Higham's Trading with the Enemy: The Nazi American Money Plot 1933-1949 and American Swastika: The Shocking Story of Nazi Collaborators in Our Midst From 1933 to the Present Day presented his claims about the US industry's links with Nazi Germany. Barbara Shulgasser, in The New York Times wrote that the book's "obsession with Grant's sexuality is more a reflection of the authors' keen perception of what sells books than of any allegiance to the dictates of ethical journalism." Īfter the publication of Higham's book Howard Hughes, according to Margalit Fox of The New York Times, "his assertions that Hughes had a romance with Cary Grant, was centrally involved in Watergate, offering material assistance to some of the conspirators, and quite possibly died of AIDS all raised eyebrows in the news media." The work became the basis of Martin Scorsese's film The Aviator (2004). In a reference to Sophia Loren, Higham described Loren as Grant's former lover four pages after indicating they did not have a physical relationship.
Higham admitted in an interview that the association was "poorly documented." The book suffered from many contradictory statements. Again and again, he quotes the most scurrilous and unlikely gossip, without proving it." Īccording to Higham and Roy Moseley in their biography of Cary Grant (1989), the actor was on the grounds of the home of actress Sharon Tate on the night in 1969 that she was murdered. He has provided his critics with plenty of hostages. Journalist Paul Foot described Higham's biography of Wallis Simpson in the London Review of Books as "an important book. In the book about Wallis Simpson (later the Duchess of Windsor), he claimed she had learned unusual sexual practices in the brothels of Peking and was the lover of Count Ciano and Ribbentrop. This success was followed by Bette: the Life of Bette Davis, a biography of Lucille Ball, and The Duchess of Windsor (1988, 2005). Higham's first bestseller was Kate (1975), the first authorized biography of Katharine Hepburn. "It is a facile explanation," wrote Joseph McBride in 1993, "that leaves out much in the way of historical and cultural context but nevertheless contains a germ of truth." In the 1970s, he contributed freelance articles on film to The New York Times, and was a frequent guest on talk shows. Friends of Welles, in particular Peter Bogdanovich, criticized this thesis some writers have found it insightful. In The Films of Orson Welles (1970) and in Orson Welles: The Rise and Fall of an American Genius (1985), he said that Welles suffered from a "fear of completion" that led him to abandon projects when they were nearly finished because others could then be blamed for their flaws. The footage was already known to the studio archivists. While there he claimed to have found lost footage of It's All True, Orson Welles's uncompleted Latin American triptych of more than a quarter century before. Higham was a regents' professor for a short time in 1969 at UC Santa Cruz. Australian writer Terry Dowling acknowledged the influence of Higham's horror anthologies on his own writing in an essay published in Stephen Jones Horror: Another 100 Best Books. The majority of stories in the anthologies were by writers from the US and UK, with many being reprinted from Montague Summers's 1936 anthology The Grimoire and Other Supernatural Stories. In the 1960s, Higham compiled a number of horror anthologies for the Australian publisher Horwitz. Higham became literary editor of The Bulletin, the country's leading weekly, in 1964, and published three more collections of verse. There he became a journalist and critic for The Sydney Morning Herald and, later, the Sydney Daily Mirror. Higham published two books of verse in England, before moving to Sydney, Australia in 1954. After Sir Charles' death the family lived in modest circumstances during and after World War II.
Higham's parents divorced when he was three, and thereafter Charles lived with his mother. Born in London, Higham was the son of MP and advertising mogul Sir Charles Higham and his fourth wife, Josephine Janet Keuchenius Webb.
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