The convoluted authorial structure of Alloy books is anything but transparent.

“To me, all that stuff is such a black box,” said one author who has worked with the company. “They have writers who don’t exist, and they have writers who don’t really write the stuff, and they have one series supposedly by one author that are by many. There’s no one-to-one alignment between anything that gets produced and the producer. There’s no literary accountability.”

Alloy also has a reputation among writers for not always sharing its successes with the underlings who contributed to them. A case in point, often repeated as a cautionary tale among Y.A. authors, is the story behind one of the book packager’s most lucrative hits, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.

The Traveling Pants idea originated with a woman named Jodi Anderson, who was then an editor at Alloy. Ms. Anderson proposed the concept (a group of girlfriends who share a pair of jeans), which was based on some of her own college experiences. She wrote a proposal sketching out the idea that was sold to a publisher, and was under the impression that she might then get to write the book(s).

The concept was also sent to non-Alloy Y.A. writers, according to one writer who was approached, who were invited to write samples for the book. The writer said that she wasn’t paid for what she submitted and wasn’t contacted again or given feedback by the company. Ms. Anderson also wrote a sample.

In the meantime, Ann Brashares, who was then co-president of Alloy with Les Morgenstein, decided to write the book. Ms. Brashares’ The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants was published in 2001, became a huge best-seller, was developed into a movie (Mr. Morgenstein is listed as executive producer), and spawned two sequels. According to three sources, Ms. Anderson was unhappy with this outcome.

In an e-mail, Ms. Anderson said that after the book’s success, her title was changed to “editor” from “assistant editor,” and she received a small “bonus” for her contribution. When asked whether she was bitter about the situation, she said: “[N]o. I asked about receiving a story credit when I found out about the movie, but I was told to look to the future instead of the past.” She no longer works at Alloy, but she published her own Y.A. novel, Peaches, with Alloy last summer.

“There are some very talented people at Alloy, and I have grown immensely as a writer by working with those people,” Ms. Anderson wrote. “Additionally, for a long time I had a personal attachment to the company I didn’t want to let go of. We were a very tight group.”

Alloy and Mr. Morgenstein declined to comment, and Ms. Brashares could not be reached for comment.

In the Traveling Pants books, Ms. Brashares opens her “Acknowledgments” section with the following: “I would like to express my great and unending appreciation to Jodi Anderson.”

FORMER ALLOY EMPLOYEES AND OTHERS in the publishing world sometimes point out that the company is run by men—president Les Morgenstein, vice president of development Josh Bank and editorial director Ben Schrank—but that young women provide most of the grunt labor on Alloy’s book projects. (These include sexy titles geared toward teenage girls, including the incredibly popular Gossip Girl and Sweet Valley High series.)

“It’s run by three guys, and 90 percent of what they do is for teenage girls,” said one adult publisher, adding: “It’s not usual, the packager thing. Packaging is almost always photo books or reference books. But with fiction?”

In the old days, before Alloy bought what was then called 17th Street Productions, there was a young, collaborative environment and lots of group brainstorming that could be inspiring, according to former employees and authors.

“It was a great place to work, and we all learned so much and we all respected each other,” said an editor who worked at the company.

However, over time, as the company’s ownership changed and its ambitions expanded, this atmosphere changed as well.

“You just got the sense that if you came up with an idea, there wasn’t much incentive for you to bring this idea into the fold and let it become a potential product,” said Ryan Nerz, a former Alloy editor and author who recently published Eat This Book: A Year of Gorging and Glory on the Competitive Eating Circuit, sans Alloy, with St. Martin’s. “You’d research it, flesh it out, turn it into a proposal, then the company itself would take it and pitch it. At that point—unless they absolutely thought you were the best person for it—you rarely would be attached on as the author.” (An exception to this is the case of Cecily von Ziegesar, who developed and began writing the Gossip Girl series while working at Alloy.)

Mr. Nerz added: “If it sounds like I resent them, I don’t. I was able to pay my bills and get a little bit of tutelage in writing, and got paid for it.”

