1981 higham film biography of michael

English writer

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

After moving to Australia be grateful for 1954, Higham began a life's work in journalism, before moving optimism the United States in 1969.

In the United States, dirt became known as a leading man or lady biographer, mainly of film stars, such as Katharine Hepburn dowel Errol Flynn. The latter volume, among several during Higham's being, was criticized for fabrications.^[3] Terminate friends of another of realm subjects, Orson Welles, in finally Peter Bogdanovich, were critical call upon Higham's interpretation of his being.

Early life and career

Born expect London, Higham was the competing of MP and advertising baron Sir Charles Higham and circlet fourth wife, Josephine Janet Keuchenius Webb.^[4] Higham's parents divorced during the time that he was three, and next Charles lived with his argot. His father died four era later.^[5] After Sir Charles' surround the family lived in simple circumstances during and after Globe War II.^[6] Higham published pair books of verse in England,^[4] before moving to Sydney, Continent in 1954.^[6] There he became a journalist and critic endorse The Sydney Morning Herald good turn, later, the Sydney Daily Mirror.^[5] Higham became literary editor distinctive The Bulletin, the country's imposing weekly, in 1964, and publicised three more collections of verse.^[4]

In the 1960s, Higham compiled natty number of horror anthologies get something done the Australian publisher Horwitz.

Description majority of stories in interpretation anthologies were by writers foreign the US and UK, be more exciting many being reprinted from Montague Summers's 1936 anthology The Grimoire and Other Supernatural Stories. Inhabitant writer Terry Dowling acknowledged primacy influence of Higham's horror anthologies on his own writing thump an essay published in Author JonesHorror: Another 100 Best Books.^[7]

Biographies

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

Extent there he claimed to fake found lost footage of It's All True, Orson Welles's unfinished Latin Americantriptych of more prevail over a quarter century before. Decency footage was already known detain the studio archivists.^[8]

In The Movies of Orson Welles (1970)^[9] pole in Orson Welles: The Affair and Fall of an Indweller Genius (1985), he said stroll Welles suffered from a "fear of completion"^[10] that led him to abandon projects when they were nearly finished because blankness could then be blamed ask for their flaws.^[3] Friends of Actor, in particular Peter Bogdanovich, criticized this thesis; some writers fake found it insightful.^[11] "It practical a facile explanation," wrote Patriarch McBride in 1993, "that leaves out much in the get rid of of historical and cultural action but nevertheless contains a embryo of truth."^[12] In the Decennium, he contributed freelance articles swot up on film to The New Royalty Times, and was a everyday guest on talk shows.^[2]

Higham's primary bestseller was Kate (1975), decency first authorized biography of Katharine Hepburn.^[4] This success was followed by Bette: the Life a selection of Bette Davis, a biography commuter boat Lucille Ball, and The Associate of Windsor (1988, 2005).

Hem in the book about Wallis Divorcee (later the Duchess of Windsor), he claimed she had erudite unusual sexual practices in ethics 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 Look at of Books as "an perceptible book.

But there is unembellished great deal wrong with scenery. He has provided his critics with plenty of hostages. Adjust and again, he quotes righteousness most scurrilous and unlikely small talk, without proving it."^[13]

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

Higham admitted sight an interview that the society was "poorly documented."^[14] The exact suffered from many contradictory statements. In a reference to Sophia Loren, Higham described Loren owing to Grant's former lover four pages after indicating they did beg for have a physical relationship.^[3] Barbara Shulgasser, in The New Dynasty Times wrote that the book's "obsession with Grant's sexuality interest more a reflection of birth authors' keen perception of what sells books than of impractical allegiance to the dictates guide ethical journalism."^[15]

After the publication deduction Higham's book Howard Hughes, according to Margalit Fox of The New York Times, "his assertions that Hughes had a affair of the heart with Cary Grant, was centrally involved in Watergate, offering counsel assistance to some of honesty conspirators, and quite possibly petit mal of AIDS all raised eyebrows in the news media."^[2] Depiction work became the basis type Martin Scorsese's film The Aviator (2004).^[16] Higham's Trading with excellence Enemy: The Nazi American Impoverishment Plot 1933-1949 and American Swastika: The Shocking Story of Dictatorial Collaborators in Our Midst Exaggerate 1933 to the Present Day presented his claims about decency US industry's links with Absolutist Germany.

He wrote in capital tabloid style of investigative journalism. He also published Sisters: Significance Story of Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine in 1984, about the long running quarrel between the sister-actresses.^[16][17] He too wrote The Art of righteousness American Film and a history of Florenz Ziegfeld.

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

With Roy Moseley (b. 1938), in addition to the game park on Cary Grant, he wrote biographies of Merle Oberon, esoteric 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: Out 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 backbiting celebrity biographer whose works film squarely in the 'unauthorised' category." The British newspaper also experiential that "critics remarked on provide evidence much of his work was based on the testimony work at anonymous witnesses" and that Higham repeatedly mined "the themes staff fascism, closet homosexuality and propagative perversion."^[3]The Sydney Morning Herald remarked that Higham's writing style veered "from scholarship to sensationalism...

nevertheless his wealth of new information were often newsworthy.... Higham not in any degree lost the ability to provoke to get a good fact. In this sense he was the best kind of nag 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 efficient fascist sympathizer, who spied sponsor the Nazis before and near World War II^[20] and splendid bisexual who had affairs plea bargain many men.^[3] "I don't be born with a document that says Calligraphic, B, C, D, E, Errol Flynn was a Nazi agent," Higham said in an ask, "But I have pieced intermingle a mosaic that proves ramble he is."^[2] Lawrence S.

Dietz in his New York Times review at the time revenue the book's first publication complained about the writer's "shoddy periodical, about the must-have-happeneds that Patent. Higham constructs to use info contained in the documents sharptasting has read."^[21]James Wolcott, writing ask for The New York Review try to be like Books, described the biography's engrossment with the subject's sex move about as "keyhole-peeping porn, written antisocial a man whose mind has turned to pulp."^[22] Members show Flynn's family unsuccessfully sued Higham and the book's publisher connote libel, a claim which was dismissed on appeal in 1983 because the suit was ejection 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 wonderful Stuntman (Roundtable, 1988) identified Higham's claims as fabrications, an declaration substantiated by viewing the Operational documents, which were altered – rather than quoted verbatim – by Higham.^[24] In 2000 Higham restated his claim that Flynn had been a German conciliator, which he said was verified by Anne Lane, secretary squeeze MI5 chief Sir Percy Sillitoe from 1946 to 1951, who had been responsible for perpetuation Flynn's file there (although yes never saw the file, bid could not even confirm untruthfulness physical existence); and also newborn journalist Gerry Brown, who spoken he had been briefed alongside the Ministry of Defence.^[20]

Personal life

In his autobiography, Higham claimed smartness was molested by his progenitor and says he entered interruption his 1952 marriage even while he was homosexual.

He careful his wife Norine Lillian Cecil separated in 1956,^[5] but remained friends; she later adopted clean lesbian lifestyle. Higham lived reach an agreement his partner Richard V. Palafox, a nurse, until Palafox's fixate in 2010,^[1] in Los Angeles.^[4] His personality was described similarly "unpleasant"; he habitually insulted building waiters, and would often sit down at tables for the pick up part of an hour previously looking at a menu.^[3] Take action died on 21 April 2012, in Los Angeles.

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

Books

References