DURING the 1960s and 1970s Marvin Mitchelson became one of the best-known divorce lawyers in the world by acting for the wives of such famous men as James Mason, David Bowie and Bob Dylan. He only became a celebrity in his own right in 1979, when he acted for Michelle Triola, the ex-girlfriend of the actor Lee Marvin.
Triola had lived with Marvin for almost seven years before he kicked her out of his Malibu beach house in order to marry his childhood sweetheart. She turned to Mitchelson, who promptly filed suit for $1.3 million — half the assets acquired by the film star while the couple had lived together.
It was an audacious move. The idea that former partners might enjoy legal rights as a result of a non-marital relationship was completely unknown at the time. Nonetheless, Mitchelson persuaded the California State Supreme Court to accept his argument that unmarried couples base their relationships on unwritten contracts. He even had a handy name for the compensation he was seeking: “palimony”.
Triola never got a dime. Originally awarded just $104,000, even that was taken away from her on appeal. Nonetheless, Mitchelson’s reputation was made and he was flooded with business. He would later claim — with some justification — that the case changed marriage and family law for ever. Mitchelson made the most of his celebrity. Dubbing himself “the Prince of Palimony”, he wrote an autobiography, Made in Heaven, Settled in Court (1979), was interviewed on chat shows and even made an appearance as himself in the long-running TV series The Golden Girls. But the dream turned sour in 1993, when he was convicted of tax evasion. After exhausting his appeals, he spent two years in prison.
The son of Russian Jewish immigrants, Marvin Mitchelson was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1928. Before he was two years old, his family moved to Los Angeles, where his father gave up painting houses and became a successful property developer. Michelson paid for his courses at Southwestern University School of Law by working part-time as a process server. Nothing if not determined, he once broke on to the MGM lot to serve papers on Joan Collins, who would later become a client. On another occasion, he rented a tuxedo and crashed a charity function to serve a writ on Louis B. Mayer.
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Having graduated without distinction, Mitchelson set up in practice in 1957 in Hollywood, where he acted for B-movie starlets, petty criminals and negligence victims. He built his business by strategically feeding stories to reporters at the local courthouse.
Mitchelson first gained national attention in 1963, when he won a Supreme Court ruling that guaranteed free legal representation for defendants who could not otherwise afford it. His big break came the following year, however, when he acted for Pamela, the wife of the film star James Mason.
Mitchelson’s client was suing her husband for divorce on the grounds of his adultery and said she wanted $1 million alimony, a figure unheard of at that time. Displaying the bluster and bravado that would become his trademark, Mitchelson subpoenaed 43 witnesses and warned Mason’s lawyers that he was prepared to reveal in open court various embarrassing sexual secrets. The actor chose to settle out of court for $2 million.
Many more unhappy wives soon began to beat a path to Mitchelson’s door. In addition to handling two of Zsa Zsa Gabor’s seven divorces, he acted for Connie Stevens in her break-up with Eddie Fisher and represented the third Mrs Groucho Marx and the fourth and seventh Mrs Alan Jay Lerners.
He also stepped into one of Hollywood’s longest-running and most bitter custody battles — between Marlon Brando and Anna Kashfi over their son, Christian. Mitchelson won visiting rights for Kashfi after arguing that Brando’s performance in Last Tango in Paris, in which he played a “sexually maladjusted and perverted person”, made him unfit to retain exclusive custody of his son.
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The LA lawyer’s fame was now spreading far beyond California. He was instructed by Marsha Hunt when she filed a paternity suit in London against Mick Jagger and by Angie Bowie to negotiate a divorce settlement in Switzerland with her rock star husband, David. When Mitchelson struck a deal within 24 hours, Mrs Bowie declared: “Marvin is like a superhero out of a comic book.” Mitchelson squeezed $13 million out of Bob Dylan for his wife, Sara. “I had never heard of Bob Dylan when she hired me,” he confessed at the time. “But, $13 million later, I knew every song.”
At the height of his success, Mitchelson bought a huge house in West Hollywood overlooking Sunset Boulevard.The answering machine at the house greeted callers with the first bars of You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling.
Mitchelson’s office was opulent. His chair was a throne upholstered in red velvet that had once belonged to Rudolph Valentino. The ceiling contained a reproduction of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. It was all paid for by Mitchelson’s cut from a string of high-profile cases in which he acted for Soraya Khashoggi, Bianca Jagger and the late Rock Hudson’s former boyfriend, Marc Christian.
Other clients, however, began to complain that Mitchelson was overcharging, passing on too much work to his junior associates and more interested in publicity than his practice. There were also rumours of addictions to cocaine and gambling. In 1988 Mitchelson was investigated on two charges or rape, but no prosecutions followed. Five years later, he was convicted of not paying taxes on some $2 million in income and forced into bankruptcy.
In prison he ran the law library, organised an opera club and helped many of his fellow inmates with appeals, successfully overturning a number of convictions. The California State Bar allowed him to resume his practice in 2000 after a break of seven years.
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He is survived by his wife of 45 years, Marcella, and their son, Morgan.
Marvin Mitchelson, divorce lawyer, was born on May 7, 1928. He died on September 18, 2004, aged 76.