Hidden talent: the emergence of Hollywood agents, 1928-1949

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HIDDEN TALENT:

THE EMERGENCE OF HOLLYWOOD AGENTS,
1928-1949

by

Tom Kemper

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(CRITICAL STUDIES)

May 2007

Copyright 2007 Tom Kemper

ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract iii

Introduction: 1
The Agency Syndicate

Chapter 1: 14
The Flesh-Peddler’s Branch:
The Emergence of Hollywood Agents

Chapter 2: 81
Revenge of the Agent:
Myron Selznick and the Early Pioneers

Table: Weekly Contracts and Agents 115

Chapter 3: 149
The Contract Industry:
Charlie Feldman and the Competition

Chapter 4: 225
What Made Myron Run:
Power and Persuasion/Packages and Percentages

Chapter 5: 302
Tall in the Saddle:
Charles Feldman, Agents,
And the Stampede of Independents

Conclusion: 360
The Corporate Era

Endnotes 370

Bibliography 393

iii
ABSTRACT

My dissertation covers a hitherto overlooked dimension of the classical
Hollywood film industry: the role of talent agents in the 1930s and 1940s, the
formative years of the studio system. Through extensive primary archival research
I have unearthed the strong function served by talent agents in the studio system
of the 1930s and 1940s. Drawing on recent work in economics, economic
sociology and theories of institutions, my project broadens and complicates
traditional depictions of the studio era. I trace the syndicate of managerial roles—
agents in particular, but studio executives as well—that constituted the studio
“system” as much as the concentrated management within the major film
production companies. I demonstrate the social connections that translated into
business relationships and how this system aided and abetted the individual
reputations of stars, directors, and writers—as well as the reputations of the agents
themselves. Thus, my project, in addition to documenting the early history of
agents, adds a new theoretical perspective on agency within the studio system.

1

Introduction:
The Agency Syndicate

In the late 19
th
century about two dozen talent agents worked in New York.
Their primary function was to book acts in local theaters and clubs and in the
sprawling theater circuits lacing across the country. Glorified travel agents for
jugglers and jokesters might serve as an apt description of these creatures.
Managing talent amounted to identifying it—auditions and scouting expeditions
were a daily enterprise—and booking it. Very little time existed for nurturing or
creatively advising the talent on their performances. The giant theater circuits—
chains of theaters in different states owned by a single entity—sometimes changed
acts nightly. An agent helped arrange touring schedules in such cases, arranging
their clients’ acts in an orderly itinerary. Of course, these booking agents also
negotiated stronger salaries for their clients. Indeed, many of these theater chains
employed their own managers of talent. These management divisions arranged a
complete tour of the chain’s theaters for the acts, a convenience paid for through 5
% of the performer’s pay. By the teens and twenties of the new century, agencies
like William Morris established offices in New York to guide talent on these
expeditions through the theater circuits and through the expansive opportunities in
New York, with theaters and clubs continuing to change acts daily. As the New
York actors unionized in the late teens, agents had become so routine a part of the
business that they codified their practices with the actor’s union.
1

2
That paragraph is more or less the last you will hear about Broadway agents
in this dissertation on Hollywood talent agents. In a sense, Broadway agents and
Hollywood agents represent two different breeds, with only minor interspecies
links. As I demonstrate in this dissertation, Hollywood agents arose from within the
studio system. In a certain sense, then, Hollywood agents emerge in the 1920s, with
little or no connection to the genealogy of agents in early 20
th
century vaudeville.
So my history begins in the late 1920s as these “agents” sprouted from the
spreading tentacles of the Hollywood studios. Further evidence for my argument
comes from the fact that Broadway agents had a tough time cracking this market.
So entrenched were their competitors—the early Hollywood agents who had
emerged from other areas in the movie business—that Broadway agents could not
carve out substantial connections to talent and, most importantly, to the buyers: the
major Hollywood studios.
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 be 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. Challenging

3
neoclassical economics (and even radical critiques of capitalism), this field frames
economic decisions and operations entirely through and within social systems.
In my own work, this influence appears most readily in the way agents
harnessed social connections as part of their economic appeal. When I argue that
agents sold their interpersonal connections I mean literally just that; in other words,
there is no conspiratorial agenda to my argument. Instead, it is an observation about
how this particular social world and business structure intersected in classical
Hollywood.
2
Moreover, my dissertation remains alert to the ways individuals
cultivated reputations within the social systems of the Hollywood market and how
these reputations were tied to larger industrial structures and operations. In other
words, I demonstrate how individual reputations—social “personalities”—
developed within systematic practices. In this sense, my project is informed by one
of the fathers of economic sociology, Max Weber. Weber’s work on “charisma”
and institutions came to me at a crucial period in digesting the historical material
and practices I had unearthed and mapped out in my work. Weber provided a
theoretical prism through which I could articulate my argument. As S.N. Eisenstadt
argues:
For Weber, freedom, creativity, and personal responsibility did not lie
outside the scope of society, of social relations and activities. On the
contrary, interpersonal relations, organizations, institutional structures, and
the macrosocietal setting constituted the arena in which freedom, creativity,
and responsibility could become manifest.
3

In this spirit, I outline how particular agents carved out identities for themselves via
the systematic relationships they established through and within the studio system.

4
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.”
4
Harrison C. White’s formulation here,
overlooking its clunky prose, rings true with Weber’s definition of charisma and
my own perspective on agents in this dissertation.
Related to the methodological influence of economic sociology, I approach
this history through a dynamic engagement between industry analysis and
biography. As I argue, different agents accrued reputation and individuality—
“personality”—through the systematic frameworks and practices of this industry.
Thus, industry, the vast agglomeration and coordination of standard practices,
rules, and organizational structures, forces seemingly immune to and overwhelming
of individual expression, in my argument, actually aids and abets the construction
of individuality. Writing the history of agents, then, means writing biography as it
intertwines with economic and industrial history. My dissertation’s structure
mirrors this dynamic and balances these two methods, as I alternate between
biographical studies and larger industrial analysis. At the same time, these methods
get manifested in the actual argument I make about the relationship between
personalities and institutions.
I’m dealing, then, with negotiation in the literal sense; but on a larger scale
or more conceptual level I’m also dealing with the negotiation between personality
and institutions, personal relationships and business relationships. The leading

5
agencies of this time were defined by their bosses and their personalities. This
entrepreneurial era dissolved in the late 1940s with the emergence of large
corporate agencies. Some personalities lived on as a point of contrast with the
impersonality of the larger agencies, a kind of strategy in selling the smaller size of
an agency as a form of more focused individual attention. But the paradigm in the
1950s became the larger corporate agency with multiple media divisions and
squadrons of lackey agents.
In fact, almost all of the traditional histories of the classical Hollywood era
more or less ignore the presence of talent agents. To their credit, Thomas Schatz
and Bordwell, Incorporated both make passing references to agents. But in each
case, their commitment to a rather monolithic conception of classical Hollywood
passes over agents. Douglas Gomery commits himself to a stronger argument (and
exposes a major lacking in his research) when he argues that agents were ignored in
the classical era, only gaining ground in the 1950s.
5

In this sense and many others, my dissertation offers a fresh perspective on
the classical Hollywood era. 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 up to our own era, in some versions).
6
All
of the models 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.
7
As I discuss in Chapter 1, this

6
consolidation coincided with the emergence of talent agents. In this sense, agents
represented a significant component of the complex operation of classical
Hollywood.
However, more significantly if modestly, what is offered here is another
perspective on the operation of the studio system, one in which the system extends
symbiotically into what I call a syndicate of agents, managers, and advisors. 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, either the moguls at the studios or the owners in the studios’ New York
business offices (Gomery locates the top, somewhat too schematically, in New
York; Schatz, Bordwell, and others in the production executives at the studios). My
work does not necessarily overturn this model; but it suggests some of this model’s
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 historians
of the studio system have drawn on the work of business historian Alfred D.
Chandler, they’ve missed, I think, an important part of his argument. In The Visible
Hand, a history of the managerial revolution in American business in the late 19
th

century and early 20
th
century, Chandler has offered historians of the American film
business an exemplary structure for analyzing managerial logic and networking.
Chandler’s work offered a model for outlining the operations of studios and their
various divisions, from marketing to development to production, distribution, and
exhibition, all coordinated through modern managerial procedures. Here these

7
historians miss an important part of Chandler’s argument, namely, that managerial
logic was dispersed outside of corporations as well.
8
Managers in production and
distribution in markets made decisions that considered the health and stability of
the market and steady transactions as much as they considered the interests of
owners. My dissertation explicates the dispersion of managerial duties in classical
Hollywood through the agency syndicate.
The model of the classical Hollywood business offered in my work
complements this system by broadening it. The business operated through a
dispersed network of managers and agents outside of the studio gates. Necessarily
so. The studios operated more efficiently by tapping this syndicate to streamline
processes like hiring and selection—contests, talent scouts, trolling theaters, and
dealing with talent agents. This dispersed managerial syndicate made informed
decisions (ruled by the logic governing the business: narrative structure in
screenplays or the star system) that narrowed the pool of applicants, thereby
controlling the flow of information to studio executives. Making key decisions
within this syndicate garnered reputations for agents, which fed their power in the
system. These reputations drew talent to particular agents, thereby fuelling their
power. Building reputations in this way fed into the habitual relations agents
established with studio executives. In this way, the management of the production
stream in this business—producing films—was often dispersed outside of the
studio walls.

8
I do not mean to imply that my project overturns other studies of
Hollywood. It remains a complement to such works, a supplement. But not a
supplement that stands off to the side or that can be easily and readily excised.
Agents are part of the core of this period’s business practices. The history presented
here is not a sideline narrative, but one that can be integrated into these previous
works. A sample section from any of the standard histories of classical Hollywood
that deals with a particular film production or creative personality could easily be
expanded to include the role an agent played in those events. My dissertation
focuses directly on such transactions in specific cases. But these 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.
Finally, one might ask, why the 1930s? Why outline a study of agents, a
profession so currently forceful in the contemporary media market, then, through
the historical perspective of the 1930s? For one thing, my project counters
commonly held assumptions—by many leading scholars—that these entities only
rose to power in the 1950s. In this sense, my project challenges traditional
American film historiography. In doing so, it opens up a new perspective on the
classical era of Hollywood, while, at the same time, challenging the divisions
commonly marking our conception of American film history up through its recent
periods.

9
For another thing, and perhaps more importantly, the 1930s was a formative
period for the American film industry. Here then we find the origins of the essential
codes of practices for agents. Here we find the definitions and validations for these
practices—all of which remain more or less in place to this day. In carving out a
role for themselves within the studio system, agents at the same time validated their
presence in this business. Through their social connections—as documented in my
dissertation—agents set up a practical role for themselves in the everyday
transactions that constituted this business But they also established a theoretical
argument for their place in this business. This legacy—the theoretical validation for
their functional role in the business—lives on until today. But it was established in
the 1930s—not without some resistance, as I demonstrate most pronouncedly in
Chapter 1.
Moreover, as I demonstrate in the final chapters, agents set up a strong
system of business practices surrounding the studios’ systems of operation. As the
business changed in the 1940s, the agency system absorbed more and more
functions (scheduling clients in productions or “packaging” productions). This
absorption provided a degree of continuity to the business as contract players went
freelance and more productions developed through packaging or semi-independent
arrangements with the studios. But my point is that this system was already in
place, already up and running in this otherwise transitional era. In other words, it
didn’t need to be invented anew.

10
Finally, the 1930s and 1940s offered a rich trove of insider documentation
of agency practices. At my disposal were the exhaustive internal office files from
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, and Samual Morrison. I discovered memos, correspondence, and client
lists for MCA and the William Morris agency in the archival holdings of their
various clients. But, with the exception of the voluminous Feldman holdings, once
the narrative moves into the 1950s, the documentation becomes scarce. The
industry trades provide fair coverage, but the narrative shifts to a decidedly outsider
perspective. Working with the internal office material as I do here allows us to gain
insight into the strategies employed by agents, the role of consultation with their
clients, the logic behind their relationships to various clients, their routine relations
with studios, their competitive strategies, and other insider perspectives—yet
another reason, then, for focusing on the 1930s and 1940s. Unfortunately, given
some of the problems agencies have encountered recently with leaks and media
coverage, I doubt that any contemporary agencies would make their files available,
even for posterity. The office files of CAA, ICM, and even William Morris in the
1970s would no doubt reveal a fascinating perspective on this period in American
film. We will never see it.
To gain different perspectives on this history, what follows is not a strictly
linear narrative (although I preserve a sense of chronology in each section for the

11
sake of clarity). While the first three chapters more or less cover the 1930s,
progression is preserved as the final chapters move into the 1940s.
Chapter 1 outlines the emergence of talent agents in the late 1920s through
their negotiations with various talent guilds. The decade covered in this chapter
featured confrontations between agents and studio executives; negotiations with the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; the code-makers of the National
Recovery Administration; and general hostility from the industry press. It closes
with the negotiations between the talent guilds and agents, and a general reflection
on “agency” in the studio system.
Chapter 2 focuses on Myron Selznick’s early career as an example of the
bureaucratic structure and operations of a leading talent agency. Selznick’s career
corroborates the argument in the first chapter regarding the role social connections
played in establishing reputation and accruing business connections in the agency
business. I contrast Selznick’s success with the struggles of smaller agencies like
those of Ivan Kahn and Edward Small. This juxtaposition underscores the power of
strong social connections and the sense of risk in this business.
Chapter 3 covers Charles Feldman’s career in the 1930s, as he rapidly
ascended to a position rivaling Selznick’s leading role. In terms of chronology, this
chapter jumps back to the years covered in the previous chapter. By overlapping
these narratives, I provide a sense of the complexity of the agency network in the
studio system. Moreover, both the Selznick and Feldman chapters cover the same
years surveyed more broadly in Chapter 1. In this fashion, I parallel biographical

12
and industrial perspectives on the agency syndicate and the studio system. These
overlapping narratives intertwine at various points and reinforce one another. But
they also remain separate to a certain degree. There is a sense in which the
businesses operated without interference from the overall industrial structure. As I
point out in Chapter 1, for example, while the NRA battles about agents made
headlines almost daily, the Selznick and Feldman offices operated without
disruption. This disconnection is important to note. At other times, industrial
transformations aided their offices. As the talent guilds gained power in the late
1930s, for example, both Selznick and Feldman racked up stronger deals for their
clients (as noted in these respective chapters).
In Chapter 4, I return to Selznick’s agency, documenting his business
activities in the early 1940s. Case studies in this chapter demonstrate the sheer
complexity of running a service business of this size. Moreover, this chapter
explicates the role of the agency syndicate in the late 1930s and early 1940s. I
show, for example, how much studios relied on the managerial network of agents to
occasionally develop and coordinate productions.
Feldman returns with a force in Chapter 5, which outlines his move into
independent production in the 1940s and the related power and problems this
created for his agency business. In one sense, Feldman’s achievements signify the
transformations taking place in the Hollywood business in the 1940s, both in terms
of the role of agents (packaging productions for studios; demanding increased
autonomy, salaries, and percentage shares for his clients) and in his independent

13
productions (tied to studio financing). At the same time, Feldman’s dual careers
generated tensions in his agency, for his staff and his clients. These problems were
accentuated by the encroachment made by two major corporate talent agencies in
the Hollywood business.
These corporations mark the end of my dissertation for they more or less
ossified certain agency practices that remain to this day. Since most of the
strategies developed in the 1930s and 1940s—packaging; dividing up studios
amongst different agents in a firm; contractual guarantees of story approval;
percentage points and freelance deals, amongst other practices—were followed by
the corporate agencies in the 1950s, covering this period would seem redundant on
some level. Moreover, the late 1940s represent a change in the media landscape.
Television became a significant buying target for the leading agencies, who all split
their companies into divisions specializing in various media: television, movies,
radio, and Broadway. The Hollywood film business was subsumed to a corporate
division; for the corporate goliaths, television represented a much stronger division.
Still, while new challenges confronted talent agents in the 1950s and 1960s, their
overall game-plan, their practices, procedures, and strategies had been laid out in
the 1930s. My dissertation lays out all of these principles and practices.

14
Chapter One

The Flesh Peddler’s Branch:
The Emergence of Hollywood Agents

In 1930, suddenly as a swarm of locusts, talent agents descended on
Hollywood, infiltrating every crevice of the studio system. Headlines cried out with
terror. Industry players demanded action. Editorials called for reprobation and
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.”
9
Articles and official pamphlets proffered tales of
“underhanded” and “semi-legal trickery,” and cases of “racketeering” and “double-
dealing” by these newly arrived tricksters.
Agents belonged to that strange new breed of businessmen like advertising
pitchmen, real estate agents, loan sharks, investment bankers, and stockbrokers, a
flourishing species of brokers driven, according to the venomous analysis of
Thorstein Veblen, merely “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.”
10
As traditional skills and measures for evaluating their
efficacy vanished in the predominance of markets dominated by dealmaking and

15
brokering services, anxieties arose around the importance of determining reliable
advice or mediation from bluff and pernicious salesmanship.
To sell conviction and quell suspicion, agents, like most other brokers,
needed to convince clients of their own trustworthiness and of certain “ethical”
qualities in order to win the indispensable confidence of their clients. In a
profession lacking traditional rituals or forms of accreditation—guilds and
apprenticeships—issues of credulity and deceit, reputation and hypocrisy, ingenuity
and insincerity operated as both criteria for an agent’s salesmanship and
marketability and for interrogation and indictment. Agents sold themselves on their
“character” and “character” marked the target for their opponents’ attacks. Agents
built their business as intermediaries in transactions and negotiations by banking
and building on relationships through the currency of “character.” Regulating,
abating, and containing these relationships, in addition to “exposing” character
traits, marked the key strategy of attack for their opponents.
To the talented, agents promised special access, the capacity to make
contact with higher powers, to turn commonality into valuable commodity, to turn
promise into deliverance. They claimed secret knowledge and private passwords,
guiding and granting entry 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 opponents, agents represented craven Hollywood hucksters and
hustlers, fleecing producers of millions and preying on the promising pools of

16
newcomers, talented and untalented, spilling into Hollywood. Their chicanery
threatened to contaminate the rational business methods allegedly governing the
burgeoning studio system.
Both portraits draw their palettes from a colorful genealogy of American
opportunists, grifters, self-promoters, and peripatetic prophets, from Melville’s
“Confidence-Man,” an antebellum con-artist who appears different to various
characters, shape-shifting through each scam as he plays on the confidence he
elicits from his victims; to P.T. Barnum, the great huckster of entertainment,
heightening the audience’s sense of wonder through oratorical artifice and
linguistic trickery and puffery; to Wall Street speculators, milking patrons of their
finances through alleged insider knowledge on hot stock issues solely for the sake
of their own commissions—a rich American soil teeming with hucksters and
hustlers who, as one recent historian even claims, represent the very drive and soul
of our American character.
11
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,
represented all-American characters.
Closely related to this apocalyptic story, in fact, passing through its very
course, another conflict, one over interpretations and institutions, erupted over the
Hollywood agent. In the early 1930s, agents fought to establish their own branch
within the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, the official organization of
the industry. In calling for admission to this institution, the agents of this period

17
sought legitimacy and recognition of their roles as important functionaries in the
studio system, comparable to other Academy members like producers, directors,
and studio executives. At the same time, the Academy launched its own
investigation into “the agent problem,” an inquiry resulting in a proposed “Codes of
Practice” for agents.
Editorials. Committees. Investigations. Interrogations. Regulations. Codes.
It seems as if no one noticed agents in Hollywood until 1930 or thereabouts. What
were agents? Where did they come from? What havoc might agents wreck upon
Hollywood? These questions rose with urgency at this moment, and these questions
are ours, the questions of this book. They provide, then, a rich starting point for our
history. The intensity of the criticism, the scrutiny, and, perhaps even more
importantly, the failure to notice agents before this moment indicates the
significance of the historical changes underway in Hollywood in this period.
Delving into the arguments and debates presented by each side on this issue reveals
the role, function, and implicit power of the agent within the classical Hollywood
system. This analysis, in turn, tells us both the way agents positioned themselves
within Hollywood business operations, and the way studios contested their
position, presence, and agency in these dealings.
Examining the conflicting and uneven development of agents within this
industry 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

18
struggles circulated within a formative period of the studio system’s eventual
growth into a mature oligopoly, a period characterized by some seminal issues and
struggles: close public scrutiny of the Hollywood industry’s oligopolistic structure
and its division of labor; controversy surrounding the Academy’s strategic
involvement in the National Industrial Recovery Act, a component of Roosevelt’s
National Recovery Administration; and clashes between management and both
nascent and active unionism. All of these issues radiated through the debates on
agents. Beyond the embattled, shocked rhetoric in the articles and public forums—
the Academy debates and committees, the NRA hearings—in the industry, agents
etched out a space for themselves in Hollywood’s daily workings. Agents did so
not only in spite of the institutional forces working against them, but through and
within the very process of these battles.
Alarmist signs of the growing hostility to talent agents surfaced most
blatantly in the early 1930s in the weekly and sometimes daily articles and exposes
on agents in film industry journals. Riddled with scaremongering headlines like
“Grafting Flesh Peddlers,” these articles conjured up images of freak exploitation,
financial instability, and anti-Semitism. Agents, with their focus on deal-making
and bargaining, smacked of the kind of unruly and reckless scheming that this
maturing industry allegedly left behind in the 1920s. As a corrective, articles and
editorials called for reform and “the institution of some sort of a code of ethics” to
quell “the evils that exist under the present agent system”—a proposition
anticipating the motion picture Academy’s own proposal three years later.

19
Signaling the perceived problem of the agent during this period, the May
10, 1930 issue of The 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 nevertheless resorted to medieval
tactics by 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 studios barred 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 abruptly changed the weekly salary, denying Pitts’ 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 up the
director at RKO studios. These articles painted a contentious relationship between
agents and producers, as both sides battled over controlling the valuable property of
talent. Both the industry discourse and the practices of the studios, then, positioned
agents as unnecessary forces in the operations of this industry. Journalism
consistently characterized the agent as an intangible yet unjustifiably powerful
force in the marketplace. Why, for example, one article asked rhetorically, should a

20
star like Jean Hersholt, with a proven track record, with an already established
artistic reputation and salary, require an agent? If agents abetted the individualism
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. In a marketplace allegedly determined by autonomous and
self-determined individuals, the presence of agents challenged the mythology of
individuals working their way through a free marketplace, advancing according to
their own inimitable skills and merits—the Emersonian values of self-reliance and
Jeffersonian principles of motivated advancement. Perceived as undeserving of the
commissions latched onto the labor of others, agents seemed chimerical courtiers in
the commerce of culture. As journalists knocked agents, studio executives locked
agents out, usually with publicity, thereby tarring agents, painting a picture of
commercial charlatans and tricksters who could not be trusted. Through the
dialogue between muckraking journalism and studio actions, industry discourse and
practices worked together in a shared paradigm governing (or attempting to) the
actions of agents.

The Preconditions for Agents

The alarmist articles about the growing agency of Hollywood agents
reflected a real increase in the number of talent agencies sprouting up in Hollywood
in the late 1920s. In 1925, for example, fewer than twenty talent agencies listed

21
their services in industry directories; of this group, we can eliminate at least six
merely as publishers of talent directories and not genuine agencies. By 1933, Film
Daily Yearbook listed over sixty Hollywood talent agencies (and close to twenty in
New York). As the industry matured, agents materialized with the infrastructure,
even if, at times, they seemed to work against it. The antagonistic rhetoric of
industry journalism, as well as that used by producers and other industry figures
hostile to agents, stained agents as opportunistic outsiders preying on weaker
aspects of the system. In this picture, agents raided this new economic field of
Hollywood and exploited practices—talent management or contract negotiations—
superfluous or tangential to the operations of the market. That this system itself
remained unstable or in flux generally goes unquestioned in these articles. As
hinted at in the figures above and the evidence below, a more organic evolution
occurred at this time: agents emerged from within this system, growing in and with
the studio system as it expanded in the late 1920s. Studio executives and journalists
more or less knew this fact; but it remained in their interest to diminish agents’ role
through a rhetoric tainting them as superfluous spongers, wildcards potentially
destabilizing a business enterprise only recently reaching rationalization and
regularity.
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

22
managing bookings and keeping track of an act’s commitments. This market
demanded strict scheduling logs (agents kept substantial books on their client’s
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 exploring the Hollywood market, even while the incomes of
movie work grew.
12

A quick career survey proves that the agents who emerged as leaders in
Hollywood in the late 1920s and early 1930s sprang from within the film
business.
13
Prior to their careers as the two of the leading Hollywood agents of this
time period, Myron Selznick and Charles Feldman, for example, had already
established themselves within the business, the former as a producer and the latter
as a lawyer representing contract negotiations for talent; likewise, Frank Orsatti
moved into the agency business in 1930 from a successful real estate company (in
his own name) catering to Louis B. Mayer and other Hollywood executives and
stars in the early 1920s; Leland Hayward banked on 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, sold the company to Paramount, where he then worked as
a senior executive, and became vice-president at First National, before finally
opening his Hollywood talent agency in the early 1930s; prior to establishing his
own flourishing agency in 1932, Nat Goldstone worked at Universal under Carl

23
Laemmle, as did Ivan Kahn, who set up a relatively successful agency in the late
1920s; Zeppo Marx, of course, 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 director Howard Hawks;
Paramount head B.P. Schulberg’s wife set up her own company in the late 1920s,
before merging with Feldman in 1932; before his extremely successful career as a
literary agent Harold Swanson worked as an executive at RKO, whose contacts he
exploited in his new enterprise (some of Swansons’s early letters soliciting clients
for his agency came on RKO stationary); Edward Small shifted between producing
and his talent agency in the 1920s; 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 in the 1930s, a close rival to
Selznick and Feldman.
By the early 1930s, four agencies represented the majority of members in
the motion picture Academy. The Joyce-Selznick agency represented eighty-seven
Academy members (twenty-three actors; thirty-seven writers; twenty-seven
directors); Collier & Flynn represented twenty-two (eighteen actors; three writers;
one assistant director); the Edward Small agency represented twenty (eight actors;
five writers; seven directors); and Phil Berg represented fifteen (eight actors; one
writer; five directors). Granted, many major stars circulated the town without
Academy membership; nonetheless, these statistics offer a useful barometer for
measuring the significance of an agency. Note that these four agencies emerged

24
through connections in the industry, with each of its founders evolving from other
areas within 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) retained few to no Academy members amongst their
clients. These statistics, then, corroborate anecdotal evidence that the leading talent
agents grew with (and within) the evolving studio system.
That Broadway agencies found such difficulty penetrating the Hollywood
market illustrates how important these early social connections proved to the
leading agencies. In all of the above cases, the agents forged significant business
and social relationships within the industry before emerging as full-fledged talent
representatives. Agents like Orsatti, Selznick, and Feldman tapped connections
based on their business dealings in previous incarnations—in real estate,
production, and law, respectively—thereby overcoming barriers of entry (namely,
working relationships with producers) that Broadway agents found difficult or
insurmountable.
How agents developed their businesses and sold their services explains why
so many of the leading agents in this growth period sprang from within 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—amount to almost
nothing in terms of cash outlays: office personnel, a steady working phone number,
and some business clothes (some less successful agents worked without offices,

25
though few survived this way).
14
To a strong degree, then, the barriers of entry for
agents remained almost entirely social—connections to important executives at
studios—and perceptual—the appearance of, in the eyes of potential clients,
connections to 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 certain degree on the quality of talent
accessed through the former. But even in pursuit of talent, studios relied on regular
contact with trusted, proven entities (agents who steered them successfully to
capable or winning talent in the past), so that access to talent alone might not
guarantee entry to a studio for a novice agent. Convincing talent that they needed a
particular representative depended on the agent’s capacity to demonstrate some
special access to important studio executives. In this regard, agents sold their
charisma, a peculiar set of skills or prowess difficult, if not impossible, to quantify
in the traditional sense of services—for example, the mathematical capacity sold by
an accountant with degrees and licenses and demonstrable practice or by a
carpenter, whose labor skills were easily measured in performance.
15

One way that agents sold their charisma came through circulating their list
of clients to studio executives, to the trade press and within industry gossip. Agents
readily stitched their names to stars in articles in Variety and they 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, released company pamphlets highlighting their various

26
clients; agents like Charles Feldman frequently took out ads listing their various
clients in different productions. Trade papers also published lists of licensed agents
and these publications served as guides for incoming talent. By the time agents
became more or less accepted components of the industry scene 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). Advertising their associations, both to talent and to studios,
through prominent deal-making or client lists, agents created an aura around their
enterprises, translating social connections into pecuniary value.
In fact, 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 up 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, almost like an organic
outgrowth, 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.
16
The contestation over the role of agents

27
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 over the free “agency” of talent. In this sense, the early 1930s
battles over agents’ power 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.
17

A certain geographic instability offers another explanation for the late-
1920s emergence of agents. While the tectonic mergers in the business continued to
register a shaky, risky endeavor for talent agencies, the generally recognized
location of the movie business only began to settle down—at least in the important
sense of perception—by the early 1920s. As one studio executive declared to Film
Daily in 1925:
Despite anything that may be said, facts are facts and Los Angeles still is
and always will be the home of motion picture production in this country.
During the coming year I already have indications of the fact that even
producers who have long scorned the idea of working in Hollywood, are
coming here. I predict that during the next twelve months we will see
greater production in Hollywood than ever disclosed in the history of
motion picture making.

Polish away the rough prose and hyperbole, and we should recognize that the
defensive and combative tone in this statement reveals some possible question
about the legitimate geographic center for film production—the producers who
“scorned” relocating to Hollywood, for example. At the same time, statements like
this once again suggest the trepidation of established Broadway agents over
approaching Hollywood and the movie business in general. One can imagine

28
numerous talent agents, already scoring degrees of success in vaudeville circuits
and Broadway theater, “scorning” any possible relocation to Hollywood, despite
the promising commercial rewards of this business. Indeed, according to the
Census of Manufacturers, California hosted 75% of the wage earners in the motion
picture business by 1929 and 80% by 1933, compared to 15% and then only 10%
respectively for New York in these years. These increases correspond directly to
the increasing numbers of Hollywood agents in the late 1920s. As California
emerged as the geographic center for movie production, only by the mid to late
1920s could this location offer enough certainty and stability for the growth of the
agency business.
As both the image and practices of a standardized and reliable film industry
crystallized, Hollywood bred agents, a development which, in turn, seemed to
threaten the emerging image of Hollywood as a valid, rational business enterprise.
In the 1920s the film business, hitherto a risky hodge-podge of ever-altering
alliances, prone to bankruptcy or litigation, consolidated into a smaller amount of
larger companies. A series of expansionist tactics and mergers, wherein production
companies acquired distribution companies and theater chains (and vice-versa),
settled the business into five to eight major companies. Vertically integrated—
controlling significant percentages of distribution and theatrical exhibition, as well
as production—these companies produced roughly eighty percent of the films
released in a given year. The studios’ control over the exhibition business existed
largely of their acquisition of key theaters in major markets, forcing independent

29
theaters to vie for major releases and agree to strict deals from the studios (for
example, limited screening times and agreeing to book films in blocks, that is,
buying batches of five to thirty or more films from the studios). By the mid-1920s,
conglomeration grew to the point where some studios listed stock on Wall Street.
Furthermore, rather than simply financing pictures on an individual basis, banks
now financed entire studios through loans based on annual accounting and the
mortgages film companies held on theaters and studio real estate. These new
financial arrangements forced studios to validate investment through their corporate
structure and their annual business plans.
Hollywood agents emerged only when the studio system infrastructure
proved steady enough for the success of such a service industry. Tracing particular
corporate histories from the 1910s through the 1930s certainly offers a stable
picture of economic and corporate continuity and a sense of rational organized
evolution. But this image of continuity should not outweigh the sense of
uncertainty characterizing this period (and even the so-called classical era or
“golden age”). As one observer wrote in 1928, “the movies will never be worth a
hoot until the business end of the enterprise is absolutely and entirely separated
from the actual producing department, and until nine-tenths of those presently in
control are fired.” George Jean Nathan, the author of this scathing assessment, may
have been seeking to protect the artistry of this medium, but his clause calling for
revolutionary firing suggests a common contemporary perspective on the mass
ineptitude characterizing the business. Note that Nathan writes this in 1928, a

30
period of alleged and comparative stability, supposedly the one that crystallized the
studio mode of production and all of its complex, efficient administrative
machinery. In fact, throughout the 1920s, studio executives and industry leaders
labored to present an image of their business as a rational enterprise governed by
the same kind of logic and calculation ruling other legitimate businesses. While the
Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association developed in the early
1920s in response to the sensational journalism surrounding cases like the Fatty
Arbuckle episode—wherein prosecutors accused the star of violently molesting a
woman at a party—and other scandals, this official industry organization labored
equally to impress upon the financial world that Hollywood was evolving into a
solid business, one whose stability banks and Wall Street investors could rely upon.
As the MPPDA’s representative argued in 1924, “the industry is settling down into
the stability and common-sense methods of other great American businesses. It is
on the right course. That course will be followed.” This rather enervated prose
nonetheless conveys a defensive tone, one that resonates with the business
discourse in Hollywood during this formative period. For example, each annual
issue of Film Daily yearbook featured a section of official public testimonies by
studio executives and industry leaders regarding key developments and future
concerns of the film business almost all of them fraught with reformist zeal or a
defensive tone. Regardless of the general content of such articles, their efforts to
frame motion picture production within the discourse of business rhetoric sought to
signal the seriousness, solidity, and sober stability of an enterprise that long ago left

31
behind the ephemeral world of the nickelodeon and fairground attractions. In a
certain sense, the articles offered up the spectacle of sound business practices and
decisions as much as they genuinely reflected certain changes in the industry. In
1925, for example, Sam Morris assured readers—and potential investors—that “the
fly-by-night promoter has probably been eliminated from the motion picture
business to a greater extent than almost any other industry and 1925 will mark a
great stride towards the extinction of this parasite.” Of course, this concern for
purifying the industry haunts the 1930s industry discourse and committees
examining agents.
Yet these consistent cries for reform and the strain placed on developing a
public rhetoric of stability governed by judicious economic principles and business
organization indicate the evident perception of this industry as an inchoate
business, a perceived instability that surely scared many agents away in the early
1920s. At the very least, the shifting business—as the various major studios merged
with one another in the mid-1920s—likely presented an intimidating picture for any
agent attempting to navigate this terrain. Here we find another perspective on the
fact that only when the industry matured we find the sudden emergence of agents in
Hollywood. While producers and conservative journalists saw agents as a force
threatening to destabilize the maturing industry, we can, in fact, see that their
presence grew up with the industry itself. In other words, as the industry matured,
agents emerged. Despite scandalous tales of raiding talent and escalating salaries
for their spoiled stars, agents contributed one form of stabilization to industry

32
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 represents more of a dispute over who would control the
negotiations and transactions with talent than over the necessity of such activity.
These early battles between studios and agents—as with so many of the
battles in 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 stars continued to serve in the maturing studio system. A star’s market value
promised to reduce the risk of production financing since a star hopefully
guaranteed some certainty in box office returns, even if this close connection to box
office performance magnified salaries. But stars represented more than a strong
indicator of potential box office. As a studio’s most visible assets, of course, stars
offered the image of 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: since the stars remained under studio
contract, studio executives could plan their annual accounting around the release of
a certain number of star vehicles. For example, stars allowed studios to leverage
slates of films (selling “blocks” of five to thirty films), tethered to one star’s film,
for sale to exhibitors. In other words, for certain theaters to receive a star’s film, the
studio forced them to buy a number of the studio’s other films. In this sense, the
star provided both box office value and a certain binding force to studio operations

33
and sales—a certainty that the devious machinations of agents threatened to
destroy.
Controlling and curtailing the movements of stars involved Ptolemaic charts
carefully calibrating a star’s availability with the diverse but unrelenting production
needs for the annual studio slate, a slate itself tied to the calendar of theatrical
markets. Stars, then, factored into all aspects of production and studio operations, a
fact that allowed for the possibility of streamlining production practices, so that, for
example, studio writers could generate screenplays with 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 contracts
and re-sign at other studios—threatened not only and most importantly the loss of
the capital of stars (and all of the apparent bankable box-office so entailed), but
also their usefulness to integrating the different practices of the studio, thereby
destabilizing the studio’s careful, crucial calibration of its assets and manpower.
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.” The 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 once they 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:

34
“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.”
18
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 notes, the studios developed an accounting system simply to track their
complex network of overlapping contracts, countering potential offers by timing
their own offers 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 certainty, guaranteeing regular employment and salary
to actors, often stipulating definite 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 even in the face of
box-office success, and the studio tacked on any missing days or weeks to the end
of the contract, a practice sometimes adding up to one or two year extensions (and
fairly frequent litigation). 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.

35
Nonetheless, the option contract left some room for agents to practice their
craft. Agents often re-negotiated 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 commodities, the stars. In
addition, agents frequently negotiated such terms as the required or limited hours of
reporting to the set, costumes, 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 (almost always splitting a
percentage of this profit with the client), served as a negotiable arena 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 their properties. The practice 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.
19

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 Casting Office (a variation on the industry branch
managing extras) that would ostensibly act as a studio-run agency for actors. This

36
co-operative venture managed the turbulent pool of “extras” entering Hollywood,
limiting access to the major studios and stifling 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, run respectively by the
studios or the Academy. Actors and agents balked at such a prospect, yet studios
continued to discuss various ideas for a centralized studio-run agency overseeing or
“managing” talent, especially in the face of the growing number of independent
Hollywood agents. And rumors—mostly unfounded—persisted that the studios
conspired to maintain salaries by refusing to hire actors who failed to renew
contracts with rival studios. The operations of the Central Casting Office gave
some credence to such conspiracy 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 in order to bring about stability to the
health of the industry at large and strengthen their power. Star raiding—when
studios courted stars with imminently terminal contracts or encouraged breaking
contracts—represented the most blatant surfacing of studio competition, and
represented one of the strongest, if still contentious, avenues of power for agents in
the 1930s. Production companies often found it more profitable to employ talent
already developed and to secure individuals by offering them higher salaries
because, in the words of one industry observer, “competing exhibitors, desirous of

37
acquiring the services of such talent, induced the breaking of existing talents.”
Even if the threat of lawsuits forestalled reckless or flagrant disregard of contracts,
agents and actors gambled on counter-offers as a way of re-negotiating existing
contracts.
In 1931, producers developed an agreement that ostensibly addressed the
issue of “star raiding.” Under the terms, producers agreed to notify each other of all
negotiations or offers to talent and limited such negotiations to a 30-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 on
the playing field. The agreement offered studios a way of controlling this
competition for all of the studios would retain knowledge of counter-offers 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. Agents and their clients vociferously attacked these plans, for in
both of these failed proposals, producers’ access to information and control of the
“market”—the titular arena of competition—effectively undermined the
competitive power of talent, thereby all but eliminating the efficacy of agents’
practices.

38
The Flesh Peddler’s Branch – Agents and the Academy

In December of 1931 producers drew up an anti-stealing agreement that
seemed directly addressed at agents; ostensibly a code between producers, the net
result intended to derail agents like Myron Selznick who notoriously renegotiated
contracts based on competing offers from studios. As a counter-move, in early
1932, a number of leading talent agents formed the Artists’ Managers Association
with the aim of defending their presence and purpose in the industry as well as to
negotiate with the producers association on issues such as studios barring agents
from their lots, the proposed restructuring of the Central Casting 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.
20
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 their agenda as an anti-
unionization body. So while the institution grew in power in Hollywood, it
remained controversial, particularly for artists since many viewed the Academy as
under almost total control by the producers. Still, these talent agents clearly
recognized the Academy’s growing power, even if it remained more effectively
symbolic than systematic.

39
To the Academy, then, the agents proposed the creation of a special branch
for their profession, alongside the five official branches of directors, writers, actors,
producers, and technicians. These branches represented individuals who had
“accomplished distinguished standing in or made valuable contributions to the
production branches of the motion picture industry, either indirectly or directly.”
21

In its coverage of the agents’ proposal, Variety noted that “no provision is in the
Academy constitution for any one except individuals who have done something to
further the industry at large.”
22
By inference, this constitutional recognition of the
five branches as significant contributors to the industry designates the excluded
agent as an insignificant player in the industry, a characterization many agents
surely found wanting in the face of their own growing power through their central
role in business transactions. Yet such exclusion also isolated an intangible but
distinct quality of the agent’s role: that is, agents’ lack of an important identity
beyond the composition of their particular and exclusive assets: the talent they
happen to represent. Without the agent’s attachment to marketable commodities,
the agent’s position within the industry remains truly insignificant, hardly one that
“further(s) the industry at large.” Academy recognition would provide agents with
access to an institutional network of power within the industry. Such recognition
would firm up official legitimacy for agents beyond the flux of marketable and
saleable talent. That these agents would seek business leverage through
definition—Academy membership—shows the important role of perception, social
connections, and symbolic identity or “social capital” in business.
23

40
The agency problem grew all the more disconcerting late in 1932 when
Academy officials discovered that agents had introduced a bill in the California
state legislature exempting them from the control of the California Labor
Commission, the division supervising all employment agencies, from maids to
temporary employment services to talent agencies. The State Labor Commissioner
granted talent agencies an annual license in this regard, and the Commissioner
supervised the contracts issued between agencies and talent. Talent agents proposed
state legislation that would remove their field of practice from such supervision and
create a separate sphere for their line of work. That this legislation would
nonetheless involve contractual supervision as well as certain 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.
24

In December of 1932, the Academy Board of Directors developed a
counter-move. Internal Academy memos reveal that at that month’s Board meeting,
much discussion centered around the increasing source of friction sprouting from
agency relationships in recent months, a reference to the number of cases of studios
barring agents from their lots and the muckraking industry press on the issue.
25

Acknowledging that agents represented 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

41
the producers.” Surviving internal notes from these meetings delineated a number
of issues in need of exploration, amongst 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.”
• “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

Despite the rather metaphysical language (“an artificial barrier”; “mutual loyalty”)
the producers’ complaints require little deciphering: they’re concerned with
retaining more direct control over talent. The other lists repeat fairly common
complaints within the industry—in trade papers, in the memos archived in various
talent agencies, and in correspondence between talent and agents, and agents and
producers. How the committee might develop approaches to or solutions for these
issues represented the real challenge, particularly since problems concerning
contracts always entail potential legal disputes and in fact remain governed by state
laws. From the start then the committee faced both speculative issues (what

42
realistic alternative could it develop for the arbitration of contract disputes that
would transcend or surpass existing state laws?) and intangible problems (how
could a code deal with issues like “loyalty” and “excessive zeal?”), even while it
dealt with more readily transparent problems (commissions, producers acting as
agents, and the wording of contracts). This investigation issued from an overall
retooling of the Academy, 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 modes of action for the revamped Academy indicates
the perceived magnitude of this problem within the industry.
The Academy drafted a number of different representatives from their
members to serve on the committee. B.B. Kahane, an RKO executive, would prove
the most zealous in his pursuit of squelching the agency problem. Directors Frank
Capra and Lloyd Bacon, actor Robert Montgomery, Jesse Lasky, and Lee Garmes,
with a handful of others joined Kahane for the first meeting of the committee on
April 20
th
, 1933. That meeting reiterated most of the concerns first raised in Board
meetings on this issue. But memos and notes surviving from their second meeting
on May 1
st
reveal how the committee shifted the language governing their
discussion of these problems to a focus on responsibility and behavior.
The committee divided the agency problem into three areas: one
encompassed the “responsibilities between agent and artist,” another covered

43
“practices” between agents and producers, and the other comprised “conditions
involving all parties.” This latter area basically covered the playing field—
contracts, arbitration, and negotiation—for which their discussion of the first two
areas—responsibilities and practices—would seek to generate rules governing
“fair” play. This division relegated most of the earlier issues expressed by the
Board to a kind of foundation level; contracts, arbitration, and negotiations
represented the starting point or the primary conditions that gave rise to the more
significant problems between producers and agents. In the committee’s logic,
bringing order to the practices and responsibilities of agents and producers would
effect change in their shared conditions. So the committee redirected the discussion
to focus on regulating behavior by defining responsibilities (held by 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 contracts

That the Academy would include contractual issues here as well as commission
rates shows how they reconceived—or attempted to—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

44
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 more
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 could possibly fall under their institutional
regulation. From this new perspective, the committee could develop its own codes
distinct from the state laws or general practices; these new codes would empower a
stricter, more localized—in terms of their 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 their
proposal.
The committee met at least seven other times over the course of the next
three months. In the process, the committee interviewed industry representatives,
held meetings with select agents, organized forums of discussion with agents, and
gathered documents like standard agency contracts (in particular, Academy files
indicate that they scrutinized a Myron Selznick contract). Long before the
committee went public with its findings and suggestions, conflicts surfaced over
the very process of their investigation. A number of the leading agents—Myron
Selznick, Frank Joyce, Phil Berg, Ruth Collier, and Edward Small, amongst a few
others—encouraged their clients to protest the suspected resurrection of a studio-
run casting bureau by the Academy and the producers’ branch. In a form letter,

45
dated April 19, 1933, the Joyce-Selznick agency, for example, encouraged all of
their clients to sign another form letter “whereby they refuse to do business with
the Artists Service Bureau.” They encouraged their clients to sign the letter
immediately and the agency picked up the letters by messenger the next morning—
a campaign run entirely by the agencies. One minor agent M.C. Levee refused to
participate in these actions and made his objection known to the community,
including the clients of the Selznick, Berg, Collier and the other agencies. Conrad
Nagel, the Academy President, tactically used Levee’s protest by inviting him to a
meeting with Academy members—including many clients of the protesting
agencies—at the Roosevelt Hotel that week. Selznick, Berg, Collier, Small, and the
other agents protested this action, labeling it an “open violation of the cooperative
spirit that the undersigned and others of the agents’ group have shown towards the
Academy in all their activities.” Indeed, these agencies showed a very general level
of cooperation with the committee—they submitted client lists and sample
contracts—even if very few of their representatives bothered to show up at the
meetings. But this little skirmish over Levee reminds us that the contest between
agents and producers did not form a neat draconian line. Agents fought with other
agents as well, and many of the smaller agents saw these public forums as a way to
take on the bigger agencies, companies regularly drawing away their clients.
Smaller agents like Levee participated with the Academy as a way of potentially
leveraging their position in a new playing field following the Code’s passage.