According to one former Alloy editor, the company used to pay $1,000 to $2,000 bonuses to staffers whose ideas had been sold, but nothing more.

The company was also known for commissioning outside authors to write on spec with the hope of ultimately receiving a contract.

“A couple of years ago, Alloy came to me with this proposal—they were looking for writers. I did 25 to 30 pages of sample work; I worked pretty hard, turned it in and never heard anything back,” said Mr. Nerz.

When authors are brought in to write their own books, as in the Viswanathan case, Alloy is known to take 30 to 50 percent of all revenues and shares the copyright with the author. When someone is hired to ghostwrite a series title, it’s a flat fee.

Opal Mehta’s journey to Alloy was not entirely linear. According to William Morris sources, Ms. Viswanathan first signed with agent Suzanne Gluck, who then passed the author to a junior agent in her office. The junior agent worked with Ms. Viswanathan and eventually hit a wall in terms of developing a commercial proposal. The junior agent then suggested that the writer speak with Josh Bank at Alloy. The Opal Mehta idea emerged from Ms. Vis-wanathan’s conversations with Mr. Bank; once an outline was ready, it was decided that another William Morris agent, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, would try to sell it to publishers, which she did, to Little, Brown. (Ms. Walsh also represents Ms. Brashares of the Traveling Pants.)

Ms. Walsh and the rest of William Morris’ literary department do a great deal of business with Alloy, which involves some complicated accounting. In the case of Opal Mehta, Ms. Walsh would have taken her standard 15 percent of Ms. Viswanathan’s reported $500,000 two-book deal, which works out to $75,000 for Ms. Walsh. It could be argued that William Morris was not necessarily representing Ms. Viswanathan’s best interests by sending her to a company that could potentially take 30 to 50 percent of the advance as well.

“To my mind, there is no conflict of interest,” Ms. Walsh said. “The relationship between the book packager and the author are very similar to the collaboration between two authors, or between an expert and an author, in that their interests are completely aligned in the project.”

William Morris recently picked up another Alloy-related client. Ms. von Ziegesar of Gossip Girls left her previous agent, Sarah Burnes, last fall, and went to Ms. Gluck. Ms. Burnes also represents Jodi Anderson.

But for all the tangled dealings in the Alloy book-packaging world, for a few, the more depressing concern is the content of some Alloy books. “Emotionally, there’s no progress,” said Francine Pascal, the creator of the Sweet Valley High series and an Alloy author. “It doesn’t touch on the classic values that Sweet Valley did—love, loyalty, friendship.”

In the 1940’s, fledgling mogul Lew Wasserman instituted the combination of black sack suit, white Sulka shirt and skinny black tie at M.C.A., the talent agency which he was then running. M.C.A. agents subsequently became known around town as the “M.C.A. mafia.” (Mr. Wasserman didn’t abandon this penguin shell when he ascended to the role of studio head at M.C.A./Universal in 1962.) In the 1970’s, C.A.A. founding father Michael Ovitz, who idolized Mr. Wasserman, continued the tradition at his agency, where the black Armani suit became the unofficial uniform in which to slay enemies over gross points.

But as American fashion has relaxed into the cozy comfort zone of rumpled khakis and distressed T-shirts, so, too, has the Hollywood dress code. Today, Universal president Ron Meyer can often be spotted in jeans, as can Columbia Pictures head Amy Pascal. Toby Emmerich, president of production at New Line, is another denim devotee, and fond of padding around his office in white athletic socks—his Labrador, Bear, a few luggish paces behind. Even entertainment lawyers, traditionally Tinseltown’s most buttoned-up caste, have no qualms dining at West Hollywood’s Pane e Vino in T-shirts.

Make no mistake: The symbolism of power has not been lost in this industry-wide dress-down. But it’s been radically altered. In the same way that producers and studio execs regularly prop their feet up on tables and sofas in order to simultaneously convey the messages of a) I’m not a suit—I’m a creative!, and b) If you had as much influence as me, you could do this, too!, casual dress separates those who can wear whatever they damn well please from those who can’t.

