Word: lazar
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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According to legend and some of his clients, Swifty Lazar seldom bothers to read manuscripts he sells, and some people even imply that he could not do so if he wanted to. "A vile canard," complains Swifty, insisting that he spends 90 minutes a day in intensive research. Actually well-educated, he is a lawyer whose practice is now limited to writing the impressive contracts he wangles for his clients...
From Edna Ferber to Vladimir Nabokov, Romain Gary, Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, his list of clients reads like the world's best-kept book of unlisted phone numbers. "I call myself a literary agent," says Lazar, "simply to distinguish myself from actors' agents." He also handles composers (Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers), choreographers, etc. For Rodgers, he recently sold The Sound of Music to 20th Century-Fox for $1,250,000, and for Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe he peddled Camelot to Warner for the same amount. He had a hand in the $5,500,000 deal...
Unsolicited Help. Now 54, Lazar was born in Stamford, Conn., the son of a German Jewish immigrant who ran a thriving butter and eggs business. Later, the family moved to Brooklyn, and Swifty took his LL.B at Brooklyn Law School. Sophie Tucker was one of his early legal clients, and he got into agenting when a nightclub impresario mentioned that he needed a Hawaiian musician. Swifty remembered one but could not recall the fellow's name. "I can get you Johnny Pineapple," he said recklessly. Then he tracked the Hawaiian down, told him his new name was Johnny Pineapple...
Unhappy Tourist. Moss Hart persuaded Lazar to become an independent agent soon after the war. Swiftly, his list grew until it included George S. Kaufman. Herman Wouk, S. N. Behrman, Johnny Mercer, Ira Gershwin, Frank Loesser, George Cukor. And as his personal legend developed, Lazar found himself caricatured in the work of his clients: Hart lampooned him gently, and George Axelrod mortalized his little friend as Irving ("Sneaky") LaSalle, the Hollywood literary agent in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter...
...Europe, he "converges" clients wherever he goes. Next week he leaves for a Swiss skiing colloquium with Irwin Shaw, Peter Viertel, Anatole Litvak, Darryl Zanuck and Henri-Georges Clouzot. He never considers himself on vacation. Once, meeting 20th Century-Fox's Buddy Adler by chance in Paris, Lazar sold him Cole Porter's Can-Can for $750,000. On another occasion, he was saving money by flying tourist class when, looking beyond the partition, he saw Spyros Skouras sitting up forward in Firstville. "I could have sold Skouras $300,000 worth of stuff," he groans. That...