46
The leading agents, meanwhile, used the investigation to revitalize their
demand for inclusion in the Academy. On April 22, 1933, Phil Berg, Ruth Collier,
Myron Selznick, Arthur Landau, and others notified the Academy that they had
elected Collier and two other agents to serve on the Agency 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.” Banking on the importance the Academy lent this issue and their
investigation, the agents struck a warning blow here, linking their participation to a
guaranteed admission. No record exists of the Academy’s response; instead, the
committee invited all talent agents to a general forum to discuss key problems in
their field potentially addressed by the code.
TO ALL LICENSED AGENTS AND PERSONAL REPRESENTATIVES

You are invited to attend and participate in an open meeting of the
Academy Committee on Artists-Agent-Producer relations next Thursday
evening, June 1, at 8 pm in the Academy Lounge, Roosevelt Hotel.

This meeting has been called to enable the Committee to secure full
understanding of the point of view of agents and representatives and to
enlist your cooperation in developing a Code of Practice and standard
clauses for representation contracts which can be generally adopted by the
industry.

This telegram, dated May 26, 1933, went out on Academy stationary to most of the
major agents (at least two of the leading agencies—Berg’s and Selznick’s—were
not included on the list in Academy files, but this document may not represent the
entire mailing list). In its invitation the telegram included a strong admonition, and,

47
very likely, a strategic misrepresentation of the facts. For the document indicated
some advance approval on the part of early drafts of the agents-producers code,
even though memos and notes fail to coordinate with the dates. (Most of the
committee’s interviews with agents were only just getting underway in April). Here
is how the committee both invited and warned agents:
AS RATIFICATION ACADEMY AGENCY CODE BY MEMBERSHIP
ASSURED THE ATTITUDE VARIOUS AGENCES TOWARD CODE
NOW OF PARTICULAR AND IMPORTANT INTEREST IN
DISCUSSIONS AT BRANCH MEETINGS BEING HELD THIS WEEK
STOP NUMBER OF LEADING AGENCIES HAVE PROMPTLY
INDICATED DESIRE COOPERATE WITH TALENT BRANCHES BUT
FEW OTHERS GONE TO SUCH ANTAGONISTIC EXTREMES THAT
IT IS ONLY FAIR THAT SOME OPPORTUNITY BE GIVEN TO MORE
CONSTRUCTIVE MAJORITY OF AGENCIES TO MAKE THEIR
POSITION CLEAR IN ORDER TO AVOID UNFAIR IMPLICATIONS
AGAINST THEMSELVES BECAUSE OF ACTION RADICIAL
MAJORITY.

Telegraphing both emergency and urgency to an otherwise fairly longstanding
problem, the prose here suggests, through barely veiled intimidation, that
cooperative agencies will be free from industry gossip and condemnation, while
characterizing the opposition as an unruly minority. Of course, the opposition, the
leading talent agencies, represented the greatest number of Academy members;
thus, they retained, despite the Committee’s efforts of persuasive power, strong
leverage over the Code’s passage. Smaller talent agencies, so the telegram hoped,
would find the legitimacy of the Academy too enticing to resist the Code’s
ratification.

48
Internal committee meeting notes show that Frank Capra and others
expressed concern that the imperiousness of their mission failed to make an
impression on agents, indicating a possible early barometric reading of the Code’s
efficacy. 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. For example, the initial draft of the agents code had included a provision
covering a sliding scale of commission for long term contracts, allowing clients to
reduce over time their paid percentages to agents. Notes from follow up meetings
of the committee show that they genuinely deliberated over agents’ suggestions to
eliminate this clause, since it might cause confusion over conventional percentages,
and, as an agent noted, “many times there is a great deal more work to be done for a
long term contract artist than for a free-lance artist.” Furthermore, the committee
agreed that this scenario created contradictions: as an artist’s salary increased—as it
generally did in long-term contracts—an agent’s commission would decrease, as
likely would the agent’s attention to that artist, since an agent would shift attention
to deals involving greater commissions (as one agent at the meeting asked, “why
should an agent’s business go backwards while an artist’s business goes
forward?”). While the Committee agreed to cut this clause, their willingness likely
represented a strategic agenda, as much as it acknowledged actual practice. After
all, commission rates did not impact producers in the same way—if at all—as
contract or salary negotiations. We should measure the committee’s willingness to

49
concede this point and others by their desire to control and tame agents’ and their
clients’ demands, more than by the committee’s concern over the contracts drawn
between agents and their clients. Still, at a follow-up meeting, the Committee
decided to hedge its compromise by putting “the idea into a pamphlet which can be
sent out with the Code but leave it out of the Code itself,” as revealed in notes from
their strategy meetings.
On July 29 1933, the Academy Committee announced the results of its
research when it released the official “Code of Practice” for agents. The proposal
sought 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.” At the same time, the proposal insisted that the Code’s twenty-
three sections protected the honest agent as well. The document offers a systematic
exposition through which to examine the perception of agents in the studio system.
Its direct and explicit moral judgments concerning agents reveal schemas of
valuation generally accepted by the industry, whether or not individuals actually
adhered to them.
Laced through the document runs the implicit fear that agents could push
salaries or business practices beyond the capacities or necessities of the industry.
On the one hand, agents needed to be contained. On the other hand, 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:

50
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 agent’s activities. Agents defined themselves as serving the
advancement of individual careers within a competitive marketplace. Producers
could not deny this aspect of an agent’s identity: the agent’s raison d’etre. 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 provided a form of self-regulation
that still allowed the market to appear a free and open space. Thus, the code offered
a regimen, one appropriate to 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 represented an example of how
business practices demand its players to occasionally sublimate individual drives
and profits for the overall good of the marketplace.
26

In this way, the “Code of Practice” for agents represented a certain realism
as it acknowledged the existence of agents within the film business. This realism
also manifested itself in the way the document represented a compromised system
that provided access to meritocratic opportunity, while at the same time proscribing
and containing an ordered role for individuals within the process of the system. The
star system of Hollywood most publicly illustrated how the movie business sold
itself as a systemic place for the “worthy.” But it also exposed the systematic way
Hollywood positioned stars as commodities, readily replaced with new stars,

51
suiting itself to the fluidity and impersonality of an industrial complex: the
meretricious individuals rose to the top but were manipulated and commandeered
by the studio moguls, exposing accessibility and free exchange as myths. Agent’s
negotiations drew attention to the studio’s monopolistic efforts, in addition to
driving actors’ salaries up. Agents then represented an unruly force. Again, the
Academy’s turn to ethics illustrates how ethics offered a way of ordering the
system so that behavior appeared as if a natural property indistinguishable from and
originating within the participants, hewing to some larger moral principles, rather
than the industry-specific needs of the system.
The erstwhile ethicists set out their document with a long letter to Academy
members outlining the abuses of agents enumerated above. The letter then points
out that:
…there have been other attempts to set up standards for the employment
negotiation function in the industry. The agents, cognizant of the evils, yet
forced for their self-preservation to indulge in sharp practices, have tried to
regulate themselves. The producers, thinking in terms of producer franchise,
sought some cure for the ills of the agency situation and considered the
establishment of a central booking office. Both movements have failed
because the forces behind them did not give first consideration to the
artists—the actors, directors, executives, writers and technicians.

Why would the document draw attention to the failure of these earlier efforts at
regulation? Noting the failure of producer’s actions and the failure of self-
governing on the part of agents served the interests of this committee by presenting
a battle of liberties only resolved now in this new document governing practices.
This Code for Agents then presented a compromise, a range of practices that

52
constituted, defined, organized and instrumentalized the strategies that individuals
in their freedom can use in dealing with each other. The document presented no
explicit examination of self-regulation and why it failed. Phrasing the central
booking office as an effort to counter illegal practices on the parts of agents
represented blatant historical revisionism. Through the committee’s historiographic
construction, the earlier battle of liberties then failed to recognize the concern or
focus of the committee’s new code: the talent. By focusing the barometer of ethical
behavior on the treatment of individuals, the “Code” maintained a sense of liberty
within a regulatory system; it presented its codes of regulation as a protection of
individuality. Now this alleged safeguarding of talent offered a way of salvaging
individuality within the increasingly complex and institutionalized networks of the
Hollywood industry.
Outlining the “Evils and Abuses Aimed at by the Code” led readers into the
Committee report itself. Aside from such obvious abuses 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 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

53
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 is designated as one that
protects the free movement of talent within the marketplace, or is carefully
balanced by a clause constraining the behavior of producers—a kind of chess game.
In addition to confirming the generally agreed upon ten percent commission
for agent’s services, the document outlined the services rendered by agents:
In consideration of the commissions agreed upon the Agent undertakes the
following duties and responsibilities:
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. Te 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.
g. Generally to perform in a competent and painstaking manner the acts
and duties of an active business manager of the professional business
and employment of the Artist.
h. To diligently observe as a condition of the validity of this contract that
in advising the Artist the Artist’s interest and benefit shall be the sole
consideration.

54
Most of these delimitations generally confirmed familiar modes of
practices. But they also serve to emphasize the agent as an employee of the talent.
Heretofore, according to the code and its supporters, the agent’s role had been ill
defined, beyond the certainty of commission. Now the code strictly delimited the
services of the agent, even if couched in a code of practice.
In a supplement to the Code of Practice, the August 24, 1933 Academy
Bulletin added another 30-day clause regarding the solicitation and negotiation of
competitive contracts, a proposal that echoed the Central Casting office. Stars, as
the Academy saw them, represented commodities developed, trained, and
publicized by producers at great expenditure of money, time, effort, and skill. Such
investments then naturally granted producers a certain holding time upon which to
assess the worth of battling counter-offers. Agents secretly enticed, induced, and
solicited these investments, turning them against producers, and robbing them of
their purchases.
With the Code more or less ironed out in its final form, the committee
speculated on different approaches for getting it into practice. The most
immediate—the strategy they would launch within the week—sought to enforce the
Code through agreement by its members (including its Corporate Members, the
major studios). But that still left out a sizable portion of the industry. In that 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 Labor Commissioner. Finally, the committee

55
sought to slip their Code into “the fair practices code” being developed in
Washington, a strategy discussed in more detail below.
Following the July publication of the Code, the committee continually
updated its lists of eligible members who had not yet voted on the code. Academy
executives sent out reminders and made phone calls to members who hadn’t yet
voted in an effort to push the number over the necessary majority.
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 possible strategies, including gathering announcements from
agents who favor—“if any,” the memo noted—the code. Following the public
release of the code, the memo suggested that the Academy encourage its members
to “furnish grievances 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 indicating their institution’s willingness to assist with agency problems. They
entertained the idea of publishing a list of all suits filed against agents. Finally, the
memo suggested that “if necessary,” they could “line up some paper…to start
expose of agency situation in Hollywood.” No record exists to determine whether
or not or how far the Academy pursued this latter strategy.
The August 21, 1933 edition of the Academy Bulletin noted that the
organization received a flood of letters, telegrams, telephone calls and personal
messages supporting adoption of the agents code. Subsequent issues included
documentation of these supportive messages from leading figures in the industry.

56
But the votes didn’t only come from producers, and the Bulletin sought to present a
balanced perspective. The Bulletin used a quotation from Jean Hersholt supporting
the code as a final obstacle to the creation of a Central Booking Office for talent.
Hersholt claimed “because of this, if for no other reason, the Agent Code should be
approved by the members.” But the September 5 issue noted 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 noted that
only thirty-five more votes were needed for a majority ruling. The Academy
reached this total by the September 26 issue, which proclaimed the Code’s
approval. How they would put it into effect, however, remained a question.
Of course, the ethics outlined in the “Codes of Practice” serve a much larger
and more insidious design. Ethics offers a form of self-regulation, a way of
controlling behavior. Persuasion presents itself through universal values, linking
behavior within a particular network or system to universal values. The Code
shifted control from the studios to the agents, offering itself as a form of self-
administration. The document attempted to establish normative boundaries within a
business community without appearing to contain or heavily control an allegedly
free market.
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 commands
no legally binding ramifications. Yet this curious document represents more than
an amusing anomaly. Such regulatory discourse in fact characterizes how large-

57
scale business is driven, conducted, and evaluated. As a number of recent historians
have noted, 20
th
century American capitalism was as much characterized by the
behavior of corporations and regulation of individuals within economic networks as
it has been by the consolidation of capital. In this case, Hollywood merely inscribed
the concerns of politicians and populist notions of fair conduct into its own
practices.
As revealed in the “Code” document, controlling individual behavior was
coextensive with the project of market control. By placing this code within a
history of earlier efforts and abuses, its underlying principles link themselves to
traditions, institutions, habits and authority, or customs and wisdom based on
lessons of experience and consensus (the committee and its “advisors”). The
market then remains axiomatically free, yet controlled by its ties to pecuniary
transcendent forces like virtues and sportsmanship. This document underlines the
significant role behavior regulation played in consolidating oligopolistic practices.
That Hollywood business leaders recognized the agent problem as one of behavior
represents an important point underlying the currents of and ideas of American
populism and capitalism.

The New Dealmakers and the New Deal

The debate surrounding agents coincided not only with intensified
journalistic scrutiny of the industry, and with the Academy’s own official
investigations, but also, and perhaps more importantly, with President Roosevelt’s

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New Deal politics, his national bank moratorium and his National Recovery
Administration (NRA). In March 1933, the newly elected President declared a four-
day national bank holiday, stemming further panic withdrawals, as part of his
attack on the continuing effects and ramifications of the Depression. Three months
later, Roosevelt created the National Recovery Administration in order 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 the
formation of these codes. NRA field representatives scouted and scrutinized
various industries and established compliance boards and branches to oversee the
new codes drawn up by owners and labor leaders. In addition to drawing up reports
on the industry—based on investigations and interviews—the NRA fielded
testimony through “hearings,” in which representatives from diverse areas testified
to the current conditions of the industry, offered suggestions for stabilization, and
recommended additions to these NRA codes. Roosevelt made it understood that the
government would overlook monopoly issues if the particular industry agreed to
cooperate with the NRA and adhere to its codes of fair practice governing business.
This climate surrounding the NRA and its goal of returning industries to
healthy, productive states naturally bled into the debates surrounding agents and the
rhetorical strategies employed by AMPAS. Producers tactically deployed NRA
discourse as a way of demonizing agents as wildcards inflating salaries to
unhealthy levels and destabilizing the economic equilibrium allegedly established

59
by the moratorium. Of course, as representatives of talent, if not exactly labor
organizers, agents were embroiled in the efforts to curtail the exorbitant salaries of
key talent. Thus, the studio 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
weaken labor, from the salaries of stars (the domain of agents) to the weakening of
labor in the crafts area. In a certain sense, the debates around agents, then, really
amount to a maturing oligopoly’s efforts to stabilize production financing, to
control studio assets, primarily stars, and to regulate predictable salaries.
Given the national scope of this bureaucratic endeavor, officers of the NRA
moved surprisingly fast. Following the official formation of the NRA in June,
government representatives made in-roads into Hollywood by the end of the
summer. Long before NRA investigators descended on Hollywood, the industry
began drawing battle lines. Agents, producers, writers, directors, actors, theater
owners, and others jockeyed for position, launched attacks, and volleyed
accusations at one another almost daily on the pages of the Hollywood Reporter
and Daily Variety. Banking on its self-proclaimed “vital connection with practically
every phase of the industry’s affairs,” the Academy sought to act as the official
referee for the NRA’s investigation of the industry. In response, the newly formed
Screen Writers Guild, and the germinating guild of screen actors, teamed with
agents to oppose the Academy’s involvement, claiming that the institution leaned
too much towards producers’ interests. For its part, the Academy dubbed the guilds

60
“radical” organizations and accused them of using “guerilla warfare,” stirring up
discontent and suspicion among its members. As the Academy nestled itself into
the NRA activities, more and more actors publicly quit the institution, with
directors threatening to join them by October. Seeking to empower its standing
through involvement with the NRA regulators, the Academy’s aggressive actions
instead mobilized and strengthened the opposition, inspiring stronger pushes for
unions on the part of writers, directors, and actors, so much so that the Academy
faced extinction by October 1933.
These conflicts pitting talent against producers and the Academy offered no
simple division into warring factions. Agents and talent found an ally in the
Academy, for example, when it came to the issue of salary control and competition.
In NRA officials, producers, casting blame on the agents and consistently pressing
for some form of control over escalating salaries, found a sympathetic audience.
But the Academy objected to any form of salary control, arguing that contests
between actually competing employers, not secret agreements and other
subterfuges, offered the only fair and practical method of arriving at salaries.
Internal Academy documents reveal that the special agents Committee
tacitly targeted the NRA process and hearings as a way of slipping their “Code for
Agents” into the final NRA documents. When word got out on this tactic, 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 investigations and leaned on

61
producers as guides to the wilds of Hollywood on their research trips. 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 the government official to target
agents on his first close investigations of the industry—as Variety generously noted
“Agent Question Headache For Industry Big Brains.” But, in a counter-move,
Variety noted “Agents Stall Rosy,” a headline following 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 various
codes dealing with agents, most following the pattern of recommended codes and
compromises displayed in the Academy debates.
When Kahane took the stand on the third day of NRA hearings in
Washington in September 1933 he used his testimony to lash out at agents and
publicly decry their disruptive influence on industry operations. In a carefully
constructed narrative, Kahane began his testimony by rattling off the annual
spending of the leading studios, climaxing this cascade of numbers with the
dramatic if not altogether surprising revelation that forty percent of a studio’s
payroll went to the actors, writers, and directors, noting that only two or three
percent of the payroll went to executives. Kahane then split the numbers even
further, adding that a few of these artisans commanded salaries well over several
thousand a week. Protecting the industry—the express purpose of the NRA—meant
protecting these valuable assets. Like good drama, then, Kahane established a sense

62
of jeopardy by introducing the villains, the force that could shatter the very
backbone of the industry: the "chiseling" agents. With the kind of stock innocent
earnestness of a distressed hero, Kahane coyly presented his "understanding" of the
purpose of the NRA hearings:
I want to say that I understand very definitely that one of the purposes of the
N.R.A. is just that—to allow those people in an industry who finally realize
that that is the best course, to cooperate and, in the case of the selfish few,
that limited majority, to coerce them into cooperation, if they are not willing
to do so voluntarily, in order to stabilize that industry for the best interests
of the whole industry.

Here Kahane presents the agent problem as one of growing pains; that is, he sees
the industry as having finally reached a state of stability and rational organization
with only agents threatening to destabilize or corrupt this new solid corporate
environment. Kahane slyly links the producers’ efforts to disempower agents to the
NRA agenda, characterizing agents as a more primitive remnant of earlier business
practices.
Kahane cited case after case of Hollywood agents threatening producers
with rival offers, often two or three times the amounts paid to contracted talent, and
daring the producer to match them. These little stories prompted a reasonable
question from the NRA’s Sol Rosenblatt, who asked why producers didn’t pick up
the telephone and confirm such rival offers. Kahane had to admit to such practices;
but, thinking quick on his feet, claimed that such rival offers usually went unnamed
by the agent. Kahane used this question to once again endorse the Central Casting

63
Office, wherein rival offers would remain transparent to every studio, effectively
undermining such competitive tactics on the part of agents.
Kahane also saw the Central Casting Office, and its diminution of agent
power, as a way of creating a barrier of entry for new companies in the business:
Some company may start in business tomorrow…free from the restrictions
of this agreement, and they negotiate with an artist. One or two or three
producers, free from restraint, can wreck any two or three of the companies
in Hollywood.

Pooling the control of talent with a studio-run central office not only undermined
the power of agents, it would also strengthen the major studios’ control of the
industry as a whole. In a forum whose initiative sought to restore a status quo to
business, foregoing any concern over monopolistic trade practices, Kahane clearly
felt comfortable enough to reveal the true impetus behind so-called “anti-raiding”
reform tactics.
In other cases, Kahane accused agents of sabotaging productions by
enticing their clients to hold out for salary increases at crucial periods: “We have
had instances to give you an idea, of where an actor, at the instigation of an agent,
when you are about to start the shooting of a picture and you have the players there
and the director and everything there, a man say, ‘Unless you give me $2500 and
$2000 a week I will not go on,’ and he is told by the agent to hold out for it.”
Once again Rosenblatt failed to follow the logic of Kahane’s testimony, and
asked how one could determine that an agent instigated such actions rather than the
artist’s own imagination.

64
Kahane: Oh, we have definite proof, Mr. Administrator—
Deputy Rosenblatt: You have proof?
Kahane stumbled through his answer. He reiterated the fact that the producers’
proposal—the 30-day clearance on rival offers—still allowed for open bidding on
the free market. He further claimed that the agency code met with no opposition,
except insofar as it involved the Academy in its planning, but that the articles
themselves faced no significant objections. He characterized the opposition as
motivated entirely by a handful of agents and their clients. He emphasized the fact
that this code sprang from the labor of eight months work on the part of the
Academy. In conclusion, Kahane declared: “Hollywood is in a nervous state today
as a result of these enticements and offers,” adding:
It is just going to take a little flare-up to cause a conflagration; that when
one star is taken away from another producer there is a desire to retaliate;
that the companies cannot stand much more strain; that the loss of just a few
personalities can wreck a company.

In an internal NRA evidence study, a process tallying the data collected
during the NRA’s study of the film industry, published in November of 1935,
Daniel Bertrand followed the logic of Kahane’s testimony almost verbatim.
27

Divided into sections covering production, distribution, and exhibition, the study
first outlined the pertinent data to each arena, and then concluded with a section on
the “Unfair Trade Practices” within each. As Bertrand noted, “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

65
Industry.” He recognized that production centered on a relatively small group of
personalities, namely, actors, directors, writers, and technicians “who have become
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. Here Bertand confirms the industry logic governing the
importance of a certain tier of talent, hitching productions to their employment and
the steady flow of productions to their contracted guarantees of performance. Yet
Bertrand acknowledged that long-term contracts failed to solve the problem of
“star-raiding,” since producers, given the weight lent to stars in the exhibition
arena, could easily resort to enticing stars to break contracts through more lucrative
offers. While studios could match such offers, the very offer “produced
psychological effects which tended to decrease the quality of the stars’ work and in
extreme cases rendered them worthless.” Bertrand then officially pegged talent
agents as a key problem in this industry. But, more importantly, he noted that
agents practiced in an arena—the negotiation for salaries and labor conditions—
that escaped regulation of the NRA. If producers sought to exploit the regulatory
climate of the NRA to reign in agents, this program ended up both validating
agents’ presence in the marketplace and rendering them immune from extensive
governance.
In their effort to yoke the Academy’s “Code of Practice” for agents to the
NRA hearings and official policy, Kahane and other producers attempted to tie this
code of ethics, already aligned with the controlling spheres of economic behavior in

66
the industry, to larger official, legal, and governmental codes. They tried this move
once before; in the release of the initial Code to Academy members, the committee
included excerpts from their interviews with California’s Labor Commissioner
even though all of the answers he provided essentially nullified the efficacy of the
code; in other words, State labor laws legally exhausted any transgressions by
agents in ways that rendered ethics superfluous. However, the inclusion of this
correspondence in the committee’s public report retained a symbolic utility, as if
the very fact that an official governmental branch regulated agents somehow lent
credence to the Academy’s interest in monitoring agents.
In the end the NRA hearings secured the role of the agent in the studio
system. While the testimony by Kahane and others scathingly tarnished agents,
motivated by a desire to mitigate their power, questioning their role in an arena
seeking to restore equilibrium to the industry, these public hearings ultimately
recognized the need for such “agents” (in the dual sense of the word) and
stabilized, even confirmed, their function in the studio system. Thus, Roosevelt and
the Screen Actors Guild refused to recognize the original NRA proposal (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 NRA unconstitutional, enough work had been done in the press,
in public forums, and with other talent groups in the industry, that agents clinched a
permanent position in the industry. They had gone head-to-head with producers,
studio bosses, and governmental officials, and came out with a stronger sense of

67
identity. Over the next few years, talent groups—the Writers Guild, the Directors
Guild, and the Screen Actor’s Guild (SAG)—consolidated their own groups to
empower their bargaining positions with the industry. SAG’s rise to power, and
eventual recognition by the industry, likewise helped to consolidate the role of
agents, even if their presence had long become part of industry practice. So when
SAG negotiated a basic contract with talent agents in 1938, the process sealed the
deal for the official legitimization of agents within the studio system.

Sealing the Deal – The SAG Franchise

In 1938, after years of battles between union leaders and studio executives,
the United States Labor Relations board recognized the Screen Actors Guild (SAG)
as the official bargaining entity for actors. That action certified the status of other
key Hollywood guilds—namely, those for writers and directors—as well.
28
Since
the status 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 late 1938 the
Artist Managers Guild (AMG), the official bargaining group for agents, began
discussing a franchise proposal with the SAG. The negotiations successfully
resulted in a ten-year agreement between agents and SAG, and agreements with the
other guilds quickly followed suit. More importantly, as with the public forums
surrounding the NRA and the Academy investigation, these negotiations offered a
platform from which agents could expand upon and hone the definition of their

68
craft. Here again agents validated, legitimized, and even, constructed a need for
their presence. The agents’ discussion of the various terms of the proposal, revealed
in detailed transcripts from their October 12, 1938 guild meeting, offers a great deal
of insight into how agents defined their role in the industry, and how they imagined
this role might develop.
29

On the issue of contracts, for example, agents clarified a new definition for
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 of the agents at the AMG meeting objected strongly to this clause and their
objections revealed how agents defined 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 advisors, not merely employment seekers.
Furthermore, agents pointed out that this stipulation would encourage agents to
sign actors to long-term studio contracts (securing employment) within the year;
this incentive would cancel out efforts to secure potentially more lucrative
freelance deals, which could risk losing the actor during the four-month terminal
period. Agents rhetorically positioned themselves, then, as nurturing and shaping a
career, a process entailing possible short-term decisions that may not seem
immediately beneficial but could pay off in the long run of a career. As evidence,

69
the Morris representative cited cases where agents “developed” talent through radio
and stage performances over the course of a year or more as a way of working on
performances prior to studio auditions. Over and over again, agents claimed to
build unknown entities into a saleable personality, and that their own investment—
from the time and skills involved in crafting a personality, or waiving early
commissions or even loaning money to a client—should be protected through the
promise of future earnings.
As successful agencies grew in size, they had to reconfigure their need to
present themselves as a personal services business and deal with their growing
bureaucratic structure. SAG’s initial proposal betrayed a certain anxiety over the
growing structural size and complexity of agencies. In order to strictly enforce the
personal services definition of the agent, SAG proposed that agency contracts
specify the exact person handling a client’s business, or as SAG specified, “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 amongst their
representatives, thereby splitting the representation of clients amongst many agents.
The clause proposed by SAG flies in the face of such practices. The SAG clause
represents the fear that, in the face of the growing corporate complexity,
individuals would get lost in the complex organizational structure, a particularly
acute anxiety for actors, of course, who banked on individuality. But this clause
would also give individual actors de facto control to essentially dictate the

70
personnel of an agency, for major clients could terminate their contracts if an
agency decided to terminate their specified agents. Still, the notion of specifying a
central agent as a client’s general handler or point-person seemed reasonable to
most agents (foregoing the termination clause), since most agencies practiced such
a strategy on an informal basis. But the proposed clause (eventually dropped) and
this debate illustrated the concern over balancing a corporation’s interests with
those of the individual clients.
The thirteenth article in 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 their
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 of the
agents at the AMG meeting acknowledged that this function highlighted one of the
prime 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 objected to such arbitrary availability). However, 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

71
without totally alienating the producer, who, after all, could serve other clients and
whose relationship must therefore be protected. In other words, 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 (i.e., demand a tea-break, for
example, for an artist during production) beyond the level of employment 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 terms of the
fixed compensation percentage. Revealing his keen insight into the variables
presented by the playing field, Feldman floated the notion 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. [My emphasis]

In such cases, Feldman argued, the agent paid compensation to the talent (usually
writers) for their creative labor contributing to the package or because the talent
required funds to float while the agents shopped the package to studios. The agent

72
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 only one or none of the elements on their own would
not be enough to sell a project. For another thing, 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). Under this scenario, an agent might be induced
to steer his clients into packages whose risk and reward may be greater than, say, a
short-term studio contract, but whose rewards would prove far greater for the agent
as a producer than for the agent’s commission on a studio contract. The very
possibility of such deals allowing agents to act as both producer and agent would
breech the element of trust entailed in their contracted 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

73
the article provided an escape clause: SAG would grant special waivers, upon
review, for agents to act as producers. This clause capped the many principles
governing the agent’s craft by strictly distinguishing the agent in terms of
definition: an agent could not act as an employer of talent since this crossed a
definitive or ultimate line. Most of the 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 by-laws.
Nonetheless, the conflict of interest issue, with the opening left by the waiver
clause, would quietly haunt agents and their clients, as numerous agents, most
notably Charles Feldman, would play both roles—indeed, MCA would later stake
most of their business on playing both roles. Those agents who opposed this
principle all resorted to similar rhetoric, arguing that limiting the agent in this way
ultimately hurt their clients. Feldman and MCA’s Jules Stein argued that agents
often invest money in the development of talent (thereby acting as their employers)
or retain talent by paying them until a good deal comes along. In such cases, an
agent often collects more than a mere ten percent commission. In other cases,
Feldman pointed out, agents created production companies in order to employ their
clients, often gaining them employment refused to them by all of the studios. In
such cases, Feldman deflects attention from the rewards offered to the agent in
these cases (which very likely exceed the typical ten percent commission from the
artist) to the dexterous, creative business dealings created by the agent in service to

74
his client. Shifting this focus in this way blurs 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 honed 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. Defining the job clearly escaped most, and regulating
agents necessarily turned to defining and confining behavior at certain moments; in
turn, the “character” of agents shifted for different occasions. 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 myriads of 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 organization as a whole.
Each characterization served different demands of their enterprise, dealing with
clients and dealing with studios, in these respective cases. Through these
negotiations, less contentious than the NRA or Academy debates but ripe with

75
similar challenges, agents fashioned their role in the industry. Yet, despite
numerous public cases of contract disputes and lawsuits, agents overall carved out a
fairly harmonious role within the system as part of an infrastructure serving the
principal needs of the business. For example, statistics from the studio era
demonstrate that agents primarily served those clients who best served the
vertically integrated nature of the business, namely, “stars” and key artists like
directors and writers. Lesser talent—minor actors, craftsmen, art directors, etc.—
found little to no representation from talent agencies.
30
In their elevation of certain
components of the industry—stars, directors, writers—agents shared the same
values as the studios in this important if no less embattled sense. Indeed, by 1938,
Fortune magazine could confidently describe agents as fulfilling a crucial
managerial position within the Hollywood infrastructure. The agent, this 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.”
31

The 1948 Paramount anti-trust ruling initiated a wave of independent
production companies often run by stars and directors, as well as a series of new
short-term contract deals between talent and the studios. However, these 1930s
debates and the efforts to regulate agents’ behavior reveal a tenuous hold on talent
during the studio era, with studios constantly struggling to maintain centralized
control over talent, their primary commodities. Such efforts manifested themselves
primarily through regulations of behavior, rather than ironclad contracts. As one of

76
a myriad of controversial characters comprising the public picture of Hollywood
business practices, agents and their efforts to validate and rationalize their
functional role within a free market illustrate the extent to which the Hollywood
film business conserved and preserved its economic system through negotiations
with representatives of the dominant culture and political establishment—the
popular media, the talent guilds, the Academy, and the NRA. In light of these
cases, the post-‘48 climate represents more of an outgrowth of already established
but contained practices, rather than an outright paradigm shift. These particular
debates—those revolving around the status of agents in relation to the Academy;
the Academy’s “Code of Practice” for agents; and the public debate on agents at the
NRA hearings—portray a more complicated image of the “classical” studio era.

Conclusion: The Political Economy of Agents and Agency

Of course, the very term “agent” conjures up questions of agency in the
philosophical sense; and while it may seem grandiose or grotesque to raise such
philosophical questions in relation to these chiselers, discussing the agent’s place
within the Hollywood system reveals how “agents” as individual productive forces
relate to the productive force of larger institutional systems. The institutional
discourse delimiting certain codes and practices for agents certainly outlined,
framed, and constrained their practices. In this sense, the discourse “produced”
agents, or defined individual subjects as composites of larger forces. Yet these
codes also reflected the actual practices of agents; in other words, the material,

77
historical actions of agents accrued certain structural relationships—client lists,
business routines, regular contacts with producers—that shaped the discourse,
shaped, for example, the conditions acknowledged by and articulated in the
Academy and NRA codes; in this sense, agents “produced” aspects of the discourse
(and the larger institutional forces governing the studio system). Thus, particular
individuals still managed to “produce” themselves within certain systems of
discourse and in some way rise above the prosaic individuals constituting the
anonymous forces of the system (one may be a pawn in the system, but some
pawns take kings). In light of these dynamics, we need to balance the power of
discussing the individual agent with an awareness of how political and economic
structures construct agents and allow for, create, and contest certain forms of
agency. Furthermore, we need to be alert to those aspects of individual agency that
rely upon and tap into the political-economic agency generated within the currents
of larger systems or how the system determines certain productive possibilities on
the part of individuals and resists others (that is, what moves allow pawns to be
kinged).
A variety of industrial and institutional factors constituting the classical
studio system would seem to greatly constrain an agent’s practice. Studio contracts
hemmed in talent, studio executives banished agents from their lots, official
industry institutions like the Academy marginalized agents, and a small number of
studios conspired to maintain a monopoly, greatly diminishing the competition in
the market. But this strong system was not necessarily hostile to individuals gaining

78
power. Agents managed to tap into this force-field and actually increased their
individual power by channeling the very social and institutional forces generated by
and within this system. In other words, the larger institutional forces allowed for a
high degree of agency; individual agency does not only work in opposition to larger
institutional forces, for the agency of agents increased in particular cases through
increased social capital agglomerated from and emerging within this system. For
example, Myron Selznick and Charles Feldman accrued conspicuous business
connections in this system and these relationships set up a tangible spectacle of
success—deals captured in headlines and prominent clients in their stables—that
increased their social capital in the studio system. As these agents developed
working relationships with studio executives, creating greater authoritative or
habitual trusts in continuing deals with these producers, they accrued greater social
capital; in other words, placing themselves in the network of commercial
transactions, however much governed by larger institutional beliefs like the star
system or genres, these powerful agents magnified their individual agency within
the networks of business operations. An agent could not alter a studio’s reliance on
stars or genres. In other words, an agent at this time could not sell a commodity,
whether talent or screenplays, that did not adhere to these qualities; those beliefs
remained deeply engrained in the operations of this business. But an agent could
tap into such beliefs by acquiring a stable of stars (or a new star or writer) and
increase their individual power within the system. Slipping into these
transactions—as agents carved out their role in the negotiations and transactions

79
between talent and producers—did not mean subordinating an agent’s power; even
then, any possible subordination by the agent remained a calculated move, an
action designed, in such cases, to appease a producer thereby gaining some credit
and trust possibly cashed in on a future deal. Their talent for divining powerful
deals notwithstanding, Selznick and Feldman built their careers on a strong social
capital already accrued from their earlier careers in the industry. Thus, individual
agency built its power and social capital from within the system.
Agents defined their role in this system through a series of contests, clashes
over their rationale and definition, and even challenges to their very presence.
Certainly some other figure like the agent could have taken on some of the agent’s
functions. Accountants surely could have managed and tracked salary increases on
contracts; lawyers might easily negotiate contracts and handle job offers, as
opponents to agents consistently pointed out. Agents worked, then, to integrate
themselves socially into the everyday culture and practice of Hollywood. In this
sense, some of the attacks on agents served as a platform from which agents
constructed definitions—albeit defensive—of their role and purpose in the industry.
Agents, for example, defined themselves as protectors of the free marketplace
wherein talent retained the right to secure high bids for their services. Likewise,
agents constructed a role for themselves through practices, from habits developed
through the emerging stability of the studio system. In the early 1930s, while under
attack by journalists and industry leaders, agents continued to gather clients and sell
them to studio executives. Selznick’s and Feldman’s surviving office files from this

80
time, for example, barely register—a memo here and there; some lunch meetings in
appointment books—the pressures of these investigations, hearings, and attacks. So
while battles raged in trade papers and public hearings, and while code-makers
drafted guidelines and regulations, agents busily defined their role through practice,
establishing—almost uninterrupted—habits and patterns to the operations and
transactions making up the everyday structure of this business.

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Chapter Two
Revenge of the Agent: Myron Selznick and the Early Pioneers

For Myron Selznick, the leading Hollywood agent of the 1930s, the
decision to embark upon his career “ruined his life. He loathed every minute of it.”
1

This sweeping summary by his sister-in-law, Irene, daughter of veritable
Hollywood royalty, Louis B. Mayer, and wife to Hollywood’s reigning independent
uber-producer 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 seethe with an estranged loathing, an insolent streak that
achieved high costs not only to producers but also to his personal life. Chaffing at
the outsider status of Hollywood agents, he fought for official recognition from the
Academy, even while he openly mocked the insipid culture of Hollywood. 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, driving a fleet of cars, and imbibing biblically. Yet such
decadence only left Myron hollow and bitter. Hardly casting a shadow under the
glaring achievements of his brother’s career as a producer, Myron felt cheated of
his own success, despising the very business that fueled his drive for power.

82
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. Shifting to this biographical perspective brings out the
complex details in the hustle and humdrum activity of the typical Hollywood agent.
Studying Selznick’s relationships with his clients, the principles governing his
business, and his dealings with the major studios, offers a more complete
understanding of how the studio system actually functioned through a diffused
operational network. 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 demonstrates that classical Hollywood operated in a more complicated
and less concentrated syndicate than the monolithic models offered up in standard
histories of this period with their singular emphasis on the vertically integrated
studios. Surveying Selznick’s office 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
practices as much as institutional policies—the NRA; the Academy; the Guild
agreements—shaped the emergence of agents. Through Selznick’s story, especially
in the ways it contrasts with smaller pioneer agents like Ivan Kahn and Edward
Small, we pick up on the specific strengths and strains of Hollywood agents’ social
networking and its role in this film industry. Selznick’s personality arose from

83
within and through the operations of this industry; indeed, his personality—his
knack for striking deals; his muscular bargaining style; his “power”—sprang from
the bureaucratic system he established 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. Myron Selznick’s notorious
career becomes all the more interesting for his personal demons and for the way
these tensions shed light on the distinctive commerce and culture of agents he
helped to create.
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 moved
his wife and three boys to New York to open “The World’s Largest Jewelry Store,”
which promptly closed within a year.
32
By then, Lewis Selznick already recognized
a growth industry in the emerging film business. Unstructured but sprawling into
the city’s every open cleft, mostly old storefronts hastily converted into small
theaters, the city’s film business teemed with opportunity, a hurly-burly market that
Lewis could quickly step into and start buying and selling goods, namely, films.
Lewis slipped into 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. Coupled with Lewis’
profligate spending on his productions, this overwhelming competition led to the
company’s demise in 1923, when he finally declared bankruptcy.

84
Myron and David found early tutelage, unbeknownst to them at the time, in
their father’s enterprise, as Lewis dragged them to business meetings and
eventually put his boys to work in the company. Myron started in the lowest
possible position as a film inspector, “the dirtiest job you could possibly hand
anybody,” according to his brother.
33
As a film inspector Myron examined the
returned films rented out to theaters by rubbing his fingers along the entire print
searching for tears. 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 kinds of memos 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 in a yearlong venture together
called the General American Radio Company (selling radios) before that fizzled.
34

For a short spell Myron established his own production company, bankrolled with
$25,000 in seed money from his father. Myron scouted talent and distribution deals
in California and convinced rising star Olive Thomas to sign with the company.
The newly formed Selznick Pictures Corporation signed a distribution deal with
Famous Plays-Lasky (later known as Paramount Pictures) and Myron set off
running film productions for the next few years. As a producer, Myron was,
according to his brother, “alternately completely cool and completely excitable,
always ‘snotty.’”
35
While none of Myron’s productions survive, film reviews from

85
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 hopefully pay off debtors following bankruptcy, provided
the only support for Myron’s production company. When the bankruptcy
eventually swallowed Myron’s new company as well, Myron left for California,
where he landed for a short period at Pathe’s cheap westerns division, but quickly
found himself out of work again. David eventually landed a position at MGM in
1926.
In the late 1920s, living off of their reputation in New York, but not yet
established in Hollywood, the brothers exuded confidence. Myron and David
remained very 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 noted that the brothers “shared an air of defiance
and a lack of conformity which both fascinated and frightened” her.
36
And yet,
“Myron’s act was incomplete without David.” The two brothers lived at the Villa
Carlotta, an apartment complex in Hollywood (their parents lived nearby with their
sable coats, rugs, and tapestries—remnants of their New York success—stuffed
into an apartment). But while David’s untamable reserve of energy galvanized his
rise as a production executive and mesmerized Irene, she found Myron’s bravado

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awkward, for he spoke like a big shot, but a former big shot, refusing to
compromise, but failing 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 operating his
business in strategic revenge on his father’s enemies, those studio heads like Zukor
and Mayer who allegedly drove the father out of the business. David claimed that
Myron kept 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.”
37
No doubt, this image lends an aggressive air to Myron’s
activities (the above quotations from David, in fact, come from a letter to a
magazine editor writing an article—unpublished—on Myron in the 1930s). Myron
himself likely encouraged this perspective since it empowered his activity as an
agent. However, the revenge scenario, aside from misrepresenting Lewis’
culpability—his poor business decisions—in his own demise, fails to explain
Myron’s improvisatory approach to the industry in the mid-1920s, as he
experimented, like a classic American 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
venture in the agency business together. In 1927, Variety reported that father and

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son planned to form the Artists’ Booking Bureau, an enterprise consolidating the
handful of small West Coast agencies.
38
The article noted that Lewis felt studio-
casting directors gave too little consideration to agents; thus, Myron’s father
recognized the opportunity to embolden agents’ powers in the emerging studio
system, a suspicion his son would shortly confirm in his own entrepreneurial
venture later that year.
Like most successful braggarts, Selznick could claim an exact origin date to
his career as an agent.
39
The fable begins in 1927. Having lost out on a number of
adventures in the production arena, David, now gainfully employed at MGM, and
Myron, out of work, shared their Hollywood apartment with an old family friend,
the director Lewis Milestone. The origin story continues as Milestone complained
to Myron one day about an upcoming interview with a studio executive. Milestone
feared that he would fall into his typical habit of conceding to a compromised
salary in his desperation to secure a job. On a dare, Myron convinced Milestone
that he would accompany the director 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 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: $2000 per week or they
walked. A flabbergasted Milestone kept his word and maintained silence as Myron
continued to haggle and fight. Milestone left the meeting with a $1500 per week

88
contract, 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 six-day,
fourteen-hour-a-day week.”
40

Regardless of the veracity of this origin story, the scene betrays a revealing
portrait of Selznick. There is first of all 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 planted in every version of this
story is the sense of aimlessness: Selznick begins as a roommate in the story,
casually engaging in a conversation leading to a proposition, and emerges as
professional. That Selznick rolled out of bed one day to become an agent remains
very unlikely. But the sense of disdain for the profession laced through this
narrative tells us something about Selznick’s overall discontentment with his agent
role. He always saw his activity as something beneath him; he always saw his
creativity with contracts a form of trickery and always viewed his negotiations
more as devilry than diplomacy.
Selznick’s story about Milestone also betrays the common myth of an
artist’s alleged lack of financial savvy or indifference toward the quotidian world of
business, both traits seemingly exposing vulnerability on the part of the rarefied

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artists, a cliché surviving even in the calculating, uncouth culture of Hollywood.
Yet a degree of truth resides in the Milestone fable. Retaining agents to fight
financial (and other) battles certainly alleviated artists from some of the inevitable
battles with their employers and allowed them to focus on other difficulties more
pertinent to their creative roles and contributions to productions. This charismatic
advocacy is how Selznick and agents in general sold their services to clients. The
persona conveyed (even created) in family stories, in gossip, and in this Milestone
tale (repeated in every article on Selznick in the 1930s) distinguishes Selznick’s
general services and depicts him as a particularly strong advocate for his clients.
Advocacy is a contractual component of his work, of course. But through these
stories and gossip and the particular accent they take on his personality, Selznick
developed a charisma that distinguished his role in the market.
According to his surviving daybook, by February 1928, Selznick was
already checking up on some contracts.
41
While 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 failed to yet register with the
California Labor Commission, a sign, perhaps, of the quick pace of Selznick’s shift
to the agency business. Late in 1928, New York agent Frank Joyce begins to appear
in Selznick’s appointment book. Selznick approached Joyce to discuss a potential
partnership, for Selznick knew that actors and actresses—Joyce retained a modest
client list—provided the fledgling business with more leverage and high
commissions. According to his brother, Selznick sought out Joyce because he

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despised handling actors, another story expressing Selznick’s disdain for his very
business.
42
But Selznick had much more strategic reasons for the partnership since
actors and actresses represented the highest commissions and the strongest case, for
example, for demanding 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 establishing a client list, while continuing
to expand as a new business.
The date Selznick finally officially registered as an agency—March 26,
1928—with the state labor commission shows two things.
43
First, Selznick
obviously started making deals before his status as an agent became official, thus,
lending some truth to the legend of the Lewis Milestone meeting. Secondly, and
more importantly, the date shows that by 1928, Selznick fully committed himself to
this endeavor. Something clicked by this point, after over a decade hustling in and
through various positions in the movie business. 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, where so many of the small
field of competitors sprang from the world of vaudeville or elsewhere, 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 importantly, what they could afford.

