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Harry, how old are you now? I'm 88.
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Eightyat I don't really feel that I'm 88. I
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don't act like I'm 88, but. How old were you when you
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retired? How old when I. When I retired? I retired
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five years ago. So I want to talk about several
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things here. You are one of my favorite creative entrepreneurs because
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you have, you have everything in one crazy
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career lifetime. You created your own business from
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nothing. You changed your own business repeatedly and kind
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of repartnered and rethought about what you were going to do.
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You had to think about your next generation leadership. You
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had to think about training people and what the heartbeat is of an
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entrepreneurial venture in the creative industries. You got to help other
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people and you got to help figure out what was happening
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next in changing sectors. All things I find really fascinating.
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I want to try to hit heartbeats on that because
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you've had to kind of shift gears many times. How
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old were you when you did your first entertainment
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doll? Well, I started out in a training program at
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MCA, a talent agency, which was then a talent
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agency. I came out of UCLA, went in the military for
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six months, came out of the military, looked for a job.
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I wanted to be in the entertainment industry. I'm not going to bore you
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with. The story about, and it's in the. Book as well, couldn't get a job
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in the midst of a recession. That country was. And
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people were being laid off right and left in the entertainment industry.
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Being at the business school at UCLA, I learned how to write
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a letter of inquiry, a letter looking for a job.
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And I wrote this letter to two agencies that
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then had training programs. One was MCA and the other was the William
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Morris Agency. I applied for position in both those
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places, and I was able to get interviews with them,
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with the personnel directors. Then I had to go through
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a series of interviews with the department heads. There were ten
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department heads, and I had to make myself available
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when they were available. And so it took about another few months,
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and you could be rejected anywhere along the way, and
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this is, by the way, to get into the training program at either of these
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places. And the pay was $40 a week. But I
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desperately wanted to get in the entertainment industry, not as an artist, not as
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a performer, but on the business side.
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And I went through the process, went through all the interviews
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and finished all the interviews, took about three months with each one of
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them. And I got a letter from each of the personnel directors
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saying, dear Harry, you've successfully passed our interview process.
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And I assumed that when I opened this letter, I would be
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offered a job. But they said, we're going to put you on a list
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of approved applicants, and when your name rises to
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the top of the list, don't call us, we'll call you.
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And I said, well, how long is that going to take? A week, two weeks,
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a month, six months, a year? We can't tell you,
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is what they said. Just don't call us. We'll call you.
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So I had to find a job at that point because I came from a
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very poor family. My father worked in a print shop, and my mother
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worked at Thompson, Ramo, Wooldrich,
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TRW. I must admit, I've never known what
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TRW stood for, so that's good to know. We come from a
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very poor family, and so we had no contacts in the talent
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agency or in the entertainment industry as a whole.
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When I fainted dead away at pre med at the hospital and
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went to UCLA, the counseling bureau, they came up with the idea
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that I had no interest in fields of science, but that I had a strong
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interest in entertainment and in business. And so that's what I decided to
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focus on. And so I wrote these letters, got an interview with these
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people, and my mother and father
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said, entertainment. What was entertainment
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then? Was it live theater, film? What year was this
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live theater? It was feature film. It was television. They were all
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three active areas of entertainment and
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musical performers, the recording industry and all that. The
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concerts. That's an area that I never got into that I didn't
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want to get into personal appearances in concerts
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anyway, so I. And my mother, father said, so get a job
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already, for God's sake.
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My uncle, he worked at Thrifty Drugstore, and
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Thrifty Drugstore had a chain of 80 stores up and down
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California. And he was in charge of housewares. He bought housewares
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for the company and distributed them. And one of the
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items that he bought were power lawnmowers.
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And he dealt with a company. A man by the name of
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Maury Loeber was his name. I remember his name vividly. And
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he owned a power Lawnmower production company in
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Richmond, Indiana, small farming town
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70 miles due east of Indianapolis on
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the Ohio border. Mr. Lober came into town, and
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my uncle introduced me to him. And Mr. Lober said,
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harry, would you. I'm going to offer you a job. You're looking for a position.
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I'd like you to come to work for me at the power Lawnmower Company in
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Richmond, Indiana. It was called the George W. Davis, G. W.
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Davis Lawnmower Company. I took the job. I had
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never been to that. I'd really not been out of Los Angeles
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at all, with the exception of my six months in the
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service, which was in San Antonio, Texas. I
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had always heard about the Midwest and how people were. Their
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values were really terrific, and wonderful people came out of the
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Midwest. So I took him up on his job offer was $120
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a week, a lot more than $40 a week.
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And I moved to Richmond, Indiana. Small
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town, maybe 15, 20,000 people, a farming
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town. And I went to work at this company, and I worked at this
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company doing everything and anything dealing
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with manufacturing and production and sales and
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distribution. And he had about 150 factory
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workers there. And there was a superintendent who ran the
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place. And I was kind of Mr. Lobers.
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He didn't have any children. He was married, but he didn't have any children. And
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he grew to take me in like his son. And I did
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everything and anything to do with production of lawnmowers. I was in charge of
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purchasing. I purchased all the raw goods that went into the
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lawnmowers. I dealt with all kinds of suppliers around the country.
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One day my mother calls me about 14 months a year, and two months
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into my stay in Richmond, Indiana. She says, I got
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a letter here from the William Morris Agency. So I said, we'll open it up.
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She opened it up and said, dear Harry, your name has risen to the top
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of the list, and you have 72 hours to
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accept the position to come into our training program. The pay is
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$40 a week. And during my. He said, you have
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72 hours to accept the job or not. If you don't take the job in
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72 hours, we're going to go on to the next person on the list. Well,
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during my interview process with the ten department
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heads, my perception of the caliber
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and the quality of the agents at MCA versus William
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Morris, I felt that the agents at MCA were far
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superior, were brighter, sharper, more aggressive, et
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cetera. And so I took a calculated risk,
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and I turned the offer down. But before I turned the
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offer down, I spoke to my mother and father, and they said,
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$125. You're making $125 to take a job
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for $40 a week? This is ridiculous. I called Mr.
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Glover to tell him he was in New York, I was going to be leaving.
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I was handing him my letter of resignation for two weeks
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notice, and he said, you haven't accepted the job yet, have you? And
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I said, well, why do you ask? He said, because
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I'm on the airplane the next day. Of flying in to meet with
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you. I'm going to try to persuade you to the contrary.
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So he came in and took me out to dinner the next night, and he
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said, you're going to take a job for $40 a
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week. You're making $125 a week. He then began to
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reevaluate just how bright I was, and he
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said, you know what? I'm going to double his salary. I'm going to make it
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$250 a. Week, which was a lot of money. At that time, which
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was a lot of money at that time, especially for a young person like
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myself. And I turned him down. I told him,
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Mr. Loba, my heart is in the entertainment industry. That's what I want to get
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into. So I've got to leave. And I left.
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Two weeks later. I moved to Los Angeles. I went to work in a training.
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Program at that NCAA that you ended up accepting. That
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one called about four months later, and your name is written to the
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top of the list. You have 24 hours to accept the position.
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I said, I don't need 24 hours, Mr. Zuck, when do I start?
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And I took that job for $40 a week.
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I left the job for $250 a week, and that's
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where I started. I started in the training program at MCA, which had a
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very sophisticated, well structured training program.
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Six guys worked in the mailroom. I came in as a number six guy,
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and you had to work your way up. And when they got up to
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the number one position, I'm going to pause. You a second and
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ask a few questions. One of them is you've
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three times talked about the people, the caliber of the
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people, and very specific of remembering names. I know you've
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working on your books. Some of those you remember possibly even more vividly.
