Jacques Chambrun (April 24, 1906 – September 8, 1976) was an American literary agent active in the 1940s and 1950s. He worked with a wide swath of clients, including novelists
Mavis Gallant
Mavis Leslie de Trafford Gallant, , née Young (11 August 1922 – 18 February 2014), was a Canadian writer who spent much of her life and career in France. Best known as a short story writer, she also published novels, plays and essays.
Pe ...
,
Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston (January 7, 1891 – January 28, 1960) was an American author, anthropologist, and filmmaker. She portrayed racial struggles in the early-1900s American South and published research on Hoodoo (spirituality), hoodoo. The most ...
,
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer and philosopher. He wrote nearly 50 books, both novels and non-fiction works, as well as wide-ranging essays, narratives, and poems.
Born into the prominent Huxley ...
,
W. Somerset Maugham
William Somerset Maugham ( ; 25 January 1874 – 16 December 1965) was an English writer, known for his plays, novels and short stories. Born in Paris, where he spent his first ten years, Maugham was schooled in England and went to a German un ...
,
Grace Metalious
Grace Metalious (September 8, 1924 – February 25, 1964) was an American author known for her novel '' Peyton Place'', one of the best-selling works in publishing history.
Early life
Marie Grace DeRepentigny was born into poverty and a broken ...
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.
Woolf was born i ...
, along with screenwriter
Ben Hecht
Ben Hecht (; February 28, 1894 – April 18, 1964) was an American screenwriter, director, producer, playwright, journalist, and novelist. A successful journalist in his youth, he went on to write 35 books and some of the most enjoyed screenplay ...
and historian
Shelby Foote
Shelby Dade Foote Jr. (November 17, 1916 – June 27, 2005) was an American writer, historian and journalist. Although he primarily viewed himself as a novelist, he is now best known for his authorship of '' The Civil War: A Narrative'', a three ...
. However, he soon gained notoriety for his business practices, including embezzling money from writers.
Biography
Chambrun was born April 24, 1906. The details of Chambrun's upbringing are unknown. Chambrun claimed that he was descended from French aristocracy, but he is believed to have grown up in
The Bronx
The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...
in New York City. His date of birth and real name are also disputed. A record exists of a "Jacques Chambrun" born in 1906 in New York City, but it is unclear whether this is the same person. A 1928 naturalization record asserts that Jacques Chambrun (formerly known as James Jabib and Djemy Tabib) was born in Beirut, Syria and had arrived in the U.S. by way of Constantinople in 1922. He told the 1950 census taker that he was a 39-year-old magazine publisher born in France but now a naturalized citizen.Source Citation: United States of America, Bureau of the Census; Washington, D.C.; ''Seventeenth Census of the United States, 1950''; Record Group: ''Records of the Bureau of the Census, 1790-2007''; Record Group Number: ''29''; Residence Date: ''1950''; Home in 1950: ''New York, New York, New York''; Roll: ''4562''; Sheet Number: ''79''; Enumeration District: ''31-1329'' (via Ancestry.com) Chambrun's death certificate stated that he was 60 years old in 1976, but several people who knew him believed he was older than that.
Chambrun presented himself as an ostentatious figure; editor
Knox Burger Knox Breckenridge Burger (November 1, 1922 – January 4, 2010) was an editor, writer, and literary agent who lived in New York City. He published Kurt Vonnegut's first short-story and with his wife he founded Knox Burger & Associates, a literary ag ...
remarked that the man evoked "an unctuous Levantine villain in a 1950
film noir
Film noir (; ) is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and motivations. The 1940s and 1950s are generally regarded as the "classic period" of American ' ...
." He was known to wear boutonnieres and pinstriped suits, travel in chauffeured vehicles, keep an office across from the
Plaza Hotel
The Plaza Hotel (also known as The Plaza) is a luxury hotel and condominium apartment building in Midtown Manhattan in New York City. It is located on the western side of Grand Army Plaza, after which it is named, just west of Fifth Avenue, a ...
, and throw what ''The New Yorker'' described as "
Hugh Hefner
Hugh Marston Hefner (April 9, 1926 – September 27, 2017) was an American magazine publisher. He was the founder and editor-in-chief of ''Playboy'' magazine, a publication with revealing photographs and articles which provoked charges of obsc ...
-style pool parties." This image enticed writers; Grace Metalious reportedly decided to work with him based on his French name alone.