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The Joyce-Selznick 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 principle that consistently circulated through internal office 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.”
44
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.”
45

Selznick’s advertising took an adversarial tone pitting agents against the studios, a
risky stance to take in relation to one’s buyers, since, after all, agents served as
gatekeepers in supplying studios with talent. But regardless of the agents’
dependence on the studio and on maintaining diplomatic relations with these
entities, attracting talent remained crucial to the agency business. So Selznick’s
posturing, however bold and polarizing, served a strategic need for his operations;

92
billing his services as one favoring the artist served to attract clients and develop
their trust in Selznick’s services.
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. Armed with directors like Lewis
Milestone and William Howard, writers like Ben Hecht and Gerald Early, and
actors like Zasu Pitts and Ruth Chatterton, Selznick’s client list prominently
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 first-stop singular powerhouse for production planning—
indeed the pamphlet’s list of clients read like a mini-studio.
46
Under actors, the
highlights included Fred Astaire, Gary Cooper, Kay Francis, Katharine Hepburn,
Charles Laughton, Carole Lombard, and Fredric March, amongst a dozen others.
Writers like Maxwell Anderson, Robert Benchley, Gene Fowler, Ben Hecht, the
Mankiewiczs, Dudley Nichols, and Casey Robinson stood out from over twenty on
this 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 (who negotiated
their studio contracts): Monta Bell, Merian Cooper, Ben Hecht, Arthur Hornblow,
Lucien Hubbard, Charles MacArthur, Kenneth MacGowan, David O. Selznick, and
Walter Wanger. “The only organization,” the pamphlet cover boasted, “with the

93
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.”
But Selznick drew greater publicity through the conspicuous deals he
racked up in the first few years of his operations—none more spectacular than his
“raid” of Paramount in 1931. In a single day, on January 12 that year, no less than
three of Selznick’s clients, William Powell, Ruth Chatterton, and Kay Francis,
deserted Paramount and simultaneously signed contracts with Warner Bros.
47

Industry trade paper headlines exploded, depicting the deals as total effrontery, as
acts of betrayal, of war, and potential signs of an unstable market dominated by
unruly agents and unregulated talent.
48
These headlines served 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 signifies the arrival of a new star, a
new celebrity, whose traits, persona, and media attention, all came in tow of these
deals, namely, Myron Selznick.
For all of the blitzkrieg 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 $6000 a week in
light of his growing popularity. Schulberg blanched and dared Selznick to explore

94
this figure with other producers. In Ruth Chatterton’s negotiations Schulberg held
to the same intransigent stance, refusing to go above $4500 a week. Selznick then
approached Warner Bros., a studio desperately in need of stars that could handle
dialogue in light of the new sound film era. Moreover, Warner Bros. needed
actresses like Francis and Chatterton to round out their stable of actors. Selznick
persuaded Warners to offer $100,000 per picture for Powell and $8000 a week for
Chatterton. That the industry at wide recognized Warners’ need for this breed of
talent lent an even greater sense of calculation to Selznick’s reputation. 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 of Selznick’s
adversarial rhetoric pitting him against the studios and for all of the public
arguments and hostile statements by the two studios, a fair amount of cooperation
occurred behind the scenes. All three clients finished obligations owed to
Paramount before moving on to their new contracts. Warner Bros. even loaned Kay
Francis back to Paramount for Ernst Lubitsch’s Trouble in Paradise the following
year at the rate of $4000 per week (her Warner contract netted her $3000 per
week). Nonetheless, this spectacular deal-making, its brazen and aggressive sense
of tactical strategy, solidified Myron Selznick’s position as a trail-blazing agent.
In 1929 Selznick and Frank Joyce formally incorporated their partnership.
Since he had started his on his own earlier, Selznick also maintained a separate
business enterprise, Myron Selznick, Inc,. to handle contracts of those clients
predating the merger with Joyce.
49
With commissions coming from such clients as

95
Lewis Milestone, the writer Casey Robinson, Sam Hirschfeld, and his brother
David, amongst others, this dual arrangement allowed Selznick to write off his cars,
entertainment expenses, and his salary through this company. In 1933, for example,
this separate company 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 two leaders. Within a few years of setting up shop, they were paying
themselves $120,000 a year, a significant measure of the scale of this service
industry, clearly displaying the salience of such ancillary operations in early 1930s
Hollywood.
50
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, slowly increasing beyond twenty employees. By the early
1930s, for example, the 10% 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 twenty to sixty dollars per week or approximately $500 to
$2500 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 director George Cukor brought in about $350 per
week, close to the average for a reputable director, and more than enough to cover

96
the salary of the agency’s story editor, who earned about $250 per week. The
agency’s field men averaged between a $100 per week (for a new man) and $300
per week on average.
Field agents operated as scouts, reporters, and general sweepers for
information. They monitored details on 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 openings, and handling general issues for their clients
with the studios (concerns about costumes, make-up tests, screenplays, or proper
credits). At the same time, these field men maintained contacts with scouts—
theater owners, literary agents, and producers—on new promising talent. 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 information about
important projects for the client, to drum up interest in the client amongst 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

97
of the executive agents, then, perused these memos and always—and most often
even the executive agents cleared their proposals with Selznick—dictated the
parameters of the deals discussed by field agents (for example insisting on a certain
base salary or certain working conditions). Selznick or one of the executive agents
would then follow through by contacting—lunch, dinner, or by phone—the
important client.
This organization generated and maintained tremendous activity. Even in
the early 1930s, the movie business was noted for being telephone crazy. Rarely in
his office, long before his alcohol induced absences increased in frequency in the
late 1930s, Selznick 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.
51
Such
anecdotal puffery—relayed in articles on the agency—created the impression of a
kind of modern busy-ness, a nonstop regulation of information and service to the
agency 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, that would
help sell their client, and that might isolate a potential buyer. At one level, then, the
agency business operated (as is true today) essentially as an information exchange

98
business. Agents kept tabs on a client’s contract and the properly allotted and
scheduled payments from the studios, as well as other promised services (hours and
working conditions). Agents gathered information that might help a client by
tracking new projects at studios, the availability of certain roles, and the desires of
producers. For example, through a studio secretary or an executive, an agent
learned that a particular producer 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 objects around
which to build such a story. All of this activity and surveillance—trolling for tips,
collating data, evaluating material and reports, reconciling information with ideas
about their clients—represents a kind of corporate exchange of gossip, a gossip of
promise, of prophecy (where might a client’s future lie), and of exchange value
(trading tips for other tips), for such information often proved valuable. That
Selznick recognized this dimension of the agency business—as information
exchange—comes through in the structure and operation of his agency, for he
organized a careful and commanding system of gathering, managing, and
dispersing information.
Under Selznick’s system, paper, binders, and files coded and signified
various categories of information, marking both the performance of a certain task
and serving the retrieval of data.
52
Memos covered client meetings and agents
dispersed this information to the entire staff with mimeographed copies—color
coded, no less, so that blue memos signaled, for example, the closing of a deal. A

99
single binder covered all of the agency’s clients with a page-per-page itemization
of client contracts. Agents updated this book only when a contract officially started
or ended; the book, in an effort to expedite and simplify data recovery, left out, for
example, details about discussions or negotiations; these could be found in a
client’s folder, in memos circulated previously as inter-office 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 on productions, or rest periods.
In addition, the agency maintained client contact lists recording—time,
date, topic—conversations between agents and clients. Pooling information
represented only one goal of this contact list. More significantly, perhaps, the
imperative driving the contact list sprang from the personal service dimension of
the agency that 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 splitting
commissions on this client]—and I notice on the contact list that she has not been
seen for three weeks.”
53
As this particular memo indicates, maintaining regular
personal contact with the clients sustained the personal service dimension of the
agent, 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,

100
results from 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 the agency-
SAG franchise characterized it), so he built a modern organizational system—index
cards, contact books, secretaries—to maintain this personal dimension of his
business.
To maintain efficiency and consistency throughout all of 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.
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.
54

101
All of this tabulation, bureaucratic calculation, and categorization echoed the
growing complexity of the industrialization of culture in 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.
A typical day in the agency office—typical for Selznick’s operation and for
many of his competitor’s offices—involved agents keeping tabs on their clients and
monitoring their availability.
55
New deadlines cropped up and progress had to be
tracked on new deals and ongoing negotiations and discussions with studios,
producers, and clients. Take, for example, June 30, 1933.
56
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 batted around
Adolphe Menjou’s name for possible projects. They discussed details on a Leslie
Howard-Gaumont deal. Another writer client, Zoe Akins, had made a deal with
Gaumont involving another agent without consulting the office and muddled the
details. She offered to pay two commissions, but Selznick’s agent refused, so this
complication had to be dealt with. They were looking for work for Samson
Raphaelson. They were looking for work in England for Fay Wray, Leo McCarey,
and Pat O’Brien—mainly for the better tax deals working abroad offered these
clients. Katharine Hepburn would start work at RKO on Bill of Divorcement in a

102
little over a week, with director George Cukor at the helm, so these clients did not
require immediate attention since this production would keep them employed for a
few months. Key points and issues from these meetings subsequently shot
throughout the office in various memos. Between the circulating memos, blue
mimeographs for contracts, the client contact sheet, and the client workbook, an
agent could pinpoint anyone on the agency’s list of over one hundred clients (and
growing) on an almost daily schedule for months at a time.
All of these meetings and memos, in their coordination and
synchronization, supported the service philosophy governing this enterprise.
Agents considered themselves part of the modern people business. In their own
fashion, Hollywood agents adhered to the same principles outlined in Dale
Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, the bestseller derived from
the author’s popular early 1930s peptalks.
57
With chapters on the “Fundamental
Techniques in Handling People” and “The Big Secret of Dealing with People,”
Carnegie captured the spirit, the beliefs, and aspirations informing the new
enterprise of mediation and brokering—the business scorned by Veblen—that
characterized much of modern business, no more so, perhaps, than in the work of
agents: “the fine art of getting along with people in everyday business and social
contacts.”
58
Agents’ work frequently spilled into leisure time, evenings most
typically. 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 on a phone call, at a Saturday

103
evening at the agent’s home, or on a golf course. Indeed, Selznick encouraged a
few of his agents to join a golf club as part of their business operations; in the same
vein, these agents wanted the office to buy them a car for New York in order to
take clients out to golf. Furthermore, they explained that a company car would help
them scope out summer stock shows (theater outside of New York) and make an
impression on clients under their diligent courtship. For example, an agent told
Selznick that he wanted to see Sylvia Sidney in a summer show, an important fact
noted in his letter since he still had “hopes of signing her to the Selznick office.” As
evinced in these memos, Selznick sanctioned activity that transformed personal
relations into opportunities for business deals and networking.
As the charismatic leader of the agency, Selznick kept this social-business
under steady surveillance, and inquired regularly about details, memos reporting on
key discussion points, and gossip circulating through the office. After all, the
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.”
59
Furthermore, the agent explained
that their dinner would include reviewing some key points in Akins’ MGM contract

104
that remained unclear, all with 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
between the agency’s leader and his clients.
In this same vein, agents developed steady relationships with particular
studio executives, a regularity 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 information so that one agent handling a specific client
could alert another agent to a development at another studio, and then turn over
negotiations to the agent handling that specific studio. Studio executives kept
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 the proper roles.
Agents borrowed screen tests from studios and would likewise send screen tests to
studios (the agency maintained a regular file of such transactions). Such logistics
also required strict maintenance of a shared client’s notebook, with the entire office
outlining start and finish dates for all of the clients.

105
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.”
60
An old Selznick family friend, Stromberg worked as an
assistant to David at MGM and before that as a publicity director for Lewis
Selznick. Myron and Stromberg remained regular gambling partners and the
agency file for Stromberg spills over with memos on collecting debts, often as post-
scripts to regular business memos. Social connections blended with business
connections.
But these regular relations between agents and studio executives made
business sense. These inter-firm 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 assignations illustrate how this industry actually functioned through a
diffused operational network as much as through concentrated management within
the major studios.
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Despite Selznick’s inflammatory oppositional rhetoric, despite his posture
as an opponent of the studios, Selznick, and agents in general, forged strong

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symbiotic 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 economized agents’ labor of sweeping the studio circuit for new
opportunities for their clients. By the same token, habitual meetings with agents—
at least those with proficient client lists—streamlined production practices like
casting, fishing for screenwriters, and scheduling. A typical meeting between
Stromberg and a Selznick agent, for example, accomplished a proficient
exploration of possible projects and prospects for both sides, as revealed in a
talking-points memo 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 cover their own interests, while at the same time exchanging
information on upcoming projects and the schedules of both available talent and
production plans. In one conference, then, Stromberg covered 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 on
through the end of the decade with 1939’s The Women featuring clients Norma
Shearer and Katharine Hepburn 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 and

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Laughter the same year featuring client Fredric March, written by client Herman
Mankiewicz. Associate producer and client Kenneth MacGowan oversaw director
client George Archainbaud’s 1932 film Penguin Pool Murder; writer-client Ben
Hecht’s 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. Of course, David O. Selznick hired Cukor and his agency stable-mates
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’s notes
also stressed certain strategic deal-making points such as bargaining for more
creative control for their clients:
• 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.
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That Selznick included such strategic guarantees for client’s creative control in his
instructions for the general management of the office shows how much these
principles shaped his general philosophy and practice as an agent. Gaining actors

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the right to approve or reject stories lent the clients much more control over their
careers and their artistry. Story approval allowed talent to develop their star persona
or to craft new dimensions in their 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 assignation. This strategy served the
agency as well in deepening their service value to the client and possibly attracting
other clients in pursuit of such creative latitude.
Of course, Selznick only turned a profit 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.”
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Selznick’s
files spill over with memos regarding overdue payments and chasing after owed
commissions. When possible, therefore, agents tried to sign contracts wherein the
studio sent paychecks directly to the agency, allowing them to deduct the
commission before advancing the remaining salary to their clients. 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 over uncollected commissions, and Raphaelsom left the agency three
times, but nevertheless repeatedly renewed his contract with Selznick.

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By 1932 Selznick’s business network, its complex interrelated operations
and surveillance, extended all the way to New York and London. Selznick
established affiliate agency branches in each of these cities. Securing offices in
these cities allowed Selznick to stake out access to new clients. These affiliates
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, forming a distinct edge in gaining
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
selling stories, books, and plays to producers and publishers.
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Having worked as a
press agent and a talent scout for various studios in the 1920s, Hayward convinced
the company to strengthen their division—run by Hayward—aimed at selling their
properties to the studios. The company operated as 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 agency, an operation partially financed by Selznick and officially
affiliated with Selznick’s agency. Hayward had befriended Frank Joyce in New
York and had associated with the Selznick brothers and their friend Lewis
Milestone back in Hollywood in the 1920s. In addition to obtaining financial

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support from Myron, Hayward struck a deal with his former company. In exchange
for the thirty-three percent Hayward still held in American Play Company stock,
the company allowed Hayward to retain all of 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 now included
Edna Ferber, Dashiell Hammett, and George S. Kaufman, amongst 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 affiliated partners split commissions on their
shared clients, the arrangement bolstered Selznick’s client list and added
immeasurable prestige.
If Leland Hayward provided a stake on potential New York clients, then the
establishment of Selznick’s London office in 1933 proved equally crucial to the
company’s success over 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 could access them. Even in the case of
foreign stars who had already popped up on Hollywood’s radar, Selznick’s London
office developed closer relationships with the artists early in the process of their

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Hollywood negotiations—and Selznick’s name possessed an impressive power for
attracting talent.
Selznick set up his agency’s London branch by hiring a few British agents
who dealt regularly with the Joyce-Selznick Hollywood office and folded them into
the new satellite agency operation.
65
Representing clients in Britain, and, more
importantly, sending them to Hollywood for work, the British office stood under
the vigilant governance of the Hollywood branch. In fact, the British office
modeled itself directly on the American operation, following a precise map of its
every component, practices, and methodology (outlined by Selznick)—from the
procedure for calling clients, to the card index file (indicating all Agency
Contracts), to its accounting forms, the templates for agency transactions (calling
clients), calendars, and index cards. Selznick visited the office once or twice a year
and worked directly on complicated deals (tense negotiations, for example,
between clients and producers) and clients—actor Robert Donat, for example—by
sailing to London at key moments in the dealmaking. Selznick also sent his
Hollywood agents to London for extended periods, both to assist in running the
office and to monitor and maintain continuity with the American branch.
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 him dealing with
personnel problems in London. Like any manager, Selznick needed his employees
to comprehend and practice the agency’s business principles without requiring
constant surveillance; he wanted his employees to absorb the agency’s principles

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into their practices. In a memo discussing Selznick’s principles for contracting
talent, Selznick scolded Jack Votion, one of his American 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.”
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Selznick brought Harry Ham back to the Hollywood office, but Jack
Votion remained, despite, in the words of a British agent, his “somewhat excitable
temperament.” But dealing with such temperaments could not interfere with
dealing with and for clients, nor could micromanaging negotiations. This
bureaucratic vigilance over his own agents, both over the details of their work and
the quality of their performance, sprang from the desire to maintain a cohesive and
coherent manner, a “personality,” to the agency’s operations. Since the agency
offered personal service, Selznick had to ensure that this personal dimension
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 service while hampered by internal acrimony. Selznick was the agency’s
personality; only his strengths and skills defined the agency.
In order to ensure that his employees could handle the daily affairs and
negotiations of their clients, the company, when not advancing employees from the
lower ranks, frequently hired its agents from within the industry, usually from the
executive pool at the studios: Reeves Espy, for example, moved over from RKO

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and Sam Goldwyn Productions to the agency. Albert Kaufman moved 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
banked on the new employee’s familiarity with the production process, with studio
personnel, and with 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 editing of a film or negotiating certain additional
weeks of production.
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 (if 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 retained small parts
in films or wrote or directed some of the standard fare turned out by studios.
Selznick could only count 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

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already among the young agency’s one hundred clients; Berg-Allenberg was
growing with clients like Wallace Beery, Walter Huston, and Melvyn Douglas
amongst its forty or so clients; the Eddington-Vincent company counted Ralph
Bellamy, Dolores Del Rio, Marlene Dietrich, and Tallulah Bankhead amongst its
forty clients; Collier, Weber, and Todd retained only a few clients with studio
contracts and they 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 stables at the Hallam Cooley agency, but the company’s
eighty clients held a fair amount of studio contracts, even if, like the agency’s
“stars,” these were for secondary roles; with over one-hundred and fifty 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 early 1930s career proved fleeting and fading;
Morris’ other clients struggled for short-term studio contracts in supporting roles.
Another Broadway transplant, Leo Morrison, handled almost one hundred clients;
aside from Spencer Tracy, Leo Carillo, and Buster Keaton, Morrison’s other clients
worked with 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.
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Many of the smaller agencies made due by managing the careers of bit
players, thereby banking on the steady employment studios offered for minor

115
supporting roles. Once a studio tapped out its contracted talent in casting a
production’s starring roles (or made deals for loan-outs with other studios or sought
the small handful of leading freelance stars) and for some of the stronger
supporting roles—for a fair number of character players retained 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 on 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. Around twenty percent of the talent agencies handled at least
seventy percent of the day-players in the mid-1930s. But cornering this market
amounted to a monopoly of monotonous labor for these agencies with generally
minimal returns. The following chart graphs the quarterly performance of the
leading agencies that handled supporting players in the studio system.
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Table 1: Weekly Contracts and Agencies

AGENTS WEEKLY CONTRACTS FOR CLIENTS TOTAL JOBS
(FROM MARCH TO MAY, 1935)
Al Kingston 24 36
Hallam Cooley 19 22
Small-Landau 14 19
O’Reilly-Mann 12 16
Tom Conlon 13 14
Eddington-Vincent 11 17
Zeppo Marx 10 16
Beyer-MacArthur 10 12
Bernard & Meiklejohn 9 10
William Morris 7 13

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Al Kingston, Hallem 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 only scored a single job for sixteen
of his clients, while the remaining eight wrangled only about two or three jobs for
clients over this period. Similar patterns emerge with the other agencies. In other
words, in all of these cases, agencies expended labor, activity, and organizational
resources for each job but for minimal returns, since these weekly contracts usually
brought in commissions of $50 to $100 at best. 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 pedigree of Selznick’s list, that is, the sheer number of
leading players it contained, distinguishd the agency 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, amongst
others; 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).
69
While
agencies like William Morris and Leo Morrison held more or equal numbers in

117
their stables, these agents squandered time, as Selznick knew, on a great number of
clients for minimal returns.
The charisma of Selznick’s big stars only drew more clients to his agency.
For a Lawrence Olivier, for example, a rising star in England, landing
representation from 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
charisma 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.

Small Agents: Ivan Kahn and Edward Small

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 pioneer agents operating independently in
early Hollywood. In practice, these agents followed many similar tactics in tapping
social or business connections for both clients and potential employers, and their
overlapping strategies illustrate the reticent rules and principles governing industry
practice and the work of agents therein. The limitations of Kahn and Small,

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however, underline the distinctive merits of Selznick’s enterprise. No less driven
than Selznick, these two smaller agents, if not lacking the canny calculation
spiriting Selznick’s efforts, certainly lacked Selznick’s deep relationships in the
industry, networks developed prior to the establishment of Selznick’s 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 illustrates the
way knowledge and skills tested and accrued through the talent agency business
overlapped with other professional arenas in Hollywood. The easy transition these
two agents made to studio executive positions underscores the fluidity of the
network joining these divisions of the film business. Certain underlying principles
governed their negotiations: both agent and producer observed comparable values
in relation to saleable stories or commercially promising talent. Such information
capital—the “knowledge” of star appeal or hit films—surfaces both in the narrative
covering the early careers of Kahn and Small, their roles as agents, and their
eventual transition into work as studio executives.
Ivan Kahn stepped into the movie business through ancillary avenues in the
burgeoning Los Angeles film industry in the early 1920s.
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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 contracted
with the company to exploit his image on candy boxes and mechanical toys in
1915, Kahn stayed clear of the film business until after his return from World War

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I. Kahn then scurried through a number of entertainment-related jobs, trying his
hand at producing (with a series of short films entitled Kahn Kid Komedies), as a
script reader for Pathe studios, and as an assistant director at Universal studios,
until finally settling in at an extras booking agency. Booking extras, the players
required to fill out crowd scenes or stand in the background of the main action,
while providing steady income, proved far less lucrative than Kahn envisioned, so
he turned to representing writers and literary properties. In 1925, Kahn 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 rights to represent the writer’s work to
American studios for two years. Kahn came up short in these cases and others.
Writers, then, proved equally weak in commanding commissions for Kahn.
Based on these early returns, the agency business did not look promising.
However, Kahn envisioned his extras agency as a pragmatic platform from which
he could stake out early relationships with potential stars.
71
Lacking the connections
of a Myron Selznick, Kahn preyed upon the pool of hungry aspirants in the waves
of extras seeking 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 on 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

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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 with no luck. He then
turned to an independent producer—always much more approachable than the
established studios—who placed her in a small role in a film. Kahn parlayed
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.
72
Kahn replicated this
gameplan—namely, garnering studio interest in a client by gaining their attention
through an independent production—in 1927, when he noticed Luis Antonio
Damaso Alonso in a crowd of extras. Kahn quickly got this energetic actor a screen
test. Through Kahn’s encouragement, the actor renamed himself Gilbert Roland
(Alonso was a John Gilbert fan).
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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 to an acting role, and only after settling the deal did Roland
discover that the studio really wanted him to double on stunts for Roman Novarro.
Despite this mishap, Roland stayed with Kahn. To draw attention from the studios
to Roland, Kahn, as he frequently did, turned to an independent producer, B.P.
Schulberg, who signed Roland to a five-year option contract, 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. Only through some lucky mergers in Roland’s
case, Kahn now represented a star at a major studio.

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Just as Kahn plucked potential stars from the ready connections he
established with extras, so he trolled for other talents in the “invisible” lower ranks
of the industry. Kahn spotted Don Alvarado working as Valentino’s lighting stand-
in—a stand-in literally stood in place on a film set while the technical crew readied
a shot and calibrated the lighting, thereby alleviating the star from such tedious
labor.
74
Kahn convinced Alvarado that he could secure work for him as an actor.
Kahn made good on his promise and quickly placed Alvarado in a number of small
roles leading up to Raoul Walsh’s Fox production The Loves of Carmen (1927)
featuring Dolores del Rio, and that same year, signed him with Feature
Productions, an independent company working through United Artists.
Within a few years of setting up shop, Kahn 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 them as “one of Ivan Kahn’s latest
discoveries,” such was his growing reputation.
75
Kahn himself stirred up attention
to his new role, taking out small advertisements in the industry trades:
Ivan Kahn
Just Signed
Don Alvarado
Long Term Contract
United Artists
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By August of 1927, the prominent film industry journalist Louis Jacobs 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

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obscurity.”
77
The article noted that Kahn did not seek to manage established talent,
but instead “elected to seek in the highways and byways for possible talent of an
unusual order.” Of course, Kahn’s station 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” 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.” Kahn’s demystifying perspective on the myth of discovery showed a cogent
analysis of the network of “scouts” in all of their various disguises and how they all
operated together in a kind of loose correspondence, sharing values about the
proper look of a star, the proper diction, the proper balance of personal
idiosyncrasies. 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 aspiring for work—and exploited this point with some savvy.
Kahn showed equal modesty even when describing his greatest discovery:
Lew Ayres, whom Kahn found 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

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actor.”
78
Kahn took Ayres to one of his few studio connections: an executive at
Pathe, Kahn’s old employer. Pathe 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 Laemmle’s
Universal had just purchased the rights to the novel All Quiet on the Western Front,
a project he tied to Ayres’ talents in selling the actor to the studio. Responding to
Kahn’s pitch, Junior set up an interview between Ayres and the film’s dialogue
director, who pegged Ayres for the leading role.
79

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.”
80
He
brought in Jonathan Smith as an assistant agent and Harry Green as a partner who
took in four-and-a-half 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 studio Casting Director positions. Using the agency, even a
minor one, as a springboard to a production position demonstrates the fluid
networking that had been established between studios and agencies by this time.
Having established his reputation, however minor, Kahn firmed a spot for
himself in the industry’s general approach to transactions for talent. In this regard,

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studio executives “worked” for Kahn as well. Thus, a studio executive brought
Olivia de Havilland to Kahn while she appeared in a small part in Max Reinhardt’s
A Midsummer’s Night Dream at the Hollywood Bowl. The executive asked Kahn to
represent de Havilland, then only a minor actress, as a measure of appearing fair in
negotiations with Warner Bros., who wanted her for the film version of the play
and for a long-term contract.
81
Kahn’s role in these negotiations illustrated the
synergy that developed between agents and studio executives, as well as, by 1935,
the studio acceptance of the role of agents, even minor ones, in everyday industry
operations.
Yet de Havilland’s growing success also illustrated the limitations of
Kahn’s agency. By 1934, Kahn’s agency commissions brought in a yearly total of
barely over $30,000.
82
Commissions on most of his clients for the year averaged
around the mid-three figures, some only in two figures, with the bulk of these
commissions shouldered by one client: Lew Ayres, whose healthy Universal
contract brought in $15,000 a year in agency commissions. According to agency
records, Joe E. Brown, a relative star at Warner Bros, brought in only $1700 in
commissions between March 1934 and August 1935.
83
In other words, the agency’s
yearly income amounted to less than one-fifth—to be conservative—of what
Myron Selznick and Charlie Feldman paid themselves and less than some field men
(who worked for salary) made in Selznick’s office.
For all of this activity, the constant surveillance of small theaters and extras,
as well as the modest office expansion, by the mid-1930s, Kahn continued to

125
struggle. This made his clients ripe for raiding, a prospect, in fact, that the small
agency seemed to invite. Thus, Leland Hayward purchased de Havilland’s contract
from Kahn only a year after Kahn signed her to a seven-year contract in 1936,
paying Kahn $9500 for her contract, a large sum for an agency averaging thirty to
forty thousand a year.
84
Hayward’s proposal offered immediate returns for the
agency that outweighed the gamble inherent in relying on future commissions. In
the meantime, Hayward earned roughly over $40,000 in commissions from de
Havilland for the six years she would otherwise have paid Kahn.
85

Kahn followed the same path with de Havilland’s sister, Joan. Kahn,
through his modest theater connections, landed her in a small theater production
and Kahn and his associate Harry Green convinced Jesse Lasky to see the play.
Lasky signed her to his independent production company set-up at Paramount for
$150 a week in March 1936.
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Lasky promptly sold her contract to RKO, with
Kahn just as quickly selling her 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 over ten years of dealing, both 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 needs of his new studio position, composed of the same job
skills—possessing values and principles for assessing talent—and the same

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connections—stage managers, theater producers, managers and other agents.
According to surviving records, Kahn even brought some of the 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, very much in
line with his earlier stratagems 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 records.
Of course, Kahn still maintained close ties with agents in his new position.
Kahn’s notes (surviving in studio files) reveal that he consistently contacted agents
after coming across new talent, for example, as 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 on your part.”
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The goal
was not to beat agents to signing talent. No client would sign a studio contract
without an agent. Rather, studios scouted talent in competition with other studios;
agents could be allies in this regard. This trade of favors, information, tips, and
talent strengthened the fluid ties between studio executives and agents.
Take the case of Kahn’s famous discovery of Linda Darnell; his main rivals
came from other studios and he rewarded an agent with his finding. Kahn
discovered Darnell while scouting in Texas. Scouting trips through major states

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was a common industry practice. An industry report for 1937 disclosed that the
major studios invested approximately $5 million as a whole in their hunt for new
talent, canvassing the country by combing university campuses, local talent
contests, and little theaters.
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After auditioning for Kahn on his scouting trip
through Texas, Darnell, identified as a promising talent by Kahn, 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 ran from $750 to $2000 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.
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Darnell earned such
consideration, traveling to Fox for a screen test that year. Darnell continued to
correspond and consult with Kahn as she measured her next moves, seeking his
advice, for example, on whether or not to try out for an RKO sponsored amateur
contest. He told her to go ahead, even though upon qualifying as a finalist, RKO
promised to offer her a studio contract. Spurred by the competition, Kahn
convinced Fox to offer Darnell a contract that she signed in April 1939. He warned
RKO that the studio could not take credit for Darnell’s discovery since Fox sent
their screen test of Darnell to RKO when they were making their talent search for
this program.
Who negotiated Linda Darnell’s contract with Fox? Jonathan Smith, Kahn’s
former partner at his agency.
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When Kahn joined Fox, Smith took over the agency,
but shifted to financial management. Thus, Kahn tipped Smith off about his

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discovery and linked the promising star to his former business partner. No shady
dealings here; simply the exchange value of social connections. Once Darnell
signed with the studio a slew of star handlers took over—make-up specialists;
voice-coaches; acting teachers—a network of advisors to whom agents surely
belong. As a studio executive exchanging tips and favors with this syndicate of
agents and scouts, Kahn acted no differently than his peers at other studios, than
those forming special relationships with Myron Selznick, Charles K. Feldman, and
any number of other agents. The Hollywood system thrived on this web of
managers and advisors outside of the studio walls. The fluid transition Kahn made
from agent to studio scout underscores the shared skills and values informing this
diffused network.
Like Kahn, Edward Small’s path to becoming a talent agent took him
through a number of different positions on the periphery of the industry, lending
him important, if minor, social 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
quickly learned, in the face of failure, to shift his talents to work behind-the-scenes
and off-stage.
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He started work as an office assistant for a vaudeville booking
agency in 1908 for Hal Franklyn, who had previously worked in the insurance
business. Edward’s brother, Morris, who had worked at Franklyn’s insurance
business and shifted to the booking agency, 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

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the East Coast, the partnership of Klaw and Erlanger and that of Lee and J.J.
Schubert, monopolized the larger eastern theaters. These companies owned theaters
and held unbreakable connections to theater circuits—strings of theaters in
particular regions under the same ownership—across the east coast. Since these
larger booking agencies essentially ignored the smaller theaters, this opened an
arena for booking agencies like Franklyn’s.
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, respectively, the booking agent learned whether or not
their clients’ acts in particular theaters would work out for the week or weekend
and whether or not new openings occurred with cancelled acts. Acts that struck out
with crowds and theater managers met with immediate cancellation, initiating a
search for a new act, both amongst the agency’s own clients and with possible
newcomers, a search, of course, always conducted in competition with other
booking agents. In addition to the activity entailed in scheduling their clients’ acts,
the booking agent sought out new talent and practically fought off hopeful
aspirants. The larger booking agencies held connections to theater circuits that
added a stronger sense of design to their activity. They could book an act with a
theatrical chain and therefore guarantee a week or even months of bookings as the
acts moved from theater to theater along those owned by the circuit. In fact, within

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another year, Small 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.”
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Agents worked with theatrical booking agencies in order to simplify and streamline
bookings. If a vaudeville act, for example, finished its bookings in out-of-town
theaters, it relied on its agent to keep it working, preferably somewhere in the same
general area to save travel expenses. In establishing his new endeavor, Small relied
on the connections he developed with clients in his capacity as a theatrical booking
agent. Occupying an office in the same building, Small also developed important
connections with Loew’s Vaudeville Circuit, 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 around twenty theaters, with Joe Schenck in charge of booking their
acts. Struggling to start his agency, Small could not resist Schenck’s offer to book
acts on the New England circuit, a theatrical chain under Keith-Albee’s
stranglehold, and therefore put his booking agency plans on hold for a few years.
When he returned to booking agency in New York in the early 1910s, Small
altered the scope of his operation. His new plan involved tapping into the growing

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amount of work for actors in film. With all of the New York film studios located
outside of the city, Small determined that an employment agency would cut down
on the expenses incurred searching for work and for talent on both ends. But Small
lacked the kinds of powerful social connections to moguls and executives that
Selznick commanded so the studios locked him out, until Joe Schenck got into the
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.”
93
Under this plan, Small printed a casting guide categorizing the various
actors: “the girl-next-door, the vamp, the homebody wife, the sophisticate, …the
rugged outdoor he-man, villains, fathers, bank-presidents.” Shifting his business to
the representation of actors involved re-educating himself, since Small now had to
consider factors that rarely came into play in his days as a vaudeville agent, skills
like acting, posture, and new information like the functions of certain roles in
dramatic narratives and staging. Yet for all of the enterprising efforts seen in his
career shift, Small still ran his company more as “a money-and-time-saver for
studios,” as evinced in the catalog of actors, than as something akin to a talent
agent. The guide followed the format of a department store or mail-order catalog,

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categorizing its products for a streamlined marketing and shopping experience. It
betrays a rather passive approach to sales, since Small operated his business more
as a supplier or “stocker” for studios than as an active hustling manager and advisor
to talent.
Small became something of the modern agent—that is, the career counselor,
the negotiator, the hustler, the agent that would surface most powerfully in the late
1920s—when he developed an entirely new philosophical approach to his business
in 1916. Small described this new angle quite simply: “Personality is a
commodity.” The idea allegedly came to him when he was looking at a chewing
gum ad; Small 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.
94

Small’s visionary moment here squares with the new business philosophy
sweeping the nation at this time, and with agent’s practices as they developed in the
late 1920s. In the 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 secularized modern way of living. Using advertising as a kind of
inspiration, you could sell yourself by reducing yourself to a commodity or an

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essential idea or personality. You could look at your career and its narrative of
climbing and achieving success as a way of selling yourself. In this vein, all sorts of
how-to books proffered ways of selling yourself and remolding 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.
95
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. 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 directors Frank
Lloyd, John Stahl, and Henry King, or performers like Norma 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 advisors for decisions regarding proper roles or proper projects,
evaluating literary properties as vehicles, or measuring business relationships with
producers in terms of an overall career plan. “Lawyers,” Small told clients, “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 declared on its cover: “Personality: A
Commodity.”
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Small’s eureka claim of novelty notwithstanding, the phrase, while

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no esoteric equation to other agents or fans, succinctly defined the function of the
star. For agents brokered the exchange value of these commodities, 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 in the fashion noted above—and outlined the various departments:
business management for stars, artists, directors, and technicians; publicity; the
literary department as a connecting link between authors and producers.
To bring recognition of new performers to producers, as well as remind the
industry of his clients’ skills, Small also produced a bi-monthly publication called
The Link, a title that symbolically established the agency as a conduit between
clients and producers.
97
The publication showed photographs of the clients,
provided information on their films, their past credits and items about their 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 bi-monthly brochure, with its short articles and captions on the
clients’ works and lives, resonated more with star magazines and the promotional
prose of the talent agent’s sales pitch. Now Small gave his clients the hard sell
beyond merely putting them on display.
Small’s business expanded to include a separate division booking extras and
a Hollywood office in the early 1920s, 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 dwindled in the

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early 1930s after the introduction of sound shorts replaced most live performances.
Still, while Small’s agency showed 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 onto
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 of his
time to production, starting with his first film there, I Cover the Waterfront. Small
turned over the agency to his brother, who merged shortly thereafter with Arthur
Landau’s agency. With the addition of Landau, the Small agency grew in size.
More importantly, Landau brought Jean Harlow and Lionel Barrymore to the
company. But the agency suffered after Harlow’s death. By the early 1940s, both
Morris Small and Arthur Landau had become production executives.
Lacking major stars in on their rosters, these small agents had to fight for
attention from the studios. Both Kahn and Small complained that the major studios
refused to meet with them. Why would a studio executive squander time listening
to a pitch from Kahn or Small? 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

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availability of George Cukor or William Powell in a single meeting. Numerous
memos in Selznick’s files outlining discussion points for meetings with studio
executives or producers list talent from all of the agency’s divisions, often up to
twenty or thirty clients.

