Dixon Q. Dern, the influential entertainment lawyer who represented Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz and helped structure the business affairs of their landmark Desilu production company, has died. He was 97.
Dern died Sunday at his home in Los Angeles, a spokesperson for WME announced.
Dern also represented Bob Hope, Jackie Gleason, The Jackson 5 and the Television Academy, among many others. And as a founding partner of Dern, Mason, Swerdlow & Floum, he helped build a formidable Hollywood law practice.
In 1975, Dern was approached by Michael Ovitz, Ron Meyer, Michael Rosenfeld, Rowland Perkins and Bill Haber, who told him they were bolting William Morris and forming a new agency, CAA.
They asked “me if I would represent CAA and more importantly serve as a sort of go-between on the shift of clients from William Morris that would follow them,” he recalled in a 2009 interview for the TV Academy Foundation website The Interviews. He agreed to do so.
