1963 Marriage & 1964 Divorce to Mark F. Segal. Meet Marvin M. Mitchelson, Beverly Hills Lawyer. Pamela & James Mason. Post Divorce Move To Beach.Long.

1963 October 1^st Paige Young marries Mark Frederick Segal in Las Vegas, per impossible to read ledger records easily found on ancestry.com.

The record shows only the date and names.

It was likely and elopement in one of those 24-hour Las Vegas wedding chapels. Paige’s mother Donna eloped for a Vegas wedding to marry her 2nd husband, Jack Holroyd, in 1958.

An old friend of Paige’s named Joan Edwards told me driving from LA to Las Vegas and getting married at one of several legal wedding chapels, “was a popular thing to do back then.”

 Paige’s new husband was born in 1942, the son of WW2 veteran (?) Harold Segal and his wife.  Mark was a marine private who took combat training in 1961 at Camp Pendleton.

  Mark F. Segal was also a car dealer at “Sea-Gull Motors,” a business started by his father, according to newspaper ads in the late 1950s, and Segal family friend Rex Ramsey.

Sea-Gull Motors either had several locations or moved locations several times in the Sherman Oaks/Van Nuys area in the 1950s and 1960s: 7211 Balboa Avenue, 4425 Van Nuys Blvd. and 6738 Sepulveda Blvd.

Rex Ramsey, a friend of Mark Segal’s, was a semi-successful race car designer and a Hollywood stunt driver in Herbie the Car. He told me during a phone coversation that Mark’s father Harold Segal, also owned the business Fox Auto Service which “was like Triple A” in the SFV, and the Segal family had several brothers in addition to Mark. He mentioned that the family was “pretty well-off.”

1963-1964 Paige and Mark live together as husband and wife at 4133 Crisp Canyon Road in Sherman Oaks, “south of the boulevard.” Ramsey said that that the home was a cabin type, the kind that Hollywood stars would rent on the weekend “to get away from it all.”

It’s very close to the neighborhood where Diana Cotterell, as Paige was known back then, lived and attended elementary, Dixie Canyon, and junior high school, Van Nuys Junior High.

When she marries, Paige continues to board her horse Hamish at nearby Sepulveda Stables. 

I corresponded with a woman who told me that when she was 12 years old, she met Paige at Sepulveda Stables where they both boarded a horse; Paige was about 19/20 years old and Paige drove her to the house on Crisp Canyon Rd., to hang out and drink lemonade, around 1962 and 1963. (She gave me the tip about the Crisp Canyon Rd connection and Paige’s sister.)

August 28, 11 months after her Las Vegas marriage, Paige and her attorney file for divorce from Mark F. Segal.

Paige is represented by rising Beverly Hills attorney Marvin M. Mitchelson.

Below are just a few of the dozens of divorce documents I obtained from a records department located in Downtown LA. I picked out some key pages to post.

 The filing states that Mark threatened Paige and her animals with bodily harm “on numerous occasions,” and on August 17, 1964, “brandished a knife in her presence,” and “Plaintiff’s profession is that of an artist and painter and on or about June 15, 1964, defendant maliciously and with intent to destroy plaintiff’s artwork drove nails through plaintiff’s prized paintings and further did mischievous damage by driving nails through plaintiff’s personal belongings including an expensive fur stole.”

Paige requests and is granted a temporary restraining order from the court.

Mark quickly countersues and denies all of Paige’s claims of abuse. He claims that she is the one who caused him mental anguish and suffering.

I do not find in the documents further explaining what Mark meant by that, no further details on what Paige did to him. With the exception of one complaint “She paid more attention to her animals than to me,” as you will see.

Marvin Mitchelson, on behalf of client Paige, asks for alimony, lawyer’s fees and court costs: “Plaintiff is not employed and presently embarking on a career as a painter, therefore needs the money from Defendant who is able bodied and employed.”

 Marks balks at this request and states he can’t afford it.

The divorce filing was picked up by the wire service UPI and appeared in several newspapers across the country.

These headlines might be called “clickbait” today.

There is a high probability that Marvin M. Mitchelson was behind the above stories.

I found evidence for this in Mitchelson’s only biography which I will quote from extensively.

“Ladies Man, The Life and Trials of Marvin Mitchelson” by John A. Jenkins.

“Beginning early in his career, Marvin had a belief in the power of publicity and looked for ways to garner some for his cases.

No matter how trivial the cause of action, if he (M.M.M.) found an angle, he could turn it into a story. And in the early days when his client list was still thin, he could gin up publicity by filing an oddball lawsuit himself.”

…”But Mitchelson knew that Man Bites Dog was what sold papers…this was 1964 and he had to work with the material fate sent him.”

Patti Corman recalled that for her in 1976 divorce, Mitchelson “called AP, UPI and every other P there is!”

 This is likely the reason Mitchelson took Paige’s case despite her lack of ability to pay him any upfront fees.  Her case was unusual or “oddball” enough for it to be of use to him.

I am fascinated with how Paige and Mitchelson may have met and who introduced them.

 Hollywood History with Celebrity Connections

Only a few days after the articles about the Paige Young/Mark Segal divorce is published in several newspapers, more news breaks that Beverly Hills matron and LA talk show host, Pamela Mason, has won an unprecedented amount of money in a divorce settlement from husband of 20 years: suave British-Hollywood actor, James Mason.

