Alain Bernheim | Producer, agent, 86
Alain Bernheim, 86, a producer and literary agent who with humorist Art Buchwald sued Paramount Pictures for using their concept for the 1988 film Coming to America , died last Friday of complications during dialysis treatment at a Paris hospital, said his wife, Marjorie. The couple, Los Angeles residents, owned a vacation home near Bois de Boulogne.
Alain Bernheim, 86, a producer and literary agent who with humorist Art Buchwald sued Paramount Pictures for using their concept for the 1988 film
Coming to America
, died last Friday of complications during dialysis treatment at a Paris hospital, said his wife, Marjorie. The couple, Los Angeles residents, owned a vacation home near Bois de Boulogne.
Buchwald, a newspaper columnist, and his producing partner Mr. Bernheim filed a $5 million suit against Paramount in 1988, saying that the Eddie Murphy hit Coming to America was based on a treatment that Buchwald wrote and sold to the studio in 1983.
A Los Angeles judge awarded them $900,000 in 1992, but the studio appealed. After a seven-year legal battle, Buchwald and Mr. Bernheim received a settlement of $825,000. Buchwald died in 2007.
- Los Angeles Times