You remember all this. Indeed, the case received so much national attention that Fields was interviewed on CNN, by Wolf Blitzer, discussing his impending cross of Sterling. Fields won. The team was sold. And the California Court of Appeal just affirmed. Bert Fields may be 87, but he doesn’t go to the office to tell old stories. He’s there to make new ones.

That Bert Fields’s success as an entertainment lawyer has reached the height of the Hollywood sign is undeniable. He represents the industry’s top performers, directors, writers, producers, studios, talent agencies, book publishers and record companies. Fields has also been the subject of profiles in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Sunday Times of London and Vanity Fair.

But when it comes to measuring the success of entertainment lawyers, a client list is worth a thousand words: Fields’s includes DreamWorks, MGM, United Artists, Paramount, The Weinstein Company, Toho, James Cameron, Tom Cruise, Michael Jackson, George Lucas, Warren Beatty, Dustin Hoffman, Mike Nichols, Rupert Murdoch, John Travolta, Jeffrey Katzenberg, David Geffen, Jerry Bruckheimer, Joel Silver, The Beatles, Madonna, Sony Music and many others. In addition, he has represented such major authors as Mario Puzo, James Clavell, Tom Clancy, Clive Cussler, Judith Regan and Richard Bach. And no doubt there are more A-listers whose identities Fields can’t share.

Fields was kind enough to speak to me from his Los Angeles office. He is a name partner in 85-attorney firm Greenberg Glusker Fields Claman & Machtinger LLP. The legendary entertainment lawyer, with Hollywood good-looks of his own, gets on the phone and gives me a welcome as warm as the 82 degrees outside his window. Fields is in great spirits, save for a cold, and he apologizes in advance for the coughing that I’m about to hear.

The Insurance Career That Could Have Been

It wasn’t difficult to prepare for my call with Fields because, in addition to the tremendous media attention that he gets, he is a litigator -- so many examples of his work were at my fingertips on Westlaw. [Fields also does transactional work. He says he’s the last one standing who does both.]

Fields’s cases on Westlaw are the type you would expect from an entertainment lawyer – except one: Knox v. Anderson, 159 F. Supp. 795 (D. Hawaii 1958). Fields was co-counsel for an aggressive life insurance salesman who was accused of selling a client more insurance than the man could afford. The policy was designed to achieve a premium savings based on certain tax deductions. However, the client’s tax bracket has too low for this to happen. The salesman was found liable and compensatory and punitive damages were awarded.

This is manna. Entertainment lawyer icon Bert Fields’s first decision on Westlaw is an insurance case. You gotta be kidding me. Of course I have to ask Fields about this right from the get-go. He remembers the case. Indeed, he has a tremendous memory of it. It’s remarkable since it happened nearly 60 years ago. Fields downplays his role. He was a young lawyer and explains that he was basically only carrying the bag for lead lawyer Bill Quinn. That makes sense, considering, Fields tells me, that Quinn was appointed by President Eisenhower to be Governor of Hawaii in the middle of the trial. Quinn later appeared on the cover of Time magazine. Amazing. Even in a Bert Fields insurance case there is a celebrity angle.

I ask Fields whether his life has been one big regret -- that he didn’t pursue insurance law as his specialty. Fields laughs. No. He hasn’t had 60 years of angst over an insurance law career left on the table.

Representing A-Listers

Bert Fields didn’t set out to be an entertainment lawyer. After Harvard Law School he served as a First Lieutenant in the Air Force during the Korean War. Fields tried numerous court martials and got the litigation bug. Following his army service he began to try cases for young actors and writers. They became successful and asked him to handle their contracts and other matters. And then it went from there – in a big way. Notwithstanding how incomplete this list is, consider some of Fields’s may it please the court moments.

