[2][3] When Jaffe left Paramount in 1936 to set up his own talent agency, Gersh moved with him to work as an office boy earning $15 a week.
[2] His first client as an agent was director Mark Robson, with whom he had been in a fraternity at UCLA some years before, and who was looking to move into directing from a job as an editor at RKO Pictures.
[2] Gersh subsequently signed other directors from the studio including Robert Wise, Richard Fleischer and Joseph Losey, thereby establishing a reputation as an effective spotter of directing talent.
[2][3] His film-industry clients included Eddie Albert, June Allyson, Mary Astor, Richard Benjamin, Lloyd Bridges, Humphrey Bogart, Richard Burton, Lee J. Cobb, Harrison Ford, Gloria Grahame, Arthur Hiller, William Holden, Karl Malden, Fredric March, James Mason, Dorothy McGuire, Zero Mostel, David Niven, Don Siegel, Raoul Walsh and Robert Wise.
[1][3] In 1965 Gersh won the role of director in The Sound of Music for his client Robert Wise, and the substantial returns to his agency from this deal allowed for the purchase of plush new headquarters in Beverly Hills.
[2] They also owned work by Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Wassily Kandinsky, Roy Lichtenstein, Franz Kline and Andy Warhol.