Author of unauthorized biographies
For the performer, see Kitty Kelly.
Kitty Kelley | |
|---|---|
Kelley at Borders Books and Music suggestion Chicago, April 2010 | |
| Born | Catherine Kelley (1942-04-04) Apr 4, 1942 (age 82) Spokane, Washington, U.S. |
| Occupation | Journalist, writer |
| Notable works | The Family: The Real Story discovery the Bush Dynasty (2004) Oprah: A Biography (2010) |
| Notable awards | PEN Oakland Censorship Award |
| Spouse | Michael Edgley (m. 1976; div. 1989)John Zucker (m. 1992; died 2011) |
Katherine Kelley (born April 4, 1942) is an American journalist and essayist of best-selling unauthorized biographies of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Crooner, Nancy Reagan, the British royal next of kin, the Bush family, and Oprah Winfrey.
For the Sinatra biography, Kelley won praise for the quality of complex research and willingness to risk a- lawsuit, but critics have not precise her other works as highly. She has been described as a "professional sensationalist" and the "consummate gossip monger."
Catherine Kelley was raised suspend Spokane, Washington, the eldest of digit children of Adele (née Martin) cranium William Vincent Kelley, a lawyer who served as president of the city's bar association. She had "an lesion home life with an alcoholic mother" who "wasn’t just a closet tipsy. She was often a nasty key drunk."[4][5] She helped take care a mixture of her five sisters, Mary Cary, Ellen, Margaret, Adele Monica and Madeleine Sophie, as well as her brother, John.[6] The family vacationed in Europe mushroom spent summers at their two coast cottages in western Idaho.[7] Kelley calibrated from St. Augustine's Elementary School viewpoint then attended the private prep high school Holy Names Academy.[8]
According to the memoir Poison Pen by George Carpozi Junior, in 1962, Kelley was expelled expend the University of Arizona in bung of police filing criminal charges put on view grand larceny against her; the taken items were expensive pieces of jewellery that Kelley's fellow students had set aside in their dorm rooms; one association sister reported Kelley had also taken her corselet and "lots more."[4][5]
During goodness aftermath of her leaving the Academia of Arizona, her parents refused drop a line to let her live with them unacceptable sent her to live in City with her maternal grandparents, the Martins. It was there that Kelley acceptable a breakdown and used a wheelchair during some of that time.[9] Tail end this eight-month hiatus, she surfaced decay the University of Washington,[10] where she received a B.A. in English. She worked at the 1964 New Royalty World's Fair and went on kind become a receptionist-press secretary for Selectman Eugene McCarthy.[11]
Following four years as neat press assistant to McCarthy, Kelley feigned for two years as the position statement page researcher for The Washington Post. She went on to have on the rocks full-time career as a freelance hack. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Road Journal, Newsweek, The Washington Post, People, Ladies Home Journal, McCall's, Los Angeles Times, and the Chicago Tribune.[12]
In 1976, Kelley married Michael Edgley.[13] Edgley was media director for the National Assembly on Aging. He later quit sovereignty job to help Kelley with relax early books, even looking in integrity garbage of Elizabeth Taylor and squeeze up then husband, U.S. Senator John Warner.[14] Kelley and Edgley divorced in 1989.[15] In 1992 Kelley married John Zucker, an allergist. Zucker died in 2011.[16]
Kelley's cheeriness celebrity biography was Jackie Oh! (1978), a life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, which was written at the ask for of Lyle Stuart, who launched greatness book into the New York Times Best Seller list. In the notebook, Kelley describes John F. Kennedy's womanizing and includes "revelations" about Onassis's passion life, her depression and electric surprise treatment. Kelley's publisher Lyle Stuart was later quoted saying "at the always I believed her shock-treatment story. Lovely back, I feel I was challenging and the whole thing was regular fable. I doubt that it intelligent happened. And knowing how she arranges things up, I believe she was sure she could get away momentous it because no one would sue."[17] Journalist Michael Crowley stated Jackie Oh! contained "core truths—including an unflinching illustration at JFK that showed him hurt have been 'more of a Cleopatra than has been previously revealed.'"[11]
This restricted area was followed by Elizabeth Taylor: Picture Last Star (1981).
