Dream Wired
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Celebrity
  • DramaAlert
  • Gossip
  • Movie
  • TV
  • Music
  • Comics
  • Shop
  • Home
  • Celebrity
  • DramaAlert
  • Gossip
  • Movie
  • TV
  • Music
  • Comics
  • Shop
No Result
View All Result
Dream Wired
No Result
View All Result
Home Movie

Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe Agent Was 97

rmtsa by rmtsa
August 7, 2024
in Movie
0
Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe Agent Was 97
74
SHARES
1.2k
VIEWS
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter


You might also like

Hi r/movies. Laura Murphy here. Director of the new comedy-thriller F*** MARRY KILL- which is now streaming everywhere and stars Lucy Hale & Virginia Gardner. I’ve also directed GirlCode, Awkwafina is Nora From Queens, Cursed Friends. Ask me anything!

THE MORNING SHOW Season 4 Teaser Is All Reflections, Power Plays, and Deepfakes — GeekTyrant

There Is Now a ‘Jack Kirby Way’ In New York City

Jay Kanter, the high-powered Hollywood agent who represented Marlon Brando, Grace Kelly and Marilyn Monroe and served as the inspiration for Jack Lemmon’s character in the classic Billy Wilder film The Apartment, died Tuesday. He was 97.

Kanter died at his home in Beverly Hills, a spokesperson for the Independent Artist Group announced. His son Adam is a partner at IAG. 

A favorite of mighty Music Corporation of America mogul Lew Wasserman, Kanter also spent seven years in England in the 1960s greenlighting European movies for Universal, produced films including the Elizabeth Taylor-starring X, Y and Zee (1972) and had a long business relationship with Alan Ladd Jr. at Fox and MGM.

When Brando was slumming around Paris after breaking out on Broadway in Streetcar Named Desire in the late 1940s, Kanter‚ then an MCA junior agent, received a call from producer Stanley Kramer saying he wanted to hire the actor to make his film debut in The Men (1950) as a paralyzed ex-G.I.

Kanter was not the budding superstar’s agent — Edith Van Cleve was — but he picked him up at a train station and took him to the home of Brando’s aunt and uncle in San Marino, California, and they all had dinner. The next day, Kanter drove the actor to a meeting with Kramer, director Fred Zinnemann and writer Carl Foreman, then asked him to come to the MCA office so he could meet the other agents.

Brando told him, “‘I don’t have to meet anybody, you’re my agent,’” Kanter recalled in 2017.

When Wasserman heard the story, “He really got a kick out of it because he was getting telephone calls from Darryl Zanuck and Jack Warner, these heads of studios that wanted to meet Marlon,” Kanter noted. “And Lew said, ‘I can’t arrange it, you’d have to talk to his agent.’ They said, ‘Who’s that?’ And he said, ‘Jay Kanter.’ And they said, ‘Who’s he?’

“Suddenly I was getting phone calls from all these heads of studios, and that was it.”

A bit later, Kanter gave a key to his Beverly Hills apartment to Jennings Lang so the senior MCA would have a place to continue his affair with one of his clients, actress Joan Bennett. “I don’t think he was borrowing it to take a nap,” Kanter said on a 2018 episode of the Love Is a Crime podcast.

After Bennett’s husband, struggling producer Walter Wanger, found out about it, he confronted Lang and shot him in the upper thigh in the MCA parking lot in Beverly Hills in December 1951. It was quite the scandal back in the day.

The Apartment (1960), of course, starred Lemmon as Bud Baxter, who lets his New York insurance company supervisors (including Fred MacMurray’s Jeff Sheldrake) use his Upper West Side digs to conduct their extramarital affairs. The United Artists film, also starring Shirley MacLaine, won five Oscars, including the one for best picture.

“I think [the Lang-Bennett-Wanger incident is] where Billy Wilder got the idea for the movie,” Kanter said. “He never told me. But it was quite obvious.”

Meanwhile, Hugh Wilson based The Famous Teddy Z, his 1989-90 CBS sitcom about a big star (Dennis Lipscomb) who takes a liking to a mailroom guy (Jon Cryer), on the Kanter-Brando origin story.

