David Whiting

David Andrew Whiting (August 1946 – February 11, 1973) was an American writer and personal manager who died in unusual circumstances. After becoming the youngest correspondent hired by Time, he turned to working in the film industry, where he enjoyed close friendships with actresses Candice Bergen and particularly Sarah Miles. After a brief affair with the latter, he became her personal manager.

A child of a broken marriage, he was educated at the exclusive St. Albans School in Washington, D.C., where his mother lived. He made an impression on fellow students there, and some faculty, with his intelligence and persona. Due to academic difficulties, he left the school after his junior year for Georgetown, where he also fell short academically. After a year working on a documentary film shoot in Libya, which cemented his interest in that field, he returned to the U.S. to finish his undergraduate studies at Haverford College.

Following his 1968 graduation, he began his journalistic career, notably managing to sneak into a White House ball he was covering for Time and briefly dance with Patricia Nixon before the Secret Service caught him. He began gravitating toward film at the expense of his journalistic career, and was able to help Miles and her husband, playwright and screenwriter Robert Bolt, get Lady Caroline Lamb, Bolt's only directorial effort, produced in 1971. Whiting was unsuccessful in getting his own screenplays produced.

Miles recalls Whiting as psychologically unstable, overly protective of her, sometimes to the point of abuse, and threatening suicide on several occasions. Following an incident during production of The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing in 1973, Whiting was found dead, with a significant head injury and high concentrations of two tranquilizers in his bloodstream, in Miles's hotel room after fighting with her and co-star Burt Reynolds in the early morning. Extensive media coverage speculated that Reynolds had played some role in Whiting's death; MGM's lawyers allowed local authorities only limited access to Reynolds, Miles and her nanny, who had slept the night in the room adjoining Miles's. Almost two months later a coroner's jury found Whiting's death to be the result of an accidental overdose, but qualified that conclusion as based on limited evidence and demanding of further investigation. Private investigators and experts hired by Whiting's mother came to different conclusions.

Early life and education David Andrew Whiting was born to Robert, an urban planner, and Louise Whiting in New York City on August 25/26, 1946. The couple divorced when David was three years old; Robert began a new family in Chicago and became estranged from Louise and David, though he did send child support payments he could scarcely afford. Louise also remarried, to Francis Newell Campbell, becoming Louise Campbell. They lived in a small house in the north of Washington, D.C., described by Whiting's friends as a depressing environment. Louise was eccentric and emotionally distant, and enrolled her son at various boarding schools from the age of 10. Whiting resented her, finding her uncaring, and only called her "Mater". enrolling as a sophomore with Davis' help. He was popular among women, particularly at nearby Bryn Mawr College while there, though an ex-girlfriend of the time described him as not overly handsome and suggested the other women, like her, were intrigued by his eccentric nature and film connections, describing him as "a person in a lot of psychic pain." Agronsky noted that Whiting was one of three St. Albans classmates to die tragically young, each in ways Agronsky said "seemed to reflect the struggles our (Baby Boom) generation had faced while coming of age". Miles had called Whiting to invite him but he declined. She rode with Reynolds on the way out but returned early with Lee J. Cobb to ride in his new car. After spending some time at the motel's cocktail lounge, she decided to apologize to Reynolds for leaving without him, going to his room at almost midnight. A masseuse, Letsgo Roberts, hired initially to tend to Miles on the production, arrived in Reynolds' room to give him a massage, at about the same time as Miles. Roberts believed the pair had been drinking but were not drunk at the time. She left around 2a.m., offering to walk Miles back to her room, but Reynolds turned down the offer. Reynolds and Miles talked and spent time in the room until around 3a.m. When Miles left his room, Reynolds walked her to her door. Miles then said that "as soon as she stepped into [her] room [...] Whiting jumped out of the dressing room".

Campbell, Whiting's mother, came to Gila Bend four days after his death, accusing Reynolds of his murder. The New York Times reported that after beginning the oath incorrectly, Winsor told Miles: "You're so pretty, you shook me up." Campbell solicited Bernard Beryl Brodie, a leading pharmacologist, to produce an affidavit saying the toxicity of drugs in Whiting's body "was not likely to cause death", Whiting's body was moved from Buckeye to San Francisco on March 17.

On March 22, the jury foreman, after delivering the accidental overdose verdict, said he thought the case should be re-investigated. The Gila Bend police chief indicated that he, too, wanted to continue investigating and review the original investigation. the Encyclopaedia of British Film and British Film Institute call it a suicide.

Miles returned to England following the inquest but media pressure in the aftermath made her decide to relocate to Los Angeles, where she could be "just another tiddler in a tank of sharks". Her family, similarly, felt forced to move. In 2007, she said that being accused of Whiting's murder was the lowest point in her life. The impact of the media response to Whiting's death and the inquest also caused strain on Miles and Bolt's marriage, and they divorced in 1976 but remarried 12 years later. In 2000, film journalist Harry Haun wrote that making reference to Whiting's death (which he called a suicide) in promoting the film was a "tawdry tactic", and that Reynolds had to threaten MGM with a lawsuit to make them change the slogan.

In 2019, Whiting's death was included in a tabloid list of "famous unsolved Hollywood murders". His "bizarre" death was first profiled in tabloids on March 1, 1973, before the inquest was heard. In the early 1990s, book Tales of Hollywood the Bizarre included a chapter on Gila Bend and Whiting's death; the author wrote that Whiting's head injury came from a coffee table in Reynolds' motel room. In 1994, both Reynolds and Miles published autobiographies which mention the incident. Miles wrote a screenplay about Whiting, completed in 2019. and recollections of Whiting's death formed the basis of the 2014 film The David Whiting Story by Walter Reuben, which won the Best Experimental/Independent Film award from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association at the 2014 Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards. Reuben had also attended Haverford, and met Whiting at the film society Reuben founded there.