Robin Moore, 82, author of 'French Connection,' 'Green Berets'
Boston-native Robert L. "Robin" Moore, who wrote "The Green Berets," "The French Connection," and "The Happy Hooker," left his home in Concord to spend his final years with the men who defined his career, the US Special Forces.
Mr. Moore moved to a house near Fort Campbell, Ky., two years ago in hope of writing another book about the elite Army unit known as the Green Berets.
"Of all his books and all the things he did, that was the thing he kept returning to," said his daughter Margo of Concord.
Mr. Moore died of throat cancer Thursday in a Kentucky hospital. He was 82.
He co-wrote the hit song, "Ballad of the Green Berets," and "always had a tear when the song was played," said his widow, Helen (Kirkman) of Hopkinsville, Ky.
Married five times, Mr. Moore was a witty, globe-trotting figure who always knew he wanted to write, according to his family.
"Earnest Hemingway was his hero," said his brother, John of Concord. "Hemingway used to write standing up so Robin would write standing up."
Mr. Moore's father cofounded and built the Sheraton hotel empire, and Mr. Moore dabbled in work for the chain in the 1960s.
When President Lyndon B. Johnson stayed at the Sheraton Jamaica, Mr. Moore replaced the Bible in his room with his book about Fidel Castro, "The Devil to Pay," according to his wife.
"Soon after that, his father said you either write books or sell hotel rooms," said Helen Moore, who first met her husband in Jamaica in 1958 and married him in June 2005 at a Special Forces convention in Nashville.
Mr. Moore's fourth wife, singer Mary Olga (Troshkin), died in April 2005. They were married 32 years.
Most of Mr. Moore's books were nonfiction or fictionalized accounts woven with reports on real events and people. He started his writing career on assignment in postwar Europe for The Boston Globe; among his last works were accounts of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In between, he brought to life gun runners in the Caribbean, mob figures from Moscow to Sicily to New Jersey, mercenaries in Africa, undercover cops, and, time and again, the warriors of the Special Forces.
"The French Connection," published in 1969, was about two New York detectives uncoiling a massive drug-trafficking network. It inspired a movie that won five Academy Awards in 1971, including for best picture.
"The Green Berets," published in 1965, was a fictional account based on Mr. Moore's six months with a Special Forces unit fighting the Viet Cong. It inspired John Wayne to fund and star in a movie that critics reveled in panning.
In "The Happy Hooker," Mr. Moore teamed with famed prostitute Xaviera Hollander and Yvonne Dunleavy to write an account of Hollander's exploits. It became one of the best-selling books worldwide of the 1970s, and it, too, spawned a motion picture.
Among the dozens of his published books were several with ties to Boston, including "Fiedler, the Colorful Mr. Pops," a biography of Boston Pops conductor Arthur Fiedler, and "The Accidental Pope," a novel that plumbs the secretive world of the Vatican and that was co-written with Raymond L. Flynn, the former Boston mayor who served as US ambassador to the Vatican.
"He was a teacher, really," Flynn said yesterday about his coauthor. "He had great patience, that old Yankee patience."
Mr. Moore first contacted Flynn after he saw him on CNN talking about his efforts to deepen relations between Israel and the Catholic Church, Flynn said.
Mr. Moore suggested Flynn put his unique knowledge of Vatican politics to use in a novel. For two years, Flynn visited Mr. Moore's Concord home regularly to write and receive critiques. "The best writer is a great reader, he would say to me," Flynn said. "When you get tired of writing, go read."
Mr. Moore was born on Halloween night in 1925, a fact he liked to point out.
He attended Middlesex School and Belmont Hill School before serving as a nose-gunner on a B-17 bomber based in England during World War II. He graduated from Harvard in 1949.
While majoring in English literature and composition there, he was sent overseas by the Globe for a series of postwar reports on Europe.
After graduating, Mr. Moore moved to New York City and tried to build a career in the nascent television business. "The first job I got in television was helping a man who sold roses on TV," he said in 1966. "My job was to take a bucket, go out to Central Park, and, when the cops weren't looking, dig a bunch of dirt up and bring it back in so we could plant the roses in it on TV."
He quit television to work in advertising for the Sheraton company. He struggled with his writing career until he talked his way into becoming the first civilian to train with and accompany a Special Forces unit.
Mr. Moore offered at least two versions of how he managed that. In the first, he said he used his relationship with Robert F. Kennedy (the two were classmates at Harvard) to gain influence with President John F. Kennedy, who, unlike many of his military leaders, thought the emerging Special Forces unit should become one of the key weapons against communist insurgencies.
In the second account, he told the Globe that it was sneaking his work into President Johnson's hotel room in Jamaica that did the trick.
Either way, "The Green Berets" book and movie, in which Mr. Moore had a small role as a lieutenant, were blockbusters.
Major General Gary L. Harrell, deputy commanding general of the Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, called Mr. Moore "a valued and trusted member of the Special Operations family."
"Robin was a devoted advocate and a true ambassador for the Green Beret and all they stand for," Harrell said in a statement.
At the time of his death, Mr. Moore was working on his memoirs and a novel about cause and effect spanning the period from the 1900s to 2050, his wife said. The working title was "Karma," but no ending exists, she said.
In addition to his brother, his daughter, and his wife, Mr. Moore leaves another daughter, Lacy Hamilton of Hancock, Maine; four grandsons; and three granddaughters.
A funeral is planned for 2 p.m. March 1 at Grace Episcopal Church in Hopkinsville. Interment will be in the family plot at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord following a memorial service to be announced later.
Michael J. Bailey of the Globe staff contributed to this obituary.
Correction: Because of a reporting error, the obituary Sunday of author Robert L. "Robin" Moore, who wrote "The Green Berets" and "The French Connection," misspelled the first name of writer Ernest Hemingway. 