Broadcasting Telecasting (Oct-Dec 1957)

TALENT AGENTS >°* 10% fQ/O double commissioning and, along with the AGVA contract, stipulates that an agent may take no commission at all from members when they perform for minimum scale. For instance: The SAG minimum is $80 a day, but the agent is allowed to deduct $8, leaving the minimum-scale SAG member with $72 for his day's work. AFTRA and AGVA contracts won't allow this; unless the agent is able to get their members more than scale, he gets no commission. Various union rules also provide that if an agent's client goes without work for 91 days he may fire his agent, and vice versa. With AFTRA and SAG, the specified minimum is 15 days of work out of 91. But the two unions have somewhat different versions of what constitutes a day's work in television and radio. AFTRA stipulates that each radio broadcast, live or transcribed, is equal to one day's work but rebroadcasts and rehearsal time don't count. Each tv broadcast amounts to IVz days' work, but here rehearsal time is included (except that each rehearsal day beyond three stretches out the 91 -day period by that much). During June, July and August each radio broadcast counts as IV2 days instead of 1, and each telecast becomes 3% days instead of 2V2. Each master phonograph record is a day's work, year around. SAG goes along generally with the AFTRA definition of what is work in radio and the record business but has a lower opinion of television work, where a telecast counts as only two days' employment. However, if rehearsals stretch out past two days, each day counts as an extra half-day. Unlike AFTRA, SAG puts no premium on summertime work. With AGVA clients, an agent has to work faster. Here he has only 90 days, not 91, in which to see that the client gets a minimum amount of work. And the minimum is not 15 days but five weeks. The standard AGVA contract describes "an appearance" in television as a full week's work, with certain qualifications, but apparently does not regard radio as recognizable work at all. For an AGVA member, a tv appearance is a week's work provided ( 1 ) that the pay is the same as for a week's work in the variety field, and (2) that the agent is'the artist's exclusive representative in tv. If the client's tv pay is less than he would get for a week in the variety field, the time-worked credit is scaled down proportionately. Aside from the various talent unions with which they deal, agents have clubs of their own, designed to protect their own interests. One such is the Artists' Managers Guild, formed in Hollywood in 1936 when unions were becoming active in the entertainment field and the agents felt they needed an equal footing. AMG, which has 65 to 70 members out of perhaps 125 agencies active STORY CONTINUED ON PAGE 56 22 AGENTS AND THEIR STABLES One of the most carefully guarded secrets of most major talent agents is their complete list of active clients. For whatever reason — protection against piracy and maintenance of better control over casting are among reasons that have been advanced — a majority of leading agents have a firm policy against releasing lists for publication. Despite this urgent secrecy, Broadcasting presents in these pages what is possibly the most complete list of clients, by agent, that has been published in recent years. The compilation does not pretend to cover all agents active in television and radio, nor even all of the most active. Nor, in most cases, are the lists complete for the individual agents. The information was compiled from many sources. In a few cases, lists were supplied by agents themselves. But that number was small. In most cases the rosters came piecemeal from a number of authorities whose business it is to keep up to date on who is whose client. By no means all of this information is up to date, but every effort was made to make it as current as possible and at the same time to reconcile conflicting claims — of which many occurred — between various lists. In the tabulations which follow, many artists will be shown as clients of two or more agents. In many instances they are, because many have different agents for different fields, but in other instances are on two or more lists simply because those agents have, at one time or another and to one person or another in the recent past, held themselves out as the representative of the talent involved. Additionally, in some cases an agent's list will include clients he is handling for another agent who operates primarily in another area. Insofar as was possible, non-performers have been classified with their individual talent specialties in parentheses. ASHLEY-STEINER MEN Peter Arnell Bil Baird John Barrymore Jr. Herb Brodkin (producer) Yul Brynner Hume Cronyn Dick Haymes Robert Q. Lewis Sidney Lumet (director) Irving Mansfield (producer) Albert McCleery (producer) Worthington Miner (producer) Cameron Mitchell Jules Munshin Ralph Nelson (producer-director) Bert Parks Reginald Rose (writer) George Sanders Rod Serling (writer) Herb Shriner Walter Slezak Peter Ustinov (writer-actor) Mike Wallace WOMEN Cora Baird Gertrude Berg Jayne Mansfield Jessica Tandy BAUM-NEWBORN MEN Don Ameche Martin Balsam Gene Barry Royal Seal Ed Binns Richard Boone Lloyd Bridges Raymond Burr Red Buttons Richard Carlson Renzo Cesana Fred Clark Staats Cotsworth Brian Donlevy Richard Egan J. C. Flippen Paul Ford Eduard Franz Reginald Gardner Jack Haley William Harrigan Buster Keaton Brian Keith Dennis King Harvey Lembeck Noel Leslie Walter Matthau Victor McLaglen Ricardo Montalban Sal Mineo Wayne Morris Arnold Moss Jules Munshin Gene Nelson Paul Reed Harry Richman Gilbert Roland Mark Rydell Paul Stewart Robert Weede Ronnie Welsh Robert Young WOMEN Janet Blair Geraldine Brooks Vanessa Brown Janis Carter Augusta Dabney Hope Emerson Lisa Ferraday Constance Ford Beverly Garland Virginia Gibson Paulette Goddard Charlotte Greenwood Susan Johnson Katy Jurado June Lockhart Sarah Marshall Osa Massen Claudia Morgan Maureen O'Sullivan Gena Rowlands Martha Scott Sylvia Sidney Benay Venuta Page 46 • October 21, 1957 Broadcasting