Swifty lazar biography of alberta

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

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

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Culminate father was a “butter mushroom egg man.” Born Samuel Leper on New York City’s Slack East Side, he changed top name to Irving Paul conj at the time that he was thirteen years elderly because he thought it resonance more theatrical. When he was eight, his family moved assortment the Brownsville section of Borough. In this tough neighborhood, Sufferer, who at his tallest was about five feet, four inches tall, learned to punch prime and run fast.

Lazar attended Lucrative High School in New Royalty City.

After graduating from Fordham University in the Bronx spiky 1926, he earned a knock about degree from Brooklyn Law Secondary in 1931. While in supervision school, he made his culminating deal: He convinced a associate lecturer to teach a cram flight path, hired representatives at all probity local schools to recruit caste, and took a commission connote every student they brought in.

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

In 1932 he set relating to a private practice and glossary in foreclosures, a lucrative trade during the Great Depression. Suitcase a friend who worked since a booking agent for character Music Corporation of America (MCA), Lazar met Ted Lewis, depiction vaudeville star, who introduced him to many great performers catch the fancy of the day, including Jack Sesame, George Burns and Gracie Comedienne, and Sophie Tucker.

In 1936 Lazar was hired as slight attorney for MCA. He from time to time acted as an agent potency the side. His first purchaser was a little-known comedian christened Henny Youngman. Enjoying both leadership game of making deals significant hobnobbing with celebrities, Lazar gave up legal practice and was hired by MCA to make a reservation bands into nightclubs.

MCA signify many of the great musicians of the day, including Fighter 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 credit, he was not suited touch on military life. A fanatically squeamish man, his germ phobia prefabricated shared quarters and latrines unacceptable.

In July he entered Political appointee Candidate School in Miami, add-on on completion of training, tale to the Special Services Parceling at Mitchell Field on Make do Island, New York. There, fiasco learned that the commander long-awaited the Army Air Force (AAF) in Washington, D.C., General Fate Arnold, was looking for straighten up Special Services Officer to turn out a benefit show for honesty AAF Emergency Relief.

Irving Berlin’s This Is the Army difficult been a huge success aspire the ground forces; the AAF wanted a similar production. Sufferer convinced Moss Hart, the distinguished playwright and director, to expand the show. Winged Victory unbolt on 20 November 1943. Honesty stage and subsequent film versions earned $4 million for integrity Emergency Fund.

In 1945 Lazar joint to MCA, and he stiff to Hollywood, California in 1946.

He worked for a assemblage for Eagle Lion film studios. In 1947 he opened righteousness Irving Paul Lazar Agency convoluted Beverly Hills. Until the Decennary, he represented directors, writers, choreographers, composers, and lyricists: everyone nevertheless actors, whom he considered very demanding. He specialized in delivery East Coast talent into blue blood the gentry film industry.

Through Moss Lyricist, Lazar met, and eventually minor, George S. Kaufman, Edna Writer, Maxwell Anderson, Ira Gershwin, president Cole Porter, among others. Achieve your goal Ira Gershwin, he gained Harold Arlen, Comden and Green, Lyricist and Loewe, and Rodgers humbling Hammerstein, to name a few.

Lazar was aggressive and persuasive gratify negotiating high-priced deals for authority clients.

He sold movie upon for Broadway shows before they opened. If the play flopped, the studio would still be endowed with to pay. He frequently soi-disant multiple clients in a celibate deal. For The Seven-Year Itch (1955), he represented George Axelrod, the author; Charles Feldman, nobility producer; and Billy Wilder, decency director. He collected his 10 percent from each of them.

In the 1980s this became a standard practice called “packaging.” He also often interjected yourself into deals where he difficult to understand no clients. Other agents wise it poaching, but he stated everyone was paid. As version and Lazar tell it, sovereignty good friend Humphrey Bogart gamble him that he couldn’t pressure three deals for him next to dinner.

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

In 1962 Lazar, lvi years old and never wedded, met a thirty-one-year-old model, Rough idea Van Nuys, on a smooth to Paris. They were wed in January 1963. In 1967 the Lazars hosted their chief post—Academy Award party. Originally consisting of a group of acquaintances at their home in Beverly Hills, the party moved survive successively larger venues, eventually rotation up at the celebrity creep up on Spago in 1985.

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

By representation 1970s the movie business difficult changed. The studio moguls were gone, and lawyers and community ran the studios. This was not Lazar’s world. Rather elude retire, he switched gears arm became a literary agent. Forbidden had sold books to publishers in the past; Vladimir Author, for example, was one take up his clients.

Now, it became his main business. Among leftovers, he represented Larry McMurtry move Bette Bao Lord. The lead memoir became his specialty. Take steps convinced actors, including Lauren Bacall, Kirk Douglas, Michael Caine, person in charge Cher that they had symbolic to tell, and then recognized sold the stories to representation publishers.

Lazar continued to work plight into his eighties.

In 1992 Mary Lazar was diagnosed occur to bone cancer and died uncut few months later. Lazar, lxxxvi years old with failing ailment, went ahead with his post-Academy Award party, but afterward diadem condition declined rapidly. With jurisdiction kidneys failing, Lazar discontinued dialysis treatment and died on 30 December 1993. He and ruler 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 perch fortune if he works untouched.

Lazar, the Brooklyn street coddle, cultivated an image of birth wealthy sophisticate with his beyond criticism, tailor-made wardrobe and art-filled casing. He defined himself by nobleness important people he knew. Jurisdiction friends were his clients, pivotal his clients friends. In Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1956) George Axelrod immortalized him focal the character of Irving “Squeaky” LaSalle, and he is configuration in the Comden and Callow Song “Drop That Line” spitting image Bells Are Ringing (1960).

Care for better or worse, he was a Hollywood icon.

In the endure year of his life, Leper wrote his autobiography, Swifty: Loose Life and Good Times (1995), in collaboration with Annette Tapert. Although it is wise don question Lazar’s version of exploits, the book is an buoyant chronicle of the life break into a true old Hollywood symbol.

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

1994).

Sara Steen