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The Ivan Moffat File: Life Among the Beautiful and Damned in London, Paris, New York, and Hollywood
Here is a fascinating portrait of Hollywood screenwriter Ivan Moffat, whose lonely, aristocratic childhood led to a precociously fashionable and sensual life in London’s High Bohemia in the late 1930s, service in director George Stevens’s World War II film documentary unit, and membership in Hollywood’s dazzling postwar expatriate community.
Moffat’s grandfather, Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, was one of the most celebrated actors of his day, producing and starring in everything from Richard II to Pygmalion on the London stage and founding the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. His mother, Iris Tree, was a well-known poet-actress-adventuress whose circle included British bluebloods Nancy Cunard and Diana Cooper, and Bloomsburyites Carrington, Lytton Strachey, and Augustus John. Ivan’s photographer father, Curtis Moffat, came from a well-connected New York family, studied with Man Ray, and had an audacious showroom that focused on Moderne furniture and lighting, some of which he designed himself. But Ivan Moffat’s extraordinary pedigree was only the foundation upon which he built his own equally extraordinary and surprisingly active personal life, populated by the leading artists and personalities of his day—from Aldous Huxley and Dylan Thomas to Preston Sturges, Charlie Chaplin, Billy Wilder, and David Selznick.
In 1943 Moffat enlisted in the army and was assigned to Stevens’s unit, started by Eisenhower, which covered the last stage of World War II, from D-day to the fall of Berlin and the liberation of the concentration camps. After the war, Stevens invited Moffat to become an associate producer for his new Hollywood company. Moffat’s unofficial credits on the screenplays for A Place in the Sun and Shane and his co-writing credit on Giant led to a successful screenwriting career, and at the same time he became a leading social figure in Hollywood. Moffat had affairs with many women—from a waitress to a duchess, from a stripper to a movie star. The most serious affair of his life was probably with the
novelist Caroline Blackwood.
At the center of The Ivan Moffat File is the elegantly written autobiography that Moffat was working on at the time of his death in 2002, to which Gavin Lambert adds never-before-seen letters, interviews, and screenplays, as well as many anecdotes and his own memories of Moffat. The result is a re-creation of the life of this unique figure, flamboyant and mysterious.
Moffat’s grandfather, Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, was one of the most celebrated actors of his day, producing and starring in everything from Richard II to Pygmalion on the London stage and founding the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. His mother, Iris Tree, was a well-known poet-actress-adventuress whose circle included British bluebloods Nancy Cunard and Diana Cooper, and Bloomsburyites Carrington, Lytton Strachey, and Augustus John. Ivan’s photographer father, Curtis Moffat, came from a well-connected New York family, studied with Man Ray, and had an audacious showroom that focused on Moderne furniture and lighting, some of which he designed himself. But Ivan Moffat’s extraordinary pedigree was only the foundation upon which he built his own equally extraordinary and surprisingly active personal life, populated by the leading artists and personalities of his day—from Aldous Huxley and Dylan Thomas to Preston Sturges, Charlie Chaplin, Billy Wilder, and David Selznick.
In 1943 Moffat enlisted in the army and was assigned to Stevens’s unit, started by Eisenhower, which covered the last stage of World War II, from D-day to the fall of Berlin and the liberation of the concentration camps. After the war, Stevens invited Moffat to become an associate producer for his new Hollywood company. Moffat’s unofficial credits on the screenplays for A Place in the Sun and Shane and his co-writing credit on Giant led to a successful screenwriting career, and at the same time he became a leading social figure in Hollywood. Moffat had affairs with many women—from a waitress to a duchess, from a stripper to a movie star. The most serious affair of his life was probably with the
novelist Caroline Blackwood.
At the center of The Ivan Moffat File is the elegantly written autobiography that Moffat was working on at the time of his death in 2002, to which Gavin Lambert adds never-before-seen letters, interviews, and screenplays, as well as many anecdotes and his own memories of Moffat. The result is a re-creation of the life of this unique figure, flamboyant and mysterious.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published October 12, 2004
14 people want to read
About the author
Gavin Lambert
46 books25 followersGavin Lambert was a British-born screenwriter, novelist and biographer who lived for part of his life in Hollywood. His writing was mainly fiction and nonfiction about the film industry.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 15, 2014
This half biography, half memoir of Ivan Moffat provides an interesting portrait of the charmed life of the haute/upper class bohemians in the 1930's. This generation that came after the Lost Generation of Scott Fitzgerald et al. in 1920 could well be called the Beautiful and Damned because of the way their beautiful and privileged lifestyle ended with the Second World War.
The books starts and ends with biographical notes by Gavin Lambert. The middle part is composed of fragments of Moffat's unfinished/half destroyed biography, selected letters of Moffat, some excerpts of taped interviews as well as examples of Moffat's work as a Hollywood writer.
I think Lambert has done a good job with the book by building the biography around the fragments. However, that is also the weakness of the book as it never has the chance to build into an in-depth work due to the unfinished/lost parts of Moffat's autobiography. However, it still offers some truly fascinating insights to the European and American cosmopolites in in the 30's as well as of the liberation of France in 1944 and the discovery of Nazi concentration camps.
