Maurice Zolotow

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Maurice Zolotow (1917–1991) was a show business biographer. He wrote books and magazine articles. His articles appeared in publications including Life, Collier's Weekly, Reader's Digest, Los Angeles, and many others. His book Marilyn Monroe was the first written on the iconic actress, and it was the only one published while she was alive.

After graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (where he met his future wife Charlotte Shapiro a.k.a. Charlotte Zolotow, children's author and editor), he took his first job at Billboard, then a publication covering not just the music business but all aspects of show business. Zolotow was an early jazz lover, and he gave Duke Ellington his first national review. Zolotow remained devoted to pop culture, literature (one of his closest friends was the poet Delmore Schwartz), politics, and magic. Another friend, in later life, was Ricky Jay. Zolotow recalled seeing Houdini perform at Coney Island as a child; Zolotow wrote a novel, The Great Balsamo, based on him.

Subjects of his other books include John Wayne (Shooting Star), Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne (Stagestruck) and Billy Wilder (Billy Wilder in Hollywood). He wrote shorter profiles of celebrities ranging from Tallulah Bankhead to Walter Matthau to Grace Kelly to Milton Berle. References to his magazine work and his compilation of shorter profiles, It Takes All Kinds, may be found in Wikipedia under entries for Jack Webb, Samuel Sorenson Adams, and Richard Himber.

He lived in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York for much of his adult life, but after his divorce in 1969, he moved to Los Angeles, California. He had two children, poker player Stephen Zolotow and author Crescent Dragonwagon.