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Sue Mengers, Hollywood agent
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Evan Hulka
Oct 16, 2011, 6:50:41 PM10/16/11
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http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2011/10/sue-mengers-in-memoriam
Remembering Sue Mengers: Everybody Came to Sue's
By Graydon Carter
5:17 PM, October 16 2011
Sue Mengers died last night at her home, a short walk from the Beverly
Hills Hotel, and surrounded by three of her close friends, Ali
MacGraw, Joanna Poitier, and Boaty Boatwright. Her death came after a
number of small strokes, and a lifetime of illnesses that would have
felled an athlete half her age. Sue leaves behind few, if any,
relatives. There are however, legions of friends who now have a hole
in their lives they will never be able to fill.
Wikipedia has her age at 81. She claimed 78—and to the end she was
sticking by her story. (In an email after Sue’s death, one friend
imagined Sue coming back; just to correct the record of her age.) At
this point it hardly matters. She was a girlish 70-plus, who never
looked her age—and with an ever-present joint in her hand, she didn’t
act it either. Sue was a Holocaust baby, arriving in upstate New York
before America entered the war. Nobody in her family spoke English,
and like so many immigrants, she set her sights on a career in show
business. In time she became, as Fran Lebowitz says, capital “S” Sue
Mengers. By the early 70s, she was not only the most powerful female
agent in Hollywood; she was the town’s most powerful agent, period. At
one time or another during that period, she represented Barbra
Streisand, Candice Bergen, Michael Caine, Faye Dunaway, Gene Hackman,
Cher, Joan Collins, Burt Reynolds, and Nick Nolte—all at heights of
their careers. She also had the directors they wanted to work for, men
like Mike Nichols, Peter Bogdanovich, Brian De Palma, Bob Fosse, and
Sidney Lumet.
When she wound her career down in the 80s, Agent Sue became Hostess Sue
—and she was even more successful in her new vocation. Dinner at Sue’s
was like stepping into a Hollywood you imagined, but almost never
experienced. Her house was a John Woolf jewel, with great California
Regency doors, and a living room that looked over a largely unused,
egg-shaped pool. Sue would sit at one end of the seating area, with
two large facing sofas flanking her, and a chair at the other end. She
held court, certainly. But she always brought the best out in her
guests. At Sue’s everyone was funnier, and quicker, and smarter than
they were anywhere else. And as a result, everyone came to Sue’s. For
visiting friends from the East, like Fran Lebowitz, Frank Rich, Alex
Witchel, Lorne Michaels, Maureen Dowd, and Alessandra Stanley, she
rolled out the single-name stars: Warren, Jack, Barbra, Elton, Ali,
Anjelica, Bette, Sting, and Trudy, along with friends with last names
like Geffen, Diller, Poitier, Lansing, Friedkin, Semel, Lourd, and
Zanuck.
I first met Sue at Ray Stark’s house almost twenty years ago. She was
married at the time to a great-looking Belgian director named Jean-
Claude Tramont. They had a relationship that one friend described as a
Satanic version of Nick and Nora Charles. But they were both funny.
One day, in a brief fit of enthusiasm for exercise, Sue decided to get
a running machine. As she was trying one out in the store, Jean-Claude
turned from his wife, dressed in a caftan and scarf, and puffing on
the treadmill, to the salesman, and asked, not-too-quietly, if they
had “the Isadora Duncan model”. He died in the mid-nineties, and right
up to the end of her life, Sue’s phone was answered by her assistant,
“Tramont residence.”
