Harvey Silbert

Harvey L. Silbert (1912–2002) was an American real estate and entertainment lawyer, casino executive and philanthropist. He represented celebrities and studio executives. He was a real estate investor in Westwood, Los Angeles, and a director of casinos in Las Vegas, Nevada. He was a major donor to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he brought Hollywood celebrities for fundraisers.

Early life and education Harvey Silbert was born on June 10, 1912, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Silbert graduated from the Southwestern University Law School. He represented actors including Constance Bennett, Dan Dailey, and Frank Sinatra, and studio and casino executives such as Howard Hughes. (The properties belonged to Arnold Kirkeby, but Kreedman had an option on them. Two months later, in May 1968, Silbert joined the board of directors of the corporation, which owned the Fremont Hotel and Casino and the Stardust Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. Also in May 1968, he joined the board of directors of the Riviera, a hotel and casino on the Las Vegas Strip, alongside David Merrick and Harry A. Goodman. Three years later, in 1971, he served as the president of the Riviera casino.

Silbert developed the Sheraton Plaza Hotel in Palm Springs, California, in 1984.

Silbert was a lawyer at Loeb & Loeb, an international law firm based in Century City, in the 1990s. He made charitable gifts to the Anti-Defamation League and the Milken Family Foundation. He also served on the board of trustees of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). With his wife, he endowed the Harvey L. Silbert Center for Israeli Studies and supported the construction of the Lillian and Harvey L. Silbert Humanities Building, the Silbert Family Wing in the Louis Boyar Building, and the Lillian Silbert Garden on its campus. He persuaded Frank Sinatra to endow the construction of the Frank Sinatra International Student Centre on campus.

Silbert died on September 28, 2002, in Los Angeles, California. It was awarded to attorney William Shernoff in 2008. By 2015, it was awarded to Jonathan H. Anschell, the Executive Vice President, Deputy General Counsel and Secretary for the CBS Corporation, and Richard S. Volpert, a partner at the law firm Glaser Weil.