Amazingly, there’s still one remaining citadel of old-fashioned civility—or, depending on how you look at it, one last group of suckers. Agents remain the only group left in Hollywood that still adheres to a professional, if unofficial, dress code, making them an anachronistic curiosity as they march down Wilshire Boulevard en masse at noontime—an orderly squadron of charcoals, navies and blacks—headed in the direction of Barney Greengrass (here, a chichi place at the top of Barneys Beverly Hills) or Mr. Chow. They’re like displaced refugees from Wall Street, dabbing at their dampened brows with Brioni handkerchiefs—a feeble attempt to combat the unforgiving glare of the Los Angeles sun.

But in recent years, the Egyptian cotton has begun to fray around the edges a bit. Though suits are still the standard at the Big Five agencies (C.A.A., William Morris, I.C.M., U.T.A. and Endeavor), fewer ties are showing up at the office, especially as the weekend draws near. William Morris even observes Casual Friday. According to a spy at Endeavor (the model for Ari Gold’s former place of employment on HBO’s hit show Entourage), partner Adam Venit regularly wears khakis and polo shirts—throughout the week. Ari Emmanuel, the model for the Ari Gold character, is a Friday jeans kind of guy. (Neither man wished to comment.) Things are getting more and more lax at U.T.A. as well, according to several employees. C.A.A., which has a reputation as corporate and sleek as its I.M. Pei–designed headquarters, remains the only agency whose employees are respectful enough, or paranoid enough, to adhere to five full days of jacket and tie.

White Jeans at William Morris

At William Morris, the good ol’ boy 10-percentery whose image is still colored by memberships at the Hillcrest Country Club on Pico Boulevard, cigar-smoking sessions and day-long games of pinochle, things first started to slouch toward dishevelment in the mid-1990’s, when former president Arnold Rifkin—despite his personal fondness for Armani—introduced Casual Fridays.

This was a dramatic shift from the way Rifkin’s predecessor, Jerry Katzman, ran the ship. “I always felt that you looked a lot more professional if you dressed professionally,” Mr. Katzman said in a telephone interview. “That the creative side of the business could dress however they wanted, but that agents were really representing talent, and they were the business side of the agenda.”

One veteran W.M.A. agent who wished to remain anonymous (the agency biz can be a bit like the Gestapo when it comes to the press) recalls attending a staff meeting during the Katzman era on the day before Thanksgiving. Because the agent was getting on a flight in the afternoon, he wore jeans and a black turtleneck.

Upon taking his seat at the conference table, Mr. Katzman, seated at the head, stared icily at the agent before asking: “How far do you live from here?”

“The question just dropped in the air. Everyone knew what it meant—that I should go home and change,” the agent said. “I was terrified.”

Mr. Katzman relaxed a bit when he was told about the flight.

In 1999, the bar at W.M.A. was lowered further with the arrival of David Wirtschafter, now president, who schleps around the agency’s hallowed halls in a positively Kurt Cobain–esque ensemble of faded jeans, work boots and flannel shirts, according to one colleague; another cited “flip-flops, jeans, athletic stuff—T-shirts and sweatpants.”

“He always did it, and nobody ever stopped him,” Mr. Katzman said. “I think that’s his personality.”

To the bewilderment of Mr. Wirtschafter’s colleagues, W.M.A. chairman Jim Wiatt, a sartorial stickler who’s known for his aversion to facial hair—“What are we selling, refrigerators?” the agent scolded one employee sporting a 5 o’clock shadow—looks the other way. (Mr. Wirtschafter, perhaps understandably wary after his unusual candor in a New Yorker profile blew up in his face, declined to discuss his style choices with The Observer.)

These days, W.M.A. agents are more likely to confuse Hillcrest for a hot new bar on Melrose. When it comes to clothes, they favor pale blue button-downs (staff meetings are often a sea of powder blue) and simple ties, affecting the look of overgrown prep-school boys whose weekend plans lean toward Palm Springs—as opposed to Vegas, the destination of flashier types from C.A.A. and Endeavor.