From left: Jay Kanter escorted Marilyn Monroe to the New York premiere of ‘East of Eden’ in March 1955 and dined with Grace Kelly at the Stork Club in the city in September 1954.

Courtesy Everett Collection (2)

Jay Ira Kanter was born in Chicago on Dec. 12, 1926. After coming to Los Angeles, he got a mailroom job at MCA, then graduated to messenger and assistant to Wasserman.

“He treated me very well, he was kind of my mentor and would discuss various deals at the studios [with me],” Kanter remembered. “Eventually I drove him around when he would call on different studio heads. Then he finally said, ‘You better start earning your keep here, you’re an agent now.’”

After Wanger shot Lang, Wasserman sent Kanter to work in MCA’s New York office so the L.A. district attorney couldn’t interview him. “I went to New York for what I thought was a couple of weeks,” he said, “and I ended up staying there for nine years.”

He got the relative newcomer Kelly $750 a week for a guaranteed six weeks of work in 1951 on the Kramer-produced, Zinnemann-directed, Foreman-written High Noon, according to Donald Spoto’s 2010 book, High Society: The Life of Grace Kelly, and repped her when she signed a seven-year deal with MGM in 1952.

In 1953, Kanter married Judy Balaban — the daughter of Barney Balaban, the president of Paramount Pictures from 1936-64 — at The Plaza in New York, where Kelly and singer Rosemary Clooney were bridesmaids and Brando was the best man.

(He had first met Balaban when she was at a New York nightclub watching her then-boyfriend, singer Merv Griffin, perform. She would later serve as a bridesmaid at Kelly’s 1956 wedding to Prince Rainier of Monaco and write a book about it.)

Kanter spent his first few days repping Monroe driving along the Pacific coast with her after she didn’t want to report to the studio right way. (His other clients included Paul Newman, Jerome Robbins, Laurence Olivier and Terence Rattigan.)

After MCA was dissolved in 1962 in an antitrust ruling, Kanter became a film production exec at sister company Universal. He signed director Michael Winner to a six-picture deal and spent a reported $30 million on British films — 1967’s Charlie Bubbles, starring Albert Finney and Liza Minnelli, among them —but never had a hit.

Always impeccably dressed, Kanter turned to producing in the ’70s, working on such films as X, Y and Zee; Villain (1971), starring Richard Burton; Winner’s The Nightcomers (1971), starring Brando; Fear Is the Key (1972), starring Barry Newman; and Big Truck and Sister Clare (1974), starring Peter Ustinov.

In 1975, he segued to Fox to join Ladd, who would soon give Star Wars (1977) a green light. The pair also worked together at The Ladd Co. — movies under their watch included Chariots of Fire, Body Heat and Blade Runner) — MGM/UA (where Kanter was in charge of MGM) and MGM-Pathe. He set up his own independent production company in 1994.

Over the years, Kanter spoke about his relationships with Kelly, Monroe, Ladd and Brando — he and producer Mike Medavoy were the executors of the actor’s estate — in several documentaries.

After he and Balaban divorced in 1961, he was married to Kit Bennett from 1965 until her 2014 death.

In the 1990s, Mel Brooks and Kanter organized a weekly lunch of their close friends. At the start, the meals included a close circle of former Fox execs and filmmakers from the ’70s, among them Ladd, Richard Donner, Paul Mazursky, Freddie Fields and Michael Gruskoff; later, Jeff Cohen, Tim Deegan, Jay Cooper, Richard Benjamin, Fred Specktor and Ben Mankiewicz joined in.

The lunches have continued every Friday for more than 35 years, including last week at the regular location, Porta Via on the patio in Beverly Hills, and Kanter was there.

In addition to his son Adam (and his wife, Brooke), survivors include his other children, Dustin (and Debra), Tom, Cydney, Bernard, Amy (and her husband, composer Bob Thiele) and Michael (and Erica); and his grandchildren, Jason (and Andie), Matthew, Owen (and Jared), Sophie, Charlie, Hannah, Kit, Cleo, Grayson and Ryan.



