David Whiting

His death is fictionalized in the 2011 novel The Gatsby Game by Anne R. Allen, who had briefly dated Whiting in college, and recollections of Whiting's death formed the basis of the 2014 film The David Whiting Story by Walter Reuben, which won the Best Experimental/Independent Film award from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association at the 2014 Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards. Reuben had also attended Haverford, and met Whiting at the film society Reuben founded there.

Miles returned to England following the inquest but media pressure in the aftermath made her decide to relocate to Los Angeles, where she could be "just another tiddler in a tank of sharks". Her family, similarly, felt forced to move. In 2007, she said that being accused of Whiting's murder was the lowest point in her life. The impact of the media response to Whiting's death and the inquest also caused strain on Miles and Bolt's marriage, and they divorced in 1976 but remarried 12 years later.

The publicity for The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing sought to capitalize on the media interest surrounding Whiting's death, as well as the rumors that Reynolds and Miles were romantically involved, and created an advertising campaign and slogan that was "sexed up". Reynolds expressed displeasure at the slogan; it was modified to better represent the film, reading "Burt and Sarah in a torrid love story that shocked the Old West!". In 2000, film journalist Harry Haun wrote that making reference to Whiting's death (which he called a suicide) in promoting the film was a "tawdry tactic", and that Reynolds had to threaten MGM with a lawsuit to make them change the slogan.

David Andrew Whiting (August 1946 – February 11, 1973) was an American writer and personal manager. 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.

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.

Whiting was found dead in Miles' motel room at the Travelodge in Gila Bend, Arizona, on February 11, 1973, aged 26. Agronsky noted that Whiting was one of three St. Albans classmates to die tragically young, each in ways Agronsky said "seemed to reflect the struggles our (Baby Boom) generation had faced while coming of age".

Bolt said that when Whiting had good days, they liked to spend time with him, that "he could be witty, self-mocking and extraordinarily perceptive"; Bolt saw Whiting as a surrogate son but acknowledged that, on his bad days, Whiting lived in a fantasy world where "he became intensely jealous of anyone who displayed affection for [Miles]". While he lived with them, Miles and Bolt encouraged Whiting to visit a psychiatrist, but he refused. Miles later suggested that Whiting's madness was the price for his brilliance. Despite his familial relationship with Miles and Bolt, Whiting said in a January 1973 interview that he would one day marry Miles, even if he had to wait for Bolt to die. Miles has denied reports she and Whiting had a sexual relationship. He had also already married 22-year-old flight attendant Nancy Cockerill in Cook County, Illinois, in January 1970. It is suggested by Agronsky that he kept the marriage a secret from everyone, including his mother, to enjoy a playboy lifestyle. He used Cockerill's job to travel often at reduced cost, claiming when others asked that it was because his father was a Pan Am executive, one of many extravagant lies he used to create his persona. Neither his nor Cockerill's parents knew of the marriage.

In 2019, Whiting's death was included in a tabloid list of "famous unsolved Hollywood murders". His "bizarre" death was first profiled in tabloids on March 1, 1973, before the inquest was heard. In the early 1990s, book Tales of Hollywood the Bizarre included a chapter on Gila Bend and Whiting's death; the author wrote that Whiting's head injury came from a coffee table in Reynolds' motel room. In 1994, both Reynolds and Miles published autobiographies which mention the incident. Miles wrote a screenplay about Whiting, completed in 2019.

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 (his first), The Capri Numbers, with a British friend.

Whiting had an unstable emotional life. Writer Ron Rosenbaum said he was driven by a need to form a family bond; Rosenbaum suggested that Whiting felt he had found this with Miles, Bolt, and their son Thomas. The family lived on a country estate in Surrey; shortly after getting to know Miles, Whiting proposed he write an article for Time about the couple and moved in with them. In the following weeks, he seemed to make no progress and made it clear he did not want to leave. Miles would later describe him during this period as having "fits of depression and then fits of creativity when he showed his brilliance. Then he had those manic times when he got over the top with excitement." He continued to live with the family. Four months after moving in, Whiting threatened suicide, causing Miles and Bolt to not mention his departure for several more months. After he became anxious working on Lady Caroline Lamb with them, in September 1971, the couple suggested he move into Miles' London apartment. Whiting threatened to kill himself if they ever made him leave. As two other friends who had previously stayed with Miles had taken their own lives, she took the threat seriously; Whiting did move to the apartment in February 1972. A few weeks later, he took an overdose and was rushed to the hospital, moving back in with Bolt and Miles afterward. Miles recalled in later years that when Whiting lived with them, she prevented three suicide attempts.

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.

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.

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 (daughter of then-president Richard 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 (after Fitzgerald protagonists Anthony Patch of The Beautiful and Damned and Amory Blaine of This Side of Paradise). 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.

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.

David Andrew Whiting was born to Robert, an urban planner in Chicago, 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 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.