On Fridays, however, staid decorum gives way to misguided creativity. “The Casual Friday thing is a disaster, because a lot of people who try to do it—it’s pathetic,” said one high-level W.M.A. agent. “One of my associates comes in with white jeans and a big, oversized shirt—a long-sleeved button-down that looks like it’s his dad’s shirt. He looks like a farmer. He’s trying to look cool and hip, and it’s down to his knees …. The trick is how you pull off the casual part and look decent.”

Mr. Katzman marveled at the current relaxed environment. “Even Arnold was not a casual kind of person,” he said. “Casual Friday meant that you didn’t have to have a tie! It didn’t mean that you could come in in jeans and a T-shirt.”

(Luckily, we have Anna Wintour to whip these slackers into shape: high-rollers at William Morris received free copies of Men’s Vogue when the magazine launched earlier this month.)

Members of the establishment aren’t the only ones who’ve been rolling up their sleeves lately. In July, Paradigm—an up-and-coming agency that earlier this year swallowed Writers & Artists and has been rumored to now be eyeing I.C.M.—had its first-ever dress-down day. “People were mostly wearing a lot of jeans, polo shirts—everyone kind of looked the same,” said a spy. “You could tell right away who had some style and who just didn’t have a clue. A couple of people had flannel shirts tucked into their jeans—kind of dorky. It was revealing. A couple of the male agents looked incredibly thin, like a little boy. Very skinny.”

According to Leslie Kaufman, a personal shopper in the men’s department at Barneys Beverly Hills on Wilshire Boulevard, suits haven’t exactly been flying off the racks for her agent clientele in recent years. “The agency business used to be much more prominent,” Ms. Kaufman said. “With the advent of going to casual office days, there’s been a big change in the suit business.”

Whether the fall will bring an uptick in sales remains to be seen. “Our season has not quite started,” Ms. Kaufman said. “September just deals with Labor Day and the High Holy Days and the Emmys.”

Ian Daniels, who owns a discount men’s-clothing warehouse in Santa Monica from which he supplies agents and other Hollywood “clotheshorses” (such as the permatanned actor George Hamilton) with marked-down Kiton, Borrelli and Cesare Attolini garments, said that his clients are increasingly looking for “crossover” attire, or things that can be worn both at work and at play. Mr. Daniels is a strong believer in “casual elegance,” he said on a recent afternoon, looking like a 21st-century Don Johnson in an untucked pink Barba shirt, white Borrelli pants and Prada Sport loafers without socks. “I think there’s way too many guys running around in jeans and T-shirts,” he said. “Instead of dressing like grown men, they’re dressing like kids.”

Spit ’n’ Shine at I.C.M.

A few members of the old guard are still carrying the torch of formality. I.C.M. president Ed Limato, a flamboyant iconoclast who brings to mind both the late George Plimpton (whom he somewhat resembles) and Elton John (a client), keeps the ranks in line at I.C.M.—even though at his famed pre-Oscar party, Mr. Limato goes shoeless.

“I’m the holdout,” Mr. Limato said over the telephone in a baritone voice that allows no letters to escape unenunciated. “I wear a shirt and suit every day, and I expect everybody else to. As long as I’m here, that’s the way it’s going to be. It’s a business and you represent talent, and I don’t think talent wants to see their agents dress like their best buddies. I think they think of the agents as people who represent them. I think they want to see spit and shine.

“I don’t believe in—what did you call it?—Casual Friday,” he said disdainfully.

According to an observer, when Mr. Limato spotted a female employee wearing culottes once, he gasped in horror: “Clam diggers!” On another occasion, when an agent entered his office without any stays in his collar, Mr. Limato cried: “You’ve forgotten your bones today!”

When Mr. Limato spies an agent who doesn’t live up to his standards of tailoring, a company-wide e-mail is fired off, reminding agents that no day is Casual Day. According to several sources, Mr. Limato is also known for sending out e-mails directing that if agents’ window blinds aren’t fully deployed, they should be three-quarters of the way down, in order to preserve a look of unity from the sidewalks of Wilshire.

