LOS ANGELES – Edie Wasserman, who was the widow of Hollywood powerhouse Lew Wasserman and who was known as a tireless benefactor for charitable causes, especially the Motion Picture and Television Fund, has died. She was 95.

Wasserman died Thursday in Beverly Hills of natural causes, said her grandson, Casey Wasserman.

“She was an incredible woman, sort of once in a lifetime,” he said. “She had very strong convictions and was dogged in her pursuit of those. And they usually involved helping others.”

Actress Jamie Lee Curtis, who was her goddaughter, said in a statement: “The world lost a dynamic force for good in Hollywood. Her partnership and marriage to Lew Wasserman is one for the history books.

“Her great philanthropic endeavors …will bear beautiful fruit long after her passing,” Curtis said. “She was sweet and sharp, tough and tender. She was a unique and fascinating woman.”

With her husband, Wasserman helped raise millions for the fund, which cares for aging actors and others in the industry.

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Decades after arriving in Los Angeles in the late 1930s, the Wassermans had become “the undisputed king and queen of Hollywood among the baroque society of Rodeo Drive,” Kathleen Sharp, author of a biography about the couple, told the Los Angeles Times in 2004.

He was the longtime chief executive of MCA and president of Universal Studios, a former talent agent who emerged as the most powerful mogul in post-World War II Hollywood. They were married for almost 66 years when he died at 89 in 2002.

“Madame,” as her husband called her in their twilight years, was self-confident, spirited and politically astute, said Sharp, who titled the 2003 biography “Mr. & Mrs. Hollywood.”

Through her fundraising skills, Wasserman was instrumental in shaping the Music Center, CalArts and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, “helping to turn Los Angeles from a cow town to a cosmopolitan city,” Sharp said in 2004.

The couple lived modestly despite their wealth, which only increased after entertainment conglomerate MCA was sold in 1990. Forbes magazine estimated his net worth at $500 million in 1998.

Their Beverly Hills home was a rare extravagance they bought in 1960 for $400,000. From its living room, Wasserman formed the first Hollywood wives club; stars such as Janet Leigh, Polly Bergen and Rosemary Clooney shared back-lot secrets that Edie would pass on to Lew.

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With such social ties, Edie became — as actress Sharon Stone put it in 1998 — “the matriarch of the business in this town.”

Edith Beckerman was born Nov. 4, 1915, in Cleveland. Her father was a lawyer with such show-business clients as Sophie Tucker and Guy Lombardo.

When Edie met Lew, she was making $18 a week at the May Co., and he was hiring bands for a local nightclub.

 


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