Chambrun became notorious for shady dealings with clients. He frequently was known to sell manuscripts and stories without the permission or knowledge of his clients, earning a significant commission on them -- 20 to 30 percent, compared to the more typical 15%. He would use the proceeds from these sales to pay off debts to other writers in what ''The New Yorker'' likened to a "literary
pyramid scheme
A pyramid scheme is a business model that recruits members via a promise of payments or services for enrolling others into the scheme, rather than supplying investments or sale of products. As recruiting multiplies, recruiting becomes quickly im ...
." Such incidents include negotiating world rights to W. Somerset Maugham's books and embezzling $30,000 from the writer, causing Maugham to fire him in 1948. Another writer, Mavis Gallant, wrote in her diaries about waiting for Chambrun to pay her for stories that had run in ''The New Yorker'' while near-broke in Spain, selling her clock for breakfast money. Some writers were warned not to work with him, such as
James Michener
James Albert Michener ( or ; February 3, 1907 – October 16, 1997) was an American writer. He wrote more than 40 books, most of which were long, fictional family sagas covering the lives of many generations in particular geographic locales and ...
and
Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (russian: link=no, Владимир Владимирович Набоков ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Bo ...
, whose ''
Lolita
''Lolita'' is a 1955 novel written by Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is notable for its controversial subject: the protagonist and unreliable narrator, a middle-aged literature professor under the pseudonym Humbert Humber ...
'' Chambrun wished to handle movie rights for. Most of his clients eventually severed ties, with varying levels of animosity.
Another controversy involving Chambrun took place in 1954, this time involving Ben Hecht and actress
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe (; born Norma Jeane Mortenson; 1 June 1926 4 August 1962) was an American actress. Famous for playing comedic " blonde bombshell" characters, she became one of the most popular sex symbols of the 1950s and early 1960s, as wel ...
, whose biography he was co-writing. Chambrun sold scandalous portions of Hecht's manuscript without his or Monroe's permission to British tabloid the ''
Empire News
The ''Empire News'' was a Sunday newspaper in the United Kingdom.
The newspaper was founded in 1884 in Manchester as ''The Umpire''. A penny newspaper, it was the first successful provincial Sunday newspaper in England. Owned by H. S. Jennings, ...
''. Some writers also believe that Chambrun made significant edits to the text. Chambrun received 1,000 pounds sterling for the excerpts, which ran from May to August 1954. Upon publication they scandalized Monroe's studio bosses and enraged Hecht, who was forced to sell back his advance to Doubleday Press. Hecht never finished the biography's final chapters and would not publish what he had until 1974.
During the 1950s, Chambrun noticed
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977), or simply Elvis, was an American singer and actor. Dubbed the "Honorific nicknames in popular music, King of Rock and Roll", he is regarded as Cultural impact of Elvis Presley, one ...
's massive following among teenagers. He purchased stories and photos from the archives of a
Memphis, Tennessee
Memphis is a city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the seat of Shelby County in the southwest part of the state; it is situated along the Mississippi River. With a population of 633,104 at the 2020 U.S. census, Memphis is the second-mos ...
newspaper and compiled them in a 1956 book called ''All About Elvis'', which sold out. Emboldened by its success, Chambrun spun it off into a magazine inspired by ''
Seventeen
Seventeen or 17 may refer to:
*17 (number), the natural number following 16 and preceding 18
* one of the years 17 BC, AD 17, 1917, 2017
Literature
Magazines
* ''Seventeen'' (American magazine), an American magazine
* ''Seventeen'' (Japanese m ...
'' magazine, called ''16''. He and a partner would write most of the articles under the
pen name
A pen name, also called a ''nom de plume'' or a literary double, is a pseudonym (or, in some cases, a variant form of a real name) adopted by an author and printed on the title page or by-line of their works in place of their real name.
A pen na ...
"Georgia Winters." The first issue featured Elvis on the cover. When Chambrun met model
Gloria Stavers Gloria Stavers (October 3, 1927 – April 1, 1983) was the editor in chief of ''16 Magazine''. Her personality gave this teen celebrity magazine its stamp for many years. Stavers is credited with being one of the first women rock-and-roll journa ...
at a party, she was hired and eventually became the magazine's longstanding editor.
Chambrun died on September 8, 1976, possibly from a car crash.