Hi Marty,
I remember watching that program with my parents. Thank you for sharing.
Connie
Sent from my iPhone
On Feb 27, 2017, at 7:47 PM, Rosemarie Chavarria <knitqueen2007@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Hi, Marty,
I remember watching The People's Court from time to time when it was out. One
particular case I remember is that of a blind woman who I think wanted to
take a cab to a restaurant. The driver refused to take her because the
Muslims don't believe in guide dogs. The woman took her case to court and she
won. I forgot how much she was rewarded but Judge Wapner complimented her on
having all her documentation with her.
Rosie
From: ourplace-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ourplace-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On ;
Behalf Of Marty Rimpau
Sent: Monday, February 27, 2017 4:21 PM
To: our place list <ourplace@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [ourplace] joseph wapner, 97, folksy judge on 'the people's court'
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 Ame ricans 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
Universi ty. "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 P urple 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.
