Fewer good biographers: Gavin Lambert dead at 80

[Eve]

He was a really terrific, reliable and readable biographer, I’ll miss his work:

LOS ANGELES, July 18 - Gavin Lambert, an incisive observer of life in Hollywood through his screenplays, novels and film histories, died on Sunday at a hospital in Los Angeles. He was 80. Mr. Lambert’s fiction and nonfiction speak candidly about the realities of Hollywood stardom and about the potentially destructive effects of the industry’s harsh demands on artistry. His sharp and often droll insights are evident in an acclaimed book of short stories about Hollywood, The Slide Area: Scenes of Hollywood Life, first published in 1959; in his novel Inside Daisy Clover, which he adapted for the screen for Natalie Wood; and in a 2004 biography, Natalie Wood: A Life. In Nazimova, he explored the life of Alla Nazimova, a Russian immigrant and a star of stage and silent films, and in Norma Shearer, he chronicled the life of one of Hollywood’s biggest stars in the 1920s and 30s, one who was intimately connected with the studio power structure.

[Homebrew]

So your plan to become the greatest living biography is under way, I see.

[Homebrew]

:smack:

… greatest living biographer …

[Otto]

Biography, biographer, either one works for the masses clamoring for Eve’s life story.

AFAIK the only book of his I’ve read is the Nazimova, and as I recall I found it quite entertaining.

[Eve]

I highly recommend his Norma Shearer book, too.

“If you only read one Norma Shearer book this year, make it Gavin Lambert’s,” say nine out of ten old-movie queens.

[Walloon]

He wrote the first production history of Gone With the Wind, which became a mini-genre in itself.