Curt Gentry, 83, Co-Author of ‘Helter Skelter,’ Dies
Curt
Gentry, an author and well-regarded biographer of J. Edgar Hoover who
had his biggest commercial success when he teamed up with Vincent
Bugliosi to write the 1974 blockbuster “Helter Skelter: The True Story
of the Manson Murders,” died on July 10 in San Francisco. He was 83.
His brother, Pat, confirmed the death, saying Mr. Gentry had been in hospice care. No cause was given.
Mr.
Gentry had written books about California history and culture when he
teamed with Mr. Bugliosi, who as a deputy district attorney in Los
Angeles had prosecuted the Manson case, among the most sensational of
the 20th century.
Mr.
Manson and his followers were accused of the gruesome murders of seven
people, including the actress Sharon Tate, the wife of the director
Roman Polanski, over less than 48 hours in Los Angeles in August 1969.
As
the prosecutor, Mr. Bugliosi was in a position to deliver an
authoritative, exclusive account. He provided the facts and the
documentation; Mr. Gentry, the driving narrative.
The
book’s title was taken from words written in blood at one of the crime
scenes, a reference to the title of a 1968 Beatles song that had
resonated with Mr. Manson. He and his followers were convicted; Mr.
Manson, now 79, remains in prison.
The
book became one of the best-selling titles of the 1970s, helping to
elevate true-crime narratives into the mainstream. In 1975, it won an
Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for best fact crime
book.
The
success of “Helter Skelter,” and the royalty checks it provided, gave
Mr. Gentry the time to research and write “J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and
the Secrets,” published in 1991.
With
nearly 850 pages of text and documentation, including previously
undisclosed internal documents, the book, a 15-year project, shed new
light on the man who led the Federal Bureau of Investigation for 48
years.
“Mr.
Gentry has illuminated his unrelentingly harsh profile in
vindictiveness and egocentricity with fresh details,” David Johnston
wrote in
The New York Times in 1991. “He discloses that in the attic of the
Justice Department, the F.B.I. ran a school teaching agents how to
conduct break-ins. In a basement ‘blue room’ Hoover entertained select
aides with screenings of surveillance films and pornographic movies.”
Mr.
Gentry claimed that Gerald R. Ford and Ronald Reagan had both provided
information to Hoover — Ford while he was a member of the Warren
Commission investigating the assassination of President John F. Kennedy
and Reagan when he was president of the Screen Actors Guild.
Unlike
some biographers, Mr. Gentry drew no conclusions about Mr. Hoover’s
sexual orientation — an issue because of Hoover’s preoccupation with
investigating the sex lives of others. “I could never find anything
definitive,” Mr. Gentry told The Times. “He had very little human
contact. He seemed to have no human feelings.”
Curtis
Marsena Gentry was born in Lamar, Colo., on June 13, 1931. His father
was a city clerk and his mother, who came from a long line of ranchers,
worked in a bank.
Mr.
Gentry was a reporter for several newspapers as a teenager and briefly
attended the University of Colorado before serving in the Air Force
during the Korean War. After moving to San Francisco, he graduated from
San Francisco State College (now San Francisco State University) and
wrote freelance articles and a travel guide to the city.
In
a 1964 book, “The Madams of San Francisco: An Irreverent History of the
City by the Golden Gate,” he used a history of prostitution to explore
the city’s social and cultural shifts since the gold rush days of the
1840s.
In
1970, Mr. Gentry collaborated with the American spy Francis Gary Powers
on “Operation Overflight,” the story of how Mr. Powers was shot down in
the Ural Mountains in Russia in 1960 and spent 21 months as a Russian
prisoner before he was returned to the United States in a prisoner swap.
His
other books include “Frame-Up” (1967), about two California union
leaders who spent more than two decades in prison for a bombing that
killed 10 people in San Francisco in 1916 before being pardoned; and
“The Last Days of the Late, Great State of California,” a novel that
predicted a devastating earthquake.
For many years, Mr. Gentry was part of a
circle of writers,
including Evan S. Connell, Richard Brautigan and Don Carpenter, who ate
and drank together at Enrico’s restaurant in the North Beach
neighborhood of San Francisco.
His
brother is his only immediate survivor. His first wife, the former
Laura Spence, died many years ago. His second marriage ended in divorce.
Correction: July 22, 2014
An obituary on Monday about the author Curt Gentry misstated the
year a plane flown by the American spy Francis Gary Powers, with whom
Mr. Gentry collaborated on a book, was shot down in Russia. It was 1960,
not 1962.
