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The Agency: William Morris and the Hidden History of Show Business
By Frank Rose
0 - Default Title
Description
The story begins more than a century ago, when a fiery young immigrant named William Morris opened a vaule-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 flag 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.
Product details
- Binding:
- Paperback
- Number of Pages:
- 560
- Release Date:
- 1996-06-01
- Publication Date:
- 1996-06-01
- Publisher:
- Harper Business
- Languages:
- Published: English, Original: English
- ISBN10:
- 0887308074
- Weight:
- 476 g
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