Harvey Levin

Biography

Harvey Levin grew up in Los Angeles, and as a young adult his goal was to become a law professor. After obtaining an undergraduate degree from the University of California in Santa Barbara, he went to the Windy City to earn his JD at the University of Chicago Law School. Harvey Levin's successful completion of the bar exam gave him the power to make his teaching wishes come true, so he returned to Los Angeles to teach law at what is now called Whittier College School of Law in 1977.

The career path of Harvey Levin changed directions when he was asked by his school dean to participate in debates surrounding the taxation-themed Proposition 13. His work on the project brought increased media attention and landed Harvey Levin a weekly radio gig, his own column in the Los Angeles Times and a string of television appearances. Now a budding media personality, the established law professor was curious about what else was out there.

harvey levin on the people's court and celebrity justice

The next step in Harvey Levin's career saw him combine his legal prowess with his new projects on television. He became a legal analyst for The People's Court, a show that he would be associated with on and off for 25 years, culminating in a successful run as the show's producer. He also took an interest in the investigative side of reporting, but it almost backfired during the O.J. Simpson trial, when he accused prosecutor Marcia Clark of entering the defendant's house without a warrant, only to have his "evidence" proven wrong.

Harvey Levin's experience observing the trial of O.J. Simpson left him fascinated by celebrities and crime. As a result, he developed an idea for a show called Celebrity Justice that would provide insight and exploration into these two topics. Unfortunately, the television networks weren't keen on the idea and it took seven years for it to finally come to fruition. When it did, the show was a mild success until its cancellation in 2005, something that Harvey Levin felt was due to poor time slots that didn't cater well to the idea of breaking entertainment news.

harvey levin and tmz

In 2005, Harvey Levin was offered the job of managing editor for a new web site venture called TMZ -- an abbreviation for the "thirty mile zone" around Hollywood where studio productions are still considered local. Harvey Levin initially balked at the offer because he didn't feel comfortable on the internet, but he then realized that the 24/7 power of the internet would give him news-breaking capabilities that he never had on television. Harvey Levin took the job and hired back many of his old Celebrity Justice staffers, and the web site quickly became a celebrity news magnet. Intimate details of Mel Gibson's DUI arrest, the audio recording of Alec Baldwin's notorious answering machine outburst, and the video of Michael Richards' career-killing racist stand-up disaster were some of TMZ's most newsworthy stories. Naturally, a TV spin off of TMZ on TV debuted in 2007 with Harvey Levin in the driver's seat.

Within four years, TMZ.com was receiving over 10 million visitors per month and the stories just kept on getting bigger. In 2009, Harvey Levin took his site into the political arena to show how the Chicago-based Northern Trust Bank spent a significant chunk of their federal bailout money on ritzy concert events, which eventually forced the company to make a pledge to pay it back. Then, after breaking the news of Christian Bale's Terminator: Salvation on-set spazz and the infamous Chris Brown and Rihanna assault case, TMZ.com was the first media outlet in the world to publish the news of Michael Jackson's passing. While the launch of another Harvey Levin television creation, Beyond Twisted, was a bust, he remained in the spotlight after winning a bet with John Mayer that he could produce a mugshot from the singer's 2001 arrest. After the picture went live at TMZ.com, John Mayer donated $25K to two of Harvey Levin's favorite animal charities. The result was a lot of happy puppies, especially three new ones. Their names? John Mayer, TMZ and Harvey Levin.