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CALIFORNIA’S TALENT AGENCIES

ACT:
Rick Siegel
8 min read · Nov 3, 2023

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THE LAST VESTIGE OF THE HOLLYWOOD BLACKLIST

Rick Siegel is a Hollywood-based personal manager, inducted into the

National Personal Managers Hall of Fame in 2017. He is also certified by the
California State Bar to give continuing education credits to attorneys on the
proper way to interpret the Talent Agencies Act (“TAA”, “Act”).

As a stand-up comedian in the 80’s, I didn’t ask the four questions; I had
three…

Why is the sky blue?

Anti-Semitism.

Why does the sun come up from the East and go down in the West?

Anti-Semitism.

Why did the apple fall from the tree and hit Isaac Newton in the head?

Gravity; not everything is anti-Semitism.

Maybe I was wrong. Lately, for reasons both personal and international, I’m
starting to think everything is anti-Semitism.

In 1990 I began a successful career as a personal manager. (1) A then-barely-

known Ellen DeGeneres credits the commercial campaign I got her for ABC’s
interest to develop her successful sitcom. When managing a 16-year-old Seth
Rogen and he was on FREAKS AND GEEKS, I sent Judd Apatow SUPERBAD…
not to make the movie, but to use him as a writer on the TV show. That
worked out for Seth.

I told Craig Ferguson, then in a bit of a career dead zone, that if he came to
America for ten days, I’d make him a star. He did and he’s done okay. I
started working with Leah Remini when she was getting a few recurring
guest star roles, and three years later she’d done six pilots, two series and
didn’t have to audition, CBS made her an offer to play Kevin James’ wife in
THE KING OF QUEENS.

But after a decade of not being owed even a dollar in commissions, I had a
couple clients on long-running television series decide not to pay me. It
forced me to sue them if I wished to receive my deserved monies. In reply,
my ex-clients petitioned the California Labor Commissioner (“CLC”),
claiming my helping them succeed was acting like a talent agent without a
talent agency license violated the state’s Talent Agencies Act (“TAA”, “Act”).

Those allegations should have been just a nuisance; the CA legislature never
passed laws either reserving the procuring of employment for artists for
licensed talent agents. Nor did it ever pass a law creating any kind of
consequence — not a fine, penalty, sentence, or statute giving adjudicators
the athority to impair contractual rights — should an unlicensed person be
found to have procured.

But here comes the plot twist: despite there being no law giving such
authority, the Labor Commissioner found I had violated a law that does not
exist and extinguished my contractual rights to some seven-figures in
commissions. Sorta like if you got pulled over for driving through a green
light and the traffic court judge, finding you’d driving thru the green light,
took away your car.

Since then I’ve been on a two-plus-decade quest to end the wrongful

enforcement and what has over the last fifty-five years, kept personal
managers from the benefit — an estimated half-billion dollars in
commissions either voided, abandoned or settled away — of their labors.
Some think I’ve been on a quixotic journey, one that cannot reach the
intended end. I have made a couple very positive inroads, including a
landmark win at the California Supreme Court, Marathon Entertainment v.
Blasi, 42 Cal 4th 974 (2008). Because of that, and my still fighting fifteen years
late, some peers think of me as Riçk of Arç. I’m determined to be known as
the Braveheart of managers.

While I knew from the start the enforcement was wrongful, the financial
equivalent of the cops beating up Rodney King, it took me years to figure out
exactly why it was wrong and only recently figured out how this wrongful,
unconstitutional, extrajudicial enforcement started.

And yes, its genesis is anti-Semitism. As pointed out in a recent Skirball

Cultural Center exhibition about the Blacklist, the House Un-American
Activities Committee’s concern about communism was more or less a
McGuffin; its hidden target was Jews. Anyone who’s seen OPPENHEIMER
learned McCarthyism was much more about ‘the Jews’ than a real fear of
communism.

In 1953, the height of McCarthyism, it was as common to accuse a Jew of

being a Commie as it was in CASABLANCA to ‘round up the usual suspects.’

Save for some African-Americans working with black artists, personal

management was then an almost exclusively Jewish profession. And in 1953,
the height of McCarthyism/Hollywood Blacklist, after a teenaged-Piper
Laurie and her mom wanted to get out of paying Piper’s manager
commissions, the resultant breach of contract lawsuit reached a Court of
Appeals. Along with the Parties’ papers, the CA Labor Commissioner
submitted an amicus brief with the clear objective of swaying the judges into
finding the manager’s procurement activities unlawful and his contract
should be voided. [5]

At the time, the State had three employment licensing schemes — one for
general employment agencies, one for the folks who booked performers’
personal appearance engagements, and one for talent agents who got their
clients film, tv and radio jobs. The amicus claimed that the State’s having the
three schemes established “a clear intent on the part of the legislature to
regulate closely activities of such agents and managers.”

