Brad Darrach

Who was Brad Darrach?

Brad Darrach was a journalist and film critic. A 1942 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, he joined Time Inc. in 1945 after working for the Baltimore Sun and the Providence Journal. He wrote for Time Inc. magazines including Time, Life, People and Sports Illustrated. During a career which spanned the 1940s to the 1990s, he profiled such notables as Elizabeth Taylor, Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra, Fred Astaire, Barbra Streisand, Robin Williams, Bill Cosby, Jack Nicholson and Miss Piggy. His 1955 Time cover story on Marilyn Monroe, based on a chaste 10-hour interview in her hotel bed while she was filming Bus Stop, was the first to report on the star’s traumatic childhood; in 1984, he wrote: "Out it came for the first time, the whole hideous mess: the foster homes, the religious sadists who threatened her with hellfire, the child molester who raped her when she was 6. Simply to remember was agony for Marilyn. Sometimes she was racked with sobs; sometimes she choked on anger and disgust. Sometimes tears filled my eyes too." For a 1995 Life Magazine photoshoot with Michelle Pfeiffer, he held the Hope Diamond in his hand.

Darrach’s work is widely anthologized. His 1973 Playboy interview with Mel Brooks is reprinted in Gene Shalit’s Laughing Matters. His reporting for Playboy on the 1972 Bobby Fischer-Boris Spassky chess match is included as one of four “Best of the Best” in David Halberstam’s Best American Sportswriting of the Century. He succeeded James Agee as Time’s film reviewer; several of his reviews are reprinted in Film 67/68.