drew attention to the star in Hollywood circles, but Donat resisted subsequent studio offers. By 1935, with David O. Selznick’s move into independent production, the agency recognized a new opportunity to sign Donat, particularly since Warner Bros. and another talent agency were making overtures to the actor as well: Please sound out Robert Donat situation as to possibility of his availability and also could Warners or Hawks-Volck [another talent agency] keep us from collecting should we offer Donat proposition that he might accept. The proposition is a picture with David Selznick, possibly David’s first for United Artists, so you can imagine the importance of it. Donat could have story approval. Don’t know what price would interest Donat but from this end seems like fifty thousand for part which we know we can get. Please investigate and answer. If possible would like to negotiate long-term deal.

The memo notes that determining studio interest in Donat would prove risky without the actor’s firm commitment to the agency—especially since Donat was entertaining overtures from the Hawks-Volck Agency as well— even as it indicates that the Selznick agency frequently engaged in such activity. A few days later Myron Selznick emphasized the importance of Donat: Can you think of any possible angle for us to sign up Donat at least for America if not free in England. Have so much confidence in his future feel with right selling talk we might swing him to us. . . . Please work hard on this.

Thanks to unfortunate encounters with inept and deceptive agents, as well as his own erratic behavior, Donat had managed to get tied up in a twopicture deal with Warner Bros. that ended in a court case. Donat emerged

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the victor, but the battle darkened his picture of Hollywood and its handlers. In August 1935 Donat placed an ad in the film trades announcing his roles in Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps and René Clair’s Ghost Goes West, but the ad boldly added: “ROBERT DONAT IS NOT REPRESENTED BY AN AGENT NOR IS HE CONTRACTED TO ANY COMPANY.” Notes from weekly meetings and interoffice memos reveal that the Selznick agency read this ad more as a sign of Donat’s impatience than of his imperviousness to persuasion and continued to pursue the actor as a client. Through Laurence Olivier, whom the London office persuaded to work on Donat, he cagily suggested that he would sign with the agency if it could get him two pictures for $200,000. At the same time Jesse Lasky at Paramount approached Donat about a one-picture deal but found Donat’s lawyer to be a problem. Lasky asked Selznick’s agency to intervene. Most of the other studios found the actor’s asking price—$100,000 a picture—too high. Inflated figures aside, the Selznick agency saw Donat’s discussion of salary as an opening. Selznick’s Hollywood office asked the London branch to explore minimum figures with Donat, stressing that it would nonetheless aim for $100,000. But when Lasky offered $75,000, with an option for a second picture at $100,000,, Donat said no. While Donat claimed “to have made it abundantly clear” that he held no interest in a management contract, the actor continued to entertain potential deals floated by the agency. Donat considered management “a purely personal matter and cannot be the subject of a contract.” Furthermore, he objected to the 10 percent commission, especially when applied to a contract for more than one picture. Convincing Donat to sign with the agency, then, would take some persuasion, not only of the merits of this particular agency but also of the value of agents in general, and particularly in terms of commissions. This set the stage, then, for a dramatic performance—and Selznick presented a dazzling one. The first act occurred in June 1936 in regard to Donat’s deal with Korda. Ready to deal for Donat, Selznick and an agency associate sailed to England to handle the negotiations personally; when they arrived at the meeting, they were surprised to find Donat and his lawyer in the midst of discussing a lengthy contract that had already been prepared. The clauses were actually being discussed when Selznick and his associate walked into the room. Selznick interrupted the conference by asking whether he and his associate could take the contract into another room and study it properly. Selznick then put off further discussion until the following day. The next morning Donat called Selznick’s associate at his flat and talked to him for nearly forty minutes, “mainly about his unhappiness at the idea

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of his being more or less coerced into agreeing to things in the Korda deal that were not to his advantage.” Furthermore, Donat questioned the neutrality of his British lawyer, who also represented United Artists, which, through its distribution deal with Korda, stood to gain from the contract. The agency associate assured the actor that Selznick already recognized all these problems. Selznick planned to reopen the negotiations from the position that no agreement existed. This bold plan satisfied Donat, who told Selznick’s associate that “he was only too happy” to see Selznick taking over the whole process and leaving him out of it until Selznick could recommend a contract for Donat’s signature. Thus at this point Donat entrusted the negotiation process—and all the labor and skills involved therein—to Selznick, even though Donat had yet to sign an agency contract. Selznick engaged in numerous long conferences with Korda, often well into the evening, trying to reach an agreement. Throughout this process Donat continued to express his appreciation that Selznick “had entered into the picture in a militant manner.” Donat relayed many specific demands to Selznick, even though the actor himself did not want to participate in any of the negotiations. While Selznick negotiated with Korda, one of Selznick’s field agents took up the issue of commissions with Donat. In an interoffice memo to Selznick, the agent explained that he had given Donat “all the usual arguments with regard to it being necessary to standardize our business, also that with his own tax reduction [on American salaries], he would actually be paying us less than 10%.” Donat agreed that Selznick’s argument sounded both reasonable and fair, but his response remained noncommittal. He hinted that 10 percent might be fair for this particular contract but wavered on the point of future negotiations. Negotiations with Selznick’s British representative continued after Selznick left England, and a series of memos kept Myron abreast of the Donat situation. They won a number of victories for Donat in the Korda wars: story approval, shooting schedules, consultation with screenwriters, rest periods. The memos noted repeatedly that Korda would explode at the agents and fly into rages, assailing Donat and the Selznick agency before conceding the point and calming down. Korda was especially irate at Donat’s demand to be allowed to make pictures for a U.S. studio—a key issue for the Selznick agency—only to eventually agree to two U.S. pictures. Why? The agency convinced Korda that Donat’s down time would be better spent on a production that might increase his value as a star and therefore of Korda’s contract. Korda also granted Donat a measure of say in the selection of stories. Donat was very happy with the results, although he worried that

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Korda’s wrath might be directed at Donat personally, when he felt that the agency should take the heat for such battles. The agency reassured him that Korda’s anger would be directed at it and not at the star. Over at SIP, Dan O’Shea got wind of the deal and told Myron: “Of course, I don’t need to tell you how big a boon it would be to us to have Donat for one or two pictures a year.” But O’Shea also tipped off the agency to a potential problem. O’Shea recalled hearing from Harry Goetz and his attorney about a picture deal with Donat, through Goetz’s Reliance Pictures and RKO (for whom Donat had made the producer Edward Small’s Count of Monte Cristo). O’Shea thought they had mentioned that they had an understanding with Donat and his attorney. O’Shea wasn’t derailing the agency’s plans here; he was exchanging information, part of the commercial circulation of gossip in Hollywood. Perhaps exchanging such information might lead to a deal with Donat for SIP, a hope that O’Shea had expressed. Still without an agency contract, Donat nonetheless regularly consulted the agency for its perspective on career matters as well as contractual issues. Immediately after he inked his new deal with Korda, Donat sent Korda’s story treatment to the agency for advice. The two agents who read the piece felt that something was missing from Donat’s character at the beginning of the story and that too much had been cut from the middle of the story. Pleased to hear these opinions, for he shared them, Donat was either testing the agency here or seeking some critical corroboration. Regardless of Donat’s motives, Selznick’s field agent explained that “it was obvious that in the rush to get out the treatment that would satisfy Dietrich [a co-star in the film] that Donat’s part had been more or less glossed over.” One of the agents then conveyed this criticism to Korda, who said that a great deal more was being done with Donat’s part than the treatment indicated. The agent suggested a dinner with Korda, Donat, the agent, and the writer, in order to discuss Donat’s criticism. The agent explained to Selznick that “Korda was most charming about the whole matter and Donat [was] highly pleased that the meeting had been arranged.” Two major problems remained for the agency: Donat had yet to sign an agency contract (at best he alluded to paying only 5 percent); and the hazy old deal with Goetz’s Reliance Pictures. When the agency pressed Donat about the Goetz deal, the sheepish but earnest Donat confessed to feeling morally obliged to meet his commitment to Reliance. Selznick’s agent told Donat that even if the actor felt bound to the commitment, he should renegotiate the contracted $30,000 salary in light of his increased market value. Donat bristled at such a scheming suggestion but acquiesced when told of scores of such adjustments granted to other artists in the industry.

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Donat’s frequent health problems created another complicating factor for the agency. His asthma, among other related problems, in conjunction with his general excitability and his passion for his art, made Donat a fragile, and occasionally volatile, creature. Donat required frequent rest periods, so agents had to negotiate for conditions of employment related to his special needs. Donat deeply appreciated the agency and Selznick in particular for understanding his unstable health—both for the arrangements they negotiated for Donat in terms of rest periods and for refusing to pressure Donat to work more often. In an operation driven so strongly by interpersonal relations, this sensitivity to a client’s needs could deepen and solidify the business connection, especially in this case, where Donat had yet to sign an agency contract. Agents had to weigh short-terms gains (signing a client to an extra film or two a year or signing back-to-back commitments with no rest periods) against the long-term risks of disenfranchising their client and losing a career (or, rather, 10 percent of a career). Donat’s interactions with Myron Selznick impressed the actor, who sensed in Selznick a responsive, almost empathetic, person (Selznick’s own unstable health, although entirely related to his abuse of alcohol, likely fueled the agent’s genuine empathy for Donat). Selznick’s sensitive handling of the Korda contract, particularly the dramatic way he swept into town to rescue Donat from his lawyer’s ineptitude and release the highly strung actor from his aggravating role in the negotiating process, brought effusive gratitude from the thespian. While Selznick thereafter handled Donat’s affairs from a distance, the agent continued to attend to Donat with sensitivity, both through consultation with the London agents and, perhaps more important, through the interpersonal skills policy that Selznick had set for his office. Selznick instructed his agents to work not only for the financial interests of his clients but also for their general wellbeing, for their particular desire, tics, and quirks. Selznick remained realistic; he knew artists could make unreasonable demands, that they could be prima donnas, that some demands remained best handled in secret with producers (à la Vivien Leigh). Nonetheless, the tone that Selznick set for his staff was that artists should be regularly consulted and contacted, and that some measure of creative control for clients should remain a negotiating goal. MGM’s 1939 production Goodbye, Mr. Chips presented a role perfectly tailored to Donat’s skills as a performer. This sentimental melodrama, which was built on the delicate observations of a humble character—a beloved teacher dedicated to his audience of students—enabled Donat to play the role in quiet tones and with subtle gestures that would nonetheless draw

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attention to someone who was, after all, always on stage in front of the class. The character’s aging in the film allowed a visible degree of change to occur in his performance, drawing attention, through the makeup and costume changes, to the actor’s variations in manner and countenance. A death scene at the end of the film conflates sympathy for the character and the audience’s empathetic response to the actor. Thus when Selznick’s office negotiated the Mr. Chips deal—part of a potential six-picture deal with MGM—it fully considered Donat’s particular skills as a performer and the ways in which the prominence of his character would translate into wider recognition for the actor (Selznick’s office represented the author of the novel and so was well aware of the story). But Selznick also negotiated the deal in consideration of Donat’s special circumstances. Donat wanted to remain in Britain, for one thing. For another, Selznick’s office had to schedule this MGM picture around Donat’s commitment to Korda (Korda, for example, would release Donat for the production only so long as MGM agreed to rent Korda’s London soundstages). When the film eventually debuted, critical reviews, industry response, and audiences confirmed Donat’s suitability for the role and his crafty execution. Selznick instructed his top agents to send congratulatory notes to Donat. In line with a common office practice, Selznick also had his staff clip favorable reviews and send them to the actor. Both practices genuinely touched Donat, who responded in kind with charming notes. The role won Donat an Academy Award for 1939, beating out Clark Gable in Gone with the Wind. In 1939 Donat was considering extending his MGM contract. But he wanted to have the option of doing more stage work; ideally, Donat preferred to do only one picture a year, according to the London office. Donat claimed that “he would like to become much more of a gentlemen of leisure.” But he didn’t “want to have to say this to Metro as he feels they might be disappointed in him.” And, as with so many clients now, Donat remained equally concerned about how “modern taxation” would affect his income. In consultation with a tax expert, Selznick worked out a percentage deal with an account set up against future earnings, allowing Donat to draw a fixed sum of money. This enabled Donat to spread his earnings over a long period. Donat’s rewards were more than financial; Selznick’s agency reworked Donat’s contracts to enhance his earnings and the value of his time off, for his health and his family. The agency’s efforts resulted in Donat’s Mr. Chips role and his Academy Award. Not surprisingly, given his suspicion of agents from the start, Donat blamed the agency for MGM’s later trenchant responses to the actor’s demands, and again threatened to dismiss the

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agency. Donat’s subsequent career faltered because of his health, personality, and insistence on working in England despite the persistently troubled condition of its film industry.

Losing Clients: Robert Carson The career of Robert Carson—an unfamiliar name today but once an important, award-winning Hollywood writer— documents how agents strategically escalated the asking prices of their clients, introducing key increments with each new exploration of the marketplace, building a salary with an almost formal ascension. Carson also represented the rare case of a writer’s parlaying his screenwriting success into a “legitimate” writing career with short stories and novels. This dimension of Carson’s career introduced a New York literary agent into the mix, and the resulting split commissions, complications, and confusions ultimately strangled the writer’s relationship with Selznick. Nonetheless, in roughly six years Selznick and his squadron of agents more than tripled this young writer’s earnings.6 Selznick plucked Carson from a William Wellman project in the mid1930s, convincing the writer to drop his current agent and join the Selznick agency (which represented Wellman). Within a month Selznick placed Carson at Paramount with a $500 weekly contract good for six months—a low but by no means bottom-of-the-barrel salary. For the same scale Carson worked on an original story with Wellman for David Selznick’s independent production A Star Is Born, and Selznick extended Carson’s run on the production during rewrites for an additional $350 a week, while Paramount extended Carson’s contract at $650 a week for another year. Following this renewal Carson immediately went to work on a new Wellman picture, Men with Wings. Meanwhile, Carson and Wellman took home an Oscar for their work on A Star Is Born. In March 1938 Carson and Selznick discussed another salary increase. However, one of Selznick’s field agents explained that “under the existing conditions at Paramount it simply cannot be done at this time,” since Paramount was in the process of reorganizing its finances after incurring losses. The field agent’s sources—Paramount executives, secretaries, and contract producers—tipped him off that “as options come up every effort is made to retain the employees on their same salary, at least until business picks up.” However, by June the field agent, “after two or three days of haggling,” had convinced Paramount to pay the increase called for in Carson’s contract. To alleviate Paramount’s concerns about committing to the new

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salary, one of Selznick’s field agents suggested a new strategy: split the option year into two six-month periods, which was a canny move, because this strategy made it possible for the agency to negotiate yet another salary increase in six months. The agent boasted: “Carson is now very happy and feels that our office did a major job winning this point.” To underline the agency’s dazzling performance on this deal, it sent Carson clips of the favorable reviews of Men with Wings, engaging in a time-honored practice of agentry: wooing clients through flattery (an important language for artists). When the new option period came due, Paramount jumped Carson to $800 a week, effectively doubling his salary in less than two years. Carson teamed again with Wellman the following year for 1939’s Beau Geste, starring Gary Cooper. In the meantime Carson started writing short stories for magazines like the New Yorker, Saturday Evening Post, and even Good Housekeeping (the last was one of the highest-paying periodicals at the time). To serve Carson in this arena, Selznick’s office arranged for the New York literary agent Carl Brandt to represent the writer’s magazine work, splitting commissions 50–50. Then, after Carson sold numerous magazine articles, he informed his Hollywood agency that he was interested in picture work only if he could get $1,500 a week; otherwise, working on magazine serials was much more satisfying for him. This dictum set a new salary goal for Selznick’s office and required it to show sensitivity, in balancing and scheduling potential jobs, by negotiating contracts that would leave time for Carson’s dual interests. Carson’s asking price had climbed to about $900 at this time, so $1,500 was within reach. Yet when a field agent floated this higher figure by a regular contact at Republic studios—a decidedly low-budget outfit—the executive balked. Still, Selznick sent out a strongly supportive interoffice memo on July 17, 1941, declaring “that ROBERT CARSON is worth $1500 per week and would like you [all agents] to endeavor to set him at this figure.” The following week a field agent reported RKO’s interest in Carson and these terms. His interoffice memo was important because Fox had expressed interest in the writer as well, so the field agent dealing with RKO was asked, “Please protect me on this so that I can satisfy Fox without interfering with your deals.” In fact, the RKO field man was closing in on a deal that would pair Carson with another Selznick client, René Clair: “If this works out,” the field agent noted, “we will then attempt to sell the following package: story [by Carson], Carson writing the screenplay, and Clair directing.” As a client Carson now represented a dual commodity: there was Carson the screenwriter for sale, and, adding to it, the agency now had a regular

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source of stories to sell. In turn, Selznick’s literary department, headed by the agent Donald Friede, pitched Carson’s magazine stories to studios. Friede’s procedure was to send out a kind of mock literary newsletter featuring stories about the agency’s writers in the form of “news” about their books, published stories, and screenplays. Titled “Of Books & Writers by Donald Friede,” the two- to four-page newsletter was “issued weekly by the Story Department of Myron Selznick and Company.” Carson’s work was a regular feature. By the end of September the agency had finally landed Carson a $1,500 per week deal at RKO, working on “Out of Gas,” a story in development for another Selznick agency client, Charles Laughton. The agency deal memo justifiably boasted, “This is a $600 per week increase for Carson and establishes a new salary.” The same memo noted that Carson was “tickled silly.” That very day Selznick’s field agent for Fox closed a deal for Carson to write a musical comedy for $1,500 a week, with a ten-week guarantee. Thus in less than two months Carson was guaranteed to gross more than $20,000. Carson sent a gushing letter to Selznick, thanking him and his field agents for nailing the Fox deal while simultaneously going after other studios: “In business again and my pockets lined with cash, I would like to inscribe myself as a happy, happy client . . . and devotee of Myron Selznick and Co.” But one question had been nagging at Carson since he first started publishing short stories. In consideration of his success in this nontheatrical market, Carson wondered why Brandt should split his commissions. Friede more or less agreed and reminded Selznick that Carson’s case was unusual (a screenwriter moving into publishing). “There is every reason to believe,” Friede explained to Selznick, “that [Carson’s] success [in publishing] will continue and that in the very near future Carson will have so many profitable commitments for serials and short stories that it will be economically more feasible for him to write entirely for magazine sale.” Most magazine writers refused studio contracts because such commitments interfered with their often more lucrative magazine work. In this regard Friede encouraged his boss to “take a very long range view of the situation.” As Friede explained, Brandt had played a crucial role in establishing Carson’s literary career: “We must recognize that Carson would not be the magazine writer he is today without the careful, intelligent and painstaking work which Carl Brandt has done.” In fact, Carson was so conscious of Brandt’s efforts and his contributions to Carson’s success that he paid Brandt an extra 5 percent commission out of his pocket. Brandt felt, and Carson concurred, that Carson’s increasing prominence as a magazine writer helped immeasurably in the Selznick agency’s ability to double the

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writer’s studio salary. Friede saw merit in this position, and he emphasized this to Selznick. Indeed, Friede’s literary reports sold Carson by touting his identity as a magazine writer, and agency memos to studios frequently pitched Carson’s cachet as a short story writer to lend him distinction. For example, pitching a new story by Carson, Friede’s newsletter announced: “It is the perfect example of what happens when a story is written by a man who is both a top magazine writer and a top screenwriter”—as if some magical math doubled the value of a story in this case. But Friede, although backed by Brandt and Carson, failed to convince Selznick, who obstinately stuck to the original terms of the deal. When Myron met directly with Carson, Selznick’s repeated refusals to budge on this issue finally destroyed their professional relationship. Selznick contended that Carson simply wanted to be relieved of paying Brandt the additional 5 percent; Myron failed to recognize the principles and deeper issues motivating Carson. Now Selznick’s field agents went to work, holding lunch and dinner meetings with Carson and firing serious memos back at Selznick. Prompted by an effort to clarify the principles and by agents who were attempting to explain issues of fairness, even ethics, to their boss, this process was a zany mix of introspection and contractual negotiation. The agents tried to impress upon Selznick that Carson was an unusually intelligent and reflective client when it came to discussing deals. Moreover, Carson made it clear that he would let his agency contract lapse when it expired (in 1946), because he was so angry about the Brandt issue. In fact, Carson had already approached another agent, exploring the possibility of breaking Selznick’s contract. The other agent advised Carson to ride it out with Selznick. Selznick treated Carson’s objections as pure bluff, claiming that Carson’s vow to simply allow his agency contract to expire in four years was an empty threat: “I would go completely nuts if I started to worry about clients who had four years to go with us and threatened that they would not sign.” Certainly, clients threatened to quit all the time. Monty Woolley, for example, regularly called his agent’s home, even venting to the agent’s wife at midnight (duly recorded in office memos). Wellman was notorious for his eruptions, with his explosions reverberating through the phones and memos of the agency. But Carson, as field agents insisted to Selznick, “has not the ordinary run of mind. He is, after all, a creator, but he has intellectual integrity, and this type of man is the least difficult for you to satisfy because his purpose is right, and it is not a selfish one.” The agents delicately implored their boss to reconsider his position. If appealing to principles didn’t work (some of these memos went unanswered while Selznick relaxed

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at his mountain resort), then appealing to his wallet might. In this regard the question was basically whether Selznick preferred to take full commission for the remaining period of Carson’s agency agreement and then lose Carson or to make the smart gamble that Carson would renew his deal with the Selznick agency if it agreed to split the commission for Carson’s studio work with Brandt. This angle was a question of numbers, the kind of cool calculation that appealed to Selznick. Yet Selznick was becoming increasingly aloof to agency business in general, letting the matter, which his field agents described as “very, very, serious,” slide for weeks before getting back to Carson or one of his own intermediaries. Even after Carson enlisted in the army in 1942, Selznick refused to budge—though his agents pointed out to him that Carson would clearly not bring in any commissions for studio work but very likely would continue to occasionally publish short stories. As the memo writer pointed out to Selznick, “If there wasn’t a war I would take my chances on what he could make in pictures outbalancing his magazine serials.” Carson, in fact, joined the army because of his principled, conscientious nature. His enlistment was no surprise to the field agents who met regularly with him, but Carson’s war service made no impression on Selznick. By the end of 1943 Carson, still troubled by the Brandt commissions issue, wrote a letter addressed personally to Selznick in which he explained, “After the war, if I survive it, I do not intend to become a movie writer again.” Therefore he asked to be released from his contract. While Carson does not mention it in the letter, being released from his movie contract would free him up to work through Brandt exclusively. The letter is genuine and straightforward: “My service in the Army has changed my sense of values entirely, and I can assure you there is no temperament involved in this request.” Selznick mulled this over for some time, rhetorically telling his associates, if Carson “isn’t going to do any picture writing, I can’t understand why he wants a release.” With Selznick rarely in the office in late 1943, Carson pressed the other agents to explain why their boss had yet to answer his letter. When Myron finally did so in February 1944, he refused Carson’s request, calling it ungrateful and essentially guaranteeing that he would lose this client. Carson’s career path demonstrated how the agency established prices by shopping artists to studios with steady increments in their salary. These salary steps, following a logic of scale despite their dispersal across multiple studios, reflected the web of intercompany contacts, managed largely by agents, and the shared understanding in the studio system of a writer’s progress (or that of any other key talent), as measured by production super-

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visors and box office. Agents and executives exchanged information about talent and their general asking prices. Carson’s situation also showed how agents frequently negotiated with other agents, both in-house and with other firms (literary agents, for example) in arranging certain deals. Carson’s field agents coordinated their efforts and information—again, inhouse and with the writer’s New York representative—in order to properly negotiate Carson’s deals and his career. Indeed, the Hollywood agents sold Carson’s literary career as a point of value within the studio marketplace. Of course, Carson’s dealings with the Selznick agency also illustrated the difficult—in this case, failed—efforts to walk a tightrope between personal relations and business decisions and the importance of balancing these two with one another. Selznick’s field agents often developed meaningful bonds with clients and understood the value, particularly in a service business, of respecting such relations throughout a client’s contract. Selznick understood this to a certain extent, but as this case shows, Selznick could negotiate as brutally with his own clients as with studio executives.

The Artful Dodger and The Lodger: Alfred Hitchcock As early as 1936, Selznick’s London office scouted out the promising British director Alfred Hitchcock as a potential export for the Hollywood office. An interoffice memo from that year revealed that Selznick’s agents were concerned about Hitchcock’s leisurely pace on productions and how this might affect his performance in Hollywood. Within a few short years Hitchcock successfully courted U.S. studios with Myron Selznick as his designated escort. But Hitchcock repressed his reservations and apprehensions about his representation by this agency, only to find them surfacing shortly after his first U.S. success.7 In 1937, having worked without an official agent up to this point, Hitchcock recruited Harry Ham, an associate in Selznick’s London office, to explore potential Hollywood deals. At the time Hitchcock had branded himself in British film culture as an artful commercial director, tallying up such hits as The Lodger and Blackmail in the late silent era and The Man Who Knew Too Much and The 39 Steps in the midthirties. Hitchcock had in fact contacted Ham two years earlier, but the agency backed off when informed that the director still owed films on his British contract. In 1937, with his contract release approaching, Hitchcock relayed the following terms to Ham as bait for Hollywood: two films in one year for an annual salary of $100,000. Hitchcock also suggested a three-year option period, offering—

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quite unrealistically, given his general work routine—three pictures a year with an “escalating price-per-picture clause.” Clearly, Hitchcock had given some thought to what he was worth. But the U.S. studios had done their own homework too and, for all their admiration, eyed Hitchcock with some skepticism, fully informed of his slow working pace, his obdurate perfectionism, and his demands for meticulous control of preproduction. RKO, MGM, David Selznick’s SIP, and Goldwyn’s company, the only studios that had expressed any real interest, all backed away from this offer. MGM threw out a counteroffer, $2,000 per week, but only if Hitchcock remained in England to take advantage of Metro’s new soundstages. Hitchcock rejected the offer, since it gained him little in terms of his career (his working conditions in England were already more advantageous than those offered by MGM). Fox too offered to finance a British production—to gain tax breaks on its British profits—but the master of suspense balked. Determined to make headway with Hollywood, Hitchcock booked a trip to New York in August 1937 and flirted blatantly with the studios through his press interviews. “The matter is still in the air,” he told the British press when he returned. “But if I do go to Hollywood, I’d only work for Selznick.” Enter Selznick—Myron Selznick. The studio that Hitchcock was determined to sign with was David’s SIP, which probably played into Hitchcock’s decision to finally sign a Selznick agency contract in the spring of 1938. But Myron Selznick did not have much luck with his new client. As David later acknowledged to Frank Capra, Myron could “not get bids for [Hitchcock] at the time I signed him.”8 David had landed the director for a salary of $50,000 for one film a year, granting Hitchcock the right to pursue freelance deals for the remaining thirty-two weeks of each year. In terms of salary provisions (both upfront fees and percentages) and other contractual guarantees (production budgets, for example), Hitchcock’s contract with SIP paled next to Feldman’s work for George Stevens, for example, and next to Myron Selznick’s work for Leo McCarey or Gregory La Cava in this period. Hitchcock understood the reasons for such discrepancies—largely his untried status in Hollywood and La Cava’s and McCarey’s commercial track record—but harbored suspicions about the deal, wondering whether Myron had made David a sweetheart deal and whether Goldwyn could have topped SIP’s offer. While the contract granted Hitchcock a strong say in story selection and development, a right to veto any loan-outs, and a right to work on outside pictures for other producers, the director fretted about the possibility of finding other work and the control he had lost to David. Discounting the persistent interference from David (relatively low actually on this production), Hitchcock’s first SIP film, Rebecca (with Selznick

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agency clients Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine in the leads), could not have gone better as a U.S. debut. It was a critical and commercial success, and a Best Picture winner. Hitchcock and his agency canvassed the studios doggedly to set up an outside production for the director. Their efforts paid off with Walter Wanger, who hired the director and gave him a free hand— and ever-escalating budget—for Foreign Correspondent. Making the rounds again, the agency paired Hitchcock with former client Carole Lombard (whose house Hitchcock rented for his Hollywood stay) on Mr. And Mrs. Smith at RKO, an unusual if efficient exercise in comedy for the director. The agency even pursued a deal for a radio show hosted by the director.9 Overall these productions went well, and Hitchcock maintained fairly steady work, even while David, who had a contractual right to approve these loan-outs, looked over his shoulder on almost every negotiation. In 1940 Myron struck a deal with Hitchcock to produce and partially finance preproduction for a U.S. remake of the director’s The Lodger. Their partnership on this endeavor revealed the problems—legal, ethical, and logistical—of an agent’s operating as a producer—particularly, as in this case, with his own client. In December 1940 Myron Selznick and Hitchcock drew up estimated costs for the sets and technical crew and set an approximate budget for the cast (minus the star). Selznick worked out the following deal with his client: he would pay Hitchcock $5,000 upon signing the contract and the director’s wife, Alma, would receive $5,000 when she began work on the script, plus $5,000 more when she finished the final draft. Myron then set about selling the project to a studio, guaranteeing that Hitchcock would direct. Per their agreement five-sixths of the profits—defined as those sums in excess of $30,000—on the sale of the script would go to Selznick, one-sixth to Hitchcock; this division applied to the sale of the script alone; for directing, Hitchcock would receive a salary ($80,000) and a percentage of the profits. In a memo dated March 7, 1941, one of Selznick’s agency associates wondered whether it would be “advisable to add a provision to the contract to the effect that the producer (Myron) is presently serving the capacity of the director’s agent and that there exists a fiduciary relationship, but that with respect to this agreement, the parties are dealing with each other ‘at arms length.’” In fact, this proposal was the match that lit the tinder in the tensions and frictions between the agent and the director, for both parties complicated this negotiation with their own ambitions and suspicions. The Lodger deal struck at Hitchcock’s worries about the Selznick brothers, particularly as the director hunted for projects between productions and pestered Myron’s office with ribbing telephone calls. As he flipped

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through the trades and noted the various business activities of the Selznick agency, Hitchcock wondered why he saw no mentions of the Lodger project (as reported by a dutiful agent who transcribed his conversation with Hitchcock). Obliquely, the director asked the agency’s business manager whether the contracts for The Lodger involved David O. Selznick at all. Told no, Hitchcock then wondered in a sarcastic stage whisper whether the contract contained “a collusion clause,” alluding to the sibling conspiracy he suspected. The foul play was buried in The Lodger deal itself. Indeed, internal agency memos reveal that Hitchcock’s paranoia served him well here. A memo to Myron Selznick from his lawyer shows that one of the crucial problems with Myron’s production partnership with Hitchcock and others like it, namely, Myron’s acting as agent and producer on a deal involving a client. Selznick’s lawyer explained why they would have to place a ceiling on Hitchcock’s asking price in negotiating The Lodger package: I think we should be firm on the $80,000 payable to HITCHCOCK for his services [as director]. Evidently, any increase in this figure will operate substantially to our detriment in the event HITCHCOCK’s services and the screenplay are sold as a package. For instance, if HITCHCOCK’s salary were increased to $100,000, I assume the increase would cost us $10,000 in the event the package were sold. In this respect it can be pointed out to HITCHCOCK that he will receive $80,000 not only, but one-half of any profits resulting from the sale of the package, and that this profit will be correspondingly increased if his salary remains the same.