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Has that been a recurring thread thereafter, that the quality
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of people has been a driving factor for
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you? No question about it. I really enjoy
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dealing with the quality of people, what kind of people they are,
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what their education has been, what their degree of success has been,
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what field that they're in. I'm always interested in people who
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have developed, have moved themselves
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along, have been motivated by success
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and advancement and earning more money.
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And so the quality of people has always been very
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important to me. The caliber and the quality of the people at
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MCA were far superior to the people at people can
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argue with me about that. That's my opinion, and, well, you got. To live with
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it afterwards as well, and spend a lot of time in this space. Let
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me then sort of take you through one sort of sidebar question, which is the
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getting started in entertainment? Sometimes it's who you know. You've
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definitely told the opposite story here. You've told a story of
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persistence. What skills did you find
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really helped you in your first five years? Human relations,
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getting along with people, being able to accept
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just about anyone for whatever they do. I
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enjoy talking to people. I enjoy seeing how people have
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molded their lives and their
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professional lives, their family lives. And I've always tried,
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I've admired people who've had those successes.
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And so I found myself being, getting
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closer with people who have done that. And it
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also instilled in me a desire to become
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successful as they had become. I guess that's the way I would
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answer that. Success is what success in
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achievement, of type of work that you did and the caliber and the level at
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which you did it. And success also in
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financial success as well. And also
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success in. I was in the talent agency business when
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I could be successful of finding an artist
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and helping move their career along
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to where they became a star. That to me
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was tremendous success and a great
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deal of achievement. So you
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left MCA to start what was the first
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of your own sort of pieces of a company. What triggered your
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departure? It wasn't that I left MCA. MCA
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left me. Lou Wasserman ran the business company at that
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time. And MCA, they bought Universal Pictures,
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Universal Studios, all of the property, all the soundstages,
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all of the library, everything that Universal owned. And
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so they were buying all of their talent
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at Universal from their talent agency for
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several months, maybe even a year or
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two. And the other agencies, like the William Morris Agency
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and ICM and other talent agencies were having trouble
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getting in the front door selling any talent to
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MCA. So, I mean, too, at Universal. So what
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happened is they felt that. They
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become a monopoly of sorts. So they filed a
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lawsuit against MCA saying that they were in
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violation of the Sherman Clayton Antitrust Act. They were
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a monopoly. And as a result, it took a long period
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of time. The wheels of justice grind very
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slowly, as they say. And it took two or three
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years for that lawsuit to make its way through whatever
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different levels of law that is in
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existence. And they finally got to
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Jack Kennedy was president at the time, Robert Kennedy
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was the attorney general, and it was him, his
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lawsuit against MCA. And finally they came to the
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conclusion the government did U. S. Government that they
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were in violation. MCA was in violation of the
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Sherman Clayton Antitrust Act. They were a monopoly.
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And they said to MCA, hex came down after
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two or three years. You either have to stay in the talent agency
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business, or you stay in motion picture and television production. You cannot
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be in both. And so it was a fairly easy decision for
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MCA, the parent company, to make at that time, because the gross dollar
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revenue for Universal, I mean, for
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MCA, was much smaller,
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80 some odd million dollars. Whereas
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I was going to say, though. The talent agency business hadn't yet grown to what
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it's become and the various scales that it's
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become. So at that point in time, what level of success had
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you risen to at this point in time? You had your own clients, you
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had your own expertise? You
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mean, at that point in time. When split from, by the
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way, the director from the government said to MCA, the parent
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company, you cannot just dismiss and terminate all of your
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employees, all your agents, you have to offer them all positions
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in production, motion picture and television production at
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Universal. And so all of the
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employees there were, I don't know, a couple thousand around the world, if
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that many. Everyone was offered a position, including myself,
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to go into motion picture or television production. And
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I'd say about 90% of the
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agents all went into motion television production.
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Yeah, they were immediate job with a salary, et
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cetera. But I had been working with this gentleman
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by the name of Noel Rubelov,
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moved out of the mailroom into that division or that department of the
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agency that dealt with commercials, radio and
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television commercials. It dealt with MCs,
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hosts of game shows, queer shows, audience participation
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shows, radio personalities. It was an area of the
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business that most talent agents didn't want to get into.
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Most talent agency wanted to be a motion pictures and television
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production or a theater production, much more glamorous.
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But I liked working with Ruboloff. He was eight years my
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senior, and I liked working with him in that
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area of the business at MCA. And I'd been there for about, I
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don't know, maybe four or five, six years roughly. At that point, I
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had decided I went to him. He was eight years my senior. As
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I say, I said, I think this is a great time for us to open
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up our own shop. And because all the clientele that we were
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representing were going to be without agents, they needed agency
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representation. So I said, I think we should
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not go into motion picture and television product and
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open our own shop. And that's what we did. We opened our
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own agency. It was called Abrams Rubeloffs and
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Associates. And even though he was my senior
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by eight years and had much more experience, when we
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went to open our bank account, City National bank, they said,
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what do you want to call your bank account? I popped up and I said,
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well, my last name is AB. We'll be first on every
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list. I think we should call it Abrams Ruboloff.
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And Ruboloff readily agreed to that, or didn't move fast
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enough anyway, so that's how it came to be known. And
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we started our business in Los Angeles. And I used to fly to New
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York to fly to Madison Avenue. I covered Madison Avenue. It
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was like a blanket dealing with all kinds of ad agencies,
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marketing our clientele. Radio and television commercials was our
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biggest source of revenue and income in those days, although
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we did do a healthy business in MCs and
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hosts game shows, quiz shows, audience participation
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shows. Bob Barker, for example, was one of our clients,
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people like Gary Owens and Jack Nars and
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Tom Kennedy. You won't recognize these names. Well, I
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will, but not all of our listeners. Well, yeah, not all of the listeners.
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And that specialization was special to
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us. There weren't any other agencies. Well, there were smaller
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agencies, one person, two person shops. When we went
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out on our own, we had three or four employees. And so
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we started building the company, and it was
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successful. And I was the one in Los Angeles
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who would travel to New York all the time
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to go up and down Madison Avenue, could care
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less about New York City. So you are someone who
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steps into risk. Risk makes you happy
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or you're comfortable with risk, or what makes it so that
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you're willing to step into a new situation.
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It's attractive to me because if I feel that I can, I manage a big
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00:19:06
achievement and go into something new and
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00:19:10
make it into something successful. So I didn't mind risk
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00:19:14
at all. I really enjoyed the competition.
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00:19:18
I enjoyed business as a whole. But I really was
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00:19:22
fascinated by business in the entertainment industry. But
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00:19:25
again, not, I didn't want to get into
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00:19:29
production that I felt was too much of a risk.
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00:19:33
But being that we had developed a terrific talent agency
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00:19:36
with outstanding clientele in a specialized
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00:19:40
area that most other talent
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00:19:43
agencies were not in. So I enjoyed the
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00:19:47
risk and the reward and, of course, the rewards.
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00:19:51
Of course, yes, there's no rewards without
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00:19:54
any risk. So in this saga, because the
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00:19:58
saga, I think, moves as well into it, becoming Abrams artist,
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00:20:02
what were the main struggles that you went through in having your own business?
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00:20:06
Well, we did have competition.
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00:20:10
William Morris Agency had a department or a division that did the same thing, that
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00:20:14
DM had a similar CAA, didn't
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00:20:18
have that department at that time. I
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00:20:22
found talent. I found developed artists.
