Please contact us
with corrections
or breaking news
Overlooked & Underrated Docs & Features
(click on broll or dschwartz for all his posts)
Penny: Champion of the Marginalized Produced and directed by San Francisco Bay Area filmmaker and artist Elizabeth Sher, “Penny” is a documentary biography of celebrated trial attorney Penny Cooper. In the film’s thirty minutes Sher provides an outline of Cooper’s life and reveals both her struggles and triumphs.
Cooper was raised by a Jewish family in a non-Jewish community. She was one of a very few number of women at the University of California Berkeley’s Boalt law school – and, of course, in the minority of women who were practicing law at that time. She came out as a lesbian in her adult life. All of which is to say that she endured decades of discrimination and abuse.
Cooper survived and thrived using her intellect, wit, strong sense of humor – and, in my opinion, her spirit.
High points from Cooper’s law career included successfully arguing a case before the United States Supreme Court which, at that time, included the now legendary Thurgood Marshall. She was inducted into the Trial Lawyer Hall of Fame in 2010 by The State Bar of California.
Cooper is an avid sports fan and an ardent patron of the arts.
Sher’s film is fun, fascinating, and Cooper’s sense of humor, thoroughly entertaining.