Leon Wildes, lawyer who successfully prevented John Lennon's deportation, dies at age 90

Leon Wildes, a prominent immigration lawyer known for his successful fight in the 1970s to prevent John Lennon's deportation, has died at the age of 90.

Leon Wildes was a graduate of the New York University School of Law who co-founded Wildes & Weinberg in 1960 and, by the end of the decade, had gained enough stature to serve as president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. His name would become part of musical and political history after an old law school classmate, Alan Kahn, called in 1972 and told him that Lennon and Yoko Ono needed his help getting their visas extended.

Wildes agreed to meet with the couple at the Manhattan offices of Apple Records, the label founded by the Beatles in the late 1960s. But he did have one embarrassing confession about Lennon and his artist-wife.