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00:20:25
We became very well known. And eventually
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00:20:29
Rubiloff and I were together for about 1415 years.
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00:20:33
And at one point in our
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00:20:36
partnership, we broke up
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00:20:41
and I opened up Abrams artists. At that point, in other
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00:20:45
words, instead of being Abram Schmugaloff, and I continued to build, and
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00:20:49
I really enjoyed not only
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00:20:52
finding talent, performing talent artists,
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00:20:55
but I also enjoyed finding talented people. And
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00:20:59
I liked to train them and give them opportunities for
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00:21:03
growth and advancement like I had had
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00:21:06
myself. And so that was the
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00:21:10
biggest motivation for writing
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00:21:14
my book, was to provide some sort of where people
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00:21:17
would want to perhaps consider coming out with a
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00:21:21
school with a master's degree in business, or maybe having gone
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00:21:25
into business after, or gone into some form of employment
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00:21:29
after college, and finding either with an
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00:21:32
undergraduate or graduate degree and finding that they
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00:21:36
ward that through, they're happy with their career choice. So
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00:21:40
after three or four years, they began to look elsewhere.
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00:21:43
When they want to get in the entertainment industry, they didn't even think about
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00:21:47
the fact they assumed everything was in production. But the
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00:21:51
key part of the entertainment industry that I think that drove it, in my
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00:21:55
humble opinion, were the talent agencies.
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00:21:59
And so I wanted to train people to become talent
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00:22:02
agents and help people
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00:22:06
find career choices, career paths in entertainment,
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00:22:10
other than performing, other than as an artist.
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00:22:13
When we first met, now was a few years ago,
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00:22:17
and you, at the time, I remember, were really looking at new
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00:22:21
technologies and getting your agents
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00:22:24
involved in things like early internet, YouTube,
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00:22:28
early social media, social media, early
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00:22:31
influencer work. How did you figure which technologies were
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00:22:35
ready for you guys to lean into? Well, I think it kind of
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00:22:39
developed on its own, and social media
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00:22:42
became important. I myself, if not,
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00:22:46
I'm not in any of those forms of social
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00:22:49
media myself, personally. In those particular
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00:22:53
fields, influencers became very, very important.
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00:22:56
Influencers are the outgrowth of social media, and
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00:23:00
influencers are people that earn great sums of money, and
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00:23:04
they have representatives, agents,
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00:23:07
managers who manage them and help move their careers
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00:23:11
along. And I felt that that was an area that I wanted
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00:23:14
to dip my toe into. I dipped my
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00:23:18
toe in, and I began to look for
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00:23:22
people. I myself didn't do it. I hired someone
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00:23:26
who was a younger person than I, who was much more
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00:23:29
knowledgeable and conversant with social media than I was,
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00:23:33
and I hired him to run that department
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00:23:37
or division of the agency. It's interesting because not only
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00:23:41
do those influencers
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00:23:44
as influencers, they are very much in demand or
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00:23:48
can become very much in demand as a result of social media,
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00:23:52
but a number of them also were
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00:23:55
hosts, potential hosts, MCs,
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00:23:59
people of that nature. And so I felt it was
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00:24:03
very similar to what our clientele were
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00:24:07
all about. I spent time developing a
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00:24:10
division or a department of the agency, and that department or division
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00:24:14
of the agency grew to be the most productive
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00:24:18
of the entire. Most productive of the entire
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00:24:22
income or revenue of the agency was that department
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00:24:26
or that division. So I invite my mother and my father to
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00:24:30
come into my office one day and to sit there or stand
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00:24:33
there and watch me work and see what I did every day
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00:24:37
and how I dealt with people and not only our
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00:24:41
clientele, but the people that we had to sell our clientele to
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00:24:47
have meetings with people, our
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00:24:50
clients, who were very
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00:24:54
demanding. And at the end of about a week, my
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00:24:57
father said to me, both of them said, at the same time,
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00:25:01
Harry, you're actually practicing medicine every day of the week. You're dealing
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00:25:05
with crazy people.
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00:25:09
And so, yeah, my dad said, you can hang your shingle right outside
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00:25:13
your office door. Harry Abrams, MD being an
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00:25:17
agent, being a good psychologist and social psychologist, and
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00:25:20
understanding how everybody's interior nuts and bolts
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00:25:24
work. So I totally see that. When did you think you were
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00:25:27
successful? Well, when I thought it was
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00:25:31
successful when MCA broke up, it was very fortuitous
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00:25:35
that they broke up, that we were able to go out. I figured we had
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00:25:40
an area of the business we had very little competition in.
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00:25:43
And so I felt we were. I don't know how one
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00:25:47
measures success, but we were able to pay our bills
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00:25:51
and employ people and still have money left.
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00:25:54
Profit, always good. And have your own time, but your time
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00:25:58
is oftentimes your clients. So
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00:26:02
you retired later than a lot of people. How did
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00:26:06
you considering that this business was in many ways tied in
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00:26:10
with you, even though you hired great people and trained them to work for you,
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00:26:13
how was that process of moving the company to
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00:26:17
the next generation? And I know they're wonderful folks and they will hear
Speaker:
00:26:21
this, but how did you go through the process of thinking about
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00:26:25
the next generation of the company? Well, first of all,
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00:26:28
we started out in a particular area, which was a very small
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00:26:32
area of the business. And the larger area of the
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00:26:36
business is when One moves into
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00:26:40
with performers. Because you ended up in almost every area of
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00:26:44
the business by the time that you got to be a multi city,
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00:26:48
multi space company, advertising, a commercial. End of our
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00:26:52
business became a very small end of our business,
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00:26:56
and we became a full fledged talent agency in,
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00:27:00
I mean, in New York initially, where I was only
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00:27:04
in New York to begin with, I used to fly out to Los Angeles and
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00:27:08
sell that market, our talent in LA. And
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00:27:11
eventually I felt we needed to have an office here. And
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00:27:16
I hired a couple of people from
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00:27:19
one of our competitors, the Gersh agency,
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00:27:23
had two guys, Scott Harris and Howard Goldberg,
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00:27:27
guys that I used to send my talent
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00:27:31
to from New Yorkers. We didn't have an office. I'd
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00:27:34
send them out there. And so they became an affiliate or
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00:27:38
corresponding talent agency for us. And so we
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00:27:41
were very close to them when they were at the Gersh office. And
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00:27:45
then I hired them away and we set up an office in
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00:27:49
LA under our title. It was
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00:27:52
called Abrams. And I put their names on the door,
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00:27:56
Abrams, Harris and Gold, because I was not
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00:27:59
there. Under screen actors regulations, rules and
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00:28:03
regulations, someone has to be name
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00:28:06
value in each of the offices. So I
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00:28:10
put their names on the door even though they had no
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00:28:14
financial or equity interest in the company. And what
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00:28:17
happened is we continued to grow and prosper. And first
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00:28:21
year, there were two young guys, much younger than I
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00:28:25
was. They didn't know how to run a business. So I would
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00:28:29
spend a week in LA and a week in New York and help them
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00:28:33
build the business in LA.
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00:28:36
But again, they had their names on the
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00:28:40
people, you know, respective artists
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00:28:43
would assume that they were at an equity, even though they did not.
