Robert Lantz(1914-2007)
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".