Ben Stein
Right here is everything you'd ever want
to know about Ben, excluding his shoe size and length of his left
arm. Now read until your eyes start getting all foggy and stuff.
Ben Stein (Benjamin J. Stein) was born
November 25, 1944 in Washington, D.C., (He is the son of the economist
and writer Herbert Stein) grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland, and
attended Montgomery Blair High School. He graduated from Columbia
University in 1966 with honors in economics. He graduated from Yale
Law School in 1970 as valedictorian of his class by election of his
classmates. He helped to found the Journal of Law and Social Policy
while at Yale. He has worked as a poverty lawyer in New Haven and
Washington, D.C., a trial lawyer in the field of trade regulation at
the Federal Trade Commission in Washington, D.C., a university adjunct
at American University in Washington, D.C., at the University of
California at Santa Cruz, and at Pepperdine University in Malibu, CA.
At American U. He taught about the political and social content of
mass culture. He taught the same subject at UCSC, as well as about
political and civil rights under the Constitution. At Pepperdine, he
has taught about libel law and about securities law and ethical issues
since 1986.
In 1973 and 1974, he was a speech writer and lawyer for Richard Nixon
at The White House and then for Gerald Ford. (He did NOT write the
line, "I am not a crook.") He has been a columnist and editorial
writer for The Wall Street Journal, a syndicated columnist for The Los
Angeles Herald Examiner (R.I.P.) and King Features Syndicate, and a
frequent contributor to Barrons, where his articles about the ethics
of management buyouts and issues of fraud in the Milken Drexel junk
bond scheme drew major national attention. He has been a regular
columnist for Los Angeles Magazine, New York Magazine, E! Online, and
most of all, has written a lengthy diary for ten years for The
American Spectator. He also writes frequently for The Washington Post,
The Wall Street Journal, op. ed. and almost every other imaginable
magazine.
He has written and published sixteen books, seven novels, largely
about life in Los Angeles, and nine nonfiction books, about finance
and about ethical and social issue in finance, and also about the
political and social content of mass culture. He has done pioneering
work in uncovering the concealed messages of TV and in explaining how
TV and movies get made. His titles include A License to Steal,
Michael Milken and the Conspiracy to Bilk the Nation, The
View From Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood Days, Hollywood
Nights, DREEMZ, Financial Passages, and Ludes.
His most recent book is the best selling humor self help book, How To
Ruin Your Life. He has also been a longtime screenwriter, writing,
among many other scripts (most of which were unmade ) the first draft
of The Boost, a movie based on Ludes, and the outlines
of the lengthy miniseries Amerika, and the acclaimed Murder
in Mississippi. He was one of the creators of the well regarded
comedy, Fernwood Tonight.
He is also an extremely well known actor in movies, TV, and
commercials. His part of the boring teacher in Ferris Bueller's Day
Off was recently ranked as one of the fifty most famous scenes in
American film. Starting in July of 1997, he has been the host of the
Comedy Central quiz show, "Win Ben Stein's Money." The show has won
seven Emmies. He appears regularly on the Fox News Channel talking
about finance. He is currently a celebrity judge on the CBS hit, Star
Search.
He is also at presently at work on a detective show for CBS. He lives
with his wife, Alexandra Denman ( former lawyer,) his son, Tommy, four
cats and two large dogs in Beverly Hills.