Mrs. Mason’s lawyer is Marvin M. Mitchelson.

Sept.1, 1964 Pasadena Independent, Pasadena, California. 1.5 millions stated here.

Author Jenkins discusses the 1 million plus dollar settlement Mason case:

“Afterward in the courthouse corridor, “James (Mason) called the settlement ‘a flea bite.’ After all, he was getting off the hook without giving her any alimony at all. But Pamela was ecstatic. Her settlement was one of the first to break the magic million-dollar mark, and Mitchelson had gotten her, and himself, a ton of publicity about it.”

“The Mason case set the tone for the Hollywood divorces to come. Pamela was so grateful she did everything she could to make Marvin Mitchelson a household name. Pamela introduced Mitchelson to her divorcing friends…she became his entrée to those rarefied upper brackets of Beverly Hills and Hollywood. Pamela hired him eight months later for a 138, 500 breach-of-contract suit against actress Loretta Young on behalf of Pamela’s sixteen-year-old daughter Portland.”

“Pamela Mason introduced Mitchelson to her divorcing friends, all of whom were wildly delighted with the results, she later said.”

END

The Mason case was a first as far as Hollywood divorces go, and a major breakthrough in the career trajectory of Marvin M. Mitchelson.

He seemed to be on a roll in 1964 when Michelson represented legendary lyricist Alan Lerner’s estranged wife, Micheline, in the couples’ contentious custody fight.

Roy Cohn was Micheline’s divorce attorney in NYC. Yes, that Roy Cohn, who had a great admirer in Mitchelson. And later Donald Trump, who ditched him when he lay dying of AIDS, not at all shockingly.

Mark F. Segal came from a fairly well off Sherman Oaks family according to Mark’s friend and stunt car driver Rex Ramsey, quoted above.

Still Mark Segal wasn’t anywhere near the league of My Fair Lady and Gigi composer Alan Lerner.

However, both men did have some things in common that most divorcing men that year did not, and that was estranged wives represented by rising lawyer Marvin M. Michelson.

The other is being found in contempt of court by failing to pay alimony to these estranged wives.

 Mark’s attorney is Bernard Echt from Sherman Oaks. Echt, a few years down the road, would represent the milkman who was being sued by Vincent Bugliosi for suspected impregnation of his wife. Strange yet true.

 An initial agreement is reached quickly: Sept. 18, 1964. Mark is required to pay Paige alimony, but only for six months.

This would be about $1000 in 2017, so the equivalent of $6000 in 2017.

1964 November 24:  Paige and her grandmother Virginia LaRocca are sworn-in for testimony in a Los Angeles courthouse, probably 111 Hill Street, for the divorce trial; Mark is a no-show.

Virginia LaRocca testifies for the plaintiff, her granddaughter Paige. An interlocutory decree of divorce is granted to Paige on grounds of extreme cruelty. But it was never finalized according to the clerk who helped me in DTLA, in a building across the street from Hill St, in a basement where they keep old hard copy records.

 Paige waives her right to any further alimony payments beyond the six months.  Mark is also ordered to pay Marvin Mitchelson $300 (about $2072 in 2017 dollars) and $15.00 in court costs around $100 today.  

Paige is awarded a 1953 MG Roadster; Mark is ordered to sign the title over to her.  Paige gets to keep certain antiques and wedding gifts.  Mark gets to keep his home at 4133 Crisp Canyon Rd. in Sherman Oaks.

Both parties are ordered to not annoy, molest or harass the other.

1965

This year shows Mark has not been making his required alimony and lawyer’s fees since 1964.

Marvin M. Michelson puts the hammer down on Mark Segal this year. For every month Mark fails to make his monthly alimony payment to Paige and the lawyer’s fees, Michelson goes to court files a suit for contempt.

It turned out to be all 12 months.

Paige’s cousin Chris told me about the last time he saw Paige.

She had a brand new yellow Mustang outside her apartment in Sherman Oaks. I told Chris about the 1953 MG that Paige had won in the divorce. Chris thinks she sold the MG to buy the yellow Mustang.

Paige moves to Malibu in late 1964/early 1965.

Months before this conversation with Chris Young, Richard Sample told me he remembers Paige owning a yellow Mustang.

When she was living in her “chicken coop” house near the beach from 1964/5 to about 1968.

Richard and Chris Young never met.

By default Paige would have owned a 1964 or 1965 Ford Mustang in yellow. There were 2 yellows if it was 1964.

“Since 1964 the Ford Mustang has utilized a multitude of shades of yellow to adorn their famous pony car.  Below is a year-to-year breakdown of the yellow shades (with paint code in parentheses, if available) we all have come to love so much.

1964:  Ford unveils a couple different shades for the inaugural release of the Mustang,  a pale hue called Phoenician Yellow (7) and a brighter hue of Sunlight Yellow (V).

1965:  Phoenician Yellow (7) is kept while the Sunlight Yellow (V) is replaced with a lighter hue called Springtime Yellow (8, only available in the Spring of 1965.”) From the website Yellow Mustang Registry.

Approx. 1968 is when Paige moved to a cabin-studio in Topanga Canyon, paid for by Bill Cosby. According to Paige’s friend Veronika from Malibu beach and Topanga. On the topic of cars Veronika said Paige did not own one, she hitchhiked or asked friends for rides.

I will be publishing a chapter on this soon. Published and appears at the bottom of the main menu.