Phil Gersh

Mr. Gersh was one of the larger-than-life Hollywood agents, a group including Myron Selznick, Charles Feldman, Lew Wasserman, Leland Hayward and Ray Stark, who often made deals for clients with one phone call, one handshake or one trip to the golf course. Mr. Gersh was born in New York, where his parents, Ida and Louis Gershowitz, owned a delicatessen. As a teenager, he moved to Los Angeles to join his sister, Mildred, who had married Sam Jaffe, an entertainment executive at Paramount and later an agent. Mr. Gersh attended the University of California, Los Angeles, worked in the prop department at Paramount and later joined his brother-in-law's agency as an office boy. He soon began representing directors and actors. During World War II, Mr. Gersh served in North Africa and Italy, then returned to Los Angeles to work as an agent. He eventually bought out the Jaffe agency and in the 1960's changed the name to the Phil Gersh Agency. It was renamed the Gersh Agency in 1990. In recent years Mr. Gersh still showed up for work at his agency, now run by his two sons, David and Robert Gersh, and Leslie Siebert. In the late 1950's Mr. Gersh and his wife, Beatrice, began collecting modern and contemporary American and European art; they donated part of their substantial collection to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles in 1989. Mr. Gersh is survived by his wife and sons, five grandchildren and a sister, Pearl Sindell of Los Angeles.