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about discredited Monroe/DiMaggio book
On Christmas Eve 1983, David Cay Johnston exposed C. David Heymann’s Barbara Hutton biography as a fraud on A1 of the Los Angeles Times. Johnston reported that Poor Little Rich Girl contained numerous fabricated sources and pointed to facts that were either invented or so false that they raised grave additional questions about Heymann’s credibility.
Random House pulped the book, but Heymann rewrote it, sold it to another publisher, got a TV movie deal, and went on to a prolific career as a celebrity biographer.
Three decades after that first investigation, Johnston again exposed Heymann, this time on the cover of Newsweek, reporting that the author’s final effort, a posthumous book about Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe, Joe and Marilyn: Legends in Love, was also shot through with manufactured information and falsehoods.
Far from pulping it, Simon & Schuster, a division of CBS Corporation, is effectively standing by the book, which its Atria/Emily Bestler imprint published. That raises serious questions about editorial standards at the publisher—ones that it declines to answer. What did it know about Heymann’s questionable practices and when did it know it?
The Joe and Marilyn fiasco comes less than a year after Simon & Schuster published Dylan Davies’ fabricated book about the Benghazi attack, an incident that seriously damaged CBS News and 60 Minutes star Lara Logan, as well. The publisher had to pull that book.
Simon Schuster should come clean about discredited Monroe DiMaggio book Columbia Journalism Review
Simon & Schuster, and CBS Corporation AND Emily Bestler, can't be trusted. Second time around? Nah.
On Christmas Eve 1983, David Cay Johnston exposed C. David Heymann’s Barbara Hutton biography as a fraud on A1 of the Los Angeles Times. Johnston reported that Poor Little Rich Girl contained numerous fabricated sources and pointed to facts that were either invented or so false that they raised grave additional questions about Heymann’s credibility.
Random House pulped the book, but Heymann rewrote it, sold it to another publisher, got a TV movie deal, and went on to a prolific career as a celebrity biographer.
Three decades after that first investigation, Johnston again exposed Heymann, this time on the cover of Newsweek, reporting that the author’s final effort, a posthumous book about Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe, Joe and Marilyn: Legends in Love, was also shot through with manufactured information and falsehoods.
Far from pulping it, Simon & Schuster, a division of CBS Corporation, is effectively standing by the book, which its Atria/Emily Bestler imprint published. That raises serious questions about editorial standards at the publisher—ones that it declines to answer. What did it know about Heymann’s questionable practices and when did it know it?
The Joe and Marilyn fiasco comes less than a year after Simon & Schuster published Dylan Davies’ fabricated book about the Benghazi attack, an incident that seriously damaged CBS News and 60 Minutes star Lara Logan, as well. The publisher had to pull that book.
Simon Schuster should come clean about discredited Monroe DiMaggio book Columbia Journalism Review
Simon & Schuster, and CBS Corporation AND Emily Bestler, can't be trusted. Second time around? Nah.