Contracting Agency
“The talents belong to the operation long before
they are put on show; otherwise they would not
conform so eagerly.” – Adorno & Horkheimer

Of Edward 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 the philosophy guiding Small’s approach to his clients:
“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 motion picture, Bow
struggled through some small parts and cheap productions. But her image caught
the attention of independent producer B.P. Schulberg, whom Edward Small
befriended when the former worked as a publicity man with the Zukor-Lasky
combine.
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Initially, Schulberg used Bow mainly as a loan-out, renting her to other
studios for $500 a week, earning him $300 above the weekly salary he paid the
actress. In fact, in 1924 all eight of her films came from other studios. When
Schulberg sold his company and himself to Paramount, where he eventually
became head of production. Bow continued work under Paramount’s larger

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operations in films with bigger budgets, such as 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 concernced. 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.”
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Indeed, Paramount disposed of Bow in fifteen pictures that year. Despite
this almost reckless deployment of their 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. With its flimsy plot and diaphanous
dialogue, It captured the allure of Bow’s spontaneity and sexuality; it also
resonated with the gossip that circulated around 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 saleable “Personality,” then It stands out
as a perfect and typical star vehicle. All stars got treated to the narrative build-up,
the close-ups, the central attention doled out on 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 elusive yet captivating trait defining

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stand-out personalities. From Clara Bow as Bette the toiling, humble shop girl,
albeit sparkling with “It,” to Clara Bow as “Clara Bow,” all dolled up singing and
strumming a ukulele for a band of revelers on a yacht, “positively top-heavy with
‘IT’” (as the title-card points out), over and over again the film creates moments for
Bow to become an “image,” as if on a poster or magazine cover, a “star:” posing
languorously in the sun or lying supine 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.
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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 claimed to represent Clara Bow: Maxine
Alton and Edward Small. Small’s claim remains questionable since it comes from
his unpublished memoirs, even though Bow worked with Badger and Schulberg,
two significant contacts in Small’s enterprises. Moreover, Small listed Clara Bow
in his agency pamphlet, even while he qualified it in the following way:
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.
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Alton’s claim comes from a fanzine article—equally dubious—from the time
period. According to Alton, she acted as Bow’s emissary on the actress’s first trip
to California.
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Alton’s lack of prowess as Bow’s agent may stem from the fact

139
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.
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That Bow’s agent remains a question tells us something about the status
of agents at this historical moment; it confirms the fact that agents were not yet
fully embedded in this business culture. In this way, this question of historical
record tells us something about this historical moment; it reveals agents’ lack of
definition within the industry in the late 1920s, before agents secured a stronger
role in the general habits of Hollywood business practices and, indeed, before
Myron Selznick articulated the role of the agent in his own notorious negotiations.
If the historical record fails to clarify who can rightfully lay claim as Bow’s
agent, by 1926, one point remains clear: no agent worked on behalf of Bow 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 relished in this trickery, as he
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 $1500 a week for 1928. Even the
studio attorneys joined in the mockery of the starlet: “Don’t let the position of
Clara’s signature annoy you [Clara had not signed the document on the designated
“dotted line”]. The remarkable thing is that she did not sign on the back or at the
bottom.”
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Such scorn escaped the conspiratorial corridors of cinema’s power
centers for Paramount’s exploitation of Bow remained an open secret, commented
on by industry journalists. Even the New York Times noted that Bow’s $1500

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weekly salary remained out of proportion with the success of her films, especially
in comparison to stars earning three or four times that amount.
105

How Paramount treated Bow as a professional and how they managed her
career underscores, by contrast, the significance of Selznick’s strategic innovations
and interventions as an agent. All of the significant principles that Selznick outlined
in a memo to his staff “IMPORTANT POINTS TO WATCH FOR IN STUDIO
CONTRACTS” remain absent from Bow’s contracts as well as from her
negotiations with Paramount.
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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 approval

Selznick insisted that his agents negotiate for the removal of the lending clause—
which granted studios the privilege to “loan” their contracted talent to other studios
for a profit. At the very least, Selznick frequently negotiated stipulations wherein
his clients split the earnings on loan-outs with their employers. Furthermore,
Selznick instructed his agents to take out the morality clause in contracts—or, at
least, greatly limit its impact.
Selznick’s expansion of the negotiable points in studio contracts redefined
the parameters of the commodified talent as well as the service provided by—and
now, given these new definitions of the agent’s role, necessitated by—the role of

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the agent. Even headstrong, otherwise savvy stars like Bow failed to gain ground in
bargaining for special provisions or details on their contracts in the late 1920s, a
failure that only accentuates the innovative approach to contracts outlined in
Selznick’s principles.
Unlike the case of Clara Bow, who held no power over determining which
roles best suited her talent and her ambition, Ruth Chatteron’s contract with Warner
Bros insisted on stories mutually agreed upon by the actress and the studio and
demanded that only leading directors would work with the star—clauses, in fact,
that Selznick inserted in Powell’s contract as well. While Bow suffered through
dozens of films that failed to fully develop her talents or diminished her talent
through overexposure and weak production values and somehow survived,
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 in the case
of Clara Bow, an increase in the quantity 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 artistic quality of productions. As a counter-strategy designed to protect the
commodity value of their clients, Selznick and other agents like Charles Feldman

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frequently built certain minimal production budgets into contracts for their clients.
Furthermore, insisting on pricier directors—when possible, insisting on a client’s
right to select directors or approve other cast members—insured a degree of quality
to the productions as well. A narrow focus on salary—and even this aspect got lost
in the case of Clara Bow—missed these important dimensions. Selznick not only
defined the role of the agent in these interactions, he also defined and shaped the
kind of discourse that created and defined artists in this industry.
In the case of William Powell—a fair and apt comparison, after all, since he
worked under the same roof as Clara Bow at Paramount in 1930—Selznick stayed
alert to Powell’s roles and his potential. Powell had graduated from the American
Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, and this training evinced itself in
Powell’s poise, his precise enunciation, and his controlled even dignified
countenance. Yet since 1925, when he first signed with the studio, Paramount cast
Powell in around eight films a year, mainly in villainous roles. When he first
approached Powell, Selznick vowed to negotiate for better roles and more control
over material in addition to the promised scandalous salary demands. With his
brother David in a major executive position at Paramount, Myron landed Powell in
a number of leading heroic roles in the late 1920s. Powell’s theatrical training
proved particularly effective in gaining strong roles when the studio made the
transition to sound in 1929. Moreover, David worked with screenwriters to tailor
characters for Powell’s persona. 1930’s Street of Chance and For the Defense
created strong roles for Powell, ones that contributed to each film’s box-office

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success and the actor’s rising popularity. In fact, Myron’s client John Cromwell
directed the two films, which co-starred client Kay Francis, with the latter film co-
written by two of Selznick’s leading writer clients Jules Furthman and Oliver
Garrett. That same year Photoplay magazine ranked Powell at the top of popular
stars. Aggressively pushing for key roles and greater creative control over projects
for clients paid off by increasing their bargaining power. In this case, the
bargaining allowed Powell to break off from Paramount and effectively establish
new terms for his future contracts. While he struggled in his two years at Warner
Bros—a period marked by the studio’s general struggles across the board as a result
of the lingering Depression—Powell brought these contract terms—and his
salary—to MGM in 1934 where he scored two hits in Manhattan Melodrama and
The Thin Man, setting up a string of successful films from there on. Bow’s
misdirection accentuates the canny calculation and vigilant guidance behind
Powell’s ascension. And Powell’s accomplishment once again reveals the
significant role social networks played in buoying and even defining the power of a
successful agent—for who produced Powell’s two 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 success gained notoriety
for Selznick’s agency and this attention benefited the agency in other ways.
Powell’s success illustrates how serving certain clients could aid in drawing new
clients to the agency. The promising young actress Carole Lombard, Powell’s wife,
was so impressed with her husband’s deals that she too signed with Selznick’s

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agency. In other words, groundbreaking deals gained more than increased salaries
or greater autonomy for clients; these deals generated charisma and served to draw
in new clients to the agency.
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 commodities. In the case of William Powell, Selznick established
the conditions that allowed for Powell’s creative evolution. Balancing culture over
commerce in this arena did not necessitate the abandonment of economic motives;
in fact, this choice remains economically driven, if only at a more insidious level.
Pressing for greater control over their careers on behalf of his clients made them all
the more beholden to Selznick as an agent. Including such items as story approval
or directors’ rights to edit their productions on the deal-making agenda served to
define the role and necessity of the agent in these transactions. While the NRA
Code, the Academy Code, or the later talent guild franchise agreements
discursively defined the agent’s function in the film industry, through his practice
Selznick laid out the architectural foundations for the construction of Hollywood
agents, and with each addition this construction grew more and more complex and
solid. Born out of aggressions, fighting to maintain their position in the industry,
organizing talent in opposition to the producers, aiding the battles of the writers,
directors, and actors in the formation of their guilds, Selznick and other agents now
could see themselves as integral components of the industry. While Selznick

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granted artists a taste of control over their own careers and their participation in the
production practice, he left no doubt as to who granted this freedom, thereby
assuring and even creating the need for his business activity. The increasing artistic
control seen in Powell’s contract (and Hepburn’s, Cukor’s, Chatterton’s and others)
paved the way for the kinds of deals Selznick would strike in the later 1930s. But
more importantly these deals imprecated agents in a complex web of deal points
and negotiations, bulked up contracts whose dense network of allusions and tangled
prose called in the army of agents to decipher, amend, and tie up further.
Increasing the negotiable points on studio contracts expanded the power of
artists and simultaneously hardened the necessary role of the agent in negotiations.
Honing in on new contract points created an abracadabra jargon and discourse only
decipherable by the conjuring acts of agents. Agents prided themselves as
possessors of this arcane knowledge to translate contracts, to read into the hidden
meaning, to see new meanings. Agents could now bill their skill at decoding the
secret language of contracts and the new power in negotiations as a selling point.
Certainly, Selznick’s reputation grew in this fashion, for clients and industry press
portrayed his prowess in this regard.
For all of Selznick’s oppositional stances in the press, his depiction as an
unruly force in the trades (for example, with the Warner Bros. “raid”), and his
pugnacious personality, Selznick achieved this charisma—his reputation and
personality—from within the system. He gained a distinction by working with,
against, or twisting certain aspects of the system, inserting himself into the

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bargaining between talent and studios, and organizing a productive system within
his agency to sustain the regularity and efficiency of such negotiations and
transactions. Through such a bureaucratic system, Selznick’s status grew and the
studio system gained from this charisma as well. Studio executives banked on
Selznick’s knowledge and the prestige of his agency as a confident, reputable
thoroughfare for talent. As these executives grew more assured of Selznick’s
talents and especially the strength of the agency’s client list, they established
normal, habitual relations with Selznick. In other words, Selznick’s charisma
developed a certain trust, which of course fed the charisma: the special connections
Selznick retained with important producers and studio executives made his agency
more attractive to potential clients.
Selznick’s agency operations demonstrated the relationship between
personality and the organized, continuous function of studio system. For one thing,
Selznick’s charisma 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. He
constructed an agency bureaucracy, a managerial system of information exchange,
relationships, and surveillance built around steady relations between his field
agents and assigned studio executives that mirrored and buttressed his own
important connections. Maintaining charisma required Selznick’s continual

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accretion of these steady relationships and led to and reinforced his office structure
and bureaucracy.
A second but no less important relationship between Selznick’s charismatic
power (true more or less for any number of his competitors) sprang from
innovations in the studio system in the early 1930s. The rise of talent agents, minor
and major, systematic developments that Selznick himself contributed to and
harnessed in no small way, increased Selznick’s power through the conspicuous
deals he struck. In other words, these systemic innovations, the ways agents were
gradually noticed, organized, and ultimately validated in the system wide network
of Hollywood (the Academy investigation; the NRA hearings; the fomenting talent
guilds) gave rise to a role for Selznick to magnify and focus the symbolic value of
his personality. In this way, the regularity, 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 personalities, of charisma,
of “agency” in the system.
In March, 1935, Frank Joyce died after a long illness. This left the agency
solely under the command of Myron Selznick, its already notorious and
conspicuous leader. If his persona drew attention to the agency and gave it
definition, then the business would now function much more under the spell and
whims of his personality. While this more focused leadership at the same time left
the business vulnerable to the exigencies of Selznick’s alcoholism and potentially
unstable personality, its leader retained a powerful reputation in 1935. That same

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year rumors hit the industry trade papers that Myron Selznick was negotiating to
buy out Universal Studios.
107
For a number of 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 receivership and reorganization. For unknown reasons, these
plans never panned out. But Selznick’s serious position in these negotiations, and
the sober reporting on the plans in the industry trade press, offer testimony to the
strength of his structural position in the industry at this time. Prospective mogul or
leading talent agent, Myron Selznick was a major player.

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Chapter Three
The Contract Industry:
Charles Feldman and the Competition

“The most powerful of the culture agencies, who work harmoniously with
others of their kind as only managers do, whether they come from the ready-to-wear
trade or college, have long since recognized and rationalized the objective mind.”
-- Adorno & Horkheimer, “The Culture Industry”

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, both in his business dealings and his
social engagements in the world of Hollywood; his manner served him well. In a
racket 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

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new roles for them, doting on their individual performances, stitching screenplays
to embroider their particular skills, tactically weaving them into packages with
other clients, or by generating proper recognition and attention for their roles 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 of
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, but developing persuasive compromises or
pinpointing holes in their positions that worked to the advantage of his clients
108
.
Unlike Myron Selznick’s raucous road to riches, Charles Feldman’s career
reveals a contented management of the agent’s role in the Hollywood marketplace.
While the jaundiced Selznick seemed frustrated over the embattled role of the
agent, Feldman displayed a cool and integrated approach to his business. Feldman
accepted his role as an outsider, enjoying 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 Cezannes). Where these two rivals sprang from partly explains their
differing constitutions and levels of contentment as agents. As a former lawyer,
Feldman already worked on the margins of the creative forces of production,
whereas Selznick emerged as an agent after a record of failure in the world of
production. Far from viewing the agent as some commercial crusader pillaging the

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production centers of Hollywood, Feldman held long-time friendships with Darryl
Zanuck—later representing the producer when he left his position as head of Fox
studios and became an independent—Sam Goldwyn, and Jack Warner, amongst
others, socializing regularly with these studio heads, and frequently vacationing
with them. 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 a certain distance from the
core of power, a position Selznick refused to accept, but one Feldman adapted to
with a certain calculated grace, parlaying his social connections into long lasting
and steady success. Indeed, when the agents’ guild initiated negotiations with the
talent guilds in 1937, they nominated Feldman as their leader, only five years after
he had embarked upon his career. If Feldman graciously declined, it was because
by then he was far too busy with his successful agency, running almost neck and
neck with Selznick’s business.
109
In this five-year period, Feldman, a keen legal and
analytical mind, carved out new deal strategies and paradigms that set competitive
milestones for other agents. From the start, Feldman promoted a limited notion of
freelancing through juggling nonexclusive contracts, signing clients to short
contracts—two film deals or two to three year studio terms—that simultaneously
allowed them to work at other studios. No doubt harnessing his legal training,
Feldman proved a probing reader of contracts and a nuanced writer of inventive
provisions therein. This agent understood that contracts represented a process and a

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dialogue, not a final step, providing a platform for all parties to parse out terms and
conditions favorable to both sides. In Feldman’s hands, contracts became both
more flexible and more rigorous, depending on his goals and the interests of his
clients. 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 alleged adherence to the ironclad option contract. In light of
other agents’ withering relationship to studios and to the option contract, Feldman’s
achievements remain all the more exceptional.

Setting Up Shop
Feldman literally grew up side-by-side with the film industry’s emergence
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’s movie studios began sprouting. After a year at the
University of Michigan in 1921, Feldman transferred to UCLA, where he graduated
in 1925 before heading straight across town to USC law school. During summer
vacations, Feldman worked as an assistant or stagehand at Fox studios 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 the following year. His
early clients consisted almost exclusively of actors, writers, and directors working
in the film industry. Within a few short years, after setting up his law office in the

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Taft Building on the corner of Hollywood and Vine, already a business center for
the growing film industry, Feldman drew in clients such as Edward G. Robinson,
James Cagney, Ray Milland, Joe E. Brown, James Flood, Busby Berkeley, Samson
Raphaelson, and Spencer Tracy.
110

Feldman repeated the storied tale of his origins as an agent often: after
advising a client on the wording of certain conditions written into a contract,
Feldman charged his fee and tabulated a cool $5000 for his services; but, with the
contracts laying there before him, all of the numbers exposed in plain sight and
plain math, Feldman realized that the agent involved in the same deal made out
with a ten percent commission amounting, over the contract’s duration, to
$100,000.
111

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,
many of the skills called upon in his legal practice readily translated to the life of
an agent: the capacity to handle arguments, to jockey different positions, to
persuade and negotiate, to determine principles and insist on their adherence, to
extrapolate positions from earlier precedents. Most agents lacked the training
commanded by Feldman and his skills constituted a competitive advantage. But
beyond his legal skills, Feldman needed to prove that he knew the world of film
and, in this regard, generate a trust with talent, and equally, with the studios.

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Feldman set up shop as an agent in June of 1932. Having accrued a strong
social standing and business reputation in the Hollywood community, Feldman still
needed to draw 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, actor Gregory Ratoff, Feldman met Felix Young,
who produced a number of projects for Feldman’s other legal clients, such as
director—and first official agency client—David Burton, whose Let’s Fall in Love,
for example, starred clients Ratoff and Ann Sothern. Young introduced Feldman to
Adeline Schulberg (the wife of Paramount studio head B.P. Schulberg) whose
talent agency already represented a number of important clients, such as Joan and
Richard Bennett.
112
Feldman convinced Schulberg to join him in his new enterprise.
Her name added some glamour to the agency and suggested close ties to
Hollywood’s power elite. In fact, in their coverage of the new business venture,
Variety dryly identified Feldman’s partner as “Ad (Mrs. B.P.) Schulberg.” The
same article referred to 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.”
113
While such pithy writing chimes in with the
truth that every social event in Hollywood worked simultaneously as a business
network, only a few of Selznick’s clients made the leap.

155
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.
114
Still, the Schulberg-Feldman agency continued to grow and draw in
new clients, many from Feldman’s law practice. Legal client and actor Gregory
Ratoff, for example, readily volunteered to sign Feldman on as his agent. The
transfer plunged Feldman into negotiations between Ratoff and Gaumont’s British
film production company. Ratoff expressed no interest in working in Britain; but he
suspected that turning the offer down might harm Feldman’s reputation as a new
agent, so he convinced Feldman to simply make Ratoff’s term impossibly high.
Earning $1750 a week at the time, Ratoff encouraged Feldman to ask for $5000 a
week, round-trip transportation, and Gaumont’s coverage of the taxes on Ratoff’s
salary. Gaumont agreed.
115

By February of 1933, the agency established a client list of about twenty
actresses, twenty actors, fifteen directors and thirty writers, and a small staff of
minor agents working under the partners. By 1934, within two years of the
founding of the agency, the Feldman-Schulberg agency represented Claudette
Colbert, Sylvia Sidney, Irene Dunne, Charles Boyer, directors Michael Curtiz,
Anatole Litvak, and Mitchell Leisen, and writers Sidney Buchman, and Anita Loos,
amongst other powerful players.
116
Ann Sothern left Ivan Kahn to sign with
Feldman. Ruth Chatterton scotched the Myron Selznick agency to go with

156
Feldman’s operation, and Charles Boyer, newly arrived from France, after
interviewing rival agents Nat Goldstone, Arthur Landau, Frank Orsatti, and Sam
Morrison, decided to employ Feldman as a representative, ignoring the advice of
Adolphe Menjou who encouraged his friend to sign with Selznick.
117
All of these
moves confirmed Feldman’s growing reputation.
Indeed, no other agency at the time met with such rapid success. Following
Myron Selznick’s notorious triumphs in the field, a number of industry figures
attempted to establish agency businesses in the early 1930s, but many failed to
survive, let alone approach the stature of Selznick.
118
Feldman’s agency quickly
offered a close rival to Myron Selznick, even while the two agents maintained a
collegial relationship, often working on deals together when their clients sought
each other out for projects.
119
Feldman retained a strong respect as well for Leland
Hayward, as the two frequently socialized together 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.
These connections ran deep. When Feldman married Jean Howard (a
Ziegfeld showgirl contracted in minor roles at MGM) in early 1934, producer
Walter Wanger stood as the agent’s best man.
120
When Wanger left MGM that year
to set himself up as a semi-independent producer, Feldman represented him. 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

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client 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 and Her Master’s Voice; Walter Pidgeon starred in Big Brown
Eyes, to name just a few projects from the agent and producer’s long relationship.
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 industry-cachet for Feldman’s enterprise. But she had poor
work habits, brought in very 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.
121
For example, a rival agency purchased Sylvia Sidney’s
contract for $25,000, giving her new representatives the sole rights to ten percent of
her future earnings under the terms of the contract.
122
Feldman brought in Ralph
Blum, one of his former law associates, as a partner, giving Blum a strong stake in
the firm—now renamed the Feldman-Blum Agency—for the cost of a little over
$100,000. MGM’s Louis B. Mayer, on the executive board of the Bank of America,
co-signed the loan Blum took out to purchase his stake in the agency, an act that
certainly signaled the growing status of agents within the industry.
123
Mayer’s role
in this transaction remained all the more noteworthy since rumor had it that the
mogul, lusting after Jean Howard, banished Feldman from the lot after the agent
married the starlet.

158
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 measures the level of confidence Feldman had attained with
his position in the business at this time. Another sign was the way he threw money
around during this deal. By 1935, Feldman paid himself a weekly salary of $1100,
a sum deducted from the office expenses before calculating the annual profit, of
which Feldman took fifty percent; therefore, his annual salary stood closer to
$100,000 at this time, a sum surpassing that of many studio executives and closing
in on Myron Selznick’s annual take. Blum’s loan from Bank of America (the one
signed by Louis B. Mayer) covered the remaining amount needed to buy-out Ad
Schulberg’s stock in the company, and gave Blum a 25% share in the agency’s net
profits (in addition to a $400 weekly salary). Under Feldman and Blum worked
three executive agents: Jack Gordean, who 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.
124
A small platoon of field agents—generally from four to six—and a
gaggle of secretaries completed the office staff. As with Selznick’s agency,
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 between select studio executives, producers, and clients.
125
But the new
corporate papers clearly stated that Feldman shall “have complete charge of the

159
entire business and business affairs of the corporation.”
126
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 the personality of Feldman—his charisma, his energy, and
his oversight. This gave the organization definition, a face, a personality, and this
helped to sell the personal services that attracted clients; but it also meant that
actions would progress, stand still, or fall based on Feldman’s decisions alone.
Case in point. Feldman protected his interests in the new partnership by
designating a stronger stake in a number of the clients he personally brought to the
business, granting himself 50% of the money received before any participation by
the corporation in the following list of clients:
Simone Simon Charles Kaufman
Ann Southern Joseph Kessell
Anatole Litvak Jacques Thery
Rouben Mamoulian Edward Buzzell
Rex O’Malley George Stevens
William Brady Mark Sandrich
Roland Drew Al Werker
Walter Pidgeon Max Steiner
Cesar Romero Charles Kenyon
Walter Slezak Horace McCoy
Jed Harris David Vivian

In their negotiations, Feldman designated a similar list of clients to Blum, though
with none coming close to the promise of some of Feldman’s exclusive clients, like
Walter Pidgeon, Rouben Mamoulian, or Anatole Litvak.
127
For almost the entirety
of 1935, the two partners debated over their rights to certain clients and the
percentages related to their respective client lists—suggesting at various stages a

160
75/25 % split or one by thirds, and amply arguing for the merits of each suggestion.
Almost one year after entering the merger, Feldman and Blum continued to
squander time debating petty issues over the rights to Walter Pidgeon, whom
Feldman claimed to have signed through his associate Charles Morrison.
Frustrated, Feldman dictated a letter, clearly covering his legal tracks, 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-1/3
rd
deal would be final and
for all time.
128

Feldman’s memo goes on and on rehearsing the various scenarios, alluded to
above, for splitting commissions.
These debates between Feldman and Blum added a level of sluggishness to
the company’s proceedings, and characterized some of the problems faced when
merging two smaller companies. Each party sought to curtail the risk of added
overhead by insuring that little of this additional expenditure and profit-sharing
would impinge on the steady profits coming from their own established
commissions on exclusive clients. This problem would characterize later mergers in
Feldman’s operations; but when larger corporate agencies emerged in the late
1940s their structures readily absorbed mergers with little of the internal debates
that squandered manpower and energy as in this case. At any rate, Blum proved an
enervated opponent in this debate, and he remained a background figure in all of

161
the agency’s operations. He barely registered a presence in the surviving notes from
the agency’s weekly meetings and its inter-office memos, only surfacing with any
force 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 the most distinctive tactics of his activities as an agent. Like Myron
Selznick and a small handful of the leading agents in the early 1930s, Feldman
recognized percentage points in a film’s profits or grosses as a target for escalating
his clients’ salaries, and he worked steadily on achieving such contractual 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.
Freelancing clearly offered a stronger potential bargaining position for clients in
demand from the studios since the talent could more readily play off of their recent
successes in negotiations. But freelancing entailed a higher degree of risk than
long-term 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 clients opted for the security of long-term contracts.
129
Michael
Curtiz, for example, remained a staff director for Warner Bros., even after he
logged commercial hits like Captain Blood and The Adventures of Robin Hood.

162
Ann Sothern shuffled through substandard programmers—and standard contracts—
at Columbia and RKO (often paired with Feldman client Gene Raymond); when
she left these studios in 1937, after severing with agent Ivan Kahn for 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 around $280,000 a year, climbing up the hierarchy 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 leaving the Orsatti
agency) made due with standard studio contracts, acknowledging their modest star
status. Nancy Carroll and Marian Marsh signed standard studio contracts with
Columbia; the same for 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 names knowing their underlit place in Hollywood mise-en-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 working with overlapping and

163
nonexclusive short-term contracts. Feldman’s innovation came in his construction
of and promotion of nonexclusive long-term contracts. In other words, Feldman
signed certain of his clients to short-term studio 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 possible projects, since a client could now
select from properties at numerous studios. Overlapping contracts also entailed
increased surveillance on the part of the agency, constantly checking back and forth
with the various studios over starting times and possible conflicting schedules for
productions, 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
secured a reputation for 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 stars could achieve in
the studio system. Feldman’s intervention and innovation in both actresses’ careers
also clarifies the nature of certain aspects of an agent’s performance. No simple

164
Svengali here, Feldman acted more as a career-engineer, networking opportunities
for talent to flourish. While Feldman possessed an astute capacity for offering
detailed advice on scripts or acting, and he would increasingly exercise such traits
by the end of the 1930s, in these cases Feldman shaped his clients’ careers by
licensing more creative control to them and expanding their contractual domain.
With both Colbert and Dunne, Feldman’s creative work with contracts enabled the
stars to expand the range of their personas and thereby the range of opportunities
and remuneration availed 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 very likely came to Feldman as a result of his initial merger with
Ad Schulberg, for the actress was already under contract to Paramount in 1932 for
five pictures in one year at $2500 a week. That contract, in fact, shows up in the
agency’s files only months after Feldman officially partnered with Schulberg.
130
A
Broadway star in the 1920s, Colbert made a number of pictures at Paramount’s
New York studios before moving to Hollywood in the early 1930s. She garnered
respectful interest in films and magazines for her sly beauty, her knowing looks,
and her graceful but gamely continence. 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 casting her steadily in their releases.

165
In fact, from 1929 to 1933, Colbert appeared in over twenty films, hardly the kind
of pace that allowed an artist to work thoroughly on refining techniques or
characterizations. Jumping from lesser 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 co-starring 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 more subdued
performance that did not necessarily draw out all of Colbert’s skills.
When he took over as Colbert’s agent, Feldman negotiated a new one-year
contract with the studio in November 1933 for $50,000 per picture and, more
importantly, established Colbert’s right to work on outside pictures.
131
That
provision proved crucial to Colbert’s subsequent career and produced immediate
results. One of those outside pictures was 1933’s It Happened One Night, for which
Feldman negotiated a $50,000 salary for the actress, 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 a steady but overwhelming momentum with
audiences and theater owners. Within a few months, theaters that had booked the
film for two-week runs were re-booking it for longer engagements. By the end of

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the year, the film ranked at number five in the annual list of top grossing films. But,
as Variety noted, and everyone in the industry knew, this ranking was somewhat
misleading since, as a Columbia production, the film lacked the exhibition
resources of the major studios who allowed hits to run long in their studio-owned
theaters, a privilege unavailable to this theater-deprived studio. Everyone knew that
It Happened One Night was truly the film, the phenomenon, of the year. Colbert
justifiably captured much of the credit, and an Oscar for her performance shored up
more praise.
Indeed, Colbert’s role in the film allowed her to show off all of her skills,
the timing, the looseness, the irony, the self-conscious stylization of her acting, and
her ingenuity, all honed from 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 improvisatory approach to staging, his habitual
consultation with actors, and his interest in creating offbeat characters played
perfectly into Colbert’s persona. Feldman, as evinced in the surviving memos and
contracts, made Colbert’s role in the film possible through his creative contract
juggling. As a result of the expanded range of choices made available through the
projects pooled between Paramount and Columbia, Colbert could more acutely and
carefully determine roles for herself.
The very month production began on the film, and as Columbia excitedly
sold the film to exhibitors as a star-crossed pairing of Clark Gable (on loan from
MGM) and Colbert, Feldman concocted a nonexclusive contract for the actress to

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work on two more pictures with Columbia at $50,000 each. Feldman’s Columbia
contract granted Colbert the right to approve stories and directors, and stipulated in
advance her approval specifically of Frank Capra, Frank Borzage, and Lewis
Milestone. As it turned out, Colbert did not work with any of these directors—
appropriate projects and scheduling prevented such pairings (Feldman was also
courting Borzage at the time, but the director felt morally beholden to his earlier
agent). But dictating these directors into the contract signified a symbolic stature
for Colbert and kept her standards, as partially measured by budgets and directors,
visible and accountable for her agent and the studio.
In the midst of all of 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 over the course of two years, with
some room for expanding on this timeframe. More importantly, the contract
allowed her to perform independently in one Warner Bros film, two films
specifically for John Stahl—the target of a Feldman wooing campaign at the time
(Feldman won him over within a few months)—at Universal, and one for
Columbia. Under the Paramount contract, Colbert would receive $6000 weekly for
the first fifty weeks of the first year and the same for the following year. 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 only work with directors within the highest salary
brackets, thereby guaranteeing certain production values for the films, particularly

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in combination with her own salary. In the case that Colbert canceled any of her
outside pictures—a right held only by Colbert—the contract granted Paramount the
right to make a picture, but only by increasing 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% of the gross receipts for the six weeks of
work on the picture and the same terms for her Warner Bros. picture.
In each of Colbert’s contracts—Paramount, Universal, Columbia, Warner
Bros.—Feldman wrote in a clause granting Colbert the right to approve of stories.
This gave Colbert autonomy in developing her range as 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 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!
132

Note that this memo showed 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
contributed to (or failed to in this case) the narrative of her career. In this light, the
memo reveals how Colbert and her handlers sought out a vehicle that would set up

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some sort of contrast or distinction with Colbert’s recent roles. Note that the agent
evidently scanned available projects at Paramount and then set aim on other
sources. Such a tactic only becomes possible 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 yielded these provisions with discrimination and
determination. Over the course of the first year of the deal, Colbert turned down at
least four stories from Warners, but at least four as well from Paramount.
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In fact,
Colbert’s deal impressed even her contractor, 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—not a humble selection), 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 very passive, but it

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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 Warners, much to Harry Warner’s
consternation, Feldman arranged a complicated package for Colbert as a substitute
project. Feldman promised director-client Anatole Litvak and actor-client Charles
Boyer to Warner Bros. for a story Litvak found interesting, an odd little comedy set
amidst Bolshevism, Royalty, and the Russian Revolution called Tovarich. 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 the actress fail to come through.
134
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 show that some executives felt that Boyer was wrong for the
role).
135
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.”
136
Per Colbert’s request, Feldman also worked out Paramount’s loan of
cinematographer Charles Lang to Warner Bros. for the production, as well as
Paramount’s Travis Benton, Colbert’s favorite costume designer.
137

For such extensive productive activity, the planning, the creative decisions,
consultations, and contributions, all circulating outside of the studio walls, so to
speak, mostly in the province of Feldman’s command, Warner Bros. paid,

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indirectly through commissions, Feldman well. 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 over $32,000; some small agents counted it a lucky
year to clear double that amount. However impressive the arithmetic, the fact that
the film’s key creative equation, the “packaging” of talent, added up from
component-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 advisors stretched outside of 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 writer-client 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, pulling in $150,000 per picture as
well as a percentage of the gross on her productions, Colbert found herself perched
up at the top of the highest paid talent in the film industry, taking in $426, 944 for
the year.
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Irene Dunne followed a similar career path. With a sophisticated
background in opera training and musical education, Dunne landed in a successful
run of musical comedies in New York in the late 1920s. There, a Hollywood talent
scout spotted her, resulting in a relatively strong contract with RKO in 1930 at
$1000 a week.
139
“That was before I got an agent named Charles Feldman,” Dunne
recalled, “who was a marvelous, marvelous agent. I thought when I came out here
I was smart enough to handle my own career and I soon found out I wasn’t.”
140

When he took over as Dunne’s agent in 1932, Feldman renegotiated her contract at
each renewal period. Within a year, Feldman arranged a new contract for Dunne,
doubling her weekly earnings but also commanding her a 25% share of the gross
receipts. This contract also granted Dunne the right to select stories—one from the
three submitted by the studio—and her director—one from two submitted by the
studio.
141

That first year, in a page out of the Claudette Colbert playbook, Dunne
worked with John Stahl on Universal’s Back Street, a melodrama that scored with
audiences, and a successful loan-out that Dunne subsequently parlayed into an
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
sanctioned by the actress in terms of stories, characters, and directors. None of
these films qualified necessarily as breakaway hits, but their box-office strength
provided enough ammunition for Feldman to negotiate more vigorous provisions
for his client.

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Thus, for RKO’s 1935 film Roberta, Feldman convinced the studio to grant
Dunne, on top of her salary, payments of 15% once the film recovered twice its
costs. RKO billed Dunne above her co-stars Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers
(testimony to the clout of the star and her contract) on the film and it earned
$770,000 in royalties. In the months following the film’s release, Dunne received a
steady income from her share in the royalties:
July $8700
August $7000
September $3500
October $5900
November $28,600
December 1-15 $24,600
December 15-31 $21,270
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Thus, Dunne cashed in more through her percentage deal on this film than she did
from her salary.
More significantly, Dunne’s growing stardom lent her enough confidence
that Feldman was able to convince her to go freelance. In 1935 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 rose to $125,000 per film in 1936. That same year,
1935, Feldman added a one-picture-per-year nonexclusive contract with Universal
to his juggling act of Dunne’s various contracts. In addition to their rewards in
terms of remuneration, Feldman’s percentage contracts, especially when coupled
with nonexclusivity, contributed to a client’s sense of freedom in selecting projects,
for the additional income, often dispersed over years, allowed his clients to reduce

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their overall output. While her Roberta shares rolled in, of course, thanks to
Feldman’s networking of nonexclusive contracts, Dunne worked again with John
Stahl on Universal’s Magnificent Obsession, for which she received a $100,000
payday and percentage points. In fact, 1935 marked something of a turning point
for Dunne’s career as her selectivity seemed to increase. 1934 represented the last
year Dunne worked on four films. With the number of options Feldman now
worked out for her through nonexclusive contracts and her strong salary topped by
the potential earnings from her percentage points, Dunne dropped to a steady two
films per year.
These nonexclusive contracts also allowed—indeed, required—Feldman
and his staff to evaluate projects in terms of Dunne’s overall career. Feldman’s
internal offices memos and phone-logs reveal that Dunne consistently consulted
with them 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.
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But Feldman advised Dunne against the role, since it came so quickly 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
Feldman client Sidney Buchman. Despite Feldman’s repeated efforts at persuading
his client to take the role and take this turn in her career—a turn that had worked

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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 to take a turn
in the slapstick farce.
144
Quite a turn, for her career now expanded from melodrama
and musicals into the comedy genre. 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 brand of comedy, screwball but
always in control of a discerning but empathetic intelligence. The next year,
Paramount’s High, Wide, and Handsome was developed expressly for Dunne by
Feldman-client Jerome Kern—showing off her singing and comedy-timing—and
helmed by client Rouben Mamoulian; then, later that year, Columbia’s The Awful
Truth, written initially by client Vina Delmar (directed by Myron Selznick client
Leo McCarey, with Dunne’s approval)—led to another Academy nomination. In
1939, Dunne balanced a comedy, Paramount’s Invitation to Happiness, written and
directed by fellow Feldman client Claude Binyon, with a melodrama, Universal’s
When Tomorrow Comes, directed by Feldman stalwart John Stahl and paired with
client Charles Boyer.
In addition to juggling the complexity of scheduling Dunne with her various
studios and their own production schedules, these nonexclusive contracts required a
diplomatic approach to balancing the stars’ commitments. In the end, these

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contracts frequently 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 late in 1937 to commit Dunne to his studio for her next
picture. 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 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]
145

All of this negotiation in October of 1938 worked simply to secure a start date on a
Columbia picture in February the following year. Feldman the matchmaker.
Feldman the production planner.
If contracts required a certain diplomacy, Feldman also resorted to
duplicity. Continuing this particular dispute with Cohn, as Columbia further
pressured Dunne to commit to a start date, Feldman informed the studio early in
1939 that Dunne, in the end, did not like the script. Feldman himself expressed
concern to the studio executives that, with three Dunne pictures hitting theaters, a
fourth picture might result in overexposure for his star. Studio executives ignored
these concerns and pressured Feldman and Dunne to commit to a date. Finally, in
July, Feldman informed the studio that “Miss Dunne is ill and physically incapable
of rendering her services until several months from now, exact date of which will
have to be determnined by her physician Dr. Ronald Cummings.”
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B.B. Kahane, then the vice-president of Columbia studios, blanched at this
excuse, sensing a common tactic of feigning illness when talent balked at certain
projects. Kahane insisted that a doctor chosen by the studio examine Dunne. When
Dunne finally conceded to this request, and the doctor “found no indication of
illness,” Kahane fired off an angry missive to Feldman. He stressed the fact that the
studio’s distribution network depended on a certain schedule of films and that the
loss of a firm date from Dunne would disrupt their 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 their overall business operations.
Feldman countered with a new tactic on behalf of Dunne: he pointed out her
objections to the script. But 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 of 1939, the project Columbia pushed
Dunne to consider was the lead role in Howard Hawks’ 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…
147

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Of course, Hawks’ approach to the material completely overhauled the woman’s
role—changes that reassured Dunne somewhat, but failed to convince her. The part
landed with Rosalind Russell. Granted, Dunne’s choice here remains easier to fault
in hindsight; nonetheless, it reveals the autonomy Dunne exercised within the
studio mode of production.
In 1939 Feldman paired Dunne with his client Charles Boyer for RKO’s
Love Affair, and, at least initially, her contract stipulated that fellow Feldman
clients Mark Sandrich or George Stevens 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.
148
Between her various contracts then—discounting
her share in the gross—Dunne took home well over $200,000 per year, on projects
she played a significant role in determining. In the early 1940s, 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 over $16,000; in
February over $22,000; and in March over $8000, 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 up $405,222 for the year; right below her,
another client, Charles Boyer, at $375,277, with Warner Baxter sitting comfortably
a few notches below at $279,807 for the year.
149
These rankings are notable in that
Boyer and Baxter, and even Colbert (on occasion) failed to crack the top ten stars

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in popularity, as gauged by exhibitor polls, an order including 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 into 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, in the top ten of
salaries, nonetheless, could not play this game, yoked as they were to long-term
contracts.
Feldman’s dexterity with contracts showed that the typical image of the
studio era as one rife with long-term confining contracts remained much more
complicated in actual practice. Certainly contracts created a stifling atmosphere for
creative artists leading to numerous clashes with studio management both in terms
of creative decisions and in terms of salaries. These contracts, however, proved far
less monolithic than often 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 into decisions about artistic practice. In fact, a
contractual logic ruled both sides here; both parties remained committed to a

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commercial enterprise. Certain contractual issues that seem entirely monetary in
logic—like percentage points in royalties 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
produced from working in this industry built around maintaining 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 their careers in the 1930s 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 over
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 quotidian routine. Not all deals broke new ground or sparked dramatic
battles with the studios. Not all clients proved worthy enough to merit such
crusades. Not all clients commanded studio attention. Not all clients even

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demanded much agency attention. Keeping the agency afloat also involved
consideration of mundane details on behalf of big clients and small. Lots of small
issues required attention. Even lots of small clients required attention, at least for as
long as the agency gambled on such clients. When the agency deemed a client’s
attention outweighed their eventual commission, then 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 in their
obsessive concern over 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, we need
to get 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—could 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, maybe while reading a screenplay by the pool or enjoying a leisurely
English breakfast on his patio, draped in his 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

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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 make-up for
certain roles. Writers called to check up on the progress of certain scripts,
information that provided good ammunition for negotiating roles for Feldman’s
various nonexclusive clients.
A selective survey of his phone records from a typical period—just a few
examples from a month in the summer of 1935—reveals a variety of business
matters surfacing, skipping over 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]…[writer client]
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.
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Feldman’s agency often coordinated their clients’ wake-up times, managed their
personal appearances (at department stores, for example), and arranged business
meetings between their own 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 elevated to handle minor details on
behalf of his clients, even if he delegated select tasks to his field agents. Certain

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clients Feldman handled personally—stars like Dunne, Charles Boyer, and even top
cameramen like Karl Freund (whom he represented in his aspirations to become a
director)—and he spoke directly to studio heads like Harry Cohn, Carl Laemmle,
Sam Briskin, and, of course, to 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 meetings or
minor contract issues could potentially lead to a client’s dismissal of the agency’s
services. Take that last item on the sample phone logs above—the query from client
Gene Raymond. It came when Raymond questioned the efficacy of the agency
because he felt that they failed to protect the size of his billing on film titles.
Arriving in Hollywood in the early 1930s, Raymond 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 to some critics
Raymond’s mail-order handsomeness came across as rather bland. While fan
magazines built up his promise, the fact that his top-billed performance in RKO’s
1933 Flying Down to Rio faded behind the show-stealing co-stars Fred Astaire and
Ginger Rogers—RKO subsequently built a series around these two—did not bode
well for the rising-star narrative framed around Raymond.
Raymond blamed Feldman for much of the downturn in his career.
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First
of all, Raymond complained that he had embarked on his RKO contract with a very
unimportant picture. Then, when Love On a Bet came along, Feldman convinced

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Raymond to work on this potentially successful film with his directing client Leigh
Jason. Raymond felt that the film would represent a good one to lobby for his
transition to a starring role; but Raymond felt that the agency failed to act on this
possibility, even though the low-budget film met with box-office success. To
compound these failures, on Raymond’s subsequent film, Bride Walks Out (1936),
RKO 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 Feldman client-producer Edward Kaufman and co-
starring 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.”
Armed with this news, Feldman 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—namely, as large if not
larger than the title of the picture—on Count Pete. Briskin refused to make any
definite promises as to the billing, although he admitted 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 over the limitations of his
representation. That his career failed to show signs of the promising narrative once

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imagined for him 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 on his 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 that flew
in the face of the fact that Feldman commonly stipulated 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 felt that his clients best handled some
matters without the agent, whose intervention could potentially stir resentment in
the 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

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the artist with the particular studio if the agent comes in and makes a simple matter
look like a monumental one.”
152
Measuring the monumentality of various issues
then fell on the agent’s assessment of the potential damage done to the client and to
the agency in relation to regular transactions with the studio. In dealing with
Raymond, Feldman rhetorically positioned the client’s status as the agency’s main
concern; but, no doubt, Feldman’s own relationship to the studio had to be
considered 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 or
not he would receive the billing that was promised him. When the titles of the
film—now renamed Walking on Air—spilled onto the screen, Raymond’s name
came after the star—and after the title. Conceding to an inevitably 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 shows that agents did not treat all clients with the same
zeal. Agents reserved their more aggressive tactics for clients promising greater
pay-offs, both in commissions and in long-term commitment to the agency.
Storming the studio barricades on behalf of a mediocre client merely for a short-
term gain—additional salary or haggling over the size of 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

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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 to their playing. Raising the stakes for a client represented a
genuine demand in the sense that such bluffing sought 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 the agent’s
designation of important clients—a George Stevens, for example, versus a Gene
Raymond.
Feldman zeroed in on director George Stevens as a client with promise, and
therefore deserving of time, energy, and bullying to bolster this client’s career and,
indeed, the size of his credits in movie titles and advertising. In fact, no other client
in Feldman’s files showed such a persistent concern over the size of his name in
advertising and titles, with Stevens often measuring the font 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). But Feldman’s attention to such matters
represented only a small example of the ways he served to develop Stevens’
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, a reputation that grew in almost stultifying
seriousness by the 1950s. Surely Stevens’ talent and aspirations pushed him in
these directions, as much as Feldman’s own important and even crucial scheming.

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Nonetheless, Feldman proved an apt steward in Stevens’ career, forging not only
new deals, more commanding salaries and profit percentage points, but also
insuring public and industry recognition of Stevens’ name—in properly-sized font
no less.
By 1932, having directed a handful of Laurel and Hardy shorts, Geroge
Stevens was with the Milton Bren-Frank Orsatti Agency.
153
Recall that, like many
Hollywood agents in the late 1920s, Frank Orsatti, as a former real estate agent for
the likes of Louis B. Mayer and theater mogul Grauman (Orsatti also ran liquor
during the prohibition, with occasional forays into prostitution, according to some
rumors), secured his position through contacts with the fermenting film business.
Orsatti transferred these business relationships, largely with Mayer’s help, to
managing actors, pouncing on the influx of actors into Hollywood in the late 1920s
by brandishing his limited connections to studio executives. But Orsatti’s agency
never approached the competitive edge staked out by his rivals. Stevens, in turn,
continued to work on modest short films.
In May 1933, Stevens found himself stranded by Universal Studios’
temporary halt on 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 Roach—with the
promise of directing one feature in the future. But Stevens was looking to expand
his range as a director. In this light, Stevens made the Orsatti agency contractually
obligated to deliver him an outside picture. A May 23, 1933 letter from Bren to

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Stevens confirmed this new wager: “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.”
154
This stipulation shows that Stevens
possessed ambition early in his career, such that, when he ended up with Feldman
we should view their relationship as a partnership built on aspirations, a fact we
should keep in mind in tracing Feldman’s role in escalating Stevens’ status and
opportunity.
Stevens renewed his contract with the Orsatti agency in 1934. But the
Orsatti agency staff constantly fluctuated, an instability that did little to serve its
clients. That same year Zeppo Marx came in as an Orsatti partner, and, 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 into a long-term contract with
RKO, one that gave the director $750 per week for the first year; $1000 per week
for the second year, gradually creeping up to $2000 a week by the fifth year—a
rather standard studio contract and hardly an impressive achievement on the part of
his agency (of course, no stipulations regarding the director’s credit size or position
in the titles, and no control over story selection).
155

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. They settled the purchase of Stevens agency contract for about $5000 (the
record shows some conflicting figures on this deal) based on a negotiated

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proportion of Bren’s future commissions on Stevens’ earlier RKO contract.
156

Taking over Stevens’ representation, Feldman vowed to at least double Stevens’
salary. He 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.
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True to his word, Feldman immediately pelted RKO’s Sam Briskin with
demands for an increase in Stevens’ salary. He convinced the studio to secure an
incremental raise in Stevens’ salary: RKO agreed to jump Stevens’ salary to the
level slated for the following year in his original contract. But Feldman continued
to press RKO on Stevens’ behalf, and, of course, Feldman consistently reminded
Stevens of these efforts. But Feldman informed Stevens that, given his present
contract, he had no alternative but to accept the deal. Stevens regretted signing a
long-term contract, as his former agent Bren had worked out with RKO. Feldman,
of course, sympathized with Stevens’ apprehension over long-term contracts.
Nonetheless, he got RKO to further increase Stevens’ salary in less than a year of
gaining this new client. In 1936, RKO paid Stevens $850 a week, with promises to
raise the pay in increments over the remaining years on his contract. Under the
terms of Stevens’ original contract he would have received $1750 per week for half
of the year and $2000 per week for the second half. Feldman got RKO to jump to a
weekly salary of $2250 for the second half of the year—skipping three steps in the
original contract—and jump the scale to $2500 per week for the next annual step.
Feldman had good motives for these moves since he stipulated in his agency

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contract with Stevens that he would only begin collecting commissions when the
director surpassed $2000 a week in salary.
158

Having accomplished a genuine leap into more serious fare with 1935’s
Alice Adams, a commercial success that briefly resuscitated Katharine Hepburn’s
career at the studio, and Annie Oakley, a hit for Barbara Stanwyck, Stevens’ status
at the studio played into Feldman’s strategy. 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
the parity of its relationship with a director delivering solid hits. With each of
Stevens’ 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 persuaded RKO to grant Stevens
producer status—as the film’s title sequence duly noted.
By 1939 this strained relationship with the studio would snap. Stevens felt
hampered by the material at RKO and frustrated by his recent experiences on
Gunga Din, a commercial success rendered nearly unprofitable nonetheless by
running 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. Thus, when Stevens wrapped
production and editing on Gunga Din in February 1939, he took his contracted
four-week vacation—and never returned.

