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 of reportage on World War Two in China.[3]
Annalee Whitmore Fadiman | |
|---|---|
| Born | May 26, 1916 Price, Utah |
| Died | February 5, 2002 (aged 85) Captiva, Florida |
| Occupation(s) | Writer and correspondent |
Early life edit
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 student newspaper.[4] She moved from San Francisco, where she briefly worked at the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, then 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 edit
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 applied to become a war correspondent but the War Department didn't allow female correspondents.[6]: 141 [4] She became a publicity manager for United China Relief, an aid organization, 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 work as a journalist. 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 Chongqing, China's wartime capital.[9] After the war, 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]
In the following years, she wrote, lectured, and participated in the radio quiz show Information Please.
Personal life edit
She married Melville Jacoby on November 24, 1941 in Manila, Philippines.[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 edit
- ^ "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.
- ^ a b c d e 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.
- ^ a b 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.
- ^ a b c "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.