Marvin Josephson, Who Scored Big Deals for Stars, Dies at 95

Marvin Josephson was born on March 6, 1927, in Atlantic City, N.J. His parents, Joseph and Eva Rivka (Rounick) Josephson, ran a dress shop.

He graduated from high school in Atlantic City, served in the Navy at the close of World War II, earned a bachelor’s degree at Cornell University and, in 1952, obtained a law degree at New York University. He went on to work in the legal department at CBS.

“Three years of writing contracts convinced him that the pickings would be greener if he represented talent,” as Newsday put it, and in 1955 Mr. Josephson started his own personal management company. One potential source of business, he thought, might be the broadcast journalists he had come to know at CBS: When walking in Manhattan with one or another of them, passers-by would often stop to say hello and sometimes ask for an autograph.

“They thought of themselves as newsmen,” he told The Miami Herald in 1984, “but they were becoming celebrities, or stars.”

Charles Collingwood, the CBS newsman, became his first client, and others followed, including Chet Huntley and, years later, Barbara Walters. Then there was his other foundational client, Mr. Keeshan.

At the time, 1955, Mr. Keeshan was on a local kiddie show, “Tinker’s Workshop,” on WABC-TV in New York. Mr. Josephson wanted to move him and the show to CBS, but WABC argued that the station, not Mr. Keeshan, owned the program.