The Beauty Broker : Nina Blanchard Has Run a Los Angeles Model Agency for 25 Years. It’s Not Always a Pretty Business.

The new model is young, beautiful, and right now very, very nervous. She crouches by the side of the desk as the woman behind it peers through a magnifying glass and scans a batch of slides.

“These won’t do,” Nina Blanchard says brusquely. “There are a lot of old-fashioned modeling poses here. Look, your neck is too stiff. You have to pull it out of your shoulders--like this.” Blanchard demonstrates, dropping her shoulders and stretching her neck.

The model, elegant in a white silk pantsuit, swallows hard and nods. She has just signed with Blanchard’s talent and modeling agency, perhaps the best-known and richest of its kind outside of New York City. As a Blanchard model, she has already accomplished what most would-be cover girls only dream about. But it’s just the beginning. Before she can be sent out on an assignment, she must acquire an impressive portfolio so that photographers and advertisers can see her ability and potential. That can take months.

“Can’t any of them be saved?” the model asks softly. Blanchard looks at the slides again. “Well, maybe this one. And this one. Perhaps this one. But none of the others.” Crestfallen, the model gathers up the slides and slips them back into her large leather case.

“You’ve got to relax, dear,” Blanchard tells her. “Keep working at it. It will come.”

The model departs. Blanchard leaves her desk to wander around her large office, the cream-colored walls of which are decorated with framed magazine covers featuring past and present talent such as Cheryl Tiegs, Shari Belafonte-Harper, Cristina Ferrare and Catherine Oxenberg. Blanchard herself is trim, 50ish, with reddish-gold hair, in a dark-green cashmere sweater and matching skirt. She confers briefly with a couple of her young bookers, who are responsible for arranging interviews and jobs for the 128 women and 81 men on the Blanchard roster.

Blanchard and her six bookers all work in one room. The telephone rings every few seconds. Usually, it’s a model checking in for assignments, or photographers and advertisers requesting a certain model for a job, or young aspirants asking how they can become a Blanchard model.

For Nina Blanchard, one of Los Angeles’ modern pioneer businesswomen, life would appear to be sweet indeed. This month, she and 79 other women entrepreneurs from across the country will be honored by President Reagan at a White House luncheon.

Her agency, which books talent for television commercials, print advertising and runway modeling, celebrated its 25th anniversary last May 27, and Mayor Tom Bradley proclaimed the occasion Nina Blanchard Day. The gruff-voiced Blanchard marked the day with a party for 900 at the Hollywood Palladium. Among the guests, in addition to the famous faces she represents, were Prince Albert of Monaco, Valerie Harper, Eileen Brennan, Dennis Weaver, Burt Reynolds, who was Blanchard’s escort, and Merv Griffin, on whose talk show Blanchard appeared more than 30 times.

New York City is still the unquestioned center of the $100-million-plus modeling industry, controlling perhaps 75% of the business. Yet Blanchard has seen Los Angeles’ share grow substantially since she started her agency in 1961, when there were only two other agencies like it in town. Now there are at least 18. But, Blanchard says, she’s at the top of the heap, with billings exceeding those of any other similar L.A. agency. She refuses, however, to reveal the exact amount of her multimillion-dollar annual revenue. There was a time, she says, when she was not reluctant to disclose what she made. But she claims that competitors began exaggerating their billings to make it appear that they had more business. “I’ve learned not to tell,” she says. (Of the more than 1,000 agencies in the United States, four dominate the industry. They are Ford Models--considered the leader--Wilhelmina, Zoli and Elite, all based in New York. But since the top agencies are private companies, their exact size and earnings are not public record. They engage in a continual game of one-upmanship, claiming larger billings than their competitors. As William Weinberg--president of the Wilhelmina agency--has said, “Everybody lies in this business.”)

