Sandford Dody | Ghostwriter for stars, 90

Sandford Dody, 90, a ghostwriter who as alter ego, confidant, and shadow coaxed best-selling autobiographies out of Bette Davis, Helen Hayes, and other performers, died July 4 of pneumonia in Jersey City, N.J. He lived in New York.

Mr. Dody got to know the denizens of Hollywood in the 1940s when he had bit parts in films. He had dreamed of being a playwright, but ghostwriting turned out to be a more reliable way of paying the bills.

A witty, often caustic, and sharply observant writer, he had mixed feelings about presuming to tell others' life stories, in their words. "Could there be anything madder than an autobiography written by someone other than oneself?" he wrote in his memoir, Giving Up the Ghost (1980).

Mr. Dody and Davis became fast friends, and the book The Lonely Life (1962) was a pleasure to write, he said. But later, he said, Davis tore into the book, "guilt-ridden that she hadn't actually written it."

He also wrote On Reflection (1968) for Hayes, known as the first lady of the American theater. Judy Garland and Katharine Hepburn turned him down, which greatly displeased him, he said in Giving Up the Ghost. He also ghostwrote All My Sins Remembered, a 1964 autobiography of Elaine Barrymore, the last wife of actor John Barrymore, and Once More From the Beginning in 1965 for opera star Robert Merrill.

- Washington Post