Seeing Sue was a requisite part of any trip to Los Angeles—but not in
an obligatory way. She was simply one of the great characters in the
land, and if she was your friend, she was really your friend. And boy
she was funny. Walking into a hotel event space for a party, she
surveyed the room and leaned into her companion and whispered out of
the corner of her mouth: “Schindler’s B-List.” Sue loved setting
people up. She introduced Barry Diller to Diane von Furstenberg, for
instance. And if she thought the match was good, she would counsel the
woman on how to “close the deal” as she put it. It was the agent in
her. When she laughed, her flat, throaty hack was as high a praise for
something you said as anything I can imagine. She was a lioness when
it came to her friends, and her loyalty was as touching to the subject
as it was terrifying to the person who, God help them, did the friend
wrong. My wife says that most of the movie stars she ever met, she met
at Sue’s. I recall one night at her place when Mel Brooks said that he
was going to take his film The Producers and put it on stage as a
musical—and that he was going to write all the music himself. As we
were getting into our cars at the end of that evening, Anjelica Huston
and Kelly Lynch and I were saying our good nights, and I mentioned
that I thought this was about the dumbest idea I’d ever heard. A year
or so later, The Producers was the sold-out hit of Broadway with
ticket prices edging over $400.
One reason everybody went to Sue’s was that she so rarely ventured out
herself. If you wanted to see her, you had to go to her. Then, a few
years ago, she said she wanted to go to the star-packed party that
Bryan Lourd throws at his house on the Friday before the Oscars. She
asked me to pick her up at 8:00 and take her. Now Sue was not the
easiest person to move around, even in the familiar regions of her own
living room. Movement was not a big part of her lifestyle. And
shuffling her from her place, into her car, out of her car, and then
up the many stairs to Bryan’s front door, well, I can only say that it
was like something out of The Wages of Fear, where the four convicts
must get their truck full of nitroglycerine through the remote jungles
of South America. But we made it, and in a room that was wall to wall
stars, Sue Mengers—who had been avoiding the public for years—was the
evening’s big hit. She sat in the library and every movie star at the
party came by to say hello. She loved movie stars—she called them
“sparklies”—and I can’t remember seeing her so happy as that night.
This was why she came to California. And it’s what made her such an
integral part of the movie community, if you can still call it that.
Sue always wanted to call the autobiography she never wrote, When I
Was Alive. Like the great character that she was, that marvelous,
never-written book went with her.
Remembering Sue Mengers: Everybody Came to Sue's
By Graydon Carter
5:17 PM, October 16 2011
Sue Mengers died last night at her home, a short walk from the Beverly
Hills Hotel, and surrounded by three of her close friends, Ali
MacGraw, Joanna Poitier, and Boaty Boatwright. Her death came after a
number of small strokes, and a lifetime of illnesses that would have
felled an athlete half her age. Sue leaves behind few, if any,
relatives. There are however, legions of friends who now have a hole
in their lives they will never be able to fill.
Wikipedia has her age at 81. She claimed 78—and to the end she was
sticking by her story. (In an email after Sue’s death, one friend
imagined Sue coming back; just to correct the record of her age.) At
this point it hardly matters. She was a girlish 70-plus, who never
looked her age—and with an ever-present joint in her hand, she didn’t
act it either. Sue was a Holocaust baby, arriving in upstate New York
before America entered the war. Nobody in her family spoke English,
and like so many immigrants, she set her sights on a career in show
business. In time she became, as Fran Lebowitz says, capital “S” Sue
Mengers. By the early 70s, she was not only the most powerful female
agent in Hollywood; she was the town’s most powerful agent, period. At
one time or another during that period, she represented Barbra
Streisand, Candice Bergen, Michael Caine, Faye Dunaway, Gene Hackman,
Cher, Joan Collins, Burt Reynolds, and Nick Nolte—all at heights of
their careers. She also had the directors they wanted to work for, men
like Mike Nichols, Peter Bogdanovich, Brian De Palma, Bob Fosse, and
Sidney Lumet.
When she wound her career down in the 80s, Agent Sue became Hostess Sue
—and she was even more successful in her new vocation. Dinner at Sue’s
was like stepping into a Hollywood you imagined, but almost never
experienced. Her house was a John Woolf jewel, with great California
Regency doors, and a living room that looked over a largely unused,
egg-shaped pool. Sue would sit at one end of the seating area, with
two large facing sofas flanking her, and a chair at the other end. She
held court, certainly. But she always brought the best out in her
guests. At Sue’s everyone was funnier, and quicker, and smarter than
they were anywhere else. And as a result, everyone came to Sue’s. For
visiting friends from the East, like Fran Lebowitz, Frank Rich, Alex
Witchel, Lorne Michaels, Maureen Dowd, and Alessandra Stanley, she
rolled out the single-name stars: Warren, Jack, Barbra, Elton, Ali,
Anjelica, Bette, Sting, and Trudy, along with friends with last names
like Geffen, Diller, Poitier, Lansing, Friedkin, Semel, Lourd, and
Zanuck.