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RKO responded by stopping payment of Stevens’ salary, prompting an
embattled correspondence with Feldman. Feldman pointed out that not only did
Stevens have a vacation owed him by his contract but also that he continued to
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 producer-director
deals, the years 1939 and 1940 did not spell out a fortuitous time for RKO to
tamper with an already independent-minded George Stevens. Moreover, with
Feldman, an agent pushing freelance deals and single picture deals over studio
contracts, Stevens found a business associate willing to explore alternative deal
structures.
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 salary, the agent regrouped and flirted with terminating the Stevens’
contract altogether. Feldman’s partner, Ralph Blum, a lawyer himself, explained
that they could strategically use this impasse 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.”
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But the two lawyers (Feldman and Blum) explored this position with a great
deal of caution. Blum himself pulled such a move years earlier with his client
Constance Cummings. In that case, the courts ruled in Cummings’ favor against

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Columbia. But Columbia informed the other studios that it planned to appeal the
decision and that it “would hold any studio which employed her strictly
accountable in damages.”
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Only Darryl Zanuck balked at this admonition, but
even then Zanuck cautiously employed her on a one-picture deal (and then only
after his lawyers thoroughly reviewed the case). A fear of lawsuits—a tacit
conspiracy in its own way—kept other studios away from Cummings. In this case,
as Feldman saw it, Stevens might succeed in turning RKO’s failure to pay into a
successful breech of contract case, but that risked entangling Stevens in a web of
legal moves that might intimidate employers, a state of confusion possibly as
frustrating and confining as Stevens’ contract.
Instead, Feldman continued to berate RKO to reinstall Stevens on the
payroll. By mid-April 1939, Feldman succeeded. RKO agreed to pay up to about
seventy percent of Stevens’ salary on his time off. Avoiding the hassles of a breech
of contract suit meant that Feldman and Stevens, while still seeking to achieve
independence, sought to do so on their own terms. Throughout these battles with
RKO in 1939, Feldman’s files show that he continued to shop Stevens’ name
around for possible 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; Columbia and Goldwyn, as far back as 1937, also showed
interest.
161
In other words, Feldman kept Stevens’ name in circulation, readying
their moves following the RKO battles.

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Back at RKO, Stevens cranked out the rather generic Vigil in the Night,
which promptly bombed at the box-office. Still berated by Feldman for a higher
salary and better working conditions on behalf of his client, RKO, no doubt tallying
the costs on Gunga Din and the losses on this recent film, and still stinging from
their earlier battles with the director, freed Stevens from his contract. One year
earlier, Feldman and Stevens chose 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 around free of the burdens generated by a legal stand off.
By April 1940 Feldman sketched out the notes for an independent
arrangement with Columbia, offering Stevens a two-picture deal at $100,000 per
picture. Based on the preliminary draft of the contract—Feldman always liked to
draw up contract drafts early in the deal-making as a point of reference for the often
protracted discussions between himself, 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.”
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Stevens was
in New York while Feldman was working on the deal; but it did look promising. In
fact, Stevens had confidence in Sam Briskin—Stevens’ 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 trust his agent. According to the
director’s files, before he replied to Feldman, Stevens asked another New York
agent, William Dover, to look over Feldman’s notes on the deal and the rough draft
of the contract. Dover complied only when assured by Stevens that his consultation

195
would remain in complete confidence, particularly since Dover occasionally did
business with Feldman (and shortly joined Feldman’s firm as an associate).
163

Fortunately for Feldman, Dover thought the deal looked sound. He only added that
the contract should allocate some measure of the budgets on the films, since this
factor could impact the outcome of Stevens’ 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. His letter to Feldman on the deal also betrayed the
director’s nimble number-crunching skills—fancy financial footwork from a
filmmaker who once directed Fred Astaire:
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.
164

In plain English, Stevens pointed out that Columbia’s 30% distribution fee would
severely cut into his potential share in the profits. In other words, Columbia took
30% of the receipts as a charge to their own productions (or joint-ventures such as
this one), attaching an additional cut on top of the percentages promised Stevens,

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percentages that only kicked in after Columbia recouped the cost of the production.
Stevens’ memo to Feldman displayed his canny and lapidary understanding that
percentage deals presented tricky propositions when the studios controlled
distribution and frequently added all sorts of charges to the cost of distribution,
subtracted from the film’s grosses before making the calculation of percentage
participants. Stevens demanded to know the way 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 client’s
percentage deals more precise in their wording (mainly by negotiating gross
percentage points which specified a cut of the monies collected before cost
deductions), Feldman worked on protecting clients from the elastic bookkeeping of
studio distribution costs, only here Stevens led Feldman’s eye to these details.
Stevens signed the contract with Columbia the next month. Free of RKO,
Stevens embarked upon the typical career of a powerful Feldman client, jumping
from studio to studio, taking more control of the production process, packaging
projects with other Feldman clients, and setting up an independent production
company. Had Stevens stayed with Milton Bren, he might have made $80,000 total
for the year of 1938 under the RKO contract Bren negotiated in 1934. Under the
deal negotiated by Feldman with Columbia, for 1940, Stevens earned $200,000,
plus a share of the profits on two films. Furthermore, Stevens earned greater control
over the selection of his material and the artistic construction of his work.

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For Columbia, Stevens made Penny Serenade with Irene Dunne, a
screenplay Feldman had alerted the director to back in 1939, expressly as a Dunne
project. In fact, Dunne’s contract for this film stipulated George Stevens as the
director.
165
In between his two films for Columbia, Stevens directed Woman of the
Year at MGM, bringing in an additional $90,000 (on a shorter shooting schedule).
He then made The Talk of the Town, or, more accurately, George Stevens’ The Talk
of the Town—not only was his name in appropriate font, it now appeared above the
title.
Indeed, billing was not too petty an issue for this client. For example,
Feldman drew MGM’s attention to the fact that Stevens’ billing on the marquee
and in ads for the film’s premiere run in New York did not adhere to their
contractual agreement. MGM did not own the Music Hall, but Feldman encouraged
them to pressure this theater. The contract called for Stevens’ billing to be 66% of
the stars and the title, but the font on Music Hall ads was quite less than this figure.
In Stevens’ letter to his agent he 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.”
166
Feldman then relayed, in his own words, this information to the
studio, even though they had no say in the theater’s independent advertising.
As these interactions suggest, close reading for his clients was not limited to
contracts and scripts but also advertising text and film title sequences. As seen with
Gene Raymond above, the position and size of one’s credits in a film’s title

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sequence was not a trivial matter for Feldman’s clients. Feldman’s dismissal of
Raymond’s concern over this issue compared to his rapid and rigorous response to
the equivalent concerns of George Stevens, Claudette Colbert, Anatole Litvak, or
other major clients, measured Feldman’s own sizing up of the worth of particular
clients.

Small Agents and the Competitive Market
Feldman’s success, and that of his colleagues like Myron Selznick, Leland
Hayward, and Arthur Lyons (who handled Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray,
and Jean Arthur at various times), masks the high degree of risk in the agency
business. Indeed, the struggles and failures of 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
gambling venture, a vocation marked by chance, debt, compromise, and loss. Even
those rare and short-lived agents who cut down their overhead to nil—those
working out of their home or even their car—gambled away working hours on the
promise that commissions would pay off time squandered through future earnings.
The stories of some of these small agents reveal this sense of gamble more
poignantly or pathetically than the winners. So while Feldman secured his
dominant position in this trade, a number of smaller agents—like Sam Jaffe, Paul

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Kohner, Harold Swanson, Walter Kane, and many lesser lights—struggled not only
to land clients in jobs but also to stay afloat as businesses.
Surveying some of the careers of these small-time sharks begs the questions
of why and how minor agents existed and subsisted at all. Given the grand social
and commercial standing commanded by the likes of a Charles Feldman or a
Myron Selznick, that is, their public links to studio moguls and to stars and the
drawing power to potential clients generated by such conspicuous and charismatic
connections, we might wonder why these two dynamos alone would not
monopolize most or all of the Hollywood talent pool. Yet the very size and success
of these two leading agencies played right into the hands of the smaller operators.
Small agents distinguished themselves more or less on the very modest measure of
their own businesses in comparison to the major talent agencies. In other words, the
smaller scale of humbler hustlers defined their very distinction and their strategic
allure to prospective clients. As operators within a service industry, these small
agents hawked the personal dimension that the larger agencies, according to this
sales pitch, could not guarantee to deliver. 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. In the same
vein, 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

200
tactic that played into modes of 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.”
167
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, to take just one example, small agents often lost or sold
off their talent to the larger entities 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 spun his small-scale operations
into a saleable solicitation: a pledge of greater personal service.
168
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 boy at
Paramount’s New York division, under his brother-in-law and general manager
B.P. Schulberg, eventually moving up to the ranks of 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

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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 $6000 to $8000 a year, remained with
him for a number of years, even while Jaffe serviced her as an agent.
169

Still, despite the lack of payoff, hooking Bennett embodied Jaffe’s strategic
angle in his solo venture by selling “personal attention.” More typically, Jaffe
approached out-of-work talent and offered to represent them. “That’s how I got
clients,” Jaffe admitted, 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 initial pocket-size office (Jaffe, a
secretary, and an assistant), Jaffe’s business connections remained fairly strong. For
example, he placed Bennett under contract with independent producer Walter
Wanger, whom Jaffe knew from their days together at Paramount. While Jaffe
couldn’t command meetings with studio heads like his rivals—“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 underling executives—middle
executives like Steve Trilling at Warner Bros. or Lew Schreiber at Fox; at small
studios Jaffe met directly with studio heads or key executives like Harry Cohn at

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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 over 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 serviced 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 sprout a few supporting 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.
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In 1939, perhaps in an effort to bolster business, Jaffe partnered again with
his sister Ad Schulberg. This new venture—renaming the office Schulberg-Jaffe—
lasted barely half a year as the office struggled to pay rent and could not afford to
pay 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 stocks and interest in the company, demanding
$10,000 as a settlement, money Jaffe did not have at hand. In the resulting

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agreement, Jaffe was forced to pay her $200 a week for the next year. Still, ridding
the agency of this dead weight—Schulberg, her secretary, and her assistant—freed
Jaffe to reorganize his operation. He made Mary Baker, a literary agent formerly
with Leland Hayward’s company who had joined Jaffe’s operation a few years
earlier, an executive agent, giving 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 banked on her social connections to the New York
literary world). In 1939 this amounted to a list of a little over twenty writers, all
with only minor credits.
Jaffe’s affiliation with Humphrey Bogart exemplified most of the defining
traits of the undersized agent’s style: his appeal to clients in terms of the greater
professional attention allegedly offered by his services; the strategy of preying
upon talent in weaker moments of their career; and also the trepidation with which
Jaffe operated in his negotiations with studios. Mary Baker introduced Bogart to
Jaffe in 1937, while the actor remained under contract with Leland Hayward, and
arranged a lunch meeting where Jaffe sold himself to the actor: “You need
somebody to look after your interests. Leland Hayward doesn’t do it.” Blunt, flat,
but apparently effective and accurate. With Bogart—not yet the Hollywood icon of
lore—only bringing in $750 per week on his Warner Bros. contract, 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 $3500 a week, Hayward would not return their calls.
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With Hayward

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shuttling back and forth between New York and Hollywood, Bogart felt abandoned
to deal with the studio on his own. Jaffe convinced Bogart with the conventional
pitch of the small agent, essentially offering more reliable and personal services
added to the fact that a West Coast agent, especially one with a small roster of
clients, could go into the studio front offices and negotiate directly. Tellingly, when
the agents’ guild convened to arbitrate on Bogart’s transfer of agents, Hayward
appointed Feldman as his representative and Jaffe, lacking a strong allegiance with
his former boss, turned to two agents from William Morris, still struggling to set-up
a beach-head in Hollywood. Lacking capital to buy Bogart’s contract outright, Jaffe
worked out a deal with Hayward, sanctioned by the agents guild, to split
commissions for double 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, an amount that 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 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
displayed by Feldman or Selznick (we should recall that both agents cooked up
robust contracts for a number of their clients at Warner Bros., a studio notorious for
its intransigent stance in negotiations). Allowing that Jaffe’s character, his pent-up
but pint-size personality, may have played some part in this caution, an equal

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motive came from the agency’s lack of clout and its vest-pocket client list, hardly
forceful enough to bully studios or persuade them to offer conciliations. 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 remained
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, moving in
and out of pictures in various capacities, whether starring in pulpy productions like
Black Legion or San Quentin, gutter-level B-films like Crime School or The
Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse, or co-starring 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 and protestation, certainly frustrated, but festering more than fighting. Studio
executives were slow to figure out what critics noticed in Bogart, a simmering
energy coiled in a cool but tense continence. But Jaffe acted slowly too. Studio
associate producer Mark Hellinger’s intervention played a strong role in getting
Bogart into more fitting roles in his productions of The Roaring Twenties and High
Sierra.
Still, the year he took over as Bogart’s agent, Jaffe played a role in getting a
salary increase, lifting Bogart to $1100 a week, still below the going rate for actors
of his status, and reaching $2000 in the sixth and seventh years, but still no say
over loan-outs, scripts, or casting.
172
And unlike Feldman and Selznick clients who

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were slowing down their production pace in the late 1930s, a practice afforded by
greater earnings and a way of amortizing taxes, Bogart appeared in eight films that
year, after five in the previous year. But even when Bogart got critical notices for
certain roles, Jaffe resisted stepping in to fight for better projects. For one thing,
unlike Feldman, Jaffe could not get to Warner; to reach him, Jaffe had to go
through production executive Steve Trilling, who then relayed the messages to the
studio chief.
173
For another thing, all of Jaffe’s moves as an agent were predicated
on his flat-minded perspective that studios retained absolute control over contracts.
Jaffe displayed few signs of Feldman’s contractual imagination.
After 1940’s High Sierra, marked by Bogart’s attention-getting
performance, when 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.”
174
In addition to capturing his fitful bitterness,
Bogart’s exaggerated and spiteful perspective on his cohorts’ contracts revealed the
competitive value in an agent’s attention to the finer nuances of contracts, an active
cause that escaped Jaffe’s notice. These two actors, clients of Myron Selznick and
Arthur Lyons respectively, while lacking complete story or casting approval,
nonetheless worked under contracts that trumped Bogart’s to a certain degree; the
sour star would have welcomed their limited work schedule as well as Raft’s
salary.
175
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

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Selznick, Feldman, and other leading agents, who carved out more empowering
contract points—story approval, limited work schedules, director approval—for
their clients, a possibility sensed by Bogart as revealed in this note. On the flip side,
Bogart’s comment showed how these 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 simultaneously 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 their “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 up around
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 $3000 per week, with no increments. This
counter-offer actually added up to an overall seven-year figure lower than the
studio’s initial offer. Indeed, further negotiations “settled” the figure at $2750 per
week, with no raises, for seven years. Over the life of the contract, then, Bogart
would get $110,00 less than the original Warner Bros offer.
176
But Jaffe missed

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more than simple math here; he missed the basic arithmetic of power in these
contracts, since his new deal for Bogart contained not a word concerning the actor’s
screen billing—an essential element for leading talent, as Feldman and Selznick
knew, particularly those wanting to gain or preserve star status—and no say in role
or story selection, areas that would remain problematic for Bogart and the studio.
In his nuanced study of Bogart’s artistry, the film historian Robert Sklar
summed 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 consideration”
177
—an
accurate and convincing assessment. 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 followed a typical competitive strategy, by “differentiating the product or
service offering of the firm, creating what is perceived industry wide as being
unique.”
178
This unique angle, revealed below in a letter from Kohner, relates
directly to his background. Kohner came to Hollywood from Bohemia, eventually
landing a post in publicity for Laemmle’s Universal Studios. Laemmle had
promised a job to Kohner when the young film fan interviewed the mogul for his

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father’s Bohemian film journal, and Laemmle set him up in Universal’s New York
office, alongside William Wyler (a Laemmle relative), who remained a life-long
friend. Kohner and Wyler translated press releases to French and German before
both transferred to Hollywood. Subsequently, Kohner became head of Universal’s
European productions based in Berlin, working on over two dozen films in the
space of a few years, before returning again to Hollywood. Once back at the Los
Angeles studios, Kohner supervised over fifty foreign language 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 Lagosi production). Kohner quickly became part of the émigré culture in
Hollywood. From Universal, Kohner moved to minor production executive
positions at MGM and Columbia, until, in 1937, his own agent, Frank Orsatti,
asked him to join his firm as a talent agent.
179

Orsatti’s suggestion sparked the scheme for Kohner’s own independent
endeavor, which he outlined in a December 1937 memo to a business associate
from his production days (a European agent who represented writers and stories);
Kohner planned to bank 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.
180

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, a plan rooted
in the very logic of this enterprise: agents sell their access to talent and employers
through tangible social connections. 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 devoid of the larger structural operations of those companies, with their field
men, regularly touching base with assigned studio executives, story editors,
secretaries, and phone operators, 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 only raised $30,000—if
that—in operating capital to develop an office and run an organization during the
start up phase of his business. Moreover, in direct violation of the SAG-agency
franchise agreement—still in the process of being ironed out during Kohner’s first
year—his “silent” partners were close friends director William Wyler and producer
Joe Pasternak. A letter from Kohner’s lawyer, Mark Cohen, to Joe Pasternak at his

211
Universal Studios office revealed that both Wyler and Pasternak committed
$10,000 each to Kohner’s business in early 1938, granting the investors a 1/3 stake
in Kohner’s new agency business.
181
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 only 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 Blvd. In these early years,
Kohner took out loans against his house—“very much in need of this money” he
wrote to his financial advisor—and remained delinquent on his taxes up until
1941.
182
While Selznick and Feldman worked with annual gross volumes in the
millions, Kohner failed to crack $50,000 in his first few years of operation—take
ten percent of that number and you get a good idea of his troubles.
183
He managed
to retain a small staff, but most of these agents came and went, with the $30 or $40
weekly salaries hardly offering any incentive to remain. Family and friends
composed much of the ever-shifting office staff; Kohner’s brother worked there
briefly, as did William Wyler’s aimless brother (Kohner owed him back salary for
a short period). Even old friend Carl Laemmle, Junior, cast adrift following the
bankruptcy and reorganization of his father’s studio, clocked in some time at the
agency, before moving on to other pursuits.
184
Shuffling staff hardly allowed

212
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. Vague because
Kohner’s continental pedigree evinced no clear competitive advantage in
Hollywood and he greatly exaggerated his connections to the reigning movie
moguls. Uncertain because Kohner could not rely on international talent to sign
with him necessarily, when other Hollywood agencies offered similar services. For
example, Kohner chased after Marlene Dietrich with his European-angle sales pitch
but she refused (she signed with Feldman). She even had to send Kohner a warning
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 defense
to Dietrich sounds sketchy since he confessed that he only spoke to Pasternak on
her behalf, a troubling sign given the lack of transparency in Kohner’s fiscal
relationship to Pasternak.
185
While he landed a few European clients, many of them
only used Kohner’s generous guidance through the immigration process to get set-
up in America.
In fact, a young American writer turned out to be Kohner’s most important
client, almost single-handedly sustaining the agency at various times in its history:
John Huston. Huston possessed enough drive and energy to push his career forward
and enough Old World chivalry and integrity (and rapacious indifference to

213
financial affairs) to stick with Kohner when 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. Kohner’s silent-partner
William Wyler, who had befriended Huston, no doubt, led Huston to the agency.
Indeed, Wyler’s own machinations played a stronger role in landing Huston in the
director’s chair on his debut film, The Maltese Falcon, than any ministrations by
his agent (Wyler allowed Huston to direct a scene on 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.
186

A big client, then, lucked into Kohner’s office. A bigger problem, however,
remained in Kohner’s lack of legal acumen and business savvy. Dedicated and
devoted in his services, Kohner remained consistently 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
impacted 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 advisors and the protracted coordination

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entailed in such a process. 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 translations 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. Kohner constantly
consulted with Cohen over contractual details, writing, to take just one case, in
May 1941—the very month Huston submitted his Falcon screenplay to the
studio—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.”
187
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 Kohner somehow 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;
he sought to establish a company that would buy the remake rights of French films
(Carl Laemmle, himself struggling for work, turned down Kohner’s proposal to
partner on this endeavor, indicating its lack of promise).
188
And Kohner continued
to seek out possible production deals, shopping around various literary properties in
this regard.

215
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 both a strong reputation and a
commanding salary rate in tow (around $2000 a week). The acclaimed star of
pictures like Gabriel Over the White House and Dodsworth, Walter Huston
accounted for more than half of the commissions on actors in 1940 and 1941,
adding an almost 20% boost to the agency’s overall take.
By the end of 1941, Kohner finally could afford to become a “Regular
Member” of the agents guild (one had to bring in over $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
from the agency’s writers and directors.
189
Wyler signed a limited contract with
Kohner employing the agent as a representative from June 1939 to October 1940,
while still retaining Leland Hayward as his primary representative. Under this
agreement, Kohner earned 5% of Wyler’s income, and 10% of 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 agents
like Kohner given Wyler’s recent contract ($150,000 per year) with Goldwyn—
arranged by Hayward—which added ten percent of the profits to the director’s
salary. But Wyler allowed his limited contract with the agency to lapse, convinced,
even though all had gone well, that business and friendship made for a potentially
troublesome combination.
190
Needless to say, since commissions from directors

216
represented such a large proportion of his monthly income, when Wyler and
Huston left for wartime duties—both became documentary filmmakers—Kohner
missed their commissions. To balance the books, Kohner went after juvenile actors
and actresses during the war years, but neither of these prospects panned out.
Meanwhile, in 1942, two promising émigré-directors, Julian Duvivier and
Robert Siodmak, severed with Kohner, for business reasons, not army service.
191

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 dallied with Kohner’s services for about a year, since the director
found Feldman’s representation lacking the attention he felt he deserved. Ever
chivalrous, Feldman had permitted Siodmak to fish around with other agents. In
this vein, Siodmak played Kohner against Nat Goldstone, an ambitious young agent
with a growing client list. The director granted each limited windows of
representation (at specific studios). Goldstone won the race, setting up the director
at RKO. When Siodmak cancelled his contract with Kohner, the agent, most
obsequiously, 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”
192
—the humbleness of a loser.

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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 endeared him, established a model boutique business. He had a solid
business plan from the start and stuck to it: focus on writers, finding them, serving
them, building them up in Hollywood. Swanson’s plan would fuse his strong
connections to the literary world established in his earlier career as an editor
coupled with his experiences in Hollywood as a production executive in the early
1930s.
In 1922, right out of college, Swanson, already a published writer, 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, amongst others—an impressive short-list of the
1920s “Smart Set.”
193
This experience established strong, 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 over the next
eight years. Swanson’s editorial position and the success of his magazine also drew
attention from Hollywood. David O. Selznick persuaded Swanson to join RKO in
1931, where he remained for three years as a production executive.
Swanson first cooked up the idea to start his own talent agency after
Selznick left RKO in 1933. Before he gave notice to the studio, Swanie flew 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

218
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.”
194
Thus, before he officially branched out into his new venture,
Swanson secured a key component to his business plan by convincing the core New
York literary agencies to sign deals with him: agencies like Harold Ober, George T.
Bye, Blanche C. Gregory, and the Curtis Brown company. When Swanson returned
to Hollywood, he gave notice to RKO, paid six months advance rent on a Sunset
Blvd. office, and brought his RKO secretary with him. He was in business faster
than a Warner Bros. montage.
In addition to establishing a specialty business, Swanson sold the “personal
attention” promised to writers by such a niche operation. 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.”
195
Not
entirely true, but true enough, and good enough for a sales pitch. From the horse’s
mouth, then, here was a clear definition of the competitive strategy deployed by
boutique agencies: honing in on a particular segment of the market—in this case,
writers—with the logic that this niche will find stronger service through a smaller,
more individualized firm. Here, at least, Swanson, unlike Kohner, specialized with
a degree of calculation that evinced a tactical reading of the market and the industry

219
and built on his literary background. More importantly, 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, Charles Bennett,
Raymond Chandler, and James Cain.
Another important dimension to Swanson’s competitive strategy was the
fact that it recognized the dual markets served by agents: selling themselves both to
clients and to studios. Under Swanson’s strategy, studios would come to rely on his
agency when seeking out 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 circuit to the New York publishing market,
either for new writers trying their hand at screenwriting or for new properties, early
signs of trends, or insider tips from the publishing grapevine. Indeed, one MGM
executive claimed that one-third of their literary material sprang from Swanson’s
office.
196
Swanson’s gameplan, billing his specialized services as a literary agency,
sold its distinction to studios, then, as well as writers, a mutually reinforcing
stratagem: 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, unlike Kohner’s initial scheme.

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Contracts and Charisma – Personality and Industry
Studio contracts were not fixed once and for all in the 1930s. They had
mutated and evolved over this rapid, complex decade of transformations in the film
industry. Following the introduction of the studio term contract in the late 1920s—
hotly contested even then—agents and talent began carving out new provisions and
new arrangements, slowly but surely, and, over the 1930s, 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: the more aggressive agents. Contracts grew bulkier, and more
detailed. By the mid to late 1930s, Feldman and Selznick 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; curtailed their work hours; expanded their field of options
through multiple contracts, or, more significantly, 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
accentuating their clients’ fame, ensuring their continued market value to the
studios, and parlaying some of this notoriety into future deals.
Agents achieved such transformations and alterations by tactically
exploiting pivotal moments in their clients’ careers, usually through freelancing or
when contracts neared their expiration date, but also by occasionally rewriting

221
clauses and provisions even in long-term contracts. Star power alone did not
guarantee such victories in the negotiation process. Charles Boyer’s contract, for
example, beat out Bogart’s, even if the latter wound up the bigger star. Agents
made the difference.
The “agency” of certain agents, that is, the power of certain personalities to
effect changes or successfully advocate for a client’s latitude of autonomy, sprang
most often from organizational set-ups 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 explained:
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 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 agencies who handle a lesser number of
personalities.
197

Here Feldman explained how the leverage generated by a strong client list infused
particular agents with a degree of “agency,” the capacity to “do more for a client.”
In turn, this potency enhanced the status and charisma of those agents, which
attracted more clients and augmented 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; note, for example, the leverage Colbert provided in securing
Boyer’s Warner Bros. contract in addition to the trust the studio granted Feldman.

222
Contrast these facts with the same studio’s dealings with Jaffe and Bogart or
Kohner and Huston. While these smaller agents evinced much more diminutive
personalities, less forcefulness, less impactfulness, and a consequent lack of service
to their clients, it was their organizational size and structure that accounted for their
diminished returns much more than personality.
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 case-closed demonstrations of the imperviousness of studio
option contracts. In 1936 Warner Bros. and Davis fought a legal battle after the
actress broke her contract and fled to England to star in an independent production;
Davis lost the dispute in court and conceded 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, since the major studios were afraid to touch him pending
the outcome of the appeals process.
Certainly, the Cagney and Davis cases reveal the rigidity of the studios, the
near-impossible conditions for negotiation, and even the poor treatment of stars.
But in light of the counter examples of Claudette Colbert and Irene Dunne or
William Powell (and many of Selznick’s other clients), and even George Stevens,
the Davis and Cagney stories also betray poor management, a dimension of the
story generally elided in typical histories. In other words, with Cagney and Davis,

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bad contracts to be sure—but equally bad strategy and bad counter-moves by their
agents.
Contracts (and their negotiation) relied on a business culture of nominal and
practical trust and reputation—the symbiotic syndicate between agents and studio
executives. Members of this culture—agents, their clients, and studio executives,
amongst others—built trust and reputation by honoring contracts, maintaining their
fealty, fulfilling services, and delivering on future promises. Contracts worked both
ways, as Feldman and other strong agents recognized. They tied the clients and
studios to a level of commitment and could be tapped to benefit clients. After all,
contracts guaranteed the distribution of a client’s creative work, as well as the
quality of the productions (and other provisional factors), a condition, in turn,
burnishing their clients with quality, critical and industrial attention (the respect of
their peers and other producers), and audiences for their work—building reputation
and parlaying this into future deals.
Feldman’s creativity with contracts, the creative “autonomy”, provisions,
and freedom he gained for his clients, did not exist apart from the studio framework
or the potency of the symbiotic syndicate that constituted the 1930s film business.
Rather, his creativity arose through this syndicate of social relations and
organization. As an early pioneer, an early entrant into the agency business,
Feldman, like Selznick, harnessed his pre-established connections, set up firm and
steady relationships with key industry players through his managerial activity, and
capitalized on these social connections. This network bolstered his charisma, and it

224
generated the circumstances that enabled his clever calculated work on contracts. In
other words, his operational network—the field agents; the inter-firm relations; the
solid, substantial client list—placed him a position, both in terms of status and
leverage, that allowed him to exercise his supple contractual imagination and his
legal skills in deciphering and revising agreements; a practice that, in turn,
solidified his reputation—a certain trust with some of the studios—and played into
situations that allowed for further innovations.
This personality, Feldman’s diplomacy, his social relations with studio
moguls and executives, his rapacious charm, his creative bargaining, did not lack
structure or organization. It worked within regulated, coordinated, and incorporated
operations and limitations. It also generated creative possibilities through
organizational networking (requisitioning executives and agents, for example, to
act on Feldman’s behalf, amongst the myriad of office activities formalized under
Feldman’s name). All of this remained true to greater or lesser degrees of other
leading agencies in the late 1930s. Neither Feldman nor Selznick nor Leland
Hayward could completely monopolize this symbiotic syndicate since size played a
role in defining operations in this service industry. Agencies needed to calibrate a
commitment to personal attention, the promise of loyal, attentive relationships
between clients and agents, in balance with the power galvanized by bureaucratic
efficiency and size. It was a syndicate of power and of niches.

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Chapter Four

What Made Myron Run:

Power and Persuasion
Packages and Percentages

In 1938, to house his growing talent agency, Myron Selznick financed the
construction of his own luxurious, modernistic one-story office building, a strong
economic investment and a conspicuous symbol of his success. Laid out in a circle,
with Selznick’s office at the center, and the general work area radiating around the
core, the concentric design provoked writer-client Harry Kurnitz to crack “all this
place needs is an electric rabbit.”
198
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 over $1 million, defining them as
resources “exclusive of good will, representation contracts and other
intangibles.”
199
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 over the
allocated 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 grew
to employ over forty people. It justifiably claimed to offer its clients “the most
extensive and thorough facilities of any agency in the State of California, including

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legal counsel and accounting assistance and all phases of business and general
service,”
200
practices that distinguished the Selznick operation from its competitors
and served to further entangle its clients in their dependence on the agency.
Increasingly, this legal counsel and business advice structured the very deals 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 also occasionally negotiated
radio deals, such arenas accounted for only about 3% of their business, with 97% of
the Selznick agency business stemming from film.
201
In other words, even with the
strong role radio played in the entertainment landscape of American culture and the
central role Broadway maintained in theatre, the Selznick agency saw no need to
expand into these areas. Agencies like William Morris and MCA may have
dominated radio and theatre, but Selznick maintained the competitive leverage he
had secured as a pioneer in the Hollywood market. His client list in the late 1930s
still harbored the top talent in the business: William Powell, George Raft, Myrna
Loy, Carole Lombard, Constance Bennett, Pat O’Brien, Adolphe Menjou, Ginger
Rogers, Olivia de Havilland, Loretta Young, Ann Sheridan, Claire Trevor, Fred
Astaire, Fredric March, Victor McLauglen, Lawrence Olivier, and Henry Fonda,
amongst others.
202
Director-clients like Lewis Milestone, George Cukor, William
Wyler, Gregory La Cava, William Wellman, and John Cromwell commanded
major reputations that made them sought after by studios, as were writers like Ben
Hecht, Dudley Nichols, Robert Riskin, and Gene Fowler, all ranking with the

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highest paid practitioners in their profession.
203
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 laced through their deals.
Capitalizing on his industrial strength clients, Selznick recognized
opportunities for new deal models in the evolving Hollywood industry of the late
1930s. Such power surfaced in Selznick’s push for profit percentage contracts for
his clients, his “packaging” of clients on the same film productions (thereby
multiplying the agency’s commissions as well), and his initial exploratory forays in
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, usually an additional $100,000
to $140,000, placing his total income in the arena of leading studio executives—
indeed, beyond the realm of many of them and beyond that of most of his clients.
204

Changes in the country’s tax laws in 1936—when higher percentages cut into the
upper earnings brackets—eventually prompted a reorganization of Selznick’s
operations. Since he still retained two separate enterprises on the books, Selznick
liquidated Myron Selznick and Co. (his original agency) because the accumulated
earnings of the Company would have made it necessary for the Corporation to
declare a dividend to Selznick taxable at 81% (and there were other complicated
taxes related to new revenue acts). By dissolving one company, reorganizing the

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two as a corporation, and transferring the value to Selznick at Federal and capital
gain rates, Selznick only paid aggregated taxes of about twenty percent. His
accountants estimated that the new corporate structure would save Selznick more
than $200,000 in taxes over the next five years. Part of the restructuring involved
eliminating Selznick’s weekly salary and instead amortizing (paying on
installments) his percentage of collected commissions. His accountant explained
that the new structure would allow him to “charge off” $207,000 (including
amortization on contracts of $100,000) against an income of $108,000, rendering
his income tax free.
205

These new tax laws led to changes 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 latter arena, for example, many directors and
actors decreased their workloads to avoid entering higher tax brackets or 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.
206
In another typical case from this period, the business division
suggested that Henry Fonda should work on a British production to reduce some of
his tax burden; it also offered advice on his securities and savings accounts. This

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kind of personal management and creative accounting nicely dovetailed with the
agency’s drive to establish profit percentage deals for its clients.
207
Thus, Selznick
or one of his agents might negotiate a percentage deal, entailing the stratified or
delayed dispersal of funds, whose distribution would be monitored by the business
division, which, in the end, may have suggested the benefit of 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 led to changes in
production circumstances as well, since clients now cast an eye on future taxes
when weighing their potential employment. Most often, such calculation supported
reduced workloads 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
over two years) or through a percentage of the box office—clients avoided paying
higher tax percentages on their income. In this regard, Selznick played a key role in
encouraging or assisting clients to set up their own production units since the
motivation for these set-ups stemmed not merely from a desire for more artistic
control but equally from the benefits established by tax structures, as did work in
England and abroad through deals set up by the agency’s London office. For
example, in 1938 the agency floated a deal in front of Paramount wherein the
studio would fund British productions run by Gregory La Cava and split the profits
fifty-fifty with the director-client. Since there was no profits and gains tax on such

230
income in England, and only fifteen percent in this country, the agency, through its
business division, structured the potential deal so that La Cava would split his own
profits and taxes between American and British residency. Another deal on the
table involved a La Cava-Paramount British production with Gary Cooper, dividing
the profits amongst all three partners.
208
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 the
Hollywood industry.

My Man Myron: 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 ranked only at number 27, below such items as
“wardrobe” and “commercial advertising.” Still, if not a regular component of deal-
making, by the mid 1930s Selznick crafted 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 to unravel 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 serving to reinforce
the potential for such practices on the part their competitors (Zeppo Marx, for
example, arranged gross percentage points for his brothers with MGM, as did

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Barbara Stanwyck’s agent and Cary Grant’s lawyer, amongst others). 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. Very often, percentage deals developed through the
framework of independent productions via the mid-decade flourishing of stand-
alone entities like those established by pioneer Samuel Goldwyn, and newcomers
David O. Selznick and Walter Wanger, who ran their own production companies
linked to major studio distribution deals. Through percentage-participation deals
these smaller companies found a way to reduce the immediate costs of acquiring
talent by cutting them in on some of the risks and rewards. With the industry
returning to revitalized regularity by the mid-1930s, as companies like Paramount
and Universal climbed out of receivership, 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 expending too much upfront.
This willingness to traffic in new modes of contractual transactions
resonated with the general American economic and political climate of the second
half of the 1930s. As the economist John Kenneth Galbraith observed, one lasting
effect of the New Deal lay in the way it implemented the concept of
“countervailing power,” that is, encouraging labor and owners to restore some
equilibrium to big business.
209
No coincidence, then, that Feldman and Selznick—

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amongst other agents—began ratcheting up the number of freelance and percentage
deals in this half of the decade. It seems that the New York executive boards, the
brass pulling the studio strings, loosened up their hold on talent, fully knowing the
economic benefits to the studio as well, by approving deals that conceded to some
of the demands of their “employees:” big-name stars and directors. If New Deal
spirit alone failed to sway the New York offices, then enough incentive sprang
from the Department of Justice’s impending anti-trust investigation of the major
studios, a specter haunting the pages of industry trades in the late 1930s. The
eventual 1940 settlement between the major studios and the government limited
block-booking to five-pictures—amongst other concessions—a practice that played
into some of the new production practices—reducing, for example, the releases of
major star vehicles—tinkered with in this period. Certainly, conflicts between talent
and studios continued during these years, but a “countervailing” trend emerged in
the increasing number of innovative deals unveiled by agents in the late 1930s.
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-the-trenches
perspective on Hollywood business, rejoin the larger narrative (covered in Chapter
One) on agents and institutional forces, the dealings with the Academy, the Labor
Relations Board, and the NRA. In the post-NRA climate, Hollywood studios, like

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many other American businesses, yielded to some of the demands of their
employees in their overall business operations—the same period in which Feldman
and Selznick coined some of their most creative contracts. A striking percentage
deal won great rewards for a Selznick or Feldman client, but it also won headlines
for the studios, visibly displaying their willingness to negotiate in a New Deal
spirit—a deal is a deal, and then some.
Some of Selznick’s earliest experiments in this vein came from independent
companies, even if they never actually paid off. In 1931 Lewis Milestone, for
example, received fifty percent of the net on Howard Hughes’ independently
financed The Front Page. But the film failed to reach a profitable stage for the
percentages to kick in. And Selznick pursued percentage deals for clients William
Wellman and for an independent production partnership—ultimately abandoned—
between David O. Selznick and Milestone.
210

Other instances of Selznick’s early percentage deals related to head-strong
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 granting her
12-1/2% of the gross over double the negative cost (thus, if the production costs
amounted to around $175,000, Hepburn would begin to participate after
approximately $350,000 had been reached at the box office).
211
In 1934, Selznick
and Hayward negotiated a new Hepburn contract arranging a stratified percentage
share of the grosses. For each picture—with a guarantee of six pictures in two

234
years—Hepburn received $50,000. In addition, on each picture the contract
promised Hepburn the following percentages of the box office returns: 5% from
$600,000 to $700,000; 7.5% from $750,000 to $1 million; and 11% for everything
over $1 million. In the following years, Hayward negotiated new per picture
salaries for Hepburn jumping from $60,000 to $100,000 while maintaining the
same profit percentage structure. By 1938, after a string of disappointing box office
results, Hepburn and RKO tore up her contract by mutual consent. Nonetheless, the
Selznick agency continued to negotiate on Hepburn’s behalf as her representatives
dealt with RKO in fights over the percentage points owed to Hepburn on films not
yet released and on re-releases of her earlier work. While it failed to completely
pay off with Hepburn, this percentage contract developed a strong template for
similar deals in the future.
By the mid-1930s, Selznick found more opportunities for percentage deals
in independent productions like1934’s Becky Sharp, for which Selznick negotiated
a contract for Miriam Hopkins guaranteeing her $60,000 for eight weeks plus 10%
of the gross over $800,000.
212
That same year Selznick worked out a four picture
deal for Constance Bennett with Twentieth Century Productions (before the
independent company bought out Fox studios) granting her a $60,000 “advance” on
each film from a percentage of the distribution gross. A complicated equation
guaranteed Bennett a $75,000 payday on each film and, after payments reached this
salary plateau, the contract promised her 5% of the gross thereon.
213

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Client Janet Gaynor’s 1937 contract for the independent production A Star
is Born allotted her 10% of the distributor’s gross until the amount reached
$100,000. Once the film reached net profits, the contract stipulated a 10% cut of the
net for Gaynor, capping her take at $50,000.
214
That same year Ronald Colman
received $150,000 plus 10% of the gross receipts over $1.25 million for the
independent production The Prisoner of Zenda.
215
Both films, produced by brother
David’s Selznick International Productions, featured numerous clients in key
positions: William Wellman directed the former, with a cast, in addition to Gaynor,
spilling over with clients like Fredric March, Adolphe Menjou—both freelancers at
the time—and Andy Devine; while client John Cromwell helmed agency
stablemates Madeleine Carroll, David Niven, and Mary Astor in the latter
production. In drawing so strongly and singularly on the agency clientele, these two
films illustrate the diffused network of production planning outside of the studio
base, intimately linking agents and studio supernumeraries. New arrangements like
packaging—employing 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 pre-constituted team of clients to the studio.
Instead, these films teeming with Selznick clients (or other films packed with
Feldman clients, for that matter) arose through the formalized grapevine of regular
contact between particular agents and specific studios, the symbiotic syndicate that

236
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—at
the same meeting or phone call, or in a subsequent machine-gun attack of memos—
would suggest other clients for key roles on 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 at 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 launched into a campaign selling another client’s absolute suitability for the
role or project. Such sales pitches arose from the inter-firm contacts agencies
established with studio assignations, where individual agents maintained habitual
relations with particular studios and their executives: Feldman’s and Selznick’s
foot soldiers met regularly with executives and producers like, to take just a few
examples, 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 spawning in the studios, agents found more
sales opportunities for such ersatz packaging.