In other words, to protect Myron Selznick’s interests as a producer—his share of the profits after production costs were accounted for—the agency would have to cap Hitchcock’s salary (any increase of which would decrease Selznick’s take as a producer by adding to the production costs). This dilemma, this conspiracy, perfectly illustrated the concerns raised in the agents’ agreement with the Screen Actors Guild, that agents’ acting as producers or buyers necessarily presented situations too entangled with conflict to render clear services for their clients. In this case the Selznick agency, as its lawyer explicitly spelled out in his memo, would sacrifice its service to Hitchcock—to gain the client the highest offer on the market in exchange for his services—in order to protect the financial stake of the agency’s boss in the project. The conspiracy is contractual. A more immediate obstacle, one of communication, arose when Hitchcock claimed that he had never agreed to direct the picture for $80,000. Of course, securing Hitchcock’s directing services offered the most attractive aspect of “the package,” as agents characterized the project in their interof-

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fice memos. For instance, when Frank Lloyd, one of the agency’s producerclients, called in a panic because he did not have a third picture to complete his deal with Universal, one of Selznick‘s quick-thinking agents thought of throwing The Lodger to Lloyd, with Hitchcock to direct and another client, Joan Fontaine, to star: “I told Frank the script would cost him $75,000, Hitchcock $80,000 and Fontaine would also cost him $80,000.” Thus the agent protected Selznick’s interest—per the lawyer’s recommendation— by sticking to Hitchcock’s $80,000 price tag—leaving Selznick with $45,000 on the sale and his agency with $16,000 in commissions. This particular deal derailed because of the difficulty of securing Hitchcock and Fontaine, both of whom remained under contract to SIP. Keep in mind that during these convoluted machinations, the script had yet to be written. Hitchcock himself dodged the issue of completing a script and seemed mainly interested in selling the idea, not the actual production, an ambivalence that even his agents detected. When an agent lunched with Hitchcock in January 1942, the director wondered whether they could get $60,000 for just selling the script. “What script?” the agent asked. Hitchcock evaded the question, suggesting only that if a deal were imminent, a script would appear. Hitchcock’s cagey responses when asked about the progress of this project suggest that he may never have been interested in directing this remake and may have been looking only for a quick sale. From January through March 1942, as The Lodger surfaced in lunchtime discussions with Selznick’s agents as a potential Hitchcock project, the director made ominous noises to the effect that he would very likely “not renew his contract with us,” as an agent warned in a memo. Hitchcock’s contract with Selznick’s agency expired in June 1943—as a reminder memo to Selznick indicated—so the clock was ticking. Selznick hoped to attach Hitchcock’s signature to a seven-year agency contract to any potential Lodger deal. One month later Sig Marcus of the Selznick agency tried to discuss The Lodger situation with Hitchcock, only to be told that Jack Skirball (an independent producer with a production deal at Universal) had offered Hitchcock $150,000 for sixteen or seventeen weeks on another production— Hitchcock glibly noted that “he was ‘not sure’”—starting the following week. Casually mentioning a deal set to begin within a week betrayed Hitchcock’s coy sense of drama and the director’s hostility toward the agency. Stunned, Marcus informed the director of the importance of making full disclosure to Selznick regarding any deal so that the agency could secure a competitive price. In the face of this indirect accusation, Hitchcock backpedaled and claimed that there really was no deal. Marcus asked

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Hitchcock how Skirball could discuss $150,000 without any real deal on the table, to which Hitchcock responded, somewhat defensively, that he “was a very saleable commodity, and that Skirball would have no difficulty getting off the hook.” Hitchcock claimed that he did not want to make a great deal of money out of the deal but that he simply was keenly interested in making The Lodger. Hitchcock then hinted at a certain discomfort about dealing with his agent as a producer. He wondered whether Selznick would receive 50 percent of any bonus that Hitchcock earned. Marcus explained that the agency would make only its usual 10 percent on fees or bonuses for Hitchcock’s directing, “but if the bonus were in the nature of the purchase price of his share of The Lodger that would become another matter.” In an effort to free himself of Selznick, Hitchcock continued to press his agent to simply sell Hitchcock’s interests in The Lodger to Skirball. Myron proposed $50,000 for his share of the story plus 10 percent of the profits to Skirball. One of Myron’s associates suggested writing a letter to Hitchcock explaining Selznick’s unwillingness to sell his interest in The Lodger: “I think you might fairly predicate it upon the fact that you went into the deal in order to be associated with him in the making of the picture, and that you do not feel any financial compensation would take the place of this—at least, not now.” This note indicated that Selznick may have wanted to leverage his ties to an important client to move the project into production, suggesting that the agent continued to maintain an interest in production, despite his rather halfhearted efforts. Suspicious of both Selznicks, Hitchcock continued to insist that he would leave the agency upon the expiration of his contract. To shed his entanglements with the Selznick agency, in January 1943 Hitchcock sold half his ownership of The Lodger to David Selznick for $15,000. Hitchcock then moved on to a new deal with Jack Skirball. Myron Selznick explored other possibilities (for example, using frozen funds in England to pay for the project and signing the director Carol Reed and the producer Hunt Stromberg, with Monty Woolley for the part of the lodger—clients one and all), but none of these came to pass. Weary of the agency and increasingly indifferent to his everyday business obligations, Myron Selznick clung to the project and bitterly noted its similarities to Shadow of a Doubt, a 1943 production that Hitchcock eventually directed for Skirball (with an original screenplay by Alma Reville and Thornton Wilder). Selznick (or one of his field agents) even drew up a diagram of parallels between the two films (see table 2). A pathetic image: the crumpled Selznick, pettily taking notes in the dark, on a project long lost to

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Table 2. Parallels between The Lodger (1927) and Shadow of a Doubt (1943) The Lodger

Shadow of a Doubt

Housekeeper and her family look upon THE LODGER as a distinguished gentleman and benefactor LODGER mentally deranged LODGER murders young blonde girls Possible romance between LODGER and housekeeper’s daughter Scotland Yard detective in love with the housekeeper’s daughter LODGER never convicted

Sister and her family look upon brother, UNCLE CHARLIE, as distinguished man of the world and their benefactor UNCLE CHARLIE mentally deranged UNCLE CHARLIE murders rich widows Possible romance between UNCLE CHARLIE and sister’s daughter FBI man in love with sister’s daughter UNCLE CHARLIE never convicted

Source: “Alfred Hitchcock” folder, agency files, Myron Selznick Papers, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin.

chance, acrimony, infighting, and haggling. The table depicts a rivalry between client and agent. It also stems from a culture that still breeds a commodification of ideas and art; it displays no notion of an artist’s working over familiar material with subtle variations or interesting new angles. Selznick developed these notes in consideration of a lawsuit. But he dropped the idea and sold his rights to the Lodger story to Twentieth Century Fox for $12,500—the end of a project that lost money and, ultimately, a client.

Absolutely Shot: The Demise of the Selznick Agency The stories of Vivien Leigh, Robert Donat, Robert Carson, and Alfred Hitchcock unfolded more or less simultaneously, suggesting something of the steadfast surveillance necessary to running a large agency. Another trend emerges, too: the growing suspicion and discontent of the clients. By 1943 or so each of these clients—all leading figures in the industry, three of whom (Donat, Leigh, and Carson) had won Academy Awards, while the fourth had directed Rebecca, which won the Best Picture award for 1940— had threatened to quit the agency. Nor were these clients the only agency clients who had grown increasingly distrustful, dissatisfied, and unfulfilled

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in relation to the agency. So the other story that emerges here is that of the agency’s demise. In 1944 George Cukor joined a chorus of clients who were complaining about Myron Selznick. Cukor’s criticism came from a particularly poignant perspective since, as a close friend of the family’s, he possessed much more insight into the toll wreaked on the company by Selznick’s increasing alcoholic indifference to work. In a handwritten letter dated January 28, 1944, Cukor broke the news to his agent and friend: Writing this letter is awful tough going for me. I am signing with the William Morris office. Nobody, better than you, knows the crises and headaches that arise in this business. Some of these situations are piddling, but some are crucial and decisive and need constant watching. No one, I’ve ever come across, has the knowledge, acumen and guts to tackle these problems better than you. But in the last few years, I have felt that I have not had the full benefit of your handling. I consider this step a business necessity and I hope with all my heart that it will not alter our friendship. It is a wrench after thirteen or fourteen years with you. It is made all the more difficult because of my deep feeling for you, and—believe me—because of appreciation and gratitude for what you have done for me.10

For more than a decade, as Cukor acknowledged, the Selznick team had served the director well: steady increases in salary; greater control of his projects; pairing and packaging with other Selznick clients; and juggling opportunities at various studios as a way of expanding his creative options. But by the late 1930s Cukor complained that he was handling most of his deal making himself; Selznick’s office offered only perfunctory services: drawing up contracts; following through on payments and contract drafts. It left all the negotiating work up to Cukor, a frustrating burden for an artist. In addition, he probably still felt some sense of betrayal because of his dismissal from Gone with the Wind, and the director had experienced a number of problems with MGM executives in the early 1940s. Hence, Cukor’s name shows up in Feldman’s surviving daybooks from early 1944, very likely because the director was interviewing the agent before deciding to move to William Morris. Before Myron dashed off a personal reply to Cukor, Selznick demonstrated some of the shrewdness and acumen that Cukor credited him with. In New York at the time, Selznick phoned one of his associates one week later to check on the exact details and figures in Cukor’s contracts; the associate wired Selznick: “Confirming my report to you on the long distance phone today, George Cukor’s current contract at Metro ($4000 per week for

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4 straight years) has for its earliest expiration date July 23, 1945,” noting that the possibility of extensions meant the contract could run until 1946.11 Figures in hand, three days later Selznick framed a personal reply before laying into the financial facts: Your letter stating that you were going to sign with the William Morris office was a terrific disappointment and shock to me. You say that “some situations” which arise in your case “are piddling, but some are crucial and need constant watching.” If so, why didn’t you call me? If at any time I was unavailable to you because I was in New York or at Hill Haven, I had an organization at your beck and call.

Then the cold facts: Of course, you are obligated to pay commissions on your present MGM contract, and any replacement or extension, and I am sure it is your intention to do so.12

Sober in business but not so in life. By the early 1940s Selznick’s drinking was destroying his health and business, to say nothing of his family and friends. “For a long time,” his sister-in-law Irene observed, “drinking didn’t seem to affect his business or his personal popularity. Then it became excessive and began to ruin his health, his business, and his life.” David advised Myron’s wife, Marjorie, of the obvious: her husband “simply [had] to cut out the drinking.”13 But Marjorie had noticed what David seemed to deny for quite some time. In 1939 she had moved herself and her daughter to Boston, writing to Myron: “You must know that it is no longer possible for me to tolerate your fixed habit of excessive drinking which has accentuated an attitude naturally arbitrary and self-willed and which has caused you on too many occasions to make me the butt of a constant stream of abuse, not only when we were alone, but in the presence of groups of people, many of them intimate friends.”14 Divorce papers and litigation soon followed. With Myron’s family falling apart, David and Irene stepped up their attention, calling in the family lawyer who, after consulting with doctors, urged Myron to take a vacation from the agency: “If this means the business will not run as well, I am confident that nevertheless it will run.” Of course, with Myron’s flickering presence of late, the agency ran itself, more or less. But the divorce fueled further bouts of drinking, despite Myron’s repeated efforts to take the cure. His doctors anticipated a mental breakdown: Myron has not yet gotten back to any degree his normal sleep pattern. His secretary just called me to change an appointment because he did not get to sleep until seven o’clock this morning. Emotionally, he is still off balance,

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though oriented. Anything like a normal emotional plane will be reached only after many months of abstinence. When we think of the hurt and hardships to his personality that was engendered by his alcoholic dependency over many years, a period of slow convalescence must be anticipated.15

While David continued to encourage Myron to move into production—he claimed the agency had been Myron’s “Frankenstein, as it devoured him and obscured his real objectives”—David nonetheless urged caution in a communication to Myron’s doctor: “He can’t expect to leap back into a field from which he has been absent for twenty years. Further, I believe I am correct in saying that the worst thing in the world would be for him to turn to me, or to lean on me in any way, in such endeavors. This would accomplish nothing, other than perhaps increasing any inferiorities he may feel.”16 Even these plans evaporated. What did not dry up was the veritable flood of clients leaving the office. For all the reasons outlined by Cukor, Carole Lombard sued for release from her contract in 1940. The judge ruled in her favor but acknowledged that Selznick had served her well, having raised her salary and her standing in the industry.17 That she continued to owe the agency commissions (until her death in a 1942 airplane accident) represented an otherwise empty victory for Selznick in the midst of his other losses. Errol Flynn bolted in 1941. Gregory La Cava left in 1942, joining fellow directors Lewis Milestone (who signed with Feldman) and William Wellman (who signed with Bert Allenberg).18 Sam Jaffe lured Joan Bennett back to his agency in 1943. The producer Val Lewton and the writers Robert Stevenson and Leigh Brackett all left for Feldman’s agency. Other clients failed to renew their contracts or, like Hitchcock and Robert Carson, made it clear that they would leave when their agency contract expired. Signing promising new clients like James Mason, Richard Barthelmes, and the director Tay Garnett did little to balance these losses. Others, like Lucille Ball, turned aside the agency’s overtures; Lucy stayed true to her savvy agent, Arthur Lyons. Perhaps the most disconcerting developments in this slow deterioration came from within Selznick’s own staff and associates. In 1939, for reasons that remain undocumented, Leland Hayward cut his ties with the company and convinced an important Selznick executive, Nat Deverich, to join him. The Selznick agency’s reorganization that year may have been a response to Hayward’s departure or may have precipitated it. Selznick’s erratic focus and alcoholism offered equally likely reasons for Hayward’s departure. Or, simple business opportunism may have prompted the partnership’s dissolution.19 At any rate, Hayward took many clients with him. Moreover, these

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clients were essentially given a choice to remain with Selznick or sign anew with the Hayward-Deverich Agency, as Hayward outlined in a letter to his clients: For some months I have negotiated with Myron Selznick in an effort to get the affairs of Leland Hayward and Company, Ltd. straightened out. This has finally been accomplished and hereafter the California office will be known as Hayward-Deverich, Inc. . . . Under the arrangements I gave Myron Selznick the right to take over any client who wants to go with him instead of staying with me.20

More than a handful stayed with Hayward: Henry Fonda, James Stewart, Katharine Hepburn, William Wyler, Ginger Rogers, Fred Astaire, Fredric March, Ben Hecht, and Myrna Loy, among dozens of others. In the next few years more and more executives followed Hayward and Deverich’s example and quit Selznick, leaving the business to lesser agents and Selznick’s alcoholism. In 1940 Dan Winkler jumped ship to become a studio executive at RKO. Two years later Jimmy Townsend and Phil Ryan, two of Selznick’s “most important men,” in the words of Feldman’s spies, joined Winkler. The Feldman associate added, “This leaves Selznick’s organization absolutely shot”: As I see it (and very roughly, mind you) Myron must be disgusted with the agency business and has other ideas regarding his personal activities in the future. I believe that for the past three or four years Myron has been disgusted with the agency business and in addition is again a wealthy man.21

This memo exposes the competitive stakes in the Selznick agency’s deterioration, as well as the powerful and dangerous work of gossip in the industry. That same month another Feldman executive boasted of obtaining “a list of Myron’s people” and reviewing it strategically. Leland Hayward himself tipped this Feldman associate that both Olivia de Havilland—who had already dumped Hayward—and Paulette Goddard had given notices of termination to Selznick.22 This spiral continued, with Myron in and out of dry-out programs and sanitariums, his business straining to serve its clients, and his brother and family meddling in all his affairs. On March 21, 1944, Myron attended a dinner party at Gregory Ratoff’s home. Convinced to try a glass of wine, he quickly found his way to the hard stuff—a lot of it. Just as quickly, he became ill. Early in the morning of March 23, 1944, after eight blood transfusions and a total loss of consciousness, Myron Selznick died of portal vein thrombosis (vascular disease) at Santa Monica Hospital.

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A few days later client William Powell read an eloquent eulogy, written by client Gene Fowler, to a dense crowd of industry figures and family at Myron Selznick’s funeral.23 The trade press ran respectful headlines on their front pages, covering the agent’s colorful career and acknowledging his important contributions to the industry: increasing remuneration for talent; bolstering the creative autonomy of talent; packaging productions; crafting important freelancer deals as models for independent productions, among other achievements. Recognizing the agent’s importance to independent producers, the Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers issued a resolution on March 30, 1944, acknowledging Selznick’s importance to independent production, a rare honor for a nonmember: Myron Selznick was, by training and character, an independent. He became a powerful and constructive force in the motion picture industry by reason of his insistence on maintaining his own independence and his willingness to fight for the rights of his clients. He was always a friend and counselor of the independent producer. He believed that independent production of motion pictures was essential to the continued growth and artistic success of motion pictures. He was loyal to that concept and fearless in its advocacy. In his death, the motion picture industry, and particularly, the independent producer, have lost a real friend.24

Such honors extended all the way to Congress, as Charles Feldman noted with some pride for his profession in a letter to George Stevens, who was overseas with an army film unit: You have undoubtedly heard that Myron Selznick passed away some weeks ago. Our congressman, Will Rogers, Jr. gave him quite a commendation before the House of Representatives in Washington and alluded to him as one of the great pioneers of the industry and also as one of our greatest producers. I think he got David mixed up with Myron but nevertheless it was a very nice thought. As a matter of fact, this is the first time that any Hollywood personality was eulogized before Congress. It didn’t happen to Will Rogers, it didn’t happen to Thalberg or Fairbanks or any of the other “greats” but it did happen to a Hollywood agent.25

Business did not stop in the midst of all this solemnity and memorializing, and Myron’s death left the agency ripe for plundering. Initially, the few remaining agents were determined to make the Selznick agency run. In the first year they lost more than half their remaining clients. In dealing with the remnants of Selznick’s agency holdings, his bank’s trust officers authorized four agency executives as signatories. And Myron’s estate considered various options for managing the company. One proposal suggested dropping all clients pulling in $30 to $35 a week in commissions—like Dashiell

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Hammett, for example—and maintaining only talent that was generating three- to four-figure weekly commissions.26 None of these plans got off the ground. Many members of the Artists’ Managers Guild offered to serve Myron’s clients while still protecting the agency’s interests. In this regard Leland Hayward nobly suggested forming a committee of leading agents to act in an advisory capacity for the agency. Feldman, Noll Gurney—one of Myron’s former field agents—and Sam Jaffe made similar overtures. Impressed with this nominally uncommon chivalry in an otherwise competitive business, David wrote a note to Bert Allenberg at the guild thanking the members for such generosity but indicating that he would manage the estate himself.27 Collecting commissions from clients dogged the estate for years, leading to many lawsuits and wasteful labor on David’s part, distracting him from his efforts to maintain his independent production company. David even had to take legal action against his friend and employee George Cukor, demanding that the director honor agency commissions based on his MGM contract and that he pay 5 percent in commissions for one year on his new William Morris contract.28 Managing the estate was a distracting mess but a lucrative one. David’s advisers encouraged him to sell the assets. He entertained offers for the London branch from Feldman, William Morris, and Music Corporation of America (MCA), the latter two corporations angling to buy existing agencies as a way of solidifying their operations in the film business.29 MCA aggressively pursued the London office, even if David seemed put off by the company from the start. Negotiations with all the interested parties involved difficult determinations about how to split commissions on active contracts, as well as haggling about the upfront purchase price. David’s indecisiveness, his determination to protect his brother’s legacy and honor, and his simultaneous frustration at the taxing attention demanded by his brother’s estate made the negotiations all the more difficult and protracted. When the MCA deal fell apart, David expressed concern that MCA had obtained valuable information about clients and the London operation in the process. Indeed, from the outset David suspected that MCA agents were merely trying to familiarize themselves with the London organization in order to chip off clients. As David noted with some alarm to his lawyer, an MCA agent signed five clients during a short London trip in January 1945.30 Despite such suspicions, negotiation between David and MCA continued for many years. By 1951 the London office showed a net loss of $350 and a trend of consistently shrinking gross earnings (fewer commissions), demonstrating to David’s accountant “the wisdom, if not the necessity of

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disposing of this asset as soon as possible.”31 MCA ultimately bought the London office, but it remained more of a figurehead operation than a significant asset. The New York office also fielded numerous purchase offers. In 1944 it looked like James Saphier might take over the New York branch, along with the Los Angeles office, a prospect that David found attractive (Saphier had been on good terms with both brothers). But Charles Feldman’s offers quickly emerged as the most serious and persistent; in fact, at various points in the negotiations Feldman expressed interest in the New York, London, and Los Angeles offices.32 He purchased the New York office in September 1945—David permitted Feldman to retain the name for a few months—for $25,000, in installments, and the operation was running at a loss in 1948 when the Selznick estate received the final $5,000 check from Feldman. The Los Angeles office, Feldman’s main target, continued to function, albeit under great duress. The building itself was a valuable tangible asset, as David Selznick revealed in a memo entertaining Feldman’s bids; David feared that Feldman was outsmarting them in the negotiations. Specifically, David suspected Feldman of bluffing about his lack of interest in the building itself. “I think he is hungry as a wolf for it,” David remarked. “Not less than fifteen times in the course of these negotiations . . . he has pretended indifference to the building . . . only to change his tune when I have talked about leaving it out.”33 In the end Feldman left the building out of the deal. But he snatched up the remaining assets (some stray clients and employees) in Los Angeles and New York. Myron’s business, or what remained of it, had been divided and folded into Feldman’s and MCA’s, those of his strongest rival and a relative newcomer.

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9. Tall in the Saddle Agents in the Producer’s Chair

The purchase of Myron Selznick’s talent agency completed Charles Feldman’s ascension to the top of the agency business. David O. Selznick suspected that owning the agency of his former rival was at least as important to Feldman as its strict financial value. In private communication with his lawyer, David, as executor of Myron’s estate, fretted about the symbolic loss to Myron’s reputation and the whiff of victory he detected in Feldman’s ambition for the remnants of Myron’s agency. Feldman expressed little interest in signing all the remaining clients and seemed more enthralled with the nominal purchase of assets, particularly Myron’s central office building: “My guess is that Feldman would like to get 5% of the important clients because this costs him little or nothing; that he would like to get the building; that he would like to get the prestige and self-satisfaction of acquiring what for so many years he looked up to from the other side of the tracks,” David told his lawyer.1 In other words, Feldman offered no cash for clients—only an agreement to split commissions with Selznick—but cash for the building (which Selznick ended up keeping) and the New York office. News reports, publicity, and industry gossip portrayed the purchase as a prized acquisition for Feldman. Feldman certainly recognized the symbolic value. In 1946, in notes to a magazine writer working on a profile of Feldman (who, incredibly, proofread the article before publication), the agent concocted the following, somewhat fictionalized, narrative about his origins: “I went to Myron Selznick to get a job in his agency business. Was turned down and two years ago, after Myron’s death purchased entire Selznick offices in Hollywood and New York.”2 No record exists of Feldman’s approaching Selznick for a job, so he probably added this dimension to inflate the dramatic arc of his triumph in buying out Selznick’s agency (some aspects of the deal remained incomplete at this point). Still, Feldman’s sense of the symbolic stands up: with Selznick 197

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out of the picture, Feldman was the de facto leader in the Hollywood agency business in the 1940s, even as newcomers William Morris and Music Corporation of America grew more powerful. Feldman had earned this stature. From the late 1930s through the mid1940s he carved out new paths for his clients, for agents, for independent production companies, and for himself—often simultaneously. Feldman had staked out his leadership at the forefront of the freelance movement, creating new deals for clients like Claudette Colbert, Irene Dunne, and Charles Boyer. Feldman played a central role in advising individual producers like Sam Spiegel and Sam Engel to create their own independent production companies. And when Feldman acquired client Howard Hawks in the late 1930s, he set up semiautonomous production deals with the studios and, after the war, Hawks’s own independent company. Like Selznick, Feldman pounced on the new tax laws to encourage clients to arrange new deals, decreasing their annual workload (to change their income brackets), as did the consent decree that limited block booking. These factors contributed to transformations in business practices, conditions recognized and tactically exploited by Feldman. But the symbiotic syndicate established between agents and talent, and agents and studio executives helped the business adapt to these new conditions.

Feldman’s Move into Production In the late 1930s Feldman obtained a special waiver from the Screen Actors Guild to act as both an agent and a producer. Within a few years Feldman began merging his activities as a new producer and an agent.3 In 1941, for example, Feldman sold Model Wife to Universal with clients Joan Blondell to star in client Charles Kaufman’s screenplay and Leigh Jason to direct. That same year Feldman also hawked Paris Calling to Universal with clients Randolph Scott and Elizabeth Bergner and Appointment for Love with Charles Boyer. With his writer clients Feldman developed the screenplays for Universal’s Seven Sinners, Pittsburgh, and The Spoilers, populating each film with his clients and taking a producer’s credit on two of the films (all of which I discuss in this chapter), among numerous other production packages of the 1940s. As Collier’s noted, in a profile that focused on Feldman’s unique status as an agent-producer, by 1949 “the ‘package deal’ [was] standard operating procedure in the movie industry.”4 Packaging conflated the theory and practice of Feldman’s move into independent production. When Feldman officially incorporated Charles K.

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Feldman Productions in 1937, he began gathering material and financing screenplay development (he renamed his agency Famous Artists Corporation).5 By 1940 Feldman had made his first moves into his own supervised productions. Feldman described his transition to film production as part of his “singularly ordered” career, that is, as a logical progression from lawyer to agent to producer: “Now I find myself as part of my agency business forced into an expansion of my activities into the production field, which step I had never originally planned.”6 Feldman’s production activity was strategic, calculating the interests of his clients and his agency and the needs of the studios. In contrast to a Walter Wanger, Samuel Goldwyn, or David O. Selznick, who established themselves as competitive alternatives to the studio mode of production, Feldman envisioned his role as an independent producer more from a service-oriented perspective—he was providing a utility to his clients and to the studios. “I didn’t go into competition with the studios,” Feldman explained. “I just bought what they didn’t want or had passed up. I would wrap a story up, then stick an important name on the label, usually the name of a star or top director. The rest was easy. No producer in his right mind would turn down a deal like that.”7 Unlike Myron Selznick’s rather bombastic, even hostile (and failed), approach to independent production companies, Feldman staked out a specialty market—supplying productions or packages to complement studio output—and it grew in the 1940s. Both the growth in movie attendance during World War II and an industry that favored stratified, limited picture deals (dispersing salary payments over time) over long-term contracts, created a favorable climate for independent producers. Certain studios proved more receptive to these deals. Universal, Columbia, RKO, and United Artists were Feldman’s steadiest clients for package deals, since these companies did not carry big rosters of contracted stars, which encouraged these studios to turn to independent producers for product. But as more studios trimmed their overhead in the late 1940s and conceded to the tax concerns of talent, Feldman found that big studios like Warner Bros. and Twentieth Century Fox were willing customers for independently packaged productions. Of course, independent production, as Feldman’s friend Walter Wanger noted, represented a misnomer, since the producer depended so strongly on the studios.8 Like an agent, an independent Hollywood producer had to work within the paradigms and values established by the studio system: genres, stars, principles of clear storytelling and cinematography, and other values established both by box-office trends and long-standing norms. A producer or an agent had to pitch projects and clients within this framework. As an agent Feldman depended on the same studio executives—it was only a matter switching hats and switching tracks.

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Feldman joined a crowded field of independents. Frank Capra went freelance and signed separate one-picture deals with Warner Bros. in 1940 and 1941, engagements that assured him of a percentage of the gross of each picture on top of his $100,000 minimum directing fee (Feldman got the same rate plus percentages for George Stevens at the time). Many other creative types also were operating without conventional long-term studio contracts, figures like Gary Cooper, Jack Skirball, and Leo McCarey. James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson signed new Warner Bros. contracts that granted them story approval and role approval, with Cagney commanding a percentage of the gross on top of salary. Cagney signed an independent production deal with UA in 1942. That year Variety tallied up the surge in productions worked out through the independent unit-manager approach, as “company after company has swung away from the system of front-office assignment of producers . . . toward the unit idea.”9 These producers worked with different levels of independence. Goldwyn, Selznick, Jesse Lasky, Orson Welles, and Preston Sturges oversaw their productions with varying degrees of autonomy. Studios still retained control of distribution outlets and thereby reined in the levels of independence accorded talent. Yet the ranks of independents grew to include Frank Borzage, Frank Capra, Lester Cowan, Bing Crosby, Mark Hellinger, Mervyn Le Roy, Lewis Milestone, Robert Riskin, and others.10 And by 1944 Variety claimed that “Hollywood’s most important independent producers are setting virtually their own terms with distributors.”11 Agents like Feldman settled those terms. Viewed from the perspective of the studio system, these transformations looked like erosion; viewed in the context of the strong network of agents around the studios, these transformations register more as a dispersal of managerial tasks. Studios increasingly outsourced managerial duties to independent producers—and agents like Feldman were ready and waiting to pick up the reins. The important point here is that the transactions, coordination, and negotiation between agents and studio executives were already in place, ready to absorb these managerial duties. The system didn’t need to be invented anew in the 1940s. The relationship between agents and studios accounted for Feldman’s successful transition to independent production. Once again, then, social connections counted for “agency” in the studio system. As an agent Feldman had established links to talent and to producers and studio executives; as a producer he harnessed this network to set up production deals. Feldman’s reputation, built through the regulated transactions in his agency business, played into this new enterprise. In one such case, for example, Feldman promised an investor that he had a completed screenplay perfectly

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pitched for his clients George Raft and Marlene Dietrich. “Both stars,” he claimed, “would defer practically all their salaries. The picture could be made on this basis with these deferments for approximately $300,000.”12 As a producer, then, Feldman tacitly and expressly touted his access to clients as among his assets.