(Mr. Limato denied any fenestral preoccupations. “When you’ve been here a long time, you hear things that add to the color of the person,” he said with a chuckle. “There’s nothing to that.”)

Of course, boys will be boys.

“If Limato’s in town and you come in on a Friday, you’ve gotta be smart about it,” one mid-level male I.C.M. agent said. “Often I don’t wear a tie on Friday, and I usually don’t shave on Friday.”

He added, sotto voce: “I’ve had two days of growth and been able to get away with it!”

Said one former I.C.M. agent about the agent-suit relationship: “Jeff [Berg, chairman of I.C.M.] once said to me that one of the reasons he liked the company to dress up was that if a client makes $20 million a picture, then in the office that means we make $2 million off them. ‘So I think you can get dressed up for them,’ he said.

“All things agency-driven are anxiety-, fear-driven,” the agent continued. “One of those [fears] is that you might lose a client if the client thinks for a second that the person taking care of them isn’t dressed to the nines and a complete business man.”

But this fear may be unfounded. Luke Greenfield, who wrote and directed The Girl Next Door, and who is represented by Philip Raskind, an Endeavor agent and partner, said, “I’ve never seen Phil not in a suit, but if he did show up in flip-flops and a Hawaiian shirt, I’d love it. Especially in a creative environment, everyone needs to relax.”

He paused. “If he was dealing with my back-end [gross] and quote, maybe it would be a little disconcerting.”

Then again, not all agents are complaining about an enforced dress code. “I actually feel more comfortable in a suit,” said one U.T.A.’er. “I like a division between what I wear on the weekend and what I wear to work.” The Casual Friday hater from W.M.A. concurred. “I personally wouldn’t want to be repped by someone who wears a T-shirt,” he said.

Female agents have it both better and worse. On the one hand, they have greater latitude in interpreting the definition of professional dress. “As a woman, we have a teeny bit more leeway, because it’s not about always wearing a power suit,” said one Endeavor agent in her 30’s. “A woman can get away with wearing a great T-shirt and a skirt, whereas no man can wear a great T-shirt.”

Yet when the workday ends and it’s time for premieres or work drinks, women are stuck in their limbo attire—not quite banker, but not quite urban chic, either. “I never go out in my same clothes,” said one female I.C.M. agent. “I just feel uncomfortable. I always bring a pair of jeans and change in the bathroom. I’ll wear whatever—a blouse and blazer with jeans and my pumps.”

Joe Rosenberg, formerly of C.A.A. and now an executive at Radar Pictures, is one of those frowning on agents in T-shirts. “From a client’s point of view, they’re handling your business and they’re out there speaking for you, and I think you want someone to be, as a human being, professional in who they are and how they say what they say, but also to look the part,” he said.

On a recent weekday morning, Mr. Rosenberg paid a visit to Jack Taylor, the 89-year-old Russian-born Beverly Hills clothier, whose handmade suits start at $3,200. Black-and-white photos of former clients Cary Grant and Jack Lemmon were hanging on one of the shop’s walls. Legendary former William Morris president Abe Lastfogel was also a customer.

Dressed for work—orange cashmere sweater, faded jeans, gray New Balance sneakers—Mr. Rosenberg picked out fabric for a new suit and bantered with Mr. Taylor, small and natty in velvet slippers. Then the younger man left the store.

Seated at his paper-strewn desk, Mr. Taylor shook his head and closed his eyes behind his enormous Wassermanesque, black-framed glasses.

“Did you see him?” he said, his voice softly hoarse. “That’s the way they all dress. It’s terrible.”

