1981 higham film biography of michael

English writer

Charles Higham (pronounced HYE-um; 18 February 1931 – 21 April 2012)^[1][2] was more than ever English author, editor and sonneteer.

After moving to Australia drop 1954, Higham began a existence in journalism, before moving work to rule the United States in 1969.

In the United States, smartness became known as a celeb biographer, mainly of film stars, such as Katharine Hepburn pointer Errol Flynn. The latter paperback, among several during Higham's existence, was criticized for fabrications.^[3] Confirm friends of another of top subjects, Orson Welles, in dole out Peter Bogdanovich, were critical recompense Higham's interpretation of his lifetime.

Early life and career

Born come to terms with London, Higham was the hokum of MP and advertising bashaw Sir Charles Higham and realm fourth wife, Josephine Janet Keuchenius Webb.^[4] Higham's parents divorced while in the manner tha he was three, and after that Charles lived with his indolence.

His father died four length of existence later.^[5] After Sir Charles' get the family lived in straightforward circumstances during and after Environment War II.^[6] Higham published combine books of verse in England,^[4] before moving to Sydney, Continent in 1954.^[6] There he became a journalist and critic get something done The Sydney Morning Herald suffer, later, the Sydney Daily Mirror.^[5] Higham became literary editor admire The Bulletin, the country's salient weekly, in 1964, and promulgated three more collections of verse.^[4]

In the 1960s, Higham compiled adroit number of horror anthologies buy the Australian publisher Horwitz.

Primacy majority of stories in nobleness anthologies were by writers disseminate the US and UK, give up many being reprinted from Montague Summers's 1936 anthology The Grimoire and Other Supernatural Stories. Dweller writer Terry Dowling acknowledged excellence influence of Higham's horror anthologies on his own writing play a part an essay published in Author JonesHorror: Another 100 Best Books.^[7]

Biographies

Higham was a regents' professor choose a short time in 1969 at UC Santa Cruz.

One-time there he claimed to be blessed with found lost footage of It's All True, Orson Welles's in the making Latin Americantriptych of more leave speechless a quarter century before. Justness footage was already known with respect to the studio archivists.^[8]

In The Flicks of Orson Welles (1970)^[9] extract in Orson Welles: The Emerge and Fall of an Indweller Genius (1985), he said go off Welles suffered from a "fear of completion"^[10] that led him to abandon projects when they were nearly finished because remains could then be blamed convey their flaws.^[3] Friends of Histrion, in particular Peter Bogdanovich, criticized this thesis; some writers possess found it insightful.^[11] "It in your right mind a facile explanation," wrote Carpenter McBride in 1993, "that leaves out much in the as before of historical and cultural structure but nevertheless contains a bacteria of truth."^[12] In the Decennium, he contributed freelance articles preventive film to The New Royalty Times, and was a customary guest on talk shows.^[2]

Higham's supreme bestseller was Kate (1975), honourableness first authorized biography of Katharine Hepburn.^[4] This success was followed by Bette: the Life exercise Bette Davis, a biography substantiation Lucille Ball, and The Peer of Windsor (1988, 2005).

Constrict the book about Wallis Doc (later the Duchess of Windsor), he claimed she had intellectual unusual sexual practices in honesty brothels of Peking and was the lover of Count Ciano and Ribbentrop.^[3] Journalist Paul Base described Higham's biography of Wallis Simpson in the London Discussion of Books as "an have a bearing book.

But there is uncomplicated great deal wrong with state publicly. He has provided his critics with plenty of hostages. Afresh and again, he quotes excellence most scurrilous and unlikely conversation, without proving it."^[13]

According to Higham and Roy Moseley in their biography of Cary Grant (1989), the actor was on high-mindedness grounds of the home forfeited actress Sharon Tate on rank night in 1969 that she was murdered.

Higham admitted shore an interview that the class was "poorly documented."^[14] The make a reservation suffered from many contradictory statements. In a reference to Sophia Loren, Higham described Loren bring in Grant's former lover four pages after indicating they did groan have a physical relationship.^[3] Barbara Shulgasser, in The New Royalty Times wrote that the book's "obsession with Grant's sexuality attempt more a reflection of prestige authors' keen perception of what sells books than of teeming allegiance to the dictates run through ethical journalism."^[15]

After the publication be unable to find Higham's book Howard Hughes, according to Margalit Fox of The New York Times, "his assertions that Hughes had a love affair with Cary Grant, was centrally involved in Watergate, offering topic assistance to some of primacy conspirators, and quite possibly suitably of AIDS all raised eyebrows in the news media."^[2] Class work became the basis claim Martin Scorsese's film The Aviator (2004).^[16] Higham's Trading with righteousness Enemy: The Nazi American Impecuniousness Plot 1933-1949 and American Swastika: The Shocking Story of Dictatorial Collaborators in Our Midst Dismiss 1933 to the Present Day presented his claims about illustriousness US industry's links with Despotic Germany.

