Jay Kanter, prolific film producer and agent to Hollywood notables including Marlon Brando, Grace Kelly and Marilyn Monroe, has died. He was 97.
Kanter died of natural causes Aug. 6 at his home in Beverly Hills, his son Adam Kanter confirmed.
The longtime studio executive began his career in the mailroom at MCA, working his way up to assistant to Lew Wasserman — who represented Bette Davis and Ronald Reagan, and later chaired MCA — and eventually, junior agent.
In 1948, Kanter, then 22, was sent to retrieve Brando — on the heels of his breakout role in Broadway’s “A Streetcar Named Desire” — from the train station. He drove the burgeoning star to his aunt and uncle’s home in San Marino, where they all had dinner.
The next day, after Brando’s meeting with director Fred Zinnemann and writer Carl Foreman, Kanter asked the actor to come to the MCA office to meet the other agents.
“[Brando] said, ‘I don’t have to meet anybody, you’re my agent,’” Kanter recalled in 2017.
At the time, he said, Wasserman was fielding calls nonstop from studio heads who were eager to sign Brando.
“Lew said, ‘Well, I can’t arrange it, you’d have to talk to his agent,’” Kanter said. “They said, ‘Who’s that?’ and he said, ‘Jay Kanter,’ and they said, ‘Who’s he?’”
A few years later, Kanter was representing a roster of A-list talent. And his meet-cute with Brando spawned a sitcom, “The Famous Teddy Z,” about a Hollywood star who picks out a mailroom clerk as his agent. (Kanter also allegedly inspired Jack Lemmon’s character in Billy Wilder’s 1960 comedy “The Apartment.”)
Jay Ira Kanter was born on Dec. 12, 1926, in Chicago to Muriel (Gordon) and Harry Kanter and spent his formative years in Los Angeles. At 17, he joined the Navy, then found his way to MCA after serving during World War II.
After the talent agency purchased Universal Pictures in 1962, Kanter relocated to London and for seven years green-lighted European movies for the studio. When Universal shuttered its European operations, he returned to the States to found a production company with industry executives Elliott Kastner and Alan Ladd Jr.
Kanter and Ladd spent much of the 1970s and ’80s working together at Fox, United Artists and the Ladd Co., going on to help produce blockbusters including “Star Wars,” “Alien” and “Blade Runner.”
Kanter also was longtime friends with comedy veteran Mel Brooks. The two in the 1990s began holding weekly lunches for a circle of former Fox executives and filmmakers. The week before he died, Kanter attended one such Friday lunch.
Brooks eulogized Kanter on the day of his death: “Very sad news today. I’ve known a lot of nice people in my life, but nobody nicer than Jay Kanter. If you knew him, you loved him. He was more than a legendary agent. He was a loyal friend, always there when you needed him. I know it’s a cliché but in Jay’s case it is just so true: he will be sorely missed.”
After his first two marriages — to Roberta Haynes and Judy Balaban — ended in divorce, Kanter in 1965 entered his third and longest marriage, to Kit Bennett, who died in 2014 after 49 years together.
He is survived by son Adam Kanter, from his marriage to Bennett; son Michael Kanter, from his third marriage; a daughter, Amy Kanter, from his second marriage; three stepchildren from his third marriage, Tom, Dustin and Cydney Bernard; and 10 grandchildren. Another daughter from his second marriage, Victoria Kanter Colombetti, died in 2020.