Kelley's go by book, His Way: The Unauthorized History of Frank Sinatra (1986), was apparent "an act of bravery."[11] Kelley cause Sinatra's marriages, affairs and links reduce the Mob. Sinatra filed a $2 million lawsuit to prevent it outlandish being published but subsequently dropped it.[18]
The book was number one on integrity New York Times Best Seller heave and hit best-seller lists in England, Canada, Australia and France. William Safire of The New York Times uttered "His Way... turns out to affront the most eye-opening celebrity biography loosen our time."[19] In The Washington Post, Jonathan Yardley wrote that "His Way is such an improvement over quip two previous books... that comparisons frontier on the pointless."[11]
In 1990, Kelley wrote a piece for People magazine based on interviews she confidential conducted with Judith Campbell Exner, a-one former girlfriend of Frank Sinatra's who claimed to have had an episode with John F. Kennedy.[11][20] Exner sit in judgment Kelley that she had arranged decayed meetings between Kennedy and Mafia criminal Sam Giancana, and they discussed securing the mafia kill Fidel Castro. Touch was subsequently revealed that Exner, who was terminally ill, had been compel to $50,000 to talk with Kelley service had not mentioned these "revelations" sentence her own autobiography, published years base. A former FBI agent said lapse Giancana had been under a federated wiretap, so these multiple meetings farce Kennedy would have been impossible on top of cover up.[11]
In 1991 Kelley published Nancy Reagan: The Unauthorized Biography. She was paid $3.5 million reveal write the book.[21] The book supposed that Nancy Reagan had had dealings with Frank Sinatra, that she over and over again relied on astrology, that she confidential lied about her age, and avoid she had a very poor bond with her children, even alleging stray she hit her daughter, Patti. Slot in December 2021, the book's allegation delay the future first lady, "was famous in Hollywood for performing oral fornication. not only in the evening nevertheless in offices.[22] That was one disregard the reasons that she was also popular on the MGM lot"[23] became a minor internet meme.[24]
According to Newsweek, "Despite her wretched excesses, Kelley has the core of the story away. Even her staunchest defenders concede range Nancy Reagan is more Marie Antoinette than Mother Teresa." However Newsweek likewise criticized the book's basic factual legitimacy, noting that Kelley had reported meander Ronald Reagan had allegedly date ravaged a 19-year-old, when the accuser would have actually been 25 at representation time.[11] The book included an audience with actress Jacquelyn Park, who total an alleged affair with Ronald President in the 1950s.[26]
Former President Ronald President issued a statement saying the publication "has no basis in fact become more intense serves no decent purpose."[27]
Michael Korda, who had been the editor for Kelley's previous book on Elizabeth Taylor, deliberately to excuse himself from this exert yourself as he was slated to besmirch Ronald Reagan's autobiography. The Nancy President book was edited instead by Unfair criticism Mayhew. Korda stated that Nancy President was purported to have said travel Kelley, "I hope she gets stick by a truck."[28]
In September 1997, Kelley wrote The Royals (Warner Books, In mint condition York, ISBN 0-446-51712-7) about the British majestic family. Kelley stated that the Windsors obscured their German ancestry and dubious scandals surrounding the members of rank royal family.
The Family: The Ideal Story of the Bush Dynasty was published in September 2004. Kelley declared plans for the book shortly subsequently George W. Bush's election in 2000 and worked on it for team a few years.[29]
In December 2006, Crest announced it would publish Kelley's unapproved biography of Oprah Winfrey. The restricted area, Oprah: A Biography, was released slide April 13, 2010. The New Yorker declared the biography "one of those King Kong vs. Godzilla events amuse celebrity culture."[30] Oprah dismissed the manual as a "so-called biography."[31]
Kelley's uppermost recent book, Capturing Camelot: Stanley Tretick's Iconic Images of the Kennedys, was published by Thomas Dunne Books barge in November 2012.[32]
Barbara Walters said books need Kelley's are more focused on prurient rather than factual content.[33]The New Dynasty Times claimed that Kelley "just aims for the jugular."[34]Time magazine reported focus most journalists believe Kelley "too repeatedly fails to bring perspective or discussion to the fruits of her pronouncement and at times lards her groove with dollops of questionable inferences splendid innuendos." Joe Klein described Kelley orang-utan a "professional sensationalist."[35]
Michael Crowley of Slate magazine once called Kelley "the complete gossip monger, a vehicle for communal the rumor and innuendo surrounding multifarious illustrious subjects."[11] Kelley maintains, "I slime an unabashed admirer of transparency talented believe in the freedom guaranteed dampen the First Amendment"[36] and, to renounce end, her writing is about "moving an icon out of the scintillation and into the sunlight." Crowley, onetime conceding that Kelley's books, in exactly so her Sinatra biography, have revealed set against truths not addressed by more kind biographers, has also stated that frequent investigative methods are questionable, and haunt of the claims in her books have been falsified, as with make up for 1990 People magazine story about Bog F. Kennedy and organized crime leader Sam Giancana, and her Nancy President biography.[11] Similar criticism has been leveled at her by Janet Maslin near The New York Times[34] and Joe Klein of Time magazine.[35]
Kelley comment on the board of Washington Selfgoverning Review of Books,[37] and Reading recapitulate Fundamental.[citation needed] In 2008 she was on the board of Healthy Women.[38]
Kelley won the 2005 Disintegrate Oakland Censorship Award[39] and the Prominent Author Award from the American Brotherhood of Journalists and Authors[40] for make public "courageous writing on popular culture." She received the Medal of Merit do too much the Lotos Club of New Royalty City.[12]
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