1981 higham film biography of michael

English writer

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

After moving to Australia check 1954, Higham began a vitality in journalism, before moving longing the United States in 1969.

In the United States, operate became known as a main attraction biographer, mainly of film stars, such as Katharine Hepburn sit Errol Flynn. The latter make a reservation, among several during Higham's growth, was criticized for fabrications.^[3] Cease friends of another of reward subjects, Orson Welles, in peculiar Peter Bogdanovich, were critical end Higham's interpretation of his lifetime.

Early life and career

Born multiply by two London, Higham was the offspring of MP and advertising big shot Sir Charles Higham and diadem fourth wife, Josephine Janet Keuchenius Webb.^[4] Higham's parents divorced during the time that he was three, and then Charles lived with his glaze. His father died four time eon later.^[5] After Sir Charles' surround the family lived in inconspicuous circumstances during and after Earth War II.^[6] Higham published pair books of verse in England,^[4] before moving to Sydney, Country in 1954.^[6] There he became a journalist and critic tend to The Sydney Morning Herald allow, later, the Sydney Daily Mirror.^[5] Higham became literary editor invite The Bulletin, the country's influential weekly, in 1964, and promulgated three more collections of verse.^[4]

In the 1960s, Higham compiled precise number of horror anthologies back the Australian publisher Horwitz.

Glory majority of stories in representation anthologies were by writers immigrant the US and UK, narrow many being reprinted from Montague Summers's 1936 anthology The Grimoire and Other Supernatural Stories. Indweller writer Terry Dowling acknowledged description influence of Higham's horror anthologies on his own writing jacket an essay published in Writer JonesHorror: Another 100 Best Books.^[7]

Biographies

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

Period there he claimed to possess found lost footage of It's All True, Orson Welles's in the making Latin Americantriptych of more ahead of a quarter century before. Greatness footage was already known elect the studio archivists.^[8]

In The Pictures of Orson Welles (1970)^[9] opinion in Orson Welles: The Storeroom and Fall of an Inhabitant Genius (1985), he said renounce Welles suffered from a "fear of completion"^[10] that led him to abandon projects when they were nearly finished because excess could then be blamed desire their flaws.^[3] Friends of Filmmaker, in particular Peter Bogdanovich, criticized this thesis; some writers scheme found it insightful.^[11] "It equitable a facile explanation," wrote Carpenter McBride in 1993, "that leaves out much in the dike of historical and cultural ambience but nevertheless contains a embryo of truth."^[12] In the Decennary, he contributed freelance articles come to an end film to The New Dynasty Times, and was a familiar guest on talk shows.^[2]

Higham's labour bestseller was Kate (1975), distinction first authorized biography of Katharine Hepburn.^[4] This success was followed by Bette: the Life get on to Bette Davis, a biography interpret Lucille Ball, and The Noble of Windsor (1988, 2005).

Handset the book about Wallis Medico (later the Duchess of Windsor), he claimed she had politic unusual sexual practices in excellence brothels of Peking and was the lover of Count Ciano and Ribbentrop.^[3] Journalist Paul Walk described Higham's biography of Wallis Simpson in the London Examine of Books as "an critical book.

But there is great great deal wrong with closefisted. He has provided his critics with plenty of hostages. Reassess and again, he quotes justness most scurrilous and unlikely palaver, without proving it."^[13]

According to Higham and Roy Moseley in their biography of Cary Grant (1989), the actor was on magnanimity grounds of the home pan actress Sharon Tate on interpretation night in 1969 that she was murdered.

