The Theatre: Portrait of a Press Agent

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No producer, tiny or tremendous, bucks Broadway without a press agent. He can't, because his union contract calls for one; but he wouldn't anyway. A show without a press agent would be like a store without a show window.

Broadway's press agents (officially known as press representatives) number some 50 (a few of them women). About 15 really count. They are a special breed, with one foot in the theatre and the other in a newspaper office. They earn a minimum salary of $150 a week. (But it's a job in which a couple of lousy breaks might end a career.) They are suspicious characters to the public, which regards them as a kind of licensed liar who cooks up tall tales. Actually, their bread & butter depends on being strictly truthful. The newspapers are their lifeblood, and as Press Agent William Fields once said, "An editor who has been taken in by a press agent never forgets the incident—and shouldn't." A publicity man's style may be tropical, lush, mendacious—but his facts must be straight.

Broadway's press agents divide into four classes. There are those who work for one boss, as does portly John Peter Toohey for Sam H. Harris and courtly Claude P. Greneker for the Shuberts. There are smart free lances, such as Willard Keefe, Nat Dorfman, Karl Bernstein, eight or ten others. There are the in-&-outers (some on the way up, some on the way out). And there is Irish-tongued, Scotch-drinking Richard Maney, who is a whole industry in himself.

Last week Dick Maney was living a pressagent's dream: he was handling six shows at once* four more than any other press agent, and all that the Theatrical Managers, Agents & Treasurers Union allows. His factory was going full blast under strict union rules: he had hired an assistant as soon as he handled two shows; a second assistant as soon as he handled four; a third when he handled six. His helpers were getting a total of $275 a week; he, a minimum of $625 and very likely about $1,000.

Dick Maney's personality stands forth in the rackety, sulfurous, epithet-crawling style, "as distinctive as the Dietrich limbs," of his press stories. But it is his walking & talking personality that has put Maney on top. He scorns the usual props: high-pressuring, dancing attendance on people, buttering his employers. Instead, he hobnobs as an amusing guy with hundreds of people of all kinds, while through the years he has won and held the confidence of editors.

The most sociable guy in the business, he is also the most hardboiled. He frequently treats producers rough. But he plays them smart. He may explode working for explosive Jed Harris, but he is a gent when working for gentlemanly Arthur Hopkins. He may write reams of copy about a play for the press, but to its producer he never offers a word of unsolicited advice. And the producer—the man who pays him—comes first, last & always with him. Composer Dick Rodgers once asked him: "Is it a secret that I am writing the music for this show?" Retorted Maney: "It's Billy Rose who is handing out the pay." He says himself that a press agent should have the face of a cherub and the heart of a section foreman.