- Gavin Lambert
Gavin Lambert (born
July 23 ,1924 -July 17 ,2005 ) was a British-bornscreenwriter ,novelist andbiographer who lived for part of his life inHollywood .Early life
Lambert was educated at
Cheltenham andOxford , where he became friends with filmmakersKarel Reisz andLindsay Anderson . At Oxford he also founded, together with Reisz and Anderson, the short-lived but influential journal, "Sequence", which he co-edited with Anderson. From 1949 to 1955 he edited the periodical "Sight and Sound ", with Anderson as a regular contributor. At about the same time Lambert was deeply involved in Britain's Free Cinema movement which called for more social realism in contemporary movies. He also wrotefilm criticism for "The Sunday Times" and "The Guardian ". In 1957 he moved toHollywood ,California , in order to work there as a screenwriter and personal assistant to directorNicholas Ray , whose movie "Bitter Victory" (1957) he co-wrote. He claimed he became Ray's lover for a period of time.Screenplays and Hollywood
Lambert became a notable screenwriter of the Hollywood studio era. In 1954, while still living in England, he wrote his first
screenplay , "Another Sky", about the sexual awakening of a prim English woman inNorth Africa . In 1955, he also directed "Another Sky" inMorocco . This was followed in 1958 by the Hollywood screenplay, "Bitter Victory" and in 1960 by "Sons and Lovers". The latter, for which Lambert gained an Academy Award nomination, is based on a novel byD. H. Lawrence . "The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone " (1961) adapted a novella byTennessee Williams on the affairs of an older actress with a young Italiangigolo . As, from the 1920s through the late 1960s,homosexuality was rarely portrayed on the screen, gay screenwriters like Lambert learned to express their personal sensibilities discreetly between the lines of a film. "The important thing to remember about 'gay influence' in movies," observed Gavin Lambert, "is that it was obviously never direct. It was all subliminal. It couldn't be direct because the mass audience would say, Hey, no way."It was not until 1965 that Lambert adapted his own Hollywood insider novel "Inside Daisy Clover" (1963) for the screen. "Clover", starring
Natalie Wood andRobert Redford , tells the cautionary tale of a teenage movie star involved in the Hollywood studio system of the 30's and her unhappy marriage to a closeted gay leading man. However, in the film version he was not fully identified as gay because at Redford's request, the husband he played was changed from homosexual to appear as though he might be bisexual. From this time on, Lambert and Wood became lifelong friends. Another of Lambert's screenplays was "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden" (1977), based on a novel byHannah Green , which describes in layman's terms ateenager 's battle withschizophrenia . Later, the author also wrote the scripts for some TV movies such as "Second Serve" (1986) ontransgender tennis playerRenée Richards and "Liberace: Behind the Music" (1988) on gay performerLiberace . In 1997, he contributed toStephen Frears 's film "A Personal History of British Cinema". He was heavily quoted inWilliam J. Mann 's book, "Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood, 1910-1969."Books and final years
Lambert was also a noted biographer and novelist, who focused his efforts on biographies of gay and lesbian figures in Hollywood. According to screenwriter and cinema Professor
Joseph McBride , he was "a keenly observant, wryly witty chronicler of Hollywood's social mores and artistic achievements." He wrote biographies on some Hollywood stars, such as "On Cukor" (1972) on gayfilm director George Cukor and "Norma Shearer: A Life" (1990) on the Canadian actressNorma Shearer . His book, "Nazimova: A Biography" (1997) was the first full-scale account of the private life and acting career oflesbian actressAlla Nazimova . He was the author of the memoir "Mainly AboutLindsay Anderson " (2000) (whose title echoed that of Anderson's own biographical work, "About John Ford"), and wrote sevennovel s primarily with Hollywood settings, among them "The Slide Area: Scenes of Hollywood Life" (1959), a collection of seven short stories that portray a bevy of tinsel-town lowlifes, "Inside Daisy Clover " (1963), "The Goodbye People" (1971) about Hollywood's beautiful people, and "Running Time" (1982), a portrait of an indefatigable woman from child starlet to screen goddess, but also a unique life history of the American film industry. In 1996, Lambert wrote the introduction to "3 Plays", a collection of works by his longtime friend,Mart Crowley .His final biography, "Natalie Wood: A Life" (2004) supplied an insider's look at actress
Natalie Wood and chronicled everything concerning her life, as Lambert was a Wood friend for 16 years.The book was praised by Natalie Wood's daughter, Natasha Gregson Wagner, as "a wonderful biography on my Mom. It will be the definitive biography on my mother." Lambert's biography includes Wood's relationship withElvis Presley , and interviews with the people who knew Wood best, such asRobert Wagner ,Warren Beatty ,Paul Mazursky , andLeslie Caron . In his book, Lambert controversially claimed that Wood frequently dated gay and bisexual men, including directorNicholas Ray and actors Nick Adams,Raymond Burr ,James Dean ,Tab Hunter andScott Marlowe . Lambert said he was [http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,12589,1533971,00.html also] involved with Ray and that Wood supported homosexual playwright Mart Crowley (a later lover of Lambert's) in a manner that made it possible for him to write his play, The Boys in the Band (1968). Lambert's final book was "The Ivan Moffat File: Life Among the Beautiful and Damned in London, Paris, New York and Hollywood" (2004).Gavin Lambert became an American citizen in 1964. From 1974 to 1989, he chiefly stayed in
Tangier , where he was a close friend of the writer and composerPaul Bowles . He spent the final years of his life inLos Angeles , where he died ofpulmonary fibrosis on July 17, 2005. He left behind a brother, niece and nephew, and namedMart Crowley executor of his estate.His papers are currently housed at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University.
Further reading
*Sharon Waxman, "Gavin Lambert, 80, Writer Who Chronicled Hollywood Life, Dies." "The New York Times", July 19, 2005
External links
* [http://www.advocate.com/news_detail.asp?id=18945 "Advocate" obituary 20 July 2005]
* [http://www.laweekly.com/ink/printme.php?eid=66361 David Thomson, "Mainly about Gavin"]
* [http://ch.planetout.com/news/article.html?2005/07/20/5 News & Politics: Oscar-nominated gay writer Gavin Lambert dies]
* [http://www.paulbowles.org/gavinlambert.html 'My Friend Paul Bowles' by Gavin Lambert]
* [http://ehrensteinland.com/htmls/g012/gavinlambert.html Recent photo]
* [http://www.facets.org/asticat?function=buyitem&catname=facets&catnum=/DV78973 Gavin Lambert's only directorial effort "Another Sky"]
*imdb name|id=0483149|name= Gavin Lambert
*Screenonline name|id=454558|name=Gavin Lambert
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