Gloria Allred
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Gloria Rachel Allred (born Gloria Rachel Bloom on July 3, 1941 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States) is an American lawyer and radio talk show host. She is also the mother of Court TV hostess Lisa Bloom.
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Personal life
Gloria Allred grew up in Pennsylvania. She is of Jewish descent. After high school, she attended to the University of Pennsylvania. There she met her first husband and got married. At age 19, she became pregnant with her daughter Lisa. Soon after Lisa's birth, Allred and her husband divorced. Unable to collect child support from her former husband, she was forced to return to her parents' home.
A newly single mother, Allred then moved back in with her parents and continued her studies in school, graduating with honors with a bachelor's degree in English in 1963. She tried her hand at a variety of jobs before she decided to become a teacher. After taking a position at Benjamin Franklin High School, she began working on her master's degree at New York University. While there, she became interested in the civil rights movement, which was beginning to gain momentum. After earning her master's degree in 1966, she returned to Philadelphia to teach at a high school with a predominantly African-American enrollment.[citation needed]
Allred moved to Los Angeles and married her second husband, Raymond Allred, in 1968. They were divorced in 1987.[citation needed]
Allred attended Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, California and was admitted to the California State Bar in 1975. [1]
Career
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She represented Amber Frey when Frey was a witness in the criminal case against Scott Peterson. She has also represented cases against the Boy Scouts of America for not allowing girls, something she referred to as gender apartheid, a case against K-Mart for having both a boys and a girls toy section, as well as representing actress Hunter Tylo when producer Aaron Spelling fired her because of her pregnancy.[2]
Early in her career in Los Angeles, Allred made a name for herself by successfully suing the then all-male Jonathan Club, an exclusive private club, over its membership discrimination policies. [citation needed] The lawsuit was brought by a professional woman in the late 1970s who was spurned by the club when her application was rejected based solely on her sex, which the club denied, but Allred proved in court. After the lawsuit the club stopped discriminating its membership on sex or ethnicity.[citation needed]
After she brought the lawsuit against the Boy Scouts of America, she was asked if she would rather represent a man suing the WNBA, LPGA or a women's college. Allred responded, "That's a good question. I don't have an answer for you."[citation needed]
She used to co-host a radio talkshow with Mark Taylor on KABC in Los Angeles. She also served as a panelist on the 1990 revival of television game show To Tell the Truth.[citation needed]San Francisco Chronicle reporter Peter Hartlaub calls her the person for the media "to turn to", even if she has nothing worthwhile to contribute.[citation needed] Hartlaub cites a visit Allred made to The Today Show, when she and Sondra Blake showed up to announced that they would not discuss the trial of Robert Blake. In amazement, Matt Lauer replied, saying "I don't mean to be rude here, but I just want to make sure I understand this...Then the reason that -- that both of you are appearing here this morning is simply [to say you two have nothing to say]...nothing more?"[3]
Craig Smith, a legal commentator, said in reference to her that "lawyers shouldn't try their cases in the media and Allred has tried far more cases in the media than she has ever tried in any courtroom." Smith also spoke of an episode in which Allred chastised a limo driver because he didn't know who she was.[4]
She is also known for her criticism of pop singer Michael Jackson.[5]
She has also represented the family of slain transgender teen Gwen Araujo in the Bay Area, as well as the girlfriend of Scott Dyleski, 17, who has been charged with killing the wife of prominent Bay Area attorney and legal analyst Daniel Horowitz.
She was the University of Pennsylvania's College of Arts and Sciences' Distinguished Speaker at its 2006 graduation.
Most recently, she failed in a Supreme Court appeal to limit the gag rule on the attorneys of criminal defendants. She is noted throughout California as a liberal attorney.
Trivia
- Allred appears in a cameo role in the film Rat Race wherein the character Wayne Knight plays exclaims "Oh shit, it's Gloria Allred!", after she has witnessed him hit a pedestrian. She also appears earlier in the film where the Cody brothers, played by Seth Green and Vince Vieluf, attempt to start a lawsuit against a hotel by slipping on a glass they placed at the top of a set of stairs. Before they go through with their plan, a woman slips on the glass and falls down the stairs. At the bottom, Gloria Allred introduces herself and plans to sue the hotel.
Parodies
- In the South Park episode "Cripple Fight," Gloria Allred is Big Gay Al's lawyer against a Boy Scouts-like club that excludes homosexuals. She is presented as being narcissistic and likes to call people bigoted, even Al himself when he says the Scouts should be allowed to exclude him if they want.
- In an episode of The Fairly Oddparents, when Timmy has to bring his mom to a father-son scouting event instead of his dad, Mrs. Turner employs a lawyer named Gloria Bullhead to force the scouts to allow it.
- In the Simpsons episode "Behind the Laughter," a portrayal of Allred appears as Lisa Simpson's attorney at a quarrelsome Thanksgiving dinner. When Marge insults Lisa for writing a tell-all book, Allred (identified as a "shrill feminist attorney" in a caption) rises and shouts, "That is assault!"
See also
- Fight Back and Win (2006) by Gloria Allred. ISBN 0-06-073928-2.
