Brad Darrach
Encyclopedia
Brad Darrach was a journalist and film critic. A 1942 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania
, he joined Time Inc.
in 1945 after working for the Baltimore Sun and the Providence Journal. He wrote for Time Inc. magazines including Time
, Life
, People
and Sports Illustrated
. During a career which spanned the 1940s to the 1990s, he profiled such notables as Elizabeth Taylor
, Marlon Brando
, Frank Sinatra
, Fred Astaire
, Barbra Streisand
, Robin Williams
, Bill Cosby
, Jack Nicholson
and Miss Piggy
. His 1955 Time cover story on Marilyn Monroe
, based on a chaste 10-hour interview in her hotel bed while she was filming Bus Stop
, was the first to report on the star’s traumatic childhood; in 1984, he wrote: "Out it came for the first time, the whole hideous mess: the foster homes, the religious sadists who threatened her with hellfire, the child molester who raped her when she was 6. Simply to remember was agony for Marilyn. Sometimes she was racked with sobs; sometimes she choked on anger and disgust. Sometimes tears filled my eyes too." For a 1995 Life Magazine photoshoot with Michelle Pfeiffer
, he held the Hope Diamond
in his hand.
Darrach’s work is widely anthologized. His 1973 Playboy
interview with Mel Brooks
(which won a Playboy Non-fiction Award) is reprinted in Gene Shalit
’s Laughing Matters. His reporting for Playboy on the 1972 Bobby Fischer
-Boris Spassky
chess
match is included as one of four “Best of the Best” in David Halberstam
’s Best American Sportswriting of the Century. He succeeded James Agee
as Time’s film reviewer; several of his reviews are reprinted in Film 67/68.
The vividness of his writing is notable; his language has appeared in several collections of quotations, including this description of Elvis Presley
: "The hair was a Vaseline cathedral, the mouth a touchingly uncertain sneer of allure. One, two-wham! Like a berserk blender the lusty young pelvis whirred and the notorious git-tar slammed forward with a jolt that symbolically deflowered a generation of teenagers and knocked chips off 90 million older shoulders. Then out of the half-melted vanilla face a wild black baritone came bawling in orgasmic lurches. Whu-huh-huh-huh f'the money! Two f'the show! Three t'git riddy naa GO CAAT GO!" This description of Jackie Gleason
is also memorable: "Gross in physique, gargantuan in gourmandise, oceanic in liquid capacity, prodigal of purse, a fire hose of libido and a Niagara of comic invention, the man was excess personified and one of the great entertainers of the age."
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
, he joined Time Inc.
Time Inc.
Time Inc. is a subsidiary of the media conglomerate Time Warner, the company formed by the 1990 merger of the original Time Inc. and Warner Communications. It publishes 130 magazines, most notably its namesake, Time...
in 1945 after working for the Baltimore Sun and the Providence Journal. He wrote for Time Inc. magazines including Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
, Life
Life (magazine)
Life generally refers to three American magazines:*A humor and general interest magazine published from 1883 to 1936. Time founder Henry Luce bought the magazine in 1936 solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name....
, People
People (magazine)
In 1998, the magazine introduced a version targeted at teens called Teen People. However, on July 27, 2006, the company announced it would shut down publication of Teen People immediately. The last issue to be released was scheduled for September 2006. Subscribers to this magazine received...
and Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated is an American sports media company owned by media conglomerate Time Warner. Its self titled magazine has over 3.5 million subscribers and is read by 23 million adults each week, including over 18 million men. It was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the...
. During a career which spanned the 1940s to the 1990s, he profiled such notables as Elizabeth Taylor
Elizabeth Taylor
Dame Elizabeth Rosemond "Liz" Taylor, DBE was a British-American actress. From her early years as a child star with MGM, she became one of the great screen actresses of Hollywood's Golden Age...
, Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando, Jr. was an American movie star and political activist. "Unchallenged as the most important actor in modern American Cinema" according to the St...
, Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the...
, Fred Astaire
Fred Astaire
Fred Astaire was an American film and Broadway stage dancer, choreographer, singer and actor. His stage and subsequent film career spanned a total of 76 years, during which he made 31 musical films. He was named the fifth Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute...
, Barbra Streisand
Barbra Streisand
Barbra Joan Streisand is an American singer, actress, film producer and director. She has won two Academy Awards, eight Grammy Awards, four Emmy Awards, a Special Tony Award, an American Film Institute award, a Peabody Award, and is one of the few entertainers who have won an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy,...
, Robin Williams
Robin Williams
Robin McLaurin Williams is an American actor and comedian. Rising to fame with his role as the alien Mork in the TV series Mork and Mindy, and later stand-up comedy work, Williams has performed in many feature films since 1980. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance...
