Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

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RIP Charles Higham

COMMENT: We are sad­dened by the pass­ing of Charles High­am, author and Hol­ly­wood biog­ra­ph­er whose work includ­ed a very impor­tant for­ay into the Nazi Fifth Col­umn in the West, includ­ing and espe­cial­ly the U.S. indus­tri­al­ists and financiers who backed the Axis pow­ers of World War II.

In the audio archives, High­am’s work is well rep­re­sent­ed, pri­mar­i­ly his opus Trad­ing with the Ene­my and vital­ly impor­tant fol­low-up vol­ume Amer­i­can Swasti­ka.

Inevitably, High­am has come under fire from the “Usu­al Sus­pects”– jour­nal­is­tic snipers who take pot shots at the brave from behind insti­tu­tion­al cov­er.

In Errol Fly­nn: The Untold Sto­ry, High­am ana­lyzed the career of the Hol­ly­wood lover­boy and con­clud­ed that he had been a Nazi spy. Of sub­stan­tive inter­est in these quar­ters is the fact that Fly­nn was part of a cir­cle of UK expa­tri­ates in Hol­ly­wood that includ­ed Ronald Rea­gan. (Fly­nn and Rea­gan appeared in a num­ber of films togeth­er.)

As George Seldes not­ed, one must learn to “Tell the Truth and Run.”

Well done and Rest in Peace, brave war­rior.

“Charles High­am, Celebri­ty Biog­ra­ph­er, Dies at 81” by Mar­galit Fox; The New York Times; 5/3/2012.

EXCERPT: Charles High­am, a pro­lif­ic celebri­ty biog­ra­ph­er whose books drew vast atten­tion for their mem­o­rably vast claims (Errol Fly­nn was a Nazi spy, Howard Hugh­es played a cen­tral role in Water­gate), died on April 21 at his home in Los Ange­les. He was 81.

His death, appar­ent­ly of a heart attack, was announced on Wednes­day by his friend Todd McCarthy, the chief film crit­ic of The Hol­ly­wood Reporter.

Mr. High­am (pro­nounced HYE-um), who began his career as a poet, wrote some two dozen biogra­phies, whose sub­jects includ­ed Katharine Hep­burn, Mar­lene Diet­rich, Bette Davis, Rose Fitzger­ald Kennedy, Cary Grant and Orson Welles. . . .

. . . But none sent brows quite as high as “Errol Fly­nn: The Untold Sto­ry” (1980), in which Mr. High­am assert­ed that Fly­nn, who died in 1959, had spied for Ger­many dur­ing World War II. Though crit­ics fault­ed the book for build­ing a deduc­tive chain not express­ly com­pelled by the evi­dence, Mr. High­am defend­ed his meth­ods.

“I don’t have a doc­u­ment that says A, B, C, D, E, Errol Fly­nn was a Nazi agent,” he said in an inter­view with The New York Times the year the biog­ra­phy was pub­lished. “But I have pieced togeth­er a mosa­ic that proves that he is.” . . .

. . . . His oth­er books include “Trad­ing With the Ene­my: An Exposé of the Nazi-Amer­i­can Mon­ey Plot, 1933–1949” . . .

Discussion

2 comments for “RIP Charles Higham”

  1. I attribute much of my own awak­en­ing to “deep pol­i­tics” to the books of Mr High­am and Dav­e’s Mag­num Opus “How the US Lost WWII”.
    RIP Mr High­am.

    In pos­si­bly relat­ed news, researcher Peter Lev­en­da was on “Coast to Coast AM” last night dis­cussing his book on “Hitler’s Escape”. Worth a lis­ten if you can access the stream. Dave also did a show about this a while back which I think was called “Escape of the Wolf”(??).

    Posted by stu | May 14, 2012, 1:54 pm
  2. [...] RIP Charles High­am [...]

    Posted by Miscellaneous articles for – Articles divers pour 05-19-2012 | Lys-d'Or | May 19, 2012, 3:01 pm

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