Saddling John Wayne: Dietrich Rides Again In his later years John Wayne feigned complete bafflement when he claimed that after all his time in the film business, he still didn’t know what an agent did.13 But Wayne knew all too well, for his relationship with Feldman spanned the richest period in the actor’s career, lasting well into the 1960s and full of correspondence, consultations, conflicts, and consolations—no passing affair but a meaningful long-term relationship. Of course, admitting to a dependency on handlers like agents amounts to acknowledging a certain lack of independence, a chink in the armor of machismo that Wayne wore with such confidence. Feldman played a strong role in navigating Wayne’s access to stronger, richer material, in partnering the actor with creative personnel to accentuate and buttress his skills, and in gaining the actor industry attention and a degree of autonomy as his career developed. Acquiring Wayne in the late 1930s was yet another of Feldman’s acts of thievery, one so transparent that he wound up in courts as a result. But Wayne’s career strategy in the early 1940s meshed well with Feldman’s strategies in the synergy between his production company and his talent agency. Marlene Dietrich, another of Feldman’s recent acquisitions, lured the young cowboy-actor into Feldman’s stable—at least, according to Sam Morrison, who was Wayne’s agent at the time. In papers he filed with the Los Angeles Superior Court in October 1941, Morrison claimed that Dietrich had used “undue influence to weaken and undermine the mental capacity” of Wayne, leading the actor to abandon Morrison and flee to Feldman while under the spell of Dietrich, Feldman’s client and alleged emissary in this illicit enterprise. Morrison had managed the young actor’s career throughout the 1930s, as Wayne drifted in and out of minor roles in studio films and major roles in minor films. Tellingly, one mid-1930s article about agents mentions Morrison’s office and in passing refers to a young John Wayne who was waiting impatiently to see his agent. When Wayne landed in Ford’s Stagecoach—produced by Feldman’s good friend Walter Wanger—the actor’s ambition probably began to outweigh his patience

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with his agent. But then Wayne encountered Marlene Dietrich, who had recently become a Feldman client. Feldman had signed Dietrich as a client in 1938, long after she had become a genuine star in such films as The Blue Angel, The Scarlet Empress, and Shanghai Express, some of which had received decidedly mixed commercial and critical responses. By the end of the 1930s Dietrich had become “box office poison,” according to exhibitors, who placed a full-page ad declaring so in 1937. They thought that her seductive delivery had grown tired and campy—particularly in a period dominated by earthy actors like Feldman’s own Claudette Colbert and Irene Dunne. Dietrich entered Feldman’s orbit through one of the many innovative production setups that Feldman explored in the late 1930s.14 In 1938 Feldman had entered into discussions with Universal’s Joe Pasternak about a potential production partnership, wherein the producer, Feldman, Feldman’s associate Ralph Blum, and the director Henry Koster would form “a great ‘United Artists’ type of set-up.”15 While this grand scheme never materialized, Feldman became a regular provider of talent to Pasternak’s Universal productions. Both Pasternak and Feldman recognized the potential for Marlene Dietrich to return to the screen. Feldman felt that her films needed to balance out Dietrich’s exoticism by regularizing her material, by replacing, for example, the phony veils and European lighting that had surrounded her in the past with robust U.S. settings, genres, and characters. Feldman’s pitch, ever alert to the ways in which stars represent constructions—that is, objects shaped by the screenplay, costars, and production quality—as much as real figures (real personalities, looks, and talent), convinced the cautious actor. Then he sold her on his agency as well. He immediately set her up in Pasternak’s Destry Rides Again, a comedic but rugged little western. Dietrich was cast as a saucy French saloon owner; the film was free of European conventions and surrounded Dietrich with a spirit of the frontier, not to mention an American love interest, Jimmy Stewart. Off her pedestal, Dietrich proved equally sure-footed in pioneers’ dust. Feldman repeated this formula in her follow-up film, Seven Sinners (1940), with a solidly American navy drama, no less. In fact, Feldman developed the screenplay through his production division and with his screenwriter clients. With Jimmy Stewart tied up in another production, Feldman naturally turned to one of his own clients, Tyrone Power. Feldman had purchased Power’s contract in 1938 for $30,000 from the agent Ruth Collier (Dana Andrews also came over from Collier in another deal). But Power refused the role and went off to make a series of films for Feldman’s pal

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Figure 12. Packaging in action: clients Randolph Scott, John Wayne, and Marlene Dietrich in The Spoilers (1942). Courtesy of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Darryl Zanuck at Fox.16 Feldman then turned to John Wayne, who was now consulting with Feldman but still was contractually tied to Morrison. Having put together this little combination for Seven Sinners, Feldman next paired Dietrich and Wayne in two more of his screenplay properties, The Spoilers and Pittsburgh, both in 1942. Feldman’s emphasis on controlling a client’s career by independently selecting projects impressed both Dietrich and Wayne. It pushed Wayne to work more actively on his persona—his famous gait, his delayed delivery, his poise—which Dietrich also encouraged during their short relationship on (and off) the set of the Feldman productions. To Wayne, Dietrich was a performer whose calculations added up to the careful construction of a consistent and coherent screen persona. She always retained a strong say in her career, even when she followed Feldman’s advice. Once an actor who stumbled through roles as they came to him, Wayne now recognized the importance of building a persona by selecting his roles carefully and establishing a certain continuity in his characterizations, even as the roles changed in different films. One

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couldn’t rely entirely on agents—Wayne understood that much through his frustrations with Morrison—even those as responsive and committed as Feldman; actors needed to show a commitment to their career. Thus Wayne took a greater interest in the development of scripts and the overall production process. These little card tricks—shuffling and packaging clients with his screenplays—could lead to problems. For example, William Dover, a Feldman agent, told the boss that he had learned from Mitchell Leisen, one of Feldman’s directing clients, that Dietrich had “expressed herself as being very unhappy about being obliged to go into THE SPOILERS. He [Leisen] said she inferred she was doing it for you, and that she feels it will definitely revert her back to that type of role that she has been too long identified with.”17 Leisen had just worked with Dietrich on the Feldman package The Flame of New Orleans, a tepid comedy that failed at the box office for Universal. Her complaints about The Spoilers, Leisen learned from her, stemmed more from her insecurity than suspicions about Feldman’s intentions, since Dietrich suspected that Universal did not want her for the role and felt obliged to Feldman in casting her. At any rate Leisen’s tip allowed Feldman to send a team of writers to meet with the star and shape her character so that it was more to her liking. In a story conference with one of Feldman’s associates, Dietrich pointed out that the two main characters lacked size and consistency. She pushed for a treatment that brought out the more “turbulent” aspects of the drama. Dietrich imagined the two main characters as jealous creatures—“vital, primitive, hard-hitting, passionate, with hair-trigger emotions.” While her ideas were loaded with clichés, Feldman granted her some leeway in shaping her character and even specific scenes. Feldman played a strong role in shaping these films as a producer, and his role as agent to these stars here became indistinguishable from his role as a producer. For example, on Pittsburgh Feldman scrutinized the film editor’s various versions with keen attention to the treatment of his star clients. In demanding new cuts and reshoots, Feldman added numerous close-ups of his stars. “See that the cameraman is instructed to really make a gorgeous shot” of Dietrich’s entrance, Feldman dictated in notes for a reshoot: We have rewritten and are rewriting further the scene (which is a retake) in the early part of the picture, where Wayne comes in to Dietrich and she is in a sort of negligee. . . . We hope to change this scene so that it will be a very, very important emotional scene for her, so that at the finish of the scene there will be a complete capitulation on her part, and the audience will unqualifiedly know that she is desperately in love with Wayne.18

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Of course, Feldman’s shaping of the film completely paralleled his reshaping of Dietrich’s persona, designed to generate audience sympathy for the character. Having her display her character’s vulnerability helped to soften, if not erase, her image as a calculating and hypnotic woman, derived from roles Dietrich played in her early films. The resurrection of Dietrich’s star persona in these films rubbed off on Wayne, doubling the service value of these productions (to the agency and its clients: Randolph Scott, their costar, was also an agency client). In the publicity material for these films—Feldman hired the publicist with Universal footing the bill—Feldman consistently emphasized Wayne’s association with John Ford and kept the focus on the actor’s recent films, especially the critical and commercial success of Stagecoach, even if Randolph Scott, the other Feldman client sharing the bill with Dietrich and Wayne in these offerings, garnered slightly more attention. Still, in a memo to Universal’s marketing director, Feldman advised the studio to play up Dietrich and Wayne in the advertising (did Feldman act here as the film’s producer or as his client’s agent?). Dietrich’s “new wave of popularity” received equal emphasis. Among the mainly favorable reviews, all of which treated the films as modest but successful entertainment vehicles, the Hollywood Reporter noted of The Spoilers that its “apt casting is a tribute to the Charles K. Feldman group plan.”19 To capitalize on such industry attention, Feldman took out ads emphasizing the agency’s clients in these productions. These Feldman productions delivered what Feldman had promised his clients: new success, new recognition, and an expansion of their personas and the roles available to them in the future. Of course, Feldman walked away from these productions with more than his commissions. Regardless of the involvement of these clients, The Spoilers and Pittsburgh—just two of nearly a dozen packages Feldman put into play in the early 1940s—typified his ancillary approach to development and production. Feldman independently hired the writers, usually from his client pool, to work on the stories and the first drafts of the screenplays. Writer-client Lou Breslow received his going rate of $675 a week from Feldman for working on early versions of Pittsburgh, based on an original story idea by Owen Francis, another client.20 Feldman purchased Francis’s story on speculation, guaranteeing the author $2,500 off the top from the sale of the script, plus an additional 25 percent of the total sale. Breslow would receive his weekly salary and 25 percent of the sale as well, with the remaining 50 percent going to Feldman. When Breslow moved on to another studio job—arranged by Feldman—the agent-producer brought in a few more clients—Tom Reed,

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then Robert Fellows—to develop the script further. In the end Feldman himself purchased the script outright for $10,000 (in other words, Feldman paid Owen and Breslow $2,500 each), then turned around and sold it to Universal Studios for $43,000, with a guarantee to Feldman the producer of 12.5 percent of the gross. Feldman followed the same strategy with The Spoilers. His take from both films brought him an additional $120,000 in the first few years of their release.21 Wayne met Feldman on Seven Sinners and immediately began consulting with the agent. Given Feldman’s close relationship with Walter Wagner, the producer of Wayne’s 1939 film Stagecoach, Feldman and Wayne may have crossed paths even earlier. However, Morrison still retained an agency contract on Wayne at that time. Stagecoach seemed to catch Morrison by surprise; the agent’s surviving scrapbook, while spilling over with articles and pictures of lesser clients, showed evidence of his relationship with Wayne only during the year of Stagecoach, when suddenly page after page of clippings, reviews, and advertising featured his client and early news about Seven Sinners; then Wayne disappeared from Morrison’s scrapbook.22 Wayne had signed a five-year contract with Morrison in 1932 and renewed it in 1936 for another five years, commencing June 4, 1937.23 Under Morrison’s guidance Wayne signed a contract with the B-movie studio Republic, a standard document that gave Wayne $3,000 per picture through 1943. But 1939’s Stagecoach changed everything. The success of this film and Wayne’s starring role in the production fueled his dissatisfaction with his career and his agent. When Wayne moved on to films produced by Wanger’s friend Feldman, the young actor became increasingly unhappy that Morrison had failed to exploit Wayne’s new success. He stopped paying commissions to Morrison on July 31, 1941. Feldman’s internal office memos reveal that Feldman was already looking for new roles for Wayne and for ways to restructure his Republic contract. As Wayne explained to the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) in October 1941, he had been dissatisfied with Morrison for years. This relationship, Wayne complained, was “so unsatisfactory to me that I was compelled to negotiate on my own behalf. . . . and such negotiations, on at least two occasions [very likely the Universal films with Feldman] resulted in my obtaining in excess of the offers obtained by Leo Morrison.” Wayne’s actions, his dealings with Feldman and his dispute with Morrison, spawned further conflicts. SAG chastised Morrison for taking the matter to court, preferring, like many segments of the industry, to handle such disputes in-house and under its own rules. Dietrich also filed letters with SAG that refuted Morrison’s allegations regarding her role in Wayne’s switch to Feldman. She encouraged SAG to pressure Morrison to

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drop the suit because of the unfavorable publicity and mentioned that she thought that one reason for the SAG agreement with the Actors’ Managers Guild was to handle such conflicts. SAG helped resolve the situation by the end of 1941, with Wayne agreeing to pay Morrison commissions based solely on the Republic contract and nothing else. But this did not stop Feldman from setting out to renegotiate Wayne’s deal with Republic. Indeed, within a few years Feldman had completely restructured Wayne’s Republic deal: one picture a year for five years, with an advance of $100,000 against 10 percent of the gross.24 The deal also guaranteed picture budgets of at least $800,000, an impressive figure for the studio (although, like the rest of Hollywood, the B-movie company was enjoying the bountiful box office of the war years). More important, the deal granted Wayne producer status on selected productions—an increasingly typical move in Feldman’s negotiations in the 1940s. A key film in Wayne’s gradual ascension to stardom remains 1944’s Tall in the Saddle. As Garry Wills has noted, Tall in the Saddle marks a transformation of the actor into John Wayne, providing “a first glance at what would be Wayne’s later persona.”25 But Feldman’s fingerprints are all over this film, even though neither he nor Wayne produced it. Client Edward L. Marin (brother of Ned Marin, a vice president of Feldman’s agency) directed the film. It was produced by Robert Fellows, who had worked as an associate producer under Feldman on Pittsburgh—Wayne and Fellows had first met on the set of Seven Sinners—and later joined Wayne’s production company. The film also starred Ella Raines—borrowed from Universal—a client who came to Hollywood as a protégé of Feldman client Charles Boyer (Feldman placed her under contract with Boyer’s independent production company, which loaned her out for productions).26 One of Wayne’s most formative and influential collaborators—on this film and subsequent productions—also came from Feldman’s stable: Paul Fix. Fix, another actor from Pittsburgh and an aspiring screenwriter (a career also managed by Feldman), worked closely with Wayne on developing his acting, providing coaching and constructive commentary. Wayne consulted with Fix as he shaped Tall in the Saddle‘s main character around Wayne’s strong points as an actor. This practice fit Feldman’s notion of carefully tailoring roles to define a star’s persona. Moreover, Feldman client Loretta Young (a recent acquisition from Selznick’s agency) had suggested Fix as Wayne’s acting coach. “Duke was bright enough,” Fix said, “but he didn’t know how to move, what to do with his hands, and after three lines he was lost.” Wayne and Fix worked out a set of signals for steering Wayne’s performance from the sidelines. For example, when Wayne was overdoing

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the famed furrowing of his brow, Fix would put his own hand to his head. “I was on the set with Duke for years and nobody ever caught on,” he said.27 Wayne and Fellows—through Feldman—later put Fix under contract to their production company. Fix’s contributions, then, did not end with the screenplay. He shaped the character to Wayne’s persona, as the actor and Fix refined it. And since Fix advised Wayne on the set, he contributed to shaping Wayne’s performance as well (Fix also played a small role in the film)— once again Feldman had played matchmaker for his clients. Granting Wayne a degree of autonomy in his producing deal at Republic magnified the agency’s role in trolling for material for him. In fact, Feldman’s agency picked up the Tall in the Saddle story for Wayne through an agent at the Small agency. Feldman’s agent worked out a deal that granted Wayne a three-day option on the material—a Saturday Evening Post serial—during “which time John Wayne will endeavor to set up a deal with a studio” to purchase the story at the asking price of $15,000.28 The brief window likely reflected confidence that Wayne would quickly get Republic to agree to a movie based on the story. But the memo revealed how much and how early Wayne controlled the project; at the same time the memo recorded the role the agency played in scouting material for Wayne to work with and shape into serviceable vehicles for his talent. To the industry at large Wayne’s work as a producer confirmed his growing control of his career. Almost every review of 1947’s The Angel and the Badman noted Wayne’s status as a producer on the film and usually did so early in the review. Furthermore, Feldman orchestrated rounds of interviews and publicity that highlighted Wayne’s new production deal and noted his roles with Dietrich. While Angel qualified as a genre film, Wayne’s first project as a producer marked a certain level of ambition. Some critics noted this distinction—the film portrayed Wayne’s gradual eschewing of the life of violence. The Los Angeles Times review called it “very probably Republic’s sweetest western; it is certainly one that no other studio would disdain,” thereby elevating the film above the studio’s typical fare. The Hollywood Reporter noted, in a full-page survey, that Angel received great reviews from New York critics, regionally isolated as highbrow country. One New York critic added that “producer Wayne has seen to it that actor Wayne gives a good performance,” a split identity emphasizing the dual dimensions that distinguished Wayne’s new persona. This perspective perfectly reflected Feldman’s strategies for burnishing Wayne’s new reputation within the industry. Even while this critic noted, as many did, that the film dragged, his criticism was consistent with Wayne’s new image: “Actor Wayne should have pointed out to producer Wayne that the picture

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is too talky, moves too slowly and runs too long for what is still, after all, a western.” Such recognition of Wayne’s new status transformed him into a productive entity (a producer), not merely a passive actor—and served to brighten his starlight. Years earlier a 1941 magazine profile of Wayne had referred to him as “the fastest-moving leading man among the come-uppers on the Coast,” and particularly emphasized his costarring gigs with Dietrich, a bona fide star. Many of these stories played up Wayne’s appearance in Stagecoach and his friendship with John Ford, a tactic that again associated Wayne with Alist talent, thereby raising Wayne’s profile in the industry. A Hedda Hopper article repeated the Ford-Wayne relationship in terms of Wayne’s producing career, with Herbert Yates—the head of Republic Studios and always a collegial business associate of Feldman’s—calling Wayne a potential triple threat: producer, actor, and director—an exaggeration of the terms of Wayne’s deal that Yates was only too glad to make in order to flatter one the studio’s most important assets. By 1944 Wayne had cracked the box office’s top twenty-five—he was no. 24—and climbed steadily to the top of the list by the end of the decade. Wayne’s career escalation coincided with Feldman’s resuscitation of Dietrich’s, and, in characteristic fashion, Feldman merged these two professional projects—Wayne’s reconstruction and Dietrich’s resurrection. From Feldman and Dietrich, Wayne learned to take more command of his career: through advice on his performance, his manners, his delivery, and careful selection of roles and stories, as well as greater leeway to exercise such practices through the control granted in contracts. Directly and indirectly, Feldman played a role in all these areas, pushing the actor into new professional and contractual terrain in the years to come.

The Big Deal: Howard Hawks and Lauren Bacall In 1940 Charles Feldman added Howard Hawks to his agency’s stable of powerful directors and to his own independent production enterprises. Hawks’s astute biographer, Todd McCarthy, considered the relationship “the most important professional association” of Hawks’s life.29 In fact, the opportunities for independent productions at this time indirectly led Hawks to Feldman. When Hawks’s brother, who had previously managed the director’s career, bolted the agency business for a production deal, Hawks moved over to Feldman’s agency (literally— the two agencies had offices in the same building). Here Hawks benefited from Feldman’s

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independent production planning and his penchants for juggling overlapping contracts and packaging clients. Both Hawks and Feldman, in turn, managed the career of their mutual discovery, Lauren Bacall. Feldman’s handling of Bacall demonstrated yet another example of the strategic merging of his production company and his talent agency. It also revealed his skills as an agent, aptly demonstrating his devotion to the various facets—from contractual advice to aesthetic criticism (his sensitivity to the screenplays of her films and to her performances)—of a client’s career, facets that go beyond merely handling contract negotiations. Hawks’s change in agents came at an opportune moment. Feldman had just fielded a call from Jesse Lasky seeking Lewis Milestone (who had left Selznick for Feldman) or George Stevens for his production (arranged through a Warner Bros. deal) of Sergeant York, the true story of the great World War I hero. With those directors already engaged, Feldman happily offered Hawks’s services. By 1939 Hawks had earned a strong reputation in the business, with major films like Scarface, Only Angels Have Wings, and His Girl Friday to his credit. Convincing Lasky of Hawks’s suitability took no time at all. Feldman worked real magic in putting the deal together. He negotiated an $85,000 salary for Hawks—a moderately impressive figure—but also stipulated that the studio credit the film as “A Howard Hawks Production” on advertising and in the title sequence—even though Lasky remained the film’s producer (he had brought the project to Warner Bros.) and Hawks had come fairly late to the preproduction planning. No matter. Through Feldman’s deal the film would be known as a Hawks production, ensuring industry recognition for Feldman’s client. With the film’s overwhelmingly successful commercial and critical run, Feldman’s work paid off. He then parlayed this success into a $100,000 directing job for Hawks on Goldwyn’s independent production Ball of Fire, and in less than a year Feldman and Warner Bros. were negotiating a semi-independent production deal for Hawks. While certain details of this 1942 deal would be renegotiated at various times during its term, it nonetheless established the framework for a productive period in Hawks’s career. The initial terms guaranteed Hawks’s services on one picture per year for five years at a directing fee of $100,000 for each film.30 The nonexclusive deal granted Hawks story choice and a production credit. Feldman also negotiated a concurrent deal for Hawks at Universal, getting the director $100,000 to direct three pictures in three years but with a promise of 50 percent of the net profits. At Warner Bros. the advertising and title sequences would read “A Howard Hawks Production,” in type at least 40 percent of the size of the film’s title, while the same moniker would appear on the Universal films at 75 percent of the

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size of the title. At the same time Feldman continued to pursue other deals; he nearly sold RKO on an independent production deal that would have partnered Hawks with Gary Cooper.31 The original Warner Bros. contract stipulated that Hawks would direct Battle Cry and Dark Eyes, both derived from literary properties owned by Feldman and Hawks. Hawks wanted to start the second picture soon after the first one. With two semi-independent commitments—to Warner Bros. and Universal—running concurrently, Feldman sought to protect Hawks’s independence by writing firm start dates into the contract, obliging Warners to pay Hawks’s salary whether the studio was prepared to start production or not. This foreclosed the possibility that Warners could tie up Hawks’s time and services with delays. In addition, Feldman added ten more salaried weeks to the contract for an extra $30,000. Feldman could have increased the overall salary, but the profit percentages made this deal worth the risk. As Feldman explained, “Naturally there must be an element of gamble on Hawks’s part, inasmuch as there are considerable percentages involved on both pictures.” Hawks was to receive 20 percent of the net profits up to a box office gross of $3 million and 30 percent thereafter. Feldman also convinced the studio to pay Hawks’s agency commissions directly to Feldman’s office, and the contract allowed Warners to deduct the commission amount from the recoupable elements, meaning that the studio recovered these costs before it began distributing percentages to Hawks and the Feldman-Hawks production company. Struggling with the development of their first screenplay, in August 1943 Feldman and Hawks substituted To Have and Have Not for Battle Cry, with Warners authorizing the change and reimbursing Hawks for purchase of the rights to this Hemingway novel (from Feldman’s frequent business associate Howard Hughes). One component of this complicated deal was the stipulation that Warners would guarantee Humphrey Bogart’s services for a production start date no later than December 1, 1943. Feldman’s old business partner Sam Jaffe, who was also Bogart’s agent, failed to participate in these negotiations, leaving Bogart a mere contract player throughout this process, a pawn, albeit a well-paid one, in the power plays of Feldman, Hawks, and Warners. Some of the original contracts and deal memos also mention Ann Sheridan—until Feldman introduced a young unknown for the picture: Betty Bacall. Feldman “discovered” the teenage Betty Bacall (renamed Lauren) through his association with Hawks, whose wife had brought the young model to the attention of Howard and his agent.32 The young woman had no acting experience, but Hawks recognized a potential talent. Feldman signed her to contracts with both his talent agency and his production company,

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Hawks-Feldman Productions, in May 1943. Feldman the agent, then, negotiated the following deal for his client: Hawks-Feldman Productions would have “the right, but not the obligation, to use the services of the artist in two pictures during each contract year.” When Warner Bros. finally became convinced of her promise, the studio wanted a piece of her contract, a prospect involving a separate round of negotiations. In May 1944 Feldman, acting as Bacall’s agent, negotiated a simultaneous contract with Warner Bros., splitting her services between the studio and the Feldman-Hawks production company: “Warners has all obligations under the contract and the right to two pictures during each contract year.” Feldman the agent insisted that Warners could not assign or loan out the artist for anything, a requirement heavily disputed by Warners through extended negotiations. However, Feldman allowed the Feldman-Hawks production company to loan her out, a somewhat natural consideration for an independent production company with an inherently limited slate of films. In late 1943, when it became clear that Bogart would not be available until January to start To Have and Have Not, Feldman reiterated to Jack Warner the importance of securing a starting date, since failing to do so could affect Hawks’s long-term schedule in a way that might prevent him from moving on to new deals or render him unavailable for other assignments. This move underscored the importance of negotiating salaried starting dates with penalties for delays, regardless of the film’s actual start of production. This clause forced a studio to pay attention to starting dates, thereby guaranteeing that a client’s time would not be squandered and protecting the client’s availability for other deals. Feldman always negotiated such guarantees for clients with leverage like Hawks’s. To Have and Have Not proved to be a terrific hit for Warner Bros., and Hawks was eager to work with Bogart and Bacall again. So Feldman and Hawks reworked the deal with Warners to bring in a property they owned—the rights to Raymond Chandler’s novel The Big Sleep—and set up a new production, with their company taking 20 percent of the gross. To protect his share Hawks worked quickly and efficiently on the shoot. After The Big Sleep wrapped, Feldman paired Bacall with client Charles Boyer in Confidential Agent, a routine spy thriller that garnered bad reviews. Bacall’s wooden performance in particular drew negative criticism. When Feldman saw test screenings of The Big Sleep, he went into rescue mode. He sent a carefully argued memo to Jack Warner, imploring the studio to reshoot certain scenes. He framed his appeal to Warner—clearly designed to protect the value of Feldman’s commodity, Bacall—as a matter of protecting the studio’s own assets (both Bacall and the film itself).

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Feldman’s memo illustrated the power agents retained, in terms of their reputation, to persuade studios to consider their arguments and creative contributions. Here an agent played a consulting role that was at least as strong as that of executives working within the studio walls: Dear Jack: You will recall that during the filming of The Big Sleep I came to your house and urged you to make retakes with Bacall. You allowed Howard [Hawks] to make three or four days additional scenes with some retakes. After viewing the picture in its entirety I asked you again to re-do the scene where Bacall wears a veil but in the last analysis you allowed the scene to stay in. Before the retakes were made I suggested to Howard, and in two or three instances he followed my suggestions, that he give Bacall certain scenes that were previously shot with the butler and made other substitutions of a similar nature. All of the foregoing I did because I felt Bacall only had a “bit” in the picture. After reading the write-ups in the New York papers, Jack, and the general comments regarding the girl with which you are probably familiar by now, I urge you (and that is the reason for this letter) to view the film again with the following in mind: 1. Make whatever photographic retakes are necessary and by all means re-do the veil scene. 2. Give the girl at least three or four additional scenes with Bogart of the insolent and provocative nature that she had in To Have and Have Not. You see, Jack, in To Have and Have Not Bacall was more insolent than Bogart and this very insolence endeared her in both the public’s and the critic’s mind when the picture appeared. It was something startling and new. If this could be recaptured through these additional scenes with Bacall and Bogart, which frankly I think is a very easy task, I feel the girl will come through for you magnificently. Bear in mind, Jack, that if the girl receives the same type of general reviews and criticisms on The Big Sleep [regarding the bad reviews for Confidential Agent] which she definitely will receive unless changes are made, you might lose one of your most important assets. Though the additional scenes will only cost in the neighborhood of probably $25,000 or $50,000, in my opinion this should be done even if the cost should run to $250,000. I am writing this note to you as a friend and trust that you will not think that I presume to tell you how to run your business. Rushing to see a show so had dictated this letter without rereading same.33

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Unbeknown to Feldman, three weeks earlier Jack Warner had decided to rush The Confidential Agent into theatrical release because, as his internal memo claimed, he thought that Bacall was “about a hundred times better in ‘Confidential’ than she is in ‘Big Sleep.’” But four days after receiving Feldman’s letter, Warner recalled all prints of The Big Sleep in circulation. A few days later Warner authorized the retakes, as well as reediting of the film. Comparing the two versions, one can see that the retakes followed Feldman’s advice to the letter.34 Three months later Warner wrote an inhouse memo stating that sneak previews confirmed that “this new version which has scenes protecting Bacall comes off great, and in my opinion we have one hundred percent better picture.” Feldman’s rendering of Bacall’s star persona displayed a keen capacity for formal analysis (as sharp as any film critic’s). His perceptive observations about the dynamic between Bacall and Bogart—like the push and pull of magnetic attraction—in To Have and Have Not show an ear alert to the subtler forces in dialogue. Moreover, Feldman’s observations reveal an awareness of the ways in which particular facets of character roles were layered into the creation of a star persona. In other words, star personas were associated not only with the roles stars played but with the characteristics of these parts, and creating a persona meant establishing a certain continuity to the roles. This continuity could be—and it is in successful careers—appropriated by stars as their own. So while stars certainly shaped their persona through aspects of their own personality (traits, of course, constructed by coaches, acting lessons, voice training, rehearsal, and choreography), the screenplays contributed to the formation of star personas to a large degree. This statement is not just a theoretical observation, as Feldman’s memo evinced. Feldman’s memo also revealed his own understanding of the creative construction of a star, a sharp analytical capacity that showed some of the creative intelligence underscoring his career as an agent. Furthermore, Feldman’s memo clearly articulates how cultural forces— in this case, attention to well-honed dialogue—translated into increased value. This example extended beyond the simple issue of selecting the right roles in order to assure a more lucrative career. It involved protecting Bacall’s persona by rewriting dialogue and character in an already completed film. In this sense the memo reflected routine considerations about the appropriateness of certain roles or films in relation to the long-term career of the star. Feldman (and other agents) consulted consistently with his clients in this fashion, fretting about films, weighing a project’s shortterm benefits for clients (salary, location, etc.) against its larger impact on their career. Other memos and phone notes reflect the same kind of advice

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Figure 13. Behind the veil: Feldman worked behind the scenes to protect clients like Lauren Bacall, shown here in The Big Sleep (1946). Courtesy of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

and confirm that such creative consultation characterized Feldman’s sage counsel. Thus Feldman—and other agents like him—didn’t simply measure film projects by the monetary value to their clients. Acting as an agent required knowledge of the ways in which films (even the choice of films for directors and musicians) built a client’s persona, brick by brick.—Feldman’s

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legal background trained him to read the tricks and traps of abstruse contracts and to create contractual tricks of his own. But agents also needed the kind of savvy for the medium and its formal aspects—dialogue, performance, pacing—demonstrated in Feldman’s memo on Bacall—in other words, a balance of aesthetic form and financial analytical acuity. And, of course, as revealed in this memo, formal analysis potentially translated into financial rewards. Favoring the monetary attractions of a potential project over its effect on a career meant risking that very career’s longevity, thereby risking future earnings—financial and formal analysis were, then, strongly linked and could not be so easily separated. Feldman’s advice was rooted in making The Big Sleep a better film. But this concern was part of the larger concern for the long-term career of a client.

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10. The Deal Factory New Fortunes in the Forties

Agents navigated the war years of the early 1940s by more or less staying the course. After the major studios signed a 1940 consent decree agreeing to include no more than five films in a block-booking arrangement, they decreased their annual output. On the one hand, this meant fewer opportunities for agents. On the other hand, it meant the studios would have to make pictures of higher quality because they couldn’t palm off the dogs in a batch that included a surefire star vehicle. Thus studios proved more willing to negotiate higher salaries for talent, particularly actors who had enough box-office clout to stir public interest (marketing distinction) in a film. More significantly, while the war was reducing international markets for Hollywood films, the domestic market was exploding. Considering these factors, the market for agents—studios that were buying projects and clients—changed little during the war, save for those clients who moved in and out of service, thereby creating gaps in their availability.1 As the studios tinkered with their annual output, exhibitors demanded more films to fill their theaters, as Americans’ movie attendance shot up during the war. Smaller studios like Universal moved in to take advantage of this opportunity. Lacking the stable of talent that major studios had under contract, Universal engaged in new business strategies like independent production deals. Agents like Feldman and Arthur Lyons and others stood at the front of the line to negotiate them. In 1942, after turning free agent with the completion of For Whom the Bell Tolls, Gary Cooper began entertaining offers from studios, all of which understood that Cooper, who stood at the top of the box-office rankings, would set his own terms. Cooper and his agent insisted on a percentage deal, tied to commitments of one film a year and allowances for outside pictures (hence, overlapping nonexclusive contracts), story and director approval, 217

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and perhaps producing as well. Cooper sought a cut of 12 to 15 percent of the box office for his films, which assured him of about $200,000. Even the normally intransigent Warner Bros. agreed to Cooper’s cut and conditions for Saratoga Trunk. In this unusual deal Cooper waived his upfront salary for the film for a guaranteed “fractional part of the gross proceeds from the distribution.”2 Several agents joined Feldman in setting up their own production companies. Sam Jaffe obtained a waiver from the Screen Actors Guild to produce three pictures on the condition that he not take commissions on any clients he happened to employ.3 Jaffe picked up the topical story of the five Sullivan brothers who had died in the war and squired the story to various studios. He tried to interest client Fritz Lang in the production, but the volatile director balked, and another Jaffe client, Lloyd Bacon, took the reins for The Sullivans.4 Jaffe also played a strong role in the production partnership of clients Joan Bennett and Fritz Lang. Bogart established an independent company with his business partner but left Jaffe out of the deal. Burt Lancaster would shortly form a company with agent Johnny Hyde. All this activity galvanized Feldman’s plans for independent productions, as he wrote to George Stevens in 1944, preparing the director for his return to Hollywood. After informing Stevens of the great reviews for his The More the Merrier, Feldman added, You should be interested to know that your percentage interest should net you considerable monies. . . . I will try to give you the trend of the industry. As you know, Bill Goetz has formed a company with Leo Spitz, called International Pictures. Nunnally Johnson was brought in and given a substantial percentage of his productions. All of them, I believe, have stock interests in the separate independent companies that are set up. Even Fred MacMurray and Leslie Fenton have formed a corporation to make pictures of their own. The trend, of course, is to independent productions. I have a formula for top-ranking directors, in which the director receives a proximate guarantee of $200,000 a year and also a substantial percentage of the profits of the picture. . . . Howard Hawks has worked under a set-up like this and I think it has been the very best arrangement negotiated in the entire industry.5

Feldman continued to serve Stevens’s interest by bolstering his standing in the industry through prestige projects and industry recognition. In 1947 Feldman sent Stevens the script for I Remember Mama with client Irene Dunne attached. Dunne wanted Stevens for the film, and Feldman pitched it to the director as “an Academy Award film” and reiterated that point in

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later telegrams. It didn’t turn out that way, but it won critical and industry recognition—and profit percentages for Stevens and Dunne.6

Into the Red: Feldman’s Independent Productions For Howard Hawks’s Red River Feldman worked out an innovative method of financing, one that reflected the new possibilities and parameters available to filmmakers through independent productions. If Feldman viewed most of his own productions as supplementary or ancillary to the studios’, this production represented a genuinely independent enterprise. In January 1945 Hawks purchased a story from a writer friend about the Chisholm Trail, the overland path for the nation’s first major cattle drive, and hired the writer to develop a screenplay. Having proved himself in slapstick comedy, thrillers, war films, and detective stories, Hawks wanted to tackle a western, particularly since he had worked without credit on Howard Hughes’s The Outlaw before abandoning the production early on. By March Hawks had brought in another writer to polish a presentable draft and alerted Feldman that the director was ready to set up the project. Hawks pictured two of his old pals in the lead roles, Gary Cooper and Cary Grant. Cooper wasn’t sold on the project, and Grant was unavailable at the time. So Feldman suggested John Wayne, continuing his push to escalate the actor’s standing in the industry. Feldman arranged a $50,000 salary for Wayne and a 10 percent share of the profits, with a guarantee of $75,000.7 In 1945 Hawks and Feldman incorporated Monterey Productions, mainly for the production of Red River, with its budget set at $1.75 million. Hawks would receive $125,000 to produce and direct, approximately his fee on his recent Warner Bros contract. With his wife as another shareholder in the corporation, Hawks would take 57 percent of the profits, with Feldman set to receive 24 percent. Feldman developed a scheme by which the film would be funded through a combination of private financing and bank loans. The independent producer—and business colleague—Edward Small formed a group of “eight other wealthy show-business figures, mostly lawyers and distribution executives, to form a syndicate blandly known as the Motion Pictures Investors Corporation [MPI].”8 This group’s investment was augmented by a $900,000 loan from Security-First National Bank in Beverly Hills. Small then brought the film to United Artists as part of a multipicture deal. Through this complicated arrangement Monterey would receive its money only after UA collected its distributor’s share and MPI and the bank recouped their contributions.

