Robert Gottlieb Dies: Legendary Editor To Robert Caro, Michael Crichton, Nora Ephron, Toni Morrison & Joseph Heller Was 92
16.06.2023 - 02:19
/ deadline.com
Robert Gottlieb, the legendary editor at Simon & Schuster, Alfred A. Knopf and The New Yorker who helped shape the work of many of the world’s greatest writers over the past six decades, has died, according to Knopf and The New Yorker. He was 92.
A smattering of the literary talents whose work Gottlieb edited include Nobel laureates such as Toni Morrison, Doris Lessing and V.S. Naipaul; bestselling novelists such as John le Carré, Michael Crichton and Ray Bradbury; Hollywood types such as Bob Dylan, Elia Kazan, Katharine Hepburn, Sidney Poitier, Nora Ephron and Lauren Bacall; Pulitzer Prize-winners such as John Cheever, Katharine Graham and Robert Caro; and even a president, Bill Clinton.
Gottlieb was featured in the documentary Turn Every Page, directed by his daughter Lizzie, which premiered at last year’s Tribeca Festival and was picked up by Sony Pictures Classics. The film focuses on Gottlieb and Caro as they as they work methodically to complete the final volume of Caro’s Lyndon Johnson biography, a project which has spanned decades.
Though focused on literature, Gottlieb’s work had a profound impact in the world of entertainment. Dozens of the classics he edited went on to be adapted for the big and small screen
As an editor, Gottlieb hit pay dirt from the start. In the late ’50s at Simon & Schuster, he was dazzled by a manuscript entitled Catch-18, by an advertising copywriter. Due to its similarity to a title from Leon Uris, Gottlieb convinced the book’s author, Joseph Heller, to change it to Catch-22. The book, of course, became a classic, with the title entering the American lexicon.
In 1969, he married Italian actress Maria Tucci, who has appeared in, among other things, Sidney Lumet’s Daniel, Gus Van