The Agency
William Morris and the Hidden History of Show Business
by Frank Rose
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Book Presentation:
For 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.
About the Author:
Frank Rose is the author most recently of The Art of Immersion: How the Digital Generation Is Remaking Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and the Way We Tell Stories, published in the US and the UK by W.W. Norton, and a senior fellow at the Columbia University School of the Arts. Formerly a contributing editor at Wired, he has covered such topics as the making of Avatar, Samsung and the rise of the South Korean techno-state, and the posthumous career of Philip K. Dick in Hollywood. His work has also appeared in Premiere (where he was a contributing editor when The Agency was published in 1995), Fortune, Esquire, Travel + Leisure, New York, The New York Times and The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, and Vanity Fair. Among his other books are the national best-sellers West of Eden: The End of Innocence at Apple Computer, now available in an updated edition, and Into the Heart of the Mind. He lives in the East Village of Manhattan, where he got his start covering the punk scene at CBGB for The Village Voice.
Press Reviews:
"A cram course on the modern entertainment business as seen...from the point of view of the humble apparatchiks who doggedly tried to prevent the lunatics from wrecking their asylum." --New York Times Book Review
"The Agency is more than a titillating string of boldface names... Rose uses the saga of the Morris Agency's rise and fall as a prism through which to examine the constantly evolving nature of show business." --Los Angeles Times Book Review
"If you like to read juicy details of the usually dysfunctional lifestyles of movie and television stars, this is a book for you." --Chicago Tribune
"Reveals the shark tank at its most lethal and hilarious." --San Francisco Chronicle
"It's a darker side of show biz than one sees on Entertainment Tonight." --USA Today
See the publisher website: HarperCollins
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