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When it was finally released in September 1948, two years after production began, Red River did remarkable business, hitting no. 3 in box office as it moved from New York to Los Angeles in the first month and hitting no. 1 only a few weeks into its second month of release. Variety declared Red River the no. 3 box-office film of the year as its domestic rentals reached $4 million and made Hawks the no. 6 “money-director”of the year. Hawks’s A Song Is Born was released in 1948 as well, landing in the top ten for most of the year. But because Hawks went over budget and the Hawks-Feldman production company sold off his percentage points, Hawks saw money from this film only after 1952, when it was re-released.9 Monterey Productions found itself surrounded by lawyers representing nearly thirty claimants to Red River’s profits—including, incredibly, John Wayne.10 After Feldman’s production company (and United Artists, the distributor) failed to deliver full payment of the actor’s share in the profits, Feldman’s agency advanced loans to Wayne—part of the complicated mess that resulted from working with clients in multiple roles and with multiple partners. By 1952 Monterey still owed creditors approximately $175,000.11 One year later Monterey finally saw some profits from the film—distributed as 25 percent to Monterey; 69 percent to MPI, and 6 percent to Wayne. By 1954 Monterey had realized $15,000 in profits; three years later it sold the film to United Artists for $225,000. In 1959 Monterey, which by then had long been nothing more than a paper entity, was officially dissolved, after paying off the remaining $18,000 owed to creditors for Red River. The risks of the artistically rewarding experience of financing independent productions could be great. Of course, Hawks’s overruns on a studio film could be absorbed by the studio’s enormous annual budget. And MPI could offset losses with profits from other independent film investments. For Hawks the overruns meant a cut in his percentage points; his artistic ambitions benefited in the short term because he got to make this critically successful and personally gratifying film. But the overruns on Red River cost him further independence, and before the film was even released, Feldman was searching for a new studio contract for Hawks. In its marriage of independent financiers and a studio distribution guarantee, the structure of the deal offered a template for future independent productions—a model for the more nimble financial arrangements used by United Artists in the 1950s and 1960s. Demonstrating the important roles that banks could and would play in freeing artists from the studios, the Red River deal also showed the new conditions through which complicated financing could take hold of productions as much as a studio could. Ultimately, Hawks had to sacrifice his financial control—and the possibility

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of future productions, for this deal sent him right back to the studios—for his artistic control. Hawks’s troubles on Red River—and his own culpability in those problems—did not mean that the production was a negative experience for him. Hawks’s experience and Feldman’s role in securing his independence for the production need to be put into perspective. According to a contemporaneous industry survey polling the degrees of satisfaction and frustration among studio directors, their main complaint related to their lack of control of productions and their efforts to secure greater degrees of self-expression and creative freedom. Few directors complained about working hours, job insecurity, contracts, or even salaries. Almost 50 percent of the directors asked for “a freer rein in making pictures,” “less interference,” and for “making the director responsible to one producer alone.”12 Feldman achieved all these goals for Hawks—even in his Warner Bros. contract, Feldman stipulated that Hawks remain answerable to only one production executive. The poll of studio directors showed that they desired closer working relationships with writers, greater authority for stories and casting, and more time for preparation. Hawks’s experience on Red River—and his contracts with Feldman in general—achieved these desires in a way that the accounting books could not measure. This achievement may have had long-term effects in ways that percentage points fail to measure as well. For Red River certainly cemented Hawks’s artistic reputation, even if his budgetary and scheduling overruns confirmed industry gossip about the financial risks attached to using him. In his first eight years with Feldman, in other words, Hawks’s working conditions allowed him to produce Sergeant York, To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, and Red River, some of the strongest and most distinctive films in his body of work. Red River also capped John Wayne’s ascension to the top of the Hollywood star system. The film solidified his star persona with audiences, and Wayne garnered strong reviews for his performance. On October 15, 1948, when the film was clearly turning out to be one of the most successful films of the year, Feldman the agent took out an ad in the trade papers that simply quoted reviews of the film and listed his clients in the production: Hawks, Wayne, Paul Fix, Coleen Gray, and Joanne Dru. Feldman selected and edited the reviews to focus primarily on Hawks and Wayne: “Wayne plays to perfection” and “Wayne gives the outstanding performance of his career.” The ad benefited the Feldman agency (and Feldman’s production company, although that entity is not noted in the ad) by listing his clients above the banner: “Charles K. Feldman Clients Of Famous Artists’ Corp.” Following the film’s release, the Showman’s Trade Review, a

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magazine pitched to theater exhibitors, voted Wayne no. 2 in popularity, behind Bob Hope.13 In April 1949 Feldman negotiated a headline-grabbing deal for Wayne at Warner Bros., one that Variety‘s front page called precedent setting. The deal involved one picture a year for seven years, giving Wayne 10 percent of the gross on reissues (studios often re-released films to fill theaters to capitalize on recent successes).14 SAG had recently complained about the reissue practice, claiming that it hurt employment since re-releases cut down on the number of films in production. Wayne had a more pointed personal reason to complain. Following the success of Red River, studios flooded the market with Wayne reissues, capitalizing on Wayne’s suddenly increased star power. United Artists, which released Red River, reissued Stagecoach and The Long Voyage Home. Universal reissued Feldman’s productions— The Spoilers, Seven Sinners, and Pittsburgh, as well as I Cover the War and Sea Spoilers—and Republic reissued Fighting Seabees and Flying Tigers. Feldman clearly bargained for his clients’—and his own—rightful cut of these films. In this groundbreaking new deal Wayne’s 10 percent cut of the gross garnered recognition in the industry of his increased power and demonstrated Feldman’s continuing command of negotiations and deal making. But Feldman’s work on the reissues percentage showed the agent’s attention to industry trends and to new areas for building up and ensuring revenue streams for his clients and for himself.

Feldman vs. Feldman Throughout the 1940s Feldman faced the enviable problem of how to run two busy and flourishing enterprises: the leading Hollywood talent agency and a modest but steadily successful production company. Feldman’s problem grew out of the time spent away from each enterprise since both operated under his sole supervision; he rarely delegated crucial decision making to any of his subordinates. Combining these two interests, through packages or acting as producer on his client’s independent productions, as he did with John Wayne, Marlene Dietrich, Lauren Bacall, Howard Hawks, and many others, offered one solution since Feldman worked as a producer and agent at once in such instances (all the ethical and conflict-of-interest issues notwithstanding). Still, those cases proved equally demanding of the produceragent’s attention, and Feldman’s dual professional pursuits created tremendous practical, philosophical, personal, and even financial problems.

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Figure 14. Charles Feldman holds his client’s hand as Marlene Dietrich talks to the bandleader Kay Kyser. Charles K. Feldman Collection, American Film Institute Library.

For an agent so diligent and attentive to the contractual and creative affairs of his clients, Feldman’s frequent and extended absences from the agency threatened to destabilize its operations. As an agent Feldman fashioned himself as a personal, ever-ready comrade to his clients, and his business greatly depended on the quality of the personal relationships that characterized his work with leading talent like Irene Dunne, Howard Hawks, or George Stevens. Even at his busiest Feldman made himself available to these important clients, discussing the merits of scripts or the nuances of their performance in addition to navigating the implications of complicated deals. But the field agents and executives within his talent agency relied heavily on Feldman’s stewardship as well. So Feldman’s time away on his various productions threatened the loss not only of clients but also of direction in the office. To confuse matters, Feldman ran his production company out of his agency office—using his secretary to arrange the

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schedules of both businesses and often dictating directions about sending out production company scripts to the shared office staff. But more often he conducted his business out of his home, carrying on late afternoon meetings with writers, actors, and directors while he lounged by the pool. A need to develop a focused agency strategy and structure grew all the more imperative as two large agencies—Music Corporation of America (MCA) and William Morris—finally began to make headway in the Hollywood market in the mid- to late 1940s. As Myron Selznick’s agency dissolved and MCA and Morris purchased other agencies, the competitive field shifted, making Feldman’s dual careers all the more dangerous. Bringing in a strong partner to help run the talent agency offered one solution. In the early 1940s, with this strategy in mind, Feldman had approached Leland Hayward (now free of the Selznick agency) and proposed a merger of their operations.15 This merger would have established the largest talent agency in the industry, creating an indomitable force. Feldman’s strategy here counted on installing a partner who could manage the shop while Feldman worked on his productions. That Hayward operated his business with the same laissez-faire approach as Feldman represented a major obstacle; Hayward did not want to shoulder all the talent agency’s managerial responsibility (in fact, Hayward also wanted to get into production). Not surpirisingly, these discussions never moved beyond Hayward’s skepticism. Still, Feldman’s partner, Ralph Blum, sensed that a reorganization of the talent division would and should alleviate some of Feldman’s problems. Since joining the firm, Blum had hovered in the background, even while he maintained status as a partner. More comfortable with reviewing contracts, as this practice drew on his legal background, Blum never recovered from the early divisiveness of the partnership. Feldman remained the agency’s leader. Hence, even with Blum in charge while Feldman spent time on productions, the office lacked focus. In 1942, with all this in mind, Blum proposed a merger with Myron Selznick, particularly since so many executives at the rival agency had departed: I have no definite ideas at the moment as to how a merger could be effected, but it seems to me it would be a terrific saving in overhead and a combination of the firms would certainly be a most imposing set-up for the agency business. I also have in the back of my mind, what I think is your desire for your own future, namely, production.16

The savings in overhead as a result of reduced transaction costs and, as with the proposed Hayward merger, the potential combination of the two client

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lists presented a daunting picture for the competition. Most telling are Blum’s closing lines, in which he frames the discussion of his partner’s future in speculative terms, revealing the sense of uncertainty about Feldman’s own interests. In the end this proposal, like so many others during this period, got buried as Feldman moved on to new projects. While his business associates, employees, and, likely, many of his clients wondered which direction Feldman would take—agenting or producing— in 1943, Feldman entertained an offer that would have forced him to choose: Twentieth Century Fox offered him the vice presidency of its studio. This position involved working directly under his good friend Darryl Zanuck, and, at least during the war years, when Zanuck was running an army film unit, essentially placed Feldman in charge of a studio—a heady offer that recognized Feldman’s reputation in the industry. After more than ten years as an agent and fewer as a producer, Feldman came close to running a studio. But Feldman turned Fox down. He explained, “I feel that as an independent producer I am free to make pictures on a completely freelance basis with any studio.” Another solution to balancing Feldman’s workload lay in simply arranging a strong production deal with a studio while maintaining his status as an independent producer. This would have allowed Feldman to disperse some of his duties in the production company to the studio partner—managing the productions, planning distribution details, and other minutiae. In the mid1940s Twentieth Century Fox and Feldman held numerous discussions about setting up a long-term distribution deal for his productions. Following long, sporadic rounds of negotiations, Feldman’s lawyers pointed out that this arrangement would ultimately force Feldman to stop vacillating: the deal required Feldman to dispose of his capital stock in the agency and terminate his employment there.17 Feldman’s lawyers also suspected that the purchase of the production company would trigger an IRS audit, because Fox, as part of the deal, planned to purchase the stock of the production company at inflated prices so that Feldman could treat the exchange as capital gains. With his characteristic aversion to making up his mind, Feldman backed out of the deal. In 1944 Arnold Grant, one of Feldman’s lawyers, finally confronted Feldman and pressed him to make a decision: stick with the agency business and drop his production company or abandon the agency business altogether for production—one or the other. In his letter Grant laid out, with a tinge of exhaustion and frustration, the problems generated by Feldman’s dual enterprises: “I do believe that your continued vacillation, in addition to sapping your mental and physical strength, may deprive you of opportunity.”

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As one solution, Grant, acting as an intermediary, floated out a startling, secret proposition from one of Feldman’s rivals: MCA wanted to buy Feldman’s talent agency. As Grant explained: MCA originated a conversation with me . . . which I did not encourage, invite, or indicate that I had any knowledge of or authority to pursue. They, however, insisted on sketching their desires and intent without equivocation. It boils down to this: they would be willing to pay you in cash between three and four hundred thousand dollars for approximately twenty of your top people [clients]. They will be perfectly happy to have you make a list for them of thirty or thirty-five personalities whom they believe would be willing to come with them with your consent.

In other words, in its offer to purchase Feldman’s agency, MCA proposed that Feldman draw up a list of thirty or so clients he believed might be willing to move to MCA. MCA would then narrow the list down to about twenty attractive clients. It offered to hire Feldman’s top executive, Jack Gordean, and leave the remaining clients to Ralph Blum and Ned Marin, another top agent, along with the old agency structure, albeit stripped of its top twenty clients. Grant clearly favored this deal and highlighted the key points of MCA’s offer to Feldman: a. You would receive in cash three or four hundred thousand dollars that could be set up on capital gains basis. b. Gordean would have a satisfactory home and compensation if he wanted to go with MCA. c. All of the other people in your organization will remain as a nucleus for a Marin-Blum business. d. You get the current assets of the company of one hundred fifty thousand dollars on a capital gains basis. e. You having realized about four hundred fifty thousand dollars for yourself can offer to make a gift, if you so desire, of the remaining assets of the agency to your employees who remain, which certainly gives them an opportunity to hold on to and build something sound even granting that your departure will cause the loss of some of the people.

From Grant’s perspective, selling the agency to MCA would solve the problem of simultaneously running an agency and a production company: 1. The sale would provide cash that could be declared as a capital gain, thereby entailing less taxation (the company’s current assets could also be declared a capital gain).

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2. Gordean could continue to work as an agent, if he wanted to go with MCA, and the other agents could remain under a new organization.18

Grant pressed the advantages of accepting MCA’s offer, mainly to force Feldman to focus on one career. Feldman turned MCA down. He enjoyed working in both businesses too much, and his consistent earnings from the agency—well more than what MCA’s top man, Lew Wasserman, took in each year—provided Feldman with a comfortable cushion to absorb the risks associated with his production company. Grant’s own degree of uncertainty could not have made Feldman’s decision any easier. While Grant firmly pushed the sale to MCA, he remained plainly skeptical of all the industry talk about independent productions: I strongly believe that the next year or two are going to see radical changes in the tax laws where most of the break will be going to manufacturing companies which will include motion picture companies and very little of the break will go to individuals. These changes, I believe, will find the major companies less inclined to give percentage deals and independent releases because lowered corporate taxes will mean that they themselves can keep so much more of their earned gross income.19

Grant’s advice reflected the speculative nature of the film business in the 1940s. Too often corporate studio histories read as if one event unfolded presciently after another, with only the unstable market causing problems. But Grant and Feldman were arguing about contrasting prophecies here. Grant was telling Feldman that changes in the tax laws would render studios unwilling to give out percentage deals and fund independent productions. Feldman completely disagreed. As Feldman explained to a banker—in a proposal outlining a new independent production company—he thought the new market brought about by the tax law changes would prove far more receptive to independent production companies, particularly if, as expected, the Supreme Court forced studios to relinquish their theater chains. Now, Feldman argued, “pictures will be sold on a competitive basis and all chains will be open to the independent producer.”20 Feldman argued that these new conditions placed independent producers in a much better position to control production costs since they could cut percentage deals with artists. Grant countered with another choice that Feldman needed to make, this one related to his production strategy. In Grant’s view Feldman’s previous and ongoing production deals, in particular those with Universal, while supplying substantial income to Feldman and continuing profits through percentage

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deals, built up neither capital assets—he did not own the prints of his own films, for example—nor Feldman’s status as a producer. If Feldman planned to continue his production pursuits, Grant argued, he needed to do it in one of two ways: “Either arrange for a release, financing, and physical home at one of the major studios which requires no money and gives you 100% ownership of your company and the ability to build talent on your own, or form your own company with others who put in cash and have flexibility for the future.” The letter is laced with advice from Grant—addressing practical points about owning a larger stake, building up reserve capital, and long-term investment—but also shows a concern for Feldman’s reputation. Grant returns to the problems caused by Feldman’s insistence on wearing two hats. His status as an agent remained strong, even if some clients—and even business associates—wondered how long he would continue as an agent, Grant warned, but Feldman’s status as a producer would continue to be taken less seriously by the industry if he continued to try to do both jobs. In this regard, Grant shows a concern, however unarticulated, for reputation and its role in business practices. Complicating factors far less than one would imagine, in 1946 Jean Howard filed for divorce from Feldman. While a little shocked at first, Feldman completely understood her position. The two fought often and practiced a rather recreational infidelity, even if they managed to develop an understanding about each other’s affairs. Feldman chased his clients, potential clients, and other young aspirants. In a 1946 letter to Ann Warner, Feldman, by way of talking Ann out of divorcing Jack, described a scenario straight out of one of the sophisticated comedies directed by someone like Preston Sturges or Howard Hawks, a relationship built on humor in the face of the inevitable problems that arise in relationships: “I asked Jean last weekend what the situation would be if . . . I happened to see her lunching with some attractive man at the Colony. She answered, ‘Why, you would come over to my table and say, “How are you darling—did you receive my alimony check?”’”21 After the divorce Howard and Feldman even vacationed together with the Zanucks and continued to spend time together— Feldman often stayed at the house in a separate wing—sharing intimacy and companionship for their remaining years. Clients were not so forgiving of the wanderlust that distracted Feldman from business. Claudette Colbert left with Feldman field agent Charles Wendling when he set up his own agency. Clients like Michelle Morgan and Robert Fellows found themselves in the crosshairs of MCA, reminding Feldman’s agents of the serious focus that the agency required. Marlene Dietrich stood at the front of the line of complainants. After spending most

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of the war putting on shows for troops overseas (“the entire industry,” Feldman reminded her, “is cognizant of your efforts,” translating her philanthropic activity into its industrial exchange value and social cachet), Dietrich found few good film offers on her return and believed the reason was the lack of attention from her agency. Feldman defended his prolonged absence from the agency, referring only tangentially to the reasons for his client’s complaints: My reason primarily for going to New York was to open the New York office. We took over the Myron Selznick office, and you can believe me when I say it was quite a job trying to get the office into operation. Frankly, I didn’t have moment for any fun though I was in New York almost five weeks.22

In fact, for all its symbolic value, purchasing Selznick’s assets only added to the complications and problems faced by the Feldman agency in the mid1940s, at least in terms of the New York office. Licensed to run it with Selznick’s name attached for a brief period, Feldman could not retain the staff. He tried to convince Mavis McIntosh and Margot Johnson—both with another New York literary agency, A. & S. Lyons—to leave their posts and set up an office under Feldman’s umbrella because both women had strong client lists that they could bring over. They turned him down, and he flirted with buying out A. & S. Lyons altogether. Feldman also courted Audrey Wood, the famous literary agent who was then steering the likes of Tennessee Williams, but she too rejected his overtures. Feldman still fretted about his agency and more or less recognized its problems, even if he failed to acknowledge his own contributions to these troubles. Looking at the moderate returns from his talent agency for 1945, for example, and concerned about lost clients like Warner Baxter or anxious clients who were talking about leaving, like Joan Blondell (she was frustrated that the agency could garner studio interest in her only for films like Tarzan), Feldman lashed out at his crew, citing their shortcomings: “Here’s Berg-Allenberg with practically no one in their set-up—with Berg practically doing nothing—increasing their business at every turn. . . . We are the largest and unquestionably the most expensive set-up in town and the results are appalling.” Feldman frankly thought “things are getting worse.”23 Rattling off his associates’ habits of arriving late, getting coffee, and lunching at Romanoff’s, he informed them, “You fellows don’t know what a soft job you have.” He warned: “For the sake of your business you should do something about it.” Ironically, as documents in his surviving files attest—he required long detailed reports and updates from the staff and made extensive notes and wrote detailed memos about his own work, with

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Figure 15. Charles Feldman with Cary Grant, Merle Oberon, and Bert Lahr during the Hollywood Victory Caravan of 1942, raising funds for the war effort. Charles K. Feldman Collection, American Film Institute Library.

reactions, instructions, and directions—the agency’s problems were entirely a result of Feldman’s own extended absences. Still, Feldman recognized the need for some action, and in 1946, shortly after finalizing his purchase of some of Myron Selznick’s assets, he reorganized the office. Out went the beleaguered Ralph Blum, who sold his shares in the corporation for $75,000 each to Jack Gordean and Ned Marin.24 Both Gordean and Marin signed documents that relinquished any claims to commissions from Howard Hawks and Norman Corwin, interest in various story properties, and Feldman’s production company, all entities whose profits contractually fell outside their share. More important, Feldman gave Gordean and Marin a 25 percent share of all profits exceeding $200,000, the amount that covered executive salaries. Feldman commanded $2,000 per week, with Gordean and Marin each taking in $750 per week. Feldman hoped that granting his two executives a stake in the business would bolster their sense of responsibility and willingness to give direction in Feldman’s absence but also give them incentive to expand the business in the face of competition.

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This restructuring did not put an end to Feldman’s vacillation; it only emboldened his commitment to his own pursuit of independent productions. But the complications did not disappear. Several active projects at both the talent agency and the production company give a good picture of the problems facing both enterprises. Keep in mind that Feldman throughout this period continued to concentrate on the careers of Marlene Dietrich, John Wayne, Lauren Bacall, George Stevens, Howard Hawks, and dozens of other clients. As impressive as these complications remain, then, they represent only fragments of his business activity. In 1949 Feldman’s production company managed more than fifteen projects in various states of development and production.25 John Steinbeck had just completed a screenplay for The Wayward Bus. Feldman was supervising the development of five novels to which he owned the film rights. He unsuccessfully pursued the rights to Guys and Dolls, Stalag 17, and Death of a Salesman. He was negotiating for the rights to A Streetcar Named Desire and Finian’s Rainbow, landing the first but losing out on the second. He had just signed client Kirk Douglas to appear in The Glass Menagerie, with a start date set for October. He was dealing with Republic Pictures, with which he retained a limited distribution deal, on its releases of his productions of Orson Welles’s Macbeth and Lewis Milestone’s The Red Pony, both of which had just finished production. (Feldman’s main production company frequently organized these assets and productions under separate corporate banners: Group-Milestone for The Red Pony; Group Productions for Moonrise; and Literary Classics for Macbeth.) Macbeth was set up after his friend Orson Welles—not a client—mentioned the project, and Feldman hastily slotted it into his production schedule (Republic was setting up a number of prestige projects at the time). While Feldman did not need to supervise the production, when he and Republic executives saw the final product, which featured a cast that spoke with unintelligible Scottish accents, a tempest of memos and meetings ensued, with Feldman ultimately agreeing to redub the sound. But all this activity did not save the film. On the other hand, The Red Pony required Feldman’s supervision from start to finish. It came through an independent production company set up by Feldman for Milestone, who was a client, and was coproduced by Feldman’s own company, which invested more than $100,000 in its development. Feldman supervised script development and cast client Myrna Loy in the lead, along with nonclient (but recipient of intense agency wooing) Robert Mitchum. Milestone handled the production with little interference from Feldman and only some consultation. But Feldman took a strong

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interest in the advertising, savaging Republic’s tepid ad campaign: “A Wonderful Story About Wonderful People.” Feldman argued, “In all advertising, the fact should be stressed that it is Steinbeck’s Great American Classic,” and he urged the studio to look at the ad campaign for Fort Apache as an exemplar for its “definiteness.” As he did with most of his productions, Feldman targeted the prestige market, noting that the ads, and public relations in general, should stress not only the stars but the reputations of Lewis Milestone and John Steinbeck and the score by Aaron Copeland, the respected conductor and composer. Selling The Red Pony on the strength of its one action sequence, as Republic planned, Feldman argued, brought the film down to the level of “Grade B” action thrillers. He stressed pushing the film “on the same high plane as ‘Red River.’” And, of course, he protected his client by reminding the studio that “our contract is specific regarding billing. MYRNA LOY, first position.” Feldman even took an interest in the film’s release pattern, consulting with distributors about which states to target first and how to proceed from there. For all these plans and strategies, despite some respectable reviews the film did poorly at the box office. Feldman was also trying to get a film version of The Shadow off the ground, with a completed script (by client Leonardo Bercovici) and Orson Welles to star, and perhaps client Susan Hayward. In addition, with Howard Hawks, Feldman owned a 50 percent share in the rights to Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, which Feldman continued to shop to studios. The production company had Ella Raines under contract and owned the rights to stories by Norman Corwin—and all required consistent managing and shopping to prospective producers. Feldman had spent all of 1947 supervising the development of a screenplay based on Henry James’s The Aspern Papers—paying a client $1,100 per week—then selling the final script to his friend producer Walter Wanger (Universal paid for it through its production deal with Wanger) for $145,000 (Feldman announced the sale to the trades at $200,000, a way of drawing attention to the project). Feldman also sold The Bishop’s Wife, after much development, to producer and friend Samuel Goldwyn for more than $200,000. These projects only topped the long list that failed to reach the development stage, let alone reach the sales or production phases. While he continued to supervise those projects as a producer, Feldman at the same time had to deal with the following issues in his agency, culled selectively from a report about a staff meeting in 1949. The sheer quantity in this selection remains the most important point here and is illustrative of the degree to which Feldman’s vacillation caused confusion.

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In addition to serving its steady clients, the agency courted new clients by ferreting out new deals for them, as noted in the staff meeting report: IDA LUPINO . . . She told us every agent in town was romancing her but she advised all she had a verbal understanding with us. Also, she said if we could get her out of Fox deal she would sign with us.

The notes from this meeting go on to describe a number of scripts she was considering as well as a number of moves the agency could make on her behalf should she find any one of the scripts interesting. Staff members were also discussing an independent production setup for Robert Rossen with Harry Cohn at Columbia. Charles Boyer was nervous about not getting enough work and was even considering radio work to fill in the time. They were also going after other agents: RE: HENRY WILSON. Saw Mr. Wilson with Ned and we both feel he could prove of value here. Wilson told us he got $500 per week and expenses from Selznick, but we explained we were in no position to pay anything approaching it.

Of course, Feldman’s executive agents commanded salaries in this range and higher, so the company no doubt saw a bargain in Wilson (Rock Hudson’s future agent). They were trying to arrange pictures for Lauren Bacall, Hoagey Carmichael, the rising newcomer Kirk Douglas, and Michael Curtiz, all of whom eventually wound up in Young Man with a Horn. They discussed other projects for Curtiz, William Seiter, and Howard Hawks. RE: SUSAN HAYWARD. She was in tonight and met with everyone. I think the deal will be o.k. on the basis as discussed, except she made one request, of having one outside picture during the term of this contract, plus the necessary protective clauses. I presume Ned Marin will get into this immediately with Schreiber. RE: GLORIA GRAHAME. Talked to Charlie Vidor today and he advised he is personally very enthusiastic about her test. However, Harry Cohn has not seen it yet. He also told me the MacDonald test was nothing exciting and apparently this was merely a gesture on his part.

Certainly, a lack of urgency or immediacy surrounded some of the clients, no matter the anxiety they expressed to their agents, since deals took some time to unfold. In other words, some clients—with contracts, jobs, scheduled time off—could be put on hold at times. But the perceived lack of availability on Feldman’s part could still prove damaging to the agency. After all, omnivorous agencies like MCA and William Morris, while seemingly corporate and impersonal, promised potential clients the kind of immediate

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attention that its armies of agents could provide based on the sheer size of its operation. Feldman could no longer afford to approach business affairs with his casual, insouciant style, however charming. So, in this regard, as one example among many, one of Feldman’s field men warned him that Cedric Hardwicke “is getting a bit restless and disappointed and is very susceptible to influence by another agency; I think it would be very wise if you personally had at least one meeting with him—perhaps lunch or drink.”

Contracts, Corporations, and Complications Selznick was gone; Feldman was king. For a day—by the late 1940s MCA and the William Morris Agency were making inroads into Hollywood. And transformations within the industry demanded changes in the agency business. In other words, Feldman’s agency required not only his attention but a rethinking and restructuring of the agency itself. Feldman’s business was moving in new directions while he was still moving back and forth between production and management. Independent productions and nonexclusive contracts, the very instruments of change championed most strongly by Feldman, demanded greater concentration from talent agents, and gave them a stronger role in their client’s careers, which now required more attention as more opportunities for selecting productions spread. As a producer Feldman successfully explored and claimed some of this new territory, but its demands magnified the problem of splitting his attention between two enterprises. With the consent decrees now limiting block booking and the Supreme Court likely to eliminate the practice altogether, industry trades widely circulated the idea that stars now played a stronger role in selling pictures to an audience than they had in the past. As a producer Feldman knew this to be true and, in pitching projects to studios and investors, would note that a certain star had expressed interest in the project or that specific stars were “attached” to a project, a practice that emphasized the growing significance of stars not only in exhibition but in raising financing for productions. In the 1940s, with the rise of independent producers like Feldman, attaching stars in the earliest stages of a project could guarantee financing, if not capitalize an entire independent company. As an agent, then, Feldman’s radar needed to expand beyond the studios, and the agency’s regular contacts therein, to include independent producers and investors. More production outlets, of course, increased the opportunities for clients, but they also increased the complexity of the agency’s operations, particularly when calculations based on tax breaks and percentages were fac-

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tors in these decisions and discussions. In other words, as a participant in the very expansion of independent production in the 1940s, Feldman recognized new opportunities on the playing field, even while these very conditions demanded new strategies from his agency. Olivia de Havilland’s lawsuit against Warner Bros. in 1944—in which the actress had won release from the extensions Warner Bros. had added to her contract—drew widespread attention to the weakening of long-term contracts. De Havilland’s case was more symbolic than revolutionary. It only rendered unwarranted extensions illegal. By contrast, nonexclusive contracts, long a staple of Feldman’s practices, created a far more complex set of dynamics that increased the demand for talent and thereby afforded his clients more power in determining their employment—salaries, of course, but also choice of material, varying degrees of creative license, and approval of directors or writers. Such choices in turn rendered the services of agents all the more important and demanding: surveying potential projects, lining up productions and packages, scheduling productions and new opportunities, and negotiating contracts on a more regular schedule (shorter contracts, of course, increased the frequency of negotiation periods for each client). Feldman and his competitors had already established a strong decentralized system that could provide the services required by nonexclusive talent. Handling negotiations for individual productions, managing an artist’s career, coordinating commitments and new opportunities—the agency business had long included all these. It could adapt to the increased number of freelance— or, more accurately, short-term contract—artists now circulating within the studio system. Feldman’s leading role in carving out these practices made his agency powerful, but he now faced much stronger competition. Indeed, in 1949 MCA developed an astounding percentage deal for its client Jimmy Stewart. In this arrangement Stewart dropped his usual upfront asking price of $200,000 in exchange for a 50 percent share in the net profits of Winchester 73, a long-simmering project on the lot.26 Stewart’s tremendous share in profit participation notwithstanding, such an arrangement had many, many precedents, as I have shown. Still, the deal demonstrated the formidable new competition that Feldman’s talent agency faced. Feldman knew this terrain and had charted similar deal-making expeditions at Universal. In fact, only a few years earlier he complained to Universal’s Nate Blumberg about a similar deal the studio had struck with Ginger Rogers (a Hayward client): When I have discussed percentage deals for actors, I recall very vividly, Nate, how you told me we could not afford to make the deals because the actors

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were asking too much and the percentages were too high. . . . Yet it is nothing for Jack Skirball to go out and pay Ginger Rogers $175,000 and 40% of the profits from the top. I was personally flabbergasted when I heard Universal went for this deal.27

As is so often the case in tense negotiations, Feldman pitched his position with a melodramatic sense of astonishment (after all, he had racked up some good deals for clients at the studio, as well as a steady number of his own coproductions through Universal). Feldman’s mock shock aside, the Ginger Rogers deal proves how amenable and receptive Universal was toward deals that leveraged a star’s earning against the potential box office returns. Still, the Winchester 73 arrangement was a one-shot deal not heard around the world of Hollywood in 1949 or 1950. While many film histories report this story as causing volcanic eruptions throughout the industry, it actually went unreported at the time, and some details came to light only later in the 1950s.28 In fact, a Feldman deal racked up the most explosive headlines for an agent in 1949. In April, working on behalf of David O. Selznick, Feldman struck a loan-out arrangement with Warner Bros. for seven players under contract to Selznick. In exchange for $2.5 million Warner Bros. gained the services of Selznick’s Jennifer Jones, Gregory Peck, Shirley Temple, Louis Jourdan, Betsy Drake, Joseph Cotton, Rory Calhoun, and director Robert Stevenson. That gave Feldman a $250,000 commission on a single deal.29 For a few days’ work in the spring Feldman could call 1949 a good year overall. Confident, gregarious, and upbeat in the face of these changes, Feldman closed the decade with a round of publicity about the dual nature of his career. A series of articles appeared in 1949 and 1950 in magazines like Life and Collier’s that touted Feldman’s success and his social standing in Hollywood. Feldman played a strong role in orchestrating the pieces, arranging interviews with his associates and double checking early drafts.30 For the Life spread Feldman arranged a picture of himself with some of his leading clients positioned in an almost miniature version of the grand studio shots of yore, when, for example, MGM gathered more than fifty contracted stars, including Spencer Tracy and Clark Gable, for a panoramic shot of star power. For this picture Feldman posed in a natty outfit in a sophisticated domestic setting. There Feldman stood, at the peak of his power, despite the problems around him. He is posed in front of a piece from his personal art collection—emblems of sophistication and taste (important traits to display for an agent)—with what might be called his professional art collection seated around him: Charles Boyer, Clifton Webb, Preston Sturges, Jean Negulesco, Kirk Douglas, Howard Hawks, George

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Figure 16. Charles Feldman among his “collection”: Charles Boyer, Clifton Webb, Preston Sturges, Jean Negulesco, Kirk Douglas, Howard Hawks, George Stevens, and Louis Jourdan. Feldman promoted his agency and production company in magazine articles such as the one from Life featuring this photograph by Allan Grant (April 17, 1950). From Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images.

