Jacques Chambrun

Jacques Chambrun (April 24, 1906 – September 8, 1976) was an American literary agent active in the 1940s and 1950s. He worked with a wide swath of clients, including novelists Mavis Gallant, Zora Neale Hurston, Aldous Huxley, W. Somerset Maugham, Grace Metalious, H. G. Wells, and Virginia Woolf, along with screenwriter Ben Hecht and historian Shelby Foote. However, he soon gained notoriety for his business practices, including embezzling money from writers.

Biography Chambrun was born April 24, 1906. The details of Chambrun's upbringing are unknown. Chambrun claimed that he was descended from French aristocracy, but he is believed to have grown up in The Bronx in New York City. He told the 1950 census taker that he was a 39-year-old magazine publisher born in France but now a naturalized citizen. Chambrun's death certificate stated that he was 60 years old in 1976, but several people who knew him believed he was older than that.

Chambrun presented himself as an ostentatious figure; editor Knox Burger remarked that the man evoked "an unctuous Levantine villain in a 1950 film noir." He was known to wear boutonnieres and pinstriped suits, travel in chauffeured vehicles, keep an office across from the Plaza Hotel, and throw what The New Yorker described as "Hugh Hefner-style pool parties." This image enticed writers; Grace Metalious reportedly decided to work with him based on his French name alone. Another writer, Mavis Gallant, wrote in her diaries about waiting for Chambrun to pay her for stories that had run in The New Yorker while near-broke in Spain, selling her clock for breakfast money. and Vladimir Nabokov, whose Lolita Chambrun wished to handle movie rights for. Most of his clients eventually severed ties, with varying levels of animosity. Chambrun received 1,000 pounds sterling for the excerpts, which ran from May to August 1954. Upon publication they scandalized Monroe's studio bosses and enraged Hecht,

During the 1950s, Chambrun noticed Elvis Presley's massive following among teenagers. He purchased stories and photos from the archives of a Memphis, Tennessee newspaper and compiled them in a 1956 book called All About Elvis, which sold out. Emboldened by its success, Chambrun spun it off into a magazine inspired by Seventeen magazine, called 16. He and a partner would write most of the articles under the pen name "Georgia Winters." The first issue featured Elvis on the cover. When Chambrun met model Gloria Stavers at a party, she was hired and eventually became the magazine's longstanding editor.

Chambrun died on September 8, 1976, possibly from a car crash.