Gersh Agency
| Phil Gersh | |
|---|---|
| Born |
October 19, 1911 New York City |
| Died | May 10, 2004 (aged 92) Beverly Hills, California |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Hollywood talent and literary agent |
| Years active | 1949-2004 |
Phil Gersh (19 October 1911 - 10 May 2004) was an American talent and literary agent, who established an agency known as The Gersh Agency (also known as TGA, or simply Gersh) in 1949, based in Beverly Hills, California and New York City, representing stars including Humphrey Bogart, David Niven and Richard Burton. He was considered one of the last links between Hollywood's Golden Age and today's corporate-owned movie business.
Gersh was born in New York City to poor Russian immigrant parents, Ida and Louis Gershowitz. His parents owned a deli on 25th and 9th Avenue. When Gersh was 8 or 9 years old, his family moved to Washington Heights and opened a restaurant there. As a child Gersh hoped to become a baseball player, and used to sell peanuts outside baseball stadiums.
Gersh moved to Los Angeles in the early-1930s to study at UCLA, graduating in 1934. He began working on a swing gang for Paramount Pictures, where his brother-in-law Sam Jaffe was an executive. When Jaffe left Paramount in 1936 to set up his own talent agency, Gersh moved with him to work as an office boy earning $15 a week. His first client as an agent was director Mark Robson, with whom he had been in a fraternity at UCLA some years before, and who was looking to move into directing from a job as an editor at RKO Pictures. Gersh subsequently signed other directors from the studio including Robert Wise, Richard Fleischer and Joseph Losey, thereby establishing a reputation as an effective spotter of directing talent.
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