Stevens, and Louis Jourdan. The caption noted that as a group these stars collected about $1.2 million per movie, making Feldman’s cut a healthy $120,000. In many ways, it was a keepsake picture. In the next decade television and corporate agencies took over the entertainment business. Such a small, personality-driven agency would almost become a thing of the past, even though these clients stuck with Feldman for the next ten years

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or so. They remained the core of his business as he competed with agencies that were corralling and controlling hundreds of clients in film, television, and radio. With Stevens, Hawks, and Wayne, Feldman didn’t need to enter the television market (he disdained it), but he dropped to fourth place in total billings in the agency business—but true to his style, it was a comfortable fourth.

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In the 1950s Feldman continued to straddle two worlds—his production business and his talent agency; his staff and advisers continued to press him to consider a stronger focus. In this vein an adept and promising agent wrote to his boss with alarm: It is ridiculous that an office with . . . prestige and standing . . . still is operating under the illusion that motion pictures are the only source of revenue in the agency business. This would be well and good if motion pictures were still the darling of the entertainment world. However, today, personal appearances, Broadway, television, etc., have jointly assumed comparable competitive importance.1

Ray Stark, the insightful and ambitious author of this note, here gives us a peek at the agency business from the trenches in the early 1950s. The number of freelancers in Hollywood and growing popularity of semi-independent productions had certainly increased business for the agencies and buttressed their role in the industry. But television broadened the field. As Stark recognized, corporate agencies, whose business structures carved up the field through interrelated divisions, now had a competitive edge in this evolving market. Stark’s assessment was prescient and sounded a note of panic because he sensed that Feldman’s agency was late to this game.2 What is important to recognize in this period of transformation—that is, the introduction of television and the growth of corporate talent agencies— is that the agency syndicate had already been constructed. The notion that freelancing talent—both for film and television—required a managerial framework to provide continuity to otherwise disparate enterprises—moving from one independent production to another—had been thoroughly established in the 1930s and 1940s. Through the coincidental evolution of television in the late 1940s larger corporations came to dominate the agency 239

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business. Otherwise, little of this syndicate’s functions or practices changed, if at all. These issues—agents and independent production—surfaced clearly in 1949 when the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) renewed its franchise agreement with the talent agents. These negotiations primarily focused on the issue of agents’ acting as producers, since Feldman, Edward Small, Arthur Lyons, Sam Jaffe, and others had pushed into this territory. Feldman’s dual career drew particularly close scrutiny. As SAG officials noted: It appears that Mr. Feldman’s production activities have become an integral part of his agency operations; that he has invested large sums of money in the purchase of stories for production and in many instances has been able to provide employment for actors who would otherwise not be employed.3

From the guild’s perspective, work was work. After all, the Department of Justice’s successful antitrust prosecution (which led to the ban on block booking and studio-owned theaters) forced the studios to greatly reduce their production output. That meant fewer job opportunities for film artists. An agent working as a producer might raise significant issues of conflict of interest, but the employment prospects were too tempting for SAG members to pass up: It was reported that no complaint has been made to the Guild in the past from any clients . . . in connection with the production activities of Mr. Feldman. Furthermore, it was felt that nothing should be done which would discourage production, particularly at this time of unemployment in the industry.4

The guild granted Feldman a blanket waiver for film productions, so long as he limited the number to three per year. It also implored Feldman that his “motion picture production activities [remain] subordinate to the agent’s primary duty as an agent,” a problem that continued to plague his business operations.5 The new corporate agencies presented the other major issue in the franchise negotiations. As with the 1938 agreement, SAG members expressed concern about the personal service offered by small agencies versus the anonymity and diffused attention of a larger corporate organization. Again, SAG sought to contractually limit representation to specified agents, targeting any breach of this agreement as grounds for breaking an agency contract. Agents acceded to this demand by allowing talent contracts to specify a team of handlers. In fact, in studying this concern, deemed an issue of “Continuity of Management” by SAG, the guild identified only two agencies—the merger-hungry Music Corporation of America (MCA) and William Morris—as potential problems:

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The proposed regulations permit CM1 agents (agencies owned by one man) to name one person in the actor’s agency contract; CM2 agents (agencies owned by more than one man) may name two persons. Only two agencies, MCA and William Morris, because of their large size, structure and method of operation, are classified as CM3 agents and may name four individuals in contracts with artists.6

Perhaps suffering from a little size envy, Feldman and Jaffe both requested classification as CM3 agencies, a request the guild questioned: “These agencies, although having substantial personnel, do not have the structure or size which would warrant placing them in the CM3 classification.”7 Still, the guild granted them the status, recognizing that both agencies planned to reorganize. The stipulation also reflected how far Jaffe had come as an agent, running a close second to Feldman (in fact, the two would merge operations in the 1950s).

MCA and William Morris: The Backstory The failure of the William Morris Agency and MCA—two powerful talent agencies in vaudeville and music—to crack the Hollywood agency business until the late 1940s emphasized the crucial part that established business connections played in staking out a significant role in this network.8 Morris and MCA were shut out of Hollywood in the 1930s and the early 1940s. In the end, after fitful efforts and minor successes in Hollywood, these two powerful corporate agency combines bought their way into Tinseltown. Adding to these strategic purchases, the two agencies used their connections to New York advertising agencies (through their radio divisions) and staked out firmly entrenched positions in the new television industry. Jules Stein, who had trained as an ophthalmologist, had founded MCA after he had fallen into the band-booking business during his last years of medical school in Chicago in the 1920s.9 A sharp eye for business management allowed Stein to rapidly grow this side business until he quit medicine within a few years to devote himself full time to managing bands and booking their shows. Stein quickly developed strong connections to Chicago clubs and built on this success to manage the bands’ traveling engagements throughout the Midwest. Soon MCA added offices in New York and became the leading agency in the band business. While Stein’s creative deals—for example, rotating bands through clubs instead of the once-standard practice of having them play extended engagements (sometimes for years)—fueled the company’s success, Stein capitalized on it by opening ancillary businesses: an

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insurance agency that sold policies to bands and a novelty business that supplied nightclubs with cigarettes and sundries; MCA also purchased real estate and percentage shares in amusement parks and hotels. Such corporate synergy helped MCA expand in the entertainment field by funneling capital from the different divisions into loans to the talent agency, allowing it to buy out smaller agencies as the company grew. When Stein targeted Hollywood as a new market in the late 1930s, MCA’s move caused no real alarm. In fact, in his early explorations of the film industry, Stein relied heavily on the advice and mentoring of Feldman. Feldman’s phone logs for 1938 record Stein’s repeated calls to the office, calls that Feldman’s position granted him the luxury of returning at his leisure. Feldman invited Stein to attend Artists’ Managers Association meetings, particularly those whose agenda included the agency-SAG agreement.10 Although the construction of MCA’s Hollywood headquarters attracted a certain amount of publicity in 1937–39, the Beverly Hills building—an enormous faux Georgian colonial—proved to be the least important investment by the corporation. The more important ones were in talent. MCA followed a consistent strategy in paying its way into the Hollywood system: purchasing other talent agencies and reshaping them under the corporate structure of MCA. During the next five years MCA slowly acquired a list of major Hollywood clients. In May 1939 the company purchased the William Meiklejohn agency, which represented about one hundred actors and writers, like Hattie McDaniel and Dorothy Parker; like many agents, Meiklejohn had moved on to a casting director position. Then MCA purchased Associated Artists, offering its owner, Johnny Beck, cash and a position at MCA and thereby acquired Errol Flynn. MCA also purchased the remains of the Zeppo Marx agency and Betty Grable’s contract from the Orsatti agency. In 1941 MCA bought William Paley’s Columbia Artists’ Bureau (an agency that managed radio talent) for $500,000, since the Federal Communications Commission had forced Paley, owner of the Columbia Broadcasting System, to divest his talent division as a conflict of interest. But with the exception of Bette Davis and Flynn, MCA had failed to acquire or develop any major stars in the early 1940s. MCA’s status in the band business certainly lent the corporation some credibility (success in New York theater did the same for William Morris), but it meant little without a client list that was attractive to studio executives. Nor did MCA’s early deal making attract much attention in the film industry. MCA’s contract for Grable, for example, represented a standard seven-year contract, starting at $750 a week, numbers that pale in comparison with what

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Figure 17. MCA’s Jules Stein and Bette Davis in the 1940s, after Stein convinced Davis to sign with the firm. Author’s collection.

Feldman or Selznick were securing for their clients. When MCA acquired Bette Davis as a client in 1938, she was still stuck in her Warner Bros. contract. By 1946 Davis was commanding an impressive $7,000 a week, but that was still less than some of the salaries Feldman and Selznick had carved out for their clients ten years earlier. However, following these agents’ leads, MCA negotiated a profit-sharing deal for Davis. On top of her salary the star now took 35 percent of the film’s profits and within two years had earned an additional $100,000 from her films (an amount that still failed to match the percentage shares of profits that Feldman’s Irene Dunne collected during those same years).11 When Jules Stein organized a corporation for Davis—B.D. Inc.—as a way of reducing her tax liability, the entity lasted for only one film before it was dissolved.12 And while Joan Crawford credited MCA’s Taft Schreiber for reviving her career, it was only after the actress won her Academy Award that MCA’s Lew Wasserman negotiated a new contract for her with terms rivaling those that Feldman was securing for his clients (Crawford earned $200,000 per picture under the new contract).

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MCA’s purchase of Leland Hayward’s agency in 1944 proved to be the crucial move in the corporation’s arrival as a player in Hollywood. This acquisition gave MCA one of the strongest client lists in the industry. Even if the deal brought the agency only half the earnings on commissions— since Hayward and his partner, Nat Deverich, maintained their half-share in the clients through the terms of the deal—it gave MCA access to the studios and a voice in industry deal making. Now there was a reason—a star-laden client list—for studios to deal with MCA. In retrospect, Stein himself acknowledged that Hayward’s clients “turned out to be our most important clients.” Stein confessed: “Even our list was secondary to his. I was just flabbergasted to think that he had so many important people—not only performers, but writers and directors—he had the best cross-section of artists in the whole field.”13 Alfred Hitchcock, James Stewart, William Wyler, Gene Kelly, Judy Garland, Henry Fonda, Billy Wilder, Fred Astaire, Montgomery Clift, Gregory Peck, and Helen Hayes were among the well-known clients now on the MCA roster. Furthermore, Hayward and Deverich were put on the MCA payroll (at $500 a week each, in addition to their 50 percent share in commissions), so the merger brought their valuable insight and advice into MCA’s decision-making and strategy sessions. More significantly, the talent list, agency structure, and its assets (Hayward’s contracts and regular studio contacts) made MCA part of the pipeline providing talent to the studios. They bought a list, and they bought clout and connections. Like MCA, the William Morris Agency had long dominated the competition in the vaudeville and theatrical circuits of the Midwest and the East Coast.14 The company’s first Hollywood office was in the Broadway district of downtown Los Angeles. Its executives gradually realized that this location showed no understanding of the industry’s business landscape, so they moved to Hollywood and Vine in the early 1930s. It didn’t help. In 1930 Morris’s Hollywood office showed a $53,000 profit. But within a year the company had lost $18,000 and in 1932 was $27,000 in the red. The loss of stars like James Cagney, who had successfully sued for release from the agency in 1932, and Joan Blondell, who had followed suit in 1933, and the fading of such Broadway-based cinematic lights as Al Jolson and Mae West added to Morris’s problems in Hollywood. Swimming champion–turned-Tarzan-star Johnny Weissmuller counted as one of its only “stars.” By 1938 the agency’s Los Angeles office was generating about one-third of the company’s business, but because radio, vaudeville, clubs, and theater accounted for two-thirds, most of the company’s key staffers and planners were in the New York office. As with MCA’s entry into Hollywood, when William Morris purchased the Berg-Allenberg Agency in 1949, it was not merely acquiring a new asset

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Figure 18. MCA finally finds firm footing in the film kingdom by purchasing the Hayward-Deverich Agency: Leland Hayward, Lew Wasserman, Jules Stein, Nat Deverich, and Taft Schreiber, 1945. Courtesy of Screen Actors Guild Foundation/ Gene Lester Collection.

but genuine entry into Hollywood. Berg-Allenberg had grown from a firm with about forty clients in 1935 (including Wallace Beery, Walter Huston, and Melvyn Douglas) to one with more than one hundred important clients in the 1940s, including Rita Hayworth, Clark Gable, Judy Garland, Joan Crawford, Edward G. Robinson, Robert Donat (after Selznick’s death), Loretta Young, and Frank Capra—an impressive list that revealed the important growth of the agency in a little more than a decade but one that also revealed, by comparison, the lack of talent at Morris during this period. Like so many of the leading talent agencies in Hollywood, the BergAllenberg Agency had emerged from within the industry and more or less grew with it. This embeddedness was partly what Morris was buying. And this strategic acquisition allowed the Morris agency to immediately call on a huge slate of talent, already developed and nurtured by the BergAllenberg agents. These mergers spawned competitive reactions from the other Hollywood talent agencies. Late in 1949, for example, the Levee-Stark Agency, the Nat

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Figure 19. The William Morris Agency, lacking firm Hollywood connections, pitched its historical roots in trade papers in the early 1930s before finally buying its way into the film industry. Author’s collection.

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Goldstone Agency, the Orsatti agency, and independent agent Harold Rose explored a merger. The plan was to use a corporate structure wherein each agent would continue to handle a personal group of talent while pooling resources to reduce costs and sharing clients for the new medium of television. By maintaining this loose corporate structure, Goldstone and the others felt they could maintain the appeal of individual personal representation with the dynamic strength and cost cutting of the corporate structure. As Mike Levee explained, “The primary purpose of the merger is to make added top manpower available to service our clients.”15 What was really driving these mergers was the emergence of television and the clear advantage held by William Morris and MCA through their New York offices—close to their contacts at the advertising agencies—and their deep list of vaudeville and radio talents, who were making easy transitions to this new medium. In this regard Feldman and General Artists Corporation—a corporate agency strong on Broadway and radio talent that ran a distant third to MCA and Morris—discussed a merger in early 1950, but this failed to materialize.16 An “agents’ agency” was how Agents Television Corporation, another merger in the works, was described in Variety in 1950. Like the other mergers, this proposal addressed the concern about television and how this new medium would fit into agency business practices. In this case the corporation planned to represent clients in television by working through their established agents: “Hollywood and New York actors and entertainers’ agents, concert managers, literary agents—any type of agency whose clients or properties would be of value in TV packaging.”17 To this end they lined up more than forty independent agents and offered them and their clients “the same type of big organizational representation they get through the goliaths of the agency world,” William Morris and MCA. But because Morris and MCA had worked so strongly with radio, they already possessed long-standing relationships with advertising agencies and these readily translated to the new television industry. These goliaths grew even larger as a result and leveraged this power in Hollywood. Feldman, Jaffe, Kohner, and other Hollywood agents lacked these connections; their forays into television suffered as a result. What did William Morris and MCA bring to the agency business? Not organizational logic and strategy, for agents like Selznick, Feldman, and Swanson constructed bureaucratic structures that streamlined their agency’s services to creative clients. Not greater creative control for their clients, for Selznick, Feldman, and others had already laid the groundwork, in contracts and negotiations, licensing such control for artists working

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within the studio system. Not independent production deals, for Selznick, Feldman, and others had devised innovative arrangements for their clients, harnessing their creativity in fairly autonomous working environments. Not transformative business deals escalating talent’s salaries and protecting them from heavy taxation, for Selznick and Feldman had built the templates for such deals as far back as the 1930s. What William Morris and MCA brought was money. They purchased their position at the top of a subsystem of the studio system. To be sure, both Morris and MCA built upon this position with innovations—revolutionary deals in television—and old ones, skillfully extending and expanding upon the practices long laid down by pioneers like Selznick and Feldman. The agency system remained in place in the late 1940s, as more and more talent became freelancers and more productions developed through the package system. But the competition changed. Corporate structures proved far more amenable to dealing with new developments like television and the increased number of independent productions. Moreover, corporate entities proved formidable in rallying the assets of their various divisions to buy up agencies. Like modern media conglomerates, MCA’s and William Morris’s holdings in real estate, production companies, and other businesses were converted into power in Hollywood. The basic functions and practices of talent agents did not change. MCA and William Morris followed principles and practices long established by Feldman, Selznick, Jaffe, and others: salary deferments to amortize taxes; percentage points; independent companies; negotiating for varying degrees of autonomy; maintaining regular relationships with agents assigned to particular studio executives; and other creative and financial contract specifications had long been routine for Feldman and others. This agency syndicate absorbed the changes in the film industry in the late 1940s. In the end what changed the power relations among agencies was the arrival of television. No coincidence, then, that the two dominant agencies in this new medium—William Morris and MCA—would dominate the talent agency business in the 1950s. The agency business didn’t change; the channels did.

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Abbreviations

AMPAS CKF DOSC MS PK WBA

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Los Angeles Charles K. Feldman Collection, Louis B. Mayer Library, American Film Institute, Los Angeles David O. Selznick Collection, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin Myron Selznick papers, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin Paul Kohner Collection, Berlin Film Museum, Germany Warner Bros. Archives, Cinematic Arts Library, University of Southern California, Los Angeles

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Notes

Preface 1. Late in the process of writing this book I discovered the work of Mark Granovetter. Granovetter essentially argues that “job-finding behavior is more than a rational economic process—it is heavily embedded in other social processes that closely constrain and determine its course and results” (Granovetter, Getting a Job: A Study of Contacts and Careers [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995], 39). Agents, of course, provide a service to job finding but equally to the gatekeeping function, which helps to streamline the employment process for employers (producers and studios). On either side of this equation, agents sell their social connections. 2. Harrison C. White, Markets from Networks: Socioeconomic Models of Production (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002), 207. 3. The quotation is from Schatz, The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era (New York: Pantheon, 1988), 9. Schatz marks the rise of television in the 1950s as one factor leading to the breakup of the old studio system. David Bordwell and his cohorts initially marked the early 1960s as the end of the studio system, although both Bordwell’s and Thompson’s recent work frames the studio mode of production as more or less in place today. For their earlier work see David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson, The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985). 4. As Giuliana Muscio argues: “Most aspects of the studio system were in place in the twenties, but in my view the complex workings of the integrated structure were fully developed only in the thirties. The introduction of sound and the acquisition of theaters tightened the already existing liaisons with the financial world and imposed on the industry more refined entrepreneurial operations” (Muscio, Hollywood’s New Deal [Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996], 13). Douglas Gomery offers the same argument in his revised edition of The Hollywood Studio System: A History (London: BFI Press, 2005) and The Coming of Sound (New York: Routledge, 2005). 251

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Notes to Pages xii–7

5. Alfred D. Chandler Jr., The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977).

1. City of Agents 1. Welford Beaton, “Pay Agents Only for What They Do,” Film Spectator, May 10, 1930, 4. 2. Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of Business Enterprise (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1978), 279. On reactions to the new broker class and the culture of salesmanship in this period see William R. Leach, Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture (New York: Pantheon, 1994), and Karen Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-Class Culture in America, 1830–1870 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1982). 3. Walter A. McDougall, Freedom Just around the Corner: A New American History: 1585–1828 (New York: HarperCollins, 2004). 4. Beaton, “Pay Agents,” 3. 5. Welford Beaton, “Grafting Flesh Peddlers,” Film Spectator, April 12, 1930, 3. 6. “Propose Life Contracts as Check against Star Grabbing and Skyrocketing of Salaries,” Variety, January 28, 1931, 2. 7. “New Star Pooling System—Inter Studio Co-Operation,” Variety, May 31, 1932, 5. 8. On the fleeced flocks see Leo C. Rosten’s sociological survey of the film business, Hollywood: The Movie Colony, the Movie Makers (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1941), 19. 9. See Murray Ross, Stars and Strikes: Unionization of Hollywood (New York: Columbia University Press, 1941), 64–88. Ivan Kahn’s early career as an agent, covered later, focused on extras before he moved on to representing writers and actors. 10. In 1935 about twenty agencies were clustered between the 9000 and 9400 blocks of Wilshire Boulevard, and nearly twenty more operated between the 8900 and 9100 blocks of Sunset Boulevard. This pattern remained throughout the 1930s and 1940s. See Film Daily Year Books for addresses. 11. On the economic concept of clustering—how otherwise competitive businesses congregate in particular geographic areas in order to expedite the exchange of valuable information and other advantages—see in particular Allen J. Scott, On Hollywood: The Place, the Industry (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005). 12. See R. H. Coase, The Firm, the Market, and the Law (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1988). Coase’s Nobel Prize–winning work defined the firm as a corporate structure that reduces the costs of transactions. In his The Economics of the Business Firm (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977) Harold Demsetz criticizes Coase’s definition for ignoring other factors that might better define the

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firm. Regardless, my point here works in that reducing transaction costs remains an undeniable goal of firms, even if not singularly definitive. 13. In the Film Spectator‘s attack on agents (“Grafting Flesh Peddlers”), Beaton isolated the agent problem as “the product of the general lack of stabilization that is characteristic of the whole industry,” indicating that the agent problem represented another symptom of the industry’s “growing pains.” 14. On late nineteenth-century vaudeville booking agencies see Lawrence Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988), 78–80. Their primary function was to book acts in local theaters and clubs and in the sprawling theater circuits around the country. Glorified travel agents for jugglers and jokesters might serve as an apt description of these creatures. Managing talent amounted to identifying it and booking it. These agencies had little time for nurturing or creatively advising the talent about their performance. The giant theater circuits—chains of theaters in different states owned by a single entity— sometimes changed acts nightly. Agents helped arrange touring schedules in such cases, producing an orderly itinerary for their clients. These booking agents also negotiated higher salaries for their clients. Indeed, many of these theater chains employed their own managers (or agents) for talent. These management divisions arranged a complete tour of the chain’s theaters for the acts, a convenience that cost performers 5 percent of their pay. For a sketchy but fairly accurate overview see chapter 1 of Whitney Stine, Stars and Star Handlers: The Business of Show (Santa Monica, Calif.: Roundtable, 1985). 15. Culled from biography files in the Core Collection of the Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (hereafter AMPAS), Los Angeles. In addition, I consulted the Ivan Kahn Collection and the Samuel Morrison Collection, as well as the Sam Jaffe oral history (1992, interview by Barbara Hall), all at AMPAS. 16. Agency files, box 7, Academy Archives, AMPAS. 17. From a survey included in the research documents of the Agency files, box 7. 18. This discussion of the competitive strategies of agents—from barriers of entry to staking out claims in the market—draws from Michael Porter’s Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors (New York: Free Press, 1980). See also Alfred D. Chandler Jr., The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977). 19. For a more sustained and original discussion of charisma as an economic factor see Max Weber, “Charismatic Authority,” in Sociological Writings (New York: Continuum, 1994), 32–37. 20. See, for example, the annual editions of Film Daily Year Book. 21. Eugene Zukor, interview by Ron Davis, July 31, 1975, Oral History Collection on the Performing Arts in America, Southern Methodist University, Dallas.

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Notes to Pages 12–22

22. Alva Johnston, “Hollywood Middleman,” Saturday Evening Post, August 29, 1936, 17. 23. See Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Bulletin (hereafter Academy Bulletin), no. 18 (1933), AMPAS. 24. National Recovery Administration, Evidence Study No. 25 of the Motion Picture Industry (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, November 1935), 23. 25. For the complete document see “Producers Agreement” in Film Daily Year Book 1932. See also “Expect Many Mix-ups over Studios’ New Anti Talent Raiding Agreement,” Variety, February 16, 1932, 4. 26. Early Academy Bulletins review these issues. See also Pierre Sands, “A Historical Study of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (1927– 1947)” (Ph.D. diss., University of Southern California, 1966), 202–26. 27. “Producers’ Pact with Agents Dies after Long Bickering, So A.M.A. Seeks Academy Bid,” Variety, June 28, 1932, 5. 28. The bill was set aside. Internal files in the Academy Archives regarding the 1933 agents committee include information about this bill as well as correspondence with the California State Labor Commission on laws pertinent to the regulation of agents. See also Donald E. Biederman et al., Law and Business of the Entertainment Industries (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2001), 31–36, on the history of state regulation of agents. 29. Notes from this board meeting and the subsequent references to committee meetings, memos, letters, and other documents come from internal academy files in the Academy Archives that were made available to me by Barbara Hall, head of special collections at the Margaret Herrick Library. Quotations from the Academy Bulletins, including the final code document, come from the June through August 1933 issues, AMPAS. 30. Notes from committee meeting, Agency files, box 7, Academy Archives, AMPAS. 31. Anyone familiar with Michel Foucault’s The Care of the Self (New York: Random House, 1986) will recognize the influence (and inspiration) for my analysis here, even if I do not attribute a level of control to the work of ethics. On concepts of self-regulation and self-administration in relation to economics, see also Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the “Spirit” of Capitalism (New York: Modern Library, 2002). 32. National Recovery Administration, Work Materials No. 34: The Motion Picture Industry Study, by Daniel Bertrand (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, February 1936). See also National Industrial Recovery Administration, Hearing on Code of Fair Practices and Competition Presented by Motion Picture Industry, vol. 124 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1933). See pp. 635–53 for the section of Kahane’s testimony attacking agents.

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2. Revenge of the Agent 1. Irene Mayer Selznick, A Private View (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983), 106. 2. Background information on Lewis Selznick comes from two reliable sources: David Thomson’s Showman: The Life of David O. Selznick (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), and Ronald Haver’s David O. Selznick’s Hollywood (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980). The rather unreliable History of the American Film Industry (New York: Dover, 1970 reprint of 1930 edition) by Benjamin B. Hampton nonetheless offers some insight into the family and industry lore surrounding Lewis Selznick. 3. David O. Selznick, letter to Howard Dietz, June 20, 1934, box 167.15, David O. Selznick Collection (hereafter DOSC), Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin. The letter was written for a profile of Myron in the New Yorker magazine. 4. The background information on Myron Selznick here comes from his brother’s letter to Dietz and an unpublished article by Charles Chapman on Myron originally intended for Look magazine (box 169.3, DOSC). Box 2259.8 in DOSC contains several drafts of a long press release following Myron’s death. While I personally perused the same source material, Thomson’s biography of David helped me focus my research on Myron. Irene Selznick’s memoir also helped to flesh out the archival material. 5. D. Selznick to Dietz. 6. I. Selznick, A Private View, 99. The other quotations can be found on this page and others nearby. 7. D. Selznick to Dietz. 8. “Selznick’s Consolidation Scheme for Agents,” Variety, July 20, 1927, 13. 9. This story is repeated in almost all biographies of and most articles about Myron. 10. Thomson, Showman, 80. 11. Myron Selznick’s daybooks remain in his papers at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin. See office files, box 4, Myron Selznick Papers (hereafter MS). 12. D. Selznick to Dietz. 13. M. Selznick daybook. 14. Hollywood Reporter, March 9, 1931, 8. 15. Quoted in Mary Mallory, “Agent-Provocateur: The Tradition and Influence of Myron Selznick on the Motion Picture Talent Agency Business” (master’s thesis, University of Texas at Austin, 1990), 27. 16. Selznick-Joyce Agency pamphlet, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (hereafter AMPAS), Los Angeles. 17. Negotiation and contract details on this deal may be found in the legal files of Ruth Chatterton, Kay Francis, and William Powell in the Warner Bros. Archives, Cinematic Arts Library, the University of Southern California. The

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Notes to Pages 32–41

files contain the negotiation memos and correspondence, contract drafts, and the final contracts. 18. See, for example, “Warner Bros Star Round Up,” Variety January 21, 1931, 3, or “Studios Seethe as WB Reported Grabbing Chatterton, etc,” Variety, January 14, 1931, 1. 19. Original audited reports, 1929–40, and articles of incorporation, box 6, MS. 20. Ibid. The Myron Selznick Papers remain uncatalogued, but I did my best to cite particular files. Some of my subsequent generalizations about the office’s practices may lack specific citations, but these observations derive from my exhaustive review of the office’s surviving files. 21. Chapman, unpublished article about Myron Selznick. 22. As early as 1924, Myron Selznick pushed for “applying business principles” and more cohesive coordination between film production and distribution. See his comments on pp. 111–12 in the 1924 Film Daily Year Book. 23. Myron Selznick’s detailed and lengthy blueprint for his agency’s operations can be found in “Lo-London #2” folder, agency files, MS. 24. M. L. Mobley, interoffice memo to Nat Deverich, May 24, 1934, folder A, agency files, MS. 25. From Myron Selznick’s outline of agency operations in “Lo-London #2” folder. 26. Charles K. Feldman’s files (surviving at the American Film Institute’s library) and Sam Jaffe’s 1992 oral history (interview by Barbara Hall, AMPAS) both testify to this common practice. 27. Jack Votion, meeting memo, June 30, 1933, folder A, agency files, MS. 28. Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936; New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981). 29. Ibid., xvi. 30. George Volck, interoffice memo to Myron Selznick, October 3, 1933, folder A, agency files, MS. 31. John McCormick, interoffice memo to Myron Selznick, June 8, 1933, “Stromberg” folder, agency files, MS. This folder is the source of subsequent references to Stromberg’s dealings with the agency. 32. Recognizing these relationships as important functions within the studio system helps to counter more reified visions of this era. This network model of Hollywood resonates with Harrison C. White’s contributions to economic sociology. White demonstrates how even the most rationalized capitalist markets remain deeply structured as social systems. These relationships often emerge as market niches or cliques. See his recent Markets from Networks: Socioeconomic Models of Production (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002). On routine, cooperative relations between organizations as an important component of the market (in contrast or addition to competition), see also Mark Granovetter, Getting a Job: A Study of Contacts and Careers (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1995). 33. From M. Selznick’s outline of agency operations.

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34. Ibid. 35. Ibid. 36. Background information on Leland Hayward comes from business files, MS, and biography files, AMPAS. See also Margaret Case Harriman, Take Them Up Tenderly: A Collection of Profiles (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1944), 216– 20, and Whitney Stine, Stars and Star Handlers: The Business of Show (Santa Monica, Calif.: Roundtable, 1985). 37. “Lo-London #2,” “London #3–London Acct.,” and “London Office” folders, agency files, MS. 38. Ibid. 39. Agents file, box 7, Academy Archives, AMPAS. 40. Ibid. 41. “Agents Who Represent the Largest Proportion of Free-Lance Actors,” May 27, 1935, box 7, Academy Archives. 42. This is demonstrated by Feldman’s client lists for 1930–40, folders 771– 73, Charles K. Feldman Collection, Louis B. Mayer Library, American Film Institute, Los Angeles. 43. “Universal as Selznick,” Variety, April 24, 1935, 1.

3. A Percentage of Power 1. Ivan Kahn Collection (hereafter Kahn-AMPAS), Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Los Angeles. The Kahn papers include his agency files and his files from his years as a casting director at Fox. 2. Ibid. 3. Articles on talent scouts, folder 7, Kahn-AMPAS. Most of the press clippings in this file are missing such information as publication dates and pages. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid. 7. Film Mercury, December 3, 1926, folder 7, Kahn-AMPAS. 8. Clipping (source unclear) dated August 6, 1927, folder 7, Kahn-AMPAS. 9. Undated essay by Kahn on his role in Lew Ayres’s career, folder 4, KahnAMPAS. 10. Talent scout reports, folder 4, Kahn-AMPAS. The reports in this folder are organized alphabetically by surname of the talent. 11. Contracts, folder 5, Kahn-AMPAS. 12. Ivan Kahn, letter to Erskine Gwynne, March 26, 1930, folder 1, KahnAMPAS. 13. Talent scout reports. 14. “Clients’ Commissions from March 1, 1934, to August 1, 1935,” folder 10, Kahn-AMPAS. 15. Ibid. 16. Contracts, folder 5, Kahn-AMPAS.

