Abe Lastfogel

Abraham Isaac "Abe" Lastfogel (May 17, 1898 - August 27, 1984) was one of the first employees and a long-time President of the William Morris Agency, a large diverisified talent agency.

Abe was the seventh son of "a Yiddish-speaking animal skinner who had fled Russia in 1889 to escape the pogroms and found work in the Gansevoort Street meatpacking district by the docks of the Lower West Side. Born in 1898, the boy had grown up in a cold-water flat on East Forty-ninth Street... He was a scappy kid, compact and solidly built..." (The Agency, pg. 34)

The William Morris Agency hired Abe Lastfogel in 1912 as an office boy. Finding success in the rapidly growing firm, Lastfogel ultimately moved to Hollywood in 1932 to manage WMA's Los Angeles office.

During World War II, Lastfogel mounted USO-Camp Shows with more than 7000 performers, including Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Gary Cooper, Bing Crosby, Dinah Shore and James Stewart, to two hundred million soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines around the world. (pg. 82)

Abe Lastfogel died of a heart attack in 1984 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and was interred in the Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery.

References

* Rose, Frank. 1995. "The Agency: William Morris and the Hidden History of Show Business"; Harpercollins; ISBN 0-88730-749-3