Norman Mailer Net Worth

What Was Norman Mailer’s Net Worth?

Norman Mailer was an American writer, filmmaker, and journalist who had a net worth equal to $5 million at the time of his death, adjusting for inflation. Norman Mailer was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, in January 1923 and passed away in November 2007. He gained fame after his novel “The Naked and the Dead” was published in 1948. Mailer won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for his novel “Armies of the Night” in 1968. He won another Pulitzer Prize for “The Executioner’s Song” in 1979, and in 1983, he earned a Primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Writing in a Limited Series or a Special for the NBC adaptation of the novel. Norman is considered one of the innovators of the creative nonfiction genre and his most famous essay is “The White Negro.” He co-founded The Village Voice in 1955 and ran for mayor of New York in 1968. In 1960, Mailer was convicted of assault for stabbing his second wife, Adele Morales. Norman Mailer passed away from acute renal failure on November 10, 2007, at the age of 84.

Early Life

Norman Mailer was born Nachem Malech Mailer on January 31, 1923, in Long Branch, New Jersey. His mother, Fanny, ran a nursing and housekeeping agency, and his father, Isaac (also known as Barney), worked as an accountant. Norman and his younger sister, Barbara, grew up in a Jewish household in Brooklyn. After graduating from Boys High School, Mailer enrolled at Harvard College at the age of 16. At Harvard, he joined the Signet Society, majored in engineering, and took writing courses. When he was 18, Norman’s story “The Greatest Thing in the World” was published after he won Story magazine’s college contest. In 1943, he earned a Bachelor of Science with honors, then he was drafted into the U.S. Army shortly after marrying his first wife. He trained at Fort Bragg before being stationed in the Philippines, where he worked at regimental headquarters as a typist. He was later assigned as a wire lineman. After he volunteered for a reconnaissance platoon in early 1945, Mailer patrolled contested territory and took part in several skirmishes and firefights. After Japan surrendered, the army sent Norman to Japan with the army of occupation. He was promoted to the rank of sergeant, and he became a first cook. Mailer wrote hundreds of letters to his wife during his time in the military, and they became the foundation for his 1948 novel “The Naked and the Dead.”

Career

After “The Naked and the Dead,” Mailer published the novels “Barbary Shore” (1951), “The Deer Park” (1955), “An American Dream” (1965), “Why Are We in Vietnam?” (1967), “A Transit to Narcissus” (1978), “The Executioner’s Song” (1979), “Of Women and Their Elegance” (1980), “Ancient Evenings” (1983), “Tough Guys Don’t Dance” (1984), “Harlot’s Ghost” (1991), “The Gospel According to the Son” (1997), and “The Castle in the Forest” (2007). He also released several nonfiction books, including “The Armies of the Night” (1968), “Of a Fire on the Moon” (1971), “Marilyn: A Biography” (1973), “The Fight” (1975), and “Oswald’s Tale: An American Mystery” (1995). Norman co-founded the publication The Village Voice in the mid-1950s, and he wrote for Esquire and Harper’s. He wrote the screenplay for the 1982 NBC adaptation of “The Executioner’s Song,” which starred Tommy Lee Jones, Christine Lahti, Rosanna Arquette, and Eli Wallach and earned five Primetime Emmy nominations. Mailer then wrote and directed a 1987 film adaptation of “Tough Guys Don’t Dance,” which starred Ryan O’Neal and Isabella Rossellini.

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Personal Life and Death

Norman was married six times and divorced five times. He eloped with his first wife, Beatrice “Bea” Silverman, in January 1944, and they had a daughter named Susan before divorcing in 1952 due to Mailer’s affair with Adele Morales. Norman and Adele moved in together in 1951, and they married three years later and had two daughters, Elizabeth and Danielle. In November 1960, Mailer stabbed Morales twice with a 2.5-inch blade and nearly killed her. He claimed that he stabbed her “to relieve her of cancer,” and he was subsequently committed to Bellevue Hospital for more than two weeks. Norman pleaded guilty to assault and was given a suspended sentence of three years’ probation. They divorced in 1962, and later that year, Mailer wed British heiress/journalist Lady Jeanne Campbell, the daughter of Ian Campbell, 11th Duke of Argyll. The marriage was short-lived, but the couple had a daughter, Kate, who became an actress and writer. From 1963 to 1980, Norman was married to model/actress Beverly Bentley, and they had two sons, actor Stephen Mailer and producer Michael Mailer. Norman had a daughter, Maggie (born 1971), with jazz singer Carol Stevens, then Mailer and Stevens married on November 7, 1980, and divorced in Haiti the next day, legitimating their daughter. In 1980, Norman married art teacher Norris Church (born Barbara Davis), and they remained together until Mailer’s death in November 2007. Their son, John Buffalo Mailer, is an actor and writer. On November 10, 2007, Norman passed away from acute renal failure at the age of 84, a month after he underwent lung surgery. He was laid to rest at Provincetown Cemetery in Massachusetts.

Awards and Honors

In 1969, “The Armies of the Night” earned Mailer a Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, and George Polk Award. In 1970, he received Harvard University’s Signet Society Medal for Achievement in the Arts, then he won the Edward MacDowell Medal (1973), Playboy magazine’s Best Nonfiction Award for “The Fight” (1975) and Best Major Work in Fiction Award for “The Executioner’s Song” (1979), and the National Arts Club’s Gold Medal for Literature (1976). In the ’80s, Norman earned a Pulitzer Prize for “The Executioner’s Song” (1980),  Lord and Taylor’s Rose Award (1985), a PEN Oakland / Josephine Miles Award (1989), and an Emerson-Thoreau Medal (1989). He received an Honorary Doctor of Letters from Rutgers University in 1969, Mercy College in 1984, and Wilkes University in 1995. Mailer was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1984, and he won the New York State Edith Wharton Citation of Merit in 1991. During the last decade of his life, Norman received the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Achievement in American Literature (2000), the James Jones Literary Society’s Lifetime Achievement Award (2002), an Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art (2002), the American Academy of Achievement’s Golden Plate Award (2004), and a National Book Award for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters (2005).

Real Estate

Mailer once owned a four-story townhouse in Brooklyn that was built in 1840. In the 1970s, he converted the building into a co-op and kept the units on the third and fourth floors for himself. He renovated the fourth floor unit to look like a ship. Norman’s heirs put his part of the building on the market for $2.4 million in 2018.