Howard Austen

Howard Austen (born Howard Auster; January 28, 1929 – September 22, 2003) was an American copywriter, theatrical stage manager, and film production assistant. Austen is best known as the longtime companion of writer Gore Vidal, with whom he lived for more than fifty years. He began his career working in advertising before serving as assistant stage manager for the 1955 Broadway production of Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? and later assisted with casting for the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird. He also managed Vidal's personal and financial affairs.

Early life and career Howard Auster was born into a working-class Jewish family and grew up in the Pelham Parkway area of the Bronx.

According to Austen, he engaged in sexual encounters with older males during his childhood. Biographer Fred Kaplan wrote that Austen associated the secrecy and transgressive nature of such encounters with both his early discovery of sexuality and his mother's disapproval of his masturbation. In an interview with Kaplan, Austen recalled: "I did it once, I think, with the super's son that was enjoyment. I did get blown in the park, I must have been eleven, by a twenty or twenty-one-year-old guy. But I really did the seducing. I was really very aggressive about it as a child. Far more then than I would ever dream of being now. And that kind of sex was so exciting. I continued that in high school."

Austen attended Christopher Columbus High School in the Bronx.

Austen had aspirations to become a singer. At Vidal's suggestion, he changed his surname from "Auster" to "Austen" "after advertising firms refused to hire him because he was Jewish". Immediately after he changed his name, Austen was hired at Doyle, Dane & Bernbach, which is today known as DDB.

Austen would go on to become the assistant stage manager for the Broadway theater play Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? in 1955. He also worked in film, assisting with the casting of the classic 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird.

Relationship with Gore Vidal On Labor Day in 1950, Austen met Gore Vidal at New York City's Everard Baths. Writing in Vogue in 1974, Curtis Bill Pepper observed that they "are just good friends, nothing else now." Vidal later characterized their bond as "two men who decided to spend their lives together." Reflecting on the nature of their relationship, he remarked: "It's easy to sustain a relationship when sex plays no part, and impossible, I have observed, when it does." Austen recalled to biographer Fred Kaplan:I guess I ended up being a permanent playmate, Greek chorus, and Jewish mother. Who could ask for anything more? I got the company of Gore. Beyond anything I ever dreamed of. ... I know people are puzzled by how it works between me and Gore. What do you say? "Hi, I'm Howard Austen, I'm associated with Gore Vidal, but we don't sleep together?" You assume when two men are living together that [they do]. It was a corner that they put me into that I just had to accept.Austen managed Vidal's financial affairs, travel arrangements, and housing needs.