Tales of an Actors' Agent by Michael Whitehall

Author:Michael Whitehall [Whitehall, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: autobiography, acting, actors' agent, michael whitehall, memoir
Publisher: Apostrophe Books Ltd
Published: 2013-03-09T00:00:00+00:00

6. The Dilettantes of St James’s

In the old days, agents were the butt of music hall jokes, characterised as ill-bred, barely literate low-lifers, working out of grubby one-room offices on the Charing Cross Road. Their American counterparts were usually portrayed in movies as dishonest, overweight, cigar-chomping wide boys. Julian was as far a cry from these two stereotypes as it was possible to be, apart perhaps from the odd cigar. Brown trilby hat (from Locks, of course), covert coat, grey suit, Turnbull & Asser shirt and an old school tie constituted his uniform. (At weekends a pair of binoculars around his neck and a racing badge were added to this get-up.) Good-looking in a ‘hooray’ kind of way, with thinning hair and piercing blue eyes, Julian had been working for Terence Plunkett Greene for some years and was also looking for a change in direction. We had a couple of meetings in a pub in Albemarle Street, and then Julian asked me to lunch with Terry Plunkett Greene at the Turf Club. This came as a surprise: my interest in working with Julian didn’t extend to Mr Plunkett Greene.

‘A very good afternoon to you, sir,’ said Mr Plunkett Greene as I walked into the bar. ‘You must be Mr Whitehall?’

In front of me, clutching a gin and tonic, stood this middle-aged dandy. He was wearing a bottle-green tweed suit with velvet collar, a silk tie with a pearl tie pin, a red pocket handkerchief, spats and, attached precariously to his right eye, a monocle; an upmarket version of ventriloquist Ray Alan’s dummy, Lord Charles.

Terry was, however, no dummy. Charming and articulate, he was an agent very much of the old school, but absolutely not the casting I envisaged for our new agency. Their proposal was that Julian and I would be directors of the new company, and Terry would be chairman. The unwieldy name of ‘Plunkett Greene, Belfrage & Whitehall’ was suggested, and their existing offices in Jermyn Street were offered as the company’s new premises. None of which appealed to me at all. I had a vision of a new, thrusting theatrical agency, which would attract the crème de la crème of acting talent, offering superlative pastoral management, a service our larger and more powerful rivals would be unable to match. But what I seemed to be walking into was a team of time-warped ‘hooray Henrys’ who looked as though they’d be more at home in the winner’s enclosure at Sandown Park than at the BAFTA Awards. But looks can be deceptive, and in Julian’s case they certainly deceived me. I learned more about agents and agency from him than from anyone else, and I have many reasons to be grateful to him.

I never got that far with Terry. I told Julian after our meeting that if we were going to move forward together, it would have to be without Terry. It took Julian some time to mull over this. After a few days, he finally telephoned me to say that Terry had agreed to step aside.

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