Hollywood elite lawyer Bert Fields dies at 93

Bert Fields, the colorful and shrewd dean of Hollywood lawyers whose services were sought out by superstars and studios knowing they would get an unrestricted defense and almost assured of some measure of victory, died Sunday at his home in Malibu, California. He was 93 years old.

The cause was complications from the long Covid-19, said his wife, Barbara Guggenheim.

Over the decades, stars and studio heads who turned to Mr. Fields included Madonna, Tom Cruise, Warren Beatty, The Beatles, Michael Jackson, Dustin Hoffman, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Michael Ovitz and Jeffrey Katzenberg.

Urban, neat and suited to Saville Row, Mr Fields has become something of a celebrity himself, earning magazine profiles and regular mentions in gossip columns.

In addition to offering examples of his strong sense of entitlement, the press took note of a bon vivant lifestyle that mirrored those of his clients, the chauffeur-driven Bentley Arnage (cost: $250,000) with which he cruised in Los Angeles, the homes he owned in Malibu, Manhattan, Mexico City and France, and the $100 bottles of wine served at dinner parties.

Among his most famous cases was his fierce representation of Jeffrey Katzenberg, the chief executive of DreamWorks Animation, against the Walt Disney Company, for denying Mr. Katzenberg $250 million contract bonuses for hits such as The Lion King. and The Little Mermaid when he was that president of the studios, from 1984 to 1994. Mr. Fields conducted a scathing cross-examination of then-Disney chief Michael Eisner, revealing that Mr. Eisner once told the co-writer of his autobiography that he hated Mr. Katzenberg.

I hate the little dwarf, Mr. Eisner had said, according to Mr. Fields’ questioning in the courtroom.

The revelation angered Mr Eisner so much that he got up from the witness chair and warned Mr Fields that he was pushing him too hard. The impression left by the exchange baffled the Disney company, which had built its reputation on lovable midgets, among other animated characters, and the benevolent, fatherly studio heads it presented on television. He settled the lawsuit for the full $250 million, more than triple the amount ever awarded to an individual in a Hollywood lawsuit, according to Variety.

When producer Harvey Weinstein and his brother, Bob, wanted to split their production company Miramax from Disney, a lawsuit seemed inevitable. But Mr. Fields, aware of Disney’s distrust of him, cut a deal in which Disney was able to keep the Miramax name and its library of 550 films; in return, he had to give the Weinsteins $130 million to start a new film company.

In the entertainment business, entering litigation without Bert Fields is like entering the Arctic without a jacket, Harvey Weinstein, who is now in prison for sex crimes, told The New York Times.

Mr Fields represented Michael Jackson in a civil case stemming from accusations in 1993 that he molested an underage boy, a case which was settled for more than $20million but in which Jackson admitted no wrongdoing . Mr Fields also avoided further damage from a number of writers who had examined Tom Cruises’ membership in Scientology, which they called a cult, by threatening them with libel suits.

When Beatles-owned Apple Corps Ltd. wanted to stop the Beatlemania tribute band from recreating classic Beatles performances with lookalikes and imitations of its trademarks, they hired Mr. Fields. He persuaded a Los Angeles judge to order the producers to pay Apple Corps $5.6 million plus interest for commercial exploitation.

When Warren Beatty protested the decision to cut four minutes from his film Reds (1981) for broadcast on television, he retained the services of Mr. Fields, who assured him, as director, the right to make the final cuts.

In 2006, editor Judith Regan sent Mr Fields to quell accusations of anti-Semitism that could have killed his career. She had paid OJ Simpson $800,000 for a book, If I Did It, which she later promoted with a TV interview in which he apparently confessed to murdering his ex-wife.

Harper Collins, the publisher, terminated the project and then fired Ms Regan, saying she had complained that a Jewish cabal at the publishing house was out to get her. Mr Fields spoke to various media outlets and warned them that as a Jew he did not believe his remarks, even if accurately reported, were bigoted, and that accusing him of making biased statements was defamatory.