I first met Sue at Ray Stark’s house almost twenty years ago. She was
married at the time to a great-looking Belgian director named Jean-
Claude Tramont. They had a relationship that one friend described as a
Satanic version of Nick and Nora Charles. But they were both funny.
One day, in a brief fit of enthusiasm for exercise, Sue decided to get
a running machine. As she was trying one out in the store, Jean-Claude
turned from his wife, dressed in a caftan and scarf, and puffing on
the treadmill, to the salesman, and asked, not-too-quietly, if they
had “the Isadora Duncan model”. He died in the mid-nineties, and right
up to the end of her life, Sue’s phone was answered by her assistant,
“Tramont residence.”
Seeing Sue was a requisite part of any trip to Los Angeles—but not in
an obligatory way. She was simply one of the great characters in the
land, and if she was your friend, she was really your friend. And boy
she was funny. Walking into a hotel event space for a party, she
surveyed the room and leaned into her companion and whispered out of
the corner of her mouth: “Schindler’s B-List.” Sue loved setting
people up. She introduced Barry Diller to Diane von Furstenberg, for
instance. And if she thought the match was good, she would counsel the
woman on how to “close the deal” as she put it. It was the agent in
her. When she laughed, her flat, throaty hack was as high a praise for
something you said as anything I can imagine. She was a lioness when
it came to her friends, and her loyalty was as touching to the subject
as it was terrifying to the person who, God help them, did the friend
wrong. My wife says that most of the movie stars she ever met, she met
at Sue’s. I recall one night at her place when Mel Brooks said that he
was going to take his film The Producers and put it on stage as a
musical—and that he was going to write all the music himself. As we
were getting into our cars at the end of that evening, Anjelica Huston
and Kelly Lynch and I were saying our good nights, and I mentioned
that I thought this was about the dumbest idea I’d ever heard. A year
or so later, The Producers was the sold-out hit of Broadway with
ticket prices edging over $400.
One reason everybody went to Sue’s was that she so rarely ventured out
herself. If you wanted to see her, you had to go to her. Then, a few
years ago, she said she wanted to go to the star-packed party that
Bryan Lourd throws at his house on the Friday before the Oscars. She
asked me to pick her up at 8:00 and take her. Now Sue was not the
easiest person to move around, even in the familiar regions of her own
living room. Movement was not a big part of her lifestyle. And
shuffling her from her place, into her car, out of her car, and then
up the many stairs to Bryan’s front door, well, I can only say that it
was like something out of The Wages of Fear, where the four convicts
must get their truck full of nitroglycerine through the remote jungles
of South America. But we made it, and in a room that was wall to wall
stars, Sue Mengers—who had been avoiding the public for years—was the
evening’s big hit. She sat in the library and every movie star at the
party came by to say hello. She loved movie stars—she called them
“sparklies”—and I can’t remember seeing her so happy as that night.
This was why she came to California. And it’s what made her such an
integral part of the movie community, if you can still call it that.
Sue always wanted to call the autobiography she never wrote, When I
Was Alive. Like the great character that she was, that marvelous,
never-written book went with her.
La N.
Oct 16, 2011, 6:56:09 PM10/16/11
to
"Evan Hulka" <ehu...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:6cf176b5-1f04-4407...@u24g2000pru.googlegroups.com...
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2011/10/sue-mengers-in-memoriam
Remembering Sue Mengers: Everybody Came to Sue's
By Graydon Carter
5:17 PM, October 16 2011
Sue Mengers died last night at her home, a short walk from the Beverly
Hills Hotel, and surrounded by three of her close friends, Ali
MacGraw, Joanna Poitier, and Boaty Boatwright. Her death came after a
number of small strokes, and a lifetime of illnesses that would have
felled an athlete half her age. Sue leaves behind few, if any,
relatives. There are however, legions of friends who now have a hole
in their lives they will never be able to fill.
