CRAZY LUCKY

A celebrity lawyer tells all—and more than most people will want to know.

From modest roots, Mason made an early splash in an early ’60s surf band that, threatened with a lawsuit from Rod Serling, changed the name of a song from “Outer Limits” to “Out of Limits.” But it was the film world that grabbed him, despite Bob Hope’s saying to the eager young man, “Go away kid. You’re bothering me.” (Hope was quoting W.C. Fields, likely in jest.) After law school, he pitched in on a case assisting Cary Grant in a lawsuit that hinged on defining gross versus net profits, and he got Jack Lemmon’s mother-in-law out of a reckless-driving ticket. Steered into representing musicians, he formed his own celebrity firm, signing Quincy Jones, Olivia Newton-John, Cat Stevens, and Roy Orbison (“he had a really cute giggle”). Other players flit across the screen: Donna Summer, Reba McEntire, Michael Jackson. Most play small roles in Mason’s dropped-name-bestrewn memoir of sometimes good, sometimes bad behavior on the part of the L.A. crowd. One small newsworthy bit, perhaps coincidental, is Mason’s account of a friendship with Jose and Kitty Melendez, done in by sons (“two young men who wanted to inherit their father’s multimillion-dollar estate”) now back in the news. Regrettably, Mason pounds the keyboard with fists of ham, generating scads of groan-worthy prose: “To borrow some ’60s lingo, ‘Dig it, I could really play the guitar.’…He is still and always will be Brian Wilson: a genius!…John Fogerty wanted nothing to do with Fantasy, Cook, Clifford or our firm. But, hey, I got into the music business.” It all makes for tedious reading, a run-on string of clunky brags and dreary anecdotes.

Readers might think it a lucky thing to miss this one.