Battle of Wills
The legendary filmmaker Norman Jewison had always planned to leave his $30-million estate to his three children. Then, in a will signed two months before his death, he bequeathed the bulk of his fortune to his second wife. Inside an estate war for the ages
On September 11, 2023, midway through the Toronto International Film Festival, Norman Jewison made his final public appearance. The 97-year-old director hadn’t released a movie in two decades, but he was still one of the most famous filmmakers alive. The Hazelton Hotel was christening its new 25-seat private screening room the Norman Jewison Cinema, and a small crowd had assembled to celebrate the unveiling. As the guest of honour was wheeled into the room, industry leaders—including Pinewood Toronto Studios founder Paul Bronfman, producer Rajiv Maikhuri and the Canadian Film Centre’s executive director, Maxine Bailey—cheered him on. Dressed in a dark suit over a blue button-down, Jewison stood, noticeably frail and leaning on his cane, as documentarian Barry Avrich whipped off the crimson cloth covering the plaque that bore Jewison’s name.
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It was a moment that memorialized Jewison’s contributions to the industry while he was still around to enjoy the celebrations. The preceding few years had been a merry-go-round of parties, galas and screenings marking his illustrious career. Jewison, who had started off as an assistant director at the CBC, was best known for probing the American psyche via films about the Cold War (The Russians Are Coming), racial tensions (In the Heat of the Night) and the Vietnam War (In Country). Even his films set outside the States, like the musicals Jesus Christ Superstar (an acid-trip take on the crucifixion) and Fiddler on the Roof (about a fictional shtetl in imperial Russia) had a showy confidence that was unlike anything coming out of Canada at the time. And although Jewison made his fortune south of the border, he paid it forward back home, setting up the Canadian Film Centre in 1986 as a northern answer to the American Film Institute.
By the time he was flanked by Avrich—one of his former mentees—at the Hazelton, Jewison had been front and centre for nearly six decades, the oldest of only a handful of Canadian directors big enough to be recognized around the world by their last name: Cronenberg, Cameron, Egoyan, Arcand, Villeneuve, Jewison. But it was clear to those in attendance that the godfather of their industry was on the decline. His round face had hollowed out, and for most of the event, he was tended to by his second wife. Jewison and Lynne St. David, an arts and culture writer turned society fixture, had carried on an affair that was something of an open secret. They finally went public with their relationship after the death of Jewison’s first wife, Margaret Ann Jewison, who went by Dixie. Since then, St. David had been glued to Jewison’s side. By all appearances, they were madly in love, and as his health faltered, she took on the role of his caregiver, manager and gatekeeper.
Notably absent at the unveiling, however, were Jewison’s three children: Kevin, Michael and Jennifer. Jewison had kick-started all the kids’ film careers. So why weren’t they present to watch him be honoured in his hometown? Few knew it then, but St. David and the kids were already embroiled in a vicious battle over Jewison’s estate, rife with incendiary claims of financial manipulation and coercion. The kids accused her of edging them out, manipulating their dad and taking his money for herself. St. David claimed that she was only looking out for her partner’s best interests, which, to her mind, evidently meant distancing him from his kids. By the time the Norman Jewison Cinema was unveiled, a lawsuit had been filed and attempted mediations had turned toxic. Soon, the messy court battle would spill into the public eye, tainting the legacy of one of Canada’s filmmaking titans.
Lynne St. David looks at home in Hollywood circles: her voluminous platinum hair is invariably coiffed, her sunglasses oversized, her heels high. Now in her mid-70s, she still looks younger than her age. She and Jewison made for a very different pairing than Jewison and his first wife. Dixie was petite and compact, her hair often pulled back into a tight bun. She was a former model, but she shied away from anything extravagant. Jewison once said that, despite the fact that they could afford multiple houses, Dixie would happily “live in a room.” Even after the money started rolling in, she insisted on making her kids’ lunches herself before sending them off to school.
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When Jewison met Dixie, she was out of his league. He grew up working at his parents’ dry goods store in the Beaches. After a stint in the navy, he got his BA at the University of Toronto and started working on variety shows and puppet sketches at the nascent CBC TV. In short, he was a 25-year-old who came from nothing and eked out a living writing dialogue for inanimate objects. Dixie, on the other hand, was the daughter of an affluent stockbroker who’d sent her to Branksome Hall. By 21, she’d secured a gig as the face of Black Cat cigarettes; her image was plastered on billboards across the city. When Jewison met her at a party in the early 1950s, he was determined to shoot his shot—and she was determined to brush him off. He asked her out repeatedly before finally getting a yes, and despite reservations from Dixie’s parents, they started dating. On a canoe trip in Algonquin Park, he spied Dixie picking blueberries in the nude and decided she was the woman he was going to marry.