**************************************
Remembering Sue Mengers: Everybody Came to Sue's
By Graydon Carter
5:17 PM, October 16 2011
Sue Mengers died last night at her home, a short walk from the Beverly
Hills Hotel, and surrounded by three of her close friends, Ali
MacGraw, Joanna Poitier, and Boaty Boatwright. Her death came after a
number of small strokes, and a lifetime of illnesses that would have
felled an athlete half her age. Sue leaves behind few, if any,
relatives. There are however, legions of friends who now have a hole
in their lives they will never be able to fill.
Wow. I remember her from the old days of Photoplay, etc. She was a
powerful woman who made a lot of people famous.
- nilita
Kris Baker
Oct 16, 2011, 7:11:59 PM10/16/11
to
"La N." <nilita20...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:j7fnef$ed7$1...@dont-email.me...
spitfire.
...and talk about another great woman: Ali. She's a force of nature
all her own, doing good in her town of Santa Fe and with a large
contingent of friends. Never a great actress, just a great woman.
Kris
Kris Baker
Oct 16, 2011, 7:29:02 PM10/16/11
to
"Kris Baker" <paralle...@ggmail.com> wrote in message
news:9g16lv...@mid.individual.net...
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2009/03/out-to-lunch-mengers200903
Kris
How come you can't find something, until after you've posted about it?
La N.
Oct 16, 2011, 7:32:58 PM10/16/11
to
- nilita
La N.
Oct 16, 2011, 7:47:00 PM10/16/11
to
news:9g17lu...@mid.individual.net...
- nilita
>
>
> Ah....here's the Mengers interview:
> http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2009/03/out-to-lunch-mengers200903
>
I believe she made kaftans ?muu muus? fashionable for awhile in the 60s/70s.
>
> Ah....here's the Mengers interview:
> http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2009/03/out-to-lunch-mengers200903
>
- nilita
R
Oct 16, 2011, 8:46:55 PM10/16/11
to
On Oct 16, 7:47 pm, "La N." <nilita2004NOS...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> "Kris Baker" <parallelcoo...@ggmail.com> wrote in message
> "Kris Baker" <parallelcoo...@ggmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:9g17lu...@mid.individual.net...
>
>
>
> > Ah....here's the Mengers interview:
> >http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2009/03/out-to-lunch-menge...
> news:9g17lu...@mid.individual.net...
>
>
>
> > Ah....here's the Mengers interview:
>
> I believe she made kaftans ?muu muus? fashionable for awhile in the 60s/70s.
>
> - nilita
I thought Allan Car made muu muus famous.
> I believe she made kaftans ?muu muus? fashionable for awhile in the 60s/70s.
>
> - nilita
La N.
Oct 16, 2011, 9:39:20 PM10/16/11
to
"R" <randi...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:3778c049-b8c0-40f3...@f36g2000vbm.googlegroups.com...
------------------
Yup. Him too.
- nilita
Kris Baker
Oct 17, 2011, 12:59:14 AM10/17/11
to
news:j7fpje$umi$1...@dont-email.me...
Rightly so. I always thought of her as a lightweight, but after
having several "close encounters", I changed my mind.
Kris
having several "close encounters", I changed my mind.
Kris
AndrewJ
Oct 17, 2011, 12:37:29 PM10/17/11
to
In the 1973 mystery movie The Last of Sheila (co-written by Sue
Mengers' longtime client Anthony Perkins), Dyan Cannon did a memorable
impersonation of Mengers. To some extent, Shelley Winters' character
in the 1981 film S.O.B. was an impression of Mengers, too.
-- Andrew M.
Mengers' longtime client Anthony Perkins), Dyan Cannon did a memorable
impersonation of Mengers. To some extent, Shelley Winters' character
in the 1981 film S.O.B. was an impression of Mengers, too.
-- Andrew M.
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