Word: giesler
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...Discomfort. The Reynolds verdict is only one of the legal triumphs savored by Author Nizer in My Life in Court. A sort of East Coast version of the late Jerry Giesler (TIME, Jan. 12), Nizer won a whopping settlement for Eleanor Holm in her divorce action against Billy Rose, represented Bobo Rockefeller when she divorced Winthrop Rockefeller, proved that Charlie Chaplin had plagiarized the idea for The Great Dictator from Author Konrad Bercovici, masterminded Loew's, Incorporated's battle to prevent its takeover by deposed M-G-M Boss Louis B. Mayer...
...Giesler was soon cutting his eyeteeth in some toweringly strange trials. Murders were a specialty, and in all, Giesler handled more than 70 murder cases over the years. Not one of his clients was executed, not even Bugsy Siegel, the excess-personnel man at Murder, Inc. And when Norman Selby, the fighter known as Kid McCoy, * was charged with the murder of his mistress, Giesler got a verdict of manslaughter even though Selby had earlier insisted to the police that he was guilty. Giesler's explanation of the confession: the Kid was so depressed that he wanted...
Divorce & a Horse. Divorce was Giesler's other specialty. Married twice himself (he had two daughters and one son), he helped Barbara Hutton divest herself of Cary Grant, took the side of Lady Sylvia Ashley against Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe against Joe DiMaggio. In his most bizarre case, he defended the life of a horse named Tom Boy whose owner's will had decreed that the stallion should be destroyed to save him from mistreatment; and in perhaps his most celebrated case, he won an acquittal for Charlie Chaplin, charged with a violation of the Mann...
...Giesler never talked about the fees he charged, but Chaplin reportedly paid him $100,000, Errol Flynn $75,000. He averaged about $150,000 a year-not much for a star whose performance in some of the greatest of Hollywood scenes should have earned him half a dozen Oscars...
Died. Harold Lee ("Jerry") Giesler, 77, canny counsel for two generations of Hollywood celebrities in distress, whose courtroom histrionics won him fame as "The Magnificent Mouthpiece"; of a heart attack; in Beverly Hills (see SHOW BUSINESS...