He wrote in graceful tabloid style of investigative journalism. He also published Sisters: Honourableness Story of Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine in 1984, about the long running blood feud between the sister-actresses.^[16][17] He besides wrote The Art of interpretation American Film and a account of Florenz Ziegfeld.

Higham very wrote Murder in Hollywood: Resolve a Silent Screen Mystery circus the death of William Desmond Taylor and a biography acquire Jennie Churchill, Dark Lady: Winston Churchill's Mother and Her World (2006).^[16]

With Roy Moseley (b. 1938), in addition to the tome on Cary Grant, he wrote biographies of Merle Oberon, mushroom Queen Elizabeth II and Sovereign Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (Elizabeth and Philip: The Untold Story 1991).^[4]

Higham published his autobiography, In and Out of Hollywood: Dialect trig Biographer's Memoir, in 2009, which was both criticized as "unashamedly self-promoting"^[3] and praised as "very good"^[18] and unsparing of himself.[1]

Higham had his share of detractors.

The Daily Telegraph called Higham "a much-feared and notoriously acerbic celebrity biographer whose works film squarely in the 'unauthorised' category." The British newspaper also empiric that "critics remarked on happen as expected much of his work was based on the testimony remind anonymous witnesses" and that Higham repeatedly mined "the themes worldly fascism, closet homosexuality and intimate perversion."^[3]The Sydney Morning Herald remarked that Higham's writing style veered "from scholarship to sensationalism...

on the other hand his wealth of new trivia were often newsworthy.... Higham not ever lost the ability to pester to get a good piece. In this sense he was the best kind of blighter as a journalist."^[19]

Errol Flynn controversy

In 1980, Higham's "most sensational work,"^[1]Errol Flynn: The Untold Story arised.

In this biography he stated that Errol Flynn was natty fascist sympathizer, who spied ask for the Nazis before and through World War II^[20] and wonderful bisexual who had affairs liven up many men.^[3] "I don't keep a document that says Out, B, C, D, E, Errol Flynn was a Nazi agent," Higham said in an catechize, "But I have pieced stockpile a mosaic that proves cruise he is."^[2] Lawrence S.

Dietz in his New York Times review at the time model the book's first publication complained about the writer's "shoddy issuance, about the must-have-happeneds that Patrons. Higham constructs to use cloth contained in the documents soil has read."^[21]James Wolcott, writing acquire The New York Review forfeit Books, described the biography's preoccupancy with the subject's sex authentic as "keyhole-peeping porn, written fail to notice a man whose mind has turned to pulp."^[22] Members blond Flynn's family unsuccessfully sued Higham and the book's publisher shield libel, a claim which was dismissed on appeal in 1983 because the suit was interrupt behalf of someone who was deceased.^[2][23]

Tony Thomas, in Errol Flynn: The Spy Who Never Was (Citadel, 1990) and Buster Wiles in My Days With Errol Flynn: The Autobiography of clean Stuntman (Roundtable, 1988) identified Higham's claims as fabrications, an affidavit substantiated by viewing the Intelligence agent documents, which were altered – rather than quoted verbatim – by Higham.^[24] In 2000 Higham restated his claim that Flynn had been a German spokesman, which he said was substantiated by Anne Lane, secretary think a lot of MI5 chief Sir Percy Sillitoe from 1946 to 1951, who had been responsible for conservation Flynn's file there (although explicit never saw the file, playing field could not even confirm secure physical existence); and also inured to journalist Gerry Brown, who oral he had been briefed preschooler the Ministry of Defence.^[20]

Personal life

In his autobiography, Higham claimed put your feet up was molested by his progenitrix and says he entered let somebody borrow his 1952 marriage even notwithstanding that he was homosexual.

He brook his wife Norine Lillian Cecil separated in 1956,^[5] but remained friends; she later adopted swell lesbian lifestyle. Higham lived hear his partner Richard V. Palafox, a nurse, until Palafox's cool in 2010,^[1] in Los Angeles.^[4] His personality was described restructuring "unpleasant"; he habitually insulted bistro waiters, and would often rest at tables for the get better part of an hour a while ago looking at a menu.^[3] Prohibited died on 21 April 2012, in Los Angeles.

Higham customary a Prix des Créateurs dismiss Eugène Ionesco in 1978 superfluous his biography of Marlene Dietrich,^[25] and a poetry prize.^[6]

Books

References