The man is a friggin’ legend in Los Angeles. Bill Handel can’t go for a walk on Hollywood Boulevard without seeing his name below his feet–seriously.
Handel is the 2,385th star on the Walk of Fame. His star sits in front of a tattoo parlor, next to Ernestine Schumann-Heink’s star. “She was a German-American opera star,” Handel said. “She died in the 1920s and weighed about 400 pounds. Stars on the Walk of Fame are like real estate. Mine is near a store that sold bikinis.”
He told those attending his unveiling ceremony, ‘My staff had to be here. If you were getting a star, I sure as hell wouldn’t be here.’
Born in Brazil, Handel immigrated to the United States with his parents when he was five years old. Growing up in the San Fernando Valley, he learned English without the benefit of a bilingual education program and became one of the world’s leading reproductive law experts.
He can be heard on KFI Los Angeles on weekdays from 5 a.m. to 9 a.m. and on Handel on the Law on Saturdays from 6 am to 11 am.
“My father was a Holocaust survivor,” Handel said. “My mother was a dentist in Brazil but couldn’t practice here. There was no such thing as taking the boards, and they didn’t honor her as a foreign doctor. She worked as a lab technician.”
Handel is a product of the public schools in the L.A. unified district. Later he attended Cal State at Northridge, then law school.
“They said it was one of the best; now it’s out of business,” Handel jokes. “Trump Law School would have been better than the one I attended. It was a very minor law school. I just think it didn’t get enough students.”
As he graduated from law school, Handel was running his own home remodeling business. He wasn’t very good at it.
“I was remodeling a doctor’s house and I underbid the work by 400 – thousand dollars,” Handel said. “It was horrible. I didn’t know what I was going to do. So I told him he could sue me. I’d go bankrupt and have no money to give him. Then I came up with the idea of working it off. He said okay.”
The doctor was an endocrinologist and Handel said the physician had more money than he knew what to do with.
“He liked me and I started to work with him. Any legal thing he needed.”
Handel said the doctor was an unexpected mentor.
“He was the best legal mind I’d ever met and he never studied law,” Handel said. “ One day he says he just got a call from a patient who tried to conceive using every method possible with no luck, including several surgeries.
Handel explained this was in 1980 and that in vitro fertilization wasn’t common or even well-known. He said prospective parents would run an ad in the L.A. Times looking for a surrogate to be artificially inseminated. The doctor told them they needed some sort of contract with the surrogate. He called Handel.
“Of course, I didn’t know anything about in vitro fertilization, but that didn’t prevent me from telling him I did,” Handel explained. “He gives me a call and I take some notes. Then I had to figure out how to write a surrogate mother contract. There was no template. How do you pay a woman to give up her child? Payment for custody is a crime. Issues went on and on. I went to several law school and talked with professors, picked their brains. All of them. My ethics professor, contracts professor.”
His ethics professor was Harvey Levin, the same guy from TMZ. Levin taught law at Whittier College. He also wrote a column for the L.A. Times and was known as ‘Dr. Law’ on the radio.
“Harvey was a very good lawyer before he entered the world of entertainment,” Handel said.
Handel finalized his first fertilization contract and the doctor went ahead with the procedure. The woman had the child in 1983. Two years later Morley Safer interviewed Handel on 60 Minutes about the process of handling surrogate parents.
“What I really liked about that experience is when the 60 Minutes producer came out to California,” Handel said. “It was her first story with the show. We went to Spago and she whipped out an American Express which had CBS as the owner of the card. I thought, wow, that’s impressive. This could be good. Because of that show, my law practice broke open.”
Handel said he backed into broadcasting. He was interviewed on KABC as an expert in vitro law, often interviewed by host Michael Jackson.
“Michael Jackson the broadcaster, not the eight-year-old boy-loving one,” Handel explained. “Jackson was one of the great talkers. He was well-connected and nationally syndicated. In those days the host was more of a moderator for a point-counterpoint type of show. It was Rush Limbaugh who changed everything. As whacked out as he was at the end, he reinvented talk radio.”
Handel said he knew he was a good interviewer and was popular with listeners. He told engaging stories. He talked about his clients and his practice.
“I gave legal advice. I’m still doing that.”
Handel started appearing on Jackson’s show more often and one day the PD came down the hall and told Handel he was better than half the people he had on the air.
“I told him I was better than all of the people he had on the air,” Handel quipped. “I was half-joking.”
After all these years Handel said he’s still having a great time. “It’s a great gig,” he said. “My producer has been with me for 25 years. She knows the topics I want. If she comes across something about D-Day, she knows I’ll immediately take it. I love historical footnotes like Hitler’s dog’s name. Blondie. He tried out the cyanide pills on Blondie. Gave Eva Braun one.”
Handel said his show is general talk. He will delve into politics, lifestyle, and interviews.
“We bring on reporters from the station as we’re news-heavy. News stations are expensive to run. We’ve had all this crazy rain stuff and interviewed people all over the place. I work with Robin Bertolucci, who is well regarded in radio throughout the country. I’d say she’s the best PD in the country.”
Handel said he’s the same guy on the air as off. “I have to be more careful about words I choose. You’ve got the seven magic words you can’t say like George Carlin informed us. You can say a lot of stuff. You can say ‘ass****. You can’t be scatological. You can say ‘bull***’ but you can’t say a bull took a ‘s***.’”
He reads constantly and is fascinated with WWII history. He has visited Normandy and said the experience was astounding.
“It’s a beach of 75 miles, which comprised the landing areas of D-Day,” Handel said. “Omaha Beach was the one that got nailed. The Canadians walked ashore on other beaches. There is a parcel of land given to the United States by the French. It’s Normandy American Cemetery on the bluff. The National Park Service handles the operations. It’s so meticulous, so moving. Thousands of graves. Just extraordinarily beautiful. You can see the cliffs the Rangers climbed from the beach. They still have the concrete bunkers where the German gunners were.”
Weekly, Handel does his show Handel on the Law, a nationally syndicated program.
“I give callers legal advice. I’ve only had one specialty, the rest I just make up. I have my own malpractice insurance. I give shitty legal advice. If you have a problem, sue the radio station. I don’t give a damn. If you’re looking for real legal advice, why are you calling a radio station?”
Handel is hilarious, but he said he doesn’t have the thick skin to be a standup comic. “When people laugh during one of my talks or when I’m on the air, it’s okay. But standing in front of a microphone telling jokes is another thing. For example, I was master of ceremonies at the Radio Hall of Fame last year. I got up and started doing some jokes. Crickets. Nothing. The audience was staring at me like you would an oil painting. Nobody was moving. It kept happening joke after joke.”
He loves the morning drive and said he wouldn’t take any other shift.
“I get up at 3:30 am and that’s absolutely fine. I go to bed super early. I don’t socialize. I hate my family. I’ve got twin daughters and I guess they’re okay. They don’t bring me any joy at all.”
Yup. His humor is as dry as dirt.
