Gore Vidal

Biography/bibliography in: "Contemporary Authors". New Revision Series, Vol. 132, pp. 395-409. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2005.

A 1995 BBC documentary on him, Omnibus: Gore Vidal's Gore Vidal Part 1 (1995), features The Night of the Generals (1967) among a montage of posters for films he is known to have contributed to as a writer, although, as with Ben-Hur (1959), he is not credited.

Won a National Book Award (1993) for his non-fiction collection "United States: Essays, 1952-1992".

Another unsuccessful foray into politics would occur in 1982 when he ran for governor of California. In addition to being an accomplished writer, he is also a novice actor.

In 1976, he accepted the Oscar for best writing-original screenplay on behalf of Frank Pierson, who wasn't present at the Academy Awards ceremony.

Uncle of Burr Steers, who is related on his mother's side to Thomas Jefferson's infamous vice president Aaron Burr, the subject of Vidal's best-selling novel "Burr" in 1973.

In the early 1970s, a Washington, D.C. television station named the host of their weekly horror movie slot Gore Dival.

Co-Founded the U.S. Peace Party with Benjamin Spock on June 23, 1967. Much like Gore Vidal himself, Spock was an outspoken activist in the anti-Vietnam War movement during the 1960s and early 1970s. This third party still exists today as the Peace and Freedom Party (PFP).

In 1960, he unsuccessfully ran for Congress, backed by celebrity supporters like Paul Newman & Vidal's ex-fiancé Joanne Woodward.

Is uncredited as a screenwriter on Ben-Hur (1959), although producer Sam Zimbalist had promised Vidal and Christopher Fry, who worked on the script independently from Vidal, screen credit. Karl Tunberg, who wrote the original screenplay before many rewrites by Vidal and Fry produced the final shooting script, claimed the credit. Zimbalist died before the movie ended, and thus could not testify at the Writers Guild arbitration hearing. Tunberg won the credit, but failed to win the Oscar. The film had been nominated for 12 Oscars, and won a record 11, a record that has since been tied. The movie's sole loss was for best writing-screenplay based on material from another medium. The loss is usually attributed to the fallout over the credit dispute, which Vidal made widely known.

He met his long-term partner Howard Austen in 1950. They were together until Austen's death in November 2003.

He was an intimate friend of playwright Tennessee Williams. They lived together in Italy for many years. Whenever Gore was asked to name his favorite movie, he facetiously named Marriage Is a Private Affair (1944), a mediocre film starring Lana Turner. Vidal knew that Tennessee Williams had contributed to its screenplay without credit, and he was embarrassed whenever anyone mentioned the film.

After graduating from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1943, Gore joined the US Army Reserves. Some of his Army experiences inspired his first novel, Williwaw, which was published when he was just 19. He dedicated the novel to J. T. , a deceased prep-school friend. Subsequent novels would prominently feature gay male characters, and Gore found soon found his books had staying power on bestseller lists.

In 1936, as a 10-year-old boy, he appeared in a Pathé Newsreel landing his father's light aircraft.

His father, Eugene Luther Vidal, helped start three different airlines and had a lengthy romantic relationship with aviator Amelia Earhart. With Earhart's recommendation to Eleanor Roosevelt, Vidal was named Director of Aeronautics in Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration. He then appeared on the cover of Time magazine (December 18, 1933). In his youth, Eugene had been a football star at West Point and competed in the decathlon in the Antwerp Olympic Games of 1920.

Gore Vidal was born Eugene Louis Vidal in 1925 in West Point, New York, to Nina (Gore) and West Point aeronautics instructor and aviation pioneer Eugene Luther Vidal. The Vidals endured a rocky marriage divorcing ten years after Gore's birth. Young Gore spent much of his childhood with his blind grandfather, Senator T. P. Gore of Oklahoma. Vidal would later become the confidant of Jacqueline Kennedy when Jacques mother married his former step father, Hugh D. Auchincloss.

He has been cited as a relative of Tennessee senator and Vice President Al Gore ("Gore" was Gore Vidal's mother's maiden name). However, Gore Vidal and Al Gore share no common "Gore" ancestors going back to at least the early 1700s.