By M&C People Apr 3, 2008, 20:53 GMT
Guy McElwaine, a founding partner of International Creative Management (ICM) and one of Hollywood's more respected modern agent-turned-studio bosses, died Wednesday after battling pancreatic cancer. He was 71.
A former MGM publicist, McElwaine joined ICM in 1975 after his original agency, CMA, merged with Famous Artists. McElwaine was also a pretty decent minor league baseball player. He served as Sinatra’s right hand guy, and was John F. Kennedy's Los Angeles liaison too.
McElwaine was Steven Spielberg’s first agent, and he represented star Marilyn Monroe.
McElwaine also ran Columbia and Warner Bros for a time. McElwaine recently produced several movies the last couple years including "The Good Shepherd."
Deadline Hollywood's Nikki Finke wrote a loving tribute to one of the last lions of Hollywood.
Finke writes: "I knew Guy very well so I also recognize this is a tremendous loss to Hollywood. Not just because of the kind of person he was: gentlemanly yet gruff, easy-going yet stern. But even more because he represented a showbiz breed that is too rapidly dying out along with their enormous repository of Industry history. The perennially tan, silver-haired agent was the kind of man other men liked and women loved -- a charming, martini-drinking, storytelling Irishman.
Scrupulously loyal to clients, he was also a tough, shrewd negotiator who knew the politics and the rituals of Hollywood as only a true insider can. His friends were established Hollywood: Alan Ladd Junior, Frank Price and Ray Stark, who, in the ultimate compliment, once called the agent 'a Jew in Goy clothing.' "
Her entire obituary of Guy can be found here:LINK/
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