Harold Norling Swanson was a literary agent

Literary agent

A literary agent is an agent who represents writers and their written works to publishers, theatrical producers and film producers and assists in the sale and deal negotiation of the same. Literary agents most often represent novelists, screenwriters and major non-fiction writers...

 who represented Frank Buck

Frank Buck (animal collector)

Frank Howard Buck was a hunter and "collector of wild animals," as well as a movie actor, director, writer and producer...

, F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost...

 and many other well-known American writers.

Career

Swanson began his career as a writer, but achieved more success as the editor, for eight years during the 1920s, of College Humor, a Chicago-based monthly magazine. In 1931, he moved to Hollywood, where he received a few minor story credits and then spent a period as an associate producer at RKO, with eight films to his credit, including two Wheeler and Woolsey comedies, Hips, Hips, Hooray! and Kentucky Kernels.

In 1934, Swanson opened his eponymous agency on Sunset Boulevard. He began representing adventurer-writer Frank Buck

Frank Buck (animal collector)

Frank Howard Buck was a hunter and "collector of wild animals," as well as a movie actor, director, writer and producer...

 in 1935, soon after Buck's appearance in Fang and Claw

Fang and Claw (1935 film)

Fang and Claw was a 1935 jungle adventure documentary starring Frank Buck. Buck continues his demonstration of the ingenious methods by which he traps wild birds, mammals and reptiles in Johore.-Scenes:Among the scenes in the film:...

, the documentary film based on his book of the same name. Swanson’s efforts led to Buck's first appearance in a dramatic role, in the 15-chapter serial Jungle Menace

Jungle Menace

-External links:* * * **...

, released by Columbia Pictures in 1937.

The Swanson Agency was unique at that time in its exclusive focus on the sale of motion picture (and later television and radio) rights to literary properties, as well as representation of the writers (including screenwriters) themselves. His dominance in this area is illustrated by the fact that by 1939 his client list reportedly included 80 of the 110 writers then working for Twentieth Century Fox. At one time or another, he represented F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost...

, James M. Cain

James M. Cain

James Mallahan Cain was an American author and journalist. Although Cain himself vehemently opposed labeling, he is usually associated with the hardboiled school of American crime fiction and seen as one of the creators of the roman noir...

, William Faulkner

William Faulkner

William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...

, Ernest Haycox

Ernest Haycox

Ernest James Haycox was a prolific American author of Western fiction.-Biography:Haycox was born in Portland, Oregon, to William James Haycox and the former Martha Burghardt on October 1, 1899...

, Katharine Brush

Katharine Brush

Katharine Brush was an American author.According to her autobiographical collection of works, This Is On Me , Katharine Brush was born Katharine Ingham in Middletown, Connecticut. Brush did not attend college, but instead began working as a columnist for the Boston Traveler...

, Frank Gruber

Frank Gruber

Frank Gruber may refer to:*Frank Gruber , American writer*Frank Gruber , entrepreneur and new media journalist...

, Paul Gallico

Paul Gallico

Paul William Gallico was a successful American novelist, short story and sports writer. Many of his works were adapted for motion pictures...

, Charles Bennett

Charles Bennett

Charles Bennett may refer to:* Charles Bennet, 4th Earl of Tankerville, cricket pioneer, * Charles Bennett , British track and field athlete, most notable for 1500m events* Charles Bennett...

, MacKinlay Kantor

MacKinlay Kantor

MacKinlay Kantor , born Benjamin McKinlay Kantor, was an American journalist, novelist and screenwriter. He wrote more than 30 novels, several based on the American Civil War, and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1956 for his 1955 novel Andersonville, about the Confederate prisoner of war camp...

, Kenneth Millar (Ross Macdonald

Ross Macdonald

Not to be confused with John D. MacDonaldRoss Macdonald is the pseudonym of the American-Canadian writer of crime fiction Kenneth Millar...

), Pearl Buck, Raymond Chandler

Raymond Chandler

Raymond Thornton Chandler was an American novelist and screenwriter.In 1932, at age forty-five, Raymond Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in...