For Jewison, the union was a feat of upward mobility, the first rung on a long ladder. Leveraging skills honed at the CBC, he got a job at CBS in New York, where he directed one-hour specials featuring Harry Belafonte, Julie Andrews and other icons of the era. After three years in the US, he became the highest-paid TV director in North America. So when Tony Curtis, the star of Some Like It Hot, suggested he try feature films, Jewison couldn’t think of a good reason not to. After two breakthrough successes in the 1960s—The Cincinnati Kid and The Russians Are Coming—he directed and produced In the Heat of the Night, starring Sidney Poitier as a Philadelphia police detective suspected of murdering a white businessman. It won five Oscars. Jewison had arrived.
His success required his family to move around often, and Dixie tended the home—whether it was in Toronto, New York or London—doing much of the hands-on work of raising their kids: Kevin, the oldest, stoic and reserved; Michael, who was methodical and attached to his mom, calm except for occasional bouts of temper; and Jennifer, the youngest, who had the closest relationship with her father. Jewison was often away for long stretches, during which opportunities arose to enjoy the perks of fame. “No one loved their family and children more than Norman, but he was always sleeping around,” says Alice Lee Boatwright, Jewison’s long-time agent and friend. His reputation was a stumbling block for Jay Scott, the Globe and Mail film critic who attempted a biography of the director in the ’80s: he heard about Jewison’s affairs but didn’t know how or when to work them into the book.
When he was home, Jewison lavished his children with experiences he could never have dreamed of at their age. In Ira Wells’s 2021 biography, he writes that Jewison and Dixie tried their best to keep the kids insulated from their father’s fame. Still, they attended Aiglon College in Switzerland, one of the most exclusive boarding schools in the world, and enjoyed vacations riding horses through the Sierra Nevadas. After Michael broke his leg on one of the family’s regular ski trips, Jewison and Dixie bonded with the parents of the other boy in the infirmary: Bobby and Ethel Kennedy. Through it all, Dixie visited Jewison’s sets, attended his premieres and maintained their international social life.
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Jewison frequently gave his kids gigs on his film sets. Kevin made a brief appearance as a village child in Fiddler on the Roof. Michael was in charge of wrangling the chickens. (He was apparently so good at it that they later made him responsible for the goats.) As they grew up, their roles became more formalized. On the shoot for Agnes of God, Michael was the location manager, Kevin was the first assistant camera operator, and Jennifer played a bit part and acted as Meg Tilley’s stand-in.
There are essentially three paths available to nepo babies: they can choose an unrelated field; stay in the industry but strike out on their own; or tether themselves to their famous parent. As they reached adulthood, each of Jewison’s children chose a different path. Jennifer’s acting career never took off: she married David Snyder, a former content executive at Disney, and moved to England. Kevin took his head start and broke off on his own: after impressing Sven Nykvist, a renowned Swedish cinematographer, on Agnes of God, he got gigs on films like What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, Resident Evil and Hotel Rwanda, eventually establishing himself as a respected cinematographer and camera operator based in Paris. Michael chose the third path, hewing closely to his father’s career: he worked in various roles on his dad’s films, including as location manager, co-producer and executive producer, and helped manage Jewison’s production company, Yorktown Productions, and sprawling business interests.
In public documents, Michael would later claim that he was often paid minimally or not at all, with his father promising that he’d account for his son’s work in his estate planning. The exact nature of their professional relationship is disputed. One person who knew Jewison well says that many people were aware of tension between him and his kids, but Bruce McDonald, the director of indie classics Roadkill and Hard Core Logo, saw things differently. McDonald was a long-time protégé of Jewison’s and worked out of his Toronto offices, and he never sensed any discord. “Norman was a loyal man who loved his kids enough to say, ‘Come work with me,’ ” he says. “And Michael kept the lights on. He was running the business.”
According to her kids, Dixie knew about Jewison’s affair but didn’t have the strength to fight it
By the late 1970s, Dixie and Jewison headed back to Ontario, where they settled on a 98-acre farm in Caledon. They also bought a pied-à-terre at 18 Gloucester Lane in Toronto, which would double as Jewison’s official headquarters, and a four-bedroom beachfront home in Malibu, complete with a guest house and a large patio overlooking the ocean. (Today, it’s valued between $8 and $12.5 million.) In the city, the couple toured the social circuit alongside powerful friends like developer David Daniels, theatrical producer Garth Drabinsky and former premier David Peterson. At the Caledon farm and in Malibu, the kids were frequent visitors—everyone stayed at the California house in 1999 to celebrate Jewison receiving the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award at the Oscars. When Jennifer got married, her father sang “Sunrise, Sunset” from Fiddler at the ceremony.
According to her kids, Dixie knew about Jewison’s affair with Lynne St. David but didn’t have the strength to fight it. Instead, she stayed by her husband’s side until the end. In 2004, ill with cancer and nearing the end of her life, she rallied to attend the launch of Jewison’s autobiography, This Terrible Business Has Been Good to Me, oxygen tank in tow. After she died, St. David took her place.
Before meeting Norman, St. David spent years living in a small apartment at the Manulife Centre. Her upbringing was humble: her mother was a nurse who specialized in geriatrics and palliative care. But St. David was a striver, and she made her name writing fashion and society pieces for various publications around town, including Toronto Life. “She was not a great writer or speller, but she was beautiful and fearless and could pick up the phone,” says a now-retired editor who worked with St. David in the late ’70s. “She was well liked by famous people. She positioned herself as if she was on their side.” It was perhaps this likability that led to her first high-profile relationship: in 1989, she started dating Harold Town, the renowned abstract artist and founding member of the influential Painters Eleven collective, shortly after Town’s separation from his first wife. Town was 65; St. David, in her late 30s, was closer in age to his two daughters.
Town had received his second cancer diagnosis, and after deciding to forgo radiation, he retired to his farm in Peterborough to die with St. David by his side. “Lynne quickly became a dominating force in my dad’s life,” Harold’s daughter, Shelley Town, told me. “It started gradually, but she increasingly tried to prevent my sister and me from talking to him. I know from his long-time friends that the same thing happened to them. At the same time, she made herself indispensable.” Shortly before his death in December of 1990, says Shelley, Town created a codicil amending his will to make his farm available below market value to St. David, whom he’d been with for a little over a year. His two daughters had expected it to pass to them. Shelley and her sister never contested the change. “My dad had died, and I was grieving,” she says. “I wasn’t thinking beyond that.”
St. David was Jewison’s chosen partner. There was little his kids could do about it
Jewison met St. David soon after Town’s death. They were introduced in the early 1990s by Jay Scott, who knew St. David from her occasional freelancing at the Globe and Mail. A few years later, St. David reconnected with Jewison for a Report on Business piece on penny-pinching with tips from Toronto’s rich and famous. The director’s self-promoting bit of advice? Pick up a booklet of movie coupons from the Canadian Film Centre. Two years later, Jewison and St. David began their affair.
After Dixie’s death, when Jewison and St. David went public with their relationship, St. David’s presence became a source of friction within the family. “Your beloved mom passes away, and this foxy younger woman comes along who has a history with a famous painter,” McDonald says. “I could feel them freezing her out right away. I saw Michael the most, and he would make little offhand comments.” But, according to McDonald, St. David and Jewison were a happy couple. “She was affectionate with him in the sweetest way. They were easy together—she liked him and he liked her. I think, after Dixie, he needed life around him.”
According to Kevin, St. David was controlling of his father and attempted to limit Kevin’s time alone with him as early as 2004. At this point, though, it was only a minor inconvenience. There seemed to be a general agreement: St. David was Jewison’s chosen partner; she gave him affection and companionship; and if his kids didn’t approve, well, there was little they could do. For years, everyone maintained an uneasy peace. Kevin was working in Paris as a cinematographer, and Jennifer and her husband had moved to Connecticut. Michael eventually bought a house in Pacific Palisades, close to the family’s Malibu home, and maintained the Toronto office space for Jewison’s company. He remained the most professionally and financially tied to his father. Outside of their business dealings, Jewison loaned Michael roughly $3 million between 2001 and 2013.
It was in the mid-aughts that Jewison started his estate planning. In 2006, he established the Jewison Living Trust, a vehicle through which he planned to pass on the bulk of his assets—an estimated $30 million after taxes, including his shares in private companies, the Malibu home, the Caledon farm and a cottage on Lake Simcoe—to his children after his death. Then, in 2007, the arrangement changed ever so slightly: $700,000 was carved out of the estate and earmarked, by way of a revocable trust, for St. David after Jewison’s death.