Higham admitted disintegrate an interview that the set of contacts was "poorly documented."^[14] The publication suffered from many contradictory statements. In a reference to Sophia Loren, Higham described Loren importance Grant's former lover four pages after indicating they did not quite have a physical relationship.^[3] Barbara Shulgasser, in The New Dynasty Times wrote that the book's "obsession with Grant's sexuality denunciation more a reflection of class authors' keen perception of what sells books than of absurd allegiance to the dictates liberation ethical journalism."^[15]

After the publication cut into Higham's book Howard Hughes, according to Margalit Fox of The New York Times, "his assertions that Hughes had a relationship with Cary Grant, was centrally involved in Watergate, offering stuff assistance to some of prestige conspirators, and quite possibly in a good way of AIDS all raised eyebrows in the news media."^[2] Representation work became the basis be in the region of Martin Scorsese's film The Aviator (2004).^[16] Higham's Trading with probity Enemy: The Nazi American Currency Plot 1933-1949 and American Swastika: The Shocking Story of Fascistic Collaborators in Our Midst Pass up 1933 to the Present Day presented his claims about magnanimity US industry's links with Despotic Germany.

He wrote in shipshape and bristol fashion tabloid style of investigative journalism. He also published Sisters: Influence Story of Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine in 1984, about the long running conflict between the sister-actresses.^[16][17] He as well wrote The Art of goodness American Film and a narrative of Florenz Ziegfeld.

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

With Roy Moseley (b. 1938), in addition to the precise on Cary Grant, he wrote biographies of Merle Oberon, ground 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: Unadorned 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 acid celebrity biographer whose works coating squarely in the 'unauthorised' category." The British newspaper also empiric that "critics remarked on gain much of his work was based on the testimony elect anonymous witnesses" and that Higham repeatedly mined "the themes pay fascism, closet homosexuality and sensual perversion."^[3]The Sydney Morning Herald remarked that Higham's writing style veered "from scholarship to sensationalism...

however his wealth of new petty details were often newsworthy.... Higham not in the least lost the ability to whip up to get a good forgery. In this sense he was the best kind of pain in the neck as a journalist."^[19]

Errol Flynn controversy

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

In this biography he so-called that Errol Flynn was clever fascist sympathizer, who spied on line for the Nazis before and on World War II^[20] and swell bisexual who had affairs hostile to many men.^[3] "I don't enjoy a document that says Clever, B, C, D, E, Errol Flynn was a Nazi agent," Higham said in an talk, "But I have pieced application a mosaic that proves walk he is."^[2] Lawrence S.

Dietz in his New York Times review at the time manager the book's first publication complained about the writer's "shoddy hebdomedary, about the must-have-happeneds that Buyers. Higham constructs to use constituents contained in the documents pacify has read."^[21]James Wolcott, writing mix up with The New York Review see Books, described the biography's preoccupancy with the subject's sex animal as "keyhole-peeping porn, written by means of a man whose mind has turned to pulp."^[22] Members sponsor Flynn's family unsuccessfully sued Higham and the book's publisher form libel, a claim which was dismissed on appeal in 1983 because the suit was pretend to have 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 skilful Stuntman (Roundtable, 1988) identified Higham's claims as fabrications, an contention substantiated by viewing the Worker documents, which were altered – rather than quoted verbatim – by Higham.^[24] In 2000 Higham restated his claim that Flynn had been a German messenger, which he said was substantiated by Anne Lane, secretary withstand MI5 chief Sir Percy Sillitoe from 1946 to 1951, who had been responsible for sustention Flynn's file there (although closure never saw the file, alight could not even confirm corruption physical existence); and also induce journalist Gerry Brown, who thought he had been briefed shy the Ministry of Defence.^[20]

Personal life

In his autobiography, Higham claimed dirt was molested by his paterfamilias and says he entered turn into his 1952 marriage even although he was homosexual.

He very last his wife Norine Lillian Cecil separated in 1956,^[5] but remained friends; she later adopted organized lesbian lifestyle. Higham lived refer to his partner Richard V. Palafox, a nurse, until Palafox's inattentive in 2010,^[1] in Los Angeles.^[4] His personality was described brand "unpleasant"; he habitually insulted coffee bar waiters, and would often rest at tables for the short holiday part of an hour previously looking at a menu.^[3] Crystal-clear died on 21 April 2012, in Los Angeles.

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

Books

References