, Steve Fisher

Steve Fisher

Steve Fisher is an American college basketball coach currently at San Diego State University.Fisher attended Illinois State University, where he helped lead the Redbirds to the 1967 Division II Final Four. After school, he became a high school coach in Park Forest, Illinois. In 1979, he accepted...

, Elmore Leonard

Elmore Leonard

Elmore John Leonard Jr. , better known as Elmore Leonard, is an American novelist and screenwriter. His earliest published novels in the 1950s were westerns, but Leonard went on to specialize in crime fiction and suspense thrillers, many of which have been adapted into motion pictures.Among his...

, John O'Hara

John O'Hara

John Henry O'Hara was an American writer. He initially became known for his short stories and later became a best-selling novelist whose works include Appointment in Samarra and BUtterfield 8. He was particularly known for an uncannily accurate ear for dialogue...

, Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates is an American author. Oates published her first book in 1963 and has since published over fifty novels, as well as many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction...

, Paul Theroux

Paul Theroux

Paul Edward Theroux is an American travel writer and novelist, whose best known work of travel writing is perhaps The Great Railway Bazaar . He has also published numerous works of fiction, some of which were made into feature films. He was awarded the 1981 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his...

, Joseph Wambaugh

Joseph Wambaugh

Joseph Aloysius Wambaugh, Jr. is a bestselling American writer known for his fictional and non-fictional accounts of police work in the United States...

, Philip Wylie and Cornell Woolrich

Cornell Woolrich

Cornell George Hopley-Woolrich was an American novelist and short story writer who sometimes wrote under the pseudonyms William Irish and George Hopley....

. Among the many books he sold to the Hollywood studios were The Postman Always Rings Twice, The Big Sleep

The Big Sleep (1946 film)

The Big Sleep is a 1946 film noir directed by Howard Hawks, the first film version of Raymond Chandler's 1939 novel of the same name. The movie stars Humphrey Bogart as detective Philip Marlowe and Lauren Bacall as the female lead in a film about the "process of a criminal investigation, not its...

, Old Yeller

Old Yeller (1957 film)

Old Yeller is a 1957 Walt Disney Productions film starring Tommy Kirk, Dorothy McGuire and Beverly Washburn, and directed by Robert Stevenson. It is about a boy and a stray dog in post-Civil War Texas. The story is based upon the 1956 Newbery Honor-winning book Old Yeller by Fred Gipson. Gipson...

, Butterfield 8

BUtterfield 8

BUtterfield 8 is a 1960 Metrocolor drama film directed by Daniel Mann, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Laurence Harvey. Taylor, then 28 years old, won an Academy Award for her performance...

and The Mosquito Coast

The Mosquito Coast

The Mosquito Coast is a 1986 American film directed by Peter Weir, based on the novel by Paul Theroux. The film stars Harrison Ford, Helen Mirren, and River Phoenix. The film tells the story of a family that leaves the United States and tries to find a happier and simpler life in the jungles of...

.

Final years

Swanson published an autobiography, Sprinkled with Ruby Dust, in 1989. He worked in his agency until shortly before his death from a stroke. He is buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park

Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills)

Forest Lawn – Hollywood Hills Cemetery is part of the Forest Lawn chain of Southern California cemeteries. It is at 6300 Forest Lawn Drive in the Hollywood Hills neighborhood in the Hollywood district of Los Angeles, California, on the lower north slope at the far east end of the Santa Monica...

.

External links

• "H.N. Swanson, the Agent Who Made Gatsby 'Great,' Is a Past Master of the Hollywood Deal" People
  People (magazine)
  In 1998, the magazine introduced a version targeted at teens called Teen People. However, on July 27, 2006, the company announced it would shut down publication of Teen People immediately. The last issue to be released was scheduled for September 2006. Subscribers to this magazine received...
  
  , January 8, 1990
• Obituary in The New York Times
  The New York Times
  The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
  
  , June 3, 1991