Gavin Lambert
Encyclopedia
Gavin Lambert was a British
-born screenwriter
, novelist and biographer who lived for part of his life in Hollywood. His writing was mainly fiction and nonfiction about the film industry
.
, Cheltenham
, Gloucestershire
, England
, and at Magdalen College, Oxford
, where one of his professors was C. S. Lewis
. At Oxford, he befriended filmmakers Karel Reisz
and Lindsay Anderson
, and they founded a short-lived but influential journal, Sequence
, which he co-edited with Anderson. Lambert eventually left Oxford without obtaining a degree. From 1949 to 1955 he edited the periodical Sight and Sound, again 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 wrote film criticism
for The Sunday Times
and The Guardian
. In 1957 he moved to Hollywood, California
, to work as a screenwriter and personal assistant to director Nicholas Ray
, whose movie Bitter Victory
(1957) he co-wrote. He claimed to be Ray's lover for a period of time.
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 composer Paul Bowles
. He spent the final years of his life in Los Angeles
, where he died of pulmonary fibrosis
on 17 July 2005. He left behind a brother, niece and nephew, and named Mart Crowley
executor of his estate.
His papers are currently housed at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University
.
, Another Sky, about the sexual awakening of a prim English woman in North Africa
. In 1955, he also directed Another Sky in Morocco
. 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 by D. H. Lawrence
. The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone
(1961) adapted a novella by Tennessee Williams
on the affairs of an older actress with a young Italian gigolo
. 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
and Robert 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 by Hannah Green, which describes in layman's terms a teenager's battle with schizophrenia
. Later, the author also wrote the scripts for some TV movies such as Second Serve (1986) on transgender
tennis
player Renée Richards
and Liberace: Behind the Music (1988) on gay performer Liberace
. In 1997, he contributed to Stephen Frears
's film A Personal History of British Cinema. He was heavily quoted in William J. Mann
's book, Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood, 1910-1969.
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 film director
George Cukor
and Norma Shearer: A Life (1990) on the Canadian actress Norma Shearer
. His book, Nazimova: A Biography (1997) was the first full-scale account of the private life and acting career of lesbian
actress Alla Nazimova
. He was the author of the memoir Mainly About Lindsay Anderson
(2000) (whose title echoed that of Anderson's own work, About John Ford
).
He also wrote the book GWTW: The Making of Gone with the Wind
(Little, Brown and Company
, 1973). Working as a Hollywood screenwriter
, Lambert was able to interview and gain personal remembrances of those involved with the classic 1939 film, including dismissed director George Cukor and actress Vivien Leigh
(Scarlett O'Hara
).
His final biography, Natalie Wood: A Life (2004) supplied an insider's look at actress Natalie Wood
and chronicled everything concerning her life, since Lambert was a friend of Wood for sixteen 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 with Elvis Presley
, and interviews with the people who knew Wood best, such as Robert Wagner
, Warren Beatty
, Paul Mazursky
, and Leslie Caron
. In his book, Lambert controversially claimed that Wood frequently dated gay and bisexual men, including director Nicholas Ray
and actors Nick Adams, Raymond Burr
, James Dean
, Tab Hunter
, and Scott Marlowe
. Lambert said he was 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).
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
.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
-born screenwriter
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...
, novelist and biographer who lived for part of his life in Hollywood. His writing was mainly fiction and nonfiction about the film industry
Film industry
The film industry consists of the technological and commercial institutions of filmmaking: i.e. film production companies, film studios, cinematography, film production, screenwriting, pre-production, post production, film festivals, distribution; and actors, film directors and other film crew...
.
Personal life
Lambert was educated at the independent school Cheltenham CollegeCheltenham College
Cheltenham College is a co-educational independent school, located in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England.One of the public schools of the Victorian period, it was opened in July 1841. An Anglican foundation, it is known for its classical, military and sporting traditions.The 1893 book Great...
, Cheltenham
Cheltenham
Cheltenham , also known as Cheltenham Spa, is a large spa town and borough in Gloucestershire, on the edge of the Cotswolds in the South-West region of England. It is the home of the flagship race of British steeplechase horse racing, the Gold Cup, the main event of the Cheltenham Festival held...
, Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn, and the entire Forest of Dean....
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, and at Magdalen College, Oxford
Magdalen College, Oxford
Magdalen College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. As of 2006 the college had an estimated financial endowment of £153 million. Magdalen is currently top of the Norrington Table after over half of its 2010 finalists received first-class degrees, a record...
, where one of his professors was C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
Clive Staples Lewis , commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as "Jack", was a novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist from Belfast, Ireland...
. At Oxford, he befriended filmmakers Karel Reisz
Karel Reisz
Karel Reisz was a Czech-born British filmmaker who was active in post–war Britain, and one of the pioneers of the new realist strain in 1950s and 1960s British cinema.-Early life:...
and Lindsay Anderson
Lindsay Anderson
Lindsay Gordon Anderson was an Indian-born, British feature film, theatre and documentary director, film critic, and leading light of the Free Cinema movement and the British New Wave...
, and they founded a short-lived but influential journal, Sequence
Sequence (journal)
Sequence was a short-lived but influential British film journal founded in 1947 by Lindsay Anderson, Gavin Lambert and Karel Reisz.Anderson had returned to Oxford after his time with the army Intelligence Corps in Delhi, Lambert was a schoolfriend of Anderson from Cheltenham College who had dropped...
, which he co-edited with Anderson. Lambert eventually left Oxford without obtaining a degree. From 1949 to 1955 he edited the periodical Sight and Sound, again with Anderson as a regular contributor. At about the same time Lambert was deeply involved in Britain's Free Cinema
Free Cinema
Free Cinema was a documentary film movement that emerged in England in the mid-1950s. The term referred to an absence of propagandised intent or deliberate box office appeal. Co-founded by Lindsay Anderson, though he later disdained the 'movement' tag, with Karel Reisz, Tony Richardson and Lorenza...
movement which called for more social realism
Social realism
Social Realism, also known as Socio-Realism, is an artistic movement, expressed in the visual and other realist arts, which depicts social and racial injustice, economic hardship, through unvarnished pictures of life's struggles; often depicting working class activities as heroic...
in contemporary movies. He also wrote film criticism
Film criticism
Film criticism is the analysis and evaluation of films, individually and collectively. In general, this can be divided into journalistic criticism that appears regularly in newspapers, and other popular, mass-media outlets and academic criticism by film scholars that is informed by film theory and...
for The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times (UK)
The Sunday Times is a Sunday broadsheet newspaper, distributed in the United Kingdom. The Sunday Times is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News International, which is in turn owned by News Corporation. Times Newspapers also owns The Times, but the two papers were founded...
and The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
. In 1957 he moved to Hollywood, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, to work as a screenwriter and personal assistant to director Nicholas Ray
Nicholas Ray
Nicholas Ray was an American film director best known for the movie Rebel Without a Cause....
, whose movie Bitter Victory
Bitter Victory
Bitter Victory is a 1957 black and white French-American international co-production film shot in CinemaScope, directed by Nicholas Ray....
(1957) he co-wrote. He claimed to be Ray's lover for a period of time.
Gavin Lambert became an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
citizen in 1964. From 1974 to 1989, he chiefly stayed in Tangier
Tangier
Tangier, also Tangiers is a city in northern Morocco with a population of about 700,000 . It lies on the North African coast at the western entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar where the Mediterranean meets the Atlantic Ocean off Cape Spartel...
, where he was a close friend of the writer and composer Paul Bowles
Paul Bowles
Paul Frederic Bowles was an American expatriate composer, author, and translator.Following a cultured middle-class upbringing in New York City, during which he displayed a talent for music and writing, Bowles pursued his education at the University of Virginia before making various trips to Paris...
. He spent the final years of his life in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, where he died of pulmonary fibrosis
Pulmonary fibrosis
Pulmonary fibrosis is the formation or development of excess fibrous connective tissue in the lungs. It is also described as "scarring of the lung".-Symptoms:Symptoms of pulmonary fibrosis are mainly:...
on 17 July 2005. He left behind a brother, niece and nephew, and named Mart Crowley
Mart Crowley
Mart Crowley is an American playwright.Crowley was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi. After graduating from The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. in 1957, Crowley headed west to Hollywood, where he worked for a number of television production companies before meeting Natalie Wood on...
executor of his estate.
