Stanley Herbert Polley (April 7, 1922 – July 20, 2009) was an entertainment manager from the 1960s and 1970s. His clients included rock band Badfinger, musician Al Kooper, singer Lou Christie, singer-producer Hank Medress, arranger Charles Calello, composer Sandy Linzer, WABC disc jockey Bob Lewis, among others.
Polley served in the U.S. Army before beginning his managerial career in New York's garment industry. He began artist management after he met Christie in the mid-1960s. It was through his association with Christie that he met and began working with other artists in the New York and Los Angeles entertainment fields. It was around 1968 that Polley first formed a company called Five Arts Management, that included Christie, Kooper, Calello, Linzer and Lewis. He formed new companies to house future artists he secured, including composers Irwin Levine and Larry Brown. In 1970, Polley formed a company called Badfinger Enterprises, Inc. as a management arm for the British rock group Badfinger, which had no American representation at the time.
According to The New York Times, Polley was named during Senate-investigation hearings in 1971 as an intermediary between unnamed crime figures and a New York Supreme Court judge. Most of Polley's American clients said they were already suspicious of their manager by this point, but the publicity of the hearings convinced several to sever ties with him.
In 1972, Polley negotiated a record contract with Warner Bros. Records for Badfinger, which called for advances to be paid into an escrow account. In 1974, Warner's publishing division filed a lawsuit against Polley when it was unsuccessful in locating the funds. The legal morass crippled Badfinger financially; band leader Pete Ham committed suicide in 1975 leaving behind a note pointing the finger at Polley for his financial ruin.
In 1991, Polley pleaded no contest to charges of misappropriating funds and money laundering in Riverside County, California. Aeronautics engineer Peter Brock accused Polley of swindling him for US$250,000 after the two set up a corporation to manufacture airplane engines. Polley was placed on probation for five years and ordered by the court to return all missing funds to Brock, although the complainant said the restitution never materialized.