Biography | Donn Tatum — The Loyola Law Studies Reported After Oxford

Obituaries still say Tatum took two law degrees at Oxford.

The trade-press account describes studies at Loyola after Oxford, but later biographical accounts disagree about the qualifications.

A February 1949 Broadcasting notice, printed when he left private practice for Don Lee, says he finished Stanford in 1934, spent two years at Oxford's law school, then enrolled at Loyola University in Los Angeles.

He took the LL.B there in 1938 and passed the California bar the same year. A 1972 Broadcasting career box repeats the Loyola degree and the 1938 admission.

[Disney's biography](https://d23.com/walt-disney-legend/donn-tatum/) instead describes bachelor's and master's degrees in jurisprudence from Oxford.

The differing qualification accounts require reconciliation.

Loyola Law School had opened in 1920. Until 1929 it shared a campus with the college and the high school. By Tatum's years it already occupied separate facilities just west of downtown.

[Loyola's history](https://www.lls.edu/thellsdifference/llsat100/historyatlls/grandavenuelocation/) places the law school on Grand Avenue from 1933 to 1964.

The later Albany Street campus cannot be identified as the site of Tatum's reported 1938 studies.

He joined Lillick, Geary and McHose and took on radio and television clients. RCA, NBC, and ABC paid the bills that turned a Stanford political-science graduate into a West Coast broadcast lawyer.

Photo: Saf209, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons. Portrait: State Archives of Florida, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.