Blanchard’s success has been inextricably intertwined with that of her models, some of whom are the highest paid in the world. She discovered super-model Cheryl Tiegs more than 20 years ago. Today Tiegs, the only model ever to have been the subject of a Time magazine cover story, is still going strong, with a multimillion-dollar clothing-design contract with Sears. Shari Belafonte-Harper, the daughter of singer Harry Belafonte, has appeared on at least 200 major magazine covers and in television commercials. Her fee can be as high as six figures. Blanchard also represents Christie Brinkley, Catherine Oxenberg (formerly of “Dynasty”) and Cynthia Sikes (formerly of “St. Elsewhere”). Also, more and more models are turning to television and the movies, and Blanchard has groomed her share of stars, among them Sally Struthers, Lindsay Wagner and Susan Saint James.

When Blanchard started out, she had a “hole in the wall” office, a broken-down car and a shabby apartment. But she also soon showed an instinct for spotting faces. Now, she works out of an elegant suite of offices in a high-rise building on Hollywood Boulevard, drives a Mercedes and lives in a large Mulholland Drive house, complete with housekeeper and caretaker.

Blanchard says, however, that in some ways life was better 25 years ago. “It was more fun in the old days. I tell you, the minute success starts, you put your back against the wall. Right away, it’s ‘Let’s get her.’ Some new agency will have a meeting, and they’ll say, ‘The main thing to do is to knock Blanchard off.’ There’s a certain kind of hostility toward success. I don’t think it’s because I’m a woman. In this business, the same thing happens to men.”

The usually abrupt and no-nonsense Blanchard seems suddenly vulnerable. “I find it very hurtful,” she says. “I just want to say, ‘Gee, what did I do?’ I feel like a school kid who’s being beaten up. I realize that’s a ridiculous kind of thing, but I can’t throw it off. This is a cutthroat business, and it’s gotten even more so in the last few years. It’s not like owning a department store. In a department store, you don’t have to worry about your clothes leaving you and going over to Bullock’s.”

But at an agency, models can--and do--leave and sign with other agencies. In the last year or two, the competition for models has become especially fierce in Los Angeles, as a result of the explosion in the number of agencies. “Models switch around an awful lot,” says Maureen Sajbel, fashion editor in the Los Angeles office of Women’s Wear Daily and the weekly W. “And some of the agencies work hard to encourage switching.”

Sajbel, who books models for the fashion-trade publications, says many new agencies are “very, very aggressive” in recruiting new models and promoting those they already have. The Nina Blanchard Agency, which Sajbel calls “really professional” and “high-quality,” has been more genteel in its dealings with advertisers and models. But gentility will only get you so far these days, and the agency has been forced to make adjustments in its operating style. Sajbel says she’s noticed that some of Blanchard’s bookers are more aggressive lately in hyping their models.

The insecurity never ends, Blanchard complains. “You’re always on the lookout for signs that someone is after a model. You might hear that one of your girls is out to dinner with a competitor. Or you can’t reach someone for a week. Or a model comes in to pick up all her pictures. The next thing you know, she’s gone.”

Why does a model switch agencies? “An offer might come at a time when things are a little slow for a model,” Blanchard says. “Another agent will promise to get her more work. He might tell her, ‘You should be on the cover of Vogue.’ ”

The competition among agencies isn’t only for established models. New faces are the essence of the business, and the increase in the number of agencies means that the hunt has become much more intense. “It’s harder and harder to find a good-looking girl because the waters have been fished dry in this country,” Blanchard says. When they tour the country looking for models, U.S. agents compete not only with each other but also with dozens of European and Japanese firms, whose representatives make semiannual trips to this country to search for new talent.

There are other obstacles as well. Blanchard is working at her desk when a handsome young male model comes over to her. “I just want to say goodby,” he says with a British accent. Blanchard leaps to her feet and throws her arms around him.

“I’m so sorry,” she says. “I did the best I could.”

“I know,” he replies.

U.S. immigration authorities have refused his request to work as a model here, and he must leave the country. Blanchard filed an appeal on his behalf, but in vain.