His papers are currently housed at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University
Boston University
Boston University is a private research university located in Boston, Massachusetts. With more than 4,000 faculty members and more than 31,000 students, Boston University is one of the largest private universities in the United States and one of Boston's largest employers...
.
Screenplays
Lambert became a notable screenwriter of the Hollywood studio era. In 1954, while still living in England, he wrote his first screenplayScreenplay
A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...
, Another Sky, about the sexual awakening of a prim English woman in North Africa
North Africa
North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, linked by the Sahara to Sub-Saharan Africa. Geopolitically, the United Nations definition of Northern Africa includes eight countries or territories; Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, South Sudan, Sudan, Tunisia, and...
. In 1955, he also directed Another Sky in Morocco
Morocco
Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...
. This was followed in 1958 by the Hollywood screenplay, Bitter Victory and in 1960 by Sons and Lovers
Sons and Lovers (1960 film)
Sons and Lovers is a British 1960 film adaptation of the D. H. Lawrence novel Sons and Lovers. It was adapted by T. E. B. Clarke and Gavin Lambert and directed by Jack Cardiff...
. The latter, for which Lambert gained an Academy Award
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
nomination, is based on a novel by D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
. The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone
The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone
The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone is a 1961 British film made by Seven Arts-Warner Bros. It was directed by José Quintero and produced by Louis De Rochemont with Lothar Wolff as associate producer. The screenplay was written by Gavin Lambert and Jan Read and based on the novel by Tennessee Williams...
(1961) adapted a novella by Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams
Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III was an American writer who worked principally as a playwright in the American theater. He also wrote short stories, novels, poetry, essays, screenplays and a volume of memoirs...
on the affairs of an older actress with a young Italian gigolo
Gigolo
Gigolo may refer to:* A male prostitute, escort, or dancer, who offers services to women* Gigolo , a 2006 single by Helena Paparizou* Gigolo , a 2003 single by Nick Cannon...
. As, from the 1920s through the late 1960s, homosexuality
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...
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
Inside Daisy Clover
Inside Daisy Clover is a 1965 American drama film based on the 1963 novel by Gavin Lambert. It stars Natalie Wood, Christopher Plummer, Robert Redford, Roddy McDowall and Ruth Gordon in her Academy Award nominated role.- Plot :...
(1963) for the screen. Clover, starring Natalie Wood
Natalie Wood
Natalie Wood, born Natalia Nikolaevna Zacharenko was an American film and television actress. After first working in films as a child, Wood became a successful Hollywood star as a young adult, receiving three Academy Award nominations before she was 25 years old.Wood began acting in movies at the...
and Robert Redford
Robert Redford
Charles Robert Redford, Jr. , better known as Robert Redford, is an American actor, film director, producer, businessman, environmentalist, philanthropist, and founder of the Sundance Film Festival. He has received two Oscars: one in 1981 for directing Ordinary People, and one for Lifetime...
, 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
I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (film)
I Never Promised You a Rose Garden is a 1977 film based on the Joanne Greenberg novel of the same name.In the wake of the success of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Roger Corman was able to get funding for a movie version of Rose Garden. Bibi Andersson played Dr. Fried, while Kathleen Quinlan...
(1977), based on a novel by Hannah Green, which describes in layman's terms a teenager's battle with schizophrenia
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness. It most commonly manifests itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social...
. Later, the author also wrote the scripts for some TV movies such as Second Serve (1986) on transgender
Transgender
Transgender is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to vary from culturally conventional gender roles....
tennis
Tennis
Tennis is a sport usually played between two players or between two teams of two players each . Each player uses a racket that is strung to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over a net into the opponent's court. Tennis is an Olympic sport and is played at all levels of society at all...
player Renée Richards
Renee Richards
Renée Richards is an American ophthalmologist, author and former professional tennis player. In 1975, Richards underwent sex reassignment surgery. She is known for initially being denied entry into the 1976 US Open by the United States Tennis Association, citing an unprecedented women-born-women...
and Liberace: Behind the Music (1988) on gay performer Liberace
Liberace
Wladziu Valentino Liberace , best known simply as Liberace, was a famous American pianist and vocalist.In a career that spanned four decades of concerts, recordings, motion pictures, television and endorsements, Liberace became world-renowned...
