Gavin Lambert

Gavin Lambert (23 July 1924 – 17 July 2005) was an English screenwriter, film critic, novelist and biographer. Described as "an incisive observer of life in Hollywood," his writing was mainly fiction and nonfiction about the film industry, particularly from a queer lens. Early in his career, he was an editor for the influential journals Sequence and Sight and Sound, and a critic for The Sunday Times and The Guardian.

Lambert's screenwriting work earned him two Academy Award nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay, for Sons and Lovers (1960) and I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (1977).

Early life and writing Gavin's father's half-sister was Ivy Claudine Godber aka Claudine West (1890-1943), a screenwriter who won an Oscar for her joint writing of the script of Mrs. Miniver in 1942.

Lambert was educated at Cheltenham College and Magdalen College, Oxford, where one of his professors was C. S. Lewis. At Oxford, he befriended Penelope Houston and filmmakers Karel Reisz and Lindsay Anderson, and they founded a short-lived but influential journal, Sequence, which was originally edited by Houston. The magazine, which lasted for only 15 issues, moved to London after the fifth issue, and Lambert and Anderson took over as co-editors. Lambert eventually left Oxford without obtaining a degree.

His final biography, Natalie Wood: A Life (2004) contains numerous errors of fact. For instance, on page nine, Lambert misstates that Wood's mother "met and married" her first husband Alexander Tatuloff in 1928. Legal records show that Wood's mother married Tatuloff on 31 August 1925. On page four, Lambert misstates that Wood's mother was born in 1912. Legal records show that Wood's mother was actually born on 26 January 1908.

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 novels 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 Goodby 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. Other works of fiction included Norman's Letter (1966), which received the Thomas R. Coward Memorial Award for Fiction, A Case for the Angels (1968), and In the Night All Cats Are Grey (1976). In 1996, Lambert wrote the introduction to 3 Plays, a collection of works by his longtime friend, Mart Crowley.

Personal life and death 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.

Filmography

Film

Television

Awards and nominations