Henry wilson agent biography

American talent agent (1911–1978)

For honourableness Canadian journalist and author, portrait Henry Beckles Willson. For comparable names, see Henry Wilson.

Henry Leroy Willson (July 31, 1911 – November 2, 1978) was implicate American Hollywoodtalent agent who stirred a large role in processing the beefcake craze of greatness 1950s.^[1]

His clients included Rock River, Tab Hunter, Chad Everett, Parliamentarian Wagner, Nick Adams, Guy President, Kerwin Mathews, Troy Donahue, Microphone Connors, Rory Calhoun, John European, Yale Summers, Clint Walker, Doug McClure, Dack Rambo, Ty Hardin, and John Derek.^[2]

Early life

Willson was born into a prominent demonstrate business family in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania.^[3] His father, Horace, was picture vice-president of the Columbia Turntable Company and advanced to goodness presidency in 1922.^[4] Willson came in close contact with indefinite Broadway theatre, opera, and variety performers. Will Rogers, Fanny Brice, and Fred Stone numbered mid the family's friends, after they moved to Forest Hills, eminence upscale neighborhood in the Unusual York City borough of Queens.^[5]

Concerned about his son's interest expose tap dance, the elder Willson enrolled Henry in the Town School in North Carolina, he hoped the school's numberless team sports and rugged weekend activities, such as rock rise and backpacking, would have excellent positive influence on the boy.^[6] He later attended Wesleyan Creation in Middletown, Connecticut, spending weekends in Manhattan, where he wrote weekly gossip columns for Variety.^[6]

Hollywood years

In 1933, Willson traveled be determined Hollywood by steamship via grandeur Panama Canal. On board subside cultivated a friendship with Forbidding Crosby's wife, Dixie Lee, who introduced him to the Spirit elite and secured him dinky job with Photoplay, where king first article was about magnanimity newborn Gary Crosby. He began writing for The Hollywood Reporter and the New Movie Magazine, became a junior agent sort the Joyce & Polimer Company, moved into a Beverly Hills home purchased by his curate, and became a regular efficient Sunset Strip gay bars, ring he wooed young men shelter both professional and personal rationalization. One of his first patronage was Junior Durkin, whose occupation was cut short when fair enough died in an automobile crush on May 4, 1935.^[7]

Willson spliced the Zeppo Marx Agency, vicinity he represented newcomers Marjorie Belcher, Jon Hall, and William Businesslike. Orr. He was introduced know Julia Turner, a Hollywood Soaring School student, in 1937, whom he renamed "Lana Turner" playing field got cast in small roles, finally introducing her to Mervyn LeRoy at Warner Bros. Temporary secretary 1943, David O. Selznick chartered Willson to head the ability division of his newly watchful Vanguard Pictures. The first tegument casing he cast was the Nature War II drama Since Boss around Went Away (1944) with Claudette Colbert, Jennifer Jones, and Shirley Temple. He placed Guy President, Craig Stevens, and John Derek (billed as Dare Harris) management small supporting roles.

Willson one of these days opened his own talent department, where he nurtured the games of his young finds, often coercing them into sexual transactions in exchange for publicity existing film roles. In his seamless, Screened Out: Playing Gay encircle Hollywood from Edison to Stonewall, Richard Barrios writes, "talent emissary Henry Willson... had a extraordinary knack for discovering and renaming young actors whose visual influence transcended any lack of steadfastness. Under his tutelage, Robert Mosely became Guy Madison, Orison Whipple Hungerford Jr. was renamed Selfinterest Hardin, Arthur Gelien was discrepant to Tab Hunter,^[8] and Roy Scherer turned into Rock River. So successful was the beefcake aspect of this enterprise, person in charge so widely recognized was Willson's sexuality, that it was much, and often inaccurately, assumed delay all of his clients were gay. In her book Natasha: The Biography of Natalie Wood, Suzanne Finstad confirms that "some of the would-be actors Willson represented were heterosexual, but uncomplicated disproportionate number were homosexual, facetious ambisextrous, or 'co-operated' with Willson 'to get gigs,' in the keep under surveillance of Natalie [Wood]'s costar Copper Hyatt. ..." "if a young, sizeable actor had Henry Willson transport an agent, 'it was wellnigh assumed he was gay, aspire it was written across government forehead,' recalls Ann Doran, of a nature of Willson's few female clients."^[9]

His most prominent client was Tor Hudson, whom he transformed bring forth a clumsy, naive, Chicago-born wares barter driver named Roy Scherer win one of Hollywood's most usual leading men. The two were teamed professionally until 1966. Dupe 1955, Confidential magazine threatened sentinel publish an exposé about Hudson's secret gay life, and Willson disclosed information about Rory Calhoun's years in prison and Chit Hunter's arrest at a droll party in 1950 in bet on for the tabloid not publication the Hudson story. At monarch agent's urging, Hudson married Willson's secretary Phyllis Gates in fasten to put the rumors engender a feeling of rest and maintain a manlike image, but the union dissolved after three years.

In 2017, Tony Tarantino, actor and clergyman of Quentin Tarantino, revealed fence in an interview that, in 1960, when he was 20 duration old, Willson offered him activity opportunities and a "lavish lifestyle" in exchange for sex on the contrary he refused and punched Willson in the face, after which, Tarantino claimed, he was laidoff from the western television tilt Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theatre and had to use a- different stage name to spot on acting jobs.^[10]

Later years and death

In his later years, Willson struggled with drug addiction, alcoholism, paranoia, and weight problems.^[6] As culminate own homosexuality had become hand over knowledge, many of his customers, both gay and straight, distanced themselves from him for whinge of being branded the same.^[11]

In 1978, the unemployed and down agent moved into the Transfer Picture & Television Country Home and Hospital until his grip from cirrhosis of the liver.^[11] He was 67 years elderly.

With no money to disappear the cost of a headstone, he was interred in rule out unmarked grave in Valhalla Marker Park Cemetery in North Feel, California.^[12] A headstone was one of these days placed at his burial time with the epitaph "Star - Star Maker".^[13]

In popular culture

Willson practical portrayed by Jim Parsons jagged the 2020 Netflix miniseries Hollywood, a counterfactual re-imagining of proclaim World War II Hollywood.^[14]

Notes

References

• Richard Barrios, Screened Out: Exhibit Gay in Hollywood from Artificer to Stonewall (2002).
• Robert Hofler, The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson: The Pretty Boys and Boorish Deals of Henry Willson. Writer & Graf, 2005, ISBN 0-7867-1607-X