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Can bios be trusted?
Courtesy of St. Martin’s Press
June 5, 2008 | 12:00 a.m. CST
With his involvement in the Church of Scientology, couch-damaging displays of excitement and tirades against psychiatry, Tom Cruise is no stranger to controversy. His outrageous behavior and maniacal grin have led the media and public to wonder what happened to the bare-legged boy in Risky Business. Yet the latest uproar about Cruise speaks to an issue larger than the man himself. The actor’s attorney and his church have attacked Andrew Morton’s Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography for allegedly containing lies. But that didn’t stop the book from becoming a New York Times bestseller.
Morton’s work, published Jan. 15, is the most recent reminder of the mysterious nature of the unauthorized biography. Why do authors risk lawsuits and their reputations to write about people without their permission? “If you as a biographer agree to conditions that limit your search for truth or at least limit what you can write after your search for truth, it’s very unlikely that readers are going to get the best possible book,” says Steve Weinberg, a biographer and MU journalism professor whose latest work, Taking on the Trust: The Epic Battle of Ida Tarbell and John D. Rockefeller, was released in March. “I almost never read authorized biographies with a great level of confidence.”
Because of their freedom, unauthorized biographies are usually less flattering than authorized bios. “Unauthorized biographies tend to be the ones that make the subject less the saint or the ideal,” says Catherine Parke, a biography expert and author of Biography: Writing Lives.
The unauthorized banner should not be taken as a mark of credibility, however. “Some of the gossipy (biographies) are well-documented and well-reported,” Weinberg says. “But a lot of them are essentially newspaper clip jobs and magazine clip jobs where there’s almost no original reporting.”
No matter the biographer’s approach, litigation is always a possibility –– as Weinberg knows from experience. His 1989 biography of Armand Hammer, a petroleum CEO, resulted in a libel lawsuit, and although Hammer died before the suit could go to court, he is one of many biography subjects to sue authors.
According to The Publishing Law Center, based in Denver, unauthorized biographers must take a few steps to ensure their work is legal. A prospective author cannot invade the subject’s privacy. In addition, they cannot state that the subject endorses or authorizes the biography or infringe on any copyrighted material, including published and unpublished letters. Biographers can also be sued if they disclose information they contractually agreed to keep confidential. Most importantly, however, biographies should be accurate.
This can be difficult if the subject is unwilling to cooperate. Fortunately, biographers have methods at their disposal. Publications such as the New York Review of Books or the Times literary supplement will place ads noting an author’s current work on a biography. Sources with primary or additional information may then contact the author to further the biography’s reportage. In the Hammer biography, Weinberg talked to people who knew the tycoon and dug up speeches he made.
Of course, unauthorized does not equal unsupported. “There are biographies that aren’t at all authorized but where the subject cooperates,” Weinberg says.
Regardless of whether they cooperate, celebrities will continue to have their biographies written as long as the public demands information. In other words, biographies are everlasting. “It’s a way into history,” Parke says. “We also are just fascinated by how other people did what they did, particularly people who do things that are of special interest to us.”