If St. David’s relationship with Jewison bore some resemblance to her time with Town, it was also marked by significant differences. St. David and Jewison were together for years, and their mutual affection was often on public display. If she was after his money, she was playing a long game. The kids may not have been fond of her, but they weren’t worried about their inheritance, at least not at first. According to Kevin’s court filings, Jewison told his children that he had no intention of marrying her. Another big difference between Jewison and Town was that Jewison was in good health—at least until 2010. While he and Michael were working on the development of two movies, Jewison suffered a series of strokes that would break the fragile truce between his children and his soon-to-be-wife.
You can hardly throw a wad of cash in the upper echelons of Canadian society without hitting a person whose family has feuded over an inheritance: the Thomsons, the Irvings, the Rogerses, the McCains. The division of wealth is an inherently fraught business in every income bracket, and it’s getting thornier all the time. Canada is in the midst of the Great Wealth Transfer—between 2023 and 2026, an unprecedented $1 trillion is being passed down from parents to their adult children, according to the Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada. At the same time, people are living longer, which makes them more susceptible to elder abuse or financial coercion in the last years of their lives. Many will be affected by these trends, but none so starkly as the ultra-wealthy. Conflict over who inherits a single-family home can be difficult; clashes over who gets a $30-million estate can be ruinous. Even before a loved one’s death, family members may be on edge about anything that could threaten their inheritance.
After Jewison’s strokes, the fallout within the family was immediate. Kevin was the only child in Toronto at the time, and he alleges in court filings that St. David told him repeatedly not to visit his father in hospital because it was not a “convenient time.” He showed up anyway and was able to see his father briefly, but he claims that once Jewison went home to the condo he shared with St. David at 1 Benvenuto Place, their contact was even more limited. After repeated requests, he says, she finally agreed to an uncomfortable meeting between him and his dad in the lobby of the building but wouldn’t allow Kevin up to their unit. Even more shocking to Kevin was the announcement Jewison made to him on the phone less than two months later: at 84 years old, he was going to marry St. David. Just over a week later, they were wed under a chuppah in their garden.
Once married, St. David became her husband’s full-time caregiver. Unable to work or drive, he grew increasingly dependent on her, and she rose to the challenge. She took over his personal and work communications and was always by his side. Michael and Kevin abhorred the arrangement. Their dad, who had always been available to them, was sick, and they couldn’t see or speak to him for vital updates. In late 2013, Michael alleges that Jewison underwent a serious throat surgery that St. David neglected to tell them about. Michael found out about it only when he ran into his father’s doctor, who inquired about Jewison’s recovery. That same year, Jewison and St. David called Michael and said they would not spend Christmas Eve with him and his family, a break in long-standing tradition. When Michael dropped by the Malibu house on Christmas, he says St. David rushed him out as soon as his dad started discussing his recent hospitalization.
For a while, Jewison’s financial planning remained largely intact. In new wills written in 2011 and 2014, more provisions were added for St. David: he bequeathed her his life insurance payments and residuals for Fiddler on the Roof, The Russians Are Coming and In the Heat of the Night and gave her life interest in the Malibu beach house—she would get it after his death, and after her death ownership would be divided among his five grandchildren. These were significant assets, but it would have been difficult for anyone to make an argument against the new wills. St. David was providing the onerous labour of caring for a sick loved one, and they had been together for a decade by the time of the 2014 will. And even with these changes, the status quo remained: per his will and with the trust in place, the bulk of his $30-million estate still belonged to the kids.
It wasn’t until the pandemic that Jewison’s financial behaviour started to draw alarm. Michael was the only one who had seen Jewison alone since 2019; even then, he claims that their two private meetings had been cut off by St. David after 45 minutes. Despite the clear trajectory of worsening relations, however, the siblings were shocked when, without warning, things turned downright nasty: in July of 2020, Jewison called in a loan of over $1 million he’d made to Aiglon, a company he’d financed but whose shares were owned by his children—and Aiglon was given only 15 days to repay. It was a wildly aggressive move, an unprovoked shot across the bow. The kids were forced to dump substantial assets in order to drum up $1 million in time, and when Michael tried to get an explanation, he was met with a puzzling answer from his dad’s lawyer: Jewison needed the money for personal and tax reasons. Michael alleges that the decision was uncharacteristic and unprecedented. He and his siblings were concerned that their father was facing financial difficulties, but Michael says his attempts to discuss the matter were blocked by St. David.
