Robert Lantz

A long-time story editor in London for 20th Century Fox and Columbia Pictures from the 1930s through the 1940s, Lantz emigrated to the United States after meeting Bert Allenberg of the talent agency, Berg-Allenberg, who asked him to open a New York office for the firm. Lantz, who was born in Berlin and raised in Hungry, was the son of a German screenwriter whose family fled to England after the rise to power of Adolf Hitler. He worked for Berg-Allenberg for two years, then for the Gale Agency for a year as head of the stage and movie departments. Opening his own agency in 1950, which he continued to run until his death, Lantz represented some of the biggest names in the business, ranging from James Baldwin, Lillian Hellman and Carson McCullers to Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Yul Brynner, Montgomery Clift, Myrna Loy and Liv Ullmann. His client list included photographer Arnold Newman, the film director Milos Forman, the playwright Peter Shaffer and the lyricist Alan Jay Lerner, as well as two Supreme Court justices (Douglas and Rehnquist). Eschewing technology and formality, Lantz preferred to work without computers, email and written contracts, often saying that a handshake was good enough because "If someone doesn't like me, I want him to be free to go... slavery was abolished. So blame Abraham Lincoln for my system".