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17. Talent scout reports. See also Olivia de Havilland legal file, Warner Bros. Archives (WBA), Cinematic Arts Library, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, for Kahn’s negotiations on her contract, as well as his unsuccessful requests to deal with Jack Warner himself. De Havilland switched agents a few more times during the next decade, as detailed in her contract history in the WBA folder. 18. Talent scout reports; “Contracts,” folder 5, Kahn-AMPAS. 19. Ibid. 20. “Record Book—Log Book,” Kahn-AMPAS. 21. Articles on talent scouts, folder 8, Kahn-AMPAS. 22. Talent scout reports. All correspondence and other details about Darnell may be found in this folder. See also Darnell’s legal files, Twentieth Century Fox Archive, Libraries and Collections, University of California, Los Angeles. 23. Ibid. 24. When Smith changed careers, Frank Orsatti roped in Darnell. Once again Kahn played the matchmaker at Orsatti’s request “I understand that Smith, who was associated with you before,” Orsatti wrote to Kahn, “is not handling Linda Darnell. I would like to talk to him about her” (August 1939 correspondence, talent scout reports). Negotiations with Smith about Darnell’s salary can be found in this folder as well. Darnell’s legal files in the Twentieth Century Fox Archive at UCLA include her initial correspondence with Smith. She changed agents numerous times in the next decade, as noted in these files. 25. Unless otherwise noted, all details derive from the three volumes of Edward Small’s unpublished autobiography, which may be found in the Special Collections of the Cinematic Arts Library, University of Southern California, Los Angeles. 26. Small autobiography, 2:116. 27. Ibid., 2:148. 28. Ibid., 2:165. 29. Warren Susman, “‘Personality’ and the Making of Twentieth-Century Culture,” in Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2003). 30. Edward Small Agency pamphlet, AMPAS. 31. A single edition of the Link can also be found at AMPAS. 32. Background on Bow comes from David Stenn, Clara Bow (New York: Doubleday, 1988), and Edward Small’s unpublished autobiography, 2:173–75. 33. Quoted in Stenn, Clara Bow, 54–55. 34. Ibid., 87. 35. Edward Small Agency pamphlet. 36. Maxine Alton, “Clara’s First Train Ride,” Photoplay, January 1930. 37. Film Daily Year Book in the mid-1920s categorized Alton under agents handling writers. But Alton drops from the lists altogether in the late 1920s. 38. Quoted in Stenn, Clara Bow, 63.

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39. Ibid., 104. 40. “Lo-London #2” folder. 41. Information on the clients of the Small-Landau agency comes from Small’s autobiography (see 3:220–22 on Montgomery and MGM); Edward Small and Arthur Landau biography files, Core Collection, AMPAS; Agency files, box 7, Academy Archives, AMPAS (client lists); and David Shipman, The Great Movie Stars: The Golden Years (New York: Hill and Wang, 1979). 42. Client list contained in Artist-Agent-Producer Relations CommitteeCorrespondence, box 33, Academy Archives. 43. From an interview of Wallis conducted by Christopher Finch and Linda Rosenkrantz for their Gone Hollywood: The Movie Colony in the Golden Age (New York: Doubleday, 1979), 279. Other sources more or less corroborate Wallis’s account. 44. Alva Johnston, “Hollywood’s Ten Per Centers,” Saturday Evening Post, August 15, 1942, 36. 45. This list, and those that follow, was compiled from the Academy Players Directory, Film Daily Year Book lists of agents and actors, and Agency files, box 7, Academy Archives, all in AMPAS. 46. Biography files, AMPAS. 47. Agency files; Film Daily Year Books, 1930s. 48. On the details and complications of the merger see folder 1763, Charles K. Feldman Collection (hereafter CKF), Louis B. Mayer Library, American Film Institute, Los Angeles. 49. Ronald Colman legal files, Twentieth Century Fox Archive. 50. Biography files, AMPAS. 51. See Feldman memo, July 13, 1936, folder 879, CKF.

4. Charisma and Contracts 1. Biographical background and perspective provided by Ernest Havemann, “Package of Stars,” Life, April 17, 1950; Willard L. Wiener, “Charmer for a Nice Fee,” Collier’s, August 6, 1949; select personal correspondence (in particular see Feldman’s long letter dated October 16, 1946, to a writer of a profile that was never published), and Feldman’s own biographical information provided in a draft for the American Historical Company, all found in folders 1888a, 1991, 1992, and 1993, Charles K. Feldman Collection (hereafter CKF), Louis B. Mayer Library, American Film Institute, Los Angeles.(The library was formerly named for Feldman, but money still counts for everything in Hollywood. Feldman was honored by the library after choosing it as the repository for his papers. The building was renamed for Mayer after his family donated considerable sums.) A more recent profile is Peter Biskind, “The Man Who Minted Style,” Vanity Fair, April 2003, 210–36. 2. For a nice pictorial representation of Feldman’s dashing Hollywood social life, see his ex-wife’s photographic memoir, Jean Howard’s Hollywood (New York: Abrams, 1989).

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3. Correspondence of the agents’ association may be found in “Artists Managers Guild,” folder 1904, and in the agency phone logs, folders 1737 –39, CKF. 4. Folder 1932, CKF. 5. See biographical articles cited in note 1. A cross-check of Feldman’s surviving legal files (folder 1932, which includes his case docket) and documents (box 36:5 contains correspondence with Feldman) in the Edward G. Robinson Collection, Cinematic Arts Library, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, indicate that Robinson probably was the client in question. 6. Folder 1932, CKF, contains bookkeeping records covering Ad Schulberg– CKF, Inc. See biographical articles cited in note 1 and Budd Schulberg, Moving Pictures: Memories of a Hollywood Prince (New York: Stein and Day, 1981), 464. 7. “Coast Agents Try Tea as Bait for Client Raid,” Variety, July 26, 1932, 2. 8. Budd Schulberg comments on his mother’s decorating abilities in his memoir, Moving Pictures, 464. Adeline’s brother, Sam Jaffe, confirms my perspective on her lack of interest in business affairs in his 1992 interview by Barbara Hall, Oral History Program, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (hereafter AMPAS), Los Angeles. 9. See client lists in folders 1774, 1807, and 1808, CKF. Folders 773, 772, and 771 contain lists for 1932, 1933, and 1934, respectively. 10. Correspondence regarding Charles Boyer, folder 880, CKF. 11. See “What! More Agents?” a front-page editorial in Variety, September 5, 1935. The article noted that “whenever anybody flops in another kind of job in Hollywood he—or she—turns agent. The talent brokers’ ranks are filled with people who gave up their regular professions—law, acting, soap peddling, chauffering, etc.—to dive into what they seem to think is the easiest money racket in the world. The failures among these ill-advised adventurers would seem to be the best answer to their wrong guessing. But, no matter how many fizzle, there seem to be always two recruits for every spot vacated by a saddened optimist who found out that agenting requires more than an office and desire to collect 10 per cent of somebody’s income. Agents are a highly specialized group of practitioners, and to be successful in the field requires a special talent, plus willingness to work and vast knowledge of the most complex selling business in the world. Besides an accurate knowledge of show mechanics, which enables them to know stories and casting requirements, agents must have arguing powers more persuasive than a lawyer requires with a jury.” 12. Phone logs in folders 1734–45, CKF. See, for example, Feldman’s memos about the screenwriter-composer Sam Hoffenstein, folder 881. 13. News clipping, folder 881, CKF. 14. Folder 1774, CKF. 15. Folder 880, CKF. 16. Folder 1774, CKF. 17. Detailed in the incorporation papers for the Feldman-Blum Agency, folder 1774, CKF. See also biography files for Blum, Gordean, Marin, and Rockett in the Core Collection, AMPAS.

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18. This description is based on an exhaustive review of the Feldman office papers. Feldman also describes these procedures at a meeting of the Artists’ Managers Guild. See Feldman’s comments on article 10, page 2, transcript dated October 12, 1938, folder 1904, CKF. 19. New corporation papers, folder 1774, CKF. 20. Ralph Blum correspondence, folder 1774, CKF. 21. Feldman memo to Blum, October 20, 1936, folder 1774, CKF. 22. Contract briefs, folders 1–8, arranged alphabetically by client, CKF. Career surveys derived from individual biography files, Core Collection, AMPAS, and individual entries in David Shipman, The Great Movies Stars: The Golden Years (New York: Hill and Wang, 1979). See also Michael Curtiz’s legal files, Warner Bros. Archives (hereafter WBA-USC), Cinematic Arts Library, USC; correspondence on Ann Sothern, folders 878 and 879, CKF. 23. Colbert’s files, contracts, and contract briefs, CKF. Elizabeth Kendall’s The Runaway Bride: Hollywood Romantic Comedy of the 1930s (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), as well as sources in her bibliography, provided background material on Colbert, as did Colbert’s biography file, AMPAS. 24. The narrative that follows derives from Colbert’s contracts and contract briefs, all in Feldman’s files. See also draft of “Night Bus” script (renamed It Happened One Night), September 28, 1933, folder 1813; contract briefs, folder 2; correspondence about and with Colbert, folders 880 and 881, all in CKF. 25. Folder 875, CKF. 26. The rejected stories are detailed in a letter from Feldman found in Colbert’s legal file, WBA-USC. All notes, contracts, and memos regarding Colbert’s Warner Bros. deal are in this file. 27. Anatole Litvak legal file and Tovarich file, WBA-USC. 28. Ibid. 29. Ibid. 30. Colbert legal file and Tovarich file. 31. Leo Rosten, Hollywood: The Movie Colony, the Movie Makers (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1941), 342. 32. Kendell, Runaway Bride, and sources in her bibliography helped to flesh out Feldman’s files on Dunne’s career. 33. Irene Dunne, interview by Ron Davis, July 23, 1982, Oral History Collection on the Performing Arts in America, Southern Methodist University, Dallas. 34. Folder 1901, CKF, contains a detailed overview of Dunne’s contracts, as well as the contracts themselves. I cross-checked this information with material (contracts and correspondence) in the Irene Dunne Collection, Cinematic Arts Library, USC. 35. Box 1:8, Dunne Collection,; contract briefs, folder 1, box 1, CKF. 36. Dunne oral history; folder 879, CKF. 37. Dunne oral history; folders 879 and 880, CKF. 38. Feldman, letter to Harry Cohn, October 3, 1938, folder 880, CKF. 39. Box 1:5, Dunne Collection.

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40. Kahane to Feldman, July 25, 1939, box 1:5, Dunne Collection. 41. Box 1:5, Dunne Collection. 42. Folder 1901, CKF. 43. Rosten, Hollywood, 342. 44. Folder 1734, CKF. 45. The following narrative and memos pertaining to Gene Raymond are from folder 879, CKF. 46. Feldman to the Artists’ Managers Guild, comments on article 13, October 12, 1938, p. 2, folder 1904, CKF. 47. “Contracts—agencies,” folder 3554, box 307, George Stevens Collection, AMPAS. 48. Frank Orsatti biography file, Core Collection, AMPAS. 49. Milton Bren, letter to George Stevens, May 23, 1933, Stevens Collection; Frank Orsatti biography file, AMPAS. 50. “Contracts—agencies,” folder 3554, box 307, Stevens Collection. 51. “Contracts—Feldman, Charles,” folder 3628, box 317, Stevens Collection. See also contract briefs, folder 8, CKF. 52. Ibid. 53. Folder 8, box 1, CKF. 54. Ralph Blum to Feldman, March 28, 1939, folder 1916, CKF. 55. Ibid. 56. Folder 1915, CKF. 57. “Columbia—Contracts,” folder 3555, box 307, Stevens Collection. 58. Ibid. 59. Stevens to Feldman, folder 3555, box 307, Stevens Collection. 60. Contract briefs, folder 1, CKF. 61. Stevens to Feldman, February 11, 1942, folder 1916, CKF.

5. Numbers and Niches 1. Michael E. Porter, Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors (New York: Free Press, 1980), 38. 2. Unless otherwise noted, this section is derived from the excellent and extensive Sam Jaffe interview by Barbara Hall, 1992, Oral History Program, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (hereafter AMPAS), Los Angeles, as are all quotations from Jaffe. Facts and figures were corroborated by industry trades and records in the Charles K. Feldman Collection, Louis B. Mayer Library, American Film Institute, Los Angeles. 3. Jaffe discusses his acquisition of Bennett in his oral history; dates and figures are from the Joan Bennett contract briefs, folder 1, box 1, CKF, and agency phone logs, folders 1737 and 1738, CKF. Selznick stole her in the early 1940s. 4. Jaffe’s client list as reported to the Academy of Motion Pictures in its agents investigation. See Agents file, box 7, Academy Archives, AMPAS. 5. Whitney Stine, Stars and Star Handlers: The Business of Show (Santa Monica, Calif.: Roundtable, 1985), 128.

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6. Legal files, Warner Bros. Archives (hereafter WBA-USC), Cinematic Arts Library, University of Southern California, Los Angeles. Bogart’s career has been endlessly documented. For the best coverage see Robert Sklar, City Boys: Cagney, Bogart, Garfield (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992), and A. M. Sperber (with Eric Lax), Bogart (New York: William Morrow, 1997). 7. In his study of Bogart, Sklar notes, “If there was another studio executive more antipathetic to Bogart than Trilling, the surviving records do not reveal them” (City Boys, 74). Bogart’s legal files in WBA-USC contain a number of notes from Jaffe requesting that his messages be relayed to Warner. Sklar quotes one—without naming Jaffe—on p. 74. 8. Rudy Behlmer, Inside Warner Bros. (New York: Viking, 1985), 144. 9. Client lists for Myron Selznick and Arthur Lyons, Agents file, box 7, Academy Archives; legal files for Raft and Lupino, WBA-USC. 10. Sklar, City Boys, 119–20, and Sperber, Bogart, 192–93, who mentions Jaffe’s role in this process. 11. Sklar, City Boys, 120. 12. Porter, Competitive Strategy, 37. 13. Biography files, Core Collection, AMPAS; Frank Orsatti file, Paul Kohner Collection (hereafter PK), Berlin Film Museum. The Kohner papers are not yet catalogued; folders are labeled according to individuals and organizations, a system reflected in my citations. 14. Kohner, letter to George Marton, Marton file, PK. 15. Mark Cohen to Joe Pasternak, Paul Kohner folder, William Wyler Collection, AMPAS. 16. Kohner to Mark Cohen, July 2, 1941. Mark Cohen folder, Paul Kohner Collection, AMPAS. The Berlin Film Museum purchased Kohner’s agency papers from his estate in the 1990s. However, some of his office papers remain with the Margaret Herrick Library (AMPAS), the recipient of his estate’s original donation. 17. Financial figures on Kohner’s operation are derived from his reports to the Artists’ Managers Guild; see Artists’ Managers Guild folder, PK. 18. Information on office personnel is derived from files in the Kohner collection at AMPAS. 19. Marlene Dietrich, telegram to Kohner, February 20, 1939, and Kohner to Dietrich, February 21, 1939, Marlene Dietrich folder, PK. 20. Client lists in Arthur Landau folder, PK. On Wyler’s role in Huston’s first directing effort, see The Maltese Falcon production files, WBA-USC. See also John Huston, An Open Book (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980), 70–78. 21. Kohner to Cohen, May 26, 1941, John Huston folder, PK. 22. Carl Laemmle Jr. folder, PK; production pitches and plans can be found in various folders; see, for example, the folders for John Huston and George Marton. 23. Financial records, 1939, 1940, 1941, in Artists’ Managers Guild folder, PK. 24. Kohner folder, Wyler Collection.

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25. Julian Duvivier and Robert Siodmak folders, PK. Siodmak’s name also turns up in Feldman’s daybooks at this time. 26. Siodmak folder, PK. 27. See chapters 4 and 5 in Swanson’s memoir, Sprinkled with Ruby Dust: A Literary and Hollywood Memoir (New York: Warner, 1989). 28. Ibid., 64. 29. Harold Swanson, letter to George T. Bye, October 9, 1934, “George T. Bye” folder, 1a-f.6, Harold Swanson Collection, AMPAS. The Swanson collection remains uncatalogued. Val Almendarez, the special collections archivist, made several key files available to me. I thank him for this, as well as for his keen stewardship. Per my query, Val organized select material and I’ve followed his system in my citations. 30. Swanson to Bye. 31. As Janet Staiger notes in “The Division and Order of Production,” “By the mid-1920s, agents were the go-betweens for non-studio-generated plots” (in David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson, The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 [New York: Columbia University Press, 1985], 146). As I discuss in chapter 1, in the late 1920s and early 1930s these go-betweens developed much as Swanson, Selznick, and others had: as specialists and regular contact points for studio executives. 32. Swanson to Ober, August 8, 1935, Harold Ober file, 3a-f.1, Swanson Collection. 33. Swanson to Ober, August 10, 1935,3a-f.1, Swanson Collection. 34. Ibid. 35. Swanson to Bye, January 31, 1935, “George T. Bye, 1935” folder, 2a-f.1, Swanson Collection. 36. Swanson to Ober, November 18, 1938, “Harold Ober” folder, 1938, 3af.6, Swanson Collection. 37. Swanson to Bye, January 18, 1935, “George T. Bye, 1932–1935” folder, 1a-f.6, Swanson Collection. 38. Details on these proposals can be found in Swanson’s letters to Harold Ober, “Harold Ober Associates, 1936” folder, 3a-f.3, Swanson Collection. 39. Emphasis added. Swanson is describing Hugh King, whom he hired and let go in the fall of 1935 (Swanson to Ober, October 5, 1935, Harold Ober file, Swanson Collection). 40. Swanson to Bye, November 17, 1934, “George T. Bye, 1932–1935” folder, 1a-f.6, Swanson Collection. 41. Swanson to Ober, September 28, 1935, “Harold Ober Associates, 1935” folder, 3a-f.1, Swanson Collection. 42. Ibid., August 1, 1938, 3a-f.5. The letter contains the details of Brandt’s slip-up. 43. Swanson, Sprinkled with Ruby Dust, 82. 44. Like almost everyone else in Hollywood in the 1930s, Swanson pursued Ernest Hemingway and came closer than most to signing the writer.

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Hemingway floated a large figure past one of Swanson’s New York contacts, but all the studios balked at the amount. 45. I found this document in the files of rival agent Paul Kohner, who seems to have copped it from a client. See “H.N. Swanson” folder, PK. 46. Swanson to Ober, August 8, 1935, “Harold Ober” folder, 3a-f.1, Swanson Collection. 47. Bye to Swanson, April 27, 1936, “George T. Bye and Company, 1935– 1936” folder, 2a-f.2, Swanson Collection.

6. Sealing the Deal 1. Robinson switched agents at least three times during the 1930s (Robinson legal files, Warner Bros. Archives [hereafter WBA-USC], Cinematic Arts Library, University of Southern California, Los Angeles). 2. Contract dated June 16, 1936, Robinson legal files. 3. A. S. Lyons listed Stanwyck on the agency’s client list in 1935; Marx did not list her that year (Agents file, box 7, Academy Archives, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences [hereafter AMPAS], Los Angeles). According to Stanwyck’s legal file (WBA-USC), her lawyer worked out these terms for her as early as 1932. I would like to thank to Emily Carman for steering me to Stanwyck’s contracts. 4. Ronald Colman legal file, Twentieth Century Fox Archive (hereafter Fox Archive), Libraries and Collections, University of California, Los Angeles. The Colman file includes a deal memo from MGM. 5. Constance Bennett and Bennett Pictures Corporation, legal files, Fox Archive. 6. “Only 10 Exclusive Stars,” Variety, July 3, 1935, 23. 7. “Misc. Contract Information (1941–1943),” folder 361, MGM Legal Department Records, AMPAS. One example of a contract rewritten in light of box-office success was Clark Gable’s after It Happened One Night. MGM revamped its deal with Gable, granting the actor a healthy $4,000 a week. See David Shipman, The Great Movie Stars: The Golden Years (New York: Hill and Wang, 1979), 223. 8. See Sheridan’s and Flynn’s respective folders in the agency files, and the contract histories in the Client Notebook, box 1, all in the Myron Selznick Papers (hereafter MS), Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin. Sheridan botched the negotiations by handling them herself. As recorded in her agency folder, Sheridan’s agents had to clean up the mess (and Selznick loaned her $5,000). 9. Columbia contract dated June 13, 1935, box 1:5, Irene Dunne Collection, Cinematic Arts Library, University of Southern California, Los Angeles. 10. The economist Richard E. Caves borrowed the screenwriter William Goldman’s pithy summary of Hollywood logic (“nobody knows”) to describe the multiple levels of uncertainty characterizing most forms of artistic production,

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particularly collaborative arts like theater and film. Caves’s analysis of contracts in the arts informs much of my analysis of contracts in this chapter. See his Creative Industries: Contracts between Art and Commerce (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000). 11. Frank MacDonald, California labor commissioner, letter to academy, 1933, in the Agency file, box 7, Academy Archives, AMPAS. 12. Feldman to the Artists Managers Guild, comments about article 15, pp. 2–3, of the October 12, 1938, transcript, folder 1904, Charles K. Feldman Collection (hereafter CKF), Louis B. Mayer Library, American Film Institute, Los Angeles. 13. Folder 879, CKF. 14. On the history of the various guilds see Nancy Lynn Schwartz, The Hollywood Writers’ Wars (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), and Gerald Horne, Class Struggle in Hollywood, 1930–1950: Moguls, Mobsters, Stars, Reds, and Trade Unionists (Austin: University of Texas, 2001). 15. The AMG grew out of an earlier association that organized the agents. In 1931, when the agents were under attack from producers, the agents formed the Artists’ Managers Association (see chap. 1). In establishing the agents’ guild in the late 1930s, the agents asked Feldman to lead the group (see Mike Levee to Feldman, folder 1904, CKF). Feldman, Selznick, Hayward, Levee, and Phil Berg played a strong role in setting up the organization. For correspondence in this regard, see folder 904, CKF. 16. Swanson to Ober, October 5, 1938, “Harold Ober, 1938” folder, 3a-f.5, Harold Swanson Collection, AMPAS. 17. Hollywood Reporter, September 1, 1938, 1. 18. Donald Gledhill, form letter to agents, July 1, 1935, Agents file, “Membership Artist Managers Invitation Drive—1935” folder, box 7, Academy Archives, AMPAS. 19. Ibid. 20. Transcript of Artists Managers Guild meeting, October 12, 1938, folder 1904, CKF. 21. Myron Selznick to studio heads, October 5, 1938, folder 15, box 167, DOSC. 22. As the economist Richard E. Caves notes: “The talent guilds provide their better paid and more successful members with only a framework for contracts, but they do set minimum wages that affect the demand for modestly talented and apprentice artists” (Caves, Creative Industries, 133). 23. See Herbert Freston, a Warner Bros. lawyer, letter to Jack Warner, December 13, 1937, Cagney legal files, WBA-USC, documenting the meeting with SAG’s Kenneth Thompson, who relayed information about his initial meeting with William Cagney, as well as subsequent meetings. Contract negotiations began almost immediately. 24. The data come from an amended complaint, dated November 14, 1940, in United States v. Paramount Pictures et al. (Civil Action No. 87–273, which was decided as 334 U.S. 131 [1948]). Mae D. Huettig includes these figures in her

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valuable study Economic Control of the Motion Picture Industry (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1944), 94. 25. See Hands across the Table, Paramount Production Files collection, AMPAS. 26. “Put Their Names in Lights,” Fortune, September 1938.

7. My Man Myron 1. Ken Sight, “Hollywood Agents,” publication not known, June 8, 1939, scrapbook, Leo Morrison Collection, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (hereafter AMPAS), Beverly Hills. 2. Quoted in Charles Chapman, unpublished article, box 169.3, David O. Selznick Collection (hereafter DOSC). Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin. The article appears to have been originally intended for Look magazine. 3. “Equity” folder, agency files, Myron Selznick Papers (hereafter MS), Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin. 4. Payroll book, MS. 5. “Equity” folder, agency files, MS. 6. “Estate, New York Office” folder, agency files, MS. 7. “Lists” folder, agency files, MS. 8. Leo C. Rosten, Hollywood: The Movie Colony, the Movie Makers (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1941), 323. See Rosten’s survey of writer salaries. 9. “Incorporation-Dissolution” folder, agency files, MS. Also see Rosten’s survey of studio executive salaries (Hollywood, 274–75). Only Louis B. Mayer and perhaps Darryl Zanuck, Hunt Stromberg, and a few others surpassed Myron Selznick’s annual compensation in an average year. 10. “Incorporation-Dissolution” folder, agency files, MS. In this December 21 memo his accountant explained: “Until your net income exceeds $207,000 during the current fiscal year, you will pay no tax whatsoever. The first income over $207,000 will be taxed at the lowest rates set forth.” 11. See Flynn in the Client Notebook, box 1, MS, and the Errol Flynn legal file, Warner Bros. Archives (hereafter WBA-USC), Cinematic Arts Library, University of Southern California, Los Angeles. 12. “Henry Fonda” folder, agency files, MS. 13. Correspondence on both deals found in “Gregory La Cava” folder, agency files, MS. 14. In describing Galbraith’s observation, I have relied on Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumer’s Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003), 23–24. As Cohen explains it, Galbraith used to the term “countervailing power” to describe the “New Deal government’s efforts to organize economically weak groups to balance more powerful interests” (24). See also Giuliana Muscio, Hollywood’s New Deal (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997). 15. “Milestone 50% with Hughes,” Variety, March 18, 1931, 4, and Ronald Haver, David Selznick’s Hollywood (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980), 63.

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Notes to Pages 150–160

16. Client Notebook, box 1, MS. 17. Hepburn’s salary and percentage points, as well as renegotiated terms for the entire run of her RKO contract, can be found in the Client Notebook, box 1, MS. 18. Folder 4, box 900, DOSC. 19. All information about March’s contracts comes from the Client Notebook and his agency folder, MS. 20. Client Notebook, box 1, MS. 21. Ibid. The “Barry Brannen” folder in the agency files, MS, also contains details of this deal. Brannen was Selznick’s lawyer. McCarey subsequently sold back portions of his interest in each of these films. 22. Client Notebook, box 1, MS. 23. “Lively Trading Keeps Name Players on Move,” Variety, July 7, 1937, 7. 24. David Selznick, memo to Dan O’Shea, August 18, 1938, “William Powell” folder 944, box 13, DOSC. 25. David Selznick memos dated March, August, and December 1937, folder 944, box 13. 26. David Selznick, letter to Jock Whitney, November 5, 1935, box 3438.1, DOSC. 27. Lombard’s key contract points as outlined in the Client Notebook, box 1, MS. 28. Carole Lombard legal file, WBA-USC. 29. “Lombard” folder 10, box 628, DOSC. 30. “Carole Lombard” file, Daily Report, December 7, 1937, folder 10, box 628, DOSC. 31. David Selznick to Dan O’Shea, undated cable (ca. 1940), folder 10, box 628, DOSC. 32. Earnings report, November 1940, folder 10, box 628, DOSC. 33. These new terms are outlined in the Lombard entry in the Client Notebook, box 1, MS. Earnings on the film are derived from RKO’s accounting reports (delivered, as contracted, to the agency) contained in the “Carole Lombard” folder, agency files, MS. 34. Correspondence on the deal and internal agency memos found in the La Cava folder, MS. 35. Ibid. 36. An interoffice memo (October 21, 1937) to David Selznick mentions discussions with Myron about Birdwell’s publicity work at a meeting that dealt with Lombard as well (folder 1, box 628, DOSC). 37. Bound volumes, Scrapbook of newspaper clippings, MS. 38. “Selznick, Myron 1939” (two folders), box 3564, DOSC. 39. Articles of incorporation for Ernst Lubitsch Productions, and other details of Lubitsch deals, in “Harry Sokolov” folder, MS. Sokolov was a preeminent Hollywood lawyer. Other details on Lubitsch deals can be found in “Selznick, Myron 1939” (two folders) in box 3564, DOSC. 40. Draft of article (this quote did not appear in the published version) with

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Birdwell’s edits and letter from Birdwell to Gladys Hall dated August 19, 1938, “Carole Lombard,” folder 303, Gladys Hall Collection, AMPAS. 41. “Myron Selznick Agency,” folder 5, box 323, DOSC. Easily found in Rudy Behlmer, ed., Memo from David O. Selznick (New York: Viking, 1972), 96. 42. “Gone with the Wind” correspondence, Estate files, MS. Myron also owned stock in Warner Bros., Paramount, Loews Inc., and Twentieth Century Fox (folder 9, box 155, MS). For the organization of Hunt Stromberg Productions, Inc., see Deposition of Hunt Stromberg, April 8, 1949, 5, in Society of Independent Picture Producers, et al. v. United Detroit Theatres Corp., et al., case number 7589, District Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Michigan, Southern Division, AMPAS. See Hunt Stromberg folders in the agency files, and correspondence related to Stromberg in the “Barry Brannen” folder, MS. 43. “Gregory La Cava” folder, agency files, MS. 44. “Myron Selznick Agency,” folder 5, box 323, DOSC. 45. Ibid. 46. “David O. Selznick” folders, agency files, MS.

8. What Made Myron Run? 1. All correspondence, key dates, and events are derived from “Vivien Leigh” folder, agency files, Myron Selznick Papers (hereafter MS), Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin. 2. From a 1941 piece called “Discovering the New Ones,” excerpted in Rudy Behlmer, Memo from David O. Selznick (New York: Viking, 1972), 180. 3. Ibid. 4. Time, December 26, 1939. 5. All correspondence, key dates, and events are derived from “Robert Donat” folder, agency files, MS. Additional background on Donat from biography files, Core Collection, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (hereafter AMPAS), Los Angeles. 6. All correspondence, key dates, and events are derived from “Robert Carson” folder, agency files, MS. 7. All correspondence, key dates, and events are derived from “Alfred Hitchcock” folder, agency files, MS. Leonard J. Leff’s Hitchcock and [David O.] Selznick (New York: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1987), helped me fill in narrative gaps and provided important background information. 8. In Behlmer, Memo from David. O. Selznick, 242. 9. In its design the show anticipated the structure of Hitchcock’s later television program, as indicated in an agency memo: “Mr. Hitchcock was favorably impressed with the set-up as outlined by the agency in which he would have supervision of the entire show and be his own M.C.” This documents a meeting with an advertising agency on September 2, 1942 ( “Alfred Hitchcock” folder, agency files, MS). 10. George Cukor, letter to Myron Selznick, January 28, 1944, “George Cukor” folder, aency files, MS.

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Notes to Pages 191–195

11. Sig Marcus, memo to Myron Selznick, February 8, 1938, “George Cukor” folder, agency files, MS. 12. Myron Selznick, letter to George Cukor, February 11, 1938, “George Cukor” folder, agency files, MS. 13. Irene Mayer Selznick, A Private View (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983), 254; David Thomson, Showman: The Life of David O. Selznick (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), 350. 14. “Myron Selznick Agency,” folder 5, box 323, David O. Selznick Collection (hereafter DOSC), Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin. 15. David Selznick to Dr. Edward Strecker, November 30, 1942, folder 19, box 160, DOSC. 16. Ibid. 17. Selznick’s lawyer outlines the case in his brief, contained in “Carole Lombard Correspondence,” box 628, folder 10, DOSC. The document demonstrates Selznick’s role in negotiating her recent deal with RKO (directly with the studio’s president), the escalation of her salary from $750 a week to $18,000 a week (on ten-week productions), and other details reflecting Selznick’s close management of her career. 18. In 1942 Geraldine Fitzgerald sent a teasing but no less revealing letter to Myron: “Please answer the following questions . . . are you alive? Are you happy in your work? Are you drunk? Do you wish you were? In which of the following states are you? Neurotic? Erotic? Psychotic? Exotic? Myopic? Spleenetic? Phlegmatic? . . . I am sure your answers will contain the explanation and key to your inaccessibility” (Geraldine Fitzgerald to Myron Selznick, June 11, 1942, “En-Fitzg” folder, agency files, MS). Selznick split commissions on Fitzgerald with the Edington-Vincent agency from 1939 to 1942. Memos about the departures of other clients can be found in their respective agency files, which are alphabetical in Myron’s papers. 19. A blank proposal from 1940 found in David O. Selznick’s papers suggests that Hayward and Myron Selznick were also exploring a merger with Feldman, perhaps also indicating an amicable split with Hayward in 1938. There is no indication how far this deal got (see folder 7, box 322, DOSC). 20. Leland Hayward, letter to clients, November 29, 1940, “Leland Hayward” folder, William Wyler Collection, AMPAS. 21. Folder 875, Charles K. Feldman Collection (hereafter CKF), Louis B. Mayer Library, American Film Institute, Los Angeles. 22. Ibid. 23. Estate files, David O. Selznick—Myron Selznick—Funeral 3/25/44, MS. AMPAS’s Margaret Herrick Library also holds a bound copy of Fowler’s eulogy. 24. Ibid. 25. Charles Feldman to George Stevens, May 27, 1944, folder 1915, CKF. 26. Estate files, David O. Selznick—Myron Selznick, MS. 27. Ibid. 28. Business files—Estate, Contracts and Settlements, MS.