“You know,” he tells Blanchard, “when they told me yesterday that I had to leave, I cried for the first time in years.”

She tells him to apply again for a visa when he returns to Britain, and she will see what she can do from here. He agrees, gives her another hug, and leaves.

“Immigration is giving me one hell of a bad time,” she mutters. “It’s the worst it’s been in years.” The Immigration and Naturalization Service is refusing to grant work permits to most foreign models who want to work in Los Angeles, she says. According to the INS, the foreign models are not uniquely qualified for the work; in other words, they would be taking jobs away from U.S. models, who could do them just as well. “Ridiculous,” she snaps. The good models here have nothing to fear from their foreign counterparts, she says. “The good ones always find work.”

For Blanchard, the search is endless. Wherever she goes, she is watching for that special face. It’s impossible to describe exactly how the face should look, but in general it should be young, attractive, interesting and, above all, photogenic. And it should be atop a tall, slim body. Blanchard’s standards for new models are exacting: They must stand between 5 feet, 9 inches and 5 feet, 11 inches tall and be between 16 and 20 years old.

Despite Blanchard’s reputation for spotting future stars, her instinct sometimes fails her. This morning, as she chain-smokes, she is looking at snapshots of a young woman she saw in the audience at a fashion show a week before. She asked the woman to send her some pictures, which turned out to be disappointing. Now she has to write to her, dashing hopes that Blanchard herself has created.

“The hardest thing we have to do is reject,” she says. “You burn out on rejection.” But rejection is a fact of life in modeling. Every month, Blanchard receives letters and pictures from about 4,000 aspiring models. Of that number, usually only three or four are invited to come in to talk to her. The agency gets hundreds of calls a week from would-be models. Blanchard herself often answers the phones but identifies herself as “Phyllis” if the caller wants to know who’s speaking. Her response to one such call reflects the futility of the dreams of most aspiring models. After picking up the telephone, she listens for a second and then says abruptly: “How old are you? How tall? I’m sorry, dear, we don’t take anybody under 5-foot-9.” End of conversation.

The agency also holds open interviews daily, and anyone can come in and be inspected by one of Blanchard’s bookers. About 600 people are seen each month. Two or three may be signed. For those who are turned down, the experience is painful but quick. In about 30 seconds, a hopeful and her (or his) pictures can be sized up, given a gentle “no,” and sent out the door. “Many of the ones who come in here have taken all the modeling and acting courses, but they just don’t have what it takes,” Blanchard says. “And if they don’t have it, there’s not a school in the world that can give it to them, because they weren’t born with it.” (No fan of modeling and charm schools, Blanchard has worked with the state Labor Commission to put fraudulent school operators and talent agents out of business.)

Some aspirants--and their mothers--don’t accept Blanchard’s rulings. Occasionally, “girls will come in with their mothers, who say: ‘You cannot turn her down. This is the only thing she wants to do,’ ” Blanchard says. “But I tell them they’re not entitled to become a model like they’re entitled to go to public school.”

Once in a while, the disappointment turns ugly. Death threats have been made, Blanchard says. Once, she had to hire a bodyguard because of a threatening letter written, she believes, by someone she had rejected. “People are very angry about beauty,” she says. “They don’t think it’s fair that models make so much money for something they’re born with, something they didn’t work for.”

Blanchard knows firsthand the sting of rejection and failure. Growing up in Los Angeles, she wanted to become an actress, and at 17 she moved to New York with $37 in her pocket. She had no luck as an actress, however, so she became an advertising copywriter, later an NBC makeup artist and then a casting director.

While at NBC, she married Ben Tomkins, a television director, with whom she moved back to Los Angeles when he was offered a directing job here. The marriage was not a success, and several years later Blanchard and Tomkins separated. He died shortly thereafter. Left with no money, Blanchard got a job as the executive director of a modeling school and then bought her own school franchise. She soon went bankrupt.

