William Morris

Over a May 15 lunch at the Beverly Wilshire hotel, William Morris Agency Chairman Jim Wiatt received sobering advice from his close friends, entertainment attorney Skip Brittenham and former Viacom Inc. executive Tom Freston. The more than century-old talent agency was on the cusp of merging with hotshot rival Endeavor, and it was becoming clear that there would be no place at the table for Wiatt.

Northeast London's William Morris Gallery has reopened after an $8-million overhaul that has reinvigorated the childhood home of Britain's Arts and Crafts pioneer. This elegant parkland villa in Walthamstow -- a free-entry attraction -- showcases Morris' oeuvre, from curlicue tapestries to heroic-themed stained glass, using touchscreens, interactive activities and period artifacts to illuminate a Victorian who believed beauty was essential to human existence. The first of nine rooms introduces Morris, stoking your interest for the next room's early experiments in painting, embroidery and furniture-making.

There's a lot less William Morris Agency left to merge with Endeavor. The 111-year-old talent agency Monday laid off more than 120 people, or about 15% of its staff, in preparation for its pending merger with competitor Endeavor. About 40 of the affected employees were agents, and the rest were support staff. The layoffs, which have been expected since the two companies agreed to join forces late last month, hit the motion picture and television talent and literary departments the hardest.

Russell Arms Actor who started on 'Your Hit Parade' Russell Arms, 92, a singer and actor who was a regular vocalist on the popular TV musical program "Your Hit Parade" from 1952 to 1957, died Monday at his home in Hamilton, Ill., where he had retired with his wife, Mary Lynne. The Lamporte-St. Clair Funeral Home in Hamilton confirmed his death but did not give the cause. Along with other regular cast members Gisele MacKenzie, Snooky Lanson and Dorothy Collins, Arms performed what were billed as the seven most popular songs in the country every Saturday night on the NBC show.

The board of talent agency William Morris is set to discuss the potential merger with rival Endeavor at a meeting scheduled for today, and Endeavor's partners are expected to follow suit shortly, according to people close to the situation. Although the ongoing talks have generated lots of attention and media scrutiny, a merger of the two competing talent shops is hardly Microsoft marrying Apple: Combined, the agencies would have estimated annual revenue of about $300 million.

State Sen. Kevin Murray (D-Culver City) will join William Morris Agency when he leaves office in November because of term limits. Murray will be an executive for the agency's consulting department, where he will cut deals for existing clients and work to lure new business with government-related entities in need of representation. William Morris represents corporations such as General Motors and MySpace.

A boutique talent agency that specializes in TV journalists and hosts said it would team up with the much larger William Morris Agency to give its clients access to a broader range of projects. Los Angeles-based Ken Lindner & Associates, which represents clients such as NBC's Matt Lauer and ABC's Elizabeth Vargas, said it was partnering exclusively with William Morris, which represents ABC's Regis Philbin and "American Idol's" Ryan Seacrest, among others.

Longtime New York literary agent Robert Gottlieb, who in recent weeks lost his biggest client--author Tom Clancy--after 18 years, is leaving William Morris Agency. Gottlieb, a Morris board member and head of the agency's New York literary department, plans to start his own agency.

Robert Crestani, the head of worldwide television at the William Morris Agency Inc., will become president of C3, the production company created last month by Comcast Corp. and Richard Frank, the former chairman of television for Walt Disney Co. Crestani, who will take the post on Nov. 1 after 19 years at William Morris, currently oversees the packaging of talent for 19 prime-time network series, including "Murphy Brown" and "Mad About You."

Judy Scott-Fox, 56, veteran literary agent for the William Morris Agency. Born in Devon, England, she studied literature and began her career working for the English satirical magazine Private Eye. Later she managed the office for the Peter Cook and Dudley Moore revue in New York called "Beyond the Fringe." In 1965, Ms. Scott-Fox opened the U.S. office of the London-based Gregson & Wigan Agency.

Los Angeles developer and landlord CIM Group spent $47.8 million for two Beverly Hills office buildings that were once part of the former William Morris Agency headquarters. CIM Group, which is the largest commercial property owner in Hollywood, bought 150 and 151 S. El Camino Drive. The three-story buildings with a combined total of more than 116,000 square feet of office space occupy two blocks just south of Wilshire Boulevard and the so-called Golden Triangle heart of downtown Beverly Hills, said broker Bob Safai of Madison Partners.

