Sue Mengers life and biography

Sue Mengers was a talent agent to many of the most important members of the New Hollywood generation of filmmakers and actors in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s.

Mengers' entry into the talent agency business was in 1955 as a receptionist at MCA, at the time the dominant company of the trade, with a roster of clients that included Jack Benny, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift. She also worked for a while as a secretary for freelance theatrical agency Baum & Newborn. Eventually, she was hired as a secretary at William Morris Agency, a powerhouse in the emerging TV business, where she remained until 1963, when a former Baum & Newborn colleague, Tom Korman, formed his own agency and hired her as a talent agent.

Her first big score was actress Julie Harris, who was primarily a stage actress. To Mengers' surprise, Harris wanted to appear on an episode of Bonanza. Mengers contacted the producer who commissioned a specially written episode for Harris. Mengers represented Anthony Perkins, who had not worked in the United States since Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960). She contacted producer Ray Stark and obtained Perkins a role in director René Clément's film Is Paris Burning? (1966).

Some time in the late 1960s or early 1970s, she was hired by Creative Management Associates (CMA), a boutique agency owned by Freddie Fields. CMA's clients included Paul Newman, Steve McQueen and Robert Redford. On December 30, 1974, Fields sold the agency to Marvin Josephson and his TV powerhouse, International Famous Agency (IFA), to become International Creative Management.

Mengers represented such luminaries as Candice Bergen, Peter Bogdanovich, Michael Caine, Dyan Cannon, Cher, Joan Collins, Brian De Palma, Faye Dunaway, Bob Fosse, Gene Hackman, Sidney Lumet, Ali McGraw, Steve McQueen, Mike Nichols, Nick Nolte, Tatum O'Neal, Ryan O'Neal, Burt Reynolds, Cybill Shepherd, Barbra Streisand, Gore Vidal, and Tuesday Weld. She retired from International Creative Management (ICM) in 1986 and came back for a brief stint at the William Morris Agency from 1988-90.

Read more