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That shimmering mid-decade classic My Man Godfrey (1936) neatly
consolidates 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 of its corporate sponsor Universal Studios, a process facilitated by
an agent—Myron Selznick. This coordinating syndicate facilitated 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. In this sense, My Man Godfrey
exemplified the decentralized arrangements (transactional relations occurring
outside of the studio) and managerial networking contained within the Hollywood
industry at this time—a complexity playing into the function of agents’ enterprises.
The mercurial Selznick client Gregory La Cava, a freelancing director, held
My Man Godfrey together, serving, by contractual arrangement, as director, co-
writer, and producer on the film, with MGM loan-out and Selznick client William
Powell in the starring role. Powell allegedly would only agree to the part if cast
opposite his amicably-exed wife, Carole Lombard, another Selznick stablemate and
Paramount loan-out. Three Selznick clients, then, conjoined, through some
complicated dealmaking, from various positions in the industry, to turn out a
sparkling 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, with its executive entrusting decisions and allocating resources to and

238
through an agent and his client (La Cava’s role as producer) in this case. This loose
covenant served Universal in that it churned out a star-laden vehicle worthy enough
to fill major theatres. In Hollywood math, two loaners plus a freelancer added up to
a commercial hit for Universal, perfectly illustrating the potency of the symbiotic
syndicate between agents and producers that constituted 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, like percentage
points, limited picture contracts, or even packaging, as with My Man Godfrey,
Feldman’s handiwork on Warners’ 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 explained their 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.”
216
Of course, such trading is the lifeblood for
the bloodsuckers, too, as Feldman and Selznick knew all to well.
Spinning off Godfrey, Carole Lombard’s subsequent contracts illustrate
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. A Selznick agency client since 1931, Lombard struggled to

239
gain ground at Paramount, as the studio tried out different roles for her in the first
half of the decade—glamour, drama, and comedy—and occasionally loaned her to
various studios. Her talent never in serious doubt to her home studio or the industry
at large, Lombard’s leading roles in Paramount’s Hands Across the Table, for
example, or the loan-out Twentieth Century displayed her widely recognized knack
for comedy, but none of these films took off in a major way.
Lombard’s renewal date on her Paramount contract, however, happened to
coincide 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. 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.
217
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.
218
Lombard’s freelance status gained her greater
determination in selecting roles, in working with creative collaborators, in granting
her more time to concentrate on her performances, in consultation on the
production process, in addition to her greater remuneration. Expanding on the
comedic craft 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

240
RKO’s In Name Only in 1939, both helmed by client John Cromwell. 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 her productions, facilitating her increased autonomy in
determining projects and finessing her work.
As always, freelance status entailed the risk of measuring salary in relation
to recent commercial rankings. Indeed, after a few wobbly box office
performances, Lombard, by mutual agreement, snipped her last picture
commitment to David’s company and negotiated a new contract with RKO that
dropped her salary to $150,000 per picture; the new contract made up for the dip,
however, with a potential increase in percentage points.
219
The percentage structure
mirrored almost exactly Katharine Hepburn’s equation.
Because the studios released films through their own distribution networks,
Selznick and his team realized that the key to ensnaring revenues for his clients’
percentage deals meant specifying a percentage of the distributor’s gross.
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 out of each film’s earning); by contracting a percentage of the
distributor’s gross for his clients, Selznick avoided such Hollywood math. For

241
example, on RKO’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith, in addition to her $10,000 a week salary,
Lombard collected 10% of the distributor’s gross until she reached $150,000, when
she would receive 5% 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 of previous deals, where
she only took a percentage of the overall gross, Lombard’s percentages added up to
figures like $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 they capitalized on La Cava’s success
with My Man Godfrey by cooking up an independent production unit, financed by
RKO, for their client. In this case, the trick lay not so much in dealing with studio
financing or with distending studio control over production; rather, the obstacle to
overcome arose again and again in studio control over distribution. First of all,
Selznick’s agency negotiated a fifty-fifty split of stock ownership between RKO
and La Cava. RKO would finance the productions, stipulating that La Cava would
direct three pictures in a period of two years. RKO relinquished almost complete
authority over the company to La Cava, consulting only on approval of the original
story (but not the script), budget, and leading players. La Cava wanted his company
to function in his own separate building like Cecil B. DeMille’s operation at
Paramount. RKO conceded to the agency’s demands, from percentage shares to
production office housing.
220

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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 agency budgeted a $5000 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.”
221
Such deals lent some
security, in the guaranteed dispersal of funds, to a freelancing career, prey as it was
to the flux of box office success. Over the next few years, La Cava helmed Stage
Door—Leland Hayward brokered the sale of the play—with co-clients Katharine
Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, and Adolphe Menjou, and 5th Ave Girl with Rogers.
Topping the innovative deals he brokered in the late 1930s was the
announcement that Myron Selznick himself would establish his own independent
production company. Selznick sent Hollywood-style shockwaves 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 in the
headline for an article on 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
article. “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

243
their films.”
222
In its timing and hyperbole, the article reeks more 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. Selznick was also pursuing
package production deals in partnership with his clients Carole Lombard and
William Powell. 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. That these
press releases may only represent spectacles to stir up greater interest in both his
clients and his agency remains equally probable.
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
223
—in David’s company certainly raised questions about his
dealings with the company and whether Myron could honestly serve his clients
with integrity and impartiality. Even after 1938’s SAG agreement with agencies
forbade agents from holding 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, amongst others. By this time, Myron earned about

244
$630,381 from his holdings; thus his interest in the production company
represented a significant portion of his financial wherewithal
224
(in 1943 Myron
also invested over 30% of initial financing for Hunt Stromberg’s independent
production company).
225
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 numerous powerful connections
galvanized by Myron. On the other hand, in moments of tension, clients—as seen
in some of the case studies 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 plague the agency’s relationships with its clients.
In the agency’s explorations of independent production set-ups for La Cava,
for example, the director initially expressed skepticism about working with
Selznick. According to Myron’s associates, La Cava had heard talk among other
directors, and even actors and actresses, about Myron compromising deals for them
to accomodate David. La Cava said that if he went into a producer-director set-up 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.”
226
La Cava’s mood

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must have swung, for later that year, the headlines rang out with the ultimately
unrealized La Cava-Lombard-Selznick proposition; however, his initial doubts
offer testimony to the suspicions circulating amongst Selznick’s clients.
To be fair, Myron’s agents—and Myron in particular—could be, and were,
extremely difficult and demanding dealmakers 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 berated
David and his executive Dan O’Shea with demanding propositions and
dealbreaking dares regarding salaries and working conditions. Some of this
contentiousness surely sprang from the brother’s rivalry and indeed from a certain
resolve to be particularly resolute in the ambiguous and potentially controversial
arena of negotiation. But this tension also sprang from the fact that both brothers
worked in different spheres, whose distinct sets of values determined their
decisions—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
memos detailing such 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

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also paid the highest price he has every received in his career, either before or
since.”
227
In the same memo, David complained that his company “discovered to
our horror” that Myron sold them a director at a price much higher than other
studios had offered: “we discovered that Metro had turned him down at less than
half of what we signed him for.”
228
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 blood. The
deals fell into place like so many other deals, with some concessions made by both
parties.
Setting up independent production companies. Arranging complicated
percentage deals. Stitching “packages” together. The fleeting Lubitsch deal. The
LaCava deal—all of these complex arrangements practically made Myron Selznick
a producer to some degree. 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 them 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 production…and I think you
would get some fun out of it as well as proving that you still know more about

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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.”)
229

Despite the agent’s grand announcements to the press and his possible
partnerships with clients, Myron Selznick’s interests remained elusive. More and
more of his memos from this period issued from his Lake Arrowhead retreat or in
phone messages relayed through his office, greatly delaying the communication
process, and far off the mark from the heady, speedy atmosphere of the telephone-
crazy office in 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 over the uncertainty of Myron’s whereabouts: he didn’t
show up. Myron’s reclusive episodes only increased in frequency over the next few
years.
These frustrations suggest a certain languor and disdain buried in Myron
Selznick’s character, or perhaps symptoms of advanced alcoholism, or both.
Despite Selznick’s 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 input certainly may have come up

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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 belonging to Feldman, Jaffe, or Kohner, for example, to name only a few—
show consistent signs of artistic advice and input in their discussions wtih 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 really existed. Thus, what
exactly 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 positioned
him in the producer’s chair more or less, 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.
All of these headline-worthy deals, these industrial transformations inspired
by and fostering new managerial approaches, the radical new production
arrangements, the complicated percentage deals, the personal production plans, the
tensions, the conflict, and confusion did not distract from the fact that Selznick’s
agency continued to run a normative service business, providing tactical advice,
ministering contracts, and facilitating employment to over 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

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dates; tax advice; minor loan-outs; negotiating production start-dates, proper credit,
and roles continued unabated while Selznick struggled with his personal issues and
with major clients.
A narrative montage of 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 dizzying simultaneity of maintaining this full-service business operation.
These case studies, in some of their mundane and mendacious twists and turns, also
reveal the difficult details surfacing in the daily life of an agency, dealing and
negotiating with clients as much as with selling their talent. The endless hustling
comes through in these stories, but also the compromise and sacrifice, protecting
the agency, its reputation, and that of the clients. Most certainly, Selznick’s
accelerating alcoholic adventures represented one of the agency’s strongest
problems at this time, even if the operation appeared to run smoothly over most of
these years. Reviewing these case studies, one after another, keeping in mind that
each narrative overlaps and runs almost concurrently, provides a sense of the
profound relevance of agents to the flow of the studio system, the tense and tedious
attention to details, the complications and calculations demanded by the enterprise
itself, particularly in the endless proliferation of memos, documentation, the
hemming and hawing over decisions, consultations, and computations, only a small
percentage of which is sampled below in each selective case. Each client below,
moreover, underscores the competitive edge maintained by Selznick’s agency

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through its London office, by scouting early flare-ups of talent and accessing them
before their competitors, particularly in the late 1930s as British talent jumped ship
from a sinking national industry. As newcomers to Hollywood, and therefore
essentially “untested” in the marketplace, the four clients below could not
command many of the innovative provisions divvied out to the agency’s leading
clients at the time, even if some of them retained a degree of control over their
careers nonetheless. In their resistance to some practices and refusal of certain roles
and projects, these clients still evince a fair share of mobility and choice,
shouldering decisions and compromises. Dozens and dozens of normal deals
circulated through the office daily in and out of the agency’s various spheres as it
spun big deals with big clients and some major deals for new clients; all the while
the agency was still dealing with its own business (its reorganization, for example,
and new tax deals) as well as Selznick’s personal demons.

Serving the Studio: Actress Vivien Leigh
230

Navigating the career of Vivien Leigh required the usual business
discrimination only in this case complicated by discretion, as the married actress’
early career moves entailed synchronization with those of her married lover and
Selznick client, Lawrence Olivier. Despite such intimate intricacies, her
relationship with Olivier abetted Leigh’s career since as soon as his career heated
up, the Hollywood office embarked on an intensive campaign to find a role for the

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British actress. How the agency managed to land her Oscar winning role in Gone
with the Wind reveals as much about an agent’s necessary complicity with studio
interests as it does about managing clients.
As early as 1935, the Hollywood office showed interest in the British
actress, and requested their London branch to “send any film or cutouts [pictures]
on Leigh.” But this interest intensified when Olivier began attracting attention and
work from Hollywood studios. Thus, in August 1938, an interoffice memo sounded
the alarms:
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.

Placing both clients on this picture provided a neat solution to their personal and
professional interests. However, a follow-up memo squelched this possibility:
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 authorized the Selznick agency to negotiate a $2500 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.

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DeMille expressed interest in her for Union Pacific, but Leigh again refused
interest in any role except the lead. DeMille backed off. Leigh instructed the
agency to explore any upcoming Max Reinhardt pictures, but the agency convinced
her—accurately—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 Leigh for their Bing Crosby picture This
Side of Heaven. At the same time, the agency deployed one of its clients Bill
Wellman to convince studio executives of casting Leigh in his current production
Beau Geste. All of these possibilities failed to pan out. But in Novemeber, a
Selznick agent, James Townsend suggested floating her by David O. Selznick
“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 over two years,
David had conducted a hysterically publicized search for the perfect actress to flesh
out the role of Scarlett O’Hara, the firebrand rippling through the pages of Gone
with the Wind, the best-seller David had acquired for production. By early
December of 1938, only a few weeks after Leigh’s arrival in America, David
continued to search for his leading lady, even while he started production on some
of the key scenes of the film, primarily special effects shots and long shots that
could be woven around the still unfulfilled casting—in particular by filming the
burning of Atlanta (a public relations spectacle in and of itself). That night,
according to legend, one confirmed by most of the historical record, Myron brought

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Vivien Leigh to the set. Even a few years after the release of the film, David stayed
alert to publicity and hype when he wrote a short magazine piece on discovering
stars in which he described how Leigh ended up in the role:
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.
231

A memo sent by David the following day, on December 10, 1938, corroborates this
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.
232

Never one to act on impulse, David’s internal office memos show that he placed
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 his new Scarlett to the press and filming commenced only a few
months later.
Selznick’s agency had to work out a leave from her contract with British
producer Alexander Korda. Even after signing her on Gone with the Wind and
bringing her to Los Angeles with her lover—Olivier was at work on Wuthering
Heights by now—the agency continued to work for the actress. In February, Leigh
phoned the office to complain about director George Cukor’s dismissal from the

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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, the late working hours, David’s aloofness, the new script, and
her recent costumes, Leigh reached a climax: 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 to consider David’s overwhelming problems with
the production and to call on her patience. Here the agent worked as a counselor.
Soothing Leigh, Marcus made her 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 ten 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 provide them with reliable
employees. These cases—unhappy clients on productions—required balancing the
weight of the client’s complaint with the weight of its possible long-term effects.
For an agent, interfering with a production every time a problem surfaced with a
client entailed risking a sense of trust built up with 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,

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immediately phoned SIP executive Dan O’Shea, and relayed all of the actress’s
frantic conversation. O’Shea told Marcus to “take a suppository and relax,” and
relayed 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 deflate a potential flare-up.
On Friday, [Sig] Marcus tried to get information on conditions from O’Shea, but he
only knew that David and Leigh had spoken, trusting “the ‘trouble’ has blown
over.”
Blown over. More or less. It returned one day later when, in an inter-office
memo, another agent noted with as much deadpan drollness as can come through
on office stationary: “Vivien Leigh called me on the telephone about three in the
afternoon and asked me if her contract with Selznick International prohibited her
from flying.” Bewildered but reserved, 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, through his sources, he
heard shooting would resume later that week. But this innocuous, if ominous,
discussion of Leigh’s imaginary itinerary erupted into another discussion of her
apprehension regarding the production overall, as she told the agent “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. Once again the agent immediately phoned Dan O’Shea at David

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Selznick’s offices 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, not telling her, of course, that he talked to O’Shea in the
interim. 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 directed to the agency from then on were limited to
wardrobe and requesting that the agency use its influence to get her a portable
dressing room—no trouble.
A new problem arose one month later. John Glidden, a British talent agent,
claimed to represent Leigh and was “shocked” to learn that Leigh had signed with
Myron’s company. He insisted on his ten percent for the Wind contract, or at least,
a split commission with Selznick. Upon further investigation, Selznick’s British
office agreed that Glidden could rightfully claim official representation. This
complication was not too 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 of the agency’s ten percent on Leigh’s earnings until January
1942.
The week following the Atlanta premiere of Gone with the Wind, Myron
Selznick made the cover of Time magazine, at least, in his proper place; under a

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photograph of Vivien Leigh, the caption read “To Dave and Myron, Vivien Leigh.”
The cover story repeated the dramatic moment of Leigh’s discovery, her face aglow
in the burning of Atlanta (like a scene from The Day of the Locust).
After winning the Oscar in February Leigh turned her attention to her SIP
contract and to her agency. She made demands on both companies that complicated
the already tense relationship between this triad of industrial forces: actress,
representatives, and production company. Leigh insisted on a salary increase and
the right to confer with the writers and producers during the writing of the script, a
right Olivier retained in his Warners contract. 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 in the following memo regarding Leigh:
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
black-jacked 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 on her behalf for
an extended leave of absence from her Hollywood contract in order to return to
England for a stage production. Privately, with Myron, even Leigh’s lawyer

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laughed about his client’s demands; but SIP, short on film projects for their
employee, finally conceded 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 previous agent worked out
the Korda contract. When Myron explained some of the comparative details, Leigh
admitted that the SIP contract was fine in all respects—except the monetary
provisions.
Yet even from this monetary 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.” Conceding to these obvious points did not satisfy
Leigh, 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 lawyers, Leigh, and
Myron’s associates to work out further details. 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 to come over

259
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 talent retained in choosing or refusing
roles. Driven by a perception of the market and their own talent, a player, usually
through an agent, might dispute a role’s appropriateness or the quality of a
particular production; but such disputes shared a sense of value with the studio,
even if reconciliation proved difficult in many cases. Here the agent played a role
in representing the client’s objections but simultaneously in 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, in the
middle of transactions between studios and talent, frequently played a much more
compromised position—in this case, working with the employer to pacify a
potentially disruptive force (namely, their client Leigh) on a production. Yet here
again we come across a certain mobility in the studio system; a set of interests
aligned in pacifying Leigh: the agency’s investment both in their client’s future
(stability and earnings); the studio’s investment in maintaining commitments to
each step of the production process; and the client’s commitment to a career.
Disputes obviously arose when these commitments failed to align, but these
resulted less from major philosophical differences, than from conflicts of
interpretation—which director would better serve a film? How to define a
commercially viable project? Who would retain the final word on a screenplay?

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Reconciling common ground between different answers or perspectives often, as in
this case, fell to the professional mediator, the agent, facilitating not only schedules
and planning, but also reputations and realignment of different points of view
between interested parties.

Courting Clients: Actor Robert Donat
233

As with the case of Leigh, the agency’s courtship of the great British actor
Robert Donat affirms the strategic competitive edge maintained by Selznick’s
British office, particularly in the late 1930s as the British film industry struggled
and its talent jumped ship. This narrative also reveals the occasional ambivalence
on the part of clients regarding agency commissions and Selznick’s persuasive
skills, both with clients and with their employers. Donat, a rising star in British film
and theater, possessed intelligence and imagination, traits when mixed with his
petulance, impulsiveness, and arrogance that made him a combustible client.
Selznick had to negotiate with Donat as much or more than he did on his client’s
behalf. This narrative reveals the energy the agency devoted to pursuing a client
and to the client’s career, in this case, paying off with an Academy Award.
The Hollywood office took note of Donat in 1934, when it cabled the
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 retained
unofficially two minor British agents, easy targets for the predatory larger agency.

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In the long run, only Donat’s apparent mistrust of agents and business dealings in
general would present a real challenge. The eminent British producer Alexander
Korda cast Donat in a supporting role 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 American 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 the star resisted subsequent studio overtures.
By 1935, with David O. Selznick’s move into independent production, the
agency recognized a renewed significance and new opportunity to sign Donat,
particularly since Warner Bros. and another talent agency made 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 ferreting out studio interest in Donat would prove risky
without the actor’s firm commitment to the agency—especially since Donat
entertained overtures from the Hawks-Volck agency as well—even while the memo
indicates that the agency frequently engaged in such activity. A few days later
Selznick emphasized the importance of Donat:

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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.

Through unfortunate encounters with inept and deceptive agents as well as
his own erratic behavior, Donat managed to get tied up in a two-picture deal with
Warner Bros. that ended in a court case. Donat emerged 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 Rene
Clair’s Ghost Goes West; but the ad boldly announced that:
ROBERT DONAT IS NOT REPRESENTED BY AN AGENT NOR IS HE
CONTRACTED TO ANY COMPANY

Notes from their weekly meetings and inter-office 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 Lawrence Olivier, whom the London office cajoled to work on the
prospective client, Donat cagily suggested that he would sign with the agency if
they could get him two pictures for $200,000. Simultaneously, Jesse Lasky at
Paramount approached Donat about a one-picture deal, but found Donat’s lawyer a
problem. Lasky asked Selznick’s agency to intervene and expedite the situation.
Most of the other studios found the actor’s asking price—$100,000 a picture—too
high. Inflated figures aside, Donat’s discussion of salary looked promising to the
agency. Selznick’s Hollywood office asked the London branch to explore minimum
figures with Donat, keeping in mind that they would nonetheless aim for the

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$100,000 figure. But when Lasky offered $75,000 (with an option for a second
picture at $100,000), Donat rejected the figure.
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 ten 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 regarding Donat’s deal with Alexander Korda. Ready to deal
for Donat, Selznick and an agency associate flew 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 of his being
more or less coerced into agreeing to things in the Korda deal that were not to his

264
advantage.” Furthermore, Donat questioned the neutrality of his British lawyer,
who also represented United Artists, who, through their distribution deal with
Korda, stood to gain from the deal. The agency associate assured the Byronic actor
that Selznick already recognized all of 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 the time
came to sign a contract meeting Selznick’s approval.
Thus, at this point, Donat entrusted the negotiation process—and all of the
labor and skills involved therein—to Selznick, despite the fact that Donat had yet to
sign an agency contract. Selznick engaged in numerous long conferences with
Korda trying to reach an agreement, often well into the evening. 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 partake 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 inter-office memo to Selznick, the
agent explained that he gave Donat “all the usual arguments with regard to it being
necessary to standardize our business, all 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

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remained noncommittal. He hinted that 10% might be fair for this particular
contract, but wavered on the notion of future negotiations.
Negotiations with Selznick’s British representative continued after Selznick
left England, as a series of memos kept him 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. Over and over again,
memos noted, Korda exploded over their demands, and flew into rages, assailing
Donat and the Selznick agency, before acceding to the issue and calming down.
Korda erupted, in particular, over Donat’s demand to be allowed to make pictures
for an American studio—a key issue for the Selznick agency—only to eventually
concede to an allowance of two American pictures. Why? The agency convinced
Korda that Donat’s downtime would be better spent on a production that might
only increase his value as a star in relation to 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 Korda’s wrath might be directed at him
personally, when he felt that the agency should take the heat for such battles. The
agency reassured him that Korda’s wrath would be directed at them and not at the
star.
Over at SIP, David’s top executive, 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 he also tipped the agency off on a
potential problem. O’Shea recalled hearing from Harry Goetz and his attorney

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about a picture deal with Donat, through Goetz’s Reliance Pictures and RKO (for
whom Donat made Small’s Monte Cristo). O’Shea thought they 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. For in this same memo, O’Shea expressed
interest in Donat for SIP. Exchanging information, then, could gain favors with one
company for future negotiations.
Still without an agency contract, Donat nonetheless regularly consulted the
agency for a perspective on career matters as well as contractual issues.
Immediately following the commencement of 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 in the beginning of
the story and a good deal had been dropped 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 “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 agreed
that a great deal more was being done with Donat’s part than was indicated in the
treatment. The agent suggested arranging a dinner on the forthcoming Saturday
evening 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

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the whole matter and Donat [was] highly pleased that the meeting had been
arranged.”
But two major problems remained for the agency: Donat had yet to commit
to signing an agency contract (at best he alluded to paying only 5%); and the
uncertain old deal with Goetz’s Reliance Pictures. When the agency pressed Donat
about this deal, the sheepish but earnest Donat confessed to feeling morally obliged
to meet his commitment with 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 the actor’s increased market value. Donat bristled over such a
scheming suggestion, but acquisced when told of scores of such adjustments
granted to other artists in the industry.
Donat’s frequent health problems created another complicating factor for
the agency. His asthmatic condition, amongst other related problems, compounded
with his general excitability and his passion for his art, made Donat a fragile, and
occasionally volatile, creature. Donat, therefore, required frequent rest periods.
Thus, agents had to negotiate for the conditions of employment in relation to his
special needs. Donat deeply appreciated the agency and Selznick in particular for
their understanding of 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

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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 clients and losing a career (or rather 10% of a career).
Donat’s interactions with Selznick impressed the actor, who sensed in him a
responsive, almost empathetic agent (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 he handled affairs thereafter
from a distance, Selznick continued to attend to Donat with sensitivity, both
through consultation with the London agents and, perhaps more importantly,
through the interpersonal skills policy Selznick set for his office. Selznick
instructed his agents to work not only for the financial interests of his clients but
also for their general well being, for their particular interests. 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
(a la Leigh above). Nonetheless, Selznick set a tone for his staff that artists should
be regularly consulted and contacted, and that some measure of creative control for
clients should remain a negotiating goal.

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MGM’s 1939 production Goodbye, Mr. Chips presented a role perfectly
tailored to Donat’s skills as a performer. This sentimental melodrama centered 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 attention to his character who was,
after all, always “on stage” in front of the classroom. The character’s ageing in the
film allowed a visible degree of change to occur in his performance, drawing
attention, through the make-up and costume changes, to the actor’s variations in
manner and countenance. A death scene at the film’s climax conflates the
narrative’s sympathy for the character with 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—they 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 possessed early
word on the story since they represented the novel’s author). 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
negotiate this MGM picture around Donat’s commitment to Korda (Korda, for
example, would only release Donat for the time of the production 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

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congratulatory notes to Donat. In line with a common office practice, Selznick also
had his staff clip favorable reviews and send them to Donat. Both practices
genuinely touched Donat, who responded in kind with charmed notes. The role
won Donat an Academy Award for 1939, beating out Clark Gable in Gone with the
Wind.
By 1939, Donat considered 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 with how “modern taxation”
would affect his deal. Selznick worked out a percentage deal with an account set up
against future earnings, allowing Donat to draw a fixed sum of money. This
allowed Donat to spread his earnings over a long period in consultation with a tax
expert.
Donat’s rewards were more than financial; Selznick’s agency increased his
salary, reworked his contracts to benefit Donat’s earnings and the value of his time
off, for his health and his family. The agency’s calculated pitches 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 trenchant
responses to the actor’s demands, and threatened to dismiss their services (ones he
never officially signed up for at any rate). Donat’s subsequent career faltered only

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as a result of his health, his personality, and his insistence on working in England
despite the persistently inconsistent and troubled conditions of its film industry.

Losing Clients: Writer Robert Carson
234

The career of Robert Carson, an unfamiliar name today but once an
important, award-winning Hollywood writer, provides keen documentation of how
agents strategically escalated asking prices for their clients, introducing key
increments with each new exploration of the marketplace, step-by-step, building a
salary with an almost formal ascension. Carson also represents the rare case of a
writer 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, in the end, strangled the writer’s relationship with Selznick.
Nonetheless, in the span of roughly six years, Selznick and his squadron of agents
more than tripled this young writer’s salary.
Selznick plucked Carson from a William Wellman project in the mid-1930s,
convincing the writer to drop his current agent and join the Selznick agency.
Within a month, Selznick placed Carson at Paramount on 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’s
independent production A Star is Born, and Selznick extended Carson’s run on the

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production during rewrites for an additional $350 a week, while Paramount
renewed Carson’s contract for $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 of 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 its recent 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,” convinced Paramount to
pay the increase called for in Carson’s option. To alleviate Paramount’s concerns
about committing to the new salary, one of Selznick’s field agents suggested a new
strategy: to split the option year into two six month periods; a canny move, for this
strategy simultaneously opened up a new opportunity for the agency to renegotiate
yet another salary increase in six months. Alleviation. Negotiation. Calculation.
Pay-off. The agent boasted: “Carson is now very happy and feels that our office did
a major job winning this point.” To underline this dazzling dealmaking, agents
forever wooed their clients through flattery (an important language for artists), as
here the agency clipped favorable reviews of Men With Wings and dashed them off

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to Carson. When the new option period came due, Paramount escalated Carson to
$800 a week, effectively doubling his salary in under two years. Carson teamed
again with Wellman the following year for 1939’s Beau Geste starring Gary
Cooper.
In the mean time, Carson started writing short stories for magazines like
The New Yorker, Saturday Evening Post, and even Good Housekeeping (the latter
representing one of the highest paying periodicals at the time). To serve Carson in
this arena, Selznick’s office arranged a deal with New York literary agent Carl
Brandt to represent the writer’s magazine work, splitting commissions 50-50. In
fact, having scored a fair amount of publications, Carson informed his Hollywood
agency that he was only interested in picture work if he could get $1500 a week;
otherwise working on magazine serials provided much more satisfaction for him.
This dictum set a new salary goal for Selznick’s office and it also required
them to show sensitivity, in balancing and scheduling potential jobs, to the writer’s
desires by negotiating contracts that would leave time for Carson’s dual interests.
Carson’s asking price had climbed to around $900 at this time, so the $1500 figure
was within reach. Yet when a field agent floated this higher figure by a regular
contact at Republic studios—a decidedly low-budget studio—the executive balked.
Still, Selznick sent out a strongly supportive inter-office 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. Recording this in an inter-office

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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, hooking Carson to a project set with another Selznick client
Rene 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; but adding to it, the agency now had a regular source of
stories to sell. In turn, Selznick’s literary department, headed by 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 on the agency’s writers
in the form of “news” on their books, story publications, 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.”
“News” on Carson’s work was a regular feature.
By the end of Septmber, the agency finally landed Carson a $1500 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 same day, Selznick’s
field agent for Fox closed a deal for Carson to write a musical comedy for $1500 a

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week, with a ten-week guarantee. Thus, in the space of less than two months,
Carson was guaranteed over $20,000. Carson sent a gushing letter to Selznick,
thanking him and his field agents for sandbagging Fox while simultaneously
attacking Warner Bros: “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 a question had been nagging Carson since he first started publishing
short stories. In consideration of his success in this non-theatrical market, Carson
wondered why Brandt should split his commissions. Friede agreed more or less 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 since 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 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 five percent

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out of his pocket. In fact, Brandt felt, and Carson concurred, that Carson’s
increasing prominence as a top magazine writer helped immeasurably in the
Selznick agency’s doubling of the writer’s studio salary. Friede saw merit in this
position and he emphasized this fact to Selznick. Indeed, Friede’s literary reports
sold Carson by foregrounding 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’s case, backed by Brandt
and Carson, failed to convince Selznick, who obstinately stuck to the original deal
terms.
When he met directly with Carson, Selznick’s repeated refusals to budge on
this issue finally collapsed their professional relationship. Selznick thought that
Carson simply wanted to be relieved of paying Brandt the additional five percent
and failed to recognize the principles and deeper issues motivating Carson. Now
Selznick’s field agents went to work on lunch and dinner meetings with Carson,
firing serious memos back to Selznick. Prompted by an effort to clarify principles
and by agents attempting to explain issues of fairness, even ethics, to their boss,
this process reflected a zany mixing of philosophical 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.

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Moreover, Carson made it clear that he would let his agency contract lapse when it
expired (in 1946), because he was so steamed up 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 represented 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
trembling 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 because Selznick was relaxing
at his mountain resort), then appealing to percentages might. In this regard, the
question was basically whether or not Selznick preferred to take full commission
for the remaining period of his agency agreement, with the certain loss of Carson,
or whether they might perpetuate the arrangement by splitting the commission for
Carson’s studio work with Brandt. This angle was a question of numbers, the kind

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of cool calculation that Selznick was not immune to performing. Yet compounding
the commissions complications with Carson was Selznick’s growing aloofness, for
he would let 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 when 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 continue to find occasion to
publish short stories. As the 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 enlisting was no surprise to the field agents who met
regularly with the writer, 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 explaining “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 it goes unmentioned in the letter, releasing him
from the 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 asking his
associates, if Carson “isn’t going to do any picture writing, I can’t understand why

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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 he
finally did so, in February 1944, Selznick refused Carson’s request, calling it
“ungrateful” and essentially guaranteeing that he would lose this client.
Carson’s career path shows how the agency established quotations by
shopping artists to studios with steady increments in their salary. These salary
steps, almost formal in their escalation, despite their dispersal across multiple
studios, illustrate the syndicate of inter-firm contacts, managed largely by agents,
and the shared understanding in the studio system of a writer’s (or any other key
talent) progress, measured by production supervisors and box-office. Agents and
executives exchanged information on talent and their general asking prices.
Carson’s case also shows 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, in
house and with the writer’s New York representative—in order to properly
navigate Carson’s deals and his career. Indeed, the Hollywood agents sold the
cachet value of Carson’s literary career as a point of value within the studio
marketplace. Of course, Carson’s dealings with the agency also illustrate 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

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relations over the course of 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: Director Alfred Hitchcock
235

As early as 1936, Selznick’s London office scouted out the promising
British director Alfred Hitchcock as a possible export property for their Hollywood
offices. An inter-office memo from that year reveals that Selznick’s agents were
concerned about Hitchcock’s leisurely pace on productions and how this might
impact his performance in Hollywood. Within a few short years, Hitchcock
successfully courted American studios with Myron Selznick as his designated
escort. But Hitchcock repressed his reservations and apprehensions about his
agency only to see them surface shortly after his first American success.
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 mid-thirties. 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

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annual salary of $100,000. Tagged to this first year, Hitchcock suggested a three-
year option period, offering—quite unrealistically given his general work routine—
three-pictures a year with an “escalating price-per-picture clause.” Clearly, these
details betrayed the fact that Hitchcock, often aloof and nonchalant in interviews,
gave more than a passing thought to this otherwise rather pithy pitch. But the
American studios had done their own homework on the director and, for all their
admiration, eyed Hitchcock with some skepticism, fully informed of his slow
pacing, his obdurate perfectionism, and his demands for meticulous control over
pre-production. RKO, MGM, David’s SIP, and Goldwyn’s company, the only
studios that had expressed any real interest, all backed off from this offer. MGM
threw out a counter-offer, at $2000 per week, but only if Hitchcock remained in
England to take advantage of Metro’s new soundstages. Hitchcock turned down the
offer, since it gained him little in terms of his career (his working conditions in
England were already more advantageous than those of the MGM branch). Fox,
too, made an offer to finance a British production—to gain tax breaks on its British
profits—but the master of suspense balked.
In August 1937, determined to make headway into Hollywood, Hitchcock
booked a trip to New York 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. While in contact with Selznick’s offices as early as
1935, Hitchcock’s determination to sign with SIP probably played into his decision

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to finally sign an agency contract with Selznick that spring of 1938. But Selznick
did not have much more luck with his new client. As David later confessed to
Frank Capra, Myron could “not get bids for [Hitchcock] at the time I signed
him.”
236
David 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 equally next to Selznick’s own for Leo McCarey or Gregory La
Cava from this same time period. Hitchcock understood the reasons for such
discrepancies—largely his untried status in Hollywood and La Cava and
McCarey’s commercial track records—but he harbored some suspicions about the
deal, wondering whether or not 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 over the possibility of finding other work and the control he lost
to David.
Discounting the persistent interference from David (relatively low actually
on this production), Hitchcock’s first American film, Rebecca (with clients
Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine in the leads), could not have gone better as an
American 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

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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—on
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.
Overall these productions went well and Hitchcock maintained fairly steady
work, even while David looked over his shoulder on almost every negotiation. If
Hitchcock continued to suspect that Myron had not negotiated fully in the
director’s interests in dealing with David’s company, then these suspicions got
unleashed and entangled in a far more spurious arrangement with Myron. In 1940
Myron struck a deal with Hitchcock to produce and partially finance pre-production
on an American remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lodger. Their partnership on
this endeavor reveals the problems—legal, ethical, and logistical—of an agent
operating as a producer—particularly, as in this case, with his own client.
Transactions and negotiations did not end with their formal agreement for this
enterprise, and they exorcised particular problems ethical problems (with an agent
acting as a client’s producer) buried in this deal and in their overall relationship.
With no indication of these problems, in December 1940, Selznick and
Hitchcock drew up estimated costs for the sets, technical crew, and approximate
budget for the cast (minus the star). Selznick worked out the following deal with
Hitchcock: he would pay Hitchcock $5000 upon signing the contract and the

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director’s wife Alma $5000 when she began work on the script, plus an additional
$5000 when she finished the final draft, selling the whole project with the
guarantee of Hitchcock attached as director. Selznick retained sole control over
selling the script. The profits—defined as those sums in excess of $30,000—on the
sale of the script would go 5/6
th
to Selznick and 1/6
th
to Hitchcock; this division
applied to the sale of the script alone; the percentage deal described above kicked in
with the film’s release.
On March 7, 1941, one of Selznick’s agency associates wondered if 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, the stress that
ultimately led to tensions and frictions between the agent and the director can be
seen in this clause, for both parties complicated this negotiation with their own
ambitions and suspicions.
This new deal struck at Hitchcock’s paranoia over the Selznick brothers,
particularly as the director hunted for projects in between productions and pestered
Myron’s office with ribbing phone-calls. Flipping through the trades and noting the
business activities of the agency, Hitchcock wondered why he saw no evident
action on The Lodger project. Obliquely, he asked the agency’s business manager if
the contracts involved David O. Selznick at all. Told no, Hitchcock then wondered

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aloud in a sarcastic stage whisper if the contract contained “a collusion clause,”
alluding to the sibling conspiracy he suspected.
But the foul play was buried in The Lodger deal itself. Indeed, internal
agency memos reveal that Hitchcock’s paranoia served him well here. In a memo to
Selznick from his lawyer we find one of the crucial problems involved with Myron
Selznick’s Hitchcock-production partnership and others like it, namely those cases
in which a client’s agent simultaneously acted as a producer. 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. 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, in order to protect 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, by adding to the production costs
would decrease Selznick’s take as a producer). This dilemma, this conspiracy,
exactly expresses the concerns raised in the SAG franchise agreement 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 their lawyer clearly spells out in his memo, would clearly sacrifice their service

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to Hitchcock—to gain the client the highest offer on the market in exchange for his
services—in order to protect their boss’s financial stake 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 numerous agency inter-office
memos. For instance, when Frank Lloyd, one of the agency’s producer-clients,
called in a panic over lacking a third picture to complete his deal with Universal,
one of Selznick’s agents, fast on his feet, thought of throwing The Lodger to Lloyd,
with Hitchcock attached, 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—as per the
agency’s 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. The difficulty of this particular deal surfaced in securing Hitchcock
and Fontaine, both of whom remained under contract to SIP.
Keep in mind that throughout this convoluted narrative—in which positions
were staked, deals were discussed, budgets were floated over the past year and a
half—the script had yet to be written. Hitchcock himself hedged on the notion of a
script and seemed mainly interested in selling the idea, not the actual production, a
waffling even his agents detected. When an agent lunched with Hitchcock in

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January 1942, the director wondered if they could get $60,000 for just selling the
script. When the agent asked, “what script?” Hitchcock evaded the answer, only
suggesting that if a deal were eminent, then a script would appear. Hitchcock’s
cagey responses to the progress of this potential project suggests that he may never
have been interested in directing this remake and may have only been looking for a
quick sale.
From January through March of 1942, as The Lodger surfaced in lunchtime
discussions with Selznick’s agents as a possible Hitchcock project, the director
indicated ominously that he would very likely “not renew his contract with us,” as
an agent warned out in a memo. Hitchcock’s contract with Selznick’s agency
expired in June of 1943—as a reminder memo to Selznick indicated—so the clock
on this deal was ticking. Selznick hoped to attach Hitchcock’s signature to a seven-
year agency contract to any potential Lodger deal.
One month later, Selznick’s Sig Morris discussed The Lodger situation with
Hitchcock only to hear the director reveal that Jack Skirball (an independent
producer with a production deal at Universal) offered Hitchcock $150,000 for
sixteen or seventeen weeks—Hitchcock glibly noted that “he was ‘not sure’”—
starting the following week. Casually broaching a deal set to begin within a week
betrayed Hitchcock’s coy sense of drama in this on-going deal, a cavalier
performance that revealed an underlying hostility towards the agency. Stunned,
Marcus informed the director of the importance of making full disclosure to
Selznick regarding any deal in order for the agency to secure a competitive price. In

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the face of this indirect accusation, Hitchcock back-pedaled and claimed that there
really was no deal. Marcus asked Hitchcock how Skirball could discuss $150,000
offer 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 over dealing with his agent as
a producer. He wondered if Selznick would receive 50% of any bonus earned by
Hitchcock. Marcus explained that only ten percent would be derived from fees or
bonuses for Hitchcock’s directing, as usual, “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 his interests in The Lodger to Skirball. Myron proposed
$50,000 for his share of the story plus ten 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 into production,

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suggesting that he continued to maintain an interest in production, despite his rather
half-hearted efforts.
Suspicious of both Selznicks, Hitchcock continued to insist that he would
leave the agency upon the expiration of his contract. To shed himself of
entanglements with his agency, in January 1943 Hitchcock sold half his ownership
of The Lodger to David Selznick for $15,000. The director, then, moved on to a
new deal with Jack Skirball. Selznick explored other possibilities (for example,
using director Carol Reed with frozen funds in England and Monty Woolley for the
part of the lodger under the aegis producer Hunt Stromberg—clients one and all),
but none of these came to pass.
Weary of the agency and increasingly indifferent to his everyday business
obligations, Selznick clung to the project, and bitterly noted some of the similarities
it held with Hitchcock’s eventual 1943 Skirball production Shadow of a Doubt
(with an original screenplay by Alma and Thornton Wilder). Selznick (or one of his
field agents) even drew up a list of alleged similarities between the two films,
noting, for example, that in The Lodger the “housekeeper and her family look upon
THE LODGER as a distinguished gentleman and benefactor” and in Shadow of a
Doubt the “sister and her family look upon UNCLE CHARLIE as distinguished
man of the world and their benefactor,” and many other parallels. The list offers a
pathetic image: the crumpled Selznick, pettily taking notes in the dark, on a project
long lost to chance, acrimony, infighting, and haggling. The chart depicts a rivalry
between client and agent. It also stems from a culture that still breeds a

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commodification of ideas and art; it displays no notion of an artist working over
familiar material with subtle variations or interesting new angles. Selznick
developed these notes in consideration of a possible lawsuit. But he dropped the
idea and sold his rights to the 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
In the four snapshot stories above—in addition to the way their simultaneity
suggests something of the steadfast surveillance necessary to running a large
agency, spinning in synchronization, of course, with the diurnal deal-making of the
business, the highs and lows, the high art (Rebecca) and low drama (arguments on
contracts and phone-calls)—another trend emerges: growing suspicion and
discontent on the part of the clients. In each narrative, by 1943 or so, the client
threatens to quit the agency. So another story emerges here: one of the agency’s
demise. While each of these stories shows how the agency landed exciting and
important new clients in the late 1930s—almost all of the above clients signed in
1938—and emerged as leading figures in the industry, almost all in fact garnering
an Academy Award directly (Donat, Leigh, Carson) or indirectly (Hitchcock’s first
American film, Rebecca, won the Best Picture Award for 1940), by the early 1940s
these clients grew more and more distrustful, unsatisfied, and unfulfilled in relation
to the agency. They were not alone.

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In 1944, George Cukor joined a chorus of clients’ complaints chastising
Selznick. Cukor’s criticism came from a particularly poignant perspective since, as
a close friend of the family, he possessed much more insight into the toll wrought
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.
237

For over a decade, as Cukor acknowledged, the Selznick team had served the
director well. His career evinced all of the tropes of a stellar Selznick client: steady
increases in salary; greater control over 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 by himself; Selznick’s office offered only perfunctory services:
drawing up contracts; following through on payments and contract drafts; leaving
all of the negotiating work up to Cukor, a frustrating burden for an artist.

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Compounding such treatment from his agency, some sense of betrayal likely
lingered in Cukor over 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 interviewing the agent before deciding to make his move to William
Morris.
Before he dashed off a personal reply to Cukor, Selznick demonstrated
some of the shrewdness and acumen Cukor credited to him in his termination letter.
In New York at the time, Selznick phoned one of his associates to check on the
exact details and figures on 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 4 straight years) has for its earliest
expiration date July 23, 1945,” noting with some tallying of extensions, the contract
could run until 1946.
238
Three days later, Selznick, facts ready at hand, could afford
to put on a “personal” act in his letter 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.
239

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Sober in business, but not so in life. By the early 1940s, Selznick’s
drinking, held at bay for so long, began to destroy 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.”
240

But Marjorie had noticed what David seemed to deny for quite some time.
In 1939, when she moved herself and her daughter to Boston, Marjorie wrote 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.”
241
Divorce papers
and litigation soon followed. With Myron’s family falling apart, David and Irene
stepped up their attention to Myron, calling in the family lawyer who, after
consulting with doctors, urged relief from agency work: “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 repeated efforts at cures. His
doctors anticipated a mental breakdown:

294
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,
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.
242

While his brother 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: “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.”
243
Of course,
even these plans evaporated.
What did not dry up was the veritable flood of clients spilling out of the
office. For all of the same reasons outlined by Cukor, Carole Lombard sued for
release from her contract in 1940. The judge ruled in her favor, but, at the same
time, acknowledged that Selznick had served her well, had raised her salary and her
standing in the industry. That she continued to owe the agency commissions (up
until her untimely death in an airplane accident in 1942) represented an otherwise
empty victory for Selznick in the midst of his other losses. Errol Flynn bolted in
1940. Gregory La Cava left in 1942, joining the earlier departures of his fellow
directors Lewis Milestone (who signed with Feldman) and William Wellman (who

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signed with Bert Allenberg). Producer Val Lewton and writers Robert Stevenson
and Leigh Brackett all left for Feldman’s agency. Other clients failed to renew
contracts or, like Hitchock and Robert Carson, made it clear that they would leave
when their agency contracts expired. Signing promising new clients like James
Mason, Richard Barthelmes, and director Tay Garnett did little to balance these
losses. Others like Lucille Ball turned down the agency’s overtures, staying 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 severed his ties with the company and
lured an important Selznick executive, Nat Deverich, to join him. Selznick’s own
corporate reorganization that year may have been a response to Hayward’s
departure or may have precipitated the severance. Selznick’s erratic focus and
alcoholism remain equally likely reasons for Hayward’s departure. At any rate,
Hayward took many clients with him. Moreover, these 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.
244

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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, amongst dozens of others.
Over the next few years, more and more executives joined Hayward and
Deverich’s exodus, 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 spying agents, 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.
245

The internal memo from Feldman’s agency 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-vulture boasted
of obtaining “a list of Myron’s people” and reviewing it strategically. Leland
Hayward himself tipped off this Feldman associate that both Olivia de Havilland—
who in 1942 dumped Hayward—and Paulette Goddard had both given notices of
termination to Selznick.
246

This spiral continued, with Myron in and out of dry-out programs and
sanitariums; his business straining to serve its clients; his brother and family
meddling in all of his affairs.

297
On March 21, 1944, Myron attended a dinner party at Gregory Ratoff’s
home. Convinced to try a glass of wine, he quickly knocked his way to the hard
stuff—a lot of it. Just as quickly, he got ill—a lot. Early on the morning of March
23, 1944, after eight blood transfusions and a total loss of consciousness, Myron
Selznick died of portal thrombosis at Santa Monica Hospital.
A few days later, client William Powell read an eloquent eulogy, composed
by client Gene Fowler, to a dense crowd of industry figures and family—one and
the same almost—at Selznick’s funeral.
247
The trade press chimed in with 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, amongst
other achievements. Recognizing the agent’s importance to independent producers,
the Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers issued a resolution on March
30, 1944, a rare honor for a non-member, acknowledging the significant inroads
Selznick built for independent production:
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.
248

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Such honors extended all the way to the official halls of Washington, as Charles
Feldman noted with some pride for his profession in a letter to George Stevens
(overseas with the 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.
249

In the midst of all of this solemnity and honor, the business did not stop,
and it left the agency, of course, ripe for plundering. Initially, following its leader’s
death, the few remaining agents at the Selznick agency were determined to make it
run. But in the first year they lost over half of their remaining clients. In dealing
with the remnants of Selznick’s agency holdings, his bank’s Trust Officers
authorized four of the agency’s executives as signatories. And the 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 Hammett, for
example—and only maintaining talent generating three to four figure weekly
commissions.
250
But none of these plans got off of the ground. Many members of
the Artists’ Managers Guild offered to service Myron’s clients while still protecting
Myron’s wishes. In this regard, Leland Hayward nobly suggested forming a
committee of the leading agents of the industry to act in an advisory capacity for
the agency. Feldman, Noll Gurney—one of Myron’s former field agents—and Sam

299
Jaffe made similar overtures. Impressed with this nominally uncommon chivalry in
an otherwise competitive business, David wrote a note to Bert Allenberg at the
Managers Guild thanking the members for such generosity, but preferred managing
the estate himself.
251

Collecting commissions on 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 commissions based on his MGM contract and that he pay five percent in
commissions for one year on his new William Morris contract.
252
Managing the
estate was a distracting mess, but a lucrative one.
David’s advisors encouraged him to sell off the assets. He entertained offers
for the London branch from Feldman, William Morris, and MCA, the latter two
corporations angling to buy up existing agencies as a way of finally firming up
their operations in the film business.
253
MCA aggressively pursued the London
office, even if David seemed put off by the company from the start. The
negotiations with all of the interested parties involved difficult determinations over
how to split commissions on active contracts, as well as haggling over the upfront
purchase price. David’s indecisiveness, his determination to protect his brother’s
legacy and honor, and his simultaneous frustration over the taxing attention
demanded by his brother’s estate made these negotiations all the more difficult and
protracted. When the MCA deal fell apart, David expressed concern that MCA had

300
obtained, in the end, valuable information on 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 chisel off
clients. As David noted with some alarm to his lawyer, an MCA agent signed five
clients on a short London trip in January 1945.
254
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 sinking gross
earnings (less and less commissions), demonstrating to David’s accountant “the
wisdom, if not the necessity of disposing of this asset as soon as possible.”
255
MCA
took the bite, but even for them the London office 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 David found attractive (Saphier had been on good
terms with both brothers). But Charles Feldman’s offers quickly emerged as the
most serious and prolonged; in fact, at various points in the negotiations, Feldman
expressed interest in the New York, London, and Los Angeles offices.
256
He
purchased the New York office in September 1945—David permitted Feldman to
retain the name for a few months—for $25,000 installments and the operation was
running at a loss in 1948 when the Selznick estate received the final $5000 check
from Feldman.

