In the media derby now running here in the courts, where even Heidi Fleiss finishes a distant second to O.J. Simpson, the Three Stooges never had a chance.
While there is neither a bloody glove nor a little black book revealing names of shame-faced Hollywood executives, the civil matter of DeRita vs. Scott is not without intrigue. The question before the jury: Did the heirs of Moe Howard illegally withhold merchandising income from the heirs of his fellow Stooges, Joe DeRita, a.k.a. Curly Joe, and Larry Fine?It gets better. One of the plaintiffs' lawyers is Bela Lugosi Jr., who is well over 6 feet tall, with gray-white hair and a face that resembles his father's.
"When I first met him," said Donald Zachary, the chief lawyer for the defense, "I said: `Let's get this out of the way right away. Are you?' He said yes. `Grandson?' `No, son.' That was it."
Every day someone speaks to Lugosi about his name. "People are very nice," he said. "I get calls on my voice mail from people who just want to say that they thought my dad was great. He's more popular now than he ever was."
Several obvious quips about bloodsucking lawyers come to mind, but Lugosi insists he's never heard any.
"I took Dad's good advice not to go into acting," Lugosi said. "He thought I ought to be in a profession. I was 18 when he died. He didn't know I would become an attorney."
The Stooges' case began last year when Jean DeRita, the widow of Joe DeRita, got in touch with two lawyers, who in turn brought in Lugosi, a business litigator with Hanna & Morton of Los Angeles. Three grandchildren of Fine joined as co-plaintiffs later.
Over the many weeks of arguments, which may conclude as early as this week, the jury has received a thorough history of Stoogedom: Joining Moe and Larry over the years was a succession of third Stooges that included Moe's brother Jerome, who played the original Curly; another brother, Shemp, who took over after Jerome died; Joe Besser, who revived the Curly character after Shemp's death; and DeRita, who took Besser's place.
Moe appears to have been the business and creative leader of the comedy team, and by mutual agreement handled the financial arrangements for all, a job eventually given to his son-in-law, Norman Maurer. Maurer successfully marketed an array of Stooges' licensed merchandise, and revenue was doled out to all parties. When he died in 1986, Maurer's widow, Joan, and their son, a writer named Jeffrey Scott, took over the administration of Stooge income.
It is at this point that the two sides diverge. Lugosi and his colleagues assert that Scott and Joan Maurer improperly administered the business, commingling funds and paying out to DeRita and the Fine heirs only 7 percent of the roughly $2.5 million in income and interest that he estimates has been earned for the Stooges since 1986.
For the defense, Zachary, of Kinsella, Boesch, Fujikawa & Towle of Los Angeles, responds that the plaintiffs have wrongly included money that Maurer earned as a writer and producer for animated cartoon series on ABC, as well as Scott's income as a writer on shows like "Jim Henson's Muppet Babies."
The elder Lugosi's somewhat tragic life was recently dramatized in Tim Burton's film "Ed Wood," with Martin Landau receiving raves for his portrayal of the actor at the end of his career. For his only child, however, the depiction was cartoonish. Having lived with his father on and off during childhood, including the period when the actor starred in Wood's movies, Lugosi believes the film mocked his namesake's talent, decency and courage.
Lugosi, 56, has some experience with show-business litigation. When he was in law school, he and his mother filed suit against Universal Studios for what they contended was the unauthorized sale of Bela Lugosi's likeness as Dracula. After 13 years, the suit, Lugosi vs. Universal, was decided in their favor, but the decision was overturned by the California Supreme Court.
In the mid-1980s, though, thanks in part to the lobbying of the younger Lugosi, the state Legislature passed a law establishing for the first time that a deceased person's name and likeness are property rights that are passed on to his or her heirs.
Lugosi said he also represented the licensing interests of Sara Karloff, daughter of Boris, who played the original Frankenstein monster; and Ron Chaney, son of Lon Chaney Jr., who played the Wolf Man. "They're the three classic characters," he said, including Dracula, of course. "We're going to be doing a lot of joint merchandising."
In court, Lugosi projects a forbidding persona that is at odds with his off-duty charm. At least one witness, Judy Price, vice president of children's programming and daytime specials for CBS, has chafed under his cross-examination.
After testifying for the defense about Maurer's dealings with ABC, where she worked in a similar capacity years ago, Price grew visibly upset when Lugosi asked whether she knew how many bank accounts Maurer had held.
"No," she snapped. "Do you?" For her outburst she was chided by Judge James F. Satt. At the time, she didn't know just who her inquisitor was. "Ah," Price said later, "now I understand why he was giving me the hard, cold stare in the witness box. It must be a family trait."