Clancy Sigal

Clancy Sigal(September 6, 1926 – July 16, 2017)was anAmericanwriter, and the author of dozens of essays and seven books, the best-known of which is theautobiographical novelGoing Away(1961).

Clancy Sigal
Sigal in 2002
Born	(1926-09-06)September 6, 1926 Chicago, Illinois
Died	July 16, 2017(2017-07-16)(aged 90) Los Angeles, California
Nationality	American
Alma mater	University of California, Los Angeles
Occupation(s)	Journalist Screenwriter Novelist
Spouse	Janice Tidwell
Children	1
Awards	PEN Lifetime Achievement Award National Book Award nominee,Going Away
Website	ClancySigal.com

Early life and education

Sigal was born inChicago,Illinois,to a poor family.His father, Leo Sigal, and mother, Jennie Persily, were both labor organizers;He "acquired his chutzpah and resilience in 30s Chicago," Kim Howells wrote inThe Guardian,"raised by his tough Jewish mother in a neighborhood blighted by gangsters, poverty and violence."He later wrote a book about his mother,A Woman of Uncertain Character(2007). There he describes joining the Communist Party at 15. Marc Cooper, reviewing the book for theLos Angeles Times,explained that "Nothing, he figured, could be a greater affront to Jennie, who was an ardent socialist but an even more ardent anti-Communist."During World War II, "The army saved my life," he later wrote. The high point of his time as a soldier in Occupied Germany, he later said, came when "I went AWOL to the Nuremberg War Crimes trial bent on shooting Hermann Goering."After the war he worked as an organizer in Detroit for the auto workers' union, but was expelled in a purge of communists and fellow travelers. He then moved to Los Angeles and enrolled at theUniversity of California, Los Angeles(UCLA) under theG.I. Bill;he was managing editor of the student newspaper, theDaily Bruin.His "drinking buddies," he later wrote, "included the later Watergate conspirators, Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, the latter of whom reported me regularly to the FBI."

Career

After graduating from UCLA in 1950, he got a job at Columbia Pictures, but was fired by Columbia boss Harry Cohn for making copies of radical leaflets on studio equipment (he dropped the leaflets over Los Angeles from an airplane).He then went to work as a Hollywood agent, during the blacklist years of the 1950s—the basis of his memoirBlack Sunset.He was subpoenaed by theHouse Committee on Un-American Activities,he wrote in that book, but his hearing was abruptly cancelled. Soon after, in 1957, he left Los Angeles and the U.S.—the story he told inGoing Away—and settled inGreat Britain.

In 1961 he publishedGoing Away.The book is set in 1956 and tells the story of the author's drive from Los Angeles to New York "to look at America and figure out why it isn't my country any longer."It won a National Book Award nomination.John Leonardlater wrote in the New YorkTimes:"Better than any other document I know,Going Awayidentified, embodied and re‐created the postwar American radical experience. It was as ifOn the Roadhad been written by somebody with brains.... (Sigal's) intelligence is always ticking. His ear is superb. His sympathies are promiscuous. His sin is enthusiasm. "

In London he lived withDoris Lessing,with whom he had a four-year affair.She portrayed him as "Saul Green" inThe Golden Notebook.He later wrote about those years inThe Secret Defector.TheNew York Times Book Reviewdeclared about that book, "Lenin and Stalin may have fallen, but Mr. Sigal still stands, dispensing his memories of the left with wit, irony and sheer pratfall comedy."In London he ran an underground operation for U.S. Army deserters, which he later wrote about for theLondon Review of Books.He was also part of thePhiladelphia Associationexperiment withR. D. LaingatKingsley Hall,drawing on his experiences there for his satirical novelZone of the Interior.The novel could not find a British publisher in the 1970s willing to risk the libel laws.