301
The Los Angeles office, Feldman’s main target, continued to function,
albeit under great duress and degradation. The building itself offered 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 that Feldman was bluffing about his disinterest 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.”
257
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, his strongest rival and a
newcomer—the subjects of the next two chapters.

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Chapter Five:
Tall in the Saddle:
Charles Feldman, Agents, and Hollywood’s
Stampede of Independents

When Charles Feldman purchased Myron Selznick’s talent agency it
symbolized his complete ascension in the agency business for Feldman finally
trumped his main rival. David O. Selznick suspected that this signifying value fed
Feldman’s pursuit of this deal as much as or more than its strict financial value. In
private communication to his lawyer, David, as executor of Myron’s estate, fretted
over the symbolic loss suffered to Myron’s reputation and the whiff of victory he
detected in Feldman’s ambition for the remnants of Myron’s agency. Since
Feldman expressed little interest in capturing all of the remaining clients, he
seemed more enraptured 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.”
258
In
other words, Feldman offered no cash for clients—only an agreement to split
commissions with Selznick—but cash for the building and the New York office.
Press, publicity, and industry gossip portrayed the purchase as a prized acquisition
for Feldman.

303
Feldman certainly recognized the symbolic value. In 1946, in notes to a
magazine writer working on a profile of the agent (incredibly, Feldman proofread
the article before publication), Feldman 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.”
259
The first clause
represents a complete myth; no record exists of Feldman approaching Selznick for
a job. Feldman very likely added this dimension to inflate the dramatic narrative
arc of his own triumph in buying out Selznick’s agency (and some aspects of the
deal remained incomplete at this point). Still, Feldman’s sense of the symbolic
stands up: with Selznick out of the picture, Feldman represented the de facto leader
in the Hollywood agency business in the 1940s, even while powerful newcomers
William Morris and Music Corporation of America (MCA) waited in the wings.
Feldman had earned this stature. From the late 1930s through the mid-
1940s, he carved out new paths for his clients, for agents, for independent
production companies, and for himself—often simultaneously. Feldman was at the
forefront of the freelance movement, creating new deals for clients like Claudette
Colbert, Irene Dunne, and Charles Boyer. He played a central role in advising
independent producers like Sam Spiegel and Sam Engel to create their own
independent production companies. Over the next decade, Feldman advised George
Stevens on his partnership with William Wyler and Frank Capra in their
independent set-up Liberty Films. And when Feldman acquired client Howard

304
Hawks in the late 1930s, he set up semi-autonomous production deals with the
studios and, after the war, Hawks’s own independent company.
As discussed in the previous chapter, tax laws encouraged talent to arrange
new deals, decreasing their annual workload (to change their standing in income
brackets), as did the reduced block-booking agreement. “It’s worth suggesting,”
Thomas Schatz concludes, “that the Revenue Act posed as great a threat to the
stability of the studio system as did the federal antitrust suits….The growing power
of guilds and unions was already giving studio employees unprecedented leverage,
and now the tax laws encouraged producers and directors and even writers and stars
to bolt for free-lance status or create their own companies.”
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All of these factors contributed to the 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 overall to these new conditions. This syndicate
encompassed the necessary services and functions that increased as more and more
talent split off from the studios.

Feldman’s Move Into Production
In 1937 Feldman obtained a special waiver from SAG 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.
261
In 1941, for example, Feldman sold Model Wife to
Universal with clients Joan Blondell and Leigh Jason starring and directing

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respectively in client Charles Kaufman’s screenplay. 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 writer-clients,
Feldman developed the screenplays for Universal’s Seven Sinners, Pittsburgh, and
The Spoilers, populating each film with his clients, and taking producer’s credit on
two of the films (all discussed below), amongst numerous other production
packages over the course of the decade. As Collier’s noted, in a profile of
Feldman’s unique status as an agent-producer, by 1949 “the ‘package deal’ [was]
standard operating procedure in the movie industry.”
Packaging conflated in theory and practice with Feldman’s move into
independent production. When Feldman officially incorporated Charles K.
Feldman Productions in 1937, he began gathering material and financing
screenplay development.
262
By 1940, Feldman made his first moves into his own
supervised productions. Feldman described his transition to production activity 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.”
263
Feldman’s production activity was strategic, calculating both
the interests of his clients, his agency, and the needs of the studios. Unlike 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 function—a service

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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.”
264
Unlike Myron Selznick’s rather bombastic even hostile
(and failed) approach to independent production companies, Feldman staked out a
niche market—supplying productions or packages to complement studio output—
one that grew in the 1940s. As studio historian Douglas Gomery explains, “the
boom in theater attendance in the Second World War plus a restricted use of stars
and film stock created a profitable pull to independent entrepreneurs in the 1940s.
Leading stars, producers, and directors set up production shops to make one or two
films and take advantage of capital gains tax rules.”
265
Certain studios proved more
receptive to these deals. Universal, Columbia, RKO, and United Artists represented
Feldman’s steadiest clients for package deals, since these companies did not carry
big rosters of contracted stars, a factor that encouraged them 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 big studios like Warner
Bros. and Twentieth Century-Fox 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.
266
As an agent, Feldman depended on the same figures—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 gross percentage on each picture on top of
his $100,000 minimum directing fee (Feldman hooked the same rate plus
percentages for Stevens at the time). Adding to the new freelance developments
were a slew of talent 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 gross percentage on top of
salary. And Cagney signed an independent production deal with UA in 1942.
Variety noted that by 1942 more and more productions worked through a unit-
manager approach, as “company after company has swung away from the system
of front-office assignment of producers…toward the unit idea.”
267
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
checked or reigned in the levels of independence accorded to talent. Yet the ranks
of independents grew: Frank Borzage, Frank Capra, Lester Cowan, Bing Crosby,
Mark Hellinger, Mervyn Le Roy, Lewis Milestone, Robert Riskin, and others.
268

And by 1944, Variety claimed that “Hollywood’s most important independent
producers [were] setting virtually their own terms with distributors.”
269
Agents like
Feldman settled those terms.

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As studio historian Thomas Schatz argues, Hollywood in the 1940s
experienced a “gradual erosion of studio control over the filmmaking process.”
270

Viewed from the perspective of the studio system these transformations looked like
erosion; but viewed in consideration of the strong functional and managerial
network of agents spiraling around the studios these transformations register more
as a dispersal of managerial tasks. Studios more and more outsourced managerial
duties to independent producers—agents like Feldman were ready and waiting to
pick up the reins. The important point here is that the symbiotic syndicate of
transactions, coordination, and negotiation between agents and studio executives
was already in place, already up and running, ready to absorb this dispersal of
managerial duties. It didn’t need to be invented anew in the 1940s.
The salience of the symbiotic syndicate between agents and studios
accounted for Feldman’s successful transition to independent production. Once
again, then, social connections accounted 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 pitched for his
clients George Raft and Marlene Dietrich; “both stars,” he vowed, “would defer
practically all their salaries. The picture could be made on this basis with these

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deferments for approximately $300,000.”
271
As a producer, then, Feldman tacitly
and expressly sold his access to clients as part of his assets.

Marlene Dietrich and John Wayne
In his later years, John Wayne feigned complete bafflement when he
claimed that after all of his years in the film business, he still didn’t know what an
agent did. 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 ripe with
correspondence, consultations, conflicts, and consolations—no passing affair but a
long-term meaningful 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 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 represented yet another one of
Feldman’s acts of thievery, so transparently that he wound up in courts over the
infidelity. But Wayne’s career moves in the early 1940s typified Feldman’s
strategies in the synergy between his production company and his talent agency.
Marlene Dietrich, another one of Feldman’s recent acquisitions, lured the
young cowboy-actor into Feldman’s stable—at least, according to Sam Morrison,
Wayne’s cuckolded agent at the time. In papers he filed with the Los Angeles

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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 emissary in this illicit enterprise. Morrison had lithely
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 on agents mentions Morrison’s office and passingly refers to a
young actor John Wayne waiting impatiently to see his agent. When Wayne landed
in Ford’s Stagecoach—produced by Feldman’s good friend Walter Wanger—his
ambition, very likely, began to outweigh his patience with his agent. But this
discrepancy only found expression, however, when Wayne encountered another
species of his acting breed who had recently revamped her career by switching her
representation to Feldman: Marlene Dietrich. This adulterous agency tale, like any
good melodrama, requires some backstory.
Feldman landed Dietrich as a client in 1938, long after Dietrich had reigned
as a genuine star in films such as The Blue Angel, The Scarlet Empress, and
Shanghai Express, even while some of these films met with decidedly mixed
commercial and critical responses. By the decade’s end—and possibly the end of a
career—Dietrich’s allure melted into “box office poison,” according to exhibitors,
who placed a full-page ad declaring so in 1937, her temptation-tangled delivery
grown tired and campy—particularly in a period dominated by earthy, vernacular
actresses like Feldman’s own Claudette Colbert and Irene Dunne.

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Dietrich entered Feldman’s orbit through one of the many innovative
production set-ups the agent Feldman was exploring in the late 1930s. 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 Henry Koster would form “a great “United Artists” type
of set-up.” While this grand design never materialized, Feldman became a regular
provider of talent to Pasternak’s Universal productions. Both Pasternak and
Feldman saw 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
surrounded her earlier image with rugged American settings, genres, and
characters. Feldman’s pitch, ever alert to the ways in which stars represent
constructions—that is, objects shaped by the screenplay, the co-stars, the
production quality of films—as much as real figures (real personalities, looks, and
talent), convinced the cautious actress. Selling Dietrich on this game-plan, Feldman
sold her on his agency as well. He immediately set her up in Pasternak’s Destry
Rides Again, a comedic but rugged little western. Cast as a saucy French salon
owner and free of European silky cobwebs, the film surrounded Dietrich with a
spirit of the frontier, and an earthy American love interest in Jimmy Stewart. Off
her pedestal, Dietrich proved equally sure-footed in the pioneer’s dust.
Feldman repeated this formula in her follow-up film, Seven Sinners (1940),
with the rugged pioneer spirit transformed into a no less solidly American Navy

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drama. 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 agent Ruth Collier (Dana
Andrews came over from Collier as well in another deal); Power refused the role
and went off to make a series of films for Feldman pal Darryl Zanuck at Fox.
272

Feldman then turned to another “client,” John Wayne, now consulting with
Feldman, but still contractually tied to Morrison. This trio—Wayne, Dietrich, and
Feldman—got intertwined in each other’s careers at this point and here is where the
narrative got complicated and dramatic.
Having performed this little combination on 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 one’s career by
independently selecting projects impressed both Dietrich and Wayne. It pushed
Wayne to work on his persona more actively—his notorious gait, his delayed
delivery, his pose—an attentive tailoring and self-consciousness encouraged by
Dietrich during their short relationship on (and off) the set of the Feldman
productions. To Wayne, Dietrich represented an example of a performer calculating
the careful construction of a consistent and coherent screen persona and always
retaining a strong say in her career, even when she followed Feldman’s advice.
Hitherto an actor who stumbled through roles as they came to him, Wayne
recognized the importance of building a persona by selecting roles carefully and

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establishing a certain continuity to his characterizations, even as the roles shifted in
different films. One couldn’t rely entirely on agents—Wayne understood that much
from 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. At
the core of this new approach, Feldman aided and abetted Wayne in this direction.
These little card tricks—shuffling and packaging clients with his
screenplays—could lead to problems. For example, through Mitchell Leisen, one of
Feldman’s directing clients, Willam Dover, a New York lawyer and agent now
affiliated with Feldman’s office, informed Feldman that Dietrich “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.”
273
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 regarding The Spoilers, as it turned out through Leisen’s conversations
with her, stemmed more from her insecurity than suspicions over Feldman’s
intentions since Dietrich suspected that Universal did not want her for the role and
only 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
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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 cliché ridden,
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 merged indistinguishably 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 re-shoots, 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 re-shoot:
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
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.
274

Of course, Feldman’s shaping of the film completely parallels his reshaping of
Dietrich’s persona, calculating audience sympathy for the character. This kind of
vulnerability, the exposure of weakness, worked against, if not erased, the
calculating, hypnotic and powerful roles Dietrich played in her early films.

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Collapsing in emotional vulnerability solicited audience sympathy for the actress,
especially in the consistent way Feldman had shaped these roles for Dietrich.
The resurrection of Dietrich’s star persona in these films rubbed off on
Feldman’s other client, John Wayne, doubling the service value (to the agency and
its clients: Randolph Scott, their co-star, was also an agency client) of these
productions. 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 his 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. Amongst 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.” To capitalize on such industry
attention, Feldman took out ads emphasizing the agency’s clients in these
productions.
These Feldman productions delivered what Feldman promised his clients:
new success, new recognition, and an expansion of their previous personas and the
roles available to them in the future. Of course, Feldman walked away from these

316
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.
275
Feldman purchased Francis’ story on speculation,
guaranteeing the author $2500 off the top from the sale of the script, plus and
additional 25% of the total sale. In addition to his weekly salary, Breslow would
take 25% from the sale as well, with the remaining 50% 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, 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 $2500 each), then
turned around and sold it to Universal Studios for only $43,000, but with a
guarantee to Feldman the producer of 12.5 % of the gross. Feldman followed the
same strategy with The Spoilers as well. His take from both films brought him an
additional $120,000 over the first few years of the release of the two films.
276

Wayne consulted with Feldman as soon as he met the agent on Seven
Sinners. Given Feldman’s close relationship with Walter Wagner, the producer of
Wayne’s 1939 film Stagecoach, Feldman and Wayne may have crossed paths even

317
earlier. However, Morrison still retained an agency contract on Wayne at that time.
But Stagecoach seemed to catch Morrison by surprise; the agent’s surviving
scrapbook, while spilling over with articles and pictures of lesser clients, only
showed evidence of his relationship with Wayne during the year of Stagecoach,
when suddenly page after page featured clippings, reviews, and advertising
featuring his client, including Seven Sinners; then Wayne disappeared from the
agent’s book.
In 1932, Wayne signed a five-year contract with Morrison and renewed his
contract in 1936 for another five years, commencing June 4
th
, 1937.
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Under
Morrison’s stewardship, Wayne signed a contract with B-movie studio Republic, a
standard document giving Wayne $3000 per picture through 1943. But 1939’s
Stagecoach changed the picture. The success of this film and Wayne’s starring role
in the production fueled Wayne’s dissatisfaction with his career and his agent.
When Wayne moved on to Wanger’s friend Feldman’s productions he became
increasingly unhappy that Morrison failed to exploint the actor’s new success.
Wayne 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
SAG in October 1941, for years he had been dissatisfied with Morrison. 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

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of the offers obtained by Leo Morrison.” Indeed, an earlier article on Morrison
coincidently mentions the then relatively unknown John Wayne waiting lengthily
and rather impatiently in the hall to see 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 institutions
in the industry, to handle such disputes on their own turf and on their own
conditions. Dietrich also filed letters with SAG that disputed Morrison’s
allegations regarding her role in the switch and denied any knowledge of Wayne’s
agent. She encouraged SAG to put pressure on Morrison to drop the suit because of
the unfavorable publicity and mentioned the SAG-AMG franchise and that one of
its purposes was to handle such disputes. SAG helped resolve the situation by the
end of 1941. In this agreement, Wayne continued to pay Morrison commissions
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 renegotiated Wayne’s Republic deal:
one picture a year for five years on a basis of a $100,000 advance against ten
percent of the gross.
278
The deal also guaranteed picture budgets of at least eight
hundred thousand dollars, an impressive figure for the studio (although the B-
movie company was enjoying, like the rest of Hollywood, the bountiful WWII
years). More importantly, the deal granted Wayne a producer status on selected
productions—an increasingly typical move in Feldman’s negotiations in the 1940s.

319
One of the key films in Wayne’s gradual ascension to stardom remains
1944’s Tall in the Saddle. As Gary Willis has noted, Tall in the Saddle marks a
transformation in Wayne’s on-screen persona, providing “a first glance at what
would be Wayne’s later persona.”
279
But Feldman’s fingerprints are all over this
film, even though neither he nor Wayne produced this film. Director client Edward
L. Marin (brother too of Ned Marin, vice-president of Feldman’s agency) helmed
the film. It was produced by Robert Fellows, who worked as an associate producer
under Feldman on Pittsburgh—Wayne and Fellows 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).
280

But one of the most crucial collaborators for Wayne—on this film and
subsequent productions—also came from Feldman’s stable: Paul Fix. Wayne
worked closely with Fix, another actor from Pittsburgh, and an aspiring
screenwriter (also under Feldman). Wayne consulted with Fix as he shaped the
screenplay’s main character around Wayne’s strong points. This practice fit
Feldman’s notion of carefully tailoring roles to define a star’s persona. Moreover,
Feldman client Loretta Young 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 example, when Wayne was overdoing the famed “furrowing” of his

320
brow, Fix would put his own hand to his head. “I was on the set with Duke for
years and nobody ever caught on.” A few did: 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 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 their client. 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.
281
The short selling window likely indicated
confidence that Wayne would quickly set up the story with Republic. But the
memo revealed how much and how early Wayne remained in control of the project;
at the same time, the memo recorded the role the agency played in scouting
material in its developmental form for Wayne to work with and shape into
serviceable vehicles for his talent.
Almost every review of The Angel and the Badman noted, and usually at
the start of the review, Wayne’s status as a producer on the film. Furthermore,
Feldman orchestrated rounds of interviews and publicity around Wayne

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highlighting his new production deal and noting 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 in that the film’s
narrative portrayed Wayne’s gradual dismissal 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 noted 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
chimed in with Feldman’s strategies in burnishing Wayne’s new charisma in the
industry. Even while this critic noted, as many did, that the film dragged, his
critique remained consistent with Wayne’s new image: “actor Wayne should have
pointed out to producer Wayne that the picture is too talky, moves too slowly and
runs too long for what is still, after all, a western.” This ventriloquist critical
mockery nonetheless adheres to Wayne’s dual roles and his new status. Noting this
distinction served Wayne in that it signified control over his career and roles. This
perspective transformed Wayne into a productive entity (a producer), not merely a
passive actor—and served to heighten his aura.
Years earlier, a 1941 magazine profile of Wayne referred to him as “the
fastest-moving leading man among the come-uppers on the Coast,’ and particularly

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emphasized his co-starring gigs with Marlene Dietrich, cashing in Wayne’s
association with 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 A-list 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—always a collegial business
associate of Feldman’s—the Head of Republic Studios, calling Wayne a potential
triple threat: producer, actor, and director—an exaggeration of the deal terms
heartily participated in for public relations and a studio head seeking to flatter one
the studio’s most important assets.
By 1944, Wayne cracked the box office top twenty-five—at twenty-four—
and climbed steadily to the top by the end of the decade. Wayne’s careerist
escalation coincided with Feldman’s resuscitation of Marlene Dietrich, 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, and greater
leeway to exercise such practices through the control granted in contracts. Directly
and indirectly, Feldman played a role in all of these areas, and pushed the actor into
new professional and contractual terrain in the years to come.

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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
biographer, Todd McCarthy, considered the relationship “the most important
professional association” of Hawks’ life.
282
In fact, the opportunities offered 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 to strike up a production deal, Hawks moved over to Feldman’s
agency (in a literal sense, since the two agencies had occupied the same office
building). Here Hawks fell into step with Feldman’s independent production
planning, his penchant for juggling overlapping contracts, and for packaging
clients. Both Hawks and Feldman, in fact, managed the career of their mutual
discovery, Lauren Bacall. Feldman’s handling of Bacall demonstrated the strategic
merging of his production company and his talent agency. It also revealed his skills
as an agent, aptly demonstrating his attentive 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
servicing contract negotiations.
Hawks’ move came at an opportune moment. Feldman had just fielded a
call from Jesse Lasky seeking Lewis Milestone 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

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handily offered up Hawks’ 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’ suitability
took no time, then. But Feldman worked his magic in the accompanying deal-
points. Feldman 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—this, despite the fact that
Lasky remained the film’s producer (he had brought the project to Warner Bros.)
and Hawks came to the pre-production planning fairly late in the game. No matter.
Through Feldman’s deal, the film would be known as a Hawks production, insuring
industry recognition for his client. With the film’s successful commercial and
critical run Feldman’s work paid off. Feldman 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 was at the table with Warner Bros.
negotiating a semi-independent production deal for Hawks.
While certain details of this 1942 deal would be re-negotiated at various
times over its duration, 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 $100,000 on each film.
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The deal
granted Hawks story choice, a production credit, and nonexclusive services. In
Feldman fashion he also negotiated a concurrent deal for Hawks at Universal,
commanding the director a $100,000 fee on three pictures over three years, but with

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a promise of 50% of the net profits. At Warner Bros. the advertising and title
sequences would read “A Howard Hawks Production,” in 40% font, while the same
moniker would appear on the Universal films at 75%. At the same time, Feldman
continued to pursue other deals; at RKO, for example, Feldman came close to
selling the studio on an independent production deal (partnered with Gary
Cooper).
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The original Warner Bros. contract specified Hawks as director on two
specific projects, Battle Cry and Dark Eyes, from two 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 Hawks’s salary regardless of
whether or not the studio was prepared to start production. This foreclosed the
possibility of Warners tying up Hawks’s time and services in delays. In addition,
Feldman added ten more salaried weeks to the contract for an additional $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 twenty percent of the
net profits up to a gross of $3 million and thirty percent thereafter. Feldman also
convinced the studio to pay Hawks’s agency commissions directly to Feldman’s
agency but Warners was allowed to deduct the commission amount from the

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recoupable elements, meaning that the studio recovered these costs before they
began distributing percentages to Hawks and 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 and reimbursing Hawks to purchase the rights to this
Hemingway novel (from Feldman’s frequent business associate Howard Hughes).
As one more component to this complicated deal, the contract stipulated that
Warners would guarantee Bogart’s services to start production by December 1
st
,
1943. Feldman’s old business partner, Sam Jaffe, also Bogart’s agent, fails to make
any appearance in these negotiations, leaving Bogart a mere contract player
throughout all of these negotiations, a pawn, albeit a well-paid one, in the power-
plays between Feldman, Hawks, and Warners. Ann Sheridan was also mentioned in
some of the original contracts and deal memos—until Feldman introduced a young
unknown into the picture: Betty Bacall.
Feldman “discovered” the teenager Betty Bacall (renamed Lauren) through
his association with Howard Hawks, whose wife brought the young model to the
attention of Howard and his agent.
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The young teen had no acting experience; but
Hawks recognized a potential talent. Feldman signed her to contracts both with his
talent agency and his production company, 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

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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,
if the studio were to use her for this picture—a prospect involving another separate
round of negotiations.
In May the following year, Feldman, acting as her agent, negotiated a
simultaneous contract with Warner Bros., splitting the services of Bacall between
the studio and 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 whatsoever, a
contractual term heavily disputed by Warners through extended negotiations.
However, Feldman allowed Hawks’ production company to loan out Bacall, a
somewhat natural consideration since it was 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, Feldman reiterated to Jack Warner the importance of securing a starting
date, since failing to do so could interminably hold up Hawks, impinging on his
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 through threat of penalty,
regardless of the film’s actual start of production. By itself, this contractual
obligation to pay out a salary even on a film yet to start production sounded absurd,
since it amounted to paying a director to essentially wait for production to begin.

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But this commitment retained a key strategic tactic. It raised the stakes,
contractually forcing a studio’s interest in starting a production, thereby
guaranteeing that a client’s time would not be squandered and protecting the
client’s availability for other deals. For clients with leverage like Hawks, Feldman
always negotiated such guarantees.
To Have and Have Not proved to be a terrific hit for Warner Bros. Hawks
was eager to work with Bogart and Bacall again. Once again, Feldman and Hawks
reworked the deal 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 in 20% of the gross). To protect his cut, Hawks worked quickly and
efficiently on the shoot.
At the end of production on The Big Sleep, 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 critical
attention. When Feldman saw test screenings of The Big Sleep, he went into rescue
mode. Feldman sent a carefully argued memo to Jack Warner imploring the studio
to re-shoot scenes. He framed his appeal—clearly protecting the exchange value of
his commodity, Bacall—to Warner as a matter of protecting the studio’s own assets
(both Bacall and the film itself). The memo illustrated the power agents retained, in
terms of their reputation, in persuading studios to consider their arguments and
creative contributions. Moreover, the memo demonstrated the powerful syndicate
operating as part of the classical studio system as it accentuated Feldman’s

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embedded role in the production process; for here an agent played a strong
consulting role as much as the executives working with the studio walls. For these
reasons, Feldman’s memo is worth quoting in its entirety:
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 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.
286

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Unbeknownst to Feldman, three weeks before receiving this memo, 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 re-editing the film. Comparing the two
versions, one can see that the retakes followed Feldman’s advice to the tee. Three
months later, Warner wrote in an in-house memo 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 demonstrated a keen capacity
for formal analysis (as sharp as any film critic); his perceptive observations about
the conflicts woven into the attractive forces 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 dynamic forces in dialogue. Moreover, Feldman’s observations
revealed an awareness of the ways in which particular personalities in character
roles were layered into the creation of a star persona. In other words, star personas
were not only associated with the roles stars played, but with the personality
characterizing these roles, a personality creating a certain continuity to the roles.
This continuity could be—and it is in successful careers—appropriated by the star
as their own. So while stars certainly shaped their persona through aspects of their

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own personality (traits, of course, constructed by 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. But Feldman’s memo also revealed his own understanding of the
creative construction of a star, a unique awareness that shows some of the
astuteness 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 capital 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. This memo
translated into prose conversations that happened all the time over 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 over films, weighing a film project’s short-term benefits (salary,
location, etc) against its larger impact on their career. Other memos and phone
notes indicate the same kind of advice and confirm that such creative consultation
characterized Feldman’s sage counsel. Feldman—and other agents like him—then
didn’t simply measure film projects by the monetary value to their clients, even
though SAG’s agency franchise defined the agent-client relationship as “fiduciary”
in nature. Acting as an agent involved a knowledge of the ways in which films
(even the choice of films for directors and musicians) built—brick-by-brick—a

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client’s persona. Feldman’s legal background trained him to read the tricks and
traps of obtuse 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 formal 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 conflated with a concern for the long-term benefits of continuing a
client’s career.

John Wayne and Howard Hawks
For Howard Hawks’s Red River, Feldman worked out an even more
innovative method of financing, one that indicated 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
nation’s first major cattle drive, and hired the writer to develop a screenplay.
Having proven himself in slapstick comedy, in thrillers, war films, and detective

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stories, Hawks wanted to tackle a western, particularly since he had worked
without credit on Howard Hughes’ The Outlaw, before abandoning the production
early on. By March, Hawks brought in another writer to polish a presentable draft
and Feldman was alerted to set up the project. Hawks saw two of his old pals in the
lead roles, Gary Cooper and Cary Grant; but Cooper and Grant were respectively
nonplussed with the project and unavailable. 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 ten percent share in the profits, with a
profit of $75,000 guaranteed.
287

In 1945, Hawks and Feldman incorporated Monterey Productions, mainly
for the production of Red River, with its budget set at $1,750,000. Hawks would
receive $125,000 to produce and direct, approximately his fee on his recent Warner
Bros contract. But with his wife as another shareholder in the corporation, Hawks
would take 57 % of the profits, with Feldman set to receive 24%. But 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.”
288
This group’s investment
was added to by a $900,000 loan supplied by Security-First National Bank in
Beverly Hills. Small then brought the film to United Artists as part of a multi-
picture deal. Through this complicated arrangement, Monterey would only receive

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its money after UA collected its distributor’s share and MPI and the bank recouped
their contributions.
When it was finally released in September 1948, two years after production
began, Red River did remarkable business, hitting number three in box office as it
moved from New York to Los Angeles within the first month and hitting number
one only a few weeks into the second month of release. Variety declared Red River
the number three film of the year as its domestic rentals reached $4 million and also
deigned Hawks the number six “money-director”of the year. Hawks’ 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 only saw money from this film after 1952,
when it was re-released.
289

But Monterey Production found itself besieged with problems, mainly in the
form of lawyers representing over twenty-eight claimants related to Red River—
including, incredibly, John Wayne.
290
While Feldman’s production company (and
United Artists, the distributor) failed to deliver full payment of the actor’s share in
the profits to Wayne, Feldman’s agency advanced loans to Wayne—part of the
complicated mess resulting from working with clients in multiple roles and with
multiple partners. “As of 1952, creditors were still owed approximately $175,000
by Monterey.”
291
By 1953, Monterey finally saw some profits from the film—25%
to Monterey; 69% to MPI, and six percent to Wayne. By 1954, Monterey garnered
$15,000 in profits and sold the film three years later to United Artists for $225,000.

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In 1959, the company, long just an ephemeral inactive entity, was officially
dissolved, after paying off the remaining $18,000 owed to creditors by the film
project.
The risks of the artistically rewarding experience of independently
financing productions could be great. Of course, Hawks’s overruns on a studio film
could be absorbed by the studio’s large-scale financing in its annual budget. The
Investors’ group could spread these losses across its other independent film
investments. But for Hawks the overruns meant a cut in his percentage points; his
artistic ambitions benefited in the short term on the production of this critically
successful film (and personally gratifying, an achievement we should
acknowledge). But the overruns cost him further independence and before the film
was even released, Feldman was searching for a new studio contract for Hawks.
Feldman had helped Hawks gain complete independence, enough to
complete a critically and commercially successful film. But Hawks’s fiscal
practices erased any financial independence and its attendant power underscoring
freedom from the studios. Feldman could only stand by and watch, busily
following his own projects and other clients, and protecting his own interests. In its
networking of independent financiers with a studio distribution guarantee, the
structure of the deal offered a template for future independent productions—a
model for the more adept financial footwork followed by United Artists in the
1950s and 1960s. While recognizing the important roles that banks could and
would play in freeing artists from the studios, this deal also showed the new

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conditions through which financing, in its complex indebted networks, could take
hold of productions as much as studio control. Ultimately, Hawks had to sacrifice
his financial control—and the possibility of future productions, for this deal sent
him right back to the studios—for his artistic control.
Despite Hawks’s troubles on Red River—and his own culpability in those
problems—we need to put Hawks’s experience on this independent production and
Feldman’s role in securing such independence into perspective. According to a
contemporaneous industry survey polling the degrees of satisfaction and frustration
amongst studio directors, their main complaint related to their lack of control over
productions and their efforts to secure greater degrees of self-expression and
creative freedom. Few of the directors complained about working hours, job
insecurity, contracts, or even salaries. Almost fifty percent of the directors asked
for “a freer rein in making pictures,” “less interference,” and for “making the
director responsible to one producer alone.”
292
Feldman achieved all of these goals
for Hawks—even in his Warner Bros. contract, Feldman stipulated that Hawks
remain answerable to only one production executive. This poll of directors showed
that they desired closer working relationships with writers, greater authority on
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

337
scheduling overruns confirmed industry gossip about the budgetary risks attached
to his employment. 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.
For John Wayne, Red River capped his ascension of the Hollywood star
system. The film solidified his star persona with audiences; and Wayne garnered
strong reviews for his performance in the film. 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,” amongst other salutations. The ad bolstered his agency
(and his 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 magazine
pitched to theater exhibitors, voted Wayne number two in popularity, behind Bob
Hope.
293

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 ten percent of the gross

338
on reissues (studios often re-released films to fill theaters to capitalize on previous
successes).
294
SAG had recently complained about the reissue practice, claiming
that it hurt employment since re-releases cut down on film productions. 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 wattage. United Artists, who 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 films banking on
his client’s investment in his star status. In this groundbreaking new deal, Wayne’s
10% cut of the gross, and his strong salary garnered recognition in the industry of
his increased power, and demonstrated Feldman’s continuing command of
negotiations and deal-making. But his work on the re-issues percentage showed the
agent’s attention to industry trends and to new areas for building up and insuring
revenues streams for his clients and for himself.

Feldman vs. Feldman

Throughout the 1940s Feldman faced an envious problem, 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

339
supervision, with Feldman rarely delegating crucial decision making to any of his
operatives. 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 cases
(notwithstanding all of the ethical and conflict-of-interest issues). Still, those cases
proved equally demanding of the producer-agent’s attention, and Feldman’s dual
professional pursuits created tremendous practical, philosophical, personal, and
even financial problems.
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 a
personal, ever-ready comrade to his clients and his business greatly depended on
his personal relationships, the quality of relations that characterized his work with
leading talent like Irene Dunne, Howard Hawks, or George Stevens. Even at his
busiest, Feldman availed himself to these important clients, discussing the merits of
scripts or the nuances of performances in addition to circumnavigating the
implications of complicated deal structures. 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 both

340
business’ schedules and often dictating directions about sending out production
company scripts to the shared office staff; on top of this, he conducted most of his
business in this regard 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—MCA and William Morris—finally began to make headway into 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 to stabilizing Feldman’s dual enterprises. In the early 1940s, with this
strategy in mind, Feldman approached Leland Hayward (now free of the Selznick
agency) and proposed a merger of their two agency operations.
295
This merger
would have established the largest talent agency in the industry, creating an
indomitable force from the already leading two agencies. Feldman’s strategy here
counted on setting up a partner who could manage the shop while he worked on his
productions. That Hayward operated his business with the same laissez-faire
approach as Feldman represented a major obstacle to the merger; Hayward did not
want to shoulder all of the talent agency’s managerial responsibility (in fact,
Hayward also possessed designs on entering the production field). Not
surpirisingly, these discussions never moved beyond Hayward’s skepticism.

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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 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 established
in the initial 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 of 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 affected,
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.
296

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-lists
presented a daunting picture for the competition. Most tellingly, Blum’s closing
lines, in which Feldman’s very business partner frames the discussion of his
partner’s future in speculative terms, revealed the risky sense of uncertainty about
Feldman’s own interests. In the end, the proposal, like so many others during this
period, got buried as Feldman moved on to new projects.
While his business associates, his employees, and, likely, many of his
clients, wondered which direction Feldman would take—agenting or producing—in
1943, Feldman entertained an offer that would force these questions with a

342
powerful certainty: Twentieth Century-Fox offered him the Vice-President position
at its studio. This position involved working directly under his good friend Darryl
Zanuck, and, at least during the war years, with Zanuck running an Army film unit,
essentially placed Feldman in charge of a studio—a heady offer signifying
Feldman’s reputable status in the industry. After over ten years as an agent and less
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,” sticking to a
characteristically noncommittal stance.
Another solution to balancing Feldman’s workload lay in simply arranging
a strong production deal with a studio, while still maintaining his status as an
independent producer. This would have allowed Feldman to disperse some of his
duties in the production company—managing the productions, planning
distribution details, and other minutiae—to the studio partner. In the mid-1940s,
Twentieth Century-Fox and Feldman held numerous discussions about setting up a
long-term releasing deal for his productions. Following long, sporadic rounds of
negotiations, Feldman’s lawyers pointed out that this arrangement would ultimately
force Feldman to quit his vacillation business: the deal necessitated Feldman to
dispose his capital stock in the ownership of the agency as well as terminate his
employment with the agency.
297
Feldman’s lawyers also suspected that the purchase
of the production company would tip off the IRS, since Fox, as part of the deal,
planned to purchase the stock of the company at inflated prices so that Feldman

343
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 ultimatum 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.”
298

As one solution, Grant, acting as an intermediary, floated out a startling,
secret proposition from one of Feldman’s rivals: MCA offered 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 their offer to purchase Feldman’s agency, MCA proposed that Feldman draw up
a list of thirty or so clients possibly willing to move over to MCA. MCA would
then narrow the list down to about twenty attractive clients. They offered to absorb
Feldman’s top executive Jack Gordean onto their payroll, and leave the remaining
clients to Ralph Blum, and Ned Marin, another top agent, as well as the old agency

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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 offer Feldman
a number of solutions to 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).
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.

Arnold pressed the advantages of accepting MCA’s offer mainly to force Feldman
to quit toggling between agent and producer.
Feldman turned them down. He enjoyed working in both businesses too
much, and his consistent earnings from the agency—well over what MCA’s top
man Lew Wasserman took in each year—provided Feldman with a comfortable
cushion to absorb the risks entailed from his production company.

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Compounding Feldman’s vacillation, Grant’s counsel betrayed its own
degree of uncertainty—an understandable wavering in the sense that Feldman’s
ambivalent stance, straddling the two worlds without making a leap, made offering
advice difficult, if not impossible, for his many advisors, who seemed to present
scenarios always in dual perspectives, leaving either position open. While he firmly
pushed the sale to MCA, Grant remained plainly skeptical of all the industry talk
about independent productions at this time:
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.

Grant’s advice characterized the speculative nature that constituted the film
business in the 1940s, where participants engaged in prophecy and hypothetical
speculation. Too often we hear of corporate studio histories 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 told
Feldman that changes in the tax laws would render studios very 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 would prove far more receptive to independent production companies,
particularly following the anticipated Supreme Court decision forcing studios to

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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.”
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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 by setting down another ultimatum, this one related to
Feldman’s 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 deals, neither built
up capital assets—owning 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.” Laced through Grant’s advice—practical points about
owning more stake, building up reserve capital, and long-term investment—we can
see a concern with establishing a reputation as well. Here we return—with Grant—
to the problem compounding Feldman’s dual identity; his status as an agent
remained strong, even if some clients—and even business associates—wondered
how long he would continue in this line; but his status as a producer would remain
more akin to a dilettante or boutique business—more or less how Feldman himself

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viewed this activity—if he continued to waver between these two images. 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 Howard’s position. The two fought often and practiced a
rather recreational infidelity, even if they managed to develop an understanding
perspective on 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 one of his clients like Preston Sturges or
Howard Hawks, a relationship built on humanistic 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?’”
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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 separate wing—sharing
an intimacy and companionship for their remaining years.
Clients were not so forgiving of Feldman’s wanderlust. Clients like
Michelle Morgan and Robert Fellows found themselves in the targets of MCA,
alerting Feldman’s agents to the serious focus required by the agency. Marlene

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Dietrich stood at the front of the line of complainants. Having spent most of the
war putting on shows for the troops overseas (“the entire industry,” Feldman
reminded her, “is cognizant of your efforts,” translating her philanthropic activity
into its industrial exchange value and social cache), Dietrich found few good film
offers on her return, and accordingly tied this to the lack of attention from her
agency. Feldman’s defense, by way of explaining his prolonged absence from the
agency, only obliviously betrayed the symptoms prompting 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.

In fact, for all of its symbolic value, purchasing Selznick’s assets only added to the
complications and problems faced by the agency in the mid-1940s, 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 maintain the staff, which ultimately fell apart. 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 steering
the likes of Tennessee Williams amongst others, but she too rejected his overtures.
Feldman still fretted over his agency, and, more or less, recognized its
problems, even if he failed to acknowledge his own role in contributing to these

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problems. Looking at the moderate returns from his talent agency for 1945, for
example, and concerned over lost clients like Warner Baxter or anxious clients
talking of leaving like Joan Blondell (frustrated that the agency could only garner
studio interest in her for films like Tarzan), Feldman lashed out at his crew on their
short-comings: “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.”
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Rattling off
their habits of arriving late, getting coffee, lunching at Romonoff’s, he informed
them “You fellows don’t know what a soft job you have.” He warned them: “for
the sake of your business you should do something about it.” Ironically, these
agency problems remain readily documented entirely as a result of Feldman’s own
extended absences since he required long detailed reports and updates, as well as
his own extensive and detailed reactions, instructions, and directions, all surviving
in his files.
Still, Feldman recognized the need for some action, and in 1946, shortly
after finalizing his purchase 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, two of Feldman’s executive
agents.
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Both Gordean and Marin signed documents excluded claims on Howard
Hawks, on Norman Corwin, various story properties and on Feldman’s production
company, all entities whose profits contractually fell out of their share. More

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importantly, Feldman gave Gordean and Marin a 25% share on all profits
exceeding $200,000, the amount covering the executive salaries. Feldman
commanded $2000 per week with Gordean and Marin taking in $750 per week
each. Feldman hoped that granting his two executives a stake in the business would
bolster their own sense of responsibility and direction when Feldman spent time
away but also drive their incentive to expand the business in the face of
competition.
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. Juxtaposing the projects weighing on
Feldman’s agency and his production company offers a good picture of the
problems facing such dual business activity. Keep in mind that throughout this
narrative of his dual activity in the late 1940s, Feldman continued to concentrate on
the careers of Marlene Dietrich, John Wayne, Lauren Bacall, George Stevens, and
Howard Hawks. As impressive as these complications remain, then, they represent
only fragments of his business activity.
In 1949, Feldman’s production company managed over fifteen different
projects in various states of development and production.
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John Steinbeck had just
completed a screenplay for The Wayward Bus. Feldman was supervising the
development of five different novels that he owned. 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

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one but losing out on the second. He had just signed up client Kirk Douglas to
appear in The Glass Menagerie, with a start date set for October. He was dealing
with Republic Pictures, with whom he retained a limited distribution deal, on their
releases of his productions of Orson Welles’ Macbeth and Lewis Milestone’s The
Red Pony, both of which had just finished production within the same month. (The
corporation frequently organized these assets and productions under separate
incorporated banners: Group-Milestone for The Red Pony; Group Productions for
Moonrise; and Literary Classics for Macbeth, all accounts managed by Feldman’s
main production company). The latter was set up when his friend Orson Welles—
not a client—mentioned the project and Feldman hastily slotted it into his
production slate (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
saw the final product featuring a cast all speaking in virtually impenetrable Scottish
accents it set off a tempest of memos and meetings, with Feldman playing to both
sides, but ultimately compromising by siding with the studio for redubbing the
sound. Regardless, 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 his client Lewis Milestone,
and was coproduced by Feldman’s own company, who invested over $100,000 into
the project’s development. Feldman supervised the script development and cast
client Myrna Loy in the lead, along with non-client (but recipient of intense agency
wooing) Robert Mitchum. Milestone handled the production with little interference

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from Feldman, and only some consultation. But Feldman took a strong 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 exemplary model, 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, 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 selling 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.” And 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 of 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 attached
to star, and possibly client Susan Hayward. In addition, with Howard Hawks,
Feldman owned one-half of Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, which he continued
to shop to studios. And the production company owned contracts on Ella Raines

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and stories by Norman Corwin, entities that required consistent managing and
shopping to prospective producers. He had spent all of 1947 supervising the
development of a screenplay based on Henry James’ The Aspern Papers—paying a
client $1100 per week—then selling the final script to his friend producer Walter
Wanger (Universal paid for it through their production deal with Wanger) for
$145,000 (Feldman announced the sale to the trades at $200,000, a way of drawing
notoriety to the project). Feldman also sold The Bishop’s Wife, after much
development, to producer and friend Samuel Goldwyn for over $200,000. These
projects only topped the long list of projects that failed to reach the development
stage, let alone 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 on a staff meeting in 1949. The sheer quantity—and only
a selection—remains the most important representation here, indicating the degree
to which Feldman’s vacillation caused confusion.
In addition to servicing their 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 part
should she find any one of the scripts interesting. They were also discussing an

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independent production set-up for Robert Rossen with Harry Cohn at Columbia.
Charles Boyer was very 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 sought 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 Michael
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 registered to their agents, since deals took some time to
unfold. In other words, some clients—with contracts; jobs; with 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

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agencies like MCA and William Morris, while seemingly corporate and
impersonal, promised potential clients the kind of immediate attention that its
armies of agents could provide based on the sheer size of their operations. Feldman
could no longer afford to approach business affairs with his casual, insouciant style,
however charming. So, in this regard, as one representative case amongst 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.”

Conclusion: Contracts, Corporations, and Complications

Selznick was gone; Feldman was king. For a day. For 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, not only did Feldman’s agency require his focus, the very agency
business required rethinking and restructuring. Feldman needed to focus on his
business, but a business in flux, moving in new directions, just as Feldman moved
back and forth between production and management. Independent productions and
nonexclusive contracts, the very instruments of change proffered 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.

