Charles Higham is an author, editor and poet. Higham is a recipient of the Prix des Créateurs of the Académie Française

Académie française

L'Académie française , also called the French Academy, is the pre-eminent French learned body on matters pertaining to the French language. The Académie was officially established in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to King Louis XIII. Suppressed in 1793 during the French Revolution,...

 and the Poetry Society

Poetry Society

The Poetry Society is a membership organisation, open to all, whose stated aim is "to promote the study, use and enjoyment of poetry".The Society was founded in London in February 1909 as the Poetry Recital Society, becoming the Poetry Society in 1912...

 of London Prize.

Biography

Higham is the son of MP and advertising mogul Sir Charles Higham. He published two early books of verse in 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...

, before moving to Sydney

Sydney

Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...

, Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

 in 1954, where at twenty-three he became a prominent book and film critic. He became literary editor of The Bulletin, the country's leading weekly, in 1964, and published three more collections of verse.

In the 1960's, Higham also compiled a number of now-scarce horror anthologies for Horwitz Publishing House

Horwitz Publishing House

Horwitz Publications, is an Australian publisher primarily known for its publication of popular and pulp fiction. Established in 1921 in Sydney, Australia by Israel and Ruth Horwitz, the company was a family-owned and -run business until the early 21st century. The company is most associated with...

, reprinting mainly material by non-Australian writers, the majority of the stories being reprinted from Montague Summers

Montague Summers

Augustus Montague Summers was an eccentric English author and clergyman. He is known primarily for his scholarly work on the English drama of the 17th century, as well as for his idiosyncratic studies on witches, vampires, and werewolves, in all of which he professed to believe...

' 1936 anthology The Grimoire and Other Supernatural Stories. Australian writer Terry Dowling

Terry Dowling

Terence William Dowling, born at Lystra Private Hospital , is an Australian writer, freelance journalist, award-winning critic, editor, game designer and reviewer...

 contributes an essay discussing the influence of Higham's horror anthologies on his own writing to Stephen Jones

Stephen Jones

Stephen Jones may refer to:In the arts:*Stephen Jones , English magazine editor*Stephen Jones , Australian music and video artist*Stephen Jones , British editor and author...

 Horror: Another 100 Best Books.

Higham was named Regents Professor by the University of California

University of California

The University of California is a public university system in the U.S. state of California. Under the California Master Plan for Higher Education, the University of California is a part of the state's three-tier public higher education system, which also includes the California State University...

, an honor accorded to leading literary figures in foreign countries, and while at UC Santa Cruz

Santa Cruz, California

Santa Cruz is the county seat and largest city of Santa Cruz County, California in the US. As of the 2010 U.S. Census, Santa Cruz had a total population of 59,946...

 he discovered the lost footage of It's All True, Orson Welles

Orson Welles

George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...

's uncompleted Latin American triptych

Triptych

A triptych , from tri-= "three" + ptysso= "to fold") is a work of art which is divided into three sections, or three carved panels which are hinged together and can be folded shut or displayed open. It is therefore a type of polyptych, the term for all multi-panel works...

. In The Films of Orson Welles (1970) and in Orson Welles: The Rise and Fall of an American Genius (1985), he argued that the film maker Orson Welles

Orson Welles

George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...

 suffered from a "fear of completion" that led Welles to abandon projects when they were nearly finished in order to be able to blame others for their flaws. Friends of Welles, in particular Peter Bogdanovich

Peter Bogdanovich

Peter Bogdanovich is an American film historian, director, writer, actor, producer, and critic. He was part of the wave of "New Hollywood" directors, which included William Friedkin, Brian De Palma, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Michael Cimino, and Francis Ford Coppola...

, criticised this thesis. Newsweek

Newsweek

Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...

 devoted a full-page spread to Higham as a film detective and the New York Times engaged him as its Hollywood feature writer for the Sunday theatre Section.

Higham's first best seller was Kate (1975), the first authorised biography of Katharine Hepburn

Katharine Hepburn

Katharine Houghton Hepburn was an American actress of film, stage, and television. In a career that spanned 62 years as a leading lady, she was best known for playing strong-willed, sophisticated women in both dramas and comedies...

. This success was followed by Bette, the Life of Bette Davis, a biography of Lucille Ball

Lucille Ball

Lucille Désirée Ball was an American comedian, film, television, stage and radio actress, model, film and television executive, and star of the sitcoms I Love Lucy, The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour, The Lucy Show, Here's Lucy and Life With Lucy...

, and The Duchess of Windsor (1988, 2005). His book Howard Hughes became the basis of Martin Scorsese

Martin Scorsese

Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...

's film The Aviator (2004). Higham's Trading with the Enemy: The Nazi American Money Plot 1933-1949 detailed U.S. industry's links with Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

. He also published Sisters: The Story of Olivia De Havilland and Joan Fontaine in 1984, about the legendary feud between actresses Olivia de Havilland

Olivia de Havilland

Olivia Mary de Havilland is a British American film and stage actress. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1946 and 1949. She is the elder sister of actress Joan Fontaine. The sisters are among the last surviving leading ladies from Hollywood of the 1930s.-Early life:Olivia de Havilland...

 and Joan Fontaine

Joan Fontaine

Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland , known professionally as Joan Fontaine, is a British American actress. She and her elder sister Olivia de Havilland are two of the last surviving leading ladies from Hollywood of the 1930s....

.

Higham has also written Murder in Hollywood: Solving a Silent Screen Mystery on the death of William Desmond Taylor

William Desmond Taylor

William Desmond Taylor was an Irish-born American actor, successful film director of silent movies and a popular figure in the growing Hollywood film colony of the 1910s and early 1920s...

 and a biography of Jennie Churchill, Dark Lady: Winston Churchill's Mother and Her World (2006).

