Maurice Zolotow, 77; Hollywood Biographer

Maurice Zolotow, a Hollywood writer and biographer often called the “Boswell of Broadway” for his articles on theater and celebrities, has died at 77.

He died Thursday night at Century City Hospital of cardiac arrest, his former wife, children’s author Charlotte Shapiro Zolotow, said Friday.

Zolotow’s popular 1960 biography, “Marilyn Monroe,” which he accused writer Norman Mailer of plagiarizing for his own 1973 work on the fabled actress, was recently reissued.

Zolotow’s other books include one novel, “The Great Balsamo” in 1946, and the biographical “No People Like Show People” in 1951, “It Takes All Kinds” in 1952, “Oh, Careless Love” in 1959, “Stagestruck: The Romance of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne” in 1965, “Shooting Star: A Biography of John Wayne” in 1974, and “Billy Wilder in Hollywood” in 1977.

His “Confessions of a Racetrack Fiend” in 1983, which poked fun at his favorite hobby, prompted Los Angeles Times book reviewer Ben Irwin to comment: “Zolotow emerges as a beguiling dude, a not-quite-grown-up, middle-aged character with an immense capacity for finding pleasure and torment at the $2 window.”

Among Zolotow’s betting tips, gleaned from personal experience, were: “If a horse approaching the starting gate defecates, acts skittish or shows evidence of sexual arousal, don’t bet on him. In the first instance, he probably was too well fed; in the second, he is announcing he really doesn’t feel like running today; in the third, he quite clearly has his mind on other things.”

Born in New York City Nov. 23, 1913, Zolotow studied at New York University then earned his bachelor’s degree in English at the University of Wisconsin in 1936.

Zolotow wrote for the Saturday Evening Post, Theatre Arts, American Weekly, Cosmopolitan, and the New York Times Magazine. He was a contributing editor to Los Angeles magazine.

Survivors include his son, Stephen, of New York City, and daughter, Ellen, who writes under the name Crescent Dragonwagon, of Eureka Springs, Ark., and two sisters.