Jay Kanter, Agent for Marlon Brando and Marilyn Monroe, Dies at 97

Jay Kanter, whose long career as an agent to the stars — including Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe and Grace Kelly — and later as a studio executive made him one of the last of the generation of power brokers who dominated Hollywood in the late 20th century, died on Aug. 6 at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. He was 97.

His son Adam confirmed his death.

An acolyte of the superagent Lew Wasserman, Mr. Kanter was renowned as much for the career he led as for the stories people told about him.

He was a junior agent at MCA, Mr. Wasserman’s agency, in 1948 when he was asked to retrieve Mr. Brando from the train station.

Mr. Kanter took Mr. Brando to his aunt’s house, and the next morning to a meeting with the director Fred Zinnemann, who wanted to cast Mr. Brando in his next movie, “The Men.” Apparently Mr. Kanter made a good impression, because when he suggested that they proceed to MCA to meet some of its agents, he recalled, Mr. Brando replied: “I don’t have to meet anybody. You’re my agent.”

Mr. Brando’s Hollywood career was on the verge of stardom. And now, so was Mr. Kanter’s.

“Suddenly I was getting all these calls from these heads of studios,” he said in a 2017 interview, and within a few years he represented a long line of A-list talent.

The Kanter-Brando story became Hollywood lore, so much so that it provided the inspiration for a 1989 sitcom, “The Famous Teddy Z,” about a Hollywood star who picks out a mailroom clerk (played by Jon Cryer) as his agent.

Another popular Kanter story involves his house keys. In the early 1950s, he lent them to a senior executive at MCA named Jennings Lang, who used Mr. Kanter’s apartment to carry on a tryst with the actress Joan Bennett.

Eventually, Ms. Bennett’s husband, the producer Walter Wanger, learned of the affair and confronted Mr. Lang in the MCA parking lot. Words led to violence, and Mr. Wanger shot Mr. Lang in the leg. (Mr. Lang survived; Mr. Wanger went to prison.)

“I think that’s where Billy Wilder got the idea for the movie with Jack Lemmon, called ‘The Apartment,’” Mr. Kanter told the hosts of the podcast “Love Is a Crime” in 2021. “He never told me. But it was quite obvious.”

After MCA purchased Universal Pictures in 1962, Mr. Kanter shifted into movie production. He struck up a working friendship with Alan Ladd Jr., another Hollywood power executive, and the two spent much of the 1970s and ’80s alongside each other at Fox, United Artists and the Ladd Company.

Together they helped produce some of the most memorable films of the era, including “Star Wars,” “Alien,” “Blade Runner” and “Chariots of Fire.”

Jay Ira Kanter was born on Dec. 12, 1926, in Chicago to Muriel (Gordon) and Harry Kanter. His father, who sold furniture, died when Jay was 9, after which he and his mother moved to Los Angeles to live with her sister.

He joined the Navy at 17, during World War II, and served at stateside posts. Returning home, he found an apartment in Beverly Hills and began looking for a job. He noticed a buzzing energy around the MCA offices across the street, so he decided to see if they had any positions available.

He started in the mailroom and quickly worked his way up, becoming first Mr. Wasserman’s assistant and then an agent.

Mr. Kanter was married three times. His first two marriages, to Roberta Haynes and Judy Balaban, ended in divorce. He married Kit Bennett in 1965. She died in 2014.

Along with his son Adam, from his marriage to Ms. Bennett, he is survived by another son from his third marriage, Michael; a daughter from his second marriage, Amy Kanter; three stepchildren from his third marriage, Tom, Dustin and Cydney Bernard; and nine grandchildren. Another daughter from his second marriage, Victoria Kanter Colombetti, died.

Among Mr. Kanter’s close friends was Mel Brooks, and Mr. Kanter helped in the production of a long list of Brooks films, including “Young Frankenstein,” “Silent Movie” and “High Anxiety.”

He also joined Mr. Brooks, the director Paul Mazursky and a small group of other film-industry insiders for a regular Friday lunch. The repast became legendary around Hollywood.

“We had our own table,” Mr. Kanter said in a 2012 interview for an episode of the PBS documentary series “American Masters” about Mr. Brooks. “Mel always picked up the check. And there was always a great deal of laughter coming from that table, because between Paul and Mel and occasionally some of us chiming in — I basically provided the laughter. They provided the entertainment.”

The lunches have continued, and Mr. Kanter was in regular attendance. He was there the Friday before his death, for a meal at Porta Via in Beverly Hills, his son said.

Getting up after the meal, Mr. Kanter told his old friends, “See you guys next week.”