Source link

Tags: AgentBrandoMarilynMarlonMonroe
Share30Tweet19
rmtsa

rmtsa

Recommended For You

Hi r/movies. Laura Murphy here. Director of the new comedy-thriller F*** MARRY KILL- which is now streaming everywhere and stars Lucy Hale & Virginia Gardner. I’ve also directed GirlCode, Awkwafina is Nora From Queens, Cursed Friends. Ask me anything!

by rmtsa
July 10, 2025
0
Hi r/movies. Laura Murphy here. Director of the new comedy-thriller F*** MARRY KILL- which is now streaming everywhere and stars Lucy Hale & Virginia Gardner. I’ve also directed GirlCode, Awkwafina is Nora From Queens, Cursed Friends. Ask me anything!

Hi reddit, I'm Laura Murphy, director of F*** Marry Kill, now streaming everywhere (and recently released on Hulu). Here to answer your questions. Here's the trailer: Synopsis: Thrust...

Read more

THE MORNING SHOW Season 4 Teaser Is All Reflections, Power Plays, and Deepfakes — GeekTyrant

by rmtsa
July 10, 2025
0
THE MORNING SHOW Season 4 Teaser Is All Reflections, Power Plays, and Deepfakes — GeekTyrant

Apple TV+ just dropped the teaser for The Morning Show Season 4, and it features the return of Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon, and offers shadowy reflections, and...

Read more

There Is Now a ‘Jack Kirby Way’ In New York City

by rmtsa
July 10, 2025
0
There Is Now a ‘Jack Kirby Way’ In New York City

The co-creator of Marvel’s Fantastic Four, X-Men, and many more classic characters now has a street in his honor in New York City.Jack Kirby, the artist whose collaborations with writer...

Read more

What’s Happening With Luna on Bold & Beautiful? Exit Possibility Explained

by rmtsa
July 10, 2025
0
What’s Happening With Luna on Bold & Beautiful? Exit Possibility Explained

The Bold and the Beautiful fans are speculating about Lisa Yamada’s potential exit as Luna Nozawa, following devastating surgery previews that hint at a character’s death. After Luna’s...

Read more

Sergei Loznitsa Interview on ‘Two Prosecutors,’ Trump, Next Film

by rmtsa
July 10, 2025
0
Sergei Loznitsa Interview on ‘Two Prosecutors,’ Trump, Next Film

Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa‘s Two Prosecutors, his adaptation of Georgy Demidov’s eponymous novel, is set in the Soviet Union in 1937 during Stalin’s Great Purge and tells the...

Read more
Next Post
Why I’m Ridiculously Excited That Homicide: Life On The Streets Is Coming To Peacock

Why I'm Ridiculously Excited That Homicide: Life On The Streets Is Coming To Peacock

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Browse by Category

  • Celebrity
  • Comics
  • DramaAlert
  • Gossip
  • Movie
  • Music
  • TV
  • Uncategorized

CATEGORIES

  • Celebrity
  • Comics
  • DramaAlert
  • Gossip
  • Movie
  • Music
  • TV
  • Uncategorized
No Result
View All Result

Recent News

  • Gina Kirschenheiter’s Boyfriend Travis Mullen Salary & Finances Are Revealed Amid Messy Divorce
  • Hi r/movies. Laura Murphy here. Director of the new comedy-thriller F*** MARRY KILL- which is now streaming everywhere and stars Lucy Hale & Virginia Gardner. I’ve also directed GirlCode, Awkwafina is Nora From Queens, Cursed Friends. Ask me anything!
  • Bob Dylan Announces 2025 UK and Ireland Tour Dates

Copyright © 2023 DramaWired.
DramaWired is a content aggregator and not responsible for the content of external sites.

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Celebrity
  • DramaAlert
  • Gossip
  • Movie
  • TV
  • Music
  • Comics
  • Shop

Copyright © 2023 DramaWired.
DramaWired is a content aggregator and not responsible for the content of external sites.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In