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Notes to Pages 195–205

29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

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Business files—Estate, London Ltd. Re MCA, MS. Ibid. Ibid. Business files—Feldman, MS. Ibid.

9. Tall in the Saddle 1. Estate files, David O. Selznick—Myron Selznick, Myron Selznick Papers (hereafter MS), Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin. 2. Feldman, letter to Esquire editor, October 16, 1946, and corrected proofs for the article, folder 1888, Charles K. Feldman Collection (hereafter CKF), Louis B. Mayer Library, American Film Institute, Los Angeles. 3. Folder 70, CKF. 4. Willard L. Wiener, “Charmer for a Nice Fee,” Collier’s, August 6, 1949, 50. 5. See Noel Singer, interoffice memo to Feldman, May 31, 1955, folder 70, CKF. The memo offers a history of the corporation in relation to pending changes in tax law. The production company was originally incorporated as Theatre Group Productions. 6. Feldman, letter to Ernest Havemann (author of the Life magazine portrait of the agent), November 21, 1949, folder 1888, CKF. 7. Quoted in Wiener, “Charmer for a Nice Fee,” 50. 8. See Thomas Schatz, Boom and Bust: The American Cinema in the 1940s (New York: Scribner’s, 1997), 341. 9. Ibid., 178. 10. See, among a slew of articles reporting on this phenomenon from the time period, Fredric Marlowe, “The Rise in the Independents in Hollywood,” Penguin Film Review 3 (1947): 72–75. 11. Quoted in Schatz, Boom and Bust, 183. 12. Feldman to Peter Rathvon, October 7, 1949, folder 1888, CKF. 13. Randy Roberts and James S. Olson, John Wayne, American (New York: Free Press, 1995), 187. 14. Feldman’s short-lived merger with the Edington-Vincent Agency, Dietrich’s former representatives, may have represented their first official association. 15. Folder 878, CKF. 16. On Power’s deals and Dana Andrews, see folders labeled “contract briefs,” CKF. 17. Folder 877, CKF. 18. Folder 666, CKF. 19. “The Spoilers,” clippings files, Core Collection, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (hereafter AMPAS), Los Angeles. 20. This and additional details about Pittsburgh can be found in folders 661, 662, and 666, CKF.

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Notes to Pages 206–219

21. Folder 665, CKF. 22. Scrapbook, Samuel Morrison Collection, AMPAS. 23. Background on Wayne’s relationship with Morrison, the lawsuit with Feldman, SAG correspondence, and depositions can be found in folder 1919, CKF. All subsequent references and details stem from this folder. 24. Folder 1919, CKF. 25. Garry Wills, John Wayne’s America: The Politics of Celebrity (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997), 139. 26. For details of Raines’s contracts, see folders 49, 50, 51, CKF. 27. “Paul Fix” biography files, Core Collection, AMPAS. 28. Folder 1919, CKF. 29. Todd McCarthy, Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood (New York: Grove, 1997), 319. 30. Folders 593, 595, and 596, CKF. The discussion of the Hawks–Warner Bros. deal that follows is based on documents in these folders. 31. Folders 875 and 876, CKF. 32. Folder 594, CKF. Unless otherwise noted, the discussion of Bacall that follows is based on documents in this folder. 33. This document can be found in folder 1907, CKF. But it can be found most easily in Rudy Behlmer’s edited collection, Inside Warner Bros.: 1935– 1951 (New York: Viking, 1985), 248–50. 34. In 1996 Bob Gitt of the UCLA Film and Television Archive restored the earlier version, which is now available on a wonderful DVD that also contains the later release. A special feature on the DVD compares both versions of the films (and cites Feldman’s letter).

10. The Deal Factory 1. Feldman lost about twenty clients to war service (most significantly, George Stevens). Yet the war years had little overall impact on the agency business, according to Sam Jaffe (Sam Jaffe, interview by Barbara Hall, 1992, Oral History Program, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences [hereafter AMPAS], Los Angeles). 2. Contract drafts and final contract, Saratoga Trunk legal files, Warner Bros. Archives (hereafter WBA-USC), Cinematic Arts Library, University of Southern California, Los Angeles. 3. Jaffe interview. 4. Correspondence in Fritz Lang’s papers details Jaffe’s production plans. Lang suspected his agent of selling him out and berated Jaffe for using his name in various negotiations involving the project. See the Jaffe files in the Fritz Lang Collection, Berlin Film Museum. 5. Feldman to George Stevens, October 9, 1944, folder 1915, Charles K. Feldman Collection (hereafter CKF), Louis B. Mayer Library, American Film Institute, Los Angeles. 6. Feldman to Stevens, February 17, 1947, folder 1915, CKF.

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7. Folder 690, CKF. 8. Folders 594 and 596, CKF. This production history is clearly and accurately covered in Todd McCarthy, Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood (New York: Grove, 1997), 416. 9. Folder 1899, CKF. 10. Folder 690, CKF. 11. McCarthy, Howard Hawks, 444. 12. Leo C. Rosten, Hollywood: The Movie Colony, the Movie Makers (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1941), 297–300. 13. Clippings in the John Wayne and Red River files, Core Collection, AMPAS. 14. John Wayne legal files, WBA-USC; on reissues and SAG, see reports on the deal in the John Wayne files, Core Collection, AMPAS. 15. Folder 875, CKF. 16. Ibid. 17. Folder 1, CKF. 18. Arnold Grant to Feldman, October 10, 1944, folder 24, CKF. 19. Ibid. 20. Folder 19, CKF. 21. Folder 1900, CKF. 22. Feldman to Marlene Dietrich, December 14, 1945, Charles Feldman folder, Marlene Dietrich Collection, Berlin Film Museum. 23. Folder 875, CKF. 24. Folder 1775, CKF. The discussion of the deal in this paragraph is based on documents found in this file. 25. All details—from the production company and the agency—in the discussion that follows can be found in documents contained in folders 3, 4, 871, and 872, CKF. 26. Deal memo, February 15, 1950, Winchester 73 folder, Universal Studios Collection, Cinematic Arts Library, USC. 27. Feldman to Nate Blumberg, May 7, 1946, folder 49, CKF. 28. Much has been made, for good reason, of this deal. While I will examine it more extensively in my second book on agents, I should note here that the deal remained a more or less singular accomplishment for MCA (it never really repeated a deal of this magnitude). As noted, the deal did not really register with Hollywood until the 1950s, by which time MCA had long established its leading position in the agency business; as a result this deal was not the pivotal moment it often gets painted as in film histories. This story gets repeated in sensational fashion because most film histories rely on later magazine articles—trumped-up dramatic journalism—as sources for this event. It is also important to remember that the deal enabled Universal to produce a star vehicle with outside talent for minimal costs, an arrangement the studio had been practicing for some time. Universal also gained a valuable and enduring relationship with Stewart as a result (without repeating these specific deal terms).

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Notes to Pages 236–247

29. “250G Agency Bite in DOS-WB Deal,” Variety, April 12, 1949, 1. 30. Willard L. Wiener, “Charmer for a Nice Fee,” Collier’s, August 6, 1944, 49–50; Ezra Goodman, “Feldman’s People,” Pageant, January 1950, 152–56; Ernest Havemann, “Packages of Stars,” Life, April 17, 1950, 107–16. Feldman’s correspondence with these writers can be found in folders 1888a and 1991–93, CKF.

Epilogue: The Corporate Era 1. Ray Stark to Charlie Feldman, September 22, 1953, folder 861, Charles K. Feldman Collection (hereafter CKF), Louis B. Mayer Library, American Film Institute, Los Angeles. 2. Under pressure from his staff Feldman made fitful efforts to develop television deals. 3. “Minutes of a Special Meeting of the Board of Directors of the Screen Actors Guild, Inc.,” June 6, 1949, Screen Actors Guild archives, Los Angeles. I thank Valerie Yaros, SAG’s historian, for making this material available to me. 4. “Minutes of a Special Meeting.” A few years later MCA’s waiver for its television production followed the same logic. 5. Ibid. 6. “Minutes of a Special Meeting.” 7. Ibid. 8. My second volume, on talent agencies in the 1950s through the 1970s, will overlap with the material here, offering more details about the William Morris Agency and MCA and late 1940s issues for agencies: independent film productions, the Hollywood blacklist, the famous Winchester 73 deal, and television, among other issues. While issues like the blacklist, television, and runaway productions were already quite salient in the late 1940s, dealing with them fully would require extending the narrative of this book well into the 1950s; hence, the rise of television made a logical endpoint for this volume. 9. Background on MCA is derived from two boxes of Department of Justice documents, Freedom of Information Act request no. ATF05–027. 10. See “Daybooks,” CKF. 11. Bette Davis, legal files, Warner Bros. Archives (hereafter WBA-USC), Cinematic Arts Library, University of Southern California, Los Angeles. 12. B.D. Inc., legal files, WBA-USC. 13. Stein is quoted in Brooke Hayward, Haywire (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977), 134. 14. Background on the William Morris Agency derived from Frank Rose, The Agency: William Morris and the Hidden History of Show Business (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), and “The Morris Agency: Put Their Names in Lights,” Fortune, September 1938, 67–102. 15. “Unit Agency Corp. Formed,” Daily Variety, December 9, 1949, 1. 16. “GAC, Famous Artists Combine,” Daily Variety, April 4, 1950, 1. 17. “New Indie Agency Combine,” Daily Variety, October 9, 1950, 1.

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Selected Bibliography

Allen, Robert, and Douglas Gomery. Film History: Theory and Practice. New York: Random House, 1985. Anderson, Chris. Hollywood TV: The Studio System in the Fifties. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994. Balio, Tino. Grand Design: Hollywood as a Modern Business Enterprise, 1930– 1939. New York: Scribner’s, 1993. ———, ed. The American Film Industry. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985. Becker, Howard. Art Worlds. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982. Behlmer, Rudy, ed. Memo from David O. Selznick. New York: Viking, 1972. Bernstein, Matthew. Walter Wanger: Hollywood Independent. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. Bordwell, David, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson. The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985. Capra, Frank. The Name above the Title: An Autobiography. New York: Vintage, 1985. Chandler, Alfred Jr. The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977. Clark, Danae. Negotiating Hollywood: The Cultural Politics of Actors’ Labor. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995. Coase, R. H. The Firm, the Market, and the Law. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. Custen, George. Twentieth Century’s Fox: Darryl F. Zanuck and the Culture of Hollywood. New York: Basic Books, 1997. Davis, Ronald. The Glamour Factory: Inside Hollywood’s Big Studio System. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1993. Demsetz, Harold. The Economics of the Business Firm: Seven Critical Commentaries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Gomery, Douglas. The Hollywood Studio System. New York: St. Martin’s, 1986. 275

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Selected Bibliography

Granovetter, Mark. Getting a Job: A Study of Contacts and Careers. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Haver, Ronald. David O. Selznick’s Hollywood. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980. Horne, Gerald. Class Struggle in Hollywood, 1930–1950: Moguls, Mobsters, Stars, Reds, and Trade Unionists. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001. Huettig, Mae D. Economic Control of the Motion Picture Industry. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1944. Jewell, Richard B. “How Howard Hawks Brought Baby Up: An Apologia for the Studio System.” In Janet Staiger, ed., The Studio System. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1994. Jewell, Richard, with Vernon Harbin. The RKO Story. New York: Arlington House, 1982. Kendell, Elizabeth. The Runaway Bride: Hollywood Romantic Comedy of the 1930s. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990. Kindem, Gorham, ed. The American Movie Industry: The Business of Motion Pictures. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1982. Leff, Leonard J. Hitchcock and Selznick: The Rich and Strange Collaboration of Alfred Hitchcock and David O. Selznick in Hollywood. New York: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1987. Marchand, Roland. Creating the Corporate Soul: The Rise of Public Relations and Corporate Imagery in American Big Business. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. McBride, Joseph. Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992. McCarthy, Todd. Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood. New York: Grove, 1997. McDonald, Paul. The Star System: Hollywood’s Production of Popular Identities. London: Wallflower, 2000. Muscio, Giuliana. Hollywood’s New Deal. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996. Porter, Michael. Competitive Strategy: Techniques of Analyzing Industries and Competitors. New York: Free Press, 1980. Powdermaker, Hortense. Hollywood: The Dream Factory. Boston: Little, Brown, 1950. Rose, Frank. The Agency: William Morris and the Hidden History of Show Business. New York: HarperCollins, 1995. Ross, Murray. Stars and Strikes. New York: Columbia University Press, 1941. Rosten, Leo C. Hollywood: The Movie Colony, the Movie Makers. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1941. Schatz, Thomas. Boom and Bust: The American Cinema in the 1940s. New York: Scribner’s, 1997. ———. The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era. New York: Pantheon, 1988.

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Selected Bibliography

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Schulberg, Budd. Moving Pictures: Memories of a Hollywood Prince. New York: Stein and Day, 1981. Schwartz, Nancy Lynn. The Hollywood Writers’ Wars. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982. Scott, Allen J. On Hollywood: The Place, the Industry. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005. Selznick, Irene Mayer. A Private View. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983. Sklar, Robert. City Boys: Cagney, Bogart, Garfield. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992. Stenn, David. Clara Bow: Runnin’ Wild. New York: Doubleday, 1988. Susman, Warren I. Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2003. Swedberg, Richard. Economics and Sociology. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990. ———. Principles of Economic Sociology. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2003. Thomson, David. Showman: The Life of David O. Selznick. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992. Weber, Max. Essays in Economic Sociology. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999. ———. On Charisma and Institution Building. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1968. White, Harrison C. Markets from Networks: Socioeconomic Models of Production. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002. Wills, Garry. John Wayne’s America. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997. Zukin, Sharon, and Paul DiMaggio, eds. Structures of Capital: The Social Organization of the Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

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Index

Page numbers in italics denote illustrations. Academy Awards (Oscars): Bellamy, 106, 185, 189, 218–19; Carson, 189; Colbert, 83; Davis, 243; Donat, 172, 177, 189; Dunne, 89; Leigh, 165, 189; Lombard, 156 Academy Bulletin, 20 Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), 13–20, 71, 149; “agent problem” and, 2–3; central booking offices and, 12; Code of Practice, 3, 14, 17–20, 22; NRA and, 21, 22; talent agencies and, 8 Academy Players Directory Bulletin, 71 Across the Pacific (film), 109 actors: bit players (day players), 46–48; “colored” players, 71; contract players and outsiders, 140–42; contracts and, 81; New Deal and, 21, 22; SelznickJoyce Agency and, 31; Selznick’s meetings with, 30; Small and, 62; supporting, 106. See also stars The Adventures of Robin Hood (film), 81 advertising, 63, 103 agents: AMPAS and, 13–20; banned from studios, 4, 17; big and small clients of, 69–72, 96–97; boutique, 104–5; British, 44, 45, 170–71, 172; Broadway, 7–8, 9, 247; clients and studios as dual markets for, 123; client workbooks and, 36, 38; contracts and, 11, 124, 129–30; emergence of, 5–13; female, 70; guild

of, 115; as hustlers, 2, 28; influence over film production, 212–16; mediating function of, 1, 171; New Deal and, 21–24; nonexclusive contracts and, 82; personal relations as business relations, 38, 64; as producers, 186, 198–201, 219; salaries and commissions, 87; Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and, 132–37; social networking of, 26, 38; “star-raiding,” 10, 11, 13; studios’ relations with, 31, 39–40; in World War II years, 217 Agents Television Corporation, 247 The Age of Innocence (film), 88, 89 Air Force (film), 141 Akins, Zoe, 36, 37, 39 Algiers (film), 115 Alice Adams (film), 99 Al Kingston agency, 47 Allenberg, Bert, 8, 192, 195 All Quiet on the Western Front (novel and film), 57 All Through the Night (film), 109 Alonso, Luis Antonio Damaso, 55 Alton, Maxine, 66, 67, 258n37 Alvarado, Don, 56 The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse (film), 108 American Academy of Dramatic Arts, 49 American Play Company, 42, 44 Anderson, Maxwell, 31 Andrews, Dana, 202

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Index

The Angel and the Badman (film), 208 Annie Oakley (film), 99 Ann Vickers (film), 88 Appointment for Love (film), 198 Archainbaud, George, 40 Ardell, Alice, 70 Arise My Love (film), 87 Armetta, Henry, 69 Arnold, Edward, 81 Arthur, Jean, 104, 167 Artists’ Booking Bureau, 28 Artists’ Managers Association, 13, 242 Artists’ Managers Guild (AMG), 132–36, 195, 207, 266n15 Arzner, Dorothy, 94 A. & S. Lyons, 69, 229 The Aspern Papers (James), 232 Associated Artists, 242 Astaire, Fred, 31, 44, 88, 95, 101; contracts of, 126; Hayward agency and, 193; MCA and, 244; percentage deals and, 151; Selznick agency and, 146 The Awful Truth (film), 90, 106 Ayres, Lew, 57, 58 Bacall, Lauren, 210, 211–16, 215, 222, 231, 233 Back Street (film), 88 Bacon, Lloyd, 15, 218 Badger, Clarence, 66 Bad Men of Missouri (film), 109 Baker, Mary, 107 Ball, Lucille, 192 Ball of Fire (film), 210 Bankhead, Tallulah, 46 Barnum, P. T., 2 Barrie, Mona, 71 Barrymore, Lionel, 69 Barthelmes, Richard, 192 Basch, Felix, 140, 142 Bassermann, Albert, 140 Bassermann, Else, 140 Battle Cry (film), 211 Baxter, Warner, 81, 92, 229 B.D. Inc., 243 Beau Geste (film), 166, 179 Beck, Johnny, 242 Becky Sharp (film), 149 Beery, Wallace, 46, 245

Behind the Make-Up (film), 40 Bell, Monta, 31, 40, 51 Bellamy, Ralph, 46, 106 Benchley, Robert, 31, 116 Bennett, Charles, 122 Bennett, Constance, 125 Bennett, Joan, 33, 46, 105, 167; break with Jaffe, 262n3; break with Selznick agency, 192; contracts of, 151; Jaffe and, 218 Bennett Picture Corporation, 125 Benton, Travis, 87 Bercovici, Leonardo, 232 Berg, Phil, 8, 9, 16–17, 153 Berg-Allenberg agency, 46, 69, 70, 112, 229; purchased by William Morris Agency, 244–45; story division, 117 Bergman, Ingrid, 140 Bergner, Elizabeth, 198 Berkeley, Busby, 76 Bernard and Meiklejohn agency, 47 Beyer-MacArthur agency, 47 Big Brown Eyes (film), 78 Big Five Agreement, 12 The Big Sleep (novel and film), 212–14, 215, 216, 221 Bill of Divorcement (film), 38 Binyon, Claude, 87, 90 Birdwell, Russell, 158, 159 The Bishop’s Wife, film rights to, 232 Black Legion (film), 108 Blackmail (film), 183 block booking, 10, 149, 198, 217, 234 Blondell, Joan, 198, 229 The Blue Angel (film), 202 Blum, Ralph, 78, 100, 224–25, 226, 230 Blumberg, Nate, 235 B-movies, 46, 108, 207 Bogart, Humphrey, 107–11, 125, 131, 211, 263n7; Bacall and, 213, 214; contracts and, 140 Bondi, Beulah, 141 booking agencies, 61, 253n14 Borzage, Frank, 71, 84, 200 Bow, Clara, 56, 64–68 box-office returns, 10, 12, 95, 183, 207 Boyer, Charles, 46, 78, 86, 87, 90; contract of, 124–25; Feldman and, 77, 131, 198, 207, 212; in Life spread, 236, 237; radio work and, 233

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Index Brackett, Charles, 72 Brackett, Leigh, 192 Brady, William, 79 Brandt, Carl, 179, 180, 181 Brandt, Harry, 121 Bren, Milton, 72, 98, 99, 102 Brent, George, 70 Breslow, Lou, 205–6 The Bride Comes Home (film), 87 Bride Walks Out (film), 95 Briskin, Sam, 94, 95, 98, 106, 153; at Columbia, 101; Swanson and, 120 Broadway theater, 7–8, 9, 46, 247; Actors Equity union, 16; Colbert as star of, 82 Brophy, Edward, 141 Brown, Curtis, 117 Brown, James, 141 Brown, Joe E., 58, 76 Brunton Studios, 8 Buchman, Sidney, 77, 81, 87, 89 Bullets or Ballots (film), 108 bureaucracy, 39, 41, 50, 119 Burton, David, 76 Bushman, Francis, 64 Buzzell, Edward, 79 Bye, George T., 117 Cagney, James, 46, 76, 131, 139, 200, 244 Cagney, William, 139, 266n23 Cain, James, 122 Calhoun, Rory, 236 California State Labor Commission, 14, 16, 19, 30, 130 Capra, Frank, 15, 17, 83–84, 126, 200, 245 Captain Blood (film), 81 Carey, Harry, 141 Carillo, Leo, 46 Carmichael, Hoagy, 233 Carnegie, Dale, 38 Carradine, John, 46 Carroll, Nancy, 81, 94 Carson, Robert, 178–83, 189, 192 Carter, Ben, 71 Casablanca (film), 140 casting, 40, 108, 205; actors’ casting approval, 109, 129; casting directors, 28, 58, 59, 70, 242; “colored” players and, 71; directors and, 221; packaging

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and, 152; Small and, 62, 69; Warner Bros., 70, 140–41 central booking offices, 12 Central Casting Corporation, 6 Chandler, Raymond, 122, 212 Chaplin, Charlie, 54 Charles K. Feldman Productions, 198–99, 205, 221 Chatterton, Ruth, 31, 32, 50, 68, 77 Children of Divorce (film), 66 Clair, René, 173, 179 client lists, 30, 31, 36, 37, 131, 142 clients: information gathering and, 35– 36; loss of, 178–83, 189, 192–93, 228, 272n1; lunch or dinner meetings with, 34–35, 38, 39, 94, 234; story approval and, 42, 84–86, 109, 200 Clift, Montgomery, 244 Cocteau, Jean, 54 Cohen, Mark, 112, 114 Cohn, Harry, 90, 94, 101, 106, 120, 233 Colbert, Claudette, 46, 75, 78, 103, 131, 141; break with Feldman agency, 228; Feldman and, 77, 82–87, 85, 93, 125, 198 Coleman, Nancy, 140 Collier, Lois, 71 Collier, Ruth, 16–17, 202 Collier, Weber, and Todd, 46 Collier and Flynn, 8 Colman, Ronald, 71, 125, 131 Columbia Artists’ Bureau, 242 Columbia Pictures: Colbert and, 83–84, 87; Dunne and, 89; executives of, 106; nonexclusive contracts and, 84; package deals and, 199; Selznick-Joyce Agency and, 39; small agencies and, 70; standard contracts with, 81; Stevens and, 101, 102–3 commissions, 16, 34, 76, 137, 182; billing for, 42; contract negotiations and, 130; Feldman and, 87; Kahn and, 58, 59; “packages” and, 136; Selznick’s percentage from Powell, 48–52 Confidential Agent (film), 212, 213–14 Conklin, Peggy, 78 contracts, 5, 11, 14, 15, 38, 68, 92, 139; agency, 129–30; breaking of, 11, 13, 23, 100; cancellation of, 16; Code of

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contracts (continued) Practice and, 18; coordination of, 137–43; expiration dates, 13, 49; interpretation of, 50; lawyers and, 64; litigation over, 235; nonexclusive, 80– 93, 156, 217; percentage deals and, 71, 88, 102, 148–52, 157; rewriting studio, 12, 126–27; Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and, 134; short-term, 235; studio, 46; supporting roles, 46; transformations of, 124–32; trust and, 6; wording of, 15 Cooper, Gary, 31, 148, 179, 211; as independent, 200, 217–18; as leading player, 48 Cooper, Merian, 31 Copeland, Aaron, 232 Cortez, Ricardo, 64 Corwin, Norman, 230, 232 costume designers, 87 Cotton, Joseph, 236 Coulouris, George, 141 The Count of Monte Cristo (film), 172, 175 Count Pete [Walking on Air] (film), 95, 96 Cowan, Jerome, 71 Cowan, Lester, 200 Coward, Noel, 116 Crago, Bill, 141 Cravens, Fred, 70 Crawford, Broderick, 71 Crawford, Joan, 155, 243, 245 Crime School (film), 108 Cromwell, John, 4, 31, 146, 151 Crosby, Bing, 125, 166, 200 Crother, Rachel, 116 Cukor, George, 31, 38, 40, 50, 72, 146; break with Selznick agency, 190–91, 192; dismissed from Gone with the Wind, 167, 190; litigation against, 195; Selznick’s commissions from, 34, 161; as star director, 48 Cummings, Constance, 100 Cummings, Ronald, 91 Curtiz, Michael, 81, 233 A Damsel in Distress (film), 99 Daniell, Henry, 141 Dark Eyes (film), 211

Darnell, Linda, 60, 258n24 Davis, Bette, 71, 131–32, 141, 242, 243, 243 Davis, Robert O., 140 The Death of a Salesman, film rights to, 231 Dee, Francis, 72 de Havilland, Olivia, 58–59, 105, 122, 146; break with Selznick agency, 193; Kahn and, 58–59, 258n17; lawsuit against Warner Bros., 235; Selznick’s commission from, 161 Delmar, Vina, 90 Del Rio, Dolores, 46, 56 DeMille, Cecil B., 83, 158, 166 Desperate Journey (film), 140–41 Destry Rides Again (film), 202 Deverich, Nat, 192, 244, 245 Devine, Andy, 152 Dietrich, Marlene, 46, 113, 175, 201, 203, 222; Feldman and, 201–9, 223, 231; World War II shows, 228–29 Dinehart, Alan, 69 directors, 21, 22, 28, 119; creative freedom of, 221; guild for, 132; major players, 30, 41, 68; percentage deals and, 152; Selznick-Joyce Agency and, 31 Directors Guild, 133 Dix, Richard, 70 Dodsworth (film), 114 Donat, Robert, 44, 48, 171–78, 189, 245 Donnelly, Ruth, 46 Douglas, Gordon, 69 Douglas, Kirk, 231, 233, 236, 237 Douglas, Melvyn, 46, 245 Dover, William, 101, 204 Drake, Betsy, 236 Drake, Charles, 141 Drake, Frances, 81 Drew, Roland, 79 Dru, Joanne, 221 Dunna, Steffi, 81 Dunne, Irene, 75, 102–3, 125, 131, 198; autonomy in studio system, 82, 91; contracts of, 88–93, 128–29; Feldman’s personal handling of career, 94, 223; percentage deals and, 88, 218–19, 243; Schulberg-Feldman agency and, 46, 77 Duvivier, Julien, 115

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Index Early, Gerald, 31 Edington, Frank, 70 Edington, Harry, 71 Edington-Vincent agency, 46, 47, 71, 72, 117 editing, of films, 46 Edward Small Agency, 8 Emerson, Faye, 141 Engel, Sam, 198 England, 34, 37–38, 147, 165, 170, 177 Ernst Lubitsch Productions, 159, 160 Espy, Reeves, 45 Estabrook, Howard, 40 ethics, code of, 3, 4, 19 Evans, Madge, 69 executive agents, 34–35 extras, booking and casting of, 6, 54, 68 Famous Artists Corporation, 199 Famous Players–Lasky, 27 Feature Productions, 56 Federal Communications Commission, 242 Feldman, Charles, 8, 46, 60; advertising for clients, 10, 205, 221; agency set up by, 75–80; Artists’ Managers Guild (AMG) and, 135–37; Bacall and, 210, 211–16; career, 74–75; clients, 76, 77, 79–80, 131; contracts and, 68, 80–93, 128; in corporate era, 239–41; daily schedules, 93–94; deal making and, 222, 235; field agents of, 106, 131–32; Hawks and, 209–12; independent productions of, 219–22; MCA and, 242; move into production, 198–201; percentage deals and, 148, 149, 235–36; personal characteristics, 73–74; on personalities of agencies, 130–31; in photographs, 75, 85, 223, 230, 237; as pioneer, 247–48; salary and bonuses, 58, 230, 236; Selznick compared with, 73, 74, 102; Selznick estate and, 195, 196, 197–98, 229, 230; on Selznick’s posthumous honors, 194; social standing of, 236–38; studio executives and, 94, 153; success of, 104; supporting players and, 48; television and, 238, 239, 247; tensions between agenting and producing, 222– 34; Wayne (John) and, 201–9

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Feldman-Blum Agency, 78–79 Fellows, Robert, 206, 207, 208, 228 Fenton, Leslie, 218 Ferber, Edna, 44 field agents, 34–35, 39, 51, 103, 163, 178– 79 Fields, Herbert, 81 5th Ave Girl (film), 158 Fighting Seabees (film), 222 Film Daily Yearbook, 5 Film Dancers Casting Company, 71 Film Spectator (journal), 4 Finian’s Rainbow, film rights to, 231 First National Pictures, 8, 71, 79 Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 66, 116 Fitzgerald, Geraldine, 141, 270n18 Fix, Paul, 207–8, 221 The Flame of New Orleans (film), 204 Flavin, James, 141 Flood, James, 76, 81 Flying Down to Rio (film), 95 Flying Tigers (film), 222 Flynn, Errol, 70, 71, 127, 140, 192, 242 Fonda, Henry, 44, 128, 193, 244 Fontaine, Joan, 59, 185, 187 Fools for Scandal (film), 156 Ford, John, 126, 201, 205, 209 Foreign Correspondent (film), 185 For the Defense (film), 49 Fortune magazine, 142 For Whom the Bell Tolls (film), 217 Fowler, Gene, 31, 146, 194 Fox studio. See Twentieth Century Fox Francis, Kay, 31, 32–33, 40, 125, 151 Francis, Owen, 205 Franklyn, Hal, 61 Fraser, Richard, 140 freelancing, 7, 74, 81, 88, 91, 124, 125–26, 150–51, 200, 235; Feldman and, 198; Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and, 133 Freund, Karl, 94 Friede, Donald, 180–81 The Front Page (film), 91, 149 Furthman, Jules, 49 Gable, Clark, 70, 73, 84, 177, 236; BergAllenberg agency and, 245; popularity of, 92 Gabriel over the White House (film), 114

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Galbraith, John Kenneth, 148, 267n14 Garbo, Greta, 72, 159 Garfield, John, 141 Gargan, William, 70 Garland, Judy, 244, 245 Garmes, Lee, 15 Garnett, Tay, 192 Garrett, Oliver, 49 Gaumont Film, 37 Gaynor, Janet, 152 General American Radio Company, 27 General Artists Corporation, 247 Ghost Goes West (film), 173 Gilbert, John, 55, 78 Gilded Lily (film), 87 The Glass Menagerie, film rights to, 231 Gledhill, Donald, 133 Glidden, John, 169 Goddard, Paulette, 167, 193 Goetz, Bill, 218 Goetz, Harry, 175 Gold, Charles. See Feldman, Charles Goldstone, Nat, 8, 9, 46, 77, 115 Goldwyn, Samuel, 74, 101, 200; deal making and, 159, 163; Feldman and, 94; film rights to novels and, 232; independent productions and, 210; percentage deals and, 148; studio mode of production and, 199 golf, client meetings and, 38 Gone with the Wind (novel and film), 161, 165, 166, 169; Cukor dismissed from, 167, 190; Oscar nomination, 177 Goodbye, Mr. Chips (film), 176, 177 Gordean, Jack, 79, 226, 227, 230 Gordon, William, 58, 59 gossip, 9, 35, 38, 158, 175 Grable, Betty, 242 Grahame, Gloria, 233 Grant, Arnold, 225–27, 228 Grant, Cary, 46, 72, 126, 219, 230 Grauman, Sid, 97 Graves, Robert, 46 Gray, Coleen, 221 Great Depression, 49, 105 Green, Harry, 57–58, 59 Greenstreet, Sydney, 140 Gruning, Ilka, 140 guilds, 132, 137, 266n22. See also Screen Actors Guild