"I found out about it at 9:30 the night before the announcement," said Mr. Greenberg. "George called me from the car and said, 'There's an announcement going to be made.' I thought, 'All right, well, I guess I'm with C.A.A. now.'" Three months later, virtually all of Mr. Lane's clients had decamped from William Morris to C.A.A., including directors Sam Mendes ( Gypsy ), Robert Falls ( Long Day's Journey into Night ) and Michael Mayer ( Thoroughly Modern Millie ); writers Kenneth Lonergan ( This Is Our Youth ), Martin Sherman ( The Boy from Oz ), Suzan-Lori Parks ( Topdog/Underdog) and Eve Ensler ( The Vagina Monologues ); and actor and writer Eric Bogosian. In 2003, C.A.A.'s stable of directors represented by Mr. Lane and fellow agent Michael Cardonick helmed 13 of the 32 shows running on Broadway.

C.A.A.'s new home in New York is on the sixth floor of a prewar building on lower Fifth Avenue, across the street from Restoration Hardware and Club Monaco. Mr. Lane, who stands above six feet and favors dark, stoic pinstripe suits, used to have a regular table at Michael's; now he can choose to do business at Union Square Cafe, Craft and Gramercy Tavern.

"People on Broadway have been asking C.A.A. to be involved in New York for years. If you're thinking of opening a New York office, you would want to open an office for someone who has some sort of power," said Richard Kornberg, the head of a public-relations firm that represents Hairspray and Rent . "By bringing George Lane into this quotient, you get sort of edgy writers, you get directors who are important, and you get George's encyclopedic knowledge. And it was a very smart move for C.A.A. to do."

Mr. Lane, who declined to be interviewed, is said to be fanatically devoted to his clients and to have something of a temper, though the volume has been lowered recently.

"No one describes George as warm and fuzzy," said producer Hal Luftig. "George is a tough agent. He knows what his clients want, and he just gets out there and states it."

"When George got married and had a wife, I thought, 'My God, he has another life?'" said Mr. Kornberg.

Mr. Lane's friends and associates say he's mellowed.

"George and I at times had a confrontational relationship," Mr. Kornberg said. "George, basically, he can be fucking rude. And I can be someone who answers someone back as well. But he finds a way to get things done. I don't know many other agents who are that dogged."

"He doesn't even do the yelling anymore. That's the young George of 15 years ago," said Mr. Bogosian. "As passionate as he gets sometimes on the phone, I know it's all an act. It's very fun to sit in his office and watch him do it; often he's laughing while he's yelling at people."

"I have noticed continually over the past few years that every year, George gets more self-confident," said producer David Richenthal, whose version of Long Day's Journey into Night won the 2003 Tony for Best Revival. "And I think that was true again, having this adventure at C.A.A.; it is something he has more control over by running the whole office, compared to just running William Morris' theater department. George is C.A.A. New York."

The fact that C.A.A. is in New York at all is a bit of a surprise. "I think it's kind of an interesting development that C.A.A., who had absolutely no interest in the theater in the [Michael] Ovitz era-and, furthermore, was at least reputed to actively discourage their clients from theater … that they would do this means they must feel there's some money in it," said The New York Times' Frank Rich. "Now does this mean that the theater is in fantastic financial shape? Is this a great bonanza for Broadway? Not at all. What it does mean is we're going through one of those periods-and it's happened in the past-when movie studios take a great interest in Broadway, for whatever reason. And it's exemplified by Disney, but also Warner Brothers, Universal and Fox-they have all been involved in recent Broadway productions."

Recent examples would be Miramax's $45 million screen version of Bob Fosse's Chicago (six Oscars, including Best Picture; $170 million at the box office) and HBO's $60 million version of Tony Kushner's Angels in America . Mr. Kushner's latest stage production, Caroline, or Change , opens on May 4; the success of HBO's Angels has generated more-than-usual buzz for the show. This December, Warner Brothers will release a screen version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera , directed by Joel Schumacher.

All this doesn't necessarily mean we'll suddenly start seeing C.A.A. clients such as Julia Roberts, Tobey Maguire, Adrien Brody, Cameron Diaz and the Toms (Cruise and Hanks) gobbling burgers at Joe Allen's. (Though C.A.A. client Nicole Kidman famously undraped in David Hare's play The Blue Room in 1998.)

