Sue Mengers, super-agent turned maven was possibly 78

Mengers' death was announced by Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, who posted this afternoon on his blog that she died last night "at her home, a short walk from the Beverly Hills Hotel, and surrounded by three of her close friends, Ali MacGraw, Joanna Poitier, and Boaty Boatwright."

Her death came after a number of small strokes, and a lifetime of illnesses that would have felled an athlete half her age. Sue leaves behind few, if any, relatives. There are however, legions of friends who now have a hole in their lives they will never be able to fill.

Wikipedia has her age at 81. She claimed 78—and to the end she was sticking by her story. (In an email after Sue’s death, one friend imagined Sue coming back; just to correct the record of her age.) At this point it hardly matters. She was a girlish 70-plus, who never looked her age—and with an ever-present joint in her hand, she didn’t act it either. Sue was a Holocaust baby, arriving in upstate New York before America entered the war. Nobody in her family spoke English, and like so many immigrants, she set her sites on a career in show business. In time she became, as Fran Lebowitz says, capital “S” Sue Mengers. By the early 70s, she was not only the most powerful female agent in Hollywood; she was the town’s most powerful agent, period. At one time or another during that period, she represented Barbra Streisand, Candice Bergen, Michael Caine, Faye Dunaway, Gene Hackman, Cher, Joan Collins, Burt Reynolds, and Nick Nolte—all at heights of their careers. She also had the directors they wanted to work for, men like Mike Nichols, Peter Bogdanovich, Brian De Palma, Bob Fosse, and Sidney Lumet.

When she wound her career down in the 80s, Agent Sue became Hostess Sue—and she was even more successful in her new vocation. Dinner at Sue’s was like stepping into a Hollywood you imagined, but almost never experienced.

Weekend obits:

Anita Caspary, founder of the Immaculate Heart Community in Los Angeles who led the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, still the largest Catholic order in the U.S. to sever ties with the Vatican. On Oct. 5 at age 95. LAT, The Tidings

Howard H "Tim" Hays, former editor and publisher of the Riverside Press-Enterprise, on Friday at age 94. AP, LAT, Press-Enterprise