THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, February 21, 1995 TAG: 9502210304
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B7 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
LENGTH: Short : 44 lines
Caldwell Willingham, the novelist and screenwriter whose first book, ``End as a Man,'' made him a literary star at 24, died Sunday at the Lakes Region General Hospital in Laconia, N.H. He was 72 and lived in New Hampton, N.H.
The cause was lung cancer, said his son Tom.
Willingham was a part of the widely heralded generation of young, salty writers of naturalistic fiction, including Norman Mailer and James Jones, who came to the fore of American literature in the postwar era. Although he published 10 novels between 1947 and 1975, he was probably better known in recent years for his work on screenplays for films including ``The Graduate'' (1967), ``Little Big Man'' (1970) and ``Rambling Rose'' (1991), which he adapted from his 1972 novel of the same title.
Once described by Mailer as ``a clown with the bite of a ferret,'' Willingham specialized in acerbic, comic fiction that didn't shy away from sexual explicitness or Southern Gothic excess. He was born in Atlanta in 1922, grew up in in Rome, Ga., and attended the University of Virginia. But it was his earlier experience at The Citadel, the South Carolina military school where he spent a year, that formed the basis for his best seller ``End as a Man.''
Published in 1947, this dark study of sadism among students at a Citadel-like institution generated both critical praise and controversy. Charges of obscenity were brought against the book's publisher, Vanguard Press, by the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. Vanguard was acquitted, but not before a publicity-garnering trial.
The success of ``End as a Man,'' which was turned into a play and a movie in the 1950s, cast a shadow its author never seemed to be able to escape. ``Success is always dangerous, and early success is deadly,'' he said in a 1953 interview. ``What I went through writing my second book shouldn't happen to a dog.''
KEYWORDS: DEATH OBITUARY by CNB