Sigal wasThe Observercorrespondent for the1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games,and after 30 years in England decided to return toLos Angelesafter falling in love there with writerJanice Tidwell.They soon married, and became a screenwriting team.Together they wrote the screenplay for the Oscar-winning 2002Salma HayekfilmFrida.In 2016 he published his Hollywood memoir,Black Sunset: Hollywood Sex, Lies, Glamour, Betrayal and Raging Egos."The beauty ofBlack Sunset,"Paul Buhle wrote in theLos Angeles Review of Books,"will be found in the details, lovingly or painfully described, page after page... Clancy Sigal brings the innocent and guilty back, once more, at close range, and proves himself the liveliest of literary nonagenarians in the process."

His final book,The London Lover: My Weekend that Lasted Thirty Years,a memoir of his London years, was published in 2018.A feature documentary on his life by Kurt Jacobsen and Warren Leming entitledClancy Sigal: Lord of the Gadflies,premiered at the Santa Fe Film Festival in February 2023 and since screened at several other festivals.

Awards

• National Book Award,runner up forGoing Away
• 2007:PEN Center USA,Lifetime Achievement Award presented byGore Vidal

Personal life

Sigal's first marriage, toMargaret Waltersin 1980, ended in divorce in 1989.In 1995, Sigal had a son, Joseph, with his second wife, Janice Tidwell.Sigal died July 16, 2017, in Los Angeles, California, of congestive heart failure.

Work and publications

Books

• Weekend in Dinlock,Houghton Mifflin, 1960.
• Going Away: A Report, A Memoir.Houghton Mifflin, 1961. National Book Award nominee.
• Zone of the Interior,New York: Thomas W. Crowell, 1976. Published in the UK by Pomona Press, 2005.ISBN1-904590-10-1
• The Secret Defector,New York: Harper Collins, 1992
• A Woman of Uncertain Character: The amorous and radical adventures of my mother Jennie (who always wanted to be a respectable Jewish mom) by her bastard son(2006) New York: Carroll & Graf.ISBN0-7867-1748-3
• Hemingway Lives! Why Reading Ernest Hemingway Matters Today,OR Books, 2013
• Black Sunset: Hollywood Sex, Lies, Glamour, Betrayal and Raging EgosSoft Skull Press, 2016
• The London Lover: My Weekend that Lasted Thirty YearsBloomsbury, 2018. (ISBN9781408885802)

Journalism, Essays, Stories, Reviews

• Essays and articlesforThe Guardian(64 items)
• ReviewsforThe New York Review of Books
• Writingsfor theParis Review
• Writingsfor theHuffington Post

Films

• Frida(2002) screenwriting credit[9]
• In Love and War(1996) screenwriting credit[10]
• The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom?(2007) BBC Documentary. acting credit: "as himself."[11]
• Nelson Algren: The End is Nothing, the Road is All.(2015) Documentary. acting credit: "as himself."[12]
• Clancy Sigal: Lord of the Gadflies ( "as himself" )[13]

Further reading

• John Lahr,"Squealing to Survive" (review of Clancy Sigal,Black Sunset: Hollywood Sex, Lies, Glamour, Betrayal and Raging Egos,Icon, 2018,ISBN9781785784392;and Clancy Sigal,The London Lover: My Weekend That Lasted Thirty Years,Bloomsbury, 2018,ISBN9781408885802),London Review of Books,vol. 40, no. 14 (19 July 2018), pp. 33–35.

Radio and TV

• "Remembering Mom, the Labor Organizer",Morning Edition,National Public Radio, September 4, 2006.
• "A Jewish Soldier Witnesses Nuremberg",Morning Edition,National Public Radio, October 2, 2006.
• "Late Night Live"ABC Radio Australia interview, September, 2014.
• "La La Land and Hollywood - past and present."BBC Radio 3 "Free Thinking" interview, Jan. 10, 2017.

External links

• ClancySigal.com
• Clancy SigalatUSC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism
• Clancy Sigal Papers, 1956-2007at theHarry Ransom Center,University of Texas at Austin
• Clancy SigalatIMDb