Joseph Wapner, 97, folksy judge on 'The People's Court' . By Adam
Bernstein Washington Post . WASHINGTON - Joseph A. Wapner, a retired
California judge whose flinty-folksy style of resolving disputes on the
show "The People's Court" helped spawn a genre of courtroom-based
reality television with no-nonsense jurists and often clueless
litigants, died Sunday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 97. A
grandson, Gabriel Wapner, confirmed the death but did not know the
immediate cause. Judge Wapner had had several strokes in recent years.
"The People's Court," which the silver-haired Judge Wapner hosted from
1981 to 1993, was a syndicated half-hour show that turned private
arbitration of small-claims cases into highly engrossing entertainment.
Within a few years of its debut, the program regularly attracted 20
million viewers. One measure of its success was a Washington Post
survey in 1989 that showed 54 percent of Americans could identify Judge
Wapner compared with 9 percent who could name the chief justice of the
United States, William H. Rehnquist. For a viewing audience weaned on
courtroom dramas such as "Perry Mason," the Wapner program was a stark
departure. Instead of invented murder and mayhem, "The People's Court"
featured unscripted, real-life grievances between plaintiffs and
defendants who could be tangent-prone, inarticulate, or alarmingly
naive. Disputes centered on nonpayment for goods and services, unwise
lending of money to shady friends and family members, purchases in
which the buyer did not beware, and altercations between people and
their neighbors' animals. The parties, selected from the dockets of Los
Angeles-area small-claims courts, agreed to have their matters settled
outside a normal court of law and to sign a legally binding arbitration
contract. Each litigant was paid about $250 to appear on TV. The
courtroom set, the only fictional component of the show, was presided
over by a judge who had spent 18 years on the bench of the Los Angeles
Superior Court and brooked little tolerance for unpreparedness and
interruptions. When a litigant told him, "I'm not through, your honor,"
Judge Wapner replied, "Well, now you are. "It's a case that requires
proof, and you didn't even tip the scales," he told one woman seeking
redress for damaged furniture and stolen underwear during a move.
Although he could be gruff, Judge Wapner also displayed a sense of
fairness in Solomon-like conundrums. In a matter involving disputed
ownership of a dog between two boys, it was revealed that a third party
had improperly taken the dog from the first boy and sold it to the
second. Judge Wapner gave the dog back to the first boy and awarded
$200 to the second for his careful temporary guardianship. "He behaved
like a judge who had been on the bench a little too long, and that's
what made it work," said Robert Thompson, a television and pop culture
scholar at Syracuse University. "It's hard to remember what a state of
cultural virginity the American audience was in, in regards to what
we'd call regular people - nonactors without scripts. "It turns out
regular people are whiny, petty, annoying folks, so Judge Wapner's
crotchety grouch thing was just what we wanted - to shut them up now
and then. Judge Wapner, who remained a TV presence, hosted an Animal
Planet show called "Judge Wapner's Animal Court" from 1998 to 2000.
Joseph Albert Wapner, whose father was a lawyer, was born in Los
Angeles on Nov. 15, 1919. He initially wanted to be an actor until a
theater director at Hollywood High School said he had no talent. After
graduating in 1941 from the University of Southern California, Judge
Wapner saw Army combat in the Pacific. While on Cebu, an island
province in the Philippines, he was wounded by shrapnel from a grenade
and risked his life to save a wounded soldier from being raked with
machine-gun fire. His decorations included the Bronze Star and the
Purple Heart. He received a law degree from USC in 1948 and spent 10
years in private practice before receiving a judicial appointment to
the Los Angeles Municipal Court. He leaves his wife of 70 years,
Mildred "Mickey" Nebenzahl of Los Angeles; two sons, Fred Wapner, a
judge on the Superior Court of Los Angeles County, of Los Angeles and
David Miron-Wapner of Jerusalem; a sister; four grandchildren; and a
great-granddaughter. A daughter, Sarah Wapner, died in 2015.