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00:28:47
And what took place is continuing to grow and grow and
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00:28:51
grow. After about five years, the two
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00:28:55
fellows, Howard Goldberg and Scott
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00:28:58
Harris, felt that they didn't really need me any
Speaker:
00:29:01
longer, so they went ahead and set up their own
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00:29:05
business. And under the name of, originally,
Speaker:
00:29:08
Harrison Goldberg, until, unfortunately, Howard Goldberg
Speaker:
00:29:12
passed away at an early age from AIDS,
Speaker:
00:29:16
unfortunately. And so they changed the
Speaker:
00:29:19
name. Instead of it being Harrison Goldberg, they changed
Speaker:
00:29:23
it to innovative artists. And that's the name that
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00:29:27
they have shared, they have kept today, Scott Harris,
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00:29:30
who owns and runs that business today. So that was an example
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00:29:34
of hiring people that then grew into their own business. How
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00:29:38
did you grow your succession management? Eddie Brooms,
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00:29:41
artists who. Well, and I continued to
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00:29:45
grow. And adding more
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00:29:49
agents from our training program, adding more important
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00:29:52
clientele, developing them into important
Speaker:
00:29:56
stars in their own right, we would develop them. Wasn't
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00:30:00
always me selling talent that we got
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00:30:03
from another agency. And the agency continued to grow.
Speaker:
00:30:07
When I sold the business five years ago, now
Speaker:
00:30:11
there were about 150 people working for the company between
Speaker:
00:30:15
New York and LA, and in all kinds
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00:30:18
of different divisions or departments. The only
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00:30:22
area, including literary, including theater, motion
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00:30:25
pictures, actors, actresses. The only area that we did
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00:30:29
not get into was the area of music and concerts and personal
Speaker:
00:30:33
appearances. And I really just
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00:30:36
enjoyed that growth. And we
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00:30:40
also began to sell. We developed a literary
Speaker:
00:30:43
department as well. I wasn't running it myself. I
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00:30:47
hired literary agents and built
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00:30:51
a literary department to be very successful. And we would sell
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00:30:55
talent, writers and directors,
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00:30:58
producers, but also we would sell
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00:31:01
packages where we would represent the entire
Speaker:
00:31:05
package of writer, director, producer,
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00:31:09
actors, actresses, et
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00:31:12
cetera. I'm going to keep
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00:31:16
nudging people to get the book because you tell lots of stories and there of
Speaker:
00:31:19
people you moved into and helped along with their career.
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00:31:23
What might be a couple things that you're the most proud of
Speaker:
00:31:27
from that work? Well, I've actually
Speaker:
00:31:30
fostered, parented many,
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00:31:33
not many, but several successful talent agencies of their own
Speaker:
00:31:37
today. So I'm very proud of that. Even though they became
Speaker:
00:31:41
competitors, I grew trained agents
Speaker:
00:31:44
within our company. They worked there three, four, five years,
Speaker:
00:31:48
six, seven, eight years, ten years, and then they went out on their own
Speaker:
00:31:52
and grew their own businesses. So I'm very proud of
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00:31:55
that. Even though they became competition, I was
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00:31:59
delighted that I had been helpful
Speaker:
00:32:02
in teaching them, training them, providing
Speaker:
00:32:06
them with a career path where they could earn themselves a
Speaker:
00:32:10
good, make a good living. Is there anything we, of course, could talk for hours
Speaker:
00:32:13
on this long, wonderful career you've had and the great journey you've had,
Speaker:
00:32:17
what haven't we mentioned that might be a good thing to wrap us up here?
Speaker:
00:32:20
I'm very proud of that. I have found
Speaker:
00:32:26
a number of performers, artists, actors and
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00:32:29
actresses, name talent have built them from
Speaker:
00:32:33
literally nothing up to becoming
Speaker:
00:32:36
valuable entities in their own right.
Speaker:
00:32:39
We may not represent them any longer
Speaker:
00:32:44
because the large corporate agencies would come and we were
Speaker:
00:32:47
kind of the people that built their careers, and then when they
Speaker:
00:32:51
got to be big enough, large enough and bringing in enough of an
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00:32:55
income that a large corporate agency would come after them
Speaker:
00:32:58
and steal them away from us. And it wasn't always
Speaker:
00:33:02
the case. But I'm proud of the fact that there are
Speaker:
00:33:06
several artists name artists today that
Speaker:
00:33:09
I'm responsible for, even though I've been out of the business
Speaker:
00:33:13
for five years. But I helped build their
Speaker:
00:33:16
careers, and I'm very pleased with the fact that I played
Speaker:
00:33:20
a hand, a major hand, in
Speaker:
00:33:24
developing them into desirable, in
Speaker:
00:33:27
demand artists who are paid great
Speaker:
00:33:31
sums of. Money for their services and are
Speaker:
00:33:34
nice people as well. They're very grateful for the fact
Speaker:
00:33:38
that, I wouldn't say all of them are grateful.
Speaker:
00:33:42
I think they're grateful for the fact that
Speaker:
00:33:45
Abrams of law or Howard Abrams have played an important part
Speaker:
00:33:49
in their livelihood and where they're at today.
Speaker:
00:33:53
Well, you are at all sorts of interesting things now, including
Speaker:
00:33:56
being involved here at Arts in Los Angeles and
Speaker:
00:34:00
continuing to have a touch point of arts a bit in New York when you
Speaker:
00:34:04
get out there, if people would like to find your work, we're going to
Speaker:
00:34:08
put in the show notes, links to people to find your
Speaker:
00:34:11
book. Harry, it's great talking to you. I always
Speaker:
00:34:15
find joy in it, and it's been great to see this book to come
Speaker:
00:34:19
fruition and find success. So it's
Speaker:
00:34:22
wonderful. And if anybody wants to find the book, we'll have all the links in
Speaker:
00:34:25
the show notes. Thank you very much for joining us on the show.
Speaker:
00:34:29
My pleasure. Thanks for asking me.
00:00:00
Harry, how old are you now? I'm 88.
Speaker:
00:00:03
Eightyat I don't really feel that I'm 88. I
Speaker:
00:00:07
don't act like I'm 88, but. How old were you when you
Speaker:
00:00:11
retired? How old when I. When I retired? I retired
Speaker:
00:00:15
five years ago. So I want to talk about several
Speaker:
00:00:19
things here. You are one of my favorite creative entrepreneurs because
Speaker:
00:00:22
you have, you have everything in one crazy
Speaker:
00:00:26
career lifetime. You created your own business from
Speaker:
00:00:29
nothing. You changed your own business repeatedly and kind
Speaker:
00:00:33
of repartnered and rethought about what you were going to do.
Speaker:
00:00:37
You had to think about your next generation leadership. You
Speaker:
00:00:41
had to think about training people and what the heartbeat is of an
Speaker:
00:00:45
entrepreneurial venture in the creative industries. You got to help other
Speaker:
00:00:48
people and you got to help figure out what was happening
Speaker:
00:00:52
next in changing sectors. All things I find really fascinating.
Speaker:
00:00:56
I want to try to hit heartbeats on that because
Speaker:
00:01:00
you've had to kind of shift gears many times. How
Speaker:
00:01:03
old were you when you did your first entertainment
Speaker:
00:01:07
doll? Well, I started out in a training program at
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00:01:11
MCA, a talent agency, which was then a talent
Speaker:
00:01:14
agency. I came out of UCLA, went in the military for
Speaker:
00:01:17
six months, came out of the military, looked for a job.
Speaker:
00:01:21
I wanted to be in the entertainment industry. I'm not going to bore you
Speaker:
00:01:25
with. The story about, and it's in the. Book as well, couldn't get a job
Speaker:
00:01:29
in the midst of a recession. That country was. And
Speaker:
00:01:33
people were being laid off right and left in the entertainment industry.
