Ludwig Gerber, 91; Attorney, Western Regional Head of VA

Ludwig Gerber, 91, a lawyer who was Western region administrator of the Veterans Administration after World War II, died of heart failure April 20 in a health-care facility in Huntington Beach.

As a lawyer with offices in Los Angeles and New York, Gerber’s clients included Howard Hughes, Peggy Lee and Troy Donahue.

In the late 1960s, he served as president of Criterion Films, which produced a number of B movies released by American International.

A Democrat, he made two unsuccessful bids for U.S. Congress, the most recent in Orange County in 1998.

Born in Brooklyn, Gerber earned his law degree from St. John’s University in Jamaica, N.Y. Admitted to the New York bar at age 21, he went to work for the New York City Charter Revision Commission, where he wrote the penal code of New York City, which continues to be the city’s basic penal law.

At 26, he was appointed secretary of the Borough of Brooklyn. He later worked as a legal counsel for the National Recovery Administration, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the St. Lawrence Seaway Commission.

During World War II, he became secretary of the general staff for the European Theater of Operations in London and Paris and was later transferred to the general staff in Washington as chief of administration of intelligence.