. In 1997, he contributed to Stephen Frears
Stephen Frears
Stephen Arthur Frears is an English film director.-Early life:Frears was born in Leicester, England to Ruth M., a social worker, and Dr Russell E. Frears, a general practitioner and accountant. He did not find out that his mother was Jewish until he was in his late 20s...
's film A Personal History of British Cinema. He was heavily quoted in William J. Mann
William J. Mann
William J. Mann is an American novelist, biographer, and Hollywood historian best known for his 2006 biography of Katharine Hepburn, Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn...
's book, Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood, 1910-1969.
Celebrity biographies and non-fiction
Lambert was also a noted biographer and novelist, who focused his efforts on biographies of gayGay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....
and lesbian
Lesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
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 film director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
George Cukor
George Cukor
George Dewey Cukor was an American film director. He mainly concentrated on comedies and literary adaptations. His career flourished at RKO and later MGM, where he directed What Price Hollywood? , A Bill of Divorcement , Dinner at Eight , Little Women , David Copperfield , Romeo and Juliet and...
and Norma Shearer: A Life (1990) on the Canadian actress Norma Shearer
Norma Shearer
Edith Norma Shearer was a Canadian-American actress. Shearer was one of the most popular actresses in North America from the mid-1920s through the 1930s...
. His book, Nazimova: A Biography (1997) was the first full-scale account of the private life and acting career of lesbian
Lesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
actress Alla Nazimova
Alla Nazimova
Alla Nazimova , was a Russian American film and theatre actress, a screenwriter and film producer. She is perhaps best known as simply Nazimova, but also went under the name Alia Nasimoff.-Early life:...
. He was the author of the memoir Mainly About Lindsay Anderson
Lindsay Anderson
Lindsay Gordon Anderson was an Indian-born, British feature film, theatre and documentary director, film critic, and leading light of the Free Cinema movement and the British New Wave...
(2000) (whose title echoed that of Anderson's own work, About John Ford
John Ford
John Ford was an American film director. He was famous for both his westerns such as Stagecoach, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and adaptations of such classic 20th-century American novels as The Grapes of Wrath...
).
He also wrote the book GWTW: The Making of Gone with the Wind
Gone with the Wind (film)
Gone with the Wind is a 1939 American historical epic film adapted from Margaret Mitchell's Pulitzer-winning 1936 novel of the same name. It was produced by David O. Selznick and directed by Victor Fleming from a screenplay by Sidney Howard...
(Little, Brown and Company
Little, Brown and Company
Little, Brown and Company is a publishing house established by Charles Coffin Little and his partner, James Brown. Since 2006 it has been a constituent unit of Hachette Book Group USA.-19th century:...
, 1973). Working as a Hollywood screenwriter
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...
, Lambert was able to interview and gain personal remembrances of those involved with the classic 1939 film, including dismissed director George Cukor and actress Vivien Leigh
Vivien Leigh
Vivien Leigh, Lady Olivier was an English actress. She won the Best Actress Academy Award for her portrayal of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire , a role she also played on stage in London's West End, as well as for her portrayal of the southern belle Scarlett O'Hara, alongside Clark...
(Scarlett O'Hara
Scarlett O'Hara
Scarlett O' Hara is the protagonist in Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel Gone with the Wind and in the later film of the same name...
).
His final biography, Natalie Wood: A Life (2004) supplied an insider's look at actress Natalie Wood
Natalie Wood
Natalie Wood, born Natalia Nikolaevna Zacharenko was an American film and television actress. After first working in films as a child, Wood became a successful Hollywood star as a young adult, receiving three Academy Award nominations before she was 25 years old.Wood began acting in movies at the...
and chronicled everything concerning her life, since Lambert was a friend of Wood for sixteen years. The book was praised by Natalie Wood's daughter, Natasha Gregson Wagner
Natasha Gregson Wagner
Natasha Gregson Wagner is an American actress.Gregson Wagner was born in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of Richard Gregson, a film producer, and the late actress Natalie Wood...
