Allred on a Back Road

This wasn’t Gloria Allred’s usual posture, sitting quietly in a courtroom off the beaten track, away from the crowds, ignored by the media, listening to herself being berated by another woman attorney more than equal to the task.

The queen of the feminists was accustomed to a different set of circumstances.

One sees her surrounded by television cameras on the steps of City Hall, or in the middle of a press conference outside a Beverly Hills restaurant, lashing the improprieties of a male-dominated society in a moment carefully orchestrated to attract attention.

That’s the Allred we know, seizing the day in a flashy red dress, trailed by a media parade she has summoned in the first place, a strident exponent of women’s rights, however trivial some of her cases may seem.

Then why does she sit quietly now, demure in a purity-white suit, tight-lipped and nervous as shards of her life are scattered embarrassingly through a Glendale courtroom?

Because this isn’t the usual Allred Circus, folks. This is quiet personal drama rooted in emotional pain. This is the necessity to clean up when the party’s over.

This is the ultimate reduction of a feminist star to very human proportions.

Allred’s appearance before Superior Court Judge John Kalin isn’t her shiniest moment.

The trial is to determine how the assets of Allred and her ex-husband, Bill, should be divided. That would be unpleasant enough. It is made even more unpleasant by the fact he is in prison for selling bogus aircraft parts to the Air Force through a company he partially owns.

They were divorced shortly after his conviction in 1987, and each is now seeking a share of the other’s holdings.

These are messy moments for anyone. The situation requires a cynical assessment of marriage, reduced to components of profit and interest.

The courtroom was almost empty. I sat through a morning of testimony because there seemed poetic justice in the personal travail of a woman who specializes in the travail of others.

Instructed by her attorney not to discuss the case, Allred would only say, “We all have other experiences, and this is one of mine.” Her response was muted, her manner reserved.

One couldn’t help but feel sympathy.

Allred is wealthy and, God knows, famous, but all that seemed oddly irrelevant in the moment of her despair. I profiled her years ago, when she was still married, and can’t help feeling uneasy about the contribution of that profile to her present circumstance.

I characterized Bill Allred as a weak man dominated by a strong woman, and later she joked that the profile caused the divorce. I’ve never been sure it was a joke.

I thought about that as I listened to Bill’s attorney rip into Allred last Tuesday.

Arlene Colman-Schwimmer is large, flamboyant and combative, with a reputation as vivid as the floral-print dress she was wearing. She dwarfs Allred both in size and expansive style.

Schwimmer accused Allred of lying to protect her “lily-white reputation in the media” and charged that she badgered her own housekeeper in an effort to keep the woman from testifying.

Allred’s attorney, Paul Gutman, dealt with Schwimmer in the way Bill dealt with Allred, quietly and with fatherly patience. By selecting these lawyers, the Allreds almost seemed to have hired each other.

It was a morning without movement until Judge Kalin interrupted the trial to preside over the routine dissolution of another marriage in open court.

Dramas emerge at unexpected moments. While everyone watched, John and Lois Miller were called forward. An almost painfully ordinary couple, they stood awkwardly apart as Kalin asked if divorce was what they wanted.

They said it was, though there was deep sadness to their response. Routine questions followed, and then Kalin said, “That’s it. You’re dissolved,” and in that moment of cold sanction, their life together was swept away like ashes in a gale.

The Millers left the courtroom, and the Allred trial resumed. Gloria watched them leave. I couldn’t read her expression, but I wondered if she was thinking about Bill, and I wondered if it was a memory laced with regret.

We are all subject to pain at quiet times. Even a Gloria Allred must answer to the silence.