David Whiting

David Andrew Whiting was an American writer and personal manager who died in unusual circumstances. After becoming the youngest correspondent hired by Time, he turned to working in the film industry, where he enjoyed close friendships with actresses Candice Bergen and particularly Sarah Miles. After a brief affair with the latter, he became her personal manager.
A child of a broken marriage, he was educated at the exclusive St. Albans School in Washington, D.C., where his mother lived. He made an impression on fellow students there, and some faculty, with his intelligence and persona. Due to academic difficulties, he left the school after his junior year for Georgetown, where he also fell short academically. After a year working on a documentary film shoot in Libya, which cemented his interest in that field, he returned to the U.S. to finish his undergraduate studies at Haverford College.
Following his 1968 graduation, he began his journalistic career, notably managing to sneak into a White House ball he was covering for Time and briefly dance with Patricia Nixon before the Secret Service caught him. He began gravitating toward film at the expense of his journalistic career, and was able to help Miles and her husband, playwright and screenwriter Robert Bolt, get Lady Caroline Lamb, Bolt's only directorial effort, produced in 1971. Whiting was unsuccessful in getting his own screenplays produced.
Miles recalls Whiting as psychologically unstable, overly protective of her, sometimes to the point of abuse, and threatening suicide on several occasions. Following an incident during production of The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing in 1973, Whiting was found dead, with a significant head injury and high concentrations of two tranquilizers in his bloodstream, in Miles's hotel room after fighting with her and co-star Burt Reynolds in the early morning. Extensive media coverage speculated that Reynolds had played some role in Whiting's death; MGM's lawyers allowed local authorities only limited access to Reynolds, Miles and her nanny, who had slept the night in the room adjoining Miles's. Almost two months later a coroner's jury found Whiting's death to be the result of an accidental overdose, but qualified that conclusion as based on limited evidence and demanding of further investigation. Private investigators and experts hired by Whiting's mother came to different conclusions.

Early life and education

David Andrew Whiting was born to Robert, an urban planner, and Louise Whiting in New York City on August 25/26, 1946. The couple divorced when David was three years old; Robert began a new family in Chicago and became estranged from Louise and David, though he did send child support payments he could scarcely afford. Louise also remarried, to Francis Newell Campbell, becoming Louise Campbell. They lived in a small house in the north of Washington, D.C., described by Whiting's friends as a depressing environment. Louise was eccentric and emotionally distant, and enrolled her son at various boarding schools from the age of 10. Whiting resented her, finding her uncaring, and only called her "Mater". She said after his death that she had not been able to remember his exact birthday, even when he was a child.
When he left his boarding school in Lake Placid, New York, he claimed to have given the headmaster a box of excrement as a farewell gift. He then attended high school at the St. Albans School back in Washington. Journalist Mary Anne Dolan, who knew Whiting then, said that he aspired to live as a combination of Fred Astaire, Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra and Cole Porter. He also had a fascination with F. Scott Fitzgerald and particularly The Great Gatsby. According to high school friend and biographer Jonathan Agronsky, Whiting's classmates were unconcerned with his mental state, though they would often spend time trying to decide if his "Chaucerian tales" were true.
Despite claiming past athletic prowess, Whiting was overweight and nicknamed "Gumpy" at St. Albans, though he did play on the junior varsity football team there as a reserve lineman. Whiting was the smartest in his class across subjects, often challenging his teachers; an English master said that while Whiting could be irritating, he was so intelligent "he could do anything he wanted." The administration of the school, wanting Whiting to improve his grades, placed him on academic probation as a sophomore. As a junior he got a near-perfect SAT score, but in the same semester he got a C+, falling below the B-average required, and was expelled. He continued to be mentored by St. Albans' assistant headmaster John C. Davis, whom he saw as a father figure, for several years.
During those years, Whiting took dance classes at a high-society school, where he met Eleanor Lanahan, daughter of Frances Scott Fitzgerald. They were acquainted from cotillion and debutante balls, where Whiting would be a dance partner for young women, and in November 1963, Lanahan wrote to ask him to accompany her to a holiday ball.
Whiting skipped his senior year and enrolled at Georgetown University that fall, but underperformed academically his freshman year and had to leave. He then found a job as a script writer for documentary company Trans Africa Films, and left to work in the Libyan Sahara, becoming fitter and slimmer. He described the trip as the "greatest experience of life." Fearing that he would not have any future prospects upon his return without his high school diploma, he wrote Davis from the Sahara to seek his assistance in applying to college again, saying: "I am not merely asking, I am begging – will you help me? It may be the last time anyone can."
He became an English major in the Haverford College class of 1968, enrolling as a sophomore with Davis' help. He was popular among women, particularly at nearby Bryn Mawr College while there, though an ex-girlfriend of the time described him as not overly handsome and suggested the other women, like her, were intrigued by his eccentric nature and film connections, describing him as "a person in a lot of psychic pain." While at Haverford, Whiting went to visit a friend at Princeton University and posed as a student there to impress Lanahan. He wrote a thesis on either F. Scott Fitzgerald or Hamlet, according to his mother.

