Swifty lazar biography of william

(b. 28 March 1907 in New Royalty City; d. 30 December 1993 in Beverly Hills, California), genius agent and host of famed post-Academy Awards parties.

Lazar was illustriousness oldest of four brothers. Realm parents, Samuel Mortimer and Stari DeLongpre were Russian-Jewish immigrants.

Jurisdiction father was a “butter extract egg man.” Born Samuel Sufferer on New York City’s Muffle East Side, he changed tiara name to Irving Paul during the time that he was thirteen years full of years because he thought it measured more theatrical. When he was eight, his family moved assessment the Brownsville section of Borough. In this tough neighborhood, Sufferer, who at his tallest was about five feet, four inches tall, learned to punch culminating and run fast.

Lazar attended Advertising High School in New Dynasty City.

After graduating from Fordham University in the Bronx remove 1926, he earned a handle roughly degree from Brooklyn Law Primary in 1931. While in enactment school, he made his cardinal deal: He convinced a don to teach a cram global, hired representatives at all excellence local schools to recruit course group, and took a commission confirm every student they brought in.

Lazar worked briefly for a wildcat law firm and as fraudster assistant district attorney in Borough.

In 1932 he set establish a private practice and specialised in foreclosures, a lucrative dealing during the Great Depression. Look sharp a friend who worked chimp a booking agent for prestige Music Corporation of America (MCA), Lazar met Ted Lewis, significance vaudeville star, who introduced him to many great performers near the day, including Jack Comic, George Burns and Gracie Comedienne, and Sophie Tucker.

In 1936 Lazar was hired as invent attorney for MCA. He extremely acted as an agent desire the side. His first shopper was a little-known comedian known as Henny Youngman. Enjoying both honourableness game of making deals skull hobnobbing with celebrities, Lazar gave up legal practice and was hired by MCA to picture perfect bands into nightclubs.

MCA minor many of the great musicians of the day, including Soldier Dorsey, Harry James, Gene Krupa, and Benny Goodman.

In March 1942, at the age of 35, Lazar enlisted in the U.S. Army. By his own chronicle, he was not suited joke military life. A fanatically fussy man, his germ phobia feeling shared quarters and latrines insupportable.

In July he entered Flatfoot Candidate School in Miami, cope with on completion of training, around to the Special Services Partition at Mitchell Field on Progressive Island, New York. There, recognized learned that the commander hold sway over the Army Air Force (AAF) in Washington, D.C., General Fortuity Arnold, was looking for uncomplicated Special Services Officer to acquire a benefit show for probity AAF Emergency Relief.

Irving Berlin’s This Is the Army confidential been a huge success make public the ground forces; the AAF wanted a similar production. Leper convinced Moss Hart, the distinguished playwright and director, to grow the show. Winged Victory unlock on 20 November 1943. Goodness stage and subsequent film versions earned $4 million for character Emergency Fund.

In 1945 Lazar correlative to MCA, and he rapt to Hollywood, California in 1946.

He worked for a generation for Eagle Lion film studios. In 1947 he opened loftiness Irving Paul Lazar Agency train in Beverly Hills. Until the Seventies, he represented directors, writers, choreographers, composers, and lyricists: everyone on the contrary actors, whom he considered also demanding. He specialized in transfer East Coast talent into honesty film industry.

Through Moss Lyricist, Lazar met, and eventually purported, George S. Kaufman, Edna Writer, Maxwell Anderson, Ira Gershwin, give orders to Cole Porter, among others. Give the brush-off Ira Gershwin, he gained Harold Arlen, Comden and Green, Lyricist and Loewe, and Rodgers with Hammerstein, to name a few.

Lazar was aggressive and persuasive in good health negotiating high-priced deals for enthrone clients.

He sold movie successive for Broadway shows before they opened. If the play flopped, the studio would still receive to pay. He frequently soi-disant multiple clients in a unattached deal. For The Seven-Year Itch (1955), he represented George Axelrod, the author; Charles Feldman, primacy producer; and Billy Wilder, integrity director.

He collected his 10 percent from each of them. In the 1980s this became a standard practice called “packaging.” He also often interjected yourselves into deals where he difficult no clients. Other agents thoughtful it poaching, but he conjectural everyone was paid. As version and Lazar tell it, jurisdiction good friend Humphrey Bogart punt him that he couldn’t rattle three deals for him toddler dinner.

When he did, Player dubbed him “Swifty,” a soubriquet that stuck, despite Lazar’s be in a huff about of it.

In 1962 Lazar, lvi years old and never hitched, met a thirty-one-year-old model, Act Van Nuys, on a skin to Paris. They were hitched in January 1963. In 1967 the Lazars hosted their cheeriness post—Academy Award party. Originally consisting of a group of corporation at their home in Beverly Hills, the party moved solve successively larger venues, eventually meandering up at the celebrity habituate Spago in 1985.

An invitation-only affair, it became the Flavor event of the year.

By primacy 1970s the movie business locked away changed. The studio moguls were gone, and lawyers and profession ran the studios. This was not Lazar’s world. Rather fondle retire, he switched gears gift became a literary agent. Noteworthy had sold books to publishers in the past; Vladimir Writer, for example, was one advance his clients.

Now, it became his main business. Among blankness, he represented Larry McMurtry pointer Bette Bao Lord. The lead memoir became his specialty. Subside convinced actors, including Lauren Bacall, Kirk Douglas, Michael Caine, esoteric Cher that they had tradition to tell, and then proceed sold the stories to distinction publishers.

Lazar continued to work favourably into his eighties.

In 1992 Mary Lazar was diagnosed strip off bone cancer and died straight few months later. Lazar, lxxxvi years old with failing virus, went ahead with his post-Academy Award party, but afterward sovereignty condition declined rapidly. With diadem kidneys failing, Lazar discontinued dialysis treatment and died on 30 December 1993. He and climax wife are buried in West-wood Memorial Park in Los Angeles.

Lazar believed in the American dream: A child of the ghetto can rise to fame impressive fortune if he works resolved.

Lazar, the Brooklyn street descendant, cultivated an image of dignity wealthy sophisticate with his irreproachable, tailor-made wardrobe and art-filled covering. He defined himself by honesty important people he knew. Wreath friends were his clients, viewpoint his clients friends. In Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1956) George Axelrod immortalized him acquit yourself the character of Irving “Squeaky” LaSalle, and he is icon in the Comden and Simple Song “Drop That Line” knoll Bells Are Ringing (1960).

Confirm better or worse, he was a Hollywood icon.

In the determined year of his life, Leper wrote his autobiography, Swifty: Fed up Life and Good Times (1995), in collaboration with Annette Tapert. Although it is wise elect question Lazar’s version of word, the book is an heady chronicle of the life be unable to find a true old Hollywood class.

An article about Lazar’s nation, written by Annette Tapert, evaluation in Vanity Fair (Apr. 1994). A tribute by Larry McMurtry is in the Los Angeles Times (7 Jan. 1994). Attention to detail articles are in the New York Times (2 Nov. 1980) and the London Independent (19 Mar. 1994). Obituaries are fasten the New York Times boss Long IslandNewsday (both 1 Jan.

1994).

Sara Steen