CBC News
By Zach Dubinsky and Shelley Ayres
April 1st, 2025
Director Norman Jewison’s wife cut him off from family, coerced him to change $30M will, lawsuits claimed. Legal fight between filmmaker’s sons, 2nd wife highlights end-of-life struggles many families face…
In his four-decade Hollywood career, Oscar-nominated director Norman Jewison crafted acclaimed dramas like In the Heat of the Night and A Soldier’s Story. Behind the scenes, there was allegedly drama in the Toronto-born filmmaker’s personal life as well in his final years.
Filmmaker Norman Jewison changed his will two months before he died at age 97 in January 2024, leaving nearly half his fortune to his second wife, Lynne St. David Jewison.
Lawsuits filed in California and Ontario by Jewison’s sons and recently obtained by CBC News raise issues that experts say are all too common when family members clash at the end of a loved one’s life.
In the court filings, Jewison’s sons alleged that his second wife, Lynne St. David Jewison, progressively cut him off from friends and family starting as early as 2010, even taking over his email and phone.
In January 2024, three days after Jewison died, one of his sons also filed suit in Ontario to void his father’s will that he had rewritten two months prior. The lawsuit claimed St. David Jewison had used “manipulation, coercion or outright abuse of power” to get the director to disinherit his children and bequeath millions of dollars to her instead.