Career

While at college, Whiting wrote for the Washington Star-News, covering affairs in D.C., including the debutante balls. In 1968, straight out of Haverford, Whiting was hired by Time, becoming the magazine's youngest ever correspondent. On an early assignment he was sent to cover a White House ball thrown by Tricia Nixon, due to his experience; though security was tight, Whiting left the press room to attend the ball, and was later apprehended by the Secret Service while dancing with Tricia Nixon herself. In 1970 he was assigned to cover Los Angeles, where editor Henry Grunwald called Whiting his "Golden Boy". Whiting interviewed many film stars, befriending some; Candice Bergen nicknamed him "Preppy". He wrote an in-depth article about her for Time, under the pseudonym Anthony Blaine. Whiting had met Bergen while at the Cannes Film Festival in 1970, though he was not officially covering it; he tried to woo her and followed her to Spain, where she was filming, and then around Beverly Hills when she returned. She described him as "a good friend". He also wrote a story about Paula Prentiss and her marriage to Richard Benjamin for Cosmopolitan in 1971. Despite this early success, the exposure to Hollywood encouraged Whiting to leave journalism for film production. Lanahan said that Whiting had set his sights on that career as soon as he worked on a set in Libya, and had always been obsessed with movies and movie stars.
In 1971, Whiting interviewed English actress Sarah Miles for Time; the story was ultimately published by Cosmopolitan. He pursued Miles, who was married to screenwriter Robert Bolt: the day after the interview, Whiting requested another meeting; a few days later, as Miles was due to fly to New York for other interviews, Whiting approached her in Los Angeles International Airport. He told her he was booked on the same flight, and arranged to sit next to her on the plane; in New York, Whiting appeared at her hotel with a room on the same floor. Though he behaved strangely, Miles said she did not "tell him to get lost", though she denied encouraging his advances. At the hotel in New York, Whiting was in the room when Miles became angry at MGM staff who could not secure her a work permit to appear on talk shows after 10 days of trying; Whiting intervened and got her one in a half hour. She allowed him to accompany her during her stay in New York. He then followed her back to England.
Whiting developed an obsession with Miles, who nicknamed him "Whiz Kid", and neglected his journalism work. He was fired from Time; Miles soon hired him as her manager. He had proposed writing a story about Miles and Bolt's marriage, but did not work on it. While Whiting was living with Miles and Bolt, in 1971, he took on their film project, Lady Caroline Lamb; Bolt had written the screenplay for Miles to star and himself to direct, but was struggling to get it produced. Whiting called all of his film contacts, as well as other companies he could ask for financial backing, and took Miles to the Cannes Film Festival to network. He told Miles and Bolt that he had quit Time to work on the film, so the couple hired him as "Director of Publicity and Exploitation" for their film company, Pulsar Productions. Feeling underutilized, Whiting secretly made a deal to produce a documentary about the production of Lady Caroline Lamb, which angered the producers of the film. He stayed in his room dealing with anxiety and not doing his work. He was fired from Pulsar but Miles kept him on as her manager. In 1972, Whiting got Miles the coveted lead role opposite Burt Reynolds in The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing. While this film was in production, Whiting was working on a screenplay, The Capri Numbers, with a British friend.