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

by Frank Rose

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 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.

Genres: Business, History, Nonfiction, Film, Media Tie In

Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

FRANK ROSE is the author most recently of The Sea We Swim In: How Stories Work in a Data-Driven World, published in 2021 in the US and the UK and described as "critical thinking for an age of pervasive media" by The Wall Street Journal. His previous book, The Art of Im­mer­sion: How the Digital Gen­era­tion Is Remak­ing Holly­wood, Mad­ison Ave­nue, and the Way We Tell Stories, was a landmark work that showed how technology is chang­ing the age-old art of storytelling. Sparked by a decade of re­porting on media and technology for Wired, it has been called “a grand trip” by New Scientist and “a new media bible” by the Italian daily la Re­pubblica.
A senior fellow at Colum­bia University School of the Arts, Frank teach­es global busi­ness execu­tives as faculty director of the execu­tive edu­ca­tion seminar Strategic Story­telling. He is also awards director of Columbia's pioneer­ing Digital Story­telling Lab, where in 2016 he launched the annual Break­throughs in Story­telling awards to honor the most innovative approaches to narra­tive from the past year.

Reviews

[A Cesspool · Rating 4 out of 5]

***½ (really)

now What am i suppose to do
with this all this WMA historical data??

...actually considered ☝️this several times -- contemplating putting down [as DNF], just walking away...; Credit the author for somehow making it all adequately intriguing - if only infinitely more than Bernie Brillstein's industry-wide rebuttal Where Did I Go Right? memoir; much less, filmmaker publicist "marketing executive" Barry Avrich's self-congratulatory, unremarkable revisionist-biographical Moguls, Monsters, and Madmen .

My biggest gripe is the lackin' B-T-S/making-of (feature films) anecdotals.
Really only a smattering of remarkable behind-the-scene trivia or recollections -- Not so much the sensational, exploitive stuff, rather, those revelatory specs to individual client's deals or even the ones that fell through (or never got made), e.g. Tom Hanks campaigning for When a Man Loves a Woman (1994); And/or, Burt Reynolds's firing his longtime WMA agent, Stan Kamen, after The Cannonball Run (1981) producers approached Reynolds directly — bypassing Team Burt’s representatives entirely— with their project-proposal + then-record-breaking offer: $5M payday. Kamen, being Kamen, of course, still insisted on taking his commission (primarily only because Burt was still under contract with WMA). Reynolds saw it otherwise, since William Morris knew nothing of the project, much less, ever spoke with the producers or their representatives.
...(more) stuff like that!

fyi: No updated postscript or Afterword with latest, 2013 edition? kinda tacky, imo; considering (WMA's unofficial, legacy-bookending that same year)

[Kevin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was reading this for research about Hollywood talent agencies. For that, it was a decent resource. There are general details about a few big plays and power struggles, but overall the book was a huge drag to get through. The characters (there are many) are not painted clearly enough to leave a lasting impression, so you're constantly being reintroduced to people in later episodes having forgotten who they are. There are sparse behind-the-scenes looks at negotiation strategies and contract details - not nearly as substantive as I'd hoped. The anecdotes that are meant to highlight a character or lead to a punchline are setup poorly, and their payoffs are so lacking that you feel that you've missed something. I did get some good notes out of it, but reading a year's worth of Variety probably would have yielded better results and been more fun. I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone unless they were doing similar research, and maybe not even then.

[Amy Wolf · Rating 4 out of 5]

An incredibly comprehensive history of the Agency that dominated Hollywood for decades. Includes classic personalities like Abe Lastfogel & the various palace coupes that occurred through the years. A great book about the business of Hollywood.

[Valerie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was interesting and a good history of the entertainment industry, but it wasn't particularly interesting to read. I was very glad to be done with it when I finished it.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

The reviews of this on GR are feast or famine. I found it interesting, and not at all a slog to read. :)

[Alexander White · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit dense but if the history and inner workings of the agency business interest you, it's a necessary book.

[Erik Jaman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I just don’t really know 80% of the history so it was too hard to truly follow

[Frank Palardy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting stories. This is an old agency so they go back a ways.