LAMBERT, Gavin 1924-2005

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born July 23, 1924, in East Grinstead, Sussex, England; died of pulmonary fibrosis July 17, 2005, in Los Angeles, CA. Author. Screenwriter, novelist, and biographer. Lambert was admired especially as a chronicler of the world of Hollywood in both his fiction and nonfiction. He attended Cheltenham College and Magdalen College, Oxford, but quit the latter when he found out that he could not graduate without mastering medieval English. Lambert subsequently got a job as an editor and film critic for the movie magazine Sequence, and was editor of the magazine Sight & Sound from 1950 until 1955. After writing and directing the low-budget film Another Sky, he drew the attention of director Nicholas Ray, who invited him to join him in Hollywood. Lambert accepted, and worked with Ray on several films, including uncredited scriptwriting for Bigger than Life and The True Story of Jesse James. His first credited work was for the movie Bitter Victory (1958), which was followed by the Academy Award-nominated Sons and Lovers (1960) and The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1961). By this time, Lambert was also venturing into writing novels, beginning with The Slide Area: Scenes of Hollywood Life (1960) and Inside Daisy Clover (1963), which he also adapted into a 1965 movie of the same title. As his career evolved, he focused more on novels than scripts, although he earned a second Academy Award nomination for his 1978 adaptation of I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. His later books include a number of biographies, such as Norma Shearer: A Life (1990), Mainly about Lindsay Anderson (2000), and The Ivan Moffat File: Life among the Beautiful and Damned in London, Paris, New York and Hollywood (2004). A naturalized U.S. citizen in 1964, Lambert spent the last fifteen years of his life living in Los Angeles.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Independent (London, England), July 20, 2005, p. 34.

Los Angeles Times, July 19, 2005, p. B10.

New York Times, July 19, 2005, p. A22.

Times (London, England), July 21, 2005, p. 60.