Former William Morris Agency Chief Executive James Wiatt has listed his mansion in Pacific Palisades for sale at $16.5 million. The 11,544-square-foot house built in 2007 features a sweeping staircase, high ceilings, a paneled library/bar and a master bedroom suite with dual bathrooms, a marble fireplace and a patio. There are five bedrooms, 12 full bathrooms and five half-bathrooms. The nearly one-acre property includes a swimming pool, cabanas and a guest house. Public records show the property was purchased in 2004 for $3.2 million.

Rob Young's "Electric Eden" is a rich, overgrown garden of a book. Subtitled "Unearthing Britain's Visionary Music," its ostensible purpose is to chronicle the late 1960s/early 1970s heyday of British folk rock: artists such as Fairport Convention, Nick Drake, Vashti Bunyan, Pentangle, Shirley Collins and Richard Thompson, who captured something powerful and strange even as they failed to dent the U.S. charts. Many of them came to tragic ends as well — suicide, sudden loss of voice, decades of wandering in the artistic wilderness.

AOL souped up its Hollywood ambitions Wednesday by asking the former head of the William Morris Agency to leave his board seat in order to become a strategic consultant for the online media company. Jim Wiatt, who has been on AOL's board for a year, will step down to spend most of his time using his clout in the media business to help the company develop star-branded online video content and court major advertisers. Wiatt left William Morris before it merged with another talent agency, Endeavor, last year.

I was recently invited to review a superb jazz festival in Cheltenham, about two hours west of London, in the Cotswolds. "You're going to the Cotswolds?" my friends gushed. "Yes," I said. " Hugh Masekela will be there. And Jack DeJohnette. Nigel Kennedy. Madeleine Peyroux. Nice lineup." "Yes, but the Cotswolds!" they said, without the slightest interest in the jazz festival. "Be sure to go to Chipping Campden. And the Slaughters. Bourton-on-the-Water. Stow-on-the-Wold."

Michael S. Rosenfeld, a talent agent and producer who was one of the founding partners of Creative Artists Agency, has died. He was 75. Rosenfeld died Thursday of respiratory failure at Santa Monica UCLA Medical Center after a long illness, the agency announced. "He enjoyed an exemplary career as a talent agent," the agency said in a statement. "He played an important role in the growth and success of CAA, and prided himself on starting the agency's literary department." In 1975, Rosenfeld and four other successful middle-management executives with the William Morris Agency left to form Creative Artists Agency, which would become a talent agency powerhouse.

The William Morris Agency has announced plans to set up its own record label after receiving permission from the union that represents musicians. The Hollywood talent agency has yet to work out a name, staffing or corporate strategy, but said those issues would be worked out over the next three months and the label would be operated as a separate entity. "It seemed like a natural thing that didn't present any conflict issues," said the agency's chief operating officer, Walter Zifkin.

Helen M. Strauss, who created the literary department at the William Morris talent agency and whose clients came to include six Pulitzer Prize winners, died Sunday of cancer at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital in New York City. She was 83 and had been ill for the last year. Miss Strauss began her career with the story department of Paramount Pictures. In 1944, she joined the William Morris agency, which at that time handled mostly entertainers. She was asked to create a literary department.

This has turned out to be a bang-up year for literary biography, with notable new accounts of the lives of Arthur Miller, John Cheever, Arthur Koestler and, particularly, Joseph Frank's magisterial single-volume distillation of his long years of work on Dostoevsky. It's a nearly run thing, but if you're looking for just one literary life to give as a gift in this holiday season, you won't go wrong by choosing Michael Slater's " Charles Dickens." To an American audience these days, any mention of Dickens is likely to conjure more images of public television adaptations of his work than the season does sugar plum fairies.

Over a May 15 lunch at the Beverly Wilshire hotel, William Morris Agency Chairman Jim Wiatt received sobering advice from his close friends, entertainment attorney Skip Brittenham and former Viacom Inc. executive Tom Freston. The more than century-old talent agency was on the cusp of merging with hotshot rival Endeavor, and it was becoming clear that there would be no place at the table for Wiatt.