washingtonpost.com
Breathing New Life Into Dead Celebs
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41893-2004Dec6.html

By Peter Carlson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 7, 2004; Page C01

Lawyers are frequently mocked -- and with good reason -- as shysters, sophists and pettifoggers. So it is refreshing indeed to read Los Angeles magazine's celebration of two lawyers who worked tirelessly to win justice for an exploited minority group.

The lawyers are Roger Richman and Mark Roesler. The exploited group is dead celebrities.

Until Richman and Roesler began their crusade of scorched-earth litigation, dead celebrities had no rights at all. Any sleazy huckster could use any dead celeb's picture to sell any kind of cheesy crapola -- and many sleazy hustlers did just that. They sold Marilyn Monroe toilet paper and James Dean condoms and cans allegedly filled with Elvis Presley's sweat, labeled "May His Perspiration Be Your Inspiration."

It was tacky. It was tasteless. And, worst of all, it wasn't making a nickel for these celebrities' heirs -- or their lawyers.

Richman and Roesler thought this an outrage, an injustice and, incidentally, a potential source of big bucks. And so -- as Tamar Brott tells the story in a hilarious article -- they battled to make life better for dead celebrities.

The story begins in the late '70s, when Bela Lugosi Jr. sued Universal Studios to win the right to sell his father's image. Lugosi lost that case.

But when Richman read the judge's ruling, he spied a loophole: If the elder Lugosi had appeared in ads during his life, the judge ruled, then his image would be a trademark that could be passed down to his heirs.

"As soon as I read that," Richman said, "I ran out to the Rose Bowl swap meet and bought up all the old magazines I could find."

In those old mags, Richman found ads featuring many now-dead stars who had sold their image -- Mae West, W.C. Fields, Marilyn Monroe -- and he started representing their heirs, forcing companies who'd used the stars' images posthumously to pay royalties.

Soon, celebrity offspring were "crawling out of the woodwork," he says.

"Bring home the bacon!" Clark Gable's widow told Richman. And he did, keeping a mere 35 percent of the bacon for himself.

Richman's second great victory came in 1984, after he lobbied the California legislature for a law that would grant rights to the heirs of all dead celebs, not just those who'd sold their image before departing for the big Beverly Hills in the sky. Richman made his case by showing the lawmakers a sex toy adorned with a likeness of Ronald Reagan.

"I held it up and said, 'This is a sexual device with the head of the president on it!' That's what got my law passed."

The law -- which gives heirs control of a celebrity's image for 70 years -- has a name that is beyond satire: "the California Celebrity Rights Bill."

These victories made Richman a rich man. They also benefited his hated rival, Roesler, the Indianapolis attorney who lured away several of Richman's dead clients, including Marilyn Monroe.

Roesler is the attack dog of the dead-celeb biz, employing 12 lawyers to sue anybody who dares use one of his deceased stars' images without ponying up the dough. For example, he sued Spike Lee, director of the movie "Malcolm X," on behalf of Malcolm's widow, Betty Shabazz, over control of Malcolm memorabilia.

"Shabazz won undisclosed damages that Roesler can only describe as being 'in the seven figures,' " Brott writes, "and then proceeded to put out her own line of mementos, which included air fresheners."

These days, Roesler is using new technologies to find work for his dead clients. He recently licensed Laurence Olivier's morphed image for a posthumous movie appearance. Now he's negotiating with a studio for a new film that will star a morphed Marilyn Monroe and a morphed James Dean.

"It is unclear," Brott writes, "whether their estates will allow them to have sex."

All that outrageous trademark and copyright crap makes me barf. Pseudo-intellectual property rights, my ass.

Thanks for posting this, though.
(I know that may seem strange for me to say that, given my previous sentences . . . but it's necessary that we be aware of what's going on. And Tom does a super job of finding the news we need to know.)

Appealing to some people's greed has developed into a fine art.

So, how low can people go? I believe we've reached the bottom of the barrel now....

before you know it you'll have to pay royalties every time you mention someone's name.

"Richman's second great victory came in 1984... made his case by showing the lawmakers a sex toy adorned with a likeness of Ronald Reagan."

Lobbying for dead celebrities.

Reagan wasn't dead in 1984.

That's a really icky thought anyway. Who do you think would buy a thing like that?

Its sad, because law used to be something that would help the little man (or woman) from being destroyed by those with money and power. Now its just a tool for those with money and power. Sad days.

naw Azurre, only in a more perfect world would "the law" be something primarily used to protect/support the populace... historically speaking "the law" has ALWAYS been moreso a tool of those with more who want even more still...

Democracy and our Western way of thinking has improved things slightly in the past 200 yrs or so... but we have a ways to go still.

(...kinda the reason we are here!)

The most eggregious example of this, I think, is the number of commemorative stamps we see coming out -- of the recently dead (well, relatively recently dead) -- who are obviously getting a royalty.

This year I picked up a couple sheets of the Buckminster Fuller stamp, because it was absolutely the ugliest and most bizarre stamp I had ever seen. But on the stamp it said that the Fuller Foundation received compensation for the use of his "image."

I find this so absurd, because most people could not tell you who Bucky Fuller was if you put hot coals on their feet. The Fuller Foundation or estate should be glad the Post Office was giving Fuller publicity, not trying to extract a royalty because they used his geodesic-domed head.

I'm sure there are plenty of people willing to buy a can of celebrity turds too.

Surely you have the right to have your reputation protected even after you die. I cannot believe anyone of you would agree with the unpermitted exloitation of your own names in similar circumstances.

"Help me make a list of "homage" songs."

The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll.

http://bobdylan.com/songs/hattie.html