Shirley Slesinger Lasswell
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Shirley Slesinger Lasswell | |
|---|---|
| Born | Shirley Ann Basso May 27, 1923 |
| Died | July 19, 2007 (aged 84) |
| Occupations | Businessperson and performer |
| Spouses | |
Shirley Slesinger Lasswell (May 27, 1923 – July 19, 2007) was an American marketer. She was the wife of comics artist Stephen Slesinger and, after his death, Fred Lasswell. She is furthermore best known for losing a lawsuit with The Walt Disney Company due to her company's judicial misconduct in a dispute over Winnie-the-Pooh royalties.[1]
Lasswell was born Shirley Ann Basso in Detroit, Michigan on May 27, 1923.[1] She was the daughter of Clara Louise Leasia and Michael Basso. She had one sister, Patricia Jane (Basso) Cornell.
Shirley Ann Basso performed in Olsen and Johnson Broadway musical comedies. She spent 30 months with the USO entertaining American troops at military bases and hospitals in Europe and the Pacific during World War II.[1]
She met her first husband, producer Stephen Slesinger, while working on Broadway in 1947,[1] and married him in 1948. Actress Clara Bow and her husband, actor Rex Bell, served respectively as the maid of honor and the best man at the Slesingers' wedding.[1] The Slesingers lived in New York City and on their ranch in the Blanco Basin near Pagosa Springs, which provided the backdrop of Slesinger's Western films and summer programs for inner city youth. Their marriage lasted until Stephen Slesinger's death in 1953.
In 1964, she married Fred Lasswell, a Reuben Award-winning cartoonist and inventor, who drew the comic strip Barney Google and Snuffy Smith. Lasswell also invented the first practical citrus harvester and created creative educational programs for schools. The couple remained married until Fred Lasswell's death in 2001.[1]