, Bill Cosby
Bill Cosby
William Henry "Bill" Cosby, Jr. is an American comedian, actor, author, television producer, educator, musician and activist. A veteran stand-up performer, he got his start at various clubs, then landed a starring role in the 1960s action show, I Spy. He later starred in his own series, the...
, Jack Nicholson
Jack Nicholson
John Joseph "Jack" Nicholson is an American actor, film director, producer and writer. He is renowned for his often dark portrayals of neurotic characters. Nicholson has been nominated for an Academy Award twelve times, and has won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice: for One Flew Over the...
and Miss Piggy
Miss Piggy
Miss Piggy is a Muppet character who was primarily played by Frank Oz on The Muppet Show. In 2001, Eric Jacobson began performing the role, although Oz did not officially retire until 2002....
. His 1955 Time cover story on Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model and showgirl who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s....
, based on a chaste 10-hour interview in her hotel bed while she was filming Bus Stop
Bus Stop (film)
Bus Stop is a 1956 film directed by Joshua Logan for 20th Century Fox, starring Marilyn Monroe, Don Murray, Arthur O'Connell, Betty Field, Eileen Heckart, Robert Bray and Hope Lange...
, was the first to report on the star’s traumatic childhood; in 1984, he wrote: "Out it came for the first time, the whole hideous mess: the foster homes, the religious sadists who threatened her with hellfire, the child molester who raped her when she was 6. Simply to remember was agony for Marilyn. Sometimes she was racked with sobs; sometimes she choked on anger and disgust. Sometimes tears filled my eyes too." For a 1995 Life Magazine photoshoot with Michelle Pfeiffer
Michelle Pfeiffer
Michelle Marie Pfeiffer is an American actress. She made her film debut in 1980 in The Hollywood Knights, but first garnered mainstream attention with her performance in Brian De Palma's Scarface . Pfeiffer has won numerous awards for her work...
, he held the Hope Diamond
Hope Diamond
The Hope Diamond, also known as "Le bleu de France" or "Le Bijou du Roi", is a large, , deep-blue diamond, now housed in the Smithsonian Natural History Museum in Washington, D.C. It is blue to the naked eye because of trace amounts of boron within its crystal structure, but exhibits red...
in his hand.
Darrach’s work is widely anthologized. His 1973 Playboy
Playboy
Playboy is an American men's magazine that features photographs of nude women as well as journalism and fiction. It was founded in Chicago in 1953 by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. The magazine has grown into Playboy Enterprises, Inc., with...
interview with Mel Brooks
Mel Brooks
Mel Brooks is an American film director, screenwriter, composer, lyricist, comedian, actor and producer. He is best known as a creator of broad film farces and comic parodies. He began his career as a stand-up comic and as a writer for the early TV variety show Your Show of Shows...
(which won a Playboy Non-fiction Award) is reprinted in Gene Shalit
Gene Shalit
Gene Shalit is a film and book critic. He has filled these roles on NBC's The Today Show since January 15, 1973. He is known for his frequent use of puns, his oversized handlebar moustache, and for wearing colorful bowties.-Career:...
’s Laughing Matters. His reporting for Playboy on the 1972 Bobby Fischer
Bobby Fischer
Robert James "Bobby" Fischer was an American chess Grandmaster and the 11th World Chess Champion. He is widely considered one of the greatest chess players of all time. Fischer was also a best-selling chess author...
-Boris Spassky
Boris Spassky
Boris Vasilievich Spassky is a Soviet-French chess grandmaster. He was the tenth World Chess Champion, holding the title from late 1969 to 1972...
chess
Chess
Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...
match is included as one of four “Best of the Best” in David Halberstam
David Halberstam
David Halberstam was an American Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author and historian, known for his early work on the Vietnam War, his work on politics, history, the Civil Rights Movement, business, media, American culture, and his later sports journalism.-Early life and education:Halberstam...
’s Best American Sportswriting of the Century. He succeeded James Agee
James Agee
James Rufus Agee was an American author, journalist, poet, screenwriter and film critic. In the 1940s, he was one of the most influential film critics in the U.S...
as Time’s film reviewer; several of his reviews are reprinted in Film 67/68.
The vividness of his writing is notable; his language has appeared in several collections of quotations, including this description of Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....