“I was no good” at the modeling-school business, she recalls, “because in good conscience I couldn’t sell those courses to walleyed girls. If you’re going to sell classes only to those who have potential, you won’t be able to survive. You can’t have a school and just accept the kids who are going to make it.”

After that disastrous venture, Blanchard was desperate. “I started this agency because I couldn’t find a job anywhere.” Her only assets were $300 and a tiny office, both borrowed from a friend, and a few models, most of whom had no professional experience. She spent most of the money on a brochure featuring her models, which she sent out to photographers and advertisers.

When photographers started calling within days to book her models, Blanchard panicked. “I thought, ‘Oh my God, they can’t. These girls don’t know what they’re doing.’ ” To buy more time, Blanchard told callers that the models they requested were unavailable. “Suddenly the word was going around town that all my models were booked,” Blanchard recalls with a raucous laugh. “Then I started getting calls from other models, who said, ‘We hear you’re the hot new agent in town.’ And they started coming to me.”

One of them was Dolores Hawkins, a top model in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Hawkins introduced Blanchard to Eileen Ford, whose New York agency is considered the largest in the country. “Eileen couldn’t have been nicer,” Blanchard says. “I would call her and ask, ‘What do I do about this?’ She gave me lots of advice. Then she started sending models to me here in California.” Ford and Blanchard now are close friends, calling each other several times a day. Many of Blanchard’s models work with Ford when they have New York assignments. Similarly, many Ford models--as well as those from other agencies--are affiliated with Blanchard when they work in Los Angeles.

A top New York model calls Blanchard one day to say hello. An aspiring singer, she’s in town for a few days to cut a record, but if Blanchard can find her any good modeling or commercial assignments she’ll stay around for a couple of days more. Blanchard immediately gets on the telephone with photographers and advertisers. “John, sweetheart, how are you?” she greets one photographer. “Guess who’s in town?” She names the model. “Do you know her?” A note of incredulity slips into her voice at his reply. “You don’t? Well, she’s very big. She’s divine. She’s here for a few days and will stay on longer if she can get some work. OK. Well, think about it and let me know.”

The flow of models east and west is not exactly a two-way street. More models still go to New York than come to Cali fornia. In Los Angeles, the big advertising accounts, such as the major department stores, only hire models with New York and European experience. Without such experience, beginning models get booked by smaller accounts, such as discount stores and for local newspapers and magazines. But the department stores and catalogues are where the big money is. “The department-store catalogues will pay a model anywhere from $1,000 to $2,500 a day,” Blanchard says. By comparison, Vogue magazine pays $150 a day. (The agency takes 10% to 15% of the model’s fee and advances the model his or her fee before the account pays the agency. The agency bills the account another 15% of the fee as a service charge.)

Because of the demand for models with New York and European credits, Blanchard requires her models to go to New York, Paris, Milan or Germany after they’ve worked for a while locally. If they go to New York, they may sign up with Eileen Ford or another big agent, who arranges test shots and “go-sees” (interviews with clients). Prime targets are fashion magazines, which, even if they don’t pay much, provide the exposure that a new model needs. Most models, for example, consider a Vogue cover a ticket to the big time. Once a Los Angeles model has acquired enough good test shots and magazine tear sheets, she has a solid chance of landing lucrative assignments when she returns to Los Angeles. That is, if she returns. “Sometimes they don’t come back,” Blanchard says. “That’s the chance you take.”

If New York is such an attraction, why doesn’t she set up shop there? “I’ve been asked to do that, but I’ve never considered it,” she says. “Oh, once in a while, after I’ve been back there in that supercharged atmosphere--with all the hustle and bustle, the big bookings and Vogue every day--I come back here and am rotten to my staff for three weeks. But I don’t think I could live in New York again. When I spend a week there, I start thinking, ‘I want my own car; I want the freedom to go where I want to go. I don’t want to be stuck in a cab in traffic.’ ”

She may have freedom of movement in Los Angeles, but another kind of freedom eludes her. She finds herself “locked into this place,” unable to take vacations, unable to carve out a personal life outside her agency. “There was a time when I said, ‘I’m going to get out of here at a reasonable time. I’m going to turn over a new leaf.’ But the minute you do, your place starts to fall apart. Everybody who’s in a service business like mine tells me the same thing. This is not a high-profit business.”