Fields represented Dustin Hoffman in a dispute over a magazine’s altered use of an iconic photograph of Hoffman from the film Tootsie. Fields represented Warren Beatty over the rights to cartoon character Dick Tracy. He also represented Beatty in a very important case over who would have “final cut” of the television version of Beatty’s film “Reds.” When Gore Vidal had a dispute with the Writers Guild of America, over a screenplay credit for a film, Fields was by the author’s side.

Fields, in a very high-profile arbitration, secured $250 million for Jeffrey Katzenberg, for a back bonus, following Katzenberg’s departure from Disney. Fields has represented the Estate of Mario Puzo, in a contentious suit against Paramount Pictures, over the rights to prequels and sequels of The Godfather. He was at Paramount’s side in a case against George Wendt and John Ratzenberger, over the actors’ rights to their portrayals of Norm and Cliff from Cheers. Fields has been frequent counsel to Tom Cruise, such as in his divorce with Katie Holmes, for unauthorized use of the star’s likeness and in connection with false allegations made against Cruise. When Michael Jackson faced child molestation charges in the early 1990s, Fields was part of the King of Pop’s defense team. And in a case that reached the Supreme Court of California, Fields represented Michael Flatley, in a suit against a lawyer, who extorted the Irish dance superstar, accusing him of raping a client in a Las Vegas hotel suite.

And the list goes on and on and on.

But despite how long Fields has been at it, he wasn’t the first lawyer to specialize in entertainment, he tells me, in response to my wondering. Fields points to others before him, such as the co-founder of his former firm, who was sent to California, from New York, in the 1930s, to handle a case for Paramount. Fields also mentions the Loeb Brothers, founders of Loeb & Loeb, who represented MGM in the early days.

I ask Fields if the nature of the entertainment industry makes it more dispute-prone than some others. It wasn’t always, Fields says. When he started out, people were afraid to sue the studios. But those days are long gone he tells me. Fields points to one reason why the entertainment industry may be more litigious than some others – sometimes amorphous concepts are involved, such as “final cut,” who has the right to make artistic determinations and contracts addressing approval over “material” changes in a screenplay. Such creative issues can be “malleable,” which makes them ripe for dispute.

Fields looks ahead to the future of the industry. One new aspect on the horizon that he tells me about is post-mortem rights to movie stars. As Fields explains it, someone could purchase a movie star’s post-mortem rights and, for the rest of eternity, make movies using their digital image. Fields is also interested in something he calls synthespians. These are computer generated actors who will appear human. They never die or when the audience tires of them, new ones are created. The studios won’t have to pay millions of dollars for a star to appear in a movie. They’ll just make one up.

Beatlemania: We Can’t Work It Out

Given the number of prominent and cutting-edge cases that Fields has handled, you might think it would be difficult for him to choose a favorite. But it’s not. Without any hesitation Fields tells me that it’s Beatlemania. Fields represented the Beatles, seeking damages and an injunction against Beatlemania -- Beatles look-alike and sound-alike imitators who were performing 29 Beatles songs in a live performance.

These weren’t just four guys dressed up for a talent show. Beatlemania was a huge business. According to the court’s opinion, several million people saw the show, in several thousand performances, grossing $45 million. Not surprisingly, the Beatles wouldn’t just let it be.

It seems simple enough, at least to this insurance lawyer, that Beatlemania had no right to do what it was. But Fields tells me that Beatlemania had real arguments. According to the California trial court’s opinion, while the Beatles imitators were performing, slides and movies played depicting a variety of subjects related to events during the 1960s. Based on this element of the show, the court framed Beatlemania’s defense this way: “In order to accommodate the right of privacy/publicity and the First Amendment, the New York courts [N.Y. law governed] have concluded that an unconsented ‘use’ does not violate the civil rights law if it occurs as the result of publication of newsworthy events or matters of public interest. Thus defendants contend that the use of the mixed media presentation brings Beatlemania within the ‘newsworthy or public interest’ exception, or in the alternative, causes it to be absolutely protected by the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of expression.” Apple Corps. Ltd. v. Leber, No. C299149, 1986 WL 215081, at *1 (Cal. Super. Ct. June 3, 1986).