, as "a wonderful biography on my Mom. It will be the definitive biography on my mother." Lambert's biography includes Wood's relationship with Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....
, and interviews with the people who knew Wood best, such as Robert Wagner
Robert Wagner
Robert John Wagner is an American actor of stage, screen, and television.A veteran of many films in the 1950s and 1960s, Wagner gained prominence in three American television series that spanned three decades: It Takes a Thief , Switch , and Hart to Hart...
, Warren Beatty
Warren Beatty
Warren Beatty born March 30, 1937) is an American actor, producer, screenwriter and director. He has received a total of fourteen Academy Award nominations, winning one for Best Director in 1982. He has also won four Golden Globe Awards including the Cecil B. DeMille Award.-Early life and...
, Paul Mazursky
Paul Mazursky
Paul Mazursky is an American film director, screenwriter and actor.-Personal life:He was born Irwin Mazursky in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Jean , a piano player for dance classes, and David Mazursky, a laborer. Mazursky was born to a Jewish family; his grandfather was an immigrant from...
, and Leslie Caron
Leslie Caron
Leslie Claire Margaret Caron is a French film actress and dancer, who appeared in 45 films between 1951 and 2003. In 2006, her performance in Law and Order: Special Victims Unit won her an Emmy for guest actress in a drama series...
. In his book, Lambert controversially claimed that Wood frequently dated gay and bisexual men, including director Nicholas Ray
Nicholas Ray
Nicholas Ray was an American film director best known for the movie Rebel Without a Cause....
and actors Nick Adams, Raymond Burr
Raymond Burr
Raymond William Stacey Burr was a Canadian actor, primarily known for his title roles in the television dramas Perry Mason and Ironside. His early acting career included roles on Broadway, radio, television and in film, usually as the villain...
, James Dean
James Dean
James Byron Dean was an American film actor. He is a cultural icon, best embodied in the title of his most celebrated film, Rebel Without a Cause , in which he starred as troubled Los Angeles teenager Jim Stark...
, Tab Hunter
Tab Hunter
Tab Hunter is an American actor, singer, former teen idol and author who has starred in over forty major films.-Background:...
, and Scott Marlowe
Scott Marlowe
Scott Gregory Marlowe was a versatile American actor of film, television, and stage, who was born and died in Los Angeles, California.-Early film career:...
. Lambert said he was 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
The Boys in the Band (play)
The Boys in the Band is a play by Mart Crowley. The off-Broadway production, directed by Robert Moore, opened on April 14, 1968 at Theater Four, where it ran for 1,001 performances, an extremely healthy run for both an off-Broadway production, and one not geared to a mainstream audience...
(1968). Lambert's final book was The Ivan Moffat File: Life Among the Beautiful and Damned in London, Paris, New York and Hollywood (2004).
Novels and short stories
Lambert also wrote seven novelNovel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
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
Inside Daisy Clover
Inside Daisy Clover is a 1965 American drama film based on the 1963 novel by Gavin Lambert. It stars Natalie Wood, Christopher Plummer, Robert Redford, Roddy McDowall and Ruth Gordon in her Academy Award nominated role.- Plot :...
(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
Mart Crowley
Mart Crowley is an American playwright.Crowley was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi. After graduating from The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. in 1957, Crowley headed west to Hollywood, where he worked for a number of television production companies before meeting Natalie Wood on...
.
Further reading
- Waxman, SharonSharon WaxmanSharon Waxman is an American journalist and blogger who has been a correspondent for The Washington Post and The New York Times, among others. She started a Hollywood and media business blog called The Wrap in early 2009 which competes directly with sites such as Deadline Hollywood.Waxman...
(July 19, 2005), "Gavin Lambert, 80, Writer Who Chronicled Hollywood Life, Dies." The New York TimesThe New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
.