Axel Madsen, 76, biographer of Hollywood celebrities

LOS ANGELES -- Axel Madsen, a prolific writer best known for his richly detailed biographies of Hollywood celebrities, fashion pioneers, and business titans including Barbara Stanwyck, Coco Chanel, and John Jacob Astor, has died. He was 76.

Mr. Madsen, whose books also tackled such topics as cross-country truck drivers and the CBS newsmagazine "60 Minutes," died April 23 of pancreatic cancer at his Los Angeles home, his wife, Midori, said Saturday.

A Hollywood film correspondent in the 1960s and '70s, Mr. Madsen wrote more than a dozen biographies, starting with a short work on director Billy Wilder in 1968. He continued with directors William Wyler and John Huston, and then French fashion designers Yves St. Laurent and Chanel.

In addition to profiling the leading lights of Hollywood, he wrote serious studies of French thinkers André Malraux, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir as well as captains of industry William C. Durant and Astor.

But his most popular volumes focused on Hollywood's salacious back - stories in "Gloria and Joe: The Star-Crossed Love Affair of Gloria Swanson and Joe Kennedy" (1988) and "The Sewing Circle: Female Stars Who Loved Other Women" (1995).

Michael Hargraves, a writer and researcher at the J. Paul Getty Museum who often helped Mr. Madsen with his background investigations, marveled at his friend's chosen field.

"I always joked with him, 'How come you never had a regular desk job like I did?' " Hargraves told the Los Angeles Times. "And he said, 'I've been lucky, because I've been able to get these assignments and publishers will pay me to do these types of books. They know that celebrities sell.' "

Some subjects cooperated with Mr. Madsen, whereas others avoided his probing. Mr. Madsen was hand picked to tell Wyler's story, and as a film journalist he had interviewed actresses Stanwyck and Swanson years before. But his peek behind the scenes of "60 Minutes" was unauthorized, and St. Laurent backed out of a planned interview.

Mr. Madsen's books gained attention from reviewers for high-profile publications who sometimes, but not always, offered positive responses.

In The New York Times in 1987, Laurence Wylie called the biography of marine explorer Jacques Cousteau "journalism at its best and at its worst. At its best because it is lively, simply organized, clearly written , and holds the reader's interest in what might have been a lengthy enumeration of adventures, maneuvers , and achievements. At its worst because it is careless. . . . More important, the book is superficial."

However, Wylie added, "The truth is that I enjoyed the book."

Mr. Madsen's varied interests were reflected in his choice of subjects. His wife said he decided to write about truckers after the two of them drove back and forth from Los Angeles to their other home, in Bucks County, Pa. He became fascinated with the characters they encountered at truck stops, resulting in "Open Road: Truckin' on the Biting Edge" (1982).

Mr. Madsen was born in Copenhagen to a Danish father and French mother, and grew up in Paris. He studied music but turned to writing, initially for the Paris edition of the New York Herald Tribune in the early 1950s.

Mr. Madsen moved to Hollywood in the early 1960s to satisfy his interest in film, his wife said. He handled publicity for movie studios and worked as a freelance correspondent for national and international publications.