A Player Then and Now

In his more than 60 years as an agent, Phil Gersh has had a host of famous clients, among them David Niven, Fredric March, Mary Astor, Lee J. Cobb, Gloria Grahame, Dorothy McGuire, Zero Mostel and James Mason. But the agent is perhaps best known for his handling of Humphrey Bogart in the 1950s, an association that led to some of the actor’s most memorable screen roles.

If the ‘40s had revealed the tough-guy, existential hero of “Casablanca” and “The Big Sleep,” it was during the ‘50s that Bogart’s versatility was revealed in such films as “The African Queen” and “Sabrina.” Making that transition wasn’t easy, Gersh reveals with a memory for detail that belies his 90 years.

“Bogey was a very decent guy,” Gersh says. “Very loyal. He had the same lunch every day between films at Mike Romanoff’s: two scotch and sodas, an omelet, French toast, some milk and then, at the end, coffee and a brandy. In those days, everybody drank.

“This one particular lunch, we didn’t have a future commitment for him. This was after he’d won the Oscar for ‘African Queen.’ He turned to me and said: ‘Kid, no scripts. You didn’t bring any scripts.’ I said, ‘Next week, I’ll have three scripts for you next week.’”

Bogart shook his head and told Gersh: “You didn’t bring any scripts. Nobody wants me.” “The insecurity! You see, those actors were used to the old studio system and having a contract 40 out of 52 weeks. They’d do four, five pictures a year.”

Gersh knows a thing or two about working hard-- he’s still at it every day. He’s one of the last links between Hollywood’s golden age and the corporate-owned movie business today. Where agents today communicate via cell phones and Palm Pilots, Gersh is an old-fashioned hand-holder.

He flourished at a time when movie stars turned up at premieres in mink coats and gorgeous gowns, when driven producers like Darryl Zanuck and Sam Goldwyn gambled their studios and life savings to make the movies they wanted, and talent was swapped at all-night card games among producers and agents like Myron Selznick, Leland Hayward and Charles Feldman, who were as colorful as their more famous clients.

“You can set your watch by him going by on his way to work every day,” says actor-director Richard Benjamin, a Gersh client who lives down the street from the agent and his wife of 57 years, Beatrice. (The couple are well-respected art collectors and donated a significant part of their collection to the Museum of Contemporary Art in 1989.)

Gersh hasn’t lost his verve for the business--or his bluntness in assessing the current Hollywood scene. “There’s no executive control in the movie business anymore,” says the wiry, silver-haired Gersh, whose voice still carries the cadence of his native New York. He’s in the Beverly Hills office of the Gersh Agency, which he runs with Leslie Siebert and his sons Robert and David. Today, the Gersh offices in Beverly Hills and New York employ 50 agents. The present client list includes Tobey Maguire, David Schwimmer, Marcia Gay Harden, Deborah Messing, Sam Rockwell, Patricia Arquette, Seann William Scott, David Arquette and Catherine Keener.

“Phil still works as an agent,” Siebert says. “But most important, he’s our leader, the one we turn to for advice and feedback for what we’re doing with the company.”

In the past 50 years, where his contemporaries were swallowed up by bigger agencies or simply closed their doors, how has Gersh managed to survive and thrive?

“He’s very smart about the business,” Siebert says. “He knows how to adapt to it. People like myself and his sons understand today’s business and keep it up to speed. He’s had many offers to buy him out. But this business is his passion, his life. He’ll never give it up.”

Of course, there have been some failures along the way. Kirk Douglas fired Gersh when the actor failed to win the title role in the 1959 epic “Ben-Hur,” despite the agent’s campaign to win him the part, which went to Charlton Heston. But Gersh survived in the often brutal world of Hollywood agents.

Martin Baum, a longtime agent and one of the founders of Creative Artists Agency, has known Gersh for years and feels the key to his long-lasting success is “his honesty, decency and hard work.” DreamWorks co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg calls Gersh “an unsung hero. He’s a man of great taste, an extraordinary quality to have as an agent.”

On a recent visit to his office, Gersh shakes hands with a vise-like grip. It’s casual Friday and Gersh is dressed in a green sports shirt and sharp-looking trousers.

“The actors now can call all the shots in terms of compensation, when they want to start the picture, even who the below-the-line people should be,” says Gersh, who clearly remembers when things were very different.

In the early 1930s, Gersh came to Los Angeles from New York to attend UCLA. After graduation, he went to work for his brother-in-law, agent Sam Jaffe, for $15 a week in the mail room of his agency. “But I didn’t stay there long,” says Gersh, his green eyes twinkling. “I felt it wasn’t that big an agency.”

His first client was Mark Robson, an old fraternity brother from UCLA. Robson had been an editor at RKO, who made the move up to directing. Through Robson, Gersh met and signed some other young directors at the studio: Robert Wise, Richard Fleischer and Joseph Losey. “I got lucky with them,” Gersh says, “and got a reputation for representing hot, young directors.”

When Ray Stark (an agent at that time who would later become a producer) left Charles Feldman’s rival agency, Famous Artists, Gersh replaced him and persuaded Feldman to run the two agencies as a co-venture. Years later, Gersh bought out the Jaffe Agency partners and changed the name to the Phil Gersh Agency.