In general, the court analyzed whether Beatlemania was engaging in protected “fair use” of the Beatles likeness. Its decision: Beatlemania’s “appropriation greatly exceeded any fair use.” Thus, the Beatles were entitled to recover on their right of publicity claim. The Fab Four also prevailed on their unfair competition claim.

All together the court awarded the Beatles over $7.5 million, plus huge amounts of interest over several years and an injunction against further unconsented presentation of Beatlemania. That’s a lot of money, especially in Yesterday’s dollars, even after the Taxman gets a cut.

Paperback Writer

In addition to representing some of the most famous writers in America, Fields is himself an author. The idea to try writing came from Mario Puzo. After being impressed with Fields’s writing in a brief, Puzo suggested that Fields try his hand at a book.

In the 1980s and 1990s Fields published two books under the pseudonym D. Kincaid – The Sunset Bomber and The Lawyer’s Tale. They tell the stories of debonair Hollywood lawyer Harry Cain, whose practice is devoted to wine, woman and brilliant lawyering. By Fields’s own account they are his “sex books.” This from The Lawyer’s Tale: “Meet Harry Cain…His clients call him a genius in the courtroom. His girlfriends call him a genius in the bedroom.”

Later Fields took on more serious topics, publishing non-fiction books – one about whether Richard III was guilty of murdering his nephews and another exploring the identity of William Shakespeare. In 2015, Fields published Destiny, a historical novel about Napoleon and Josephine, as well as Shylock: His Own Story. It is a treatment of Shylock beyond the limited view of him in The Merchant of Venice.

In getting ready for my interview with Fields I read Destiny. A novel about Napoleon and Josephine is not my usual fare. I read books where the main characters are lawyers or FBI agents. The last time I read a book as intellectual as Destiny was 1983, 11th grade, Jane Eyre. I tell Fields that for the few days I carried around Destiny I felt really smart and hoped people saw me reading a book with a painting of Napoleon and Josephine on the cover. Fields laughs. And then he suggests why not put the Destiny cover over any book I’m reading. I burst out laughing. [And I’m thinking about doing it.]

I really enjoyed Destiny. I learned a lot about Napoleon. Well, that wasn’t very hard to do. There isn’t a single unnecessary word in the book and the pace is rapid. It’s a great read. And in Fields’s portrayal of Napoleon, the French leader has a little bit of Harry Cain in him.

Fields: The Teacher And Benefactor

Bert Fields is committed to the future of entertainment law and legal scholarship. He teaches an entertainment law class at Stanford Law School and lectures annually on the subject at his alma mater Harvard Law School. Indeed, he recently made a $5 million gift to the law school to endow the Bertram Fields Professorship of Law. On law school’s website, Fields explains the large gift like this: “Harvard is an institution that over the centuries has contributed enormously to American thought, especially judicial thought. It changed my life dramatically and had a fundamental impact on me and my career.” Fields pointed to his time on the Law Review, where he was an editor, as providing him the writing skills essential to his success.

I asked Fields about the endowment and whether that gives him a say so in how the money is used. He tells me that some people in such situation want one, and while he’s told the law school that he would like the chair to be in constitutional law, he trusts the school to use the money as it sees best.

Going Home For Lunch

One of the most fascinating things about Fields is the simplest: he has for many years gone home for lunch--on days when nothing on his schedule prevents him from doing so. It’s a remarkable thing that a legendary entertainment lawyer, in a town where going to lunch rivals air for most important sustenance, would do so. Even when home is on the beach in Malibu. I ask Fields about this. He explains to me that he’s never been the go-out-to-lunch type because he’s never had to do anything to get clients.

Going home for lunch seems like such a hassle. But no doubt much less so for Fields. He doesn’t volunteer this, but I know that he doesn’t have to keep his eyes on the road. Fields sits in the back seat of a Bentley. When you represent the Beatles, you get to say that someone else can Drive My Car.