Jay Kanter: Agent to Marlon, Marilyn and More

Jay Kanter, the veteran Hollywood agent turned producer, died aged 97 on August 6, 2024.

He was born in Chicago in 1926. His father, a furniture salesman, died when Jay was nine years old, and he moved to Los Angeles with his mother to live with her sister. After joining the Navy, he served at stateside posts during World War II. When the war ended, he took a job at the talent agency, MCA. Starting out in the mailroom, he worked his way up, from assistant to company president Lew Wasserman, to becoming a junior agent. His first marriage, to actress Roberta Haynes in 1947, lasted only six months.

In 1948, Kanter met with a young Marlon Brando, fresh from his first success on Broadway, as he arrived in Los Angeles by train. He then accompanied the actor to a meeting with director Fred Zinnemann, and afterwards suggested they head over to MCA to find him an agent. “I don’t have to meet anybody,” Brando said. “You’re my agent.” A lifelong partnership was forged, and Brando’s role as a paraplegic soldier in Zinnemann’s hospital drama, The Men (1950), launched him as one of the greatest actors in movie history.

In 1951, Jay played a minor part in a major Hollywood scandal when producer Walter Wanger shot a senior MCA agent, Jennings Lang, who was having an affair with his wife, actress Joan Bennett. Lang had used Jay’s Beverly Hills apartment for romantic trysts. Lang survived, and Wanger, pleading temporary insanity, served just four months in prison. Although their marriage continued for another decade, Bennett’s career never fully recovered – and Lang’s wife died from a heart attack shortly afterwards. Meanwhile, Wasserman sent Jay to New York to avoid being questioned by police, and he stayed for several years.

New York Daily News, 1953

In 1952, Jay added Grace Kelly to his client roster. Although she was little-known at the time, he helped her to secure a breakthrough role in the classic Western, High Noon, and a seven-year contract at Paramount. Jay married Judy Balaban, daughter of the studio’s president, in 1953. They had two daughters, Amy and Victoria. Judy became a close friend to Grace, serving as a bridesmaid at her wedding to Prince Rainier of Monaco in 1956.

Marlon Brando and Grace Kelly at the 1954 Academy Awards

Jay Kanter with Grace at the Stork Club in New York

The 1954 Academy Awards were a double triumph for MCA, with Brando and Kelly taking home Oscars for On the Waterfront and The Country Girl – and before the year was out, another major star fell within their sights. Marilyn Monroe was dissatisfied with her agent, Charles Feldman, and her restrictive contract at Twentieth Century-Fox. After negotiating with Marilyn, Lew Wasserman promised to represent her personally in Los Angeles, entrusting Jay Kanter and Mort Viner to her service on the east coast. In November she moved to New York, forming an independent production company with photographer Milton Greene.

Jay and Barbara were friends of Milton and his wife Amy, spending time with Marilyn at the Greenes’ home in Westport, Connecticut over the Christmas holiday. At one gathering, she watched intently while Judy fed her daughter from a bottle. When Judy invited her to hold the baby, Marilyn was initially hesitant: “If I hold her, maybe she’ll turn out like I am.”

Kanter (at left) with Marilyn Monroe at the East of Eden premiere, 1955

Kanter appears at left, and in the background of this UK news photo (thanks to Fraser Penney)

When she moved to Manhattan in early 1955, Jay accompanied Marilyn to several public events, including the East of Eden premiere in March, and the Ringling Brothers circus at Madison Square Garden, where she rode in on a pink elephant; and a Navy gala at the Hotel Astor, celebrating the rebuilding of the USS Bennington. She arrived over three hours late, but Jay’s nerves were allayed when he ushered her through a street exit to Times Square. With a white fur coat draped over a strappy black cocktail dress, she stood patiently in the cold with the sailors who had gathered outside – and according to Jay, they were far more chivalrous than the reporters who regularly mobbed her.

