Motion Picture Herald (Oct-Dec 1956)

TALENT AGENT ( Continued from page 12) drops in again, and says he knows she wouldn’t touch it, in its present form, but he’s got a writer who can fix it up, and who just happens to be free at the moment. You thank him and turn the script over to his writer client. "Two more weeks go by— usually six or eight, before he’s finally through fixing it up — and the agent says he’ll sho^y it to the actress you want. Maybe she’s in Europe, which takes months, but if she’s in town, or accessible without too much effort, he comes back in a few weeks to tell you she might be willing to play the role if proper production procedures are to be observed; meaning, in the simpler words, if the budget is big enough and she can have complete approval. "Now the agent gets down to cases. He asks you whom you’ve got lined up to direct the picture, and when you tell him he reacts like you’d struck him a blow. You were supposed to know his client will not work for any director but the four who have served her best in the past. He names the four and you get one of them or you don’t get the star. “You are a little less unprepared to learn, next, that the male lead you’ve had in mind can’t act his way out of a paper bag, and that the lady you want for the feminine lead will consent to appear opposite any one of the next four names her agent is ready to name for you, which he then names, giving you your choice. Goes On and On “That’s how it goes,” the producer abbreviates, and it goes on and on and on. If you get your picture into production within a year from the time you set out to make it you’re one of the lucky ones. If you’re within 200 per cent of the budget you had in mind when you started you’re a financial genius. If you come in with a hit picture, of course, you forgive everybody and make the agent (plural, that is, if we permitted you to use some of some other agent’s or agents’ clients, too) a present of a Cadillac or negotiable facsimile.” "And if you don’t come up with a hit?” is a question. “You go back and start over again to find out what you did wrong.” This particular independent producer appears, by present tally of theatres playing it, to have come up with a hit. He is taking his time about selecting a next property for production. He’s not waiting just for a change in the buyer seller relationship in his profession, which he expects to get harder rather than easier to cope with, but for a right story to come to hand. He says the trend of the film-producing art or science or profession is toward a strengthening of talent-agent control, especially in the new and widening field of television, where the theatrical-film producer without a hit on his hands frequently must turn to earn eating money and where the slender safeguards still existing in the senior medium have never been installed and probably never will be. Note Control TV He says TV already has passed into unopposed control of the big talent agencies, and this circumstance fortifies, by a sort of reverse action, their domination of the theatrical-film field. Other producers have things to say, privately, about talent-agent control. It is the hottest topic in town. It is daily on the tongue of everybody who makes a picture, acts in a picture, directs a picture, everybody who has anything to do with or in or about a picture. Of recent times, since the breakup of the major studio talent pools, and since the sizes and shapes of screens have ceased to out-draw the human talent that agents control, the tenor of the talk about the matter has been mixed. From the employer side, as indicated above, the talk about the talent-agent has been sharply critical. From the employee side, the talk about the talent agent has virtually untinged praise. For employees, including the topmost of the top-salaried, have never been paid so much for their services. They credit the talent agent for arranging it so. If a given employee happens to be out of work at a given moment he accepts the easy explanation that he wouldn’t be if the producers hadn’t cut down on the number of pictures being made. If he’s working, which he always is if he’s not above pulling an oar in the TV galleys for a spell, he’s got no complaint. Claims Necessity From the third side, where the talent agent sits, there is plain talk about talent agents, too, but it is quiet, unexcited talk. He says he is a necessary member of a business always unstabilized in its money department — fat and freehanded when the money’s rolling in, scared and pe»ny-pinching when it stops — and ever dependent on its lawyers, accountants and bankers to keep it from flying apart in all directions when an adverse wind blows. FABIAN SAYS ( Continued from page 13) in energy, and in effort, from everyone connected with it. That time, energy, and effort could be used to great advantage in distributor-exhibitor moves to get more people into theatres. Increasing the box office should have the full time attention of all segments of the industry immediately. Much less time must be given to negotiating for product. The burden is too heavy and debilitating.” Sam Pinanski, president of American Theatres of Boston and a leader of COMPO, delivered the main luncheon address Tuesday. American exhibitors face two basic problems — the need for more product and the need “to survey the needs and wishes of the American public who, in this day of automobiles, tends increasingly to suburban shopping. At Tuesday’s final session, B. B. Garner, president of Talgar Theatres and a veteran of nearly 40 years in show business, was elected president of the Florida organization to succeed Mr. Hecht. New vice-presidents include James L. Cartwright, Sheldon Mandell and Arthur Haynes. George Jessel served as toastmaster for the closing banquet Tuesday night. He is wont to ask gently how an actor, for instance, could walk up to a studio head and ask him flat out to pay him $2,000,000 for appearing in three pictures, without laughing out loud to the producer and being laughed at in return, or how a crooner could unblushingly demand $200,000 plus five per cent of the gross for appearing with another crooner and some other actors in a picture and get it. He is more likely to ask, brushing aside the extreme cases, just how Hollywood would manage to conduct its intricate business without him, and the folks on the other sides have no ready answers. There is another party who is very concerned with the subject of talent agents. He has had a unique experience with talent agents. He is the head of a big studio that used to be a small studio. He took charge of it when it was little, worked hard, made it thrive, in its league, and decided to spend more money on its pictures, widen its field of distribution. So he set out, money in hand, to hire top performers, and their agents told him no. His money was okay, they said, and he was a nice fellow, but his studio had a name associated with cheap pictures and the top performers he wanted to hire wouldn’t work in pictures bearing his studio’s name. So he changed it. What he has to say about talent agents is strong and colorful. But, unfortunately, it is unprintable. 14 MOTION PICTURE HERALD, NOVEMBER 3, 1956