Hayward was the original Hollywood super agent. Katharine Hepburn, Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart, Greta Garbo, Cary Grant, Billy Wilder, and Ernest Hemingway were just a few of his legendary clients. After selling his agency business to MCA and co-founding Universal Pictures, Hayward began producing Broadway blockbusters and Hollywood hits, including THE SOUND OF MUSIC, SOUTH PACIFIC, THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA and MR. ROBERTS, for which he was nominated for an Oscar.

Hayward had three children with Oscar-nominated movie star Margaret Sullavan. Following their divorce, he married socialite and style maven Slim Keith, ultimately leaving her to marry Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman, the future American ambassador to France. Hayward was also a dedicated aviator who founded Southwest Airways, sat on the Board of TWA, and flew his private helicopter between his office in Manhattan and his home in upstate New York, the notoriously designated ‘Haywire House.’

In 1961, Hayward’s eldest daughter, actress and author Brooke Hayward, married actor, director, and photographer Dennis Hopper, who leapt to fame in the cult classic EASY RIDER. The Oscar-nominated film created a cultural youth quake, ushered in the era of the modern Hollywood blockbuster, and re-fashioned Dennis Hopper into a cultural icon.

The company’s exclusive archival assets, composed of the Brooke and Leland Hayward Papers, and Dennis Hopper’s 18,000+ photographic catalogue, peerlessly illustrate the world of the brand.