He enjoys talking about the old days, when deals were made on golf courses and tennis courts, not corporate boardrooms.

“I used to play tennis at the Beverly Hills Tennis Club,” Gersh recalls. “Billy Wilder used to play there. I knew him quite well. He was starting ‘Sabrina’ at Paramount and I slipped a script to Bogey without Billy knowing. I wanted to get him [Bogart] away from stick-em-up Louie with the gun [roles]. Billy phoned and said: ‘Phil, you’re a good tennis player but you don’t know nothing about casting.’”

Two weeks later, after Cary Grant turned down the role of Linus Larrabee, Wilder phoned Gersh and asked him to arrange a meeting with Bogart. They met at Bogart’s house. Wilder brought his co-author, Ernest Lehman (later to became another Gersh client). They sat and drank for several hours.

“He [Bogart] could hold his liquor. And if somebody didn’t drink, he suspected that person.” (Asked how he managed to keep up with so many renowned drinkers, Gersh confesses that he pretended to drink much of the time.) Finally, Bogart told Wilder: “If you shake hands and say you’re going to take good care of me, I’ll do the picture.”

On the first day of shooting, a very unhappy Bogart phoned his agent late in the day and told him to get over to the studio.

“Now bear in mind, William Holden and Audrey Hepburn [the two other stars of ‘Sabrina’] are very good friends of Billy’s,” Gersh says.

“Bogart’s the outsider. So I drove over to Paramount and Bogey said to me, ‘I don’t have to put my hairpiece on. Every shot is from the back of my head.’” Gersh assured Bogart he’d straighten matters out. He took Wilder aside on the set and told him to get another actor for Linus. Gersh’s unhappy client was going home and taking his hairpiece with him.

Wilder called Gersh and promised him things would be different. “He started giving him front shots,” Gersh says, smiling, still pleased at the happy resolution half a century later. “And Bogey had to put on his hairpiece.”

With another ‘50s classic, William Wyler’s “The Desperate Hours,” Gersh had to intervene again on Bogart’s behalf.

“Bogey called Spencer Tracy from my office--they were buddies--and said, ‘Spence, let’s do one together. You can have first billing. It’ll be fun.’ Tracy hemmed and hawed and finally didn’t do it. Gersh put another of his clients, Fredric March, into the role.

Gersh had negotiated a clause in the actors’ contracts prohibiting Bogart and March from working after 6 p.m. One afternoon, an unhappy Bogart phoned his agent and summoned him to Paramount. Gersh arrived at 5:30 and discovered Bogart running up and down stairs on the set of the house where his escaped-convict character was holding March and his family hostage.

Gersh says Wyler had trouble telling actors what he wanted. At first Wyler told Bogart he was going too fast up the stairs, then too slowly, then “too phony.” Bogart got angry and threatened to go home.

Gersh cautioned his client not to walk out before his contractual quitting time. Instead, he took Wyler aside and told him Bogart was having trouble with how fast the director wanted him to go up the stairs. Gersh suggested Wyler demonstrate the run for the actor.

Wyler paused, then shouted out to the crew: “It’s a wrap.”

By the next year, Bogart was dying of cancer. Gersh remembers his last visit to the actor’s home.

“He weighed 90 pounds,” Gersh recalls. “They had to bring him downstairs in the dumbwaiter. But when he saw me, he asked, ‘Where are the scripts, kid?’ I told him they were out in the car. With offers attached.”

Another longtime client was David Niven. Gersh worked on producer Mike Todd for six months to get Niven the role of Phileas Fogg in “Around the World in 80 Days.” Todd had wanted Cary Grant, but when he proved unavailable, Niven--who had been languishing in bad movies and TV guest spots--got the role. Following this resurrection of Niven’s movie career, Gersh got him the “Separate Tables” role of Major Pollack, the fraudulent, if also sympathetic, war hero and masher, a huge stretch for the debonair light comedian, which ultimately won Niven his only Oscar.

“So now he was a major star,” Gersh says. “We were friends. Had lunch together. But one night at Jean Simmons’ house, Bert Allenberg, a big agent at William Morris, gave David a sales pitch.” Gersh recalls Niven’s reaction: “‘How can I leave Phil?’ Niven asked. ‘Don’t worry,’ said Allenberg. ‘Gersh will get over it.’

“So in front of his business manager--he wouldn’t see me alone--he fired me,” Gersh recalls.

“The irony is, David called Allenberg on Wednesday and his secretary was in tears. ‘Mr. Allenberg was at Danny Kaye’s last night. He had a major stroke, and he’s dead.’ I said to myself, ‘God punished him.’”

Niven never returned to Gersh and, years later, he described the incident at his own expense in the second volume of his memoirs.

Gersh is asked if he ever takes clients back after they leave him.

“Tell him the story about Lauren Bacall wanting to come back,” says Siebert, who clearly loves this anecdote.

Gersh considers the story, then tells her: “Nah. She’s still alive.” And so is Phil Gersh.

“I’m not retiring. Once you turn it off,” says Gersh, tapping the side of his head, “you’re dead. I exercise and I have my vodka. And I have a good time.”

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Charles Dennis is an actor, a novelist, a playwright and an occasional contributor to Calendar.