Even when Blanchard is at home, she is not cut off from the office. Like Eileen Ford, Blanchard often takes promising new models with little money into her home for a couple of months. As a stand-in mother, she combines compassion with firmness. “One little girl kept complaining that she wasn’t going out nights. I told her: ‘You’re not down here for that, honey. You’re down here to work. If you don’t want to do that, you can go home.’ ”

Says a former model who was with Blanchard for 10 years: “Nina cultivates a tough, gravel-voiced, career-woman image, but deep down she’s completely different. She was wonderful to me, totally supportive and absolutely straightforward. Very often in the fashion business you can be treated like dirt. Nina never did that. She never treated me like a coat hanger, which is what you get in some other agencies.”

Even so, models soon learn to stay on her good side. One day in her office, a secretary tells a booker that an advertising executive from a leading discount store in Los Angeles is on the telephone. Blanchard tenses. “That can mean only one thing,” she says. The model hasn’t shown up yet. She is a new model who already is in hot water with Blanchard. The 17-year-old, who is a little too plump, has been instructed to lose weight but so far has not done so. Still, the agency managed to line up an assignment from the discount store for her, hoping it would become a source of future assignments. Now all that is imperiled.

“Get her mother on the phone,” Blanchard curtly orders the booker. “Find out where she is.” Furiously puffing on a cigarette, she throws some papers down on her desk. “I am so angry at that girl,” she says. “I’ve already invested a lot of money in her--test shots and all--and this is the thanks I get.” Later, the booker tells Blanchard that the model has finally shown up, but Blanchard is not appeased. “If we’re charged for the time wasted,” she says, “it’s coming out of her hide.”

Blanchard’s reputation for toughness, and her success, have hindered her personal life, particularly with men, she says. “You’re called tough when you’re just a good businesswoman. Oddly enough, women call me tough more than men. But I think men find me unapproachable, which isn’t fair either, because what I am in business is not what I am at home.

“You know, women seek out successful men,” she adds. “But I don’t think men seek out successful women.”

Blanchard often acts as adviser or role model to businesswomen. But she is ambivalent about the trend of women’s support networks. She belongs to several women’s organizations, including the Committee of 200, an elite group that is open only to women who own or direct multimillion-dollar businesses. But she questions the values of such organizations. “There’s infighting and a lot of jockeying for position,” she says. “Power has begun to infect some of the women like a disease. I find they take themselves too seriously. There’s no sense of humor.”

Blanchard feels that some businesswomen’s groups focus too much on the discrimination their members faced when they started out, when they should be exploring how their businesses can be improved. “I don’t want to go to another luncheon meeting and hear a speech on ‘Why I was discriminated against,’ or ‘Why the bank wouldn’t give me a loan,’ ” she says. However, she does find useful the occasional seminars on how women run their firms. “I want to hear what goes on in those businesses,” she says. “The real ‘networking’ is to find out about this kind of thing, that this woman is akin to you in many ways. Maybe there are things you can learn about her business that you can apply to yours.”

Despite her success, Blanchard says she occasionally wonders whether she should have gone into the agency business. As a child, she fantasized about becoming a writer or marine biologist, in addition to her dreams of acting. “Sometimes I think I would rather have been more creative than live off other people’s creativity.

“There’s nobody in the world who doesn’t say, ‘Did I make all the right choices?’ ‘What if I had become a marine biologist instead of this?’ But in the final analysis, you have become what you are because you made the choices. No one prevented me from becoming a marine biologist. What I bought, I bought.”