Entertainment

Famous attorney a bemused witness to celebrity

Alan Dershowitz worries the first line of his obituary will be that he was a celebrity lawyer and uncritical defender of Israel. Maybe so, but at least his new memoir adds “great anecdote teller” to the list.

Sprinkled in between his recounting of famous trials — O.J., von Bülow, Mike Tyson — are wonderful little tales of the clients and friends he found along the way. Some of the best:

Bobby Fischer
Dershowitz met the chess champion at the Catskill resort Grossinger’s. Fischer asked him for advice about whether he could copyright or trademark his chess moves. Dershowitz said he would be willing to look into it, and Fischer asked if he would do it free of charge.

“Sure,” Dershowitz said. “I will provide you legal advice for free, if you would do me the favor of playing one quick game with my son Elon.”

Fischer grew stern and said: “I’m not a circus performer. I don’t perform for children.”

Dershowitz responded that he wasn’t a circus performer either, and he wouldn’t do free legal work, especially for someone who wouldn’t do a small favor for a young chess fan.

Leona Helmsley
“Boring and rather stupid,” is Dershowitz’s assessment of the famous Queen of Mean. They were having breakfast in her hotel, when a waiter brought Dershowitz a cup of tea. A small amount had spilled on the saucer.

Helmsley grabbed the cup and saucer and threw it on the floor, shattering them. “Now clean it up and beg for your job,” she said to the waiter.

Marsha Clark
During the OJ Simpson trial, as Johnnie Cochran was about to give his closing argument, prosecutor Clark leaned over to him and whispered, “When you’re up there, I want you to think of only one thing: I’m not wearing any underwear.”

Dershowitz says he was dubious when Cochran told him this but when he asked Clark directly, she replied, “absolutely true.”

“Andy”
At a party, a wealthy friend introduced him to people by first name — “Donald,” “Ron” and “Mort.” Which Dershowitz knew were Trump, Perelman and Zuckerman.

“Say hello to Andy.”

Dershowitz asked Andy if he was a finance guy. “No, I work for my mum,” he replied.

“Does she run a company?”

“I guess you could say so,” he replied.

“Would I have heard of the company she runs?”

“Most definitely,” he said with a smile. “It’s Great Britain. My mum’s the queen.”

Andy was Prince Andrew.

Claus Von Bülow
After he was acquitted of the attempted murder of his wife, von Bülow hosted a dinner party. Norman Mailer was one of the guests. Von Bülow regaled everyone with tales from the trial and explained why the evidence proved his innocence.

Halfway through dinner, Mailer said to his wife, “Let’s get out of here. I think this guy is innocent. I thought we were going to have dinner with a man who actually tried to kill his wife. This is boring.”

Benjamin Netanyahu
“There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” the prime minister of Israel asked him one day. “Did O.J. do it?”

Dershowitz was taken aback. “So, Mr. Prime Minister, does Israel have nuclear weapons?”

“You know I can’t answer that,” Bibi said. Dershowitz looked back at him and said, “Aha!” and they both laughed.

Marlon Brando
Dershowitz represented Brando’s son, Christian, in his manslaughter case. He says that everyone assumes celebrities are “fascinating.” The opposite is often the case. Brando was “boring and predictable . . . He had typically ‘Hollywood’ political views, conventional ideas and no sense of humor. He loved his children but didn’t seem to have any notion of how to relate to them. He struck me as a rather pathetic figure.”

Woody Allen
While Allen was filming “Manhattan,” a mutual friend set up a lunch — a birthday present for Dershowitz. When Dershowitz admitted this to the director, Allen began to speculate who his gift would be.

“Louis Armstrong.”

“He’s dead,” Dershowitz reminded him.

“Exactly. Jimmy Hoffa would be my second choice.”

“He’s missing.”

“Exactly,” he repeated.

Allen then asked Dershowitz what dead person he would have wanted to represent. “Jesus,” the lawyer replied.

“Do you think you could have won?”

“In front of a Jewish jury, maybe.”