Kanter among the crowd surrounding Marilyn at the Ringling Brothers circus at Madison Square Garden

Kanter with Marilyn at a Navy gala

Jay also recalled being invited by Sammy Davis Jr. to a charity performance at the Apollo in Harlem, where the Kanters sat with the Greenes, and Marilyn’s date, ex-husband Joe DiMaggio – pride of the New York Yankees – got the loudest applause. After late-night photo shoots with Marilyn at Milton’s studio on Lexington Avenue, Amy Greene often slept at the Kanters’ nearby apartment. “There was a kind of magic between them, something that you could tell was clicking,” Jay would write of Milton’s remarkable ‘fifty sessions’ with Marilyn. “It was fun to watch.”

They arranged a surprise birthday party for Milton while Marilyn was living at the Gladstone Hotel; and among Jay’s personal effects, sold after his death, was a set of photos by Greene, showing Marilyn and Marlon Brando promoting a raffle for tickets to the premiere of The Rose Tattoo.

Monroe and Brando by Milton Greene (via Estate Sales)

“Marilyn seemed very free to me that year, animated, enthusiastic, looking forward to serious work,” he told author Donald Spoto. “She liked being out of the Hollywood film business. It was a time full of promise and she seemed to me to be taking hold of a new life.” She was also taking classes with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio, and producer Cheryl Crawford wanted her to star in a Broadway show. However, Jay believed that Marilyn’s priority at this time was making better films, with director approval for future projects.

Her MCA contract was finalised in July, and by December, she had resolved her dispute with Twentieth Century-Fox. On New Year’s Eve, the Kanters and the Greenes joined Marilyn at her Sutton Place apartment and toasted their victory with champagne.

Marilyn photographed with Laurence Olivier and Terence Rattigan in New York by Milton Greene, 1956

In February 1956, the British dramatist Terence Rattigan came to New York to discuss a Warner Brothers film adaptation of his popular play, The Sleeping Prince, with Laurence Olivier as director and star. Marilyn had been interested for some time, and sent a message to LaGuardia Airport, inviting Rattigan for drinks at the Barberry Room in Manhattan. She arrived with Greene, Kanter and lawyer Irving Stein, and by the end of the meeting, Rattigan agreed for Marilyn Monroe Productions to acquire the property outright. Distributed by Warners, it would be Marilyn’s first (and only) independent production.

After hearing the news, Olivier flew to New York and arranged for Marilyn to visit his hotel suite. On the day, it was so cold and wet that Olivier decided to go to her home instead. Jay took Olivier and Rattigan to Sutton Place, and was welcomed by Milton Greene. Marilyn was shuttered inside her bedroom, sitting anxiously at the dressing table – “hiding like a frightened deer,” Jay said. The men waited for nearly two hours, until Milton finally coaxed her out. As Jay recalled to author Michelle Morgan, Olivier was “so gracious and she was very silent but in total awe of him.”

Marilyn and Milton in Los Angeles

In March, Marilyn returned to Los Angeles to shoot Bus Stop at Twentieth Century-Fox. For the next three months, she and the Greenes rented a house on North Beverly Glen Boulevard in the Westwood district, although Marilyn also spent time in her acting coach Paula Strasberg’s hotel suite at the Chateau Marmont on Sunset Boulevard. While Lew Wasserman personally handled Marilyn’s affairs during this period, Jay was left to deal with the fallout.

“The Greenes have lost or misplaced the inventory,” MCA’s Al Delgado wrote to Kanter when the family vacated Beverly Glen in June. “This is quite serious because this is an expensive house with expensive furnishings … When the owners of the house return, I feel that Milton will have trouble and may possibly have a lawsuit on his hands … (I) feel very badly about the whole thing, as the house was in perfect condition when they moved in.”

On July 1, the Kanters were among thirty guests at Marilyn’s wedding to playwright Arthur Miller; and later that month, the newlyweds flew to England to shoot The Sleeping Prince. Unfortunately, Marilyn’s business partnership with Milton broke down during the tense production. In April 1957, she issued a statement claiming he had mismanaged their company, and in a meeting days later, she formally dismissed him and appointed a new board of directors. When she next met with her publicist Arthur P. Jacobs, Marilyn railed against “me and Jay, calling us ‘shitty friends of that shitty Mr Greene …’”

Jay Kanter (left of Marilyn) at her wedding to Arthur Miller

While she may have cooled towards Jay personally, their professional connection seems to have endured. According to Monroe biographer Donald Spoto, Jay visited the Millers’ apartment on East 57th Street with Lew Wasserman and George Chasin, another MCA colleague, in April 1958, to discuss Marilyn’s plans for her career after an extended sabbatical. They considered a proposal from Fox for her to star opposite Maurice Chevalier in the musical, Can-Can; as well as dramatic parts in Some Come Running with Frank Sinatra, and an adaptation of William Faulkner’s novel, The Sound and the Fury.

