"1984 Olympics" Paul Ziffren Hand Signed 8X10 B&W Photo For Sale

Up for sale "1984 Olympics" Paul Ziffren Hand Signed 8X10 B&W Photo.

ES-7035E

Paul Ziffren, who as California’s Democratic national committeeman

in the 1950s steered the party on a more liberal course and as chairman of the

board of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics helped fulfill pledges of a Games free

to local taxpayers, has died at his Malibu home. Ziffren, who died of

congestive heart failure Friday night, was 77. “I regard Paul Ziffren as the

builder of the California Democratic Party,” former Gov. Edmund G. (Pat) Brown

said Saturday. “We only had one Democratic governor in 60 years, Culbert Olson.

By his intelligent work, Ziffren in time built the party up to the point where

I was able to be elected the second. . . . He was a close personal friend and a

man I admired from our first meeting.” Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley called Ziffren

“a remarkable leader who had a capacity to bring together people of different

backgrounds and diverse interests and lead them to solve great problems. “One

of his greatest contributions, and a legacy of his leadership, were the Olympic

Games of 1984,” Bradley said. “He chaired the organizing committee, which

produced the greatest Games in the history of the Olympic movement. He was a

dear personal friend whose advice and counsel assisted me on many occasions.” Peter

V. Ueberroth, president and staff director of the 1984 Olympic committee, said

of Ziffren: “He drew respect and trust from every part of society. His

Republican friends were the best and most effective Republicans and his

Democratic friends were the best and most effective Democrats. His leadership

provided the umbrella of shade and protection for those who worked for the 1984

Olympic Games. “He gave generously and unselfishly to his friends, and I was

fortunate to be one of them.” A leader in the Los Angeles Jewish community, as

well as in legal and political circles, Ziffren had long been a close political

associate of Bradley, who in 1979 asked him to chair the Olympic effort. As

Ueberroth noted Saturday, it fell to the  gaunt, angular, soft-spoken lawyer to run

political interference for the Games, while Ueberroth was in operational

charge. Before the 1984 Olympics were formally awarded to the city, Ziffren had

predicted they would make a $100-million profit, an estimate most people

regarded at the time as outlandish. Years later, Ziffren would recall with

great pride his prediction, which was less than half the $222.7 million

actually realized. Ziffren, who learned a great deal about politics while a law

associate of Chicago’s one-time Democratic boss, Jacob Arvey, moved to Southern

California in 1943 and became a leading Beverly Hills tax attorney. By 1950, he

was raising funds for Helen Gahagan Douglas in her futile U.S. Senate campaign

against Richard M. Nixon. In 1953, Ziffren was chosen California’s Democratic

national committeeman. In his nearly eight years in that post (during which he

was instrumental in bringing the 1960 Democratic National Convention to Los

Angeles) and later, Ziffren stirred controversy by pressing for a stronger

civil rights stand by Democrats and for more of a “Western accent” in the party

rather than a Southern one. Ziffren was replaced by Stanley Mosk, then state

attorney general and now a state Supreme Court justice, as national

committeeman in 1960 in a move supported by Brown. Afterward, Los Angeles Times

Political Editor Kyle Palmer wrote: