John Gilmore (writer) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

John "Jonathan" Gilmore is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

Author

An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

and gonzo journalist known for iconoclastic Hollywood memoirs, true crime literature and hard-boiled fiction. A motion picture, television and stage actor in Los Angeles and New York in the 1950s, his friends including 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...

and Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model and showgirl who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s....

. Gilmore emerged as a writer from the Beat Generation

Beat generation

The Beat Generation refers to a group of American post-WWII writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired...

in the 60s, influenced by Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac

Jean-Louis "Jack" Lebris de Kerouac was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing, covering topics such as Catholic...

and befriended by cult author William S. Burroughs

William S. Burroughs

William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...

. The publication of his true crime book "Severed: The True Story of the Black Dahlia," ushered in a cult following for the author. His manuscripts and original writings are housed in the special collections department of the Research Library of the University of California at Los Angeles.

Biography

John Gilmore was born in the Charity Ward of the Los Angeles County General Hospital and was raised in Hollywood. His mother had been a studio contract-player for MGM while his step-grandfather worked as head carpenter for RKO Pictures

RKO Pictures

RKO Pictures is an American film production and distribution company. As RKO Radio Pictures Inc., it was one of the Big Five studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orpheum theater chains and Joseph P...

. Gilmore's parents separated when he was six months old and he was subsequently raised by his grandmother. Gilmore's father became a Los Angeles Police Department

Los Angeles Police Department

The Los Angeles Police Department is the police department of the city of Los Angeles, California. With just under 10,000 officers and more than 3,000 civilian staff, covering an area of with a population of more than 4.1 million people, it is the third largest local law enforcement agency in...

(LAPD) officer, and also wrote and acted on radio shows, a police public service (the shows featured promising movie starlets as well as established performers like Bonita Granville

Bonita Granville

Bonita Granville was an American film actress and television producer.-Early life:Born in Chicago, Illinois, Granville was the daughter of stage actors, and made her film debut at the age of nine in Westward Passage...

, Ann Rutherford

Ann Rutherford

Ann Rutherford is a Canadian-American actress in film, radio, and television. She has had a long career starring and co-starring in films, playing Polly Benedict on the big screen of the 1930s and 1940s in the Andy Hardy series, and on The Bob Newhart Show as Newhart's character's...

, the "jungle girl" Acquanetta

Acquanetta

Acquanetta , nicknamed "The Venezuelan Volcano," was a B-movie actress known for her exotic beauty.-Early years:Although accounts differ, Acquanetta claimed she was born Burnu Acquanetta in Ozone, Wyoming...

, Joan Davis

Joan Davis

Joan Davis was an American comedic actress whose career spanned vaudeville, film, radio and television. Remembered best for the 1950s television comedy, I Married Joan, Davis had a successful earlier career as a B-movie actress and a leading star of 1940s radio comedy.Born as Madonna Josephine...

, Hillary Brooke

Hillary Brooke

Hillary Brooke was an American film actress best known for her work in Abbott and Costello and Sherlock Holmes films...

, Ann Jeffreys, Brenda Marshall

Brenda Marshall

Brenda Marshall was an American film actress.Born Ardis Ankerson in Negros, Philippines, Marshall made her first film appearance in the 1939 Espionage Agent. The following year, she played the leading lady to Errol Flynn in The Sea Hawk...

and other players young John Gilmore became acquainted with. As a child actor, he appeared in a Gene Autry

Gene Autry

Orvon Grover Autry , better known as Gene Autry, was an American performer who gained fame as The Singing Cowboy on the radio, in movies and on television for more than three decades beginning in the 1930s...

movie and bit parts at Republic Studios. He worked in LAPD

Los Angeles Police Department

safety films and did stints on radio. Eventually he appeared in commercial films. Actors Ida Lupino

Ida Lupino

Ida Lupino was an English-born film actress and director, and a pioneer among women filmmakers. In her 48-year career, she appeared in 59 films and directed seven others, mostly in the United States. She appeared in serial television programmes 58 times and directed 50 other episodes...

and John Hodiak

John Hodiak

John Hodiak was an American actor who worked in radio and film.-Early life:He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Walter Hodiak and Anna Pogorzelec . He was of Ukrainian and Polish descent...

were mentors to Gilmore, who worked in numerous television shows and feature films at Warner Bros.

Warner Bros.

Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...

, 20th Century Fox

20th Century Fox

Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...

, and Universal International studios. During the 1950s, through John Hodiak

John Hodiak

, Gilmore sustained an acquaintanceship with Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model and showgirl who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s....

in Hollywood, then in New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

, where Gilmore was involved with the Actors Studio

Actors Studio

The Actors Studio is a membership organization for professional actors, theatre directors and playwrights at 432 West 44th Street in the Clinton neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded October 5, 1947, by Elia Kazan, Cheryl Crawford, Robert Lewis and Anna Sokolow who provided...

, transcribing the lectures of Lee Strasberg

Lee Strasberg

Lee Strasberg was an American actor, director and acting teacher. He cofounded, with directors Harold Clurman and Cheryl Crawford, the Group Theatre in 1931, which was hailed as "America's first true theatrical collective"...

into book form. Gilmore performed on stage and in live TV, wrote poetry

Poetry

Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...

and screenplay

Screenplay

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...

s, directed two experimental plays, one by Jean Genet

Jean Genet

Jean Genet was a prominent and controversial French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. Early in his life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but later took to writing...

. He wrote and directed a low-budget film entitled "Expressions", later changed to "Blues for Benny." The film did not get general release but was shown independently. After five years of writing a dozen motion picture scripts and developing film projects with director Curtis Harrington, Gilmore eventually settled into a literary career; journalist

Journalist

A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...

, true crime

True crime (genre)

True crime is a non-fiction literary and film genre in which the author examines an actual crime and details the actions of real people.The crimes most commonly include murder, but true crime works have also touched on other legal cases. Depending on the writer, true crime can adhere strictly to...

writer and novelist. He served as head of the writing program at Antioch University

Antioch University

Antioch University is an American university with five campuses located in four states. Campuses are located in Los Angeles, California; Santa Barbara, California; Keene, New Hampshire; Yellow Springs, Ohio; and Seattle, Washington. Additionally, Antioch University houses two institution-wide...

and has taught and lectured at length.

Acting and writing careers

While Gilmore was living in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

in the spring of 1953, a mutual friend, movie bit-player and extra, Ray Curry, introduced him to actor James Dean

James Dean

. Gilmore and Dean developed a friendship along with TV director James Sheldon, Eartha Kitt

Eartha Kitt

Eartha Mae Kitt was an American singer, actress, and cabaret star. She was perhaps best known for her highly distinctive singing style and her 1953 hit recordings of "C'est Si Bon" and the enduring Christmas novelty smash "Santa Baby." Orson Welles once called her the "most exciting woman in the...

, and Broadway director, John Stix. After Gilmore returned to Hollywood, the friendship with James Dean was renewed, Eartha Kitt sometimes making it a trio in riding motorcycles along Sunset Boulevard

Sunset Boulevard

Sunset Boulevard is a street in the western part of Los Angeles County, California, that stretches from Figueroa Street in downtown Los Angeles to the Pacific Coast Highway at the Pacific Ocean in the Pacific Palisades...

. Gilmore and Dean also rode their motorcycles along Pacific Coast Highway as well, often at speeds in excess of the posted limits. As a select group of friends in leather jacket

Leather jacket

A leather jacket is a type of clothing—a jacket-length coat—usually worn on top of other apparel, and made from the tanned hide of various animals. The leather material is typically dyed black, or various shades of brown, but a wide range of colors is possible...

s, hanging out nights at Googie's on Sunset, next door to Schwab's Drugstore, Dean, Gilmore and others were referred to as the "Night Watch," as reported in the Hollywood Reporter during April, 1955, and the Hollywood Citizen News during May, 1955, at the time Dean was starring in the film, Rebel Without a Cause

Rebel Without a Cause

Rebel Without a Cause is a 1955 American drama film about emotionally confused suburban, middle-class teenagers. Directed by Nicholas Ray, it offered both social commentary and an alternative to previous films depicting delinquents in urban slum environments...

. In his first book on Dean, The Real James Dean, published in 1975, Gilmore caused considerable controversy when he stated that their friendship involved an experimentation with bisexuality. In 1997, Gilmore wrote a second, more detailed (embellished) book on his relationship with James Dean, entitled Live Fast, Die Young: Remembering the Short Life of James Dean. Author Donald Spoto

Donald Spoto

Donald Spoto is an American celebrity biographer, Catholic theologian, and former monk. He is best known for his best-selling biographies of film and theatre celebrities such as Alfred Hitchcock, Laurence Olivier, Tennessee Williams, Ingrid Bergman, James Dean, Elizabeth Taylor, Grace Kelly,...

interviewed Gilmore about Dean for his bio Rebel: The Life and Legend of James Dean, as other authors, i.e. Joe Hyams

Joe Hyams

Joe Hyams was an American Hollywood columnist and author of bestselling biographies of Hollywood stars.- Career :...

, Val Holley, Paul Alexander, Liz Sheridan had interviewed Gilmore previously.

After writing a series of action pulp novels in the 1960s under the pseudonyms Neil Egri and Mort Gillian, in 1970 Gilmore published The Tucson Murders, through Dial Press

Dial Press

The Dial Press was a publishing house founded in 1923 by Lincoln MacVeagh.Dial Press shared a building with The Dial and Scofield Thayer worked with both. The first imprint was issued in 1924. Authors included Elizabeth Bowen, W.R...

, New York, a hardcover nonfiction true crime detailing the life and crimes of Charles Schmid, the "notorious pied piper of Tucson".

Following this, Gilmore published his second nonfiction, The Garbage People, a hardcover exploration into the lives of Charles Manson

Charles Manson

Charles Milles Manson is an American criminal who led what became known as the Manson Family, a quasi-commune that arose in California in the late 1960s. He was found guilty of conspiracy to commit the Tate/LaBianca murders carried out by members of the group at his instruction...

and the Family. A few years before the so-called Manson Murders, and while an actor, Gilmore met actress Sharon Tate

Sharon Tate

Sharon Marie Tate was an American actress. During the 1960s she played small television roles before appearing in several films. After receiving positive reviews for her comedic performances, she was hailed as one of Hollywood's promising newcomers and was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for...

at 20th Century Fox studios.

Writing on his website about Sal Mineo

Sal Mineo

Salvatore "Sal" Mineo, Jr. , was an American film and theatre actor, best known for his performance as John "Plato" Crawford opposite James Dean in the film Rebel Without a Cause...

, Gilmore says of Dean's other co-stars in Rebel Without A Cause that Dean avoided both Nick Adams and 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 that "once off the set, he went out of his way to go in the opposite direction." Also a friend of another Rebel co-star, Dennis Hopper

Dennis Hopper

Dennis Lee Hopper was an American actor, filmmaker and artist. As a young man, Hopper became interested in acting and eventually became a student of the Actors' Studio. He made his first television appearance in 1954 and appeared in two films featuring James Dean, Rebel Without a Cause and Giant...

, Gilmore hung out with him in Hollywood and also in New York City.

In the late 1950s, John Gilmore spent time in Paris, France, frequented the Beat Hotel

Beat Hotel

The Beat Hotel was a small, run-down hotel of 42 rooms at 9 Rue Gît-le-Cœur in the Latin Quarter of Paris, notable chiefly as a residence for members of the Beat poetry movement of the mid-20th century -Overview:...

, sustained friendships with novelist Françoise Sagan

Françoise Sagan

Françoise Sagan – real name Françoise Quoirez – was a French playwright, novelist, and screenwriter. Hailed as "a charming little monster" by François Mauriac on the front page of Le Figaro, Sagan was known for works with strong romantic themes involving wealthy and disillusioned bourgeois...

and movie star Brigitte Bardot

Brigitte Bardot

Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot is a French former fashion model, actress, singer and animal rights activist. She was one of the best-known sex-symbols of the 1960s.In her early life, Bardot was an aspiring ballet dancer...