While mulling over these projects, Marilyn received a screenplay from Billy Wilder, who had directed one of her best films, The Seven Year Itch. She signed on as leading lady for a salary of $100,000, plus an historic 10% of the net profits. Released in 1959, Some Like It Hot was a resounding success, and has since been described as the greatest comedy ever made.

However, it was Wilder’s next film, The Apartment (1960), which resonated with Jay’s own past. Jack Lemmon played an insurance agent who allows married boss Fred McMurray to use his apartment for liaisons with office girl Shirley MacLaine, in return for career advancement. As Jay admitted in 2021, many were reminded of his own part in the Walter Wanger shooting scandal. “I think that’s where Billy Wilder got the idea,” Jay said. “He never told me. But it was quite obvious.”

Kanter with Marlon Brando and Paul Newman on the set of The Fugitive Kind (1960)

In 1961, Jay and Judy Balaban were divorced. A year later, Marilyn Monroe died – and as MCA acquired Universal Studios, Jay ventured into film production. He married his third wife, model turned Kit Bennett, in 1965, and they had two sons, Adam and Michael.

Jay went on to produce two films in 1971: Villain, starring Richard Burton as a London crime boss; and The Nightcomers, with his long-term client Marlon Brando. Zee and Co, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Caine, followed in 1972. He also helped comedian Mel Brooks to produce Young Frankenstein (1974), Silent Movie (1976), and High Anxiety (1977.)

In 1979, Jay formed a production company with Alan Ladd Jr., president of the film division at Twentieth Century-Fox, and lawyer Gareth Wigan (who would marry Marilyn Monroe’s last publicist, Pat Newcomb, in 1982.) The Ladd Company produced the 1981 Oscar-winner, Chariots of Fire, and other important films, such as Blade Runner (1982), and Once Upon a Time in America (1984.)

Jay’s life would inspire art again in 1989, when Jon Cryer played a mailroom clerk who becomes agent to a Hollywood star in a critically praised, if short-lived CBS sitcom, The Famous Teddy Z, loosely based on his friendship with Marlon Brando. He also produced television documentaries about Brando and Grace Kelly, who had died in 1982.

Kanter with Warren Beatty at the Beverly Hills Hotel, 2012

In 2004, he announced Brando’s passing to reporters outside the actor’s Los Angeles home; and in 2012, he was a guest speaker at a service held at Westwood Memorial Park on the 50th anniversary of Marilyn Monroe’s death. His wife, Kit Kanter, died in 2014, and daughter Victoria Colombetti followed in 2020. In his final years, he attended regular Friday lunches at the Porta Via restaurant in Beverly Hills, reminiscing with Mel Brooks and other friends. On the Friday before his death, he got up from the table, saying: “See you guys next week.”

“I’ve known a lot of nice people in my life, but nobody nicer than Jay Kanter,” Mel Brooks recalled. “If you knew him, you loved him. He was more than a legendary agent. He was a loyal friend, always there when you needed him. I know it’s a cliché but in Jay’s case it is just so true: he will be sorely missed.”

Jay Ira Kanter is survived by three of his four children; three stepchildren from his third marriage; and nine grandchildren.

Obituaries

The Hollywood Reporter, August 6, 2024.

New York Times, August 14, 2024.

Los Angeles Times, August 30, 2024.

Books

Marilyn Monroe: The Biography by Donald Spoto (1992)

Icon: The Life, Times and Films of Marilyn Monroe by Gary Vitacco Robles (2014)

Marilyn in Manhattan: Her Year of Joy by Elizabeth Winder (2017)

The Essential Marilyn Monroe/Milton H. Greene: 50 Sessions by Joshua Greene (2017)

The Girl: Marilyn Monroe, The Seven Year Itch, and the Birth of an Unlikely Feminist by Michelle Morgan (2018)

Documentaries