Speaker:
00:01:36
Being at the business school at UCLA, I learned how to write
Speaker:
00:01:40
a letter of inquiry, a letter looking for a job.
Speaker:
00:01:44
And I wrote this letter to two agencies that
Speaker:
00:01:48
then had training programs. One was MCA and the other was the William
Speaker:
00:01:51
Morris Agency. I applied for position in both those
Speaker:
00:01:55
places, and I was able to get interviews with them,
Speaker:
00:01:59
with the personnel directors. Then I had to go through
Speaker:
00:02:03
a series of interviews with the department heads. There were ten
Speaker:
00:02:06
department heads, and I had to make myself available
Speaker:
00:02:10
when they were available. And so it took about another few months,
Speaker:
00:02:14
and you could be rejected anywhere along the way, and
Speaker:
00:02:17
this is, by the way, to get into the training program at either of these
Speaker:
00:02:21
places. And the pay was $40 a week. But I
Speaker:
00:02:25
desperately wanted to get in the entertainment industry, not as an artist, not as
Speaker:
00:02:29
a performer, but on the business side.
Speaker:
00:02:32
And I went through the process, went through all the interviews
Speaker:
00:02:36
and finished all the interviews, took about three months with each one of
Speaker:
00:02:40
them. And I got a letter from each of the personnel directors
Speaker:
00:02:43
saying, dear Harry, you've successfully passed our interview process.
Speaker:
00:02:47
And I assumed that when I opened this letter, I would be
Speaker:
00:02:50
offered a job. But they said, we're going to put you on a list
Speaker:
00:02:54
of approved applicants, and when your name rises to
Speaker:
00:02:58
the top of the list, don't call us, we'll call you.
Speaker:
00:03:02
And I said, well, how long is that going to take? A week, two weeks,
Speaker:
00:03:05
a month, six months, a year? We can't tell you,
Speaker:
00:03:09
is what they said. Just don't call us. We'll call you.
Speaker:
00:03:13
So I had to find a job at that point because I came from a
Speaker:
00:03:16
very poor family. My father worked in a print shop, and my mother
Speaker:
00:03:20
worked at Thompson, Ramo, Wooldrich,
Speaker:
00:03:23
TRW. I must admit, I've never known what
Speaker:
00:03:26
TRW stood for, so that's good to know. We come from a
Speaker:
00:03:30
very poor family, and so we had no contacts in the talent
Speaker:
00:03:34
agency or in the entertainment industry as a whole.
Speaker:
00:03:37
When I fainted dead away at pre med at the hospital and
Speaker:
00:03:41
went to UCLA, the counseling bureau, they came up with the idea
Speaker:
00:03:45
that I had no interest in fields of science, but that I had a strong
Speaker:
00:03:49
interest in entertainment and in business. And so that's what I decided to
Speaker:
00:03:52
focus on. And so I wrote these letters, got an interview with these
Speaker:
00:03:56
people, and my mother and father
Speaker:
00:04:00
said, entertainment. What was entertainment
Speaker:
00:04:04
then? Was it live theater, film? What year was this
Speaker:
00:04:07
live theater? It was feature film. It was television. They were all
Speaker:
00:04:11
three active areas of entertainment and
Speaker:
00:04:15
musical performers, the recording industry and all that. The
Speaker:
00:04:18
concerts. That's an area that I never got into that I didn't
Speaker:
00:04:22
want to get into personal appearances in concerts
Speaker:
00:04:26
anyway, so I. And my mother, father said, so get a job
Speaker:
00:04:29
already, for God's sake.
Speaker:
00:04:33
My uncle, he worked at Thrifty Drugstore, and
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Thrifty Drugstore had a chain of 80 stores up and down
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California. And he was in charge of housewares. He bought housewares
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for the company and distributed them. And one of the
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items that he bought were power lawnmowers.
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And he dealt with a company. A man by the name of
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Maury Loeber was his name. I remember his name vividly. And
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he owned a power Lawnmower production company in
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Richmond, Indiana, small farming town
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00:05:07
70 miles due east of Indianapolis on
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00:05:11
the Ohio border. Mr. Lober came into town, and
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my uncle introduced me to him. And Mr. Lober said,
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00:05:18
harry, would you. I'm going to offer you a job. You're looking for a position.
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I'd like you to come to work for me at the power Lawnmower Company in
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Richmond, Indiana. It was called the George W. Davis, G. W.
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00:05:29
Davis Lawnmower Company. I took the job. I had
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never been to that. I'd really not been out of Los Angeles
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at all, with the exception of my six months in the
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00:05:40
service, which was in San Antonio, Texas. I
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had always heard about the Midwest and how people were. Their
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values were really terrific, and wonderful people came out of the
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Midwest. So I took him up on his job offer was $120
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a week, a lot more than $40 a week.
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And I moved to Richmond, Indiana. Small
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town, maybe 15, 20,000 people, a farming
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00:06:06
town. And I went to work at this company, and I worked at this
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company doing everything and anything dealing
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00:06:14
with manufacturing and production and sales and
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00:06:17
distribution. And he had about 150 factory
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00:06:21
workers there. And there was a superintendent who ran the
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place. And I was kind of Mr. Lobers.
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He didn't have any children. He was married, but he didn't have any children. And
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he grew to take me in like his son. And I did
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everything and anything to do with production of lawnmowers. I was in charge of
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purchasing. I purchased all the raw goods that went into the
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lawnmowers. I dealt with all kinds of suppliers around the country.
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One day my mother calls me about 14 months a year, and two months
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00:06:51
into my stay in Richmond, Indiana. She says, I got
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00:06:55
a letter here from the William Morris Agency. So I said, we'll open it up.
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She opened it up and said, dear Harry, your name has risen to the top
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00:07:02
of the list, and you have 72 hours to
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00:07:06
accept the position to come into our training program. The pay is
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$40 a week. And during my. He said, you have
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00:07:13
72 hours to accept the job or not. If you don't take the job in
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00:07:17
72 hours, we're going to go on to the next person on the list. Well,
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during my interview process with the ten department
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00:07:25
heads, my perception of the caliber
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00:07:28
and the quality of the agents at MCA versus William
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Morris, I felt that the agents at MCA were far
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superior, were brighter, sharper, more aggressive, et
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cetera. And so I took a calculated risk,
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00:07:43
and I turned the offer down. But before I turned the
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offer down, I spoke to my mother and father, and they said,
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00:07:51
$125. You're making $125 to take a job
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00:07:54
for $40 a week? This is ridiculous. I called Mr.
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00:07:58
Glover to tell him he was in New York, I was going to be leaving.
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I was handing him my letter of resignation for two weeks
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00:08:05
notice, and he said, you haven't accepted the job yet, have you? And
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I said, well, why do you ask? He said, because
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I'm on the airplane the next day. Of flying in to meet with
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you. I'm going to try to persuade you to the contrary.
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00:08:19
So he came in and took me out to dinner the next night, and he
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00:08:23
said, you're going to take a job for $40 a
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week. You're making $125 a week. He then began to
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00:08:31
reevaluate just how bright I was, and he
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00:08:35
said, you know what? I'm going to double his salary. I'm going to make it
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$250 a. Week, which was a lot of money. At that time, which
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was a lot of money at that time, especially for a young person like
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myself. And I turned him down. I told him,
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Mr. Loba, my heart is in the entertainment industry. That's what I want to get
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00:08:52
into. So I've got to leave. And I left.
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Two weeks later. I moved to Los Angeles. I went to work in a training.
