Photo Credit: Christal Wagner
When we meet super-agent Sue Mengers, she’s awaiting other visitors. We’re not worth standing for, she cordially informs us. We’re not her “twinklies.” And she’s waiting for a call. Barbra Streisand fired Sue earlier in the day, and Sue is trying hard to conceal her hope that her top client will reconsider.
Untitled Productions’ and Theater RED’s one-woman show, I’ll Eat You Last, starred Marcee Doherty-Elst as Sue with direction by Eric Welch. Doherty-Elst was Sue’s perfect 1980s doppelganger, lounging on her elegant chaise in a satin kaftan. We were treated to a cabaret-like dish session with complimentary popcorn, a posh pop-up bar in the Journeyman Hotel and playbills comprised of business cards inside cigarette boxes.
As for Sue, she smoked constantly, indulged in a little illegal intoxication, and periodically requested an audience member take off his shoes and fetch her things onstage. It takes a great actress to make us feel both condescended to and welcomed at the same time, and Doherty-Elst was the woman for the job.
While Sue’s Tinsel Town veneer and biting humor were forces to be reckoned with, more fascinating were the chinks in her armor. In the course of our 90 minutes together, she shared stories from her childhood, including her family’s escape from Nazi Germany to make a new home in New York. We learned how she used her newly mastered English to introduce herself to the popular girl in elementary school, and just how far her ferocity, humor and persuasive ability carried her from there.
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She discovered Streisand in a little New York gay bar, and Streisand, in turn, helped Mengers find her footing as a Hollywood agent. Some of Sue’s stories are poignant—she lost cherished client Ali MacGraw because the actress’ husband, Steve McQueen, wanted MacGraw to be a stay-at-home mom. Other stories are triumphant—she launched Gene Hackman’s career by landing him the role of Jimmy Doyle in The French Connection.
Nonetheless, the tides are changing in Hollywood. We feel Sue is approaching the end of her reign as the city’s top agent. She says modern agents “purr” and rely on finesse, whereas she’s “every crayon in the box, even the ugly ones—but never boring.”
Her advice to us? “Go ahead, cross the playground. What’ve you got to lose? After all, the credits role sooner than you think.”
