Robert Lantz, R.I.P.

Talent agent Robert Lantz died last week, aged 93. His passing was noted in Variety, the show business bible, and in the New York Times.

...His constellation included the writers James Baldwin, Lillian Hellman and Carson McCullers; the actors Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Yul Brynner, Montgomery Clift, Myrna Loy and Liv Ullmann; the photographer Arnold Newman, the film director Milos Forman, the playwright Peter Shaffer and the lyricist Alan Jay Lerner.

Clients begat clients: Ms. Taylor introduced him to Mr. Burton, her fifth husband, and Justice William O. Douglas introduced him to Chief Justice Rehnquist....

...Born in Berlin on July 20, 1914, Mr. Lantz dreamed of being an author like his father, a screenwriter in the silent-movie era. He moved to London in 1935, after Hitler came to power, and worked as a story editor for American film companies. Following World War II he came to New York and began a new life representing creative artists: stars of the stage and screen, literary lions and, occasionally, public figures who thought they had a book in them.

Mr. Lantz was one of the last members of an old school: he did not use e-mail or computers. He took 10 percent of his authors’ earnings, not 15 percent, hewing to a tradition widely abandoned in the late 20th century. He made his deals with handshakes.

Interestingly, Robbie Lantz was my first agent. He offered representation after the release of Who Shall Live and Who Shall Die?. His office handled negotiations with an Auschwitz survivor who had written a memoir after retiring from the garment business--he wanted me to direct his life story. Lantz was charming, a real Berliner with an accent. His office was dark and modernist, very Continental. Someone I met in New York called him a "collector" of talent, rather than an ordinary agent. We parted ways some time after the deal fell through. When I read his obituary, I thought it was nice to have once been part of Lantz's collection...