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Program at that NCAA that you ended up accepting. That
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00:09:03
one called about four months later, and your name is written to the
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00:09:07
top of the list. You have 24 hours to accept the position.
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I said, I don't need 24 hours, Mr. Zuck, when do I start?
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And I took that job for $40 a week.
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I left the job for $250 a week, and that's
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00:09:22
where I started. I started in the training program at MCA, which had a
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very sophisticated, well structured training program.
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Six guys worked in the mailroom. I came in as a number six guy,
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00:09:33
and you had to work your way up. And when they got up to
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the number one position, I'm going to pause. You a second and
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00:09:41
ask a few questions. One of them is you've
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00:09:44
three times talked about the people, the caliber of the
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00:09:48
people, and very specific of remembering names. I know you've
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00:09:52
working on your books. Some of those you remember possibly even more vividly.
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Has that been a recurring thread thereafter, that the quality
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00:10:00
of people has been a driving factor for
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00:10:03
you? No question about it. I really enjoy
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00:10:07
dealing with the quality of people, what kind of people they are,
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what their education has been, what their degree of success has been,
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00:10:15
what field that they're in. I'm always interested in people who
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00:10:18
have developed, have moved themselves
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00:10:22
along, have been motivated by success
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00:10:26
and advancement and earning more money.
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00:10:30
And so the quality of people has always been very
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00:10:33
important to me. The caliber and the quality of the people at
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MCA were far superior to the people at people can
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00:10:40
argue with me about that. That's my opinion, and, well, you got. To live with
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00:10:44
it afterwards as well, and spend a lot of time in this space. Let
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00:10:48
me then sort of take you through one sort of sidebar question, which is the
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00:10:51
getting started in entertainment? Sometimes it's who you know. You've
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00:10:55
definitely told the opposite story here. You've told a story of
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00:10:59
persistence. What skills did you find
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00:11:02
really helped you in your first five years? Human relations,
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00:11:06
getting along with people, being able to accept
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00:11:10
just about anyone for whatever they do. I
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00:11:14
enjoy talking to people. I enjoy seeing how people have
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00:11:18
molded their lives and their
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00:11:21
professional lives, their family lives. And I've always tried,
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00:11:25
I've admired people who've had those successes.
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And so I found myself being, getting
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00:11:33
closer with people who have done that. And it
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also instilled in me a desire to become
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00:11:40
successful as they had become. I guess that's the way I would
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answer that. Success is what success in
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00:11:48
achievement, of type of work that you did and the caliber and the level at
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00:11:51
which you did it. And success also in
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00:11:55
financial success as well. And also
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success in. I was in the talent agency business when
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00:12:03
I could be successful of finding an artist
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and helping move their career along
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00:12:11
to where they became a star. That to me
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00:12:15
was tremendous success and a great
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00:12:18
deal of achievement. So you
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00:12:22
left MCA to start what was the first
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00:12:26
of your own sort of pieces of a company. What triggered your
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00:12:30
departure? It wasn't that I left MCA. MCA
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00:12:33
left me. Lou Wasserman ran the business company at that
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00:12:37
time. And MCA, they bought Universal Pictures,
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Universal Studios, all of the property, all the soundstages,
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00:12:45
all of the library, everything that Universal owned. And
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00:12:48
so they were buying all of their talent
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00:12:52
at Universal from their talent agency for
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00:12:56
several months, maybe even a year or
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two. And the other agencies, like the William Morris Agency
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00:13:03
and ICM and other talent agencies were having trouble
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getting in the front door selling any talent to
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00:13:10
MCA. So, I mean, too, at Universal. So what
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happened is they felt that. They
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become a monopoly of sorts. So they filed a
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lawsuit against MCA saying that they were in
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violation of the Sherman Clayton Antitrust Act. They were
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a monopoly. And as a result, it took a long period
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00:13:32
of time. The wheels of justice grind very
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00:13:36
slowly, as they say. And it took two or three
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00:13:40
years for that lawsuit to make its way through whatever
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00:13:43
different levels of law that is in
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00:13:47
existence. And they finally got to
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Jack Kennedy was president at the time, Robert Kennedy
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was the attorney general, and it was him, his
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lawsuit against MCA. And finally they came to the
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00:14:02
conclusion the government did U. S. Government that they
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were in violation. MCA was in violation of the
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Sherman Clayton Antitrust Act. They were a monopoly.
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And they said to MCA, hex came down after
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00:14:16
two or three years. You either have to stay in the talent agency
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00:14:20
business, or you stay in motion picture and television production. You cannot
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00:14:24
be in both. And so it was a fairly easy decision for
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00:14:27
MCA, the parent company, to make at that time, because the gross dollar
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00:14:31
revenue for Universal, I mean, for
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MCA, was much smaller,
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00:14:38
80 some odd million dollars. Whereas
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I was going to say, though. The talent agency business hadn't yet grown to what
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00:14:46
it's become and the various scales that it's
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00:14:50
become. So at that point in time, what level of success had
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00:14:54
you risen to at this point in time? You had your own clients, you
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00:14:58
had your own expertise? You
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00:15:01
mean, at that point in time. When split from, by the
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00:15:05
way, the director from the government said to MCA, the parent
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00:15:08
company, you cannot just dismiss and terminate all of your
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00:15:12
employees, all your agents, you have to offer them all positions
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00:15:16
in production, motion picture and television production at
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00:15:19
Universal. And so all of the
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00:15:22
employees there were, I don't know, a couple thousand around the world, if
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00:15:26
that many. Everyone was offered a position, including myself,
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00:15:30
to go into motion picture or television production. And
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I'd say about 90% of the
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00:15:38
agents all went into motion television production.
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Yeah, they were immediate job with a salary, et
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00:15:45
cetera. But I had been working with this gentleman
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00:15:49
by the name of Noel Rubelov,
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00:15:53
moved out of the mailroom into that division or that department of the
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00:15:57
agency that dealt with commercials, radio and
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00:16:00
television commercials. It dealt with MCs,
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00:16:04
hosts of game shows, queer shows, audience participation
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00:16:08
shows, radio personalities. It was an area of the
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00:16:12
business that most talent agents didn't want to get into.
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00:16:15
Most talent agency wanted to be a motion pictures and television
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00:16:19
production or a theater production, much more glamorous.
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00:16:23
But I liked working with Ruboloff. He was eight years my
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00:16:27
senior, and I liked working with him in that
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00:16:31
area of the business at MCA. And I'd been there for about, I
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00:16:34
don't know, maybe four or five, six years roughly. At that point, I
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00:16:38
had decided I went to him. He was eight years my senior. As
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00:16:42
I say, I said, I think this is a great time for us to open
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00:16:45
up our own shop. And because all the clientele that we were
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00:16:49
representing were going to be without agents, they needed agency
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00:16:52
representation. So I said, I think we should
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00:16:56
not go into motion picture and television product and
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00:16:59
open our own shop. And that's what we did. We opened our
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00:17:03
own agency. It was called Abrams Rubeloffs and
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00:17:07
Associates. And even though he was my senior
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00:17:10
by eight years and had much more experience, when we
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00:17:14
went to open our bank account, City National bank, they said,
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00:17:18
what do you want to call your bank account? I popped up and I said,
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00:17:22
well, my last name is AB. We'll be first on every
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00:17:25
list. I think we should call it Abrams Ruboloff.
