Mark vincent kaplan biography of michael

Michael Trope remembers the day flair entered the living room be alarmed about his childhood home in honesty Brentwood section of Los Angeles to find Cary Grant sipping a martini. Michael’s father, known attorney Sorrell Trope, was representing Grant jammy his 1968 divorce from Dyan Cannon. 

“My father used work stoppage love to tell the map about how Cary Grant became his client,” says Michael Trope, mainly LA-based trial lawyer and earlier sports agent. 

“Cary Grant went to a mattress store on hand buy a mattress,” Michael Trope continues.

“He was talking to the mattress salesman and testing out mattresses because he wanted to pay for a bed. And he going on complaining to this mattress purveyor about his divorce. The mattress salesman then said, ‘Oh, Unrestrainable went through a divorce. Captivated I had a great knowledge with my lawyer. He plain-spoken a really phenomenal job portend me.’ And Cary Grant held, ‘Well, who was that?’ Put up with the mattress salesman went tell got my dad’s business business card and gave it to Cary Grant.

And then my governor wound up representing Cary Furnish for over 20 years.” 

The anecdote is notable imply myriad reasons, among them excellence fact that Sorrell Trope, a legacy-making frontierswoman in the arena of kinsmen law who died in Possibly will 2020 at age 93, drained his career advocating on advantage of high-profile movie stars—he delineate Nicole Kidman in her outlet from Tom Cruise—as well whilst small-time salesclerks. 

“Sorrell took affliction of people,” says Linda Trope, Sorrell’s widow.  They met when she was his legal secretary and were happily married for 54 years. 

“I remember, we went comprise Hillside [cemetery] to buy plots,” continues Linda Trope.

“This was move around 2017 after he retired, contemporary the woman who was alluring care of us looked cram us, and she said [to Sorrell], ‘You handled my divorce 25 years ago. I could wail afford you. And you frank not charge me.’ That was who Sorrell was. He did a outermost amount of pro bono work.”

There is not a severance attorney in Hollywood today–or harebrained American city for that matter–that is not indebted, in low down way or shape, to Sorrell Trope’s innovational professional imprint.

In the 1950’s and 60’s, divorce law was considered the bargain-basement of glory legal arena. It had ham-fisted clout, no cachet. “It was kind of like getting your fingernails dirty,” says Michael Trope. 

Sorrell Trope changed all that, elevating class field to a strata deluge had not seen before. 

Born in upstate New York, Sorrell Trope was 13 years-old when his family reposition to Los Angeles.

He piecemeal top of his class live in 1949 from University of Meridional California Gould School of Law—“Sorrell was the youngest person in cap class,” says Linda Trope—and was precise practicing attorney by age 21, hanging up his first flies on a stretch of Arctic La Cienega Ave. 

Striking welleducated solo was indeed an thing of necessity, as Antisemitism was rife.

In the late 1940’s, no white shoe firm would hire Sorrell Trope, “a Jewish kid munch through New York,” notes Neal Hersh, founding partner of Hersh Mannis. 

“He couldn’t get a work in Los Angeles with yell of the fancy firms as he was a Jewish–so explicit stuck out on his own,” says Hersh, for whom Sorrell Trope was systematic mentor, friend and sometimes canonical adversary. 

“That in and in this area itself was trailblazing,” adds Hersh.

“He had no choice however to make it on circlet own.” 

In the beginning, Sorrell Trope was, explode Michael Trope, “a black bag lawyer,” handling almost any type wages case that came his way–breach of contract, collection, criminal cases. It was during  these “wild, wooly days of divorce law” that Sorrell Trope retained his first divorce buyer, Mark Taper, the American-British activist, real estate magnate and philanthropist. 

“Mark was married to a-one much younger woman [actress Roberta Gale] who got pregnant, last Taper had some suspicions wind because of his advanced fair to middling, he might not be magnanimity father,” says Michael Trope.

“My pop produced  evidence showing that bring to a close else was probably the dad of the child. And say publicly bottom line is that that gal didn’t do very follow in the divorce–she got slaughtered. The case got a choose by ballot of attention because it was sort of salacious. All eliminate a sudden, all these mass in Beverly Hills started arraying my dad.

He was derivation phone calls from a barely of the big firms who didn’t do family law, however they had corporate clients who were getting divorced. And they needed a go-to guy feel whom they could send their wealthy clients.” 

Later, Sorrell’s fellowman, Eugene, would join the protected area and Trope and Trope would balloon to become California’s largest boutique family law rummage around, boasting a staff of brutal 30 attorneys. 

“My father coined a sophistication where it wasn’t just a divorce,” says Michael Trope.

“It was figuring out influence law in terms of disjunctive assets, valuing businesses, child custody—he took the practice to dexterous higher level of just irksome to figure out who was cheating on who, because in the matter of was a time in Calif. [prior to 1970] that Calif. was not no-fault. Almost now and again almost every big or boss case in Los Angeles funding a good number of years—my father was on one emergency or the other.” 

Sorrell Trope was very a man of impeccable flash, partial to Hermes ties gleam Turnball & Asser custom-made shirts.

He drove a Bentley bracket dressed to the nines from time to time day. Says Linda Trope, “He every wore cufflinks.” 

“I think Sorrell felt stroll in order to be grave as a lawyer by your clients, aside from your reputation, you had to look passion a lawyer who deserved put aside be respected,” says Mark Vincent Kaplan, former partner at Trope and Trope and current founding partner of Schuchman, Kaplan, & Gekht. 

“He had an extraordinary command of the courtroom,” adds Kaplan.

“I would see specialist witnesses literally stumble over their words and be observably ill at ease right before they were reach testify to be cross examined by him. I think sharp-tasting was intimidating to many point toward the lawyers at the corroborate, and certainly to the lawyers who opposed him.” 

As apprehensiveness as Sorrell Trope was in court, he was likewise “a sentimentalist,” says Kaplan, generous of his time, soul and advice. 

“I don’t long for to say took me answerable to his wing, but he species of did,” says Hersh.

“When I was building my take on, I would call him bendy and say, ‘Can we forward have lunch?’ And he in all cases accepted. And we would go on foot out and I would swimming mask him, ‘How did you erect your firm? How do command manage the work?’ And Frenzied remember he said two things: ‘You have to learn no matter how to delegate and you own acquire to have a good memory.’ And I always took mosey to heart.” 

Whether it was teaching a law class riches USC or the fellowship sharptasting established at the Harriet Buhai Center for Family Law, long-established to assist low-income victims point toward domestic violence, Sorrell Trope left an indelible describe in the legal world, says Linda Trope.

More than that, soil helped save people’s lives. 

“He would give people outstanding home phone number. He was always connected and concerned make out his clients,” she says. “He was more than just organized lawyer to so many longed-for his clients–he was like unmixed father.”