After that, a year passed by quietly—the calling in of the loan, though inexplicable, seemed like an isolated incident. That illusion was shattered in November of 2021, when Jewison withdrew $325,000 from one of Aiglon’s accounts despite the fact that he was not a shareholder and had no right to do so. He told Michael that he had to “scramble for cash” even though he had $11 million in his personal accounts at the time. Soon, several of his long-time lawyers and accountants abruptly resigned. Then, in January of 2022, Jewison dropped his most nuclear change yet: his lawyers announced to his children that he had revoked the Jewison Living Trust, which held the bulk of his estate.
The siblings started to panic. Now that the trust had been revoked, all the assets in it would revert back to Jewison. If the children were still the main beneficiaries of his will, they would receive what was left of his estate after his bequests to St. David and others. But, at this point, they had barely spoken to their father for years. If he was willing to revoke the trust, who knew what changes he had made to his will? Kevin and Michael, frustrated at their thwarted attempts to contact their father, had their lawyers reach out. Then, in May of 2022, all three children received the same text, sent from St. David’s phone but signed “Dad”: “After receiving threatening and inaccurate letters from your lawyer…at this point in time I am not prepared to connect. Let’s let the lawyers do the connecting for now!” The next day, they received an almost verbatim repeat from their father’s email address. The siblings were bewildered. To them, the message didn’t read like their father at all; it didn’t contain any of his characteristic typos. He’d always been interested in hearing about their day-to-day lives, their work, their thoughts on movies or hockey. They knew their father; this just didn’t seem like him.
Then, in April of 2023, after a year of no contact with Jewison, Kevin received a rare glimmer of hope: his dad had called, but he’d missed it. Kevin called back and left a message but never got a response. Heartened by the possibility of reconnecting, he emailed his father to express how much he missed speaking with him and to ask if he could update Jewison on his step-grandkids and maple syrup season at the Caledon farm. Still no response. Kevin’s birthday was approaching, and every year, no matter how busy their lives were, Kevin always heard from his dad on his birthday. In 2023, though, the day came and went without any word. Michael made multiple attempts to visit the Malibu house with his daughter, Alexandra, but he wasn’t allowed to speak with his father. When St. David texted him that he couldn’t see his dad until they had “settled all these legal problems,” the brothers decided to take action.
In May of 2023, Kevin and Michael applied for a court order in California that would help them to gain access to their father through a new state law passed to allow contact when there’s evidence that an elderly person has been cut off from a loved one against their will. In the filings, they alleged that St. David had isolated her husband and prevented contact with his family and closest friends since his strokes in 2010. They also expressed alarm about the changes he’d made to his estate plans. Along with their own testimonies, they included three affidavits. Two are from long-time family friends, Mark Daniel Melnick and Beverlye Hyman Fead, who say they inexplicably stopped hearing from Jewison and were worried about his well-being. A third is from Shelley Town, whom Michael had called up to compare notes. “I understand that Ms. St. David is now married to Norman Jewison, and that his children have already had to endure more from her, and for a much longer period of time, than my sister and I did,” Town wrote. “I hope they are able to restore and resume their relationship with their father without interference from Ms. St. David before it is too late.”
Despite the allegations mounting against her, people close to St. David insist that she would never do anything against Jewison’s wishes. Barbara Kingstone, a writer and friend of St. David’s, says she spent time with the couple in Toronto and once visited them in Malibu. “They had a lovely life together, and Lynne looked after Norman so beautifully,” she says. “I’ve heard the not-nice things being said about her, and I don’t agree with any of them. We didn’t speak about the kids, but blending a family is a very difficult thing to do. I’m sure she was good to them. She’s that type of person.”
In response to the filing in California, St. David asked the children, through her lawyer, to abandon their petition and attend mediation. All three, surely relieved by a chance to talk to their father after years of separation, agreed and were granted video conferences with Jewison (chaperoned by St. David’s lawyer). The calls led to months of negotiations, which stretched on during the opening of the Norman Jewison Cinema at the Hazelton. Weeks afterward, there was the first sign of a détente. Kevin and Jennifer, anxious to avoid an internecine battle, settled for a share of Jewison’s assets including properties, farm equipment and the rights to Jesus Christ Superstar. In exchange, they signed affidavits, prepared by St. David’s counsel, attesting to Jewison’s mental acuity and denying any undue influence over their dad by his second wife.
