This memoir is the story of the late Clancy Sigal’s time in 1950s Hollywood — “Raymond Chandler’s LA before Pilates and cell phones.” Sigal was “a talent agent, flesh peddler, ten-percenter, shark.”
He worked for one of the top talent agencies, the Jaffe Agency. His clients included Bogart, Barbara Stanwyck, Peter Lorre, Vincent Price, Rod Steiger and many, many more. The book bursts with stories of Hollywood greats. Or at least white greats. Of Jaffe’s 200 clients, not one is black, Latino or openly gay. As for women, like screen-writers, they are treated by the studios as some kind of sub-species.
Black Sunset buzzes with gossip and scandal: Peter Lorre’s morphine addiction, the producer who shoots an agent’s balls off for sleeping with his wife and the homophobic Clark Gable who gets George Cukor fired from Gone With the Wind because he wants a “man’s man”. There’s also the time Louella Parsons wet herself dancing and everyone pretended nothing had happened because she was the most feared woman in Hollywood.
Sigal was a young hot-shot except when he wasn’t. Nick Ray asked his opinion of an unknown young actor he was thinking of casting in Rebel Without a Cause. “The kid, I report, is monosyllabic, possibly retarded, and needs a bath.” So much for James Dean. A few days later, Sam Jaffe asks Sigal about an 18-year-old Mississippi country singer looking for a Hollywood agent. Sigal is not impressed. “He can’t carry a tune, they’ll hate him in the big cities, and a movie star? Please! Pass.” He had just rejected Elvis Presley. Later on, his boss consoles him. “’I almost signed Ava Gardner but all I saw was thick ankles and redneck accent. Monty Clift? Just another neurotic feigelah.’”
The Yiddish comes thick and fast. Sigal puts the Jewish into Hollywood. One agent says the film of The Naked and the Dead died a death at all the studios: “Say Kaddish for it, kid.’” He goes into the office during Passover. His boss is horrified. “‘A freylach Pesach, kid. Next time stay home for the High Holidays. Otherwise it looks bad to the clients.’”
And always in the background there’s HUAC and the hunt for Communists. Sigal does a good job of naming those who named names. Even he, way down the food-chain as a young agent on the make, is being followed by the FBI (the agent inevitably wants to get into the movies). He eventually leaves for Britain in 1956 and begins a four-year affair with Doris Lessing.
This is one of the best Hollywood memoirs ever. Full of gossip, big names, lots of sex and scandal and, best of all, Sigal writes like an angel. He died last year, aged 90, and this is a terrific way to remember him and a bygone age of Hollywood legends.
David Herman is the JC’s chief fiction reviewer