(JUDGE JUDY) IS NOT PORTRAYING A JUDGE AS I VIEW A JUDGE SHOULD ACT.

“All the judges watched Judge Wapner. All America at one point or another watched Judge Wapner. And I used to say to myself, ‘I could do that.’ ”

Joseph Albert Wapner was born Nov. 15, 1919, in Los Angeles, where his father ran a one-man law practice representing “always the little guy,” Wapner recalled in his 1987 memoir, A View From the Bench.

The elder Wapner appeared occasionally on episodes of Divorce Court, the 1950s TV show that heralded the reality courtroom boom of the 1980s. overseeing traffic tickets and small claims. In 1961, California Governor Edmund G. Brown elevated him to Superior Court, where he became presiding judge. He retired in 1979.

“When I was on the bench I used to have a yellow pad and I put on the pad at the beginning of the day, ‘patience’ and ‘restraint,’ ” Wapner said in a 2005 interview with the Archive of American Television.

His second career, starting at 61, had its genesis in a discussion between TV producer Ralph Edwards, who had come up with the idea of a reality television courtroom show, and his friend, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Christian Markey.

Markey recommended the recently retired Wapner, his longtime tennis partner, for the starring role, according to a 2003 story in the Metropolitan News Enterprise of Los Angeles.

Wapner “had a good wit. He knew how to smile. He knew how to treat people and conduct a court,” Markey said, according to the newspaper.

Wapner was quoted by People magazine in 1982 as saying, “The public’s perception of judges seems to be improving because of what I’m doing, and that makes me happy.”

One of his many fans was Raymond Babbitt, the fictional autistic savant played by Dustin Hoffman in the 1988 film Rain Man, who compulsively counted the minutes until The People’s Court and fretted, “Gotta watch Wapner. Gotta watch Wapner.”

A 1989 survey by the Washington Post found that 54 per cent of American adults could name Wapner as the judge of The People’s Court, compared with nine per cent who could name the U.S. chief justice at the time, William Rehnquist.

Wapner said in his interview with the Archive of American Television that he learned from a newspaper article, not from producers, that his run as TV’s judge had ended in 1993. “It irritated me to no end for a long time,” he said.

He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame three days before his 90th birthday in 2009.

Wapner had two sons and a daughter with his wife, Mickey.

One son, Frederick, became a Los Angeles Superior Court judge.