Read The Mailroom: Hollywood History from the Bottom Up for Free Online Page B

and is chairman emeritus of the William Morris Agency. He has been with the company longer than any other living employee.
    SOL LEON is an executive vice president in the TV Department at William Morris. He lives in Los Angeles and still comes into the office every day.
    LARRY AUERBACH left William Morris when he was an executive vice president and board member. He is currently the associate dean of the School of Cinema-Television at the University of Southern California.
    HILLY ELKINS heads Elkins Entertainment, a management/production company based in Beverly Hills. He represents actors (James Coburn), directors, and writers. Elkins has also produced forty-five shows on Broadway, including Golden Boy, with Sammy Davis Jr., and Oh! Calcutta! as well as films such as A New Leaf and Alice’s Restaurant .
    LEONARD HIRSHAN left the William Morris Agency in October 2001 after fifty years. He now heads his own company, Leonard Hirshan Management.

    A CHARMED LIFE, Or A THIRTY-SIX SHORT MAKES IT BIG
     
    William Morris Agency, Los Angeles, 1943
     
    NORMAN BROKAW
    Norman Brokaw followed in Abe Lastfogel’s footsteps, rising from office boy to chairman of William Morris. Today Brokaw gives anyone he hasn’t met before a star-studded tour of his career, right down to the row of pictures on his office credenza. It’s not braggadocio; he just feels that to know his life is to know him, and to know that his life has been devoted to William Morris is to know him best of all.
    If you want to be in this business, there’s no greater place to learn than in a mailroom.
    I got my job on Saturday, July 7, 1943. My mother and I were at her brother’s house—her brother being Johnny Hyde, one of the all-time top William Morris agents. He handled Lana Turner and Betty Hutton and Marilyn Monroe. He was a partner with Abe Lastfogel, who ran the company, and had himself started as William Morris Sr.’s mailboy and assistant.
    Three things took place on that day. First, Johnny Hyde had just closed a deal for two moguls, Leo Spitz and Bill Goetz, and formed Universal-International Pictures. Later he told my mother, “There’s a young lady named Esther Kovner who’s going to be a big, big star, and I just made an important deal for her. She’ll be here shortly.”
    I was inside having a sandwich, and when I came out, I saw this attractive young lady jump into the swimming pool. Her name was Esther Williams. She had just married Dr. Kovner.
    Then Johnny asked if I’d like to go to work as a mailboy at William Morris.
    I was fifteen years old. Only Mr. Lastfogel started younger. The company didn’t call it a training program at the time, but Mr. Lastfogel loved William Morris, and William Morris loved him. Out of that relationship our New York office was built. Lots of young men started that way and grew up in our company. Lou Weiss, Sol Leon, et cetera. If I had to relive my life again, I would still want to start at the William Morris Agency, in the mailroom, and learn show business from the bottom up.
    My grandmother, grandfather, uncle, aunt, and mother were the first Russian dance troupe to arrive in America, in 1898. Coincidentally, that was the same year the William Morris Agency was founded. My mother appeared on the bill with George M. Cohan; she retired early and raised a family of six sons. I was the youngest.
    One of my brothers went to New York Military Academy at Cornwall-on-Hudson. In August 1941 he was sent to the Philippines. Four months later the Japanese struck Pearl Harbor, continued to the Philippines, and bombed Albay Gulf. My brother, a reserve officer with General MacArthur, was in the area. Later we found out that he was executed at the age of thirty-two during the infamous Bataan Death March.
    My father had died about a week before my brother went overseas; he had a coronary. When my mother got a letter from the War Department telling her my brother was missing in action, it gave her a heart attack. Later one