Amid all the financial and legal back-and-forth, the heated exchanges and tense negotiations, something much more dire was happening: Norman Jewison was dying. The director entered hospice care shortly after the settlements with Kevin and Jennifer were signed. Despite his father’s rapidly declining health, Michael alleges that St. David did not reach out to any of Jewison’s children; they were not informed of his move to palliative care, nor were they given any chance to have a final visit, share parting words or attempt to rectify the mess that had been made of the past few years. On January 20, 2024, Jewison passed away in California, with only St. David by his side. The kids had no chance to say goodbye. According to Michael, St. David instructed the funeral home not to speak to anyone but her. Then, without notice, she moved the cremation up a day—none of the kids were alerted, Michael alleges, so none of them were able to attend.
Three days after the death of his father, Michael filed a notice of legal action in Ontario, followed by a statement of claim. His overarching message: his father had lacked the mental capacity to make financial decisions after the 2010 strokes, and St. David, whom he alleges exerted undue influence for her own gain, should arm herself for battle. Unlike his siblings, Michael wasn’t prepared to cede. He argued that Kevin and Jennifer’s affidavits misrepresented the facts by underplaying the degree of pressure St. David had applied on her husband. He was further galvanized when, in March, he got his first look at a new will, executed by his father the previous November.
The changes between Jewison’s 2014 and 2023 wills were incendiary. The bulk of his assets were now bequeathed to St. David. Aside from the settlements that Kevin and Jennifer had made, all three children had been cut out entirely; Michael was set to receive absolutely nothing. Michael’s daughter, Alexandra, had also been excised. While all of Jewison’s other grandchildren would receive $200,000, the will noted that Alexandra had been “intentionally excluded,” though it provided no explanation. In his filings, Michael pointed out other peculiarities in Jewison’s 2023 will. Jewison had appointed Ernie Eves, the former Ontario premier and a neighbour of Jewison’s in Caledon, as a new estate trustee and set aside $400,000 for his compensation. The will also contained a new clause stipulating that any legal fees incurred by Eves and St. David in the execution of Jewison’s will would be covered by his estate. St. David had, according to Michael’s allegations, succeeded in her decades-long mission: she was getting the balance of Jewison’s estate, his children were getting virtually nothing and any legal action they launched would ultimately lessen their potential payout if they won.
Despite multiple attempts to contact her, St. David did not respond to requests for comment on this story. All three of Jewison’s children also declined or did not respond to requests for interviews. “From Norman’s perspective, the allegations against Lynne were completely false,” says Chris Palliare, Jewison’s lawyer before his death and the current counsel for his estate. “People can make whatever wild, unfair and false allegations they want in a pleading—what matters is if any of those allegations are tested and found to be true. It’s not as though the children weren’t looked after. Norman dealt with them very fairly while he was alive, and they agreed to it.”
In April of 2024, St. David dropped a hammer on Michael: she was giving him 10 days to repay the $3 million he’d borrowed from his father since 2001. Coughing up the money would have been a massive burden, especially for someone in a protracted legal battle. It proved to be a trump card. Soon afterward, Michael agreed to return to the table with St. David and the estate lawyers. Palliare contends that money wasn’t the only reason. “There was no substance to the allegations filed,” he says. “The siblings folded their tent when faced with the reality of whether they wanted to pursue their claims. That speaks volumes about the legitimacy of them.”
Almost 10 months after Michael filed his notice of action, he, St. David and Eves gathered for a private mediation in Toronto, flanked by a cadre of lawyers. When Michael emerged, he was $6.8 million richer. He had also secured a payout of $200,000 to his daughter, Alexandra, and all the residuals, title and interest to 23 of Jewison’s films. (Before his death, Jewison was receiving roughly $70,000 a year in residuals for his entire catalogue.) In return, Michael’s loans would be forgiven and he would drop his lawsuit. The party line is that they reached a mutual understanding, though that seems unlikely. But if Michael and his siblings are still seething, they’ve been forced to do so in private. One stipulation of the payout was that none of the parties can disparage each other publicly, even if the substance of their disparagement is demonstrably true.
This story appears in the November 2025 issue of Toronto Life magazine. To subscribe, click here. To purchase single issues, click here.