It is interesting and from todays perspective rather shocking to learn how the wealthy but highly bohemian and promiscuous British mother and American father neglected their children. In that particular type of upper class milieu that was probably the norm at that time but it is still very sad to read how Moffat never really had a childhood with his parents. It would have been interesting to read whether the selfish way his parents lived their life and the way they neglected Moffat was in any way considered as inappropriate by their peers or the more conventional upper class types.
The last two years of peace in Europe were very romantic time to young Moffat. There must be lot of nostalgia in the way Moffat describes the last summer in Austria before the Nazis took over but it feels genuine. Here again, I would have liked to read more about it not only from Moffat himself but also from Lambert.
The best part of the book deals with the liberation of Paris and the entry into Germany by the Allied forces, the end of the World War II and the meeting of the victors at the river Elbe. Moffat was first hand witness to these events as a private in the Special Motion Picture Unit of the US Army. In his biographical notes Moffat is again a bit too sketchy and vague but reading his notes I really felt the exhilarating celebratory feeling of Paris right after the liberation. It would have been nice to read more about Hemingway's court in the Ritz hotel when there was great shortage of almost everything except champagne.
Moffat was filming the discovery and the horrors of the Dachau concentration camp and the letters that he send to the family of one of the prisoners are genuinely moving. In the first letter he explains that this prisoner is alive and that he will return home to Brussels as soon as the logistics permit. In the second he replies to the letter he has received from the prisoner's family in which they have informed him that the prisoner had died in the camp.
Unfortunately, the part of the book that deals with Moffat's career in Hollywood is not satisfactory. The only interesting piece from that time is the story of Dylan Thomas' drunken visit to Charlie Chaplin's party where Thomas peed on Chaplin's sofa and Chaplin mistakenly blamed Christopher Isherwood and banned him for life from entering his house.
If Moffat would have worked harder on his autobiography, or if Lambert could have really had chance to have worked with Moffat on the biography when he was still alive, this book could have been brilliant. Nevertheless, this book is well worth the read.
The books starts and ends with biographical notes by Gavin Lambert. The middle part is composed of fragments of Moffat's unfinished/half destroyed biography, selected letters of Moffat, some excerpts of taped interviews as well as examples of Moffat's work as a Hollywood writer.
I think Lambert has done a good job with the book by building the biography around the fragments. However, that is also the weakness of the book as it never has the chance to build into an in-depth work due to the unfinished/lost parts of Moffat's autobiography. However, it still offers some truly fascinating insights to the European and American cosmopolites in in the 30's as well as of the liberation of France in 1944 and the discovery of Nazi concentration camps.
It is interesting and from todays perspective rather shocking to learn how the wealthy but highly bohemian and promiscuous British mother and American father neglected their children. In that particular type of upper class milieu that was probably the norm at that time but it is still very sad to read how Moffat never really had a childhood with his parents. It would have been interesting to read whether the selfish way his parents lived their life and the way they neglected Moffat was in any way considered as inappropriate by their peers or the more conventional upper class types.
The last two years of peace in Europe were very romantic time to young Moffat. There must be lot of nostalgia in the way Moffat describes the last summer in Austria before the Nazis took over but it feels genuine. Here again, I would have liked to read more about it not only from Moffat himself but also from Lambert.
The best part of the book deals with the liberation of Paris and the entry into Germany by the Allied forces, the end of the World War II and the meeting of the victors at the river Elbe. Moffat was first hand witness to these events as a private in the Special Motion Picture Unit of the US Army. In his biographical notes Moffat is again a bit too sketchy and vague but reading his notes I really felt the exhilarating celebratory feeling of Paris right after the liberation. It would have been nice to read more about Hemingway's court in the Ritz hotel when there was great shortage of almost everything except champagne.
Moffat was filming the discovery and the horrors of the Dachau concentration camp and the letters that he send to the family of one of the prisoners are genuinely moving. In the first letter he explains that this prisoner is alive and that he will return home to Brussels as soon as the logistics permit. In the second he replies to the letter he has received from the prisoner's family in which they have informed him that the prisoner had died in the camp.
Unfortunately, the part of the book that deals with Moffat's career in Hollywood is not satisfactory. The only interesting piece from that time is the story of Dylan Thomas' drunken visit to Charlie Chaplin's party where Thomas peed on Chaplin's sofa and Chaplin mistakenly blamed Christopher Isherwood and banned him for life from entering his house.
If Moffat would have worked harder on his autobiography, or if Lambert could have really had chance to have worked with Moffat on the biography when he was still alive, this book could have been brilliant. Nevertheless, this book is well worth the read.
August 1, 2014
This one of those books where the subject is more interesting than the read. Lambert who was a friend of Ivan Moffat collected works from Moffat that never made to print to honour his friend's fascinating life. Although the narrative is fascinating the book is disjointed. It would have been much more interesting as a biography rather than an autobiography in fragments.
"A.E. Housman ("Strange eyes drop water that have never wept/Men rush to slaughter that have never slain." 12
"A.E. Housman ("Strange eyes drop water that have never wept/Men rush to slaughter that have never slain." 12
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews