Swifty My Life and Good Times

The personal story of Irving "Swifty" Lazar describes his friendships with such figures as Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon and how he rose from Brooklyn poverty to Hollywood fame

The Brooklyn-bred son of Russian Jewish immigrants, brash, brawling Irving ("Swifty") Lazar, who died last year at 87, rose from mean streets to become one of the most successful Hollywood and New York agents. This breezy, star-studded, wisecracking and hugely entertaining autobiographical memoir, completed by freelance writer Tapert after Lazar's death, is filled with sly self-revelations and golden anecdotes about Lazar's clients, among them Cole Porter, Moss Hart, Ira Gershwin, Irwin Shaw, Truman Capote, Clifford Odets, Neil Simon, Alan Jay Lerner, Larry McMurtry, William Saroyan, Vladimir Nabokov. There are also gimlet glimpses of Lazar's friends and acquaintances?Bogart, Sinatra, Brando, Groucho Marx, Walter Winchell, Count Basie, Sam Goldwyn, etc. Leaving the impression that he was a showman who invented himself as he went along, Lazar spins juicy tales of deal-making and actors' inflated egos while defending his poaching of other agents' clients and his notorious non-reading of clients' manuscripts ("everybody worked from synopses"). Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

For Lazar, life was an anecdote and, appropriately, his autobiography reads like one. Dubbed "Swifty" by Bogart after he had made three deals in one day, Lazar graduated from his Brooklyn beginnings as a lawyer not above occasional loansharking to become a talent and literary agent extraordinaire. Lazar's clients included Noel Coward, Cole Porter, and Clifford Odets; he hobnobbed with legends such as Bogie, Sinatra, and Gershwin and sold ideas to studio titans Goldwyn, Mayer, and Warner. In the 1970s, Lazar introduced glitterati to the publishing world and went on to launch the TV mini-series phenomenon with Rich Man, Poor Man. In December 1993 he died after clinching his final deal: the sale of his own autobiography. Never modest and with a penchant for hyperbole, Lazar here offers a life story that belies his obsession with class trappings, but the hardboiled chutzpah of his youth still shines through. This anecdotal entertainment, rich with legendary names, is recommended for larger public libraries.
--Jayne Plymale-Jackson, Univ. of Georgia Libs., Athens
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.