: "The hair was a Vaseline cathedral, the mouth a touchingly uncertain sneer of allure. One, two-wham! Like a berserk blender the lusty young pelvis whirred and the notorious git-tar slammed forward with a jolt that symbolically deflowered a generation of teenagers and knocked chips off 90 million older shoulders. Then out of the half-melted vanilla face a wild black baritone came bawling in orgasmic lurches. Whu-huh-huh-huh f'the money! Two f'the show! Three t'git riddy naa GO CAAT GO!" This description of Jackie Gleason
Jackie Gleason
Jackie Gleason was an American comedian, actor and musician. He was known for his brash visual and verbal comedy style, especially by his character Ralph Kramden on The Honeymooners, a situation-comedy television series. His most noted film roles were as Minnesota Fats in the drama film The...
is also memorable: "Gross in physique, gargantuan in gourmandise, oceanic in liquid capacity, prodigal of purse, a fire hose of libido and a Niagara of comic invention, the man was excess personified and one of the great entertainers of the age."
Movies
- The Search for Solutions (1979) (Screenwriter)
Articles
- The Day Bobby Blew It in Halberstam, D., The Best American Sportswriting of the Century (Houghton Mifflin 1999) (originally in Playboy) ISBN 0-395-94514-3
- Interview with Mel Brooks in Shalit, G., Laughing Matters: a Celebration of American Humor (Doubleday 1987) (originally in Playboy) ISBN 0-385-18547-2
- The Kid from Hoboken, in Porterfield, C., 85 Years of Great Writing (2008) (profile of Frank SinatraFrank SinatraFrancis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the...
originally in TimeTime (magazine)Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
) - A Perky Porker Hits Hollywood and Leaves 'Em Squealing, in The Best of People Weekly: The First Decade (Fawcett 1984) ISBN 0-449-90113-0
- Ulysses, Marat/Sade and The Underground Film in Schickel, R. & Simon, J., Film 67/68 (Simon & Schuster 1968) (originally in Time) ASINAsínAsín is a municipality located in the Cinco Villas comarca of the province of Zaragoza, Aragon, Spain, located a few kilometers west of Orés. According to the 2004 census , the municipality has a population of 106 inhabitants....
B000H7N1KC - Living With Liz, Life Magazine, February, 1992 (profile of Elizabeth Taylor and then-husband Larry Fortensky)
- Send in the Clowns: For Desperately Ill Children, Laughter Can be The Best Medicine, Life Magazine, August, 1990
- A Different Kind of Superstar, Life Magazine, December, 1995 (profile of Hakeem OlajuwonHakeem OlajuwonHakeem Abdul Olajuwon is a retired Nigerian-American professional basketball player. From 1984 to 2002, he played the center position in the National Basketball Association for the Houston Rockets and Toronto Raptors. He led the Rockets to back-to-back NBA championships in 1994 and 1995. In 2008,...
) - Landon, M. as told to Darrach, B. Michael Landon Discusses His Illness, Life Magazine, May, 1991
- Darrach, B. & Hutchings, D. The First Ladies of Laughter Double Up, People Weekly, June 20, 1988 (profile of Lily TomlinLily TomlinMary Jean "Lily" Tomlin is an American actress, comedienne, writer, and producer. Tomlin has been a major force in American comedy since the late 1960's when she began a career as a stand up comedian and became a featured performer on television's Laugh-in...
and Bette MidlerBette MidlerBette Midler is an American singer, actress, and comedian, also known by her informal stage name, The Divine Miss M. She became famous as a cabaret and concert headliner, and went on to star in successful and acclaimed films such as The Rose, Ruthless People, Beaches, and For The Boys...
) - The Triumph of Archie Leach, People Weekly, December 15, 1986 (profile of Cary GrantCary GrantArchibald Alexander Leach , better known by his stage name Cary Grant, was an English actor who later took U.S. citizenship...
) - My Romance with Marilyn Monroe, People Weekly, July 2, 1984
- Celebration of a Father: Barbra Streisand Resurrects her Past, People Weekly, December 12, 1983
- A Hot Pig Tale!, People Weekly, September 3, 1979 (profiling Miss PiggyMiss PiggyMiss Piggy is a Muppet character who was primarily played by Frank Oz on The Muppet Show. In 2001, Eric Jacobson began performing the role, although Oz did not officially retire until 2002....
) - Leonard Nimoy Beams Himself Aboard 'Equus' and Out from Under Mr. Spock's Pointy Ears, People Weekly, July 25, 1977
- The New American Antihero: Jack Is Nimble, Jack Is Best, Jack Flies Over the Cuckoo's Nest—En Route to An Oscar?, People Weekly, December 8, 1975
- The All-American Actor The Rocky Mountain High Life of Robert Redford includes Acting, Producing, Environmentalistism and Maybe Politics?, People Weekly, October 27 1975
- Back to the Gore of Yore, Time, July 5, 1971 (profiling Doc SavageDoc SavageDoc Savage is a fictional character originally published in American pulp magazines during the 1930s and 1940s. He was created by publisher Henry W. Ralston and editor John L...
)