Gunga Din (film), 99, 101 Gurney, Noll, 195 Guys and Dolls, film rights to, 231 Hale, Alan, 140 Hall, Gladys, 159 Hallam Cooley agency, 46, 47 Hal Roach Studios, 98 Ham, Harry, 45, 183 Hammett, Dashiell, 34, 40, 44, 194–95 Hands across the Table (film), 142, 156 Hardwicke, Cedric, 234 Harlow, Jean, 69 Harris, Jed, 79 Hawks, Howard, 8, 91, 141, 150, 218; Feldman and, 209–12, 222, 223, 231; in Life spread, 236, 237; Red River and, 219–21 Hawks, William, 71 Hawks-Feldman Productions, 211–12, 220 Hawks-Volck Agency, 8, 71, 125, 172 Hayes, Helen, 44, 244 Hayward, Leland, 42–44, 70, 107, 114, 115, 158; break with Selznick agency, 192–93; Feldman and, 77, 224; Kahn and, 58–59; MCA and, 244, 245; percentage deals and, 150; portrait, 43; Selznick estate and, 195; studio background of, 8; success of, 104 Hayward, Susan, 232, 233 Hayward-Deverich Agency, 193, 244, 245 Hayworth, Rita, 245 Hecht, Ben, 31, 40–41, 146, 193 Hellinger, Mark, 108, 200 Hemingway, Ernest, 211, 232, 264–65n44 Henreid, Paul, 140 Hepburn, Katherine, 31, 34, 38, 40, 44, 50, 99; Hayward agency and, 193; as leading player, 48; percentage deals and, 150 Her Master’s Voice (film), 78 Hersholt, Jean, 4 High, Wide, and Handsome (film), 90 High Sierra (film), 108, 109, 113 Hirschfeld, Sam, 33 His Girl Friday (film), 91, 210 His Woman (film), 83 Hitchcock, Alfred, 44, 157, 172, 173, 269n9; The Lodger and Selznick, 183– 89; MCA and, 244

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Index Hoffman-Schlarger agency, 117 Holiday (film), 150 Hollywood film industry, 1, 35, 62; golden age, 75, 93; historical changes in, 3, 200; industrialization of, 37; influx of talent, 105; managerial operations in classical era, 87; movie attendance, 199, 217; newcomers to, 2, 6, 165; number of talent agencies in, 46; organizational complexity, 26; small agencies, 53; social events in, 77; sound as new era, 32, 68; trade press, 3, 9, 10, 56. See also studio system Hollywood Reporter, 21, 205, 208 Hope, Bob, 222 Hopkins, Miriam, 48, 125, 150 Hopper, Hedda, 64, 209 Hornblow, Arthur, 31, 120 Howard, Jean, 78, 228 Howard, William, 31 How to Win Friends and Influence People (Carnegie), 38 Hubbard, Lucien, 31 Hudson, Rock, 233 Hughes, Howard, 69, 149, 211, 219 Hula (film), 66 Huston, John, 113–14, 131 Huston, Walter, 46, 114, 245 I Cover the War (film), 222 I Cover the Waterfront (film), 69, 83 I Met Him in Paris (film), 87 Imitation of Life (film), 84 information exchange, 35, 59, 79, 145, 252n11 In Name Only (film), 156 International Pictures, 218 Invitation to Happiness (film), 90 I Remember Mama (film), 218–19 Irwin, Charles, 140, 142 It (film), 66 It Happened One Night (film), 83–84 Jacobs, Louis, 56 Jaffe, Sam, 104, 105–10, 131, 192, 211; as independent producer, 218; merger with Feldman, 241; Selznick estate and, 195; studio executives and, 153; television and, 247 James, Henry, 232

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Japanese Players, 71 Jason, Leigh, 95 Jezebel (play and film), 113, 150 Johnson, Margot, 229 Johnson, Nunnally, 218 Jolson, Al, 244 Jones, Jennifer, 236 Jourdan, Louis, 236, 237, 237 Joyce, Alice, 64 Joyce, Frank, 30, 33, 39; death of, 51, 144; Hayward and, 43; salary and bonuses, 34 Justice, Department of, 149 Kahane, B. B., 15, 22, 23, 91 Kahn, Ivan, 8, 53–60, 70, 77, 105; de Havilland and, 58–59, 258n17; major studios and, 72; portrait, 55 Kahn Kid Komedies (short films), 54 Kane, Walter, 59, 70, 71, 72 Kaufman, Albert, 45 Kaufman, Charles, 79, 198 Kaufman, Edward, 95 Kaufman, George S., 44 Keaton, Buster, 46 Keith-Albee agency, 62 Kelly, Gene, 244 Kelly, Paul, 81 Kennedy, Arthur, 140, 141 Kenyon, Charles, 79 Kenyon, Doris, 81 Kern, Jerome, 90 Kessell, Joseph, 79 Kid Boots (film), 66 King, Henry, 63 Kinskey, Leonid, 140 Klaw and Erlanger, 61 Kohner, Paul, 104, 111–15, 121, 131; contract coordination and, 142; portrait, 110; television and, 247 Korda, Alexander, 167, 170, 172, 173–77 Kurnitz, Harry, 144 Kyser, Kay, 223 La Cava, Gregory, 69, 146, 153, 154, 155; break with Selznick agency, 192; British productions and, 147–48; percentage deals and, 157–58; Selznick brothers and, 161 Laemmle, Carl, 8, 94, 111

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Laemmle, Carl, Jr., 57, 113, 114 Lahr, Bert, 230 Landau, Arthur, 16–17, 69, 77 Landi, Elissa, 81 Lane, Richard, 141 Lang, Charles, 87 Lang, Fritz, 44, 218, 272n4 Lasky, Jesse, 15, 59, 173, 200, 210 Laughter (film), 40 Laughton, Charles, 31, 172, 180 lawyers, 45, 67, 100, 112, 173, 220; contracts and, 64, 126; Feldman as lawyer, 8, 77; Feldman’s, 225–27; held on retainer, 114; Selznick’s, 186, 268n21, 270n17. See also litigation LeBaron, William, 89 LeBeau, Madelein, 140 Lee and J.J. Schubert, 61 Leigh, Vivien, 44, 48, 165–71, 168, 176; Academy Award, 154, 189; Selznick’s commission from, 161 Leisen, Mitchell, 77, 81, 87, 204 lending clause, 41 LeRoy, Mervyn, 71, 200 Lester, Bruce, 141 Let’s Fall in Love (film), 76 Levee, Michael, 8, 70, 71, 131, 142, 247 Levee-Stark Agency, 245 Lewis, Harry, 140 Lewton, Val, 192 Link (bimonthly review), 64, 65 literary agents, 183, 229 litigation, 11, 13, 42, 131, 195, 235. See also lawyers Litvak, Anatole, 79, 86–87, 103 Lloyd, Frank, 63, 69, 187 loan-outs, 12, 41, 83, 88, 124, 125, 140, 153, 164; contracts and, 140; deal making and, 154; director’s right to veto, 184 The Lodger (film), 183, 185–89 Loew’s Vaudeville Circuit, 62 Lombard, Carole, 31, 49, 142; break with Selznick agency, 192; Hitchcock and, 185; in My Man Godfrey, 153, 154, 155; percentage deals and, 157; Selznick agency and, 146, 159–60, 270n17 London, Selznick’s office in, 42, 44–45, 46, 147, 165, 183

The Long Voyage Home (film), 222 Loos, Anita, 77 Lorre, Peter, 140 Los Angeles, city of, 6, 54, 196, 244 Los Angeles Department of Labor Statistics, 16 Love Affair (film), 91, 152 Love on a Bet (film), 95 The Loves of Carmen (film), 56 Loy, Myrna, 40, 70, 231, 232; Hayward agency and, 193; as leading player, 48; Selznick agency and, 146 Lubitsch, Ernst, 33, 83, 85, 159 Lukas, Paul, 141 Lupino, Ida, 109, 233 Lyons, Arthur, 104, 109, 125, 192, 217 MacArthur, Charles, 31 Macbeth (film), 231 MacGowan, Kenneth, 31, 40, 51 MacMurray, Fred, 104, 218 Made for Each Other (film), 156, 157 Magnificent Obsession (film), 89 The Maltese Falcon (film), 109, 113, 114 Mamoulian, Rouben, 78, 79, 90 Manhattan Melodrama (film), 49 Mankiewicz, Howard, 40 Mankiewicz family, 31 Mannix, Eddie, 156 Mantrap (film), 66 The Man Who Knew Too Much (film), 183 March, Fredric, 31, 40, 44, 152, 156; as freelancer, 150–51; Hayward agency and, 193; as leading player, 48; Selznick agency and, 146 Marcus, Sig, 167, 168, 170, 187–88 Marin, Edward L., 207 Marin, Ned, 79, 207, 226, 230, 233 Marsh, Marian, 81 Marshall, Alfred, 93 Marx, Zeppo, 8, 47, 49, 71, 117; Fontaine (Joan) and, 59; MCA and, 242; as Orsatti partner, 71, 98; Stanwyck and, 125 Mason, James, 192 Massey, Raymond, 140 Matthews, Lester, 141 Mayer, J. G., 70 Mayer, Louis B., 25, 28, 78, 97

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Index McCarey, Leo, 37, 90, 91, 142, 161, 268n21; as independent, 200; percentage deals and, 152 McCarthy, Todd, 209 McCoy, Horace, 79 McDaniel, Hattie, 242 McIntosh, Mavis, 229 McLagen, Victor, 146 Melville, Herman, 2 Menjou, Adolphe, 37, 77, 146, 152, 158 Men with Wings (film), 178, 179 MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer), 11, 27, 81, 121, 177; Donat and, 176, 177; executives, 153; Feldman and, 78, 91, 236; Garbo and, 72; Hitchcock and, 184; Kahn and, 54, 55–56; Powell at, 49; producers, 79; Selznick-Joyce Agency and, 37, 39; Small agency and, 69; Stanwyck and, 125; Stevens and, 103 Midnight (film), 87 Milestone, Lewis, 28–29, 30, 31, 84, 232; break with Selznick agency, 192, 210; Hayward and, 43–44; as independent, 200; percentage deals and, 149; Selznick-Joyce Agency and, 31, 33; as star director, 48 Milland, Ray, 76 Milton Bren–Frank Orsatti Agency, 71, 97, 98 Mr. and Mrs. Smith (film), 157, 185 Mitchum, Robert, 231 Model Wife (film), 198 Monterey Productions, 219, 220 Montgomery, Ray, 141 Montgomery, Robert, 15 Moonrise (film), 231 The More the Merrier (film), 218 Morgan, Michelle, 228 Morris, William, 9, 107 Morrison, Charles, 80 Morrison, Leo, 9, 46, 48, 71, 206–7 Morrison, Sam, 77, 201 Motion Picture magazine, 64 Motion Pictures Investors Corporation (MPI), 219, 220 Motion Pictures Today (journal), 56 Moulin Rouge (film), 125 Muni, Paul, 46, 71, 125 Muse, Clarence, 141 Music Corporation of America (MCA),

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136, 145, 228, 233–34, 273n28; arrival as Hollywood player, 241–44, 245, 247–48; Feldman agency and, 226–27; Hayward-Deverich Agency purchased by, 244, 245; rise of, 198, 224; Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and, 240–41; Selznick estate and, 195–96; television and, 248 My Favorite Wife (film), 91, 152 My Man Godfrey (film), 153–56, 155, 157 Myron Selznick, Inc., 33 Myron Selznick and Company, 146, 180, 189–96, 224 Nat Goldstone Agency, 245, 247 National Industrial Recovery Act, 3, 21, 23 National Recovery Administration (NRA), 3, 21–23, 130, 137, 149; agent’s role in film industry and, 50; “fair practices codes” and, 19, 21; Screen Actors Guild and, 132; Selznick’s operation and, 26, 51 Negulesco, Jean, 236, 237 New Deal, 20–24, 148–49, 267n14 New York, city of, 7, 49, 121, 129; Actors Equity union, 16; client meetings in, 34; Feldman in, 77; film critics in, 208– 9; film industry in, 26–27, 62, 82; literary world in, 107, 116, 122, 123; MCA offices in, 241, 247; Selznick’s business network in, 42–44, 46, 196; Small in, 60–61; studio executive boards, 118–19, 149; William Morris Agency offices in, 244, 247. See also Broadway theater Nichols, Dudley, 31, 146 Ninotchka (film), 159 Nothing Sacred (film), 156–57 No Time for Love (film), 87 Novarro, Roman, 56 novels, film rights to, 231, 232 Now Voyager (film), 142 Ober, Harold, 117 Oberon, Merle, 71, 160, 166, 168, 230 O’Brien, Pat, 37–38, 146 Olivier, Laurence, 34, 44, 168, 185; Donat and, 173; Gone with the Wind and,

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Olivier, Laurence (continued) 165, 166, 167; Selznick agency and, 146; star power of, 48; Warner Bros. and, 170 Olsen, Moroni, 141 O’Malley, Rex, 79 O’Moore, Patrick, 140 O’Neil, Sally, 54 Only Angels Have Wings (film), 210 option contracts, 11–12, 75 O’Reilly-Mann agency, 47 Orsatti, Frank, 70, 77, 97–98, 102, 111, 258n24 Orsatti, Victor, 125 Orsatti agency, 81, 242, 247 O’Shea, Dan, 162, 168–69, 175 O’Sullivan, Maureen, 48 The Outlaw (film), 219 packaging, 87, 90, 135–36, 146, 152, 198, 203, 204, 222 Page, Joy, 140 Paley, William, 242 Paramount Pictures, 4, 49, 59; agents hired from, 45; Bow (Clara) and, 66, 67; Colbert and, 82, 83, 84–87; Donat and, 173; Dunne and, 90; as Famous Players–Lasky, 27, 56; Lombard and, 155–56; New York studios, 82; nonexclusive contracts with, 84; percentage deals and, 148; Powell and, 49; production schedules, 142; Schulberg and, 65; Selznick’s “raid” of, 32; Stanwyck and, 125; Swanson and, 120; Wanger and, 78 Paris Calling (film), 198 Parker, Dorothy, 242 Pasternak, Joe, 112, 113, 202 Pathé studios, 27, 54, 57, 70 “Pay Agents Only for What They Do,” 4 Peck, Gregory, 236, 244 Penguin Pool Murder (film), 40 Penny Serenade (film), 102–3 Penthouse (film), 40 Pepe le Moko (film), 115 percentage deals, 71, 81, 88, 102, 148–52, 157, 200, 207, 218, 219, 227, 234–36 The Philadelphia Story (film), 150 Phillips, Don, 141

Photoplay magazine, 49 Pickford, Mary, 54 Pidgeon, Walter, 78, 80 Pitts, Zasu, 4, 31 Pittsburgh (film), 198, 203, 204–5, 207, 222 The Plastic Age (film), 66 Powell, Dick, 71, 126 Powell, William, 32, 34, 69, 72, 131; contract of, 68; as leading player, 48; in My Man Godfrey, 153, 155; salary, 154; Selznick agency and, 48–52, 146, 160; at Selznick’s funeral, 194 Power, Tyrone, 120, 202 The President Vanishes (film), 78 The Private Life of Henry VIII (film), 172 Private Worlds (film), 78 Prizefighter and the Lady (film), 40 producers, 4, 6, 69; Academy and, 14; agents at odds with, 14–15, 25; Code of Practice and, 19; major players, 30; market for talent and, 13; New Deal and, 21; Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and, 137–38; Selznick-Joyce Agency and, 31–32 production, film, 46, 68, 72, 133, 256n22 Qualen, John, 140 Quality Street (film), 99 Queen Christina (film), 78 Queen Mary (film), 166 radio, 144, 145, 247 Raft, George, 108, 109, 146, 201 Raines, Ella, 207, 232 Rains, Claude, 71, 140, 142 Raphaelson, Samson, 37, 42, 76, 159 Rathbone, Basil, 125 Ratoff, Gregory, 76, 94, 193 Raymond, Gene, 81, 93, 94, 95–97, 103 Reagan, Ronald, 140 Rebecca (film), 184–85, 189 The Red Pony (film), 231–32 Red River (film), 219–22 Reed, Carol, 188 Reed, Tom, 205 Reinhardt, Max, 58, 166 reissues (re-releases), 220, 222 Reliance Pictures, 175

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Index Republic Studios, 207, 208, 209, 222, 231, 232 Reville, Alma, 188 Richards, Addison, 141 Ridgely, John, 141 Ridges, Stanley, 141 Riskin, Robert, 146, 200 RKO (Radio-Keith-Orpheum) Pictures, 4, 8, 38; agents hired from, 45; Carson and, 179, 180; Dunne and, 88–89; Edington at, 71; executives, 153; Feldman and, 150; Kahane and, 22; Kahn and, 60; La Cava and, 158; Lombard and, 156; packaging and, 199; percentage deals and, 150, 151, 152; Raymond and, 95; Selznick-Joyce Agency and, 39, 150; Selznick’s family connection at, 10; standard contracts with, 81; Stanwyck and, 125; Stevens and, 98–102; Swanson and, 116 Roach, Hal, 151 The Roaring Twenties (film), 108 Roberta (film), 88, 89 Roberts, Eric, 141 Robertson, Willard, 141, 142 Robinson, Casey, 31, 33 Robinson, Edward G., 70, 76, 108, 125, 200, 245 Rockett, Al, 79 Rogers, Charles, 153 Rogers, Ginger, 88, 95, 151, 158; Hayward agency and, 193, 235; percentage deals and, 235–36; Selznick agency and, 146 Rogers, Will, Jr., 194 Roland, Gilbert, 55–56 Romero, Cesar, 79, 81 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 20–21 Rose, Harold, 247 Rosenblatt, Sol, 22 Rossen, Robert, 233 Rubens, Alma, 64 Ruggles, Wesley, 90 Rumann, Sig, 140 The Runaway (film), 66 Russell, Rosalind, 91, 160 Ryan, Phil, 193 Sackin Agency, 70 Sakall, S. Z., 140, 142

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salaries, of agents: Feldman, 58, 112, 230, 236; Kohner, 112, 115; Selznick, 34, 58, 78, 112, 146–47, 161 salaries, of directors: Cukor, 34; Hawks, 219; Hitchcock, 184, 185, 186, 187; McCarey, 152 salaries, of film stars, 22, 45, 154, 270n17; Bogart, 108, 109; Boyer, 92; Colbert, 84, 92; Cooper, 218; Donat, 173; Dunne, 88, 91–92; Grable, 242; Hepburn, 150; Leigh, 166, 170; March, 151; Paramount “raid” and, 32–33 Sam Goldwyn Productions, 45 Sandrich, Mark, 79, 91 San Quentin (film), 108 Saphier, James, 196 Saratoga Trunk (film), 218 Scarface (film), 210 The Scarlet Empress (film), 202 Schenck, Joe, 62, 69 Schenck, Nick, 62 Schreiber, Lew, 59, 106 Schreiber, Taft, 243, 245 Schulberg, Adeline, 76–77, 82, 105, 106–7 Schulberg, B. P., 32, 56, 64–66, 67, 76, 105 Schulberg, Budd, 164 Schulberg-Feldman agency, 46, 77 Scott, Randolph, 70, 198, 203, 205 scouting, 5, 57, 59–60, 117 Screen Actors Guild (SAG), 132–37, 186; “continuity of management” issue and, 240; Feldman and, 198; Jaffe and, 218; NRA and, 23; reissue practice and, 222; Selznick’s opposition to, 137–39; Wayne (John) and, 206–7, 222 screen tests, 39, 60, 94 Screen Writers Guild, 22, 132 Sears, Grad, 162 Sea Spoilers (film), 222 Secrets of a Secretary (film), 83 Seiter, William, 81, 233 Selznick, David O., 10, 51, 161, 162–63, 167, 192; biographer, 29; Donat and, 172; early life and career, 26–28; estate of Myron Selznick and, 195–96, 197; Feldman and, 236; Hitchcock and, 184, 186; on Myron’s alcoholism, 191; percentage deals and, 148, 149; Selznick-Joyce Agency and, 31–32, 33,

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Index

Selznick, David O. (continued) 37; SIP and, 152, 154, 161; studio mode of production and, 199; Swanson and, 116, 118 Selznick, Irene Mayer, 25, 27, 160, 167, 192 Selznick, Lewis, 26, 28, 39 Selznick, Marjorie, 191 Selznick, Myron, 4, 8, 60; advertising for clients, 10, 31; agency office, 144, 145; agents committee of academy and, 16– 17; beach house, 35; biography and early career, 25–30; Carson (Robert) and, 178–83; client list, 31; connections of, 54, 62; contract negotiations and, 67–68; daily schedules, 93; deal making and, 153–56, 159–63; death of, 193–94, 245; Donat and, 171–78; employees of, 34, 44–45; field agents of, 106, 163, 174, 178–79; gambling and, 40; Hitchcock and, 183–89; as huckster/hustler, 28, 31; independent production company, 159; Lake Arrowhead retreat, 163; litigation and, 42; notoriety of, 32, 77; Paramount “raid,” 32; parties at home of, 34, 160, 168; percentage deals and, 148, 149, 150; personal characteristics, 29; in photographs, 33; as pioneer, 247–48; salary/bonuses/commissions, 34, 58, 78, 112, 146–47, 161; Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and, 137–39; smaller agencies and, 48, 70; studio executives and, 153, 183; success of, 104; trade press and, 32, 52 Selznick, Myron, alcoholism of, 35, 51, 160, 162, 163; loss of clients and, 190– 92; neglect of work and, 190; operation of agency and, 164; personal toll from, 191–92; unstable health and, 176 Selznick Distribution Corporation, 27 Selznick-Joyce Agency, 8, 30–48, 144–46, 145 Selznick Pictures Corporation, 27 Sergeant York (film), 100, 210, 221 Seven Sinners (film), 198, 202, 203, 206, 222 Shadow of a Doubt (film), 188–89 Shagrin, Max, 142

Shanghai Express (film), 202 Shearer, Norma, 40, 63–64 She Married Her Boss (film), 87 Sheridan, Ann, 127, 146, 211, 265n8 Sherman, Richard, 122 The Shop around the Corner (film), 159 Showman’s Trade Review, 221–22 Shurr, Louis, 69, 71 Sidney, Sylvia, 38, 77, 78, 158 The Sign of the Cross (film), 83 The Silver Cord (film), 88 Simon, Simone, 79 Sinclair, Ronald, 140 Siodmak, Robert, 115 SIP (Selznick International Productions), 121, 152, 154, 161, 175; Hitchcock and, 184–85, 187; Leigh (Vivian) and, 168– 69, 170; Lombard and, 155–57 Sisk, Robert, 122 Skirball, Jack, 187, 188, 200 Sklar, Robert, 110, 263n7 Slezak, Walter, 79 Small, Edward, 8, 9, 53, 83, 172, 175; advertising for clients, 10; career as agent, 60–69; major studios and, 72; as producer, 69 Small, Morris, 61, 69 Small-Landau agency, 47, 71, 117, 125 The Smiling Lieutenant (film), 83 Smith, Jonathan, 57, 60, 258n24 Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers, 194 A Song Is Born (film), 220 Sothern, Ann, 76, 77, 79, 81, 95 Spiegel, Sam, 198 Spitz, Leo, 218 The Spoilers (film), 198, 203, 203, 204, 205, 222 Stagecoach (film), 201, 205, 206, 209, 222 Stage Door (play and film), 158 Stahl, John, 88, 89; Feldman and, 84, 85, 90, 94; Small and, 63 Stalag 17 (film), 231 Stanwyck, Barbara, 96, 99, 104, 125, 131, 141 A Star Is Born (film), 152, 178 Stark, Ray, 239 stars, 2, 127; AMPAS and, 8; billing rank of, 95, 97, 232; broken contracts and,

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Index 23; commodified personality of, 66; discovery of, 57, 60, 64, 82, 167–68, 210; executive agents and, 34; “freelancing” and, 81; option contracts and, 11; persona of, 203, 205, 214, 221; popularity of, 92; release of major vehicles for, 149; salaries of, 21, 25, 31, 67, 84, 87, 88; star-raiding by agents, 10, 11, 13; studio prestige and, 10. See also actors; clients Stein, Jules, 136–37, 241–42, 243, 244, 245 Steinbeck, John, 231, 232 Steiner, Max, 79 Stevens, George, 131, 210; Bren-Orsatti agency and, 98; Feldman and, 79, 91, 184, 200, 223, 231, 236–37, 237 Stevenson, Robert, 192, 236 Stewart, James, 44, 193, 202, 235, 244, 273n28 A Streetcar Named Desire, film rights to, 231 Street of Chance (film), 49 Stromberg, Hunt, 39–40, 49, 51, 153, 158, 161 studio executives, 6, 7, 9, 34, 96, 248; agents’ meetings with, 142; contracts and, 129; cooperative practices with agents, 39–40; former agents as, 53; reliance on Selznick, 51; salaries of, 146; symbiotic relationship with agents, 198 studio system, 1, 82, 248, 251nn3–4; agents’ role in, 2, 48, 51, 117, 139, 142– 43, 164; business methods of, 2; contracts and, 92, 127; distribution and exhibition of films, 5; independent producers and, 199, 200; Justice Department investigation, 149; managerial operations, 118–20; maturation of, 7; postwar fragmentation, 3, 200; production schedules, 10; progress of talent in, 182–83; social and industrial spheres of, 74; stars’ autonomy within, 91; studio mode of production, 153, 199; supporting players in, 47, 140–42; theater chains, 227. See also Hollywood film industry; specific studios

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Sturges, Preston, 200, 228, 236, 237 The Sullivans (film), 218 The Sun Also Rises (Hemingway), 232 Supreme Court, U.S., 23, 227, 234 Susman, Warren, 63 Swanson, Harold (“Swanie”), 8, 104, 116–23, 132, 247, 264–65n44 Swing Time (film), 99, 151 Talbot, Lyle, 69 talent agencies, 5, 8; Artists’ Booking Bureau and, 28; bit players and, 46–47; freelance players and, 239; number of, 5, 46, 69, 252n10; routine business of, 93; small agencies, 46, 47, 69–72, 104– 5; specialized, 71, 112, 116, 121, 123; story divisions, 117; surge of 1920s, 6. See also specific agencies talent guilds, 51 A Tale of Two Cities (film), 125 The Talk of the Town (film), 103 Tall in the Saddle (film), 207–8 Taurog, Norman, 81 taxes/tax deals, 38, 125, 146–48, 151, 158, 165, 234; capital gains, 226; Donat and, 177; Feldman and, 198 television, 238, 239, 251n3, 269n9, 274n8; corporate structure and, 237, 247; entertainment business taken over by, 237; power relations among agencies and, 248 Temple, Shirley, 92, 122, 236 The Texans (film), 151 theater owners, 21, 61, 62, 83 Theodora Goes Wild (film), 89 There Goes My Heart (film), 151 Thery, Jacques, 79 The Thin Man (film), 49 The 39 Steps (film), 172, 173, 183 This Side of Heaven (film), 166 Thomas, Olive, 27 Tobias, George, 141 To Have and Have Not (film), 211, 212, 213, 214, 221 Top Hat (film), 151 Tovarich (film), 87, 154 Townsend, James, 166, 193 Tracy, Spencer, 46, 71, 76, 236 Trade Winds (film), 151

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Trevor, Claire, 70, 146 Trilling, Steve, 106, 108, 263n7 Trouble in Paradise (film), 33 True Confession (film), 156 Twelvetrees, Helen, 106 Twentieth Century (film), 156 Twentieth Century Fox, 4, 11, 56, 100, 189; executives of, 106; Feldman and, 91, 225; head of production, 79; independent production and, 199; Kahn and, 59, 60; Stanwyck and, 125; Swanson and, 120, 122 Union Pacific (film), 166 United Artists studio, 56, 69, 71, 83; Feldman and, 199, 219, 220; nonexclusive contracts and, 126; Wanger and, 159 United States: economic and political climate, 148–49; taxes in, 147 Universal Studios, 11, 52, 273n28; Dunne and, 88; executives, 153; Feldman and, 198, 204, 227; Kohner and, 111; Laemmle, Jr., and, 57; loan-outs and, 154; movie attendance rates and, 217; New York office, 111; package deals and, 199; percentage deals and, 148; small agencies and, 70; Spanishlanguage films, 111 U.S. Labor Relations Board, 132, 133, 149 Valentino, Rudolph, 56 Valiant Is the Word for Carrie (film), 89 Varconi, Victor, 106 Variety, 4, 6, 9, 220, 222, 260n11; on agency mergers, 247; on Bow and Schulberg, 66; on Colbert, 83; on Feldman’s agency, 77; on freelancing, 126; NRA-related reportage, 21, 22; on Paramount “raid,” 32; on unitmanager approach, 200 vaudeville, 7, 61–62, 241, 253n14 Veblen, Thorstein, 1, 38 Veidt, Conrad, 140 Verne, Karen, 140 vertical integration, 5 Victor, Henry, 141 Vidor, Charles, 233 Vigil in the Night (film), 101

Vincent, Frank, 71, 142 Vivian, David, 79 Volck, George, 70, 71 Votion, Jack, 45 Wallace, Edgar, 122 Wallis, Hal, 70 Wallis, Minna, 70–71 Wall Street, 1, 2 Walsh, Raoul, 56 Wanger, Walter, 126, 151, 185; Feldman and, 78, 87, 206; Jaffe and, 106; Selznick agency and, 32, 51; Selznick’s production company and, 159; studio mode of production and, 199 Warner, Ann, 228 Warner, Dave, 117 Warner, Harry, 86 Warner, Jack, 74, 94, 108, 212–14, 228 Warner Bros. Pictures, 32, 81; casting, 70, 140–41; Chatterton and, 68; contracts and, 108, 125, 127, 131; de Havilland’s lawsuit against, 235; Donat and, 172; executives of, 106, 110; Feldman and, 100, 236; Hawks and, 210–11; Huston and, 113, 114; independent production and, 199, 200; Kahn and, 58; Lombard and, 156; outside players and, 140–42; Paramount “raid” and, 50; Powell at, 49; Selznick-Joyce Agency and, 39; small agencies and, 70; Wayne (John) and, 222 Wasserman, Lew, 243, 245 Watch on the Rhine (film), 141 Watson, Lucille, 141 Wayne, John, 46, 203, 222; Feldman and, 201–9, 231; in Red River, 219, 220, 221–22 The Wayward Bus, film rights to, 231 Webb, Clifton, 236, 237 Webber, Harry, 71 Weissmuller, Johnny, 69, 244 Welles, Orson, 200, 231, 232 Wellman, William, 31, 146, 152, 156, 166, 178; break with Selznick agency, 192; as star director, 48 Wendling, Charles, 228 Werker, Al, 79 West, Mae, 46, 244

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Index What Makes Sammy Run? (Schulberg), 164 When Tomorrow Comes (film), 90 Whitney, Jock, 155 Wilder, Billy, 72, 244 Wilder, Thornton, 188 William Meiklejohn agency, 242 William Morris Agency, 7, 69, 233–34; arrival as Hollywood player, 241, 244– 45, 246, 247–48; Artists’ Managers Guild (AMG) and, 134; Cukor and, 190–91; number of clients, 46; in radio and theater, 145; rise of, 198, 224; Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and, 240– 41; Selznick estate and, 195; supporting players and, 47, 48; television and, 248 Williams, Tennessee, 229 Wills, Gary, 207 Wilson, Carey, 69 Wilson, Dooley, 140 Wilson, Frank, 141 Wilson, Henry, 233 The Winchester 73 (film), 235, 236, 274n8 Winkler, Dan, 193 The Wiser Sex (film), 83 Wolfe, Manny, 120 Wollcott, Alexander, 116 Woman of the Year (film), 103 The Women (film), 40

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Wood, Audrey, 229 Wood, Ward, 141 Woods, Donald, 141 Woolley, Monty, 181, 188 World War II, 170, 182, 199, 217, 229, 230 Wray, Fay, 37, 40 writers/screenwriters, 21, 22, 40, 69, 87; contracts and, 81; guild for, 132; major players, 30; Selznick-Joyce Agency and, 31, 44; Swanson and, 121 Wuthering Heights (film), 165, 166, 167 Wyler, William: Hayward agency and, 193; Kohner and, 111, 112, 113, 115; MCA and, 244; Selznick agency and, 146 Yates, Herbert, 209 Young, Collier, 121 Young, Elizabeth, 106 Young, Felix, 76 Young, Gig, 141 Young, Loretta, 33, 146, 160, 207, 245 Young, Waldemar, 81 Young Man with a Horn (film), 233 Zanuck, Darryl, 59, 74, 100; Feldman and, 94, 203, 225; Swanson and, 120, 122 Zukor, Adolph, 28, 62 Zukor, Eugene, 11