. He met William S. Burroughs

William S. Burroughs

and wrote a novel that was opted by Henry Miller's

Henry Miller

Henry Valentine Miller was an American novelist and painter. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of 'novel' that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is...

publisher, Maurice Girodias

Maurice Girodias

Maurice Girodias was the founder of the Olympia Press. At one time he was the owner of his father's Obelisk Press, and spent most of his productive years in Paris.-Early life:...

of Olympia Press

Olympia Press

Olympia Press was a Paris-based publisher, launched in 1953 by Maurice Girodias as a rebranded version of the Obelisk Press he inherited from his father Jack Kahane...

. However, the novel was not published due to financial troubles related to Olympia Press. Girodias later started a publishing company in New York: Girodias Press, and with the encouragement of William Burroughs, Gilmore's novel was again set to go to press, this time under the title "Passenger of Satan." Again the company folded. The book was later published by Creation Books in the UK, under the original title, "Fetish Blonde". Gilmore says, "The novel underwent a number of changes in those decades but the guts remained the same."

Gilmore published his first account on 60s cult

Cult

The word cult in current popular usage usually refers to a group whose beliefs or practices are considered abnormal or bizarre. The word originally denoted a system of ritual practices...

leader and convicted murderer, Charles Manson

Charles Manson

in 1971 titled The Garbage People. Modestly successful, it gained a much larger audience through a 1996 re-release, and, like most of Gilmore's books, remains in print.

Mid-Life

In 1994, Gilmore wrote a book that chronicled the famous Black Dahlia

Black Dahlia

"The Black Dahlia" was a nickname given to Elizabeth Short is an American woman and the victim of a gruesome and much-publicized murder. She acquired the moniker posthumously by newspapers in the habit of nicknaming crimes they found particularly colorful...

unsolved homicide. Occurring in 1947, at a time when his father was on the police force, Gilmore's book Severed: The True Story of the Black Dahlia Murder earned him wide recognition. According to the Publishers Weekly

Publishers Weekly

Publishers Weekly, aka PW, is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers and literary agents...

review, in the book "Gilmore presents evidence that strengthens the LAPD's case against chief suspect Jack Wilson, a reclusive, alcoholic

Alcoholism

Alcoholism is a broad term for problems with alcohol, and is generally used to mean compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of alcoholic beverages, usually to the detriment of the drinker's health, personal relationships, and social standing...

burglar and possible serial killer

Serial killer

A serial killer, as typically defined, is an individual who has murdered three or more people over a period of more than a month, with down time between the murders, and whose motivation for killing is usually based on psychological gratification...

". Marilyn Manson

Marilyn Manson (person)

Marilyn Manson is an American musician, artist and former music journalist known for his controversial stage persona and image as the lead singer of the eponymous band Marilyn Manson...

, who made paintings based on photos from the book, said: "Severed is my favorite book... John Gilmore is my favorite writer. It has been my desire to direct Severed as a movie ... my directorial debut ...". The motion picture rights to Severed: The True Story of the Black Dahlia Murder had been under option by Edward Pressman Films for six years, during which time David Lynch

David Lynch

David Keith Lynch is an American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor. Known for his surrealist films, he has developed his own unique cinematic style, which has been dubbed "Lynchian", and which is characterized by its dream imagery and meticulous sound...

was brought in to direct. Due to disagreements in the approach to the subject, despite having developed a script, the deal with David Lynch dissolved. Chris Hanley was then producing Severed: The True Story of the Black Dahlia Murder, for Edward Pressman Films, with Floria Sigismondi

Floria Sigismondi

Floria Sigismondi is an Italian, naturalised Canadian, photographer and director.Apart from her art exhibitions, she is best known for writing and directing The Runaways, starring Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning...

involved as director. Colin Wilson

Colin Wilson

Colin Henry Wilson is a prolific English writer who first came to prominence as a philosopher and novelist. Wilson has since written widely on true crime, mysticism and other topics. He prefers calling his philosophy new existentialism or phenomenological existentialism.- Early biography:Born and...

says of Gilmore's Severed: The True Story of the Black Dahlia Murder: "The best book on the Black Dahlia--in fact, the only reliable book."

John Gilmore's second 1996 release received praise from the New York Times Book Review for his story on the life and crimes of multiple murder

Murder

Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...

er, Charles Schmid

Charles Schmid

Charles Howard 'Smitty' Schmid, Jr. , also known as "The Pied Piper of Tucson," was an American serial killer. His crimes, profiled in the March 4, 1966 issue of Life Magazine, are the basis for "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?," a short story by Joyce Carol Oates...

