Career
Geffen began his entertainment career in the mailroom at the William Morris Agency (WMA), where he quickly became an agent. In order to obtain the WMA job, he had to prove he was a college graduate. As he later reported in an interview, he claimed that he graduated from UCLA. Because he worked in the mailroom, Geffen was able to intercept a letter, from the college he had claimed to have attended, which denied he had been there. He modified the letter to show that he had attended and graduated, and submitted it to WMA. His colleagues in the mailroom included Elliot Roberts, who later became Geffen's partner in a management company. Geffen left William Morris to become a personal manager and was immediately successful with Laura Nyro and Crosby, Stills and Nash. In the process of looking for a record deal for young Jackson Browne, Ahmet Ertegün suggested that Geffen start his own record label.
Read more about this topic: David Geffen
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“Whether lawyer, politician or executive, the American who knows what’s good for his career seeks an institutional rather than an individual identity. He becomes the man from NBC or IBM. The institutional imprint furnishes him with pension, meaning, proofs of existence. A man without a company name is a man without a country.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“The problem, thus, is not whether or not women are to combine marriage and motherhood with work or career but how they are to do so—concomitantly in a two-role continuous pattern or sequentially in a pattern involving job or career discontinuities.”
—Jessie Bernard (20th century)
“A black boxer’s career is the perfect metaphor for the career of a black male. Every day is like being in the gym, sparring with impersonal opponents as one faces the rudeness and hostility that a black male must confront in the United States, where he is the object of both fear and fascination.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)