The Agency: William Morris And The Hidden History Of Show Business

The Agency: William Morris and the Hidden History of Show Business

From BooklistThis would be a fascinating enough story if it was limited to the history of the William Morris Agency, the theatrical agency that has dominated the entertainment industry since the days of vaudeville. But you can't tell the William Morris story without immersing yourself in the history of show business in the twentieth century--how it evolved, who the movers and shakers were, where the business might be heading as the century draws to a close. Rose's exhaustive research is evident throughout. More than 200 sources were used, and while these personal remembrances are what gives the book its depth, the numerous anecdotes also occasionally weigh it down. Not that there's anything very dishy here. One would expect that a story featuring a cast of characters like Marilyn Monroe, Barbra Streisand, Frank Sinatra, and Bill Cosby, to name a few, would have a few tales to tell, but Rose sticks pretty much to the business side of their lives. The real stars here are the agents themselves. For once, the backstage boys get to step center stage, and it's power and influence that give them their glow. Ilene CooperFor decades, hidden from the public eye, William Morris agents made the deals that determined the fate of stars, studios, and networks alike. Mae West, Frank Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe, Danny Thomas, Steve McQueen--the Morris Agency sold talent to anyone in the market for it, from the Hollywood studios to the mobsters who ran Vegas to the Madison Avenue admen who controlled television. While the clients took the spotlight, the agency operated behind the scenes, providing the grease that made show business what it's become.The story begins more than a century ago, when a fiery young immigrant named William Morris opened a vaudeville-booking office on New York's Fourteenth Street and went up against the trust that ruled the leading entertainment medium of the day. Led after Morris's death by the legendary Abe Lastfogel, a cherubic little man who treated agents and clients alike as family, the firm transformed the agent's image from garish flesh-peddler to smooth-talking professional. But when Lastfogel's successor brutally sacrificed his best friend--the man who'd brought Barry Diller and Michael Ovitz out of the mail room--William Morris gave birth to its own nemesis: Ovitz's new firm, CAA. Throughout the '80s and '90s, as the Morris Agency made, and lost, such stars as Mel Gibson, Julia Roberts, Kevin Costner and Tom Hanks, Ovitz's power grew inexorably as Morris's waned. Lulled by the phenomenal success of Bill Cosby and the upward spiral of the Beverly Hills real estate market, Morris's board failed to act as death and defection thinned its ranks. Finally, with its flagship motion-picture department on the brink of collapse, the board was faced with the stark reality of having to buy its way back into the business it had once owned.From Publishers WeeklyThe growth of the William Morris Agency, founded in 1898, has mirrored the evolution of the entertainment industry. The agency began by booking vaudeville acts, then continued to supply talent to the ever-changing show biz formats?silent movies, radio, "talkies" and TV. And as entertainment become more of a big business, the power of the Morris Agency grew along with it. Rose's descriptions of the formative years of the agency and show business is slow-moving, but his narrative picks up as he details the era of Abe Lastfogel, who headed Morris from the early 1930s to 1969. Rose (West of Eden) really hits his stride in the last third of the book, when his focus shifts from the stars to the Morris agents themselves. Here he vividly describes the Machiavellian tactics employed by the firm's agents against other agencies and against each other to steal clients to advance their own power. Infighting among the Morris agents became public in 1975 when Michael Ovitz and four others bolted to form Creative Artists Agency. Entertainment-industry junk