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.
Born on Jan. 24, 1929, in Colorado Springs, Dixon Quackenbush Dern was adopted by a woman who wasn’t yet married, a rare occurrence back then. He enrolled in 1946 at Stanford University, where he earned his undergraduate and law degrees, before arriving in Los Angeles, and he was admitted to the California Bar in 1954.
His first job in L.A. was as the in-house attorney for the animation house UPA, the studio behind The Gerald McBoing-Boing Show and Mr. Magoo. He moved to CBS, where he handled network programming and employment contracts, but left the legal department to work directly with such series as Perry Mason and Rawhide.
Dern exited in 1962 for the job of general counsel at Desilu Productions, the home of I Love Lucy and later shows including The Untouchables, Star Trek, Mannix and Mission: Impossible. There, his work contributed to the growth of television syndication as an enduring economic model, fundamentally changing how programming would be financed, distributed and valued for generations.
He left Desilu in 1965 to run business and legal affairs at United Artists Television for a couple years before going into private practice with Dern, Mason, Swerdlow & Floum.
Around that time, he also began serving as an arbitrator and mediator in entertainment and labor disputes, with his opinions widely respected and cited within the industry.
Dern served as vice president and as a member of the board of governors of the State Bar of California; as president of the Beverly Hills Bar Association; as trustee of the Los Angeles County Bar Association; and as president of the Los Angeles Copyright Society.
In 2009, the Television Academy honored him with its Syd Cassyd Founders Award, which recognizes members who have made a significant, positive impact on the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences with their years of involvement and service.
His family noted he loved opera, books, politics and square dancing and “was deeply devoted to his AA community and proud of his 50 years of sobriety.”
Survivors include his children, Chelsea, Warren, Peter, Rosalin and Greg Dern, five grandchildren and many great-grandchildren. He will be buried beside his wife, Lisa Dunn-Dern (the mother of Chelsea, she died in 2016), at Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills.
