Very encouraging post. Show Business does wax and wane. By 1930, vaudeville was on it's last legs except for radio. The Talkies had arrived and the studios needed to spend money to make the transition. The depression didn't help their money woes. Or that some of them had expanded too much. So they hoped to pay the actors less. However, the only scheme that worked to sell pictures was selling the stars. They had tried selling the stories, but it was the stars that readers of motion picture magazines wanted to read about. And thus the movie agent entered. Studio chiefs tried to get rid of them since the agents made them spend money that they didn't want to pay. They barred them from the lots or made them use the back door. But agents survived and kept coming up with new ways of wresting money from the studios. The Studio System never died but it changed in the 1950s and then again in the 1970s. Lew Wasserman is credited with embracing rather than fighting television. He championed the block buster for film. So I hope his son has some tricks up his sleeve like Rob thinks. (My comments are from "The Agency: William Morris and the Hidden History of Show Business" by Frank Rose)
Very encouraging post. Show Business does wax and wane. By 1930, vaudeville was on it's last legs except for radio. The Talkies had arrived and the studios needed to spend money to make the transition. The depression didn't help their money woes. Or that some of them had expanded too much. So they hoped to pay the actors less. However, the only scheme that worked to sell pictures was selling the stars. They had tried selling the stories, but it was the stars that readers of motion picture magazines wanted to read about. And thus the movie agent entered. Studio chiefs tried to get rid of them since the agents made them spend money that they didn't want to pay. They barred them from the lots or made them use the back door. But agents survived and kept coming up with new ways of wresting money from the studios. The Studio System never died but it changed in the 1950s and then again in the 1970s. Lew Wasserman is credited with embracing rather than fighting television. He championed the block buster for film. So I hope his son has some tricks up his sleeve like Rob thinks. (My comments are from "The Agency: William Morris and the Hidden History of Show Business" by Frank Rose)
"I wish to be cremated. One tenth of my ashes shall be given to my agent, as written in our contract." – Groucho Marx