After Ms. Regan filed a lawsuit, Harper Collins settled the case and released a statement saying: After carefully considering the matter, we accept Ms. Regan’s position that she said nothing of an anti-Semitic nature. , and further believe that Ms. Regan is not an anti-Semite.

Mr. Fields once explained his legal strategy to journalist Ken Auletta over a glass of chardonnay at Spago, the famous Hollywood hangout. If I was a general, I would attack and continue to press the attack to unbalance the opponent, to change the odds and make a much more favorable settlement, he said. It forces the other side to think: Hey, I can lose this case. Let’s settle this.

Mr Fields’ ruse was evident when author Barbara Chase-Riboud filed a $10 million lawsuit against DreamWorks accusing her of using material from her historical novel for her 1997 film Amistad, directed by Steven Spielberg, about a revolt of slave ships.

Mr Fields fired back during a joint appearance with her on CNN by pointing out that a passage in his novel was identical to another Amistad story. He refused to use the word plagiarism, but Ms Chase-Riboud settled out of court, even praising the film as a splendid work and adding that its producers had done nothing wrong.

Mr. Fields cultivated the impression that he had never lost a case, but all but a handful of lawsuits were settled out of court and not always as lucratively as his clients had expected. Madonna’s 2004 breach of contract lawsuit against Warner Music was settled for $10 million, not the $200 million she had sought.

Mr. Fields’ reputation was clouded in 2002 when federal investigators began scrutinizing the activities of the private eye he often employed, Anthony Pellicano, and learned that this rudimentary detective had illegally wiretapped numerous subjects prosecution to unearth incriminating information and legal strategies. Mr. Pellicano was sentenced to 15 years in prison, but Mr. Fields has not been charged.

I never knew there were wiretaps, ever, he told CNN.

Nonetheless, he admitted that those years were a difficult time and the taint of cutthroat legal tactics clung to him afterwards.

Bertram Harris Fields was born on March 31, 1929 in Los Angeles. His mother, Mildred (Rubin) Fields, was a retired ballet dancer who read both the Wall Street Journal and the Communist Daily Worker. His father, F. Maxwell Fields, was an eye surgeon whose patients included Groucho Marx and Mae West.

As a teenager, Bert’s father joined the army, when he was in his 40s. Bert was sent to live with an aunt in San Francisco, then to a boarding house in Los Angeles, where he lived while in high school. He supported himself by earning money as a caddy.

He eventually attended UCLA and then Harvard Law School and after graduating in 1952 he married Amy Markson. With the Korean War, he served as an attorney with the Air Force Judge Advocate Office, then went to work for a Beverly Hills law firm. There he dealt with the divorce of a model, Lydia Menovich, and fell in love with her; she became his second wife. They were married for 27 years, until his death from lung cancer in 1986.

He met Mrs. Guggenheim, an art consultant and his third wife, when he defended her against a lawsuit brought by Sylvester Stallone over a painting she had acquired for him. Besides her, he is survived by a son from his first marriage, James, and two grandchildren.

Early in his career, Mr. Fields had a role, appearing as a prosecutor in an episode of the television crime drama Dragnet; Jack Webb, the show’s creator and star, was a client. Soon he acquired other clients Edward G. Robinson, Peter Falk and Elaine May and struck up a fruitful friendship with superagent Michael Ovitz, who referred him to brighter names, like Dustin Hoffman. In 1982, Mr. Fields merged his company with another, becoming entertainment powerhouse Greenberg Glusker Fields Claman & Machtinger.

Mr. Fields was proud of his interests outside the law. He was a Shakespeare expert and wrote three books: one which argued that Shakespeare had a secret writing partner, another which was a revisionist assessment of Richard III, and a third which was a fictionalized biography of Shylock.

He has also written two detective novels under the pseudonym of D. Kincaid, where his alter ego, a lawyer named Harry Cain, relies on a sleazy private detective who occasionally conducts illegal wiretapping.

Alex Traub contributed report.