Courtesy photo
Veteran talent agent Scott Manners, who most recently was partner at Artists & Representatives, died Friday in Los Angeles after a brief battle with ALS. Manners, who was 68, died peacefully, surrounded by his family, the agency said.
Manners, a respected agent who represented top actors throughout his career, had a couple of acting credits himself in the late 1970.
He co-founded with Tim Stone boutique talent agency Stone Manners 37 years ago. The agency renamed itself as Stone Manners Salners after Glenn Salners was upped to partner in 2010, and then as Artists & Representatives in 2019 when the company named more partners and added agents in New York, expanding its footprint to the East Coast.
“Through the years, we have all been moved by his mission to brilliantly represent the artists who bring our society closer to love,” Artists & Representatives said in a statement. “It was his life’s work to make a difference every day and change lives for the better.”
In announcing the name change to Artists & Representatives in 2019, Manners shared some of the guiding principles of his decades-long career as an agent.
“As the industry becomes more corporate, we actively look for ways to bring humanity to the work,” he said at the time. “I have always felt that I wanted to turn art into commerce; but without the art, I’m not interested in the commerce.”
Struggling to find the words to express their gratitude for the influence Manners’ has had on them, his colleagues decided to share a meaningful quote by Eugene O’Neill — one often recited by Manners — which they feel “reflects the universal spirit of his ongoing commitment to excellence.”
The quote goes, “The people who succeed and do not push on to a greater failure are the spiritual middle class. The man who pursues the mere attainable should be sentenced to get it — and keep it. Let him rest on his laurels and enthrone him in a Morris chair, in which laurels and hero may wither together. Only through the unattainable does man achieve a hope worth living and dying for — and so attain himself.”
Added his friends, “Scott never ceased pushing for his next ‘unattainable’ after each victory, all while inspiring hope and passion in everyone who knew him.”