With Roy Moseley he wrote biographies of Cary Grant

Cary Grant

Archibald Alexander Leach , better known by his stage name Cary Grant, was an English actor who later took U.S. citizenship...

, Merle Oberon

Merle Oberon

Merle Oberon was an Indian-born British actress best known for her screen performances in The Scarlet Pimpernel and The Cowboy and the Lady . She began her film career in British films as Anne Boleyn in The Private Life of Henry VIII . She travelled to the United States to make films for Samuel...

, and Queen Elizabeth II

Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom

Elizabeth II is the constitutional monarch of 16 sovereign states known as the Commonwealth realms: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize,...

 and Prince Philip (Elizabeth and Philip: The Untold Story 1991). The co-authors later had a serious falling out. In the first edition of Moseley's memoir of Bette Davis

Bette Davis

Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis was an American actress of film, television and theater. Noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic characters, she was highly regarded for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional...

, Higham is called "my great friend", but in the second revised edition he is a "doubtful author" and his name is omitted from the acknowledgements.

Charles Higham published his autobiography, In and Out of Hollywood: A Biographer's Memoir, in 2009.

Errol Flynn controversy

In 1980, Higham published a controversial biography, Errol Flynn: The Untold Story in which he alleged that Errol Flynn

Errol Flynn

Errol Leslie Flynn was an Australian-born actor. He was known for his romantic swashbuckler roles in Hollywood films, being a legend and his flamboyant lifestyle.-Early life:...

 was a bisexual fascist sympathiser who spied for the Nazis before and during World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 and had affairs with Tyrone Power

Tyrone Power

Tyrone Edmund Power, Jr. , usually credited as Tyrone Power and known sometimes as Ty Power, was an American film and stage actor who appeared in dozens of films from the 1930s to the 1950s, often in swashbuckler roles or romantic leads such as in The Mark of Zorro, Blood and Sand, The Black Swan,...

, Howard Hughes

Howard Hughes

Howard Robard Hughes, Jr. was an American business magnate, investor, aviator, engineer, film producer, director, and philanthropist. He was one of the wealthiest people in the world...

, and Truman Capote

Truman Capote

Truman Streckfus Persons , known as Truman Capote , was an American author, many of whose short stories, novels, plays, and nonfiction are recognized literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's and the true crime novel In Cold Blood , which he labeled a "nonfiction novel." At...

.

Tony Thomas, in Errol Flynn: The Spy Who Never Was (Citadel, 1990) and Buster Wiles in My Days With Errol Flynn: The Autobiography of a Stuntman (Roundtable, 1988) have denounced Higham's claims as fabrications, a claim substantiated by one's viewing the F.B.I. documents, which were altered - rather than quoted verbatim - by Higham.

According to Thomas and Wiles, Flynn was notorious in Hollywood as a womaniser

Womaniser

Womaniser or womanizer may refer to:*Womaniser, a promiscuous heterosexual man*"Womanizer" , a 2008 song by Britney Spears...

 and was a left wing supporter of the Spanish Republic

Second Spanish Republic

The Second Spanish Republic was the government of Spain between April 14 1931, and its destruction by a military rebellion, led by General Francisco Franco....

 in the Spanish Civil War

Spanish Civil War

The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...

 and of the Cuban Revolution

Cuban Revolution

The Cuban Revolution was an armed revolt by Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement against the regime of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista between 1953 and 1959. Batista was finally ousted on 1 January 1959, and was replaced by a revolutionary government led by Castro...

, even narrating a documentary entitled The Truth About Fidel Castro Revolution shortly before his death.

Personal life

In his autobiography Higham talks of his molestation by his stepmother and reveals his early marriage despite his growing awareness of his homosexuality. He and his wife stayed great friends although she later adopted a lesbian lifestyle. Higham lives with his boyfriend Richard V. Palafox, a nurse. 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...

Theatre and Film

• The Films of Orson Welles (1970)
• Hollywood in the Forties (co-written with Joel Greenberg) (1970)
• Ziegfeld (1972)
• Cecil B. DeMille: A Biography of the Most Successful Film Maker of Them All (1973)
• The Art of the American film, 1900-1971 (1973)
• Kate: The Life of Katharine Hepburn (1976)
• Charles Laughton: An Intimate Biography (1976)
• Marlene: The Life of Marlene Dietrich (1977)
• Celebrity Circus (1979)
• Errol Flynn: The Untold Story (1980)
• Bette, the Life of Bette Davis (1981)
• Sisters: The Story of Olivia De Haviland and Joan Fontaine (1984)
• Audrey: a Biography of Audrey Hepburn (1985)
• Orson Welles: The Rise and Fall of An American Genius (1985)
• Cary Grant: The Lonely Heart (1989)
• Merchant of Dreams: Louis B. Mayer, M.G.M., and the Secret Hollywood (1993)
• Howard Hughes: The Secret Life (1993)
• Murder in Hollywood: Solving a Silent Screen Mystery (2004)

Royalty

• The Duchess of Windsor: The Secret Life (1988), (2005)
• Elizabeth and Phillip: The Untold Story of the Queen of England and Her Prince (1991)

General

• The Adventures of Conan Doyle: The Life of the Creator of Sherlock Holmes (1976)
• Dark Lady: Winston Churchill's Mother and Her World (2006)

Poetry

• A Distant Star
• Spring And Death
• The Earthbound
• Noonday Country
• The Voyage To Brindisi

Anthologies

• They Came To Australia
• Australians Abroad
• Penguin Australian Writing Today

Politics

• Trading With The Enemy: The Nazi-American Money Plot 1933-1949
• American Swastika

External links