Obituaries - Shirley Slesinger Lasswell, 84; fought Disney over Winnie the Pooh royalties

Shirley Slesinger Lasswell, a brand-marketing pioneer whose battle with Walt Disney Co. over royalties generated by Winnie the Pooh merchandise was one of the longest-running court sagas in Los Angeles County history, has died. Her family said she was 84.

Lasswell, a former showgirl who marketed often high-end Pooh products nationally in the 1950s, died Thursday of respiratory failure at her daughter's home in Beverly Hills, according to her daughter, Pati Slesinger.

She spent much of her adult life in Tampa, Fla., but had lived in Beverly Hills for the last several years.

Her first husband, Stephen Slesinger, was among the first to see Pooh's financial potential. A literary agent, Slesinger in 1930 secured the rights to sell Pooh merchandise in the United States and Canada from A.A. Milne, author of the Pooh books.

When Slesinger died in 1953, Lasswell was left with the rights and a 1-year-old daughter to support.

"I thought, 'Now what do I do?' But it was right there for me," Lasswell told The Times in 2002. "I decided to promote Pooh."

Lasswell made her living designing Pooh products for upscale department stores and developing a nationwide licensing program. But when Walt Disney himself came calling in 1961, she signed over the rights in exchange for ongoing royalty payments.

"It was just me, not some huge company," Lasswell said in The Times article. "I really went as far as I could go" with Pooh.

She recalled that Disney told her, "Shirley, you won't be sorry." But eventually she was.

The battle over Pooh's money pot had its genesis in a 1981 trip to Disney World in Florida, Lasswell told The Times. Lasswell, a self-described "Pooh shopaholic," noticed that she wasn't receiving royalties for much of the merchandise she bought -- and hired a lawyer.

In 1991, Lasswell and her daughter filed suit against Walt Disney Co., alleging breach of contract and fraud. They claimed they were being cheated out of hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties for videos, computer software and other merchandise.

"I just want what we are owed," Lasswell said this month in the American Reporter, an online newspaper.

With Disney's marketing muscle, Pooh became more profitable during the 1990s than the Burbank-based entertainment empire's trademark mouse, raking in more than $1 billion a year.