. In 1997, in "Laid Bare", his first book of memoirs, Gilmore recounts his associations beginning in the 1950s and through the 1960s with Hank Williams, Janis Joplin

Janis Joplin

Janis Lyn Joplin was an American singer, songwriter, painter, dancer and music arranger. She rose to prominence in the late 1960s as the lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company and later as a solo artist with her backing groups, The Kozmic Blues Band and The Full Tilt Boogie Band...

, Jack Nicholson

Jack Nicholson

John Joseph "Jack" Nicholson is an American actor, film director, producer and writer. He is renowned for his often dark portrayals of neurotic characters. Nicholson has been nominated for an Academy Award twelve times, and has won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice: for One Flew Over the...

, Jane Fonda

Jane Fonda

Jane Fonda is an American actress, writer, political activist, former fashion model, and fitness guru. She rose to fame in the 1960s with films such as Barbarella and Cat Ballou. She has won two Academy Awards and received several other movie awards and nominations during more than 50 years as an...

, Dennis Hopper

Dennis Hopper

, Brigitte Bardot

Brigitte Bardot

, Jean Seberg

Jean Seberg

Jean Dorothy Seberg was an American actress. She starred in 37 films in Hollywood and in France, including Breathless , the musical Paint Your Wagon and the disaster film Airport ....

, Steve McQueen

Steve McQueen

Terrence Steven "Steve" McQueen was an American movie actor. He was nicknamed "The King of Cool." His "anti-hero" persona, which he developed at the height of the Vietnam counterculture, made him one of the top box-office draws of the 1960s and 1970s. McQueen received an Academy Award nomination...

, Irish McCalla

Irish McCalla

Nellie Elizabeth "Irish" McCalla was an American actress and artist best known as the title star of the 1950s television series Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. Sheena co-starred actor Chris Drake...

, Jayne Mansfield

Jayne Mansfield

Jayne Mansfield was an American actress working both in Hollywood and on the Broadway theatre...

, and other personalities.

Current life

Married and divorced three times, John Gilmore has a son, Carson Gilmore (an actor and published author), and a daughter, Ursula Gilmore, an artist, journalist and businesswoman. Gilmore is currently single and living in the Hollywood Hills. He is frequently interviewed in the media from the Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....

and New York Times to international publications, and documentaries, and is described as a noir

Hardboiled

Hardboiled crime fiction is a literary style, most commonly associated with detective stories, distinguished by the unsentimental portrayal of violence and sex. The style was pioneered by Carroll John Daly in the mid-1920s, popularized by Dashiell Hammett over the course of the decade, and refined...

cult figure, a "cultural icon

Icon

An icon is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, from Eastern Christianity and in certain Eastern Catholic churches...

," with numerous books in the works. He is published worldwide and recently completed an in-depth memoir, "a personal journey," Gilmore says, into the short life of Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model and showgirl who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s....

: Inside Marilyn Monroe. Gilmore has since published another novel,Hollywood Boulevard, and is working on what he calls his "true crime, creative nonfiction," On the Run with Bonnie & Clyde. This book is set for Spring 2011 publication.

Published works

Dark Obsession (1963)
Strange Fire (1963)
The Tucson Murders (1970)
The Garbage People (1971)
The Real James Dean (1976)
Severed: The True Story of the Black Dahlia Murder (1994)
Cold-Blooded: The Saga of Charles Schmid, the Notorious "Pied Piper of Tucson" (1996)
Laid Bare: A Memoir of Wrecked Lives and the Hollywood Death Trip (1997)
Live Fast-Die Young: Remembering the Short Life of James Dean (1997) (Can be read at Amazon.com
Fetish Blonde (1998)
Manson: The Unholy Trail of Charlie and the Family (2000)
L.A. Despair: A Landscape of Crimes & Bad Times (2005)
Crazy Streak (2006)
Inside Marilyn Monroe (2007)
Hollywood Boulevard (2009)

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Biography

Acting and writing careers

Mid-Life

Current life

Published works

Further reading

External links