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00:17:29
And Ruboloff readily agreed to that, or didn't move fast
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00:17:33
enough anyway, so that's how it came to be known. And
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we started our business in Los Angeles. And I used to fly to New
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00:17:40
York to fly to Madison Avenue. I covered Madison Avenue. It
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00:17:44
was like a blanket dealing with all kinds of ad agencies,
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00:17:48
marketing our clientele. Radio and television commercials was our
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00:17:52
biggest source of revenue and income in those days, although
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00:17:56
we did do a healthy business in MCs and
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00:18:00
hosts game shows, quiz shows, audience participation
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00:18:04
shows. Bob Barker, for example, was one of our clients,
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00:18:07
people like Gary Owens and Jack Nars and
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00:18:11
Tom Kennedy. You won't recognize these names. Well, I
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00:18:15
will, but not all of our listeners. Well, yeah, not all of the listeners.
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00:18:18
And that specialization was special to
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00:18:22
us. There weren't any other agencies. Well, there were smaller
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00:18:25
agencies, one person, two person shops. When we went
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00:18:29
out on our own, we had three or four employees. And so
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00:18:33
we started building the company, and it was
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00:18:36
successful. And I was the one in Los Angeles
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00:18:40
who would travel to New York all the time
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00:18:44
to go up and down Madison Avenue, could care
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00:18:47
less about New York City. So you are someone who
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00:18:51
steps into risk. Risk makes you happy
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00:18:54
or you're comfortable with risk, or what makes it so that
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00:18:58
you're willing to step into a new situation.
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00:19:02
It's attractive to me because if I feel that I can, I manage a big
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00:19:06
achievement and go into something new and
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00:19:10
make it into something successful. So I didn't mind risk
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00:19:14
at all. I really enjoyed the competition.
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00:19:18
I enjoyed business as a whole. But I really was
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00:19:22
fascinated by business in the entertainment industry. But
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00:19:25
again, not, I didn't want to get into
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00:19:29
production that I felt was too much of a risk.
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00:19:33
But being that we had developed a terrific talent agency
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00:19:36
with outstanding clientele in a specialized
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00:19:40
area that most other talent
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00:19:43
agencies were not in. So I enjoyed the
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00:19:47
risk and the reward and, of course, the rewards.
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00:19:51
Of course, yes, there's no rewards without
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00:19:54
any risk. So in this saga, because the
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00:19:58
saga, I think, moves as well into it, becoming Abrams artist,
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00:20:02
what were the main struggles that you went through in having your own business?
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00:20:06
Well, we did have competition.
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00:20:10
William Morris Agency had a department or a division that did the same thing, that
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00:20:14
DM had a similar CAA, didn't
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00:20:18
have that department at that time. I
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00:20:22
found talent. I found developed artists.
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00:20:25
We became very well known. And eventually
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00:20:29
Rubiloff and I were together for about 1415 years.
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00:20:33
And at one point in our
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00:20:36
partnership, we broke up
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00:20:41
and I opened up Abrams artists. At that point, in other
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00:20:45
words, instead of being Abram Schmugaloff, and I continued to build, and
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00:20:49
I really enjoyed not only
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00:20:52
finding talent, performing talent artists,
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00:20:55
but I also enjoyed finding talented people. And
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00:20:59
I liked to train them and give them opportunities for
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00:21:03
growth and advancement like I had had
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00:21:06
myself. And so that was the
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00:21:10
biggest motivation for writing
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00:21:14
my book, was to provide some sort of where people
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00:21:17
would want to perhaps consider coming out with a
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00:21:21
school with a master's degree in business, or maybe having gone
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00:21:25
into business after, or gone into some form of employment
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00:21:29
after college, and finding either with an
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00:21:32
undergraduate or graduate degree and finding that they
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00:21:36
ward that through, they're happy with their career choice. So
Speaker:
00:21:40
after three or four years, they began to look elsewhere.
Speaker:
00:21:43
When they want to get in the entertainment industry, they didn't even think about
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00:21:47
the fact they assumed everything was in production. But the
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00:21:51
key part of the entertainment industry that I think that drove it, in my
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00:21:55
humble opinion, were the talent agencies.
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00:21:59
And so I wanted to train people to become talent
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00:22:02
agents and help people
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00:22:06
find career choices, career paths in entertainment,
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00:22:10
other than performing, other than as an artist.
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00:22:13
When we first met, now was a few years ago,
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00:22:17
and you, at the time, I remember, were really looking at new
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00:22:21
technologies and getting your agents
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00:22:24
involved in things like early internet, YouTube,
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00:22:28
early social media, social media, early
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00:22:31
influencer work. How did you figure which technologies were
Speaker:
00:22:35
ready for you guys to lean into? Well, I think it kind of
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00:22:39
developed on its own, and social media
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00:22:42
became important. I myself, if not,
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00:22:46
I'm not in any of those forms of social
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00:22:49
media myself, personally. In those particular
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00:22:53
fields, influencers became very, very important.
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00:22:56
Influencers are the outgrowth of social media, and
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00:23:00
influencers are people that earn great sums of money, and
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00:23:04
they have representatives, agents,
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00:23:07
managers who manage them and help move their careers
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00:23:11
along. And I felt that that was an area that I wanted
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00:23:14
to dip my toe into. I dipped my
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00:23:18
toe in, and I began to look for
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00:23:22
people. I myself didn't do it. I hired someone
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00:23:26
who was a younger person than I, who was much more
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00:23:29
knowledgeable and conversant with social media than I was,
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00:23:33
and I hired him to run that department
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00:23:37
or division of the agency. It's interesting because not only
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00:23:41
do those influencers
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00:23:44
as influencers, they are very much in demand or
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00:23:48
can become very much in demand as a result of social media,
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00:23:52
but a number of them also were
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00:23:55
hosts, potential hosts, MCs,
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00:23:59
people of that nature. And so I felt it was
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00:24:03
very similar to what our clientele were
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00:24:07
all about. I spent time developing a
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00:24:10
division or a department of the agency, and that department or division
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00:24:14
of the agency grew to be the most productive
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00:24:18
of the entire. Most productive of the entire
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00:24:22
income or revenue of the agency was that department
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00:24:26
or that division. So I invite my mother and my father to
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00:24:30
come into my office one day and to sit there or stand
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00:24:33
there and watch me work and see what I did every day
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00:24:37
and how I dealt with people and not only our
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00:24:41
clientele, but the people that we had to sell our clientele to
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00:24:47
have meetings with people, our
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00:24:50
clients, who were very
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00:24:54
demanding. And at the end of about a week, my
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00:24:57
father said to me, both of them said, at the same time,
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00:25:01
Harry, you're actually practicing medicine every day of the week. You're dealing
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00:25:05
with crazy people.
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00:25:09
And so, yeah, my dad said, you can hang your shingle right outside
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00:25:13
your office door. Harry Abrams, MD being an
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00:25:17
agent, being a good psychologist and social psychologist, and
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00:25:20
understanding how everybody's interior nuts and bolts
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00:25:24
work. So I totally see that. When did you think you were
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00:25:27
successful? Well, when I thought it was
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00:25:31
successful when MCA broke up, it was very fortuitous
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00:25:35
that they broke up, that we were able to go out. I figured we had
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00:25:40
an area of the business we had very little competition in.
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00:25:43
And so I felt we were. I don't know how one
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00:25:47
measures success, but we were able to pay our bills
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00:25:51
and employ people and still have money left.