"I have a theory, which is: Really big stars come to Broadway for the most part to prove an artistic point, or to revive careers that need repositioning, or for some kind of character rehabilitation," said Mr. Rich, noting the recent appearances of Kevin Spacey in The Iceman Cometh, Christian Slater in Side Man and Edward Norton in Burn This . "Theater pays more like HBO than starring in a Hollywood movie."

George Lane was born at St. Vincent's hospital in Manhattan in 1952 and grew up in an adopted family. He attended Hobart and William Smith College in Geneva, N.Y., and, after graduation, worked on Governor Hugh Carey's 1976 campaign. He soon ended up in the William Morris mail room, the same place that Mr. Ovitz began in 1968. Mr. Lane rose through William Morris by bargaining hard and showing up everywhere his clients happened to be. "When George and I have done several shows that started at the Goodman Theater, I always find George at the first preview or the opening in Chicago. And then back in New York. He finds a way to be involved in the whole process," said Mr. Richenthal.

William Morris has alrready taken steps to counter C.A.A.'s New York expansion which includes the market research firm Youth Intelligence that C.A.A. acquired last year, its advertising division and its music-touring department. Now, William Morris has bulked up its theater department, installing Peter Franklin and Jack Tantleff to lead a group that represents Full Monty writer Terrence McNally, Hairspray book writer Mark O'Donnell and Avenue Q book writer Jeff Whitty, among others.

"The point is, William Morris has a stronger list now than when George was here," said Mr. Tantleff. "George has his own way of working, and it works for George, but it's not how Peter or I like to work. When we joined William Morris … we are both old enough to remember the days when the William Morris theater department had no equal. Nobody even came close. If you were in theater in any capacity-a playwright, a director-this is where you wanted to be. Our vision is to restore it to that, and you don't do that with a kind of take-no-prisoners modus operandi . William Morris didn't get that way by beating other people up."

"I see competition among the agencies as a good thing," John Breglio, a prominent entertainment lawyer, said. "The more players, the better; more and more Broadway producers are looking to Hollywood's talent and titles to bring to the theater, and it's helpful to have a C.A.A. presence in this community. For William Morris and I.C.M., more competition means competition will be rather fierce among a few agents. All the agents are now vying for the best clients."

"I'll tell you, there are four kinds of agents: nurturers, deal-makers, schmoozers and sharks," Mr. Franklin said. "The great agents can be all four things. But if all you can do is nurture, your clients will grow up and leave home. If all you can do is schmooze, you're going to be a hand-holder and you're not really going to be the agent. If all you can do is make a creative deal, you won't be able to hang onto your clients. And if all you are is a shark, eventually the buyers will kill you ."

And while the return of Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick to The Producers has injected Broadway with a jolt of media attention (the show grosses more than $1.3 million per week), New York theater is still struggling to recoup from a post–Sept. 11 economy that has seen the number of international tourists attending Broadway drop from 12 percent to less than 5 percent, according to Jed Bernstein, the president of the League of American Theaters and Producers. Last fall, the comedy Bobbi Boland, starring Farrah Fawcett, closed during previews; Rosie O'Donnell's $10 million Boy George musical, Taboo, will close on Feb. 8 after critics savaged the show, which has played to 60 percent capacity. Overall, according to Mr. Bernstein, Broadway attendance was down 5 percent in 2003, though revenues were up slightly, reflecting higher average ticket prices. Mr. Bernstein said the presence of C.A.A. and Mr. Lane in New York may help revive the theater-especially if he can lure C.A.A.'s Hollywood talent east.

But Mr. Lane, for one, isn't talking. Which is the way he likes it.

"I was really taken aback, because I knew nothing about his decision to leave William Morris," said Carol Shorenstein Hays, the producer of Mr. Greenberg's Take Me Out and Mr. Kushner's Caroline, or Change . "It's so like him; he plays things very close to his chest, I find that incredibly shrewd, honorable and powerful. I mean, Richard Greenberg didn't know, Suzan-Lori Parks didn't know-and those were his clients . "