Then the brief quotes a CA Supreme Court case: “It has long been held in
this state that when a statute contains a penalty, that penalty is equivalent to
an express prohibition, and a contract in violation thereof is void. Refusal by
our courts to allow any recovery where licensing was required is but one
example of this general rule.”

Here’s the catch: the Legislature had only enacted a penalty into the
licensing scheme for bookers. The Commissioner nefariously made it read
like the lawmakers had put penalties into all three schemes, so Laurie’s
personal manager’s contract would be voided, despite knowing there was no
such law.

And here’s why I say the Commissioner’s subterfuge was anti-Semitic. No

one would not created penalties to rob a family member, friend, member of
their country clubor fellow parishioner from benefits of their labors. The
Commissioner’s actions were specifically meant to hurt people he thought
were ‘less than,’ only those for which he had no regard; the usual suspects…
Jews.

The TAA still has no statute expressly prohibiting unlicensed persons from
procuring, nor a statute giving adjudicators the right to infringe on
unlicensed procurers’ contractual rights. Yet, the Labor Commissioner
steadfastly and stubbornly enforces the Talent Agencies Act as if there were
such regulations, despite knowing there are no such laws.

We as a society must fight hate and all religious-based discrimination,

whether the hateful actions come from a right-wing militia, foreign
terrorists, or the wrongful, extrajudicial, unconstitutional interpretation of
the TAA by a state administrative agency.

I know a change is gonna come, and it may come as early as next week. On
November 9, 2023 mother and daughter personal management team Diane
and Sarah Pardoe will be in a Los Angeles Superior courtroom appealing the
Labor Commissioner’s extinguishing their right to five-figures in
commission and worse, requiring them to repay to their ex-client all the
commissions they have previously received.

The Pardoes have admitted they are unlicensed and worked to get their ex-
client work. They will be the first litigants telling a California judge they are
appealing the enforcement of laws that do not exist, something that is clear
to anyone who simply reads the TAA without the assumptions created by the
evilness of a man in power and accepted without question for the last 70
years. [7]

Knowing California does not prohibit interested parties from submitting

amicus/friend of the court briefs, I have further explained to the court how
the Act’s enforcement is the result of judicial error, and unconstitutional
governmental mischief. [8]

It is impossible to know whether the current Commissioner realizes the

enforcement started during the era of McCarthyism. But she also knows and
refuses to acknowledge it is unconstitutional to penalize without the Act
having a penalty provision. It will come down simply to whether the judge
reads the Pardoes’ pre-trial brief, for what is clear, violations of law are
“made up of two parts, forbidden conduct and a prescribed penalty. The
former without the latter is no [violation].” [9] Substantive Criminal Law,
1.2(d) (1986), Wayne R. LaFave & Austin W. Scott, Jr.; see U.S. v. Evans, 333
U.S. 483, 486 (1948).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Siegel]

[2] https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/DLSE-TACs.htm

[3] The Commissioner finds that an unlicensed procurer violates CA. Labor
Codes §§ 1700.4 (a) and 1700.5. The former only lists the defining activities of
an agent, does not say only licensees can do any/all of them; and 1700.5 says
you cannot be a talent agent without getting a license. Unlike most penalty
assessments, which say they get authority to penalize from a statute, TAA
opinions say they get their authority from Buchwald v. Superior Court,

[4] Estimate by National Conference of Personal Managers

[5] https://www.scribd.com/document/641080169/Radin-v-Laurie-the-Labor-
Commissioner-s-Amicus-Brief

[6] https://www.scribd.com/document/627369569/23-02-21-Determination-of-
Controversy-TAC-52862-Certified

[7] https://www.scribd.com/document/682097066/Pardoe-Pre-Trial-Brief-
Submission

[8] https://www.scribd.com/document/682099225/Amicus-Letter-of-Rick-
Siegel-in-Pardoe-v-Salazar

[9] Substantive Criminal Law, 1.2(d) (1986), Wayne R. LaFave & Austin W.
Scott, Jr.; see U.S. v. Evans, 333 U.S. 483, 486 (1948). After a trial court found
Evans had harbored an illegal alien, it sentenced him to five years in prison.
The United States Supreme Court (“USSC”) found that because Congress had
statutes prohibiting anyone from smuggling an illegal alien into the country
or harboring on, but only codified five years in jail for smuggling, Evans was
released. Creating a remedy “is a task outside the bounds of judicial
interpretation. It is better for Congress, and more in accord with its
function, to revise the statute than for us to guess at the revision it would
make. That task it can do with precision. We could do no more than make
speculation law.” Evans at 495

Hollywood Anti Semitism Blacklist Talent Agency Constitutional Law

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Written by Rick Siegel Edit profile

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adman turned standup turned magazine creator/editor-in-chief turned personal manager

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