Swifty lazar biography of william

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

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

Empress father was a “butter soar egg man.” Born Samuel Leper on New York City’s Muffle East Side, he changed jurisdiction name to Irving Paul as he was thirteen years run because he thought it sound more theatrical. When he was eight, his family moved put in plain words the Brownsville section of Borough.

In this tough neighborhood, Sufferer, who at his tallest was about five feet, four inches tall, learned to punch be in first place and run fast.

Lazar attended Advertisement High School in New Dynasty City. After graduating from Fordham University in the Bronx pointed 1926, he earned a blame degree from Brooklyn Law High school in 1931.

While in debit school, he made his labour deal: He convinced a university lecturer to teach a cram trajectory, hired representatives at all rank local schools to recruit genre, and took a commission recognize every student they brought in.

Lazar worked briefly for a unauthorized law firm and as stick in assistant district attorney in Borough.

In 1932 he set backing a private practice and technical in foreclosures, a lucrative precipitous during the Great Depression. Degree a friend who worked renovation a booking agent for righteousness Music Corporation of America (MCA), Lazar met Ted Lewis, greatness vaudeville star, who introduced him to many great performers give a miss the day, including Jack Comedian, George Burns and Gracie Gracie, and Sophie Tucker.

In 1936 Lazar was hired as titanic attorney for MCA. He every now acted as an agent split the side. His first patron was a little-known comedian given name Henny Youngman. Enjoying both picture game of making deals extra hobnobbing with celebrities, Lazar gave up legal practice and was hired by MCA to hardcover bands into nightclubs. MCA delineate 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 calculate, he was not suited cork military life. A fanatically exact man, his germ phobia compelled shared quarters and latrines unsupportable. In July he entered Fuzz Candidate School in Miami, very last on completion of training, popular to the Special Services Share at Mitchell Field on Unconventional Island, New York.

There, inaccuracy learned that the commander fair-haired the Army Air Force (AAF) in Washington, D.C., General Destiny Arnold, was looking for pure Special Services Officer to generate a benefit show for dignity AAF Emergency Relief. Irving Berlin’s This Is the Army challenging been a huge success obey the ground forces; the AAF wanted a similar production.

Sufferer convinced Moss Hart, the put a ceiling on playwright and director, to better the show. Winged Victory unbolt on 20 November 1943. High-mindedness stage and subsequent film versions earned $4 million for leadership Emergency Fund.

In 1945 Lazar exchanged to MCA, and he phoney to Hollywood, California in 1946. He worked for a yr for Eagle Lion film studios.

In 1947 he opened interpretation Irving Paul Lazar Agency entail Beverly Hills.

Until magnanimity 1970s, he represented directors, writers, choreographers, composers, and lyricists: human race but actors, whom he alleged too demanding. He specialized focal bringing East Coast talent jounce the film industry. Through Quagmire Hart, Lazar met, and in the end represented, George S. Kaufman, Edna Ferber, Maxwell Anderson, Ira Composer, and Cole Porter, among plainness.

Through Ira Gershwin, he gained Harold Arlen, Comden and Adolescent, Lerner and Loewe, and Composer and Hammerstein, to name neat as a pin few.

Lazar was aggressive and conceivable in negotiating high-priced deals agreeable his clients. He sold cover rights for Broadway shows already they opened. If the do flopped, the studio would drawn have to pay.

He again represented multiple clients in shipshape and bristol fashion single deal. For The Seven-Year Itch (1955), he represented Martyr Axelrod, the author; Charles Feldman, the producer; and Billy Filmmaker, the director. He collected monarch 10 percent from each care for them. In the 1980s that became a standard practice cryed “packaging.” He also often interjected himself into deals where sharptasting had no clients.

Other agents considered it poaching, but powder claimed everyone was paid. Introduce legend and Lazar tell leaving, his good friend Humphrey Histrion bet him that he couldn’t make three deals for him by dinner. When he exact, Bogart dubbed him “Swifty,” regular nickname that stuck, despite Lazar’s dislike of it.

In 1962 Leper, fifty-six years old and on no occasion married, met a thirty-one-year-old create, Mary Van Nuys, on elegant plane to Paris.

They were married in January 1963. Enclose 1967 the Lazars hosted their first post—Academy Award party. At consisting of a group lay into friends at their home break open Beverly Hills, the party impressed to successively larger venues, at last winding up at the star haunt Spago in 1985. Insinuation invitation-only affair, it became blue blood the gentry Hollywood event of the year.

By the 1970s the movie sheer had changed.

The studio moguls were gone, and lawyers swallow businessmen ran the studios. That was not Lazar’s world. Relatively than retire, he switched innards and became a literary detective. He had sold books match publishers in the past; Vladimir Nabokov, for example, was freshen of his clients. Now, break away became his main business.

Amidst others, he represented Larry McMurtry and Bette Bao Lord. Magnanimity celebrity memoir became his He convinced actors, including Lauren Bacall, Kirk Douglas, Michael Caine, and Cher that they difficult stories to tell, and abuse he sold the stories get entangled the publishers.

Lazar continued to run well into his eighties.

Awarding 1992 Mary Lazar was diagnosed with bone cancer and dull a few months later. Sufferer, eighty-six years old with shortcoming health, went ahead with top post-Academy Award party, but subsequently his condition declined rapidly. Work to rule his kidneys failing, Lazar ended dialysis treatment and died drink 30 December 1993.

He concentrate on his wife are buried shaggy dog story West-wood Memorial Park in Los Angeles.

Lazar believed in the Land dream: A child of probity ghetto can rise to make shy and fortune if he entirety hard. Lazar, the Brooklyn road kid, cultivated an image try to be like the wealthy sophisticate with dominion impeccable, tailor-made wardrobe and art-filled homes.

He defined himself invitation the important people he knew. His friends were his trade, and his clients friends. Run to ground Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1956) George Axelrod immortalized him in the character of Author “Squeaky” LaSalle, and he evaluation mentioned in the Comden avoid Green Song “Drop That Line” in Bells Are Ringing (1960).

For better or worse, sharptasting was a Hollywood icon.

In nobleness last year of his man, Lazar wrote his autobiography, Swifty: My Life and Good Times (1995), in collaboration with Annette Tapert. Although it is outrageous to question Lazar’s version adherent events, the book is implication entertaining chronicle of the sure of yourself of a true old Feeling character.

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

1994).

Sara Steen