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00:25:54
Profit, always good. And have your own time, but your time
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00:25:58
is oftentimes your clients. So
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00:26:02
you retired later than a lot of people. How did
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00:26:06
you considering that this business was in many ways tied in
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00:26:10
with you, even though you hired great people and trained them to work for you,
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00:26:13
how was that process of moving the company to
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00:26:17
the next generation? And I know they're wonderful folks and they will hear
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00:26:21
this, but how did you go through the process of thinking about
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00:26:25
the next generation of the company? Well, first of all,
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00:26:28
we started out in a particular area, which was a very small
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00:26:32
area of the business. And the larger area of the
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00:26:36
business is when One moves into
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00:26:40
with performers. Because you ended up in almost every area of
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00:26:44
the business by the time that you got to be a multi city,
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00:26:48
multi space company, advertising, a commercial. End of our
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00:26:52
business became a very small end of our business,
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00:26:56
and we became a full fledged talent agency in,
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00:27:00
I mean, in New York initially, where I was only
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00:27:04
in New York to begin with, I used to fly out to Los Angeles and
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00:27:08
sell that market, our talent in LA. And
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00:27:11
eventually I felt we needed to have an office here. And
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00:27:16
I hired a couple of people from
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00:27:19
one of our competitors, the Gersh agency,
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00:27:23
had two guys, Scott Harris and Howard Goldberg,
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00:27:27
guys that I used to send my talent
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00:27:31
to from New Yorkers. We didn't have an office. I'd
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00:27:34
send them out there. And so they became an affiliate or
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00:27:38
corresponding talent agency for us. And so we
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00:27:41
were very close to them when they were at the Gersh office. And
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00:27:45
then I hired them away and we set up an office in
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00:27:49
LA under our title. It was
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00:27:52
called Abrams. And I put their names on the door,
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00:27:56
Abrams, Harris and Gold, because I was not
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00:27:59
there. Under screen actors regulations, rules and
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00:28:03
regulations, someone has to be name
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00:28:06
value in each of the offices. So I
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00:28:10
put their names on the door even though they had no
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00:28:14
financial or equity interest in the company. And what
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00:28:17
happened is we continued to grow and prosper. And first
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00:28:21
year, there were two young guys, much younger than I
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00:28:25
was. They didn't know how to run a business. So I would
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00:28:29
spend a week in LA and a week in New York and help them
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00:28:33
build the business in LA.
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00:28:36
But again, they had their names on the
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00:28:40
people, you know, respective artists
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00:28:43
would assume that they were at an equity, even though they did not.
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00:28:47
And what took place is continuing to grow and grow and
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00:28:51
grow. After about five years, the two
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00:28:55
fellows, Howard Goldberg and Scott
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00:28:58
Harris, felt that they didn't really need me any
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00:29:01
longer, so they went ahead and set up their own
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00:29:05
business. And under the name of, originally,
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00:29:08
Harrison Goldberg, until, unfortunately, Howard Goldberg
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00:29:12
passed away at an early age from AIDS,
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00:29:16
unfortunately. And so they changed the
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00:29:19
name. Instead of it being Harrison Goldberg, they changed
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00:29:23
it to innovative artists. And that's the name that
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00:29:27
they have shared, they have kept today, Scott Harris,
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00:29:30
who owns and runs that business today. So that was an example
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00:29:34
of hiring people that then grew into their own business. How
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00:29:38
did you grow your succession management? Eddie Brooms,
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00:29:41
artists who. Well, and I continued to
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00:29:45
grow. And adding more
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00:29:49
agents from our training program, adding more important
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00:29:52
clientele, developing them into important
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00:29:56
stars in their own right, we would develop them. Wasn't
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00:30:00
always me selling talent that we got
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00:30:03
from another agency. And the agency continued to grow.
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00:30:07
When I sold the business five years ago, now
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00:30:11
there were about 150 people working for the company between
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00:30:15
New York and LA, and in all kinds
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00:30:18
of different divisions or departments. The only
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00:30:22
area, including literary, including theater, motion
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00:30:25
pictures, actors, actresses. The only area that we did
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00:30:29
not get into was the area of music and concerts and personal
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00:30:33
appearances. And I really just
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00:30:36
enjoyed that growth. And we
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00:30:40
also began to sell. We developed a literary
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00:30:43
department as well. I wasn't running it myself. I
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00:30:47
hired literary agents and built
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00:30:51
a literary department to be very successful. And we would sell
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00:30:55
talent, writers and directors,
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00:30:58
producers, but also we would sell
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00:31:01
packages where we would represent the entire
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00:31:05
package of writer, director, producer,
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00:31:09
actors, actresses, et
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00:31:12
cetera. I'm going to keep
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00:31:16
nudging people to get the book because you tell lots of stories and there of
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00:31:19
people you moved into and helped along with their career.
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00:31:23
What might be a couple things that you're the most proud of
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00:31:27
from that work? Well, I've actually
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00:31:30
fostered, parented many,
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00:31:33
not many, but several successful talent agencies of their own
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00:31:37
today. So I'm very proud of that. Even though they became
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00:31:41
competitors, I grew trained agents
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00:31:44
within our company. They worked there three, four, five years,
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00:31:48
six, seven, eight years, ten years, and then they went out on their own
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00:31:52
and grew their own businesses. So I'm very proud of
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00:31:55
that. Even though they became competition, I was
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00:31:59
delighted that I had been helpful
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00:32:02
in teaching them, training them, providing
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00:32:06
them with a career path where they could earn themselves a
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00:32:10
good, make a good living. Is there anything we, of course, could talk for hours
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00:32:13
on this long, wonderful career you've had and the great journey you've had,
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00:32:17
what haven't we mentioned that might be a good thing to wrap us up here?
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00:32:20
I'm very proud of that. I have found
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00:32:26
a number of performers, artists, actors and
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00:32:29
actresses, name talent have built them from
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00:32:33
literally nothing up to becoming
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00:32:36
valuable entities in their own right.
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00:32:39
We may not represent them any longer
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00:32:44
because the large corporate agencies would come and we were
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00:32:47
kind of the people that built their careers, and then when they
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00:32:51
got to be big enough, large enough and bringing in enough of an
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00:32:55
income that a large corporate agency would come after them
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00:32:58
and steal them away from us. And it wasn't always
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00:33:02
the case. But I'm proud of the fact that there are
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00:33:06
several artists name artists today that
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00:33:09
I'm responsible for, even though I've been out of the business
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00:33:13
for five years. But I helped build their
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00:33:16
careers, and I'm very pleased with the fact that I played
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00:33:20
a hand, a major hand, in
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00:33:24
developing them into desirable, in
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00:33:27
demand artists who are paid great
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00:33:31
sums of. Money for their services and are
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00:33:34
nice people as well. They're very grateful for the fact
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00:33:38
that, I wouldn't say all of them are grateful.
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00:33:42
I think they're grateful for the fact that
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00:33:45
Abrams of law or Howard Abrams have played an important part
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00:33:49
in their livelihood and where they're at today.
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00:33:53
Well, you are at all sorts of interesting things now, including
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00:33:56
being involved here at Arts in Los Angeles and
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00:34:00
continuing to have a touch point of arts a bit in New York when you
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00:34:04
get out there, if people would like to find your work, we're going to
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00:34:08
put in the show notes, links to people to find your
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00:34:11
book. Harry, it's great talking to you. I always
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00:34:15
find joy in it, and it's been great to see this book to come
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00:34:19
fruition and find success. So it's
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00:34:22
wonderful. And if anybody wants to find the book, we'll have all the links in
Speaker:
00:34:25
the show notes. Thank you very much for joining us on the show.
Speaker:
00:34:29
My pleasure. Thanks for asking me.
