Known for her abrasive manner, the German-born Mengers represented numerous top film performers and filmmakers in the 1970s and 1980s. According to various sources, among those were Barbra Streisand, Ann-Margret, Cher, Ryan O’Neal, Faye Dunaway, Candice Bergen, Joan Collins, Steve McQueen, Nick Nolte, Burt Reynolds, Cybill Shepherd, Tuesday Weld, Tom Ewell, Paula Prentiss, Richard Benjamin, Tatum O’Neal, Ali MacGraw, Sidney Lumet, Gene Hackman, Peter Bogdanovich, and Brian De Palma.
“I never invited anyone who wasn’t successful,” Mengers, referring to her house parties, told The New Yorker in 1994. “I was ruthless about it. It was all stars. I would look around my living room at all of them and even I’d be impressed with myself.” Her own success, however, faded in the mid-80s when she briefly retired from the business. Later in the decade, Mengers was unable to lure much-needed top talent to the William Morris Agency. She left the agency in 1991.
“Her enemies—there is an ample supply—dismiss her as vulgar, venal, vindictive and untrustworthy, a puffball of bluff,” a 1973 Time article titled “Sweet and Sour Sue” reads. “Even some friends regard her with the affectionate respect that they might accord a pet barracuda.”
That same year, Mengers served as the basis for the character played by Dyan Cannon (one of Mengers’ clients) in Herbert Ross’ murder drama The Last of Sheila. (Ross, who called Cannon’s character “human, gamy, but not common,” was another client. Fellow Mengers client Anthony Perkins co-wrote the screenplay with Stephen Sondheim.)
In 1981, Mengers would serve as the basis for a less human and less gamy character: Shelley Winters’ obnoxious, vulgar lesbian agent Eva Brown (likely no coincidence that the name sounds like Eva Braun) in Blake Edwards’ anti-Hollywood satire S.O.B. (Another reason for the Eva Brown moniker may have been the fact that Mengers used to compare herself to All About Eve’s Eve Harrington, the ruthless climber played by Anne Baxter in the 1950 Best Picture Oscar winner.)
Mengers was married to Belgian writer-director Jean-Claude Tramont from 1973 until his death in 1996. Tramont’s three film credits as a director were Focal Point / Le Point de mire (1977), starring Annie Girardot and Jacques Dutronc; the flop All Night Long (1981), with Gene Hackman and Barbra Streisand in what amounted to a supporting role (the first of her career); and the cable TV drama As Summers Die (1986), featuring Scott Glenn, Jamie Lee Curtis, and a scene-stealing Bette Davis. Tramont also wrote the screenplay for the 1973 Elizabeth Taylor flop Ash Wednesday.
Now, Sue Mengers may have been the most powerful female Hollywood talent agent of the 1970s and 1980s, but she was hardly a pioneer in that field. Long before her entering the scene in the 1960s – representing Anthony Perkins and Julie Harris – there was Sue Carol, a former silent film actress who founded her own talent agency in the late 1930s. Carol, in fact, was in large part responsible for turning husband Alan Ladd into one of Paramount’s top stars of the 1940s.
Additionally, top publicist Helen Ferguson (another former silent film actress) at times doubled as a talent agent. In either function, among her clients were Loretta Young, Jeanette MacDonald, Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck, and Fay Wray.
The Last House on the Left villain David Hess
David Hess, probably best remembered for his serial killer Krug Stillo in Wes Craven’s controversial 1972 psycho-horror movie The Last House on the Left, has died at age 69.
According to reports, Craven later used Krug’s name as the basis for another horror film icon: Freddy Krueger, of the A Nightmare on Elm Street film series.
Born in New York City on Sept. 19, 1942, Hess initially worked as a songwriter for the likes of Elvis Presley, Sal Mineo, Andy Williams, and Pat Boone. In 1969, shortly before his entry into films, Hess became the head of A&R at Mercury Records. In addition to playing Krug in The Last House on the Left, he used his musical talents to compose the film’s soundtrack as well.
Among Hess’ other film credits were a hitman in Jack Arnold’s The Swiss Conspiracy (1976), starring David Janssen and Senta Berger; a murderous hitchhiker in Pasquale Festa Campanile’s The Naked Prey (1977), getting a fateful ride from Franco Nero and Corinne Cléry; and Alex, a rapist/sadist akin to Krug Stillo in Ruggero Deodato’s House on the Edge of the Park (1980).
Hess joined forces with Wes Craven once again in Swamp Thing (1982), starring Louis Jourdan and Adrienne Barbeau. From then on, Hess’ film work became less frequent, while moving further underground. Titles, some of which were made in Italy, include Jonathan of the Bears (1995), Zombie Nation (2004), and Smash Cut (2009).
As per online sources, Hess had four films in pre-production at this time, including a sequel to The House on the Edge of the Park, in which he was to bring Alex back.
Volker Schlöndorff, Ingmar Bergman actor Heinz Bennent
Veteran German actor Heinz Bennent died on Oct. 12. He was 90.
The Aachen-born (July 18, 1921) Heinz Bennent never became an international name despite several important roles in international films. Among those were Ingmar Bergman’s Anglo-German drama The Serpent’s Egg (1978), opposite Liv Ullmann and David Carradine; François Truffaut’s The Last Metro (1980), which earned Bennent a Best Supporting Actor Cesar nomination; and Andrzej Zulawski’s Franco-German psychological thriller Possession (1981), with Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neill.
Bennent’s German films include Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta’s The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (1975); Schlöndorff’s Academy Award winning drama The Tin Drum (1979); and Ute Wieland’s Im Jahr der Schildkröte (1988), which earned Bennent a Best Actor German Film Award.
Heinz Bennent’s children, Anne Bennent and David Bennent, are both actors. David had the lead in the World War II-set The Tin Drum, playing the boy/midget who never grows neither up nor old while wreaking havoc in the lives of all around him.