How Attorney Sorrell Trope Invented the Hollywood Divorce

How Attorney Sorrell Trope Invented the Hollywood Divorce

Michael Trope remembers the day he entered the living room of his childhood home in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles to find Cary Grant sipping a martini. Michael’s father, famed attorney Sorrell Trope, was representing Grant in his 1968 divorce from Dyan Cannon.

“My father used to love to tell the story about how Cary Grant became his client,” says Michael Trope, an LA-based trial lawyer and former sports agent.

“Cary Grant went to a mattress store to buy a mattress,” Michael Trope continues. “He was talking to the mattress salesman and testing out mattresses because he wanted to buy a bed. And he started complaining to this mattress salesman about his divorce. The mattress salesman then said, ‘Oh, I went through a divorce. And I had a great experience with my lawyer. He did a really phenomenal job for me.’ And Cary Grant said, ‘Well, who was that?’