Charles Higham dies at 81; controversial celebrity biographer
Charles Higham wrote controversial biographies of Hollywood icons, including
Cary Grant, Lucille Ball and Errol Flynn.
By Elaine Woo, Los Angeles Times
May 4, 2012


Charles Higham, a poet, critic and prolific celebrity biographer who found
political and sexual intrigue in the lives of Hollywood icons such as Cary
Grant, Marlene Dietrich and, most controversially, Errol Flynn, died April 21 at
his Los Angeles home. He was 81.


The cause was apparently a heart attack, according to Todd McCarthy, a close
friend.


Higham was the author of two dozen biographies, many of which were so salacious
that a book critic reviewing "Howard Hughes: The Secret Life" in 1993 quipped
that the writer had "reached the point where most of his subjects have slept
with one another." By Higham's reckoning, Hughes was a bisexual who had affairs
with Grant and at least two other Higham subjects, Bette Davis and Katharine
Hepburn.


His most sensational work was "Errol Flynn: The Untold Story" (1980), in which
he alleged the swashbuckling matinee idol was a Nazi spy. Higham claimed he had
extensive documentation, including hundreds of government papers, but the book
was denounced by Flynn's former wife, colleagues and other biographers.


Higham considered his most important works to be "Trading With the Enemy" (1983)
and "American Swastika" (1985), which examined collusion between the Third Reich
and prominent Americans during World War II.


He said he based his allegations of Flynn's Nazi ties on more than 5,000 U.S.
government documents, including State Department memos, passport applications
and Coast Guard reports. Among his claims was that the actor persuaded Warner
Bros. to shoot scenes for the 1941 movie "Dive Bomber" at Pearl Harbor and a San
Diego Navy base and then arranged for the Japanese government to view the
footage in advance of its fateful attack on the U.S.


Flynn's ex-wife Nora Eddington Black, who was married to him during World War
II, wrote in a 1980 letter to The Times that Higham "hasn't come up with a
single document about Errol's supposed tie-in with the Gestapo." Another
vociferous critic was William Donati, who co-wrote a 1989 book with Flynn's
stuntman and buddy, Buster Wiles, called "My Days With Errol Flynn." Donati
wrote a chapter that accused Higham of altering government documents to buttress
his charges against Flynn, who died of a heart attack in 1959.


Higham stood by his book, telling the New York Times: "I don't have a document
that says A, B, C, D, E, Errol Flynn was a Nazi agent. But I have pieced
together a mosaic that proves that he is."


Born in London on Feb. 18, 1931, Higham spent his earliest years surrounded by
servants as the son of a wealthy advertising executive. But, according to his
2009 memoir, "In and Out of Hollywood," his childhood was unstable: His mother
abandoned the family when he was 3, his father died when he was 7, and his
stepmother sexually abused him. He eventually returned to live with his mother,
who had remarried, but felt unloved.


He spurned college to work in a bookstore and began to write poetry, publishing
two volumes by age 22. In the early 1950s he moved to Australia, where his first
and only marriage ended: He acknowledged his attraction to men, and his wife
fell in love with a woman.


Higham, whose longtime companion, Richard Palafox, died two years ago, has no
immediate survivors.


In Australia, he began to write about celebrities for a Sydney newspaper, which
sent him on assignments to Hollywood. He was researching a book on director
Orson Welles when he accepted a teaching position at UC Santa Cruz in 1969. Soon
after, he moved to Los Angeles and became a Hollywood correspondent for the New
York Times.


In 1970, University of California Press published his first biography, "The
Films of Orson Welles," in which he theorized that the legendary director with a
history of abandoned film projects suffered from a "genuine fear of completion."
The book was attacked in the New York Times by director and film historian Peter
Bogdanovich, who said Higham's book was so full of inaccuracies and unsupported
conclusions that it amounted to "an illustrated textbook on how to criminally
impair an artist's career."


In the Los Angeles Times, critic Charles Champlin wrote that although Higham's
scholarship was impressive, the result was an "engrossing, outspoken but I dare
say not yet definitive book."


Over the next four decades Higham poured out Hollywood biographies at a rapid
clip: Florenz Ziegfeld, Cecil B. DeMille, Ava Gardner, Charles Laughton, Olivia
de Havilland and Lucille Ball were among his subjects. His biography of Hughes
formed the basis of the 2004 movie "The Aviator," which starred Leonardo
DiCaprio as the eccentric aviation magnate and movie producer.


The poet who became a king of the splashy Hollywood bio was dismissive of
American critics who considered his books celebrity gossip. "In Europe there is
no snobbery regarding books about film and theater at all," Higham told Newsday
in 1989, when he portrayed Grant as a wife-beating, miserly, closeted
homosexual. "There is no problem in Europe at all of a literary writer turning
to something quite different."

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-charles-higham-20120504,0,1031363.story

The legendary writer Digby Wolfe has died after a short battle with cancer.

Wolfe was a major fixture in the Australian entertainment scene in the 1950s and 1960s, living in Whale Beach in Sydney.

He was born in Britain in 1929 and, before coming to Australia, worked with comedy legends Ronnie Corbett, Hattie Jacques and Charles Hawtrey.

During his time in Australia, he hosted the variety shows Review '61 and Review '62 and worked with Irish comedian Dave Allen during his frequent Australian tours.

In the 1960s, he moved from Australia to Los Angeles and worked as an actor, appearing in television series including The Monkees, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, and The Munsters.

He was one of the original writers on the iconic American sketch comedy series Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In.

He also collaborated with John Denver, Shirley MacLaine, Cher and Jackie Mason.

Wolfe remained close to Goldie Hawn and MacLaine until his death.

During the 1970s, he returned to Australia and hosted two special editions of This Is Your Life, profiling the actor Leonard Teale and style icon Maggie Tabberer.

He also hosted the first revamped AFI Awards in 1976.

He died in Albuquerque, New Mexico on Thursday night, Sydney time, after a short battle with cancer.

He had spent the last decade working as a lecturer, and later a professor, in dramatic writing at The University of New Mexico.

He was with his family when he died. He is survived by a sister.



Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/legendary-writer-digby-wolfe-dies-20120504-1y3gq.html#ixzz1tveESfTT

Character actor often played the 'heavy'

George Murdock, 81, a veteran character actor who had a recurring role as Lt. Scanlon on the television sitcom "Barney Miller" and played God in the 1989 film "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier," died Monday at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, said his close friend and fellow actor Jennifer Rhodes. He had cancer.

More/Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-passings-20120504,0,3498750.story