The Lawyer and the Little Prince

Joseph Tandet, practicing entertainment attorney and a theatre and film producer in New York City, chronicles the adventures and misadventures he experienced bringing the classic story, The Little Prince, to the big screen. He relates how a little yeshiva boy from Brooklyn, growing up with sparse parental encouragement, attended college and law school, litigated a string of negligence cases, and went on to surmount the daunting obstacles and experience the heights of the entertainment world and Hollywood. Who would have believed it? Tandet convinced the French publisher, Gallimard, and the Saint-Exupéry family to sign a boilerplate contract under the pretense that Gene Kelley had already signed on as the leading man. Armed with nothing but nerve and chutzpah, he was able to make his way through the valley of the moguls and convince Paramount Pictures to produce a feature-length film based upon the popular story. Tandet reveals the conversations he had with directors, actors, writers, and others he met on his path to taking the magical, musical fable based upon Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's story from an idea to a feature film. This engaging memoir provides captivating inside details regarding a film that is still popular, decades after its release.