This riveting, poignant and hilarious memoir recounts Clancy Sigal's escapades as a young agent, handling mostly B-list screenwriters at the Sam Jaffe Agency in the blacklist-addled Hollywood of the 1950's. He's hired by the debonair, hardboiled agent Mary Baker after being tossed out of Columbia Pictures for using the mimeo machine to copy radical leaflets. Atom bomb tests in the desert light up the night sky, and everyone is either naming names or getting named. As the point person of a small circle of anarchistic oddballs, Clancy is constantly dogged by the FBI. But he spends his days going from studio to studio, trying to promote his clients Jack Palance, Peter Lorre, Humphrey Bogart, Barbara Stanwyck, and many others.
Clancy's style is rip-roaring?headlong, ribald, wiseass. Black Sunset belongs to a hardboiled school that also includes James Farrell and Nelson Algren. This is a once-in-a-lifetime tale of Hollywood drama and excess, from probably one of the last living observers to detail his experiences on the inside of the entertainment industry.
