Background
The son of Joseph and Bella Nizer, Nizer was born in London, before coming to the United States as a child. His father was the owner of a Brooklyn dry-cleaning business.
The son of Joseph and Bella Nizer, Nizer was born in London, before coming to the United States as a child. His father was the owner of a Brooklyn dry-cleaning business.
Columbia University; Columbia Law School.
He was a graduate of Columbia College and Columbia Law School. Foreign a number of years, Nizer was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the "highest-paid lawyer in the world". He represented many celebrities in a variety of cases, including Johnny Carson, Salvador Dalí, Mae West, Julius Erving, and Roy Fruehauf of the Fruehauf Trailer Corporation.
His most famous cases, however, involved representing Quentin Reynolds in his successful libel suit against columnist Westbrook Pegler, and representing the broadcaster John Henry Faulk against AWARE, a right-wing organization that had falsely labeled him a communist.
His representation of Reynolds served as the basis for the Broadway play A Case of Libel, while his legal victory in the Faulk case was credited with "breaking the back of blacklisting in broadcasting." Nizer was portrayed by George C. Scott in the 1975 Columbia Broadcasting System made-for-television film, Fear on Trial, co-starring William Devane as the blacklisted radio personality John Henry Faulk. Both on stage and on television, Van Heflin portrayed Robert Sloane, a fictionalized version of Nizer, in the play A Case of Libel, which dramatized the Quentin Reynolds - Westbrook Pegler trial.
The playwright was Henry Denker. The play was first televised on commercial television, but a new production shown on cable television in the 1980s, and later Public Broadcasting Service, starred Edward Asner as Sloane and Daniel J. Travanti as Boyd Bendix, who was based on conservative columnist Westbrook Pegler.