Annalee Whitmore Fadiman | |
|---|---|
| Born | May 26, 1916 Price, Utah |
| Died | February 5, 2002 (aged 85) Captiva, Florida |
| Occupation(s) | Writer and correspondent |
Annalee Whitmore Fadiman (May 27, 1916 – February 5, 2002)[1] was a scriptwriter for MGM, and World War II foreign correspondent for Life and Time magazines.[2] She was the co-author with Theodore H. White of Thunder Out of China, a book on the Chinese civil war.[3]
Early life
Fadiman was born in Price, Utah, the daughter of bank president Leland Whitmore and Anne Sharp Whitmore, who later became a librarian at New York Public Library. Fadiman graduated from Stanford University in 1937. She was the first woman to be managing editor of the Stanford Daily newspaper.[4] She moved from San Francisco, where she briefly worked at the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, to Los Angeles taking a secretarial pool job at MGM. She wrote several screen treatments including Andy Hardy Meets Debutante (1940) and a screen adaptation for Tish.[5]
Career
MGM offered her a contract but once the war began, Fadiman found "the prospect of seven years of Hollywood fluff when the real world was falling apart unendurable," and she tried to become a war correspondent but the War Department didn't allow female correspondents.[6]: 141 [4] She became a publicity manager for an aid organization called United China Relief and wrote speeches for Madame Chiang Kai-shek.[6]: 142 [7][4] During her marriage to correspondent Melville Jacoby, Fadiman survived a month-long escape from the Philippines, and did six weeks of reporting from the front lines of Bataan and Corregidor.[8] Their writings were used nearly unedited, by John Hersey, in his best-seller Men on Bataan.
After the death of her husband, she continued to pursue war writing. Theodore H. White persuaded Time Magazine's Henry Luce to petition the War Department for credentials for Fadiman. She became the only female correspondent reporting from Chungking.[9] She collaborated with White on the best-selling book Thunder Out of China, about China's role in the war which contained portions of their published dispatches from Time.[4]
After the war, Fadiman wrote, lectured, and participated in the radio quiz show Information Please.
Personal life
She was married to Melville Jacoby on November 24, 1941 in Manila.[10] He was killed in an airfield accident in Darwin in 1942 after the couple had moved to Brisbane.[9][4]
She married Clifton Fadiman in 1950.[11] The couple had two children, Kim Fadiman and Anne Fadiman. Fadiman lived on Captiva Island, Florida and was a member of the Hemlock Society. She took her own life in 2002 after living with breast cancer and Parkinson's disease.[9]
References
- ↑ "Annalee Fadiman Obituary - Captiva, Florida". Tributes.com. August 16, 2006. Retrieved August 12, 2018.
- ↑ "Anne Fadiman, a Writer, Wed to George Howe Colt". The New York Times. March 5, 1989. Retrieved August 12, 2018.
- ↑ Jacoby, Annalee; White, Theodore (1947). Thunder Out of China. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd.
- 1 2 3 4 5 Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher (February 6, 2002). "Annalee Whitmore Fadiman, 85, Screenwriter and War Journalist". The New York Times. Retrieved August 12, 2018.
- ↑ "Annalee Whitmore". IMDB. Retrieved 12 August 2018.
- 1 2 Sorel, Nancy Caldwell (2000). The Women Who Wrote the War. HarperCollins. ISBN 0060958391.
- ↑ "75 Years Ago, When War Seemed a Million Miles Away". Lascher at Large. November 24, 2016. Retrieved August 12, 2018.
- ↑ "Appreciation". Lascher at Large. April 24, 2017. Retrieved August 12, 2018.
- 1 2 3 "Annalee Whitmore Fadiman -- screenwriter, journalist". SFGate. February 11, 2002. Retrieved August 12, 2018.
- ↑ Lascher, Bill (2016). Eve of A Hundred Midnights. Harper Collins. ISBN 978-0062375216. Retrieved 12 August 2018.
- ↑ "CLIFTON FADIMAN TO WED; Gets License With Mrs. Jacoby, Widow of War Correspondent". The New York Times. February 8, 1950. Retrieved August 12, 2018.