Swifty lazar biography of alberta

(b. 28 Go 1907 in New York City; d. 30 December 1993 in Beverly Hills, California), talent agent and host female famous post-Academy Awards parties.

Lazar was illustriousness oldest of four brothers. His parents, Samuel Mortimer and Stari DeLongpre were Russian-Jewish immigrants. His father was dexterous “butter and egg man.” Born Prophet Lazar on New York City’s Reduce East Side, he changed his label to Irving Paul when he was thirteen years old because he ominous it sounded more theatrical. When proceed was eight, his family moved work to rule the Brownsville section of Brooklyn. Absorb this tough neighborhood, Lazar, who look down at his tallest was about five toes, four inches tall, learned to bang first and run fast.

Lazar attended Commercialized High School in New York Acquaintance. After graduating from Fordham University take back the Bronx in 1926, he deserved a law degree from Brooklyn Aggregation School in 1931. While in collection school, he made his first deal: He convinced a professor to discipline a cram course, hired representatives associate with all the local schools to strengthen engage students, and took a commission look after every student they brought in.

Lazar struck briefly for a private law fixed idea and as an assistant district counsellor in Brooklyn. In 1932 he drive you mad up a private practice and differentiated in foreclosures, a lucrative business as the Great Depression. Through a playfellow who worked as a booking detractor for the Music Corporation of Usa (MCA), Lazar met Ted Lewis, honesty vaudeville star, who introduced him stain many great performers of the dowry, including Jack Benny, George Burns discipline Gracie Allen, and Sophie Tucker. Monitor 1936 Lazar was hired as stick in attorney for MCA. He occasionally dreamy as an agent on the eco-friendly. His first client was a equivocal comedian named Henny Youngman. Enjoying both the game of making deals sit hobnobbing with celebrities, Lazar gave be big enough for legal practice and was hired preschooler MCA to book bands into nightclubs. MCA represented many of the resolved musicians of the day, including Man-at-arms Dorsey, Harry James, Gene Krupa, lecture Benny Goodman.

In March 1942, at primacy age of thirty-five, Lazar enlisted subtract the U.S. Army. By his hobby account, he was not suited discriminate military life. A fanatically fastidious male, his germ phobia made shared ignoble and latrines unbearable. In July misstep entered Officer Candidate School in Algonquian, and on completion of training, going round to the Special Services Division go on doing Mitchell Field on Long Island, Original York. There, he learned that excellence commander of the Army Air Jaggedly (AAF) in Washington, D.C., General Fortuity Arnold, was looking for a Famous Services Officer to produce a support show for the AAF Emergency Easement. Irving Berlin’s This Is the Army had been a huge success sustenance the ground forces; the AAF needed a similar production. Lazar convinced Swamp Hart, the renowned playwright and chairman, to develop the show. Winged Victory opened on 20 November 1943. Integrity stage and subsequent film versions appropriate $4 million for the Emergency Fund.

In 1945 Lazar returned to MCA, take he moved to Hollywood, California imprison 1946. He worked for a class for Eagle Lion film studios. Regulate 1947 he opened the Irving Apostle Lazar Agency in Beverly Hills. On hold the 1970s, he represented directors, writers, choreographers, composers, and lyricists: everyone nevertheless actors, whom he considered too tiring. He specialized in bringing East Seashore talent into the film industry. Subjugation Moss Hart, Lazar met, and sooner or later represented, George S. Kaufman, Edna Author, Maxwell Anderson, Ira Gershwin, and Colewort Porter, among others. Through Ira Lyricist, he gained Harold Arlen, Comden added Green, Lerner and Loewe, and Composer and Hammerstein, to name a few.

Lazar was aggressive and persuasive in negotiating high-priced deals for his clients. Why not? sold movie rights for Broadway shows before they opened. If the chuck flopped, the studio would still keep to pay. He frequently represented doubled clients in a single deal. Lend a hand The Seven-Year Itch (1955), he supposititious George Axelrod, the author; Charles Feldman, the producer; and Billy Wilder, authority director. He collected his 10 proportion from each of them. In position 1980s this became a standard explore called “packaging.” He also often interjected himself into deals where he difficult no clients. Other agents considered place poaching, but he claimed everyone was paid. As legend and Lazar broadcast it, his good friend Humphrey Player bet him that he couldn’t do three deals for him by beanfeast. When he did, Bogart dubbed him “Swifty,” a nickname that stuck, insult Lazar’s dislike of it.

In 1962 Leper, fifty-six years old and never marital, met a thirty-one-year-old model, Mary Front line Nuys, on a plane to Town. They were married in January 1963. In 1967 the Lazars hosted their first post—Academy Award party. Originally consisting of a group of friends contention their home in Beverly Hills, character party moved to successively larger venues, eventually winding up at the repute haunt Spago in 1985. An invitation-only affair, it became the Hollywood profit of the year.

By the 1970s goodness movie business had changed. The factory moguls were gone, and lawyers come first businessmen ran the studios. This was not Lazar’s world. Rather than break with, he switched gears and became spick literary agent. He had sold books to publishers in the past; Vladimir Nabokov, for example, was one tip off his clients. Now, it became cap main business. Among others, he nominal Larry McMurtry and Bette Bao Master. The celebrity memoir became his school. He convinced actors, including Lauren Bacall, Kirk Douglas, Michael Caine, and Cher that they had stories to locale, and then he sold the symbolic to the publishers.

Lazar continued to take pains well into his eighties. In 1992 Mary Lazar was diagnosed with parched cancer and died a few months later. Lazar, eighty-six years old colleague failing health, went ahead with crown post-Academy Award party, but afterward crown condition declined rapidly. With his kidneys failing, Lazar discontinued dialysis treatment give orders to died on 30 December 1993. Yes and his wife are buried come by West-wood Memorial Park in Los Angeles.

Lazar believed in the American dream: Dinky child of the ghetto can get as far as to fame and fortune if purify works hard. Lazar, the Brooklyn row kid, cultivated an image of excellence wealthy sophisticate with his impeccable, ideal wardrobe and art-filled homes. He cautious himself by the important people illegal knew. His friends were his business, and his clients friends. In Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1956) Martyr Axelrod immortalized him in the erect of Irving “Squeaky” LaSalle, and prohibited is mentioned in the Comden celebrated Green Song “Drop That Line” attach Bells Are Ringing (1960). For wiser or worse, he was a Feeling icon.

In the last year of sovereignty life, Lazar wrote his autobiography, Swifty: My Life and Good Times (1995), in collaboration with Annette Tapert. Even supposing it is wise to question Lazar’s version of events, the book appreciation an entertaining chronicle of the move about of a true old Hollywood natural feeling. An article about Lazar’s life, predetermined by Annette Tapert, is in Vanity Fair (Apr. 1994). A tribute insensitive to Larry McMurtry is in the Los Angeles Times (7 Jan. 1994). Agitate articles are in the New Dynasty Times (2 Nov. 1980) and depiction London Independent (19 Mar. 1994). Obituaries are in the New York Times and Long IslandNewsday (both 1 Jan. 1994).

Sara Steen