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As a producer Feldman explored this new territory, but it also injected new
purpose to his role as agent, thereby magnifying the problem of splitting his
attention between these two enterprises. With the legal decrees now setting limits
on block-booking and the recent court case likely eliminating the practice
altogether, industry trades widely circulated the idea that stars played a stronger
role in selling pictures on a case by case basis. As a producer, Feldman knew this
intimately, noting, as he pitched different projects to studios and investors, that a
certain star expressed “interest” in the project or without fail noting the stars
“attached” to a project, accentuating 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 himself, attaching stars to the earliest stages of
a project could guarantee production 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 it increased the complexity of the agency’s
operations, particularly when calculations based on tax-breaks and percentages
weighed into these decisions and explorations. In other words, as a participant in
the very expansion of independent production in the 1940s, Feldman recognized
new opportunities in the playing field, even while these very conditions demanded
new strategic practices from his agency.

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Olivia de Havilland’s successful lawsuit against Warner Bros in 1944—in
which the actress won release from the extensions Warner Bros. had added to her
contract—drew widespread attention to the weakening hold of long-term contracts.
Havilland’s case was more symbolic than revolutionary. It only rendered
unwarranted extensions illegal—admittedly extensions remained perhaps the most
attractive and powerful aspect of long-term contracts for studios—and did not
question contracts per se. By contrast, nonexclusive contracts, long a staple of
Feldman’s practices, created a far more complex set of dynamics that offered talent,
by virtue of increasing their demand, more power in determining factors related to
their employment—salaries, of course, but also choice of material, varying degrees
of creative license, and a choice of partners (approval of directors or writers). In
turn, this rendered the service capacity of agents all the more important and
demanding: surveying potential projects; lining up productions and packages;
scheduling productions and new opportunities; 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
institutional system—namely, the agency practices and bureaucracy outlined in this
dissertation—that could absorb the necessary services and functions required by
nonexclusive talent. Negotiating on individual productions, managing an artist’s
career, coordinating commitments with new opportunities; the agency syndicate
had encompassed all of these activities throughout the 1930s and 1940s. It could

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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 this syndicate lent potency to his agency, but he now faced much
stronger competition.
Confident, gregarious, and upbeat in the face of these changes, Feldman
closed the decade with a round of publicity on the dual nature of his career. A
series of articles appeared in 1949 and 1950 touting Feldman’s success and his
social standing in Hollywood, in magazines like Life and Collier’s. And Feldman
played a strong role in orchestrating the pieces, arranging interviews with his
associates, and double-checking early drafts by the journalists.
Indeed, Feldman’s carefully tailored public relations showed no concern for
the dual career, neither ethical—in terms of SAG rules—nor practical—in the sense
of the resulting conflicts within the agency. 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 lore, when, for example, MGM
gathered over fifty contracted stars like Spencer Tracy and Clark Gable for one
panoramic shot of star power. In this shot, Feldman posed in a natty outfit, in a
worldly, sophisticated domestic setting. There Feldman stood, at the peak of his
power, despite the problems circling around him; posed in front of some pieces
from his personal art collection—emblems of sophistication and taste (important
traits to display for an agent)—with his, you might say, professional art collection
seated around him: George Stevens, Howard Hawks, Charles Boyer, Preston

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Sturges, Clifton Webb, Jean Negulesco, Louis Jourdan, and Kirk Douglas. The
caption noted that the group collected a total of about $1.2 million per movie and
that Feldman’s cut was a healthy $120,000. In many ways, it was a nostalgic
picture. In the next decade, television and corporate agencies took over the
business. Such a small, personality driven business would almost become a thing of
the past, even though these clients stuck with Feldman for the next ten years or so.
They remained the core of his business as he competed with agencies 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 a fourth place position in the agency business—true to his style,
it was a comfortable fourth.

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Conclusion
The Corporate Era
Into the new decade, Feldman continued to straddle two worlds—in his
production business and his talent agency; and his staff and advisors 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.
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Ray Stark, the insightful and ambitious author of this note, revealed here an in-the-
trenches perspective on the competitive stakes facing the agency business in the
late 1940s. The amount of freelancers in Hollywood and the rising number of semi-
independent productions, as seen in the last chapter, had certainly increased the
salience of agency functions; it had deepened their role in the industry. But the
introduction of television broadened the field of opportunities for agencies. As
Stark recognized, corporate agencies, whose business structures carved up the field
through interrelated divisions, staked out a competitive edge in this evolving
market. Stark’s assessment represented a prescient marker of a new era for talent
agencies: the corporate era. Stark’s memo struck a degree of panic because he
sensed that Feldman’s agency was late to this game.
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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 in order 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 (and the FCC
ruling limiting studio involvement in the new medium) larger corporations came to
dominate this syndicate. Otherwise, very little of this syndicate’s functions or
practices altered, if at all. In other words, the agency syndicate provided a degree of
continuity to Hollywood business in the 1940s.

MCA & William Morris: The Back-story
The failure of the William Morris agency and Music Corporation of
America (MCA)— two powerful talent agencies in vaudeville and music—to crack
the Hollywood agency business until the late 1940s accentuated the crucial role that
social connections—as demonstrated in this dissertation—played in staking out a
significant role in this network. Morris and MCA were shut out of the Hollywood
business 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 Hollywood. Adding to these strategic purchases, the two agencies

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banked on their connections to New York advertising agencies (through their radio
divisions) and staked out firmly entrenched positions in the new television industry.
Former ophthalmologist Jules Stein founded MCA after he had fallen into
the band-booking business during his last years of medial school in Chicago in the
1920s.
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A sharp vision for business acumen, management, and expansion allowed
Stein to rapidly grow this side-business until he quit medicine within a few years,
devoting 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
expanded with offices in New York and became the leading agency in the band
business. While Stein’s creative deals—rotating bands, for example, at clubs when
it had been standard practice for them to play extended (sometimes for years)
engagements—fuelled the company’s success, its corporate structure leveraged its
investments strategically through the creation of various business divisions. In
other words, Stein capitalized on this success by opening ancillary businesses: an
insurance agency sold policies to bands; a novelty business supplied nightclubs
with cigarettes and sundries; and MCA 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 into this new territory caused no real alarm. In fact, in his early explorations

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of the Hollywood 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 reputation granted him the luxury of returning at his leisure.
Feldman invited Stein to attend Artists-Managers-Association meetings,
particularly those discussing the agency-SAG franchise agreement (Feldman’s
colleagues insisted that Stein come at Feldman’s invitation).
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While surrounded with a certain fanfare and pomposity, the construction of
MCA’s Hollywood headquarters in 1937, a Beverly Hills building marked by a
rather gauche colonial façade, proved to be the least important purchase by the
corporation. The more important purchases were buying talent. In this fashion,
MCA followed a consistent strategy in buying its way in the Hollywood system:
buying other talent agencies and reshaping them under the corporate structure of
MCA. Through this practice, over the next five years, MCA slowly acquired a list
of major Hollywood clients.
In May 1939, the company purchased the William Meiklejohn agency,
representing about one hundred actors and writers, like Hattie McDaniel and
Dorothy Parker (like many agents, Meiklejohn moved 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
purchased the remains of the Zeppo Marx agency. It bought Betty Grable’s contract
from the Orsatti agency. In 1941, MCA bought William Paley’s Columbia Artists’
Bureau (an agency managing radio talent) for $500,000, since the Federal

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Communications Commission forced Paley to divest his talent division as a conflict
of interest.
But, with the exception of Bette Davis and Errol Flynn, MCA 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 (as did William Morris’
success in New York theater), but such reputable success meant little without a
client-list attractive to studio executives. Nor did MCA’s early deal-making raise
much alarm or notice 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 to Feldman’s or Selznick’s handiwork. When MCA acquired
Bette Davis as a client in 1938, she remained stuck to her Warner Bros. contract.
By 1946, Davis commanded an impressive $7000 a week, but still less than some
of the salaries Feldman and Selznick 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% 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-share profits Feldman’s Irene Dunne collected
during those same years). 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 within terms
rivaling those of Feldman’s work (Crawford earned $200,000 per picture under the
new contract).

365
MCA’s purchase of Leland Hayward’s agency in 1944 proved the crucial
move in the corporation’s escalation in the Hollywood industry. This purchase gave
MCA one of the strongest client lists in the industry. Even if the deal only brought
the agency half of the earnings on commissions—since Hayward and his partner
Nat Deverich maintained their half-share on 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 admitted 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.”
308
Alfred Hitchcock, James Stewart, William Wyler, Gene Kelly, Myrna
Loy, Henry Fonda, Billy Wilder, Fred Astaire, Montgomery Clift, Gregory Peck,
and Helen Hayes, amongst others. Furthermore, Hayward and Deverich were put
on the MCA payroll (at $500 a week each, in addition to their 50% share on
commissions), so the merger brought their valuable insight and advice into the
decision-making and strategy sessions of the agency. More significantly, the talent
list, the agency structure and its assets (Hayward’s contracts and regular studio
contacts), sutured MCA into the symbiotic syndicate 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 Mid-West and East-Coast vaudeville and theatrical circuits.
309
The company

366
initially set up its Hollywood office in the Broadway district of downtown Los
Angeles. They gradually realized that this location showed no understanding of the
industry’s business landscape and they moved their office to Hollywood and Vine
in the early 1930s. The move didn’t help. In 1930, Morris’s Hollywood office
showed a $53,000 profit. But within a year the company lost $18,000 and in 1932
lost $27,000. The loss of stars like James Cagney, who successfully sued for
release from the agency in 1932, and Joan Blondell, who successfully followed
Cagney’s suit in 1933, and such fading Broadway-based cinematic lights as Al
Jolson and Mae West added to Morris’ problems in Hollywood. Swimming
champion-turned-Tarzan star Johnny Weissmuller counted as one of their only
“stars.” By 1938, the agency’s Los Angeles office was generating about one-third
of the company’s business, but radio, vaudeville, clubs, and theatre still made up
the bulk of its business, which meant that most of the company’s key manpower
and strategy went into these areas—namely, the New York office.
As with MCA’s entry into Hollywood, when William Morris purchased the
Berg-Allenberg agency in 1949, they were not merely acquiring a new asset; they
were finally acquiring a genuine entry into Hollywood. Berg-Allenberg had grown
from a firm with around forty clients in 1935 (including such noted talent as
Wallace Beery, Walter Huston, and Melvyn Douglas) to one with over 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, amongst others—an impressive list that

367
revealed the important growth of the agency over 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 Berg-
Allenberg agency had emerged from within the industry and more or less grew with
it. This embedded role in the industry is partly what Morris was buying. And this
strategic acquisition allowed the Morris agency to immediately bank on a huge
slate of talent, already developed and nurtured by the Berg-Allenberg agents.
These acquisitions spawned competitive reactions from the other
Hollywood talent agencies. Late in 1949, for example, the Levee-Stark agency, the
Nat Goldstone agency, the Orsatti agency, and independent agent Harold Rose
explored a possible merger. The plan was to use a corporate structure wherein each
agent would continue to handle a “personal” cartel 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.”
310

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 the contacts with advertising agencies—and their deep list of
vaudeville and radio talents, those making easy transitions to this new medium. In

368
this regard, Feldman and General Artists Corporation—a corporate agency strong
on Broadway and radio talent running a distant third to MCA and Morris—
discussed a merger in early 1950, but this failed to materialize.
311
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 over television and how this new medium would fit into agency business
practices. In this case, the corporation planned to represent clients on 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.”
312
To this end, they lined
up over forty independent agents offering 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 William Morris and MCA, if locked out of the Hollywood agency
world for so long for a lack of embedded social relationships, retained strong
connections to the financial networks fuelling early television: the advertising
agencies. 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. In this way, these goliaths grew
and leveraged this power in Hollywood. Feldman, Jaffe, Kohner, and other
Hollywood agents lacked these connections; their forays into television suffered as
a result.

369
The agency syndicate 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 new developments like television and the increased number of
independent productions. Moreover, corporate entities proved more formidable in
rallying the assets of their various divisions to buy up agencies. Like modern media
conglomerates, MCA’s and William Morris’ holdings in real estate, production
companies, and other businesses were converted into power in Hollywood: buying
up other agencies. But 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 factors 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 amongst agencies was the
coincidental arrival of television. No coincidence, then, that the two dominent
agencies in this new medium—William Morris and MCA—would dominate the
talent agency business in the 1950s. The agency syndicate didn’t change; the
channels changed.

370
ENDNOTES

1
I cover some of the details involved with both vaudeville booking managers and
agents in the back-story to Edward Small’s career in Chapter 2. See Trav S.D., No
Applause—Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous (New
York: Faber & Faber, 2005), especially Chapter 4. See also Frank Rose, The
Agency: William Morris and the Hidden History of Show Business (New York:
HarperCollins, 1995)

2
Late in the process of putting together this dissertation—in fact, long after I had
written Chapter 1, where I outline the social connections argument—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.”
Agents, of course, provide a service to job-finding; but equally to the gate-keeping
function that helps to streamline the employment process for employers (producers
and studios). On either side of this function, agents sell their social connections.
See Mark Granovetter, Getting a Job: A Study of Contacts and Careers (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1995). The quotation is from p. 39.

3
Talcott Parsons, “Introduction,” to Max Weber (Talcott Parsons, ed.), On
Charisma and Institution Building (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1968), p. xvi.

4
Harrison C. White, Markets from Networks: Socioeconomic Models of Production
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), p. 207.

5
See Thomas Schatz, The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the
Studio Era (New York: Pantheon, 1988) and 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). Gomery
commits this error on page 205 of The Hollywood Studio System: A History
(London: BFI, 2005). In the bibliographic guide to this book, Gomery also
erroneously claims that agents “have no association” and that all “have followed
the model of Lew Wasserman.” See p. 326.

6
The quotation is from Schatz, op cit., p. 9. Schatz marks the rise of television in
the 1950s as one factor leading to the dispersion 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 (betraying their
formalist bias) frames the studio mode of production as more or less in place in our
current era. 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). For their updates see David

371

Bordwell, The Way Hollywood Tells It: Story and Style in Modern Movies
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006) and Kristin Thompson,
Storytelling in the New Hollywood: Understanding Classical Narrative Technique
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999).

7
As Guiliana 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.” See her
Hollywood’s New Deal (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996), p. 13.
Douglas Gomery offers the same argument in his The Hollywood Studio System: A
History (London: BFI Press, 2005) and The Coming of Sound (New York:
Routledge, 2005).

8
Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in
American Business (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977).

9
Welford Beaton, The Film Spectator, May 10, 1930, p. 4.

10
Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of Business Enterprise (New York, 1978), p. 279.
On reactions to the new broker class and the culture of salesmanship at this time
period see William R. Leach, Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a
New American Culture (New York, 1994) and Karen Halttunen, Confidence Men
and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-class Culture in America, 1830-1870 (New
Haven, 1982).

11
Walter A. McDougall, Freedom Just Around the Corner: A New American
History: 1585-1828 (New York, 2004).

12
On late 19
th
century vaudeville booking agencies see Lawrence Levine,
Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America
(Cambridge, 1988), pp. 78-80.

13
Culled from General Collections-Biography files at the Margaret Herrick Library
of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (hereafter AMPAS). In
addition, I consulted the Ivan Kahn Collection and the Samuel Morrison Collection,
as well as the Sam Jaffe Oral History (all AMPAS).

14
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, 1980).

372

See also Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in
American Business (Cambridge, 1977).

15
For a more sustained and original discussion of “charisma” as an economic factor
see “Charismatic Authority” in Max Weber, Sociological Writings (New York,
1994), pp. 32-37.

16
See R.H. Coase, The Firm, The Market, and The Law (Chicago, 1988). Coase’s
Nobel Prize winning work defined the firm as a corporate structure that reduced the
costs of transactions. In his The Economics of the Business Firm (Cambridge,
1977) Harold Demsetz critiques Coase’s definition for ignoring other factors that
might better define the firm. Regardless, my point here works in that reducing
transaction costs remains an undeniable goal of firms, even if not singularly
definitive.

17
In The Film Spectator’s attack on agents (cited above), the article 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.”

18
Eugene Zukor, Oral History, Southern Methodist University Oral History
Collection.

19
Quoted in Alva Johnston, “Hollywood’s Ten-Percenters,” Saturday Evening
Post, August 15, 1942.

20
“Producers’ Pact with Agents Dies After Long Bickering, So A.M.A. Seeks
Academy Bid,” Variety, June 28, 1932, p. 5.

21
Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences Bulletin, June 1, 1927, p.1.
(AMPAS)

22
“Producers’ Pact with Agents Dies After Long Bickering, So A.M.A. Seeks
Academy Bid,” Variety, June 28, 1932, p. 5.

23
See Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone (New York, 2000) where the author
defines social capital as a value accrued within and through social networks. As
Putnam notes, a number of theorists, from Pierre Bourdieu to Ekkehart Schlicht to
Jane Jacobs independently developed this concept in diverse works.

24
The bill was set aside, but see Donald E. Biederman, et al, Law and Business of
the Entertainment Industries (Connecticut, 2001), pp. 31-36 on the history of state

373

regulation of agents. AMPAS internal Special Collections files on the 1933 Agents
Committee files also includes information on this bill and correspondence with the
California State Labor Commissioner on laws pertinent to the regulation of agents.

25
Notes from this board meeting and the subsequent references to committee
meetings, memos, letters, and other documents come from internal Academy files
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 of Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences Bulletin (AMPAS).

26
Anyone familiar with Michel Foucault’s The Care of the Self (New York, 1986)
will recognize the influence (and inspiration) for my analysis here. 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, 2002).

27
Daniel Bertrand, “Work Materials No. 34: The Motion Picture Industry Study”
(February, 1936), N.R.A. Records Section, Department of Commerce, as well as
“National Recovery Administration Hearing on Code of Fair Practices and
Competition Presented by Motion Picture Industry, “ Volume 124 (229-03). Pages
635 to 653 contain the section of Kahane’s testimony discussed here.

28
On the history of the various guilds see Nancy Lynn Schwartz, The Hollywood
Writers’ War (New York, 1983) and Gerald Horne, Class Struggle in Hollywood,
1930-1950: Moguls, Mobsters (Texas, 2001).

29
Transcripts discovered in the Charles Feldman Collection, uncatalogued, Louis
B. Mayer Library, American Film Institute.

30
For an hierarchical breakdown of the salaries of key talent in relation to the other
crafts see Leo Rosten, Hollywood: The Movie Colony, The Movie Makers (New
York, 1941), Chapter 4 (“The Big Money”).

31
“Put Their Names in Lights,” Fortune, September, 1938.

1
Irene Mayer Selznick, A Private View (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983), p.
106.

32
Background information on Lewis Selznick comes from two reliable sources:
David Thomson’s Showman: The Life of David O. Selznick (New York: Knopf,
1992) and Ronald Haver’s David O. Selznick’s Hollywood (New York: Knopf,
1980). The rather unreliable History of the American Film Industry (New York:

374

Dover, 1970 reprint of 1930 edition) by Benjamin B. Hampton nonetheless offers
some insight into the family and industry lore surrounding Lewis Selznick.

33
David O. Selznick letter to Howard Dietz, dated June 20, 1934, Box 167.15,
David O. Selznick Collection (DOSC hereafter). The letter was written for a profile
in The New Yorker magazine.

34
The following background information on Myron Selznick comes from his
brother’s letter to Dietz (op cit.) and an unpublished article on Myron originally
intended for Look magazine (DOSC, Box 169.3). 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.

35
Selznick letter to Dietz, Box 167.15, DOSC.

36
Irene Mayer Selznick, A Private View (New York: Knopf, 1983), p. 99. The other
quotations can be found on this page and others nearby.

37
Selznick letter to Dietz, Box 167.15, DOSC.

38
“Selznick’s Consolidation Scheme for Agents,” Variety (July 20, 1927), p. 13.

39
This story is repeated in almost all of the biographical material cited above, and
in almost every article on Myron.

40
David Thomson, Showman: The Life of David O. Selznick (New York: Knopf,
1992), p. 80.

41
Myron Selznick’s daybooks remain in his archival holding; Myron Selznick
Papers (MS hereafter), Box 4, Office Files.

42
Selznick letter to Dietz, Box 167.15, DOSC.

43
Box 4, Office Files, (MS).

44
The Hollywood Reporter (March 9, 1931), p. 8.

45
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, p. 27.

375

46
Selznick-Joyce Agency pamphlet, AMPAS.

47
Negotiation and contract details on this deal stem from the Legal files of Ruth
Chatterton, Kay Francis, and William Powell in the Warner Bros. Archives at USC.

48
See, as one of many examples, “Warner Bros Star Round Up”Variety (January
21, 1931), p. 3.

49
Box 6, Original audited reports, 1929-1940 and articles of incorporation, (MS).

50
Ibid. All of the following figures come from this source. Since the Myron
Selznick Papers remain uncatalogued, I will do my best to cite specific sources.
While some of my subsequent generalizations about the office’s practices may lack
specific citations, I should note that these observations derive from my complete,
exhaustive review of the office’s surviving files in their entirety.

51
Article by Charles Chapman; Box 169.3, DOSC.

52
Selznick’s detailed and lengthy blueprint for his agency’s operations can be
found in Folder “Lo-London #2,” Agency Files, (MS).

53
Folder “A,” Agency Files, (MS).

54
From Selznick’s outline of agency operations in Folder “Lo-London #2,” Agency
Files, (MS).

55
Charles K. Feldman’s files (surviving at the American Film Institute’s library)
and Sam Jaffe’s Oral History (AMPAS) both testify to this common practice.

56
Folder “A,” June 30, 1933 meeting memo, (MS).

57
Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People (New York: Simon and
Schuster, [1981 edition of 1936 publication]).

58
Ibid., p. xvi.

59
Folder “A,” Agency Files, (MS).

60
“Stromberg” Folder, Agency Files, (MS). Subsequent references regarding
Stromberg’s dealings with the agency come from this source.

376

61
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: 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, 1974).

62
From Selznick’s outline of agency operations in Folder “Lo-London #2,” Agency
Files, (MS).

63
Ibid.

64
Background information on Leland Hayward comes from Margaret Case
Harriman, Take Them Up Tenderly: A Collection of Profiles (New York: Knopf,
1944), pp. 216-220; Biography Files, AMPAS; Whitney Stine, Stars and Star
Handlers (Santa Monica: Roundtable, 1985); Business Files, (MS).

65
Folders “Lo-London #2,”“London #3–London Acct.,” and “London Office,”
Agency Files, (MS).

66
Ibid.

67
Internal Academy files, Box 7, “Agents,” AMPAS.

68
Ibid.

69
As evinced in their client lists over the course of the decade.

70
Ivan Kahn Collection, AMPAS (hereafter Kahn-AMPAS).

71
Kahn-AMPAS.

72
“Articles on Talent Scouts,” Folder 7, Kahn-AMPAS.

73
Ibid.

74
Ibid.

377

75
Ibid.

76
The Film Mercury (December 3, 1926).

77
Clipping (source unclear) dated August 6, 1927. Folder 7, Kahn-AMPAS.

78
“Talent Scout Reports,” Folder 4, Kahn-AMPAS.

79
“Contracts,” Folder 5, Kahn-AMPAS.

80
Letter to Erskine Gwynne, March 26, 1930, Folder 1, Kahn-AMPAS.

81
“Talent Scout Reports,” Folder 4, Kahn-AMPAS.

82
“Clients’ Commissions, etc.” Folder 10, Kahn-AMPAS.

83
Ibid.

84
“Contracts,” Folder 5, Kahn-AMPAS.

85
“Talent Scout Reports,” Folder 4, Kahn-AMPAS. See also Olivia de Havilland
legal file, WBA-USC.

86
“Talent Scout Reports,” Folder 4 and “Contracts,” Folder 5, Kahn-AMPAS.

87
“Record Book – Log Book,” Kahn-AMPAS.

88
“Articles on Talent Scouts,” Folder 8, Kahn-AMPAS.

89
“Talent Scout Reports,” Folder 4, Kahn-AMPAS. All correspondence and other
details on Darnell can be found in this folder.

90
Ibid.

91
Unless otherwise noted, all details from the three volumes of Edward Small’s
unpublished autobiography, USC Cinema Library Special Collections.

92
Ibid., p. 116.

93
Ibid., pp. 145-148.

94
Ibid., p. 165.

378

95
Warren Susman, “’Personality’ and the Making of Twentieth-Century Culture,”
in Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth
Century (New York: Pantheon, 1973).

96
Edward Small Agency pamphlet, AMPAS.

97
A copy of The Link can also be found at AMPAS.

98
Background on Bow from David Stenn, Clara Bow (New York: Doubleday,
1988) and Edward Small, op cit., pp. 173-175.

99
Quoted in Stenn, pp. 54-55.

100
Ibid., p. 87.

101
Edward Small Agency pamphlet, AMPAS.

102
Maxine Alton, “Clara’s First Train Ride,” Photoplay (January 1930).

103
Film Daily Yearbook in the mid-1920s lists her under agents handling writers.
But she drops from the lists altogether in the late 1920s.

104
Quoted in Stenn, p.63.

105
Ibid., p. 104.

106
“Lo-London” folder, “Agency Files,”(MS).

107
“Universal as Selznick,” Variety (April 24, 1935), p. 1.

108
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 to a writer for an unpublished profile dated October 16,
1946), and Feldman’s own biographical information provided in a draft for the
American Historical Company, Inc., all found in Folders 1888a, 1991, 1992, and
1993 in the Charles K. Feldman Papers (CKF hereafter), in the American Film
Institute’s (AFI) Louis B. Mayer Library (formerly the Charles K. Feldman library!
Money still counts the most in Hollywood; Feldman was honored by the library
after donating his files to the organization; Mayer trumped this title when his
family donated money). A more recent profile can be found by Peter Biskind in
“The Man Who Minted Style” (Vanity Fair, April 2003).

379

109
Detailed in Folder 1904 (“Artists Managers Guild”) and in the agency phone
logs, CKF, Folders1737 to 1739.

110
Folder 1932, CKF.

111
See biographical articles cited above. Cross-checking Feldman’s surviving legal
files (Folder 1932, which includes his case docket) and documents in the Edward
G. Robinson Collection at USC’s Cinema library (Box 36:5 contains
correspondence with Feldman) indicates that he was the likely client involved in
this anecdote.

112
Folder 1932 (CKF) contains bookkeeping records covering Ad Schulberg-CKF
Inc. See biographical articles cited above and Budd Schulberg, Moving Pictures:
Memories of a Hollywood Prince (New York: Stein and Day, 1981), p. 464.

113
“Coast Agents Try Tea As Bait for Client Raid,” Variety, July 26, 1932.

114
Budd Schulberg comments on his mother’s decorating “talent”in his memoirs,
op cit., p. 464. Her brother, Sam Jaffe, confirms my perspective on her lack of
interest in business affairs in his Oral History (AMPAS)—cited below.

115
Willard L. Wiener, “Charmer for a Nice Fee,” Collier’s (Aug. 6, 1949), p. 50.

116
Client Lists contained in CKF, Folders1774, 1807, and 1808. Folders 773, 772,
and 771 also contain lists for 1932, 1933, and 1934 respectively.

117
Folder 880, CKF, correspondence regarding Charles Boyer.

118
See “What! More Agents?,” a front-page editorial in Variety, Sep. 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,

380

agents must have arguing powers more persuasive than a lawyer requires with a
jury.”

119
Phone logs in Folders 1734 to 1745, CKF. See memos on Sam Hoffenstein in
Folder 881 as one representative example.

120
News clipping in Folder 881, CKF.

121
Folder 1774, CKF.

122
Folder 880, CKF.

123
Folder 1774, CKF.

124
Detailed in the incorporation papers, Folder 1774, CKF. See also AMPAS
Biography Files on Blum, Gordean, Marin, Rockett.

125
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 of the October 12, 1938 transcript in
Folder 1904, CKF.

126
New corporation papers, Folder 1774, CKF.

127
Ralph Blum correspondence, Folder 1774, CKF.

128
October 20, 1936 memo from Feldman to Blum, Folder 1774, CKF.

129
Contracts briefs, Box 1, f1-f8, CKF. Career surveys derived from individual
Biography and Clippings Files, 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, WBA. Correspondence on Ann Sothern, Folders
878 and 879, CKF.

130
Elizabeth Kendall’s The Runaway Bride: Hollywood Romantic Comedy of the
1930s (New York: Knopf, 1990), as well as her sources, provided background
material on Colbert, as did her Clippings File, AMPAS.

131
The following narrative derives from Colbert’s contracts and contract briefs, all
in her agency files. September 28, 1933 draft of“Night Bus”script (renamed “It
Happened One Night”), Folder 1813, CKF. Contract briefs, Box 1, f2, CKF.
Correspondence on and with Colbert, Folders 880 and 881, CKF.

381

132
Folder 875, CKF.

133
The rejected stories are detailed in a letter from Feldman found in Colbert’s legal
file at WBA. All notes, contracts, and memos regarding Colbert’s Warner Bros.
deal are from this file.

134
Anatole Litvak legal file and Tovarich file, WBA.

135
Ibid.

136
Ibid.

137
Colbert legal file and Tovarich file, WBA.

138
Leo Rosten, Hollywood: The Movie Colony, The Movie Makers (New York:
Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1941), p. 342.

139
Kendell, op cit., and her sources helped to flesh out the agency files on Dunne’s
career.

140
Irene Dunne Oral History (SMU), conducted by Roland Davis, Southern
Methodist University Oral History Program.

141
Folder 1901, CKF, contains a detailed overview of her contracts, as well as the
contracts themselves. I crosschecked this information with findings in the Irene
Dunne Collection, USC Cinema-Television Library.

142
Box 1: 8, Irene Dunne Collection, USC; Contract briefs, Box 1, f1, CKF.
143
Dunne Oral History, SMU; Folder 879, CKF.

144
Dunne Oral History, SMU; Folders 879 and 880, CKF.

145
Folder 880, CKF.

146
Box 1: 5, Dunne Collection, USC.

147
Ibid.

148
Folder 1901, CKF.

149
Rosten, op cit., p. 342.

382

150
Folder 1734, CKF.

151
The following narrative and memos pertaining to Gene Raymond is from Folder
879, CKF.

152
Feldman to the Artists Managers Guild, Article 13, page 2 of the October 12,
1938 transcript in Folder 1904, CKF.

153
George Stevens Collection (AMPAS), “Contracts—agencies,” Box 307, Folder
3554.

154
Ibid.

155
Ibid.

156
George Stevens Collection (AMPAS), “Contracts—Feldman, Charles,” Box
317, Folder 3628. See also “Contract Briefs,” Box 1, f8, CKF.

157
Ibid.

158
Box 1, f8, CKF.

159
Folder 1916, CKF.

160
Ibid.

161
Ibid.

162
Stevens Collection (AMPAS), “Columbia—Contracts,” Box 307, Folder 3555.

163
Ibid.

164
Ibid.

165
Contract briefs, Box 1, f1.

166
Folder 1916, CKF.

167
Michael E. Porter, Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries
and Competitors (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1980), p. 38.

383

168
Unless otherwise noted, this narrative is derived from Barbara Hall’s excellent
and extensive Oral History of Sam Jaffe, as are all quotations from Jaffe. Facts and
figures were corroborated by industry trades and records in the Charles K. Feldman
Papers (AFI).

169
Jaffe discusses his acquisition of Bennett in his oral history; dates and figures are
from the Joan Bennett contract briefs, Box 1, f1, CKF, and agency phone-logs,
Folders 1737 and 1738, CKF.

170
Jaffe’s client list as reported to the Academy of Motion Pictures in its agents
investigation. See “Agents File,” AMPAS Special Collections.

171
Whitney Stine, Stars and Star Handlers: The Business of Show (Santa Monica:
Roundtable, 1985), p. 128.

172
Legal Files, WBA. Bogart’s career has been endlessly documented. For the best
coverage, see Robert Sklar, City Boys: Cagney, Bogart, Garfield (New Jersey:
Princeton, 1992) and A.M. Sperber (with Eric Lax), Bogart (New York: William
Morrow and Company, 1997).

173
And good luck. In his study of Bogart, Robert Sklar claims “if there was another
studio executive more antipathetic to Bogart than Trilling, the surviving records do
not reveal them.” City Boys: Cagney, Bogart, Garfield (New Jersey: Princeton,
1992), p. 74. Bogart’s legal files in the Warner Bros. Archives at USC contain a
number of notes from Jaffe requesting relayed messages to Jack Warner. Sklar
quotes one—without naming Jaffe—on p. 74.

174
Rudy Behlmer, Inside Warner Bros. (New York: Viking, 1985), p. 144.

175
Client lists for Myron Selznick and Arthur Lyons, “Agents File,”(AMPAS);
Legal Files for Raft and Lupino, WBA, USC.

176
Sklar, pp. 119-120, and pp. 192-193, in Sperber, who mentions Jaffe’s role in
this process.

177
Sklar, p. 120.

178
Porter, op cit., p. 37.

179
Biography Files, AMPAS; “Frank Orsatti” file, Paul Kohner (hereafter PK)
Papers, Berlin Film Museum. The Kohner collection is uncatalogued; at the

384

moment, folders are divided by individuals and organizations, a process I follow in
my footnotes.

180
Letter to George Marton, in the “Marton” file, PK.

181
“Paul Kohner” folder, William Wyler Collection, AMPAS.

182
Paul Kohner Collection, AMPAS. The Berlin Film Museum purchased Kohner’s
agency papers in the 1990s. However, some of his office papers remain with the
Margaret Herrick Library (AMPAS), the source of his original donation.

183
Financial figures on Kohner’s operation are derived from his reports to the
Artists Managers Guild; “Artists Managers Guild” folder, PK.

184
Information on the office personnel derived from files in the AMPAS Kohner
collection.

185
Dietrich’s letter and Kohner’s response can be found in the “Marlene Dietrich”
folder, PK.

186
Client lists in “Arthur Landau” folder, PK.

187
“John Huston” folder, PK.

188
“Carl Laemmle, Jr.” folder; production pitches and plans can be found in various
folders; see, for example, folders for John Huston and George Marton.

189
Financial records, 1939, 1940, 1941, “Artists Managers Guild” folder, PK.

190
Paul Kohner folder, William Wyler Collection, AMPAS.

191
“Julian Duvivier” and “Robert Siodmak” folders, PK. Siodmak’s name also
turns up in Feldman’s daybooks at this time.

192
“Siodmak” folder, PK.

193
See Chapters 4 and 5 in Swanson’s memoir’s Sprinkled with Ruby Dust: A
Literary and Hollywood Memoir (New York: Warner, 1989).

194
Ibid., p. 64.

195
Ibid., p. 82.

385

196
Ibid., p. 68.

197
Feldman to the Artists Managers Guild, Article 15, pages 2-3 of the October 12,
1938 transcript in Folder 1904, CKF.

198
Quoted in Charles Chapman, unpublished article, David O. Selznick (hereafter
DOS) collection, Box 169.3. The article appears to have been originally intended
for Look magazine.

199
Agency Files, “Equity”Folder, Myron Selznick Papers (MS hereafter).

200
Ibid.

201
Agency Files, “Estate, New York Office” Folder (MS).

202
Agency Files, “Lists” Folder (MS).

203
Leo C. Rosten, Hollywood: The Movie Colony, The Movie Makers (New York:
Harcourt, Brace, and Co., 1941), p. 323. See Rosten’s survey of writer salaries.

204
Agency Files, “Incorporation-Dissolution” Folder (MS). Also see Rosen’s
survey (pp. 274-75, op cit) of studio executive salaries. Only Louis B. Mayer for
certain and possibly Darryl Zanuck, Hunt Stromberg and a few others surpassed
Myron Selznick’s annual take on average.

205
Agency Files, “Incorporation-Dissolution” Folder (MS).

206
See 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, p. 56.

207
Agency Files, “Henry Fonda” Folder (MS).

208
Correspondence on both deals found in Agency Files, “Gregory La Cava” Folder
(MS).

209
From Galbraith’s American Capitalism as quoted in Lizabeth Cohen, A
Consumer’s Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America
(New York: Knopf, 2003), pp. 23-4. As Cohen explains, by this term Galbraith
“meant 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).

386

210
“Milestone 50% With Hughes,” Variety (March 18, 1931), p. 4, and Ronald
Haver, David Selznick’s Hollywood (New York: Knopf, 1980), p. 63.

211
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 in Archive Box
One (MS).

212
Client notebook, Archive Box One (MS).

213
Ibid.

214
Ibid.

215
See 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, p. 50.

216
“Lively Trading Keeps Name Players On Move,” Variety (July 7, 1937), p. 7.

217
Lombard’s key contract points as outlined in the client’s notebook.

218
Carole Lombard legal file, WBA-USC.

219
These new terms are outlined in the Lombard entry in the client’s notebook,
Archive Box One (MS). Earnings on the film are derived from RKO’s reports
contained in the Agency Files, “Carole Lombard” Folder (MS).

220
Correspondence on the deal and internal agency memos found in the La Cava
folder (MS).

221
Ibid.

222
Bound Volumes, Scrapbook of newspaper clippings (MS).

223
In Rudy Behlmer, ed., Memo From Selznick (New York: Viking, 1972), p. 96.

224
Estate Files, “Gone With the Wind” Correspondence (MS).

225
Organization of Hunt Stromberg Productions, Inc. given in: The 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

387

Michigan Southern Division, Deposition of Hunt Stromberg, April 8, 1949, p. 5.
AMPAS.

226
Agency Files, “Gregory La Cava” Folder (MS).

227
In Rudy Behlmer, ed., Memo From Selznick, p. 323.

228
Ibid., p. 324.

229
Agency Files, “David O. Selznick” Folders (MS).

230
All correspondence, key dates, and events derived from Agency Files, “Vivien
Leigh” Folder (MS).

231
From a 1941 piece called “Discovering the New Ones” excerpted in Behlmer, op
cit, p. 180.

232
Ibid., p.180.

233
All correspondence, key dates, and events derived from Agency Files, “Robert
Donat” Folder (MS). Additional background on Donat from Biography Files,
General Collection, AMPAS.

234
All correspondence, key dates, and events derived from Agency Files, “Robert
Carson” Folder (MS).

235
All correspondence, key dates, and events derived from Agency Files, “Alfred
Hitchcock” Folder (MS). Leornard J. Leff’s Hitchcock and Selznick [David O.]
(New York: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1987) helped me fill in narrative gaps and
provided important background information.

236
In Rudy Behlmer, ed., Memo From Selznick (New York: Viking, 1972), p. 242.

237
Agency Files, “George Cukor” Folder (MS).

238
Ibid.

239
Ibid.

240
Quoted from Irene Mayer Selznick, A Private View (New York: Knopf, 1983),
p. 254, and David Thomson, Showman: The Life of David O. Selznick (New York:
Knopf, 1992), p. 350.

388

241
Quoted in Thomson, op cit., pp. 351-352.

242
Ibid., p. 408.

243
Ibid., pp. 408-409.

244
“Leland Hayward” Folder, William Wyler Collection, AMPAS.

245
Charles K. Feldman Collection, Folder 875.

246
Ibid.

247
Estate Files, David O. Selznick—Myron Selznick—Funeral 3/25/44 (MS).

248
Ibid.

249
Charles K. Feldman Collection, Folder 1915.

250
Estate Files, David O. Selznick—Myron Selznick, (MS).

251
Ibid.

252
Business Files—Estate, Contracts and Settlements (MS).

253
Business Files—Estate, London Ltd. Re MCA (MS).

254
Ibid.

255
Ibid.

256
Business Files—Feldman (MS).

257
Ibid.

258
Estate Files, David O. Selznick—Myron Selznick, (MS).

259
Feldman letter to Esquire editor, dated 10-16-46, including corrected proofs for
the article, in Folder 1888, CKF.

260
Thomas Schatz, The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio
Era (New York: Pantheon, 1988), p. 300.

389

261
Folder 70, CKF.

262
See Noel Singer inter-office memo to Feldman, May 31, 1955, Folder 70, CKF.
The memo offers a history of the corporation in relation to pending changes in tax
laws. The production company was originally incorporated as Theatre Group
Productions before changing the name. In 1937, Feldman also changed his agency
name from the Feldman-Blum agency to Famous Artists agency.

263
Feldman’s letter to Haueman (author of the Life magazine portrait of the agent),
dated 11-21-1949, Folder 1888. CKF.

264
Quoted in Willard L. Wiener, “Charmer for a Nice Fee,” Collier’s (August 6,
1949), p. 50.

265
Gomery, The Hollywood Studio System (New York: St. Martins, 1986), p.9.

266
See Thomas Schatz, Boom and Bust: Hollywood in the 1940s (New York:
Scribner’s, 1997), p. 341.

267
Quoted in Schatz, Boom and Bust, p. 178.

268
See, amongst a slew of articles reporting on this phenomenon from the time
period, Fredric Marlowe, “The Rise in the Independents in Hollywood, “The
Penguin Film Review 3 (London: Penguin, 1947), pp. 72-75.

269
Quoted in Schatz, Boom and Bust, p. 183.

270
Schatz, Boom and Bust, p. 12.

271
Feldman to Peter Rathvon, dated 10-7-1949, Folder 1888, CKF.

272
On Power’s deals and Dana Andrews, see “Contract Briefs” folders, CKF.
273
Folder 877, CKF.

274
Folder 666, CKF.

275
This and subsequent details on Pittsburgh can be found in Folders 661, 662, and
666, CKF.

276
Folder 665, CKF.

390

277
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.

278
Folder 1919, CKF.

279
Gary Wills, John Wayne’s America: The Politics of Celebrity (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1997), p. 139.

280
For details on Raines’ contracts, see Folders 49, 50, 51, CKF.

281
Folder 1919, CKF.

282
Todd McCarthy, Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood (New York:
Grove, 1997), p. 319.

283
Folder 593, 595, and 596, CKF. All subsequent references and citations on the
Hawks-Warner Bros. deal stem from these folders.

284
Folders 875 and 876, CKF.

285
Folder 594, CKF. All subsequent references to Bacall stem from this folder,
unless otherwise noted.

286
This document, and others related to the Bacall narrative, can be found in Folder
1907, CKF. But some of the key memos can be found most easily in Rudy
Behlmer’s edited collection, Inside Warner Bros.: 1935-1951 (New York: Viking,
1985), pp. 248-250.

287
Folder 690, CKF.

288
Folders 594 and 596, CKF. This narrative is clearly and accurately covered in
Todd McCarthy’s Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood (New York: Grove,
1997); see p. 416 for this quotation and the numbers covered in this paragraph.

289
Folder 1899, CKF.

290
Folder 690, CKF.

291
McCarthy, op cit., p. 444.

391

292
Leo C. Rosten, Hollywood: The Movie Colony, the Movie Makers (New York:
Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1941), pp. 297-300.

293
Clippings in the John Wayne and Red River files, General Collection, AMPAS.

294
John Wayne legal files, Warner Bros. Archives, USC; on reissues and SAG, see
reports on the deal in the John Wayne files, General Collection, AMPAS.

295
Folder 875, CKF.

296
Ibid.

297
Folder 1, CKF.

298
Arnold Grant correspondence, Folder 24, CKF. All subsequent quotations and
citations stem from this folder.

299
Folder 19, CKF.

300
Folder 1900, CKF.

301
Folder 875, CKF.

302
Folder 1775, CKF. Subsequent details on the deal in this paragraph can be found
in this file.

303
All details—from the production company and the agency—in this juxtaposition
can be found in Folders 3 and 4, 871 and 872, CKF.

304
Ray Stark to Charlie Feldman, 9-22-53, Folder 861, CKF.

305
Under pressure from his staff, Feldman made fitful efforts to develop television
deals. None of these amounted to anything.

306
Background on MCA derived from Connie Bruck, When Hollywood Had a
King: The Reign of Lew Wasserman, Who Leveraged Talent into Power and
Influence (New York: Random House, 2003), Dennis McDougal, The Last Mogul
(New York: Crown, 1998).

307
See “Daybooks,” CKF.

308
Stein quoted in Brooke Hayward, Haywire (New York: Knopf, 1977), p. 134.

392

309
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, 18 (September, 1938), pp. 67-102.

310
Unit Agency Corp. Formed,” Daily Variety (December 9, 1949), p. 1.

311
“GAC, Famous Artists Combine,” Daily Variety (April 4, 1950), p. 1.

312
“New Indie Agency Combine,” Daily Variety (October 9, 1950), p.1.

393

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Abstract (if available)

Abstract My dissertation covers a hitherto overlooked dimension of the classical Hollywood film industry: the role of talent agents in the 1930s and 1940s, the formative years of the studio system. Through extensive primary archival research I have unearthed the strong function served by talent agents in the studio system of the 1930s and 1940s. Drawing on recent work in economics, economic sociology and theories of institutions, my project broadens and complicates traditional depictions of the studio era. I trace the syndicate of managerial roles -- agents in particular, but studio executives as well -- that constituted the studio "system" as much as the concentrated management within the major film production companies. I demonstrate the social connections that translated into business relationships and how this system aided and abetted the individual reputations of stars, directors, and writers -- as well as the reputations of the agents themselves. Thus, my project, in addition to documenting the early history of agents, adds a new theoretical perspective on agency within the studio system.

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