Chicago born, I’m the child of two idealists. My mother Jennie Persily and father Leo Sigal were labor organizers. Jennie, a single mother, raised me mostly on her own. She was the cool negotiator; he the firebrand who carried a .25 Derringer. In our culture there was no clear line between honest labor and the Mob. If possible we hired gangsters to protect us from the company’s strikebreaking thugs. Hence our home was always full of friendly felons, anarchists and hobos on the run.
Chicago streets were my schoolroom. I impersonated a tough ‘Dead End’ kid. The mile square neighborhood called Lawndale was my entire world until the war. For petty street crimes that today would not rise to misdemeanors, I was "sentenced" to a trade school that – as fate would have it - turned out to be 99 percent girls, Jones Commercial. The shock to my male psyche was irreversible.
Chicago streets were my schoolroom. I impersonated a tough ‘Dead End’ kid. The mile square neighborhood called Lawndale was my entire world until the war. For petty street crimes that today would not rise to misdemeanors, I was "sentenced" to a trade school that – as fate would have it - turned out to be 99 percent girls, Jones Commercial. The shock to my male psyche was irreversible.
Clancy as a GI sergeant in bombed out German ruins at time of Nuremberg War Crimes trial
The army saved my life, and I almost re-enlisted. As a GI in Occupied Germany, I went AWOL to the Nuremberg War Crimes trial bent on shooting Herman Goering. (Listen to my NPR broadcast “A Jewish Soldier Witnesses Nuremberg”, 2 Oct 2006.) After the war, at UCLA, I was a GI Bill student where my drinking buddies included the later Watergate conspirators, Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, the latter of whom reported me regularly to the FBI.
My Hollywood career began after graduation. I was hired as a “reader” by a movie studio then blacklisted. By pure luck I fell into a job as a talent agent representing Humphrey Bogart and other A list stars. It was a paranoid time when informers flourished. Nuclear-tipped missiles ringed Cold War Los Angeles. I was trailed by my favorite FBI agents, “Mutt & Jeff”, who wanted to (1) nail me, and (2) help them get dates with starlets.
My split life also included a small group of poker-playing dissidents who J. Edgar Hoover in one of his crazier moods tagged us as "Cell With No Name alias Omega".
“Something told me” – a hunch – it was time to get out of Dodge City if I wanted to be a writer which I wasn’t yet.
My split life also included a small group of poker-playing dissidents who J. Edgar Hoover in one of his crazier moods tagged us as "Cell With No Name alias Omega".
“Something told me” – a hunch – it was time to get out of Dodge City if I wanted to be a writer which I wasn’t yet.
Clancy with Doris Lessing
Hemingway had a marvelous time in Paris, and so would I. Alas, the language and playing poker with the existential Simone de Beauvoir-Sartre crowd defeated me. Without a valid passport I smuggled into Britain as an illegal immigrant soaping my window sashes for easy escape over London rooftops when the police came calling. The African writer Doris Lessing and I lived together, off and on, for several years. London is where I learned to write and, perhaps most importantly, where an audience found me. I broadcast regularly from the same BBC studios that George Orwell had used. Intending only a weekend visit, I stayed in the UK for 30 years.
For several years I collaborated with the radical “anti-psychiatrists” Drs. R.D. Laing and David Cooper, with whom I hatched a halfway house for so-called incurable schizophrenics, Kingsley Hall in London’s east end.
Later, during the Vietnam War, I was "stationmaster" of a London safe house for American GI deserters and draft dodgers (two distinct species).
For several years I collaborated with the radical “anti-psychiatrists” Drs. R.D. Laing and David Cooper, with whom I hatched a halfway house for so-called incurable schizophrenics, Kingsley Hall in London’s east end.
Later, during the Vietnam War, I was "stationmaster" of a London safe house for American GI deserters and draft dodgers (two distinct species).
Clancy receiving PEN Lifetime Achievement Award
A PEN Lifetime Achievement award winner and National Book Award runner up, I am a Professor Emeritus at the Annenberg School of Journalism, University of Southern California. I have lectured at Oxford, Cambridge, the London School of Economics, and Eton College. Currently I live in Los Angeles with my screenwriting partner and wife Janice Tidwell, our son Joe and Lucky, our dog.
