Poison Pen: The Unauthorized Biography of Kitty Kelley

by George Carpozi Jr.

In an unauthorized portrait of Kitty Kelley, the author uncovers secrets about the woman who has destroyed the reputations of Frank Sinatra, Jacqueline Onassis, Elizabeth Taylor, and Nancy Reagan

368 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

George Carpozi, Jr. was an American journalist, biographer and non-fiction author. He worked as a journalist for more than fifty years.

He wrote more than 80 books covering politics, crime, current events and showbusiness biographies. Carpozi was known as the "Biographer to the Stars."

Reviews

[Richard Bartholomew · Rating 3 out of 5]

George Carpozi's output as "biographer to the stars" was prolific and well-regarded. Kitty Kelley, in contrast, is infamous for a smaller oeuvre of celebrity biographies that have been denounced by their subjects and repudiated by many of the people she claims to have quoted. Carpozi presents Kelley's work as a series of contemptible excesses to be debunked, but one senses that his purpose was not so much putting the record straight as putting an upstart – a "little girl from Spokane", one of many pulpy putdowns – in her place, both on behalf of his celebrity friends and for his publisher, Lyle Stuart, who had published Kelley’s first celebrity biography but then fallen out with her. "She Bashed Frank Sinatra. She trashed Nancy Reagan. Now it’s her turn" is the tagline – hardly taking the moral high ground, and somewhat disproportionate given their respective significance in public life. Was the decision to publish a 350-page hardback book about her really a commercial one?

Carpozi makes a strong (although hardly ground-breaking) case that Kelley’s work contains many examples of sensationalised dishonesty, including fabrication of quotes. Yet his presentation, driven primarily by irritation (if not outrage), is somewhat diffuse, and there’s a sense that for some passages started in his head with the phrase, "And another thing…". The book’s 30 chapters are untitled, perhaps because a thematic unity is not always clear. This undercuts the book’s reference value, although there is a decent index.

One of the book's more gratuitous intrusions is the information that Kelley's mother was an alcoholic, presented as if this were some moral blemish that reflects on Kelley herself. More pertinent are allegations that Kelley has a history of pilfering – it is claimed that she left the University of Arizona after evidence emerged that she had stolen from dorm-mates, and other people whose houses she stayed in claim that items were afterwards missing. However, in a rare moment of empathy Carpozi appears to recognise this as pathological behaviour: "Is Kitty Kelley a kleptomaniac? I don’t know: I’m not a psychiatrist. Psychiatry says that people steal things because they feel deprived of love."

Kelley’s career in journalism got started by way of politics: she came to Washington at the invitation of Representative Tom Foley, who knew her lawyer father, and Foley introduced her to Robert "Bobby" Baker. Baker found her a job in the office of Eugene McCarthy, but the Baker connection allows Carpozi to digress for a few pages, reminding us that Baker had founded the private Quorum Club establishment, where Ellen Rometsch had worked as a waitress. Carpozi also quotes at some length a 1972 book called The Washington Pay-Off, which had "received scant attention from the press or the public" pre-Watergate. Why does he go off at such a tangent? I wasn’t surprised to discover that the book was published by Lyle Stuart.

From McCarthy, Kelley found journalism work first at the Washington Post and then as a freelancer. Her early work included interviews with politicians, and in 2020 it's of interest to read that in 1973 she caused pain to a recently bereaved politician who as a consequence refused to speak to the press again for the next 15 years. The politician was Joe Biden, and Carpozi jogs our memory of this person by explaining that "people from beyond the outer perimeters of his political bailiwick will recall that Biden made a bid for the 1988 Democratic Presidential nomination… but… had to take his hat out of the ring in embarrassment after he was found to have 'plagiarized' speeches from other political figures". Carpozi does not burden his American target readership with the name of Neil Kinnock.

At the time Carpozi was writing, Kelley was notorious for three muckracking biographies, of Jaqueline Onassis, Frank Sinatra and Nancy Reagan. Carpozi had himself written books on Onassis and Sinatra, and his takedowns are extensive. Carpozi's chronicle here features various personalities involved in mass-market non-fiction book publishing, primarily Lyle Stuart and figures at Bantam and Simon & Schuster such as Michael Korda. Stuart was apparently obliged to pulp the original book jacket of the Onassis biography, while Bantam found itself contending with libel suits. Korda is portrayed as uncomfortable and pained when Kelley presents him with a salacious claim about Nancy Reagan's parentage, but Carpozi's message seems to be that that Kelley is the problem rather than the industry that created her. Given Stuart's interest (and, perhaps, guiding hand), how could it be otherwise?

The only real criticism against the media industry by Carpozi is aimed at the New York Times, for credulously amplifying claims in Kelley’s Reagan biography. One chapter deals with an apparent attempt by Sinatra to prevent her biography of him being published – a move which Carpozi says was "ill-advised" but, he argues, was exaggerated into a prior-restraint free-speech issue when all Sinatra was doing was trying to prevent her from misrepresenting herself as his authorized biographer.

The book also contains some British connections. Peter McKay (oddly promoted by Carpozi to a sometime editor of the Daily Express) was said to be "amused and intrigued by Kitty", and he put her in touch with Michael Thornton for material on Ava Gardner. As part of the wider context here, Carpozi obliges Thornton with an opportunity to sound off about Felicity Green, who had interfered with his copy as (an associate) editor of the Daily Express. In contrast to McKay, a certain Paul Conyers, described as editor of the News of the World (although again this can't be right) told him that "his men" had found her to be "a pretty mangy bimbo" – the last word here a piece misogynist abuse that Carpozi was apparently tempted to use as the book’s title. But if Carpozi's picture of Kelly is generally accurate, she would have been right at home at a British tabloid.

[J · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Kitty Kelly style book on the life of Kitty Kelly. What goes around, comes around. It couldn't happen to a nicer person...

The author actually is a better writer than Kitty Kelly, but he purposely copies her writing style:
- very slanted & biased writing
- full of slander & innuendos
- contradictory negative stories, hard to discern actual details but left with a general icky feeling
- not a straight forward biography, jumps between negative stories, goes back & forth in time
- spiteful, vague accusations and suggestive situations presented
- other authors referenced heavily (not original research)
- other people in the subject's lives tarnished to establish the subject's guilt by association
- sloppy writing, occasional grammar errors

Things I learned about Kitty Kelly:
- She is a member of the Junior League. :-0
- On page 60, Kitty is quoted as saying "There is sex that you do for your career and sex that you do for yourself." :-0 She basically throws herself sexually at people in power that might be able to help her career. She also uses her sexuality to get "in" with men she wants to interview or otherwise illicit information from.
- On page 112, Kitty is quoted as saying "People who live in the public eye have no expectation of privacy." Hmm. I like my famous people to keep their private lives private, so that I can still look up to them.
- She grew up in a wealthy family as the oldest of 7 children.

I'm glad I read this book. I had never heard of the author before, but I liked his old school record system. Lots of things in his writing felt quaint (out dated) and old school. Which I didn't mind. He uses the term "made it" repeatedly for sex. He dissects the first few Kitty Kelly books and points out numerous errors. Having read some Kitty Kelly books, this provides a lot of balance and context. When you point a finger at someone, four are pointing back at you!

It was a relatively fast and scandalous read.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

The amount of information in this book is astronomical. There is so much insight into the world of Kitty Kelley and so many accounted sources that I feel this book was carefully and meticulously thought out. If you are looking for a good expose that is easy to consume than I definitely would recommend this book.

[Bethany · Rating 1 out of 5]

That's a lot of effort to take down a minor writer of unauthorized bios that folks will soon forget.

Roughly 50% read. Didn't finish