Anthony Christopher Hendra (10 July 1941 – 4 March 2021) was an English satirist and writer who worked mostly in the United States. He was probably best known for being the head writer and co-producer in 1984 of the first six shows of the long-running British satirical television series Spitting Image and for starring in the film This Is Spinal Tap as the band's manager Ian Faith.
In 1964, Hendra moved to America, with actor and comedian Nick Ullett. For the next five years they worked successfully as a comedy team, appearing at the Cafe Au Go Go in New York with Lenny Bruce, at the hungry i in San Francisco with Nina Simone and at the Shadows in Washington, DC, with various headliners, including Woody Allen. They were regular guests on The Merv Griffin Show and appeared six times on The Ed Sullivan Show. in 1969 Hendra broke up the comedy team and in 1970 began writing for National Lampoon magazine, from its inception. In 1971 he became the first editor hired by founders Doug Kenney and Henry Beard.
After leaving the Lampoon in 1978, Hendra began working as a freelance editor, writer and actor. During the New York newspaper strike of 1978, he edited and co-created the parody Not The New York Times with Rusty Unger, Christopher Cerf, and George Plimpton, and published by Larry Durocher and Josh Feigenbaum.
In 1979 he co-edited (with Cerf and actor Peter Elbling) The 80s—A Look Back. In 1980 he packaged and edited The Sayings of Ayatollah Khomeini aka The Little Green Book of Ayatollah Khomeini, a collection of the Ayatollah's actual teachings with an introduction by Clive Irving, which was regularly featured on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show.
In 1982 he was editor-in-chief of Off the Wall Street Journal and Off the Wall Street Journal II, which between them sold almost a million copies and featured such contributors as Kurt Andersen. Other parodies Hendra created and edited included The Irrational Inquirer, Playboy: the Parody and Not the Bible (1983). He was featured on the cover of Newsweek (25 April 1983) with Sean Kelly and Alfred Gingold. Hendra was a writer for and became editor-in-chief of Spy Magazine from 1993–94.[citation needed]
In the mid-1980s, he decided to devote himself exclusively to writing and in 1987 published Going Too Far, a history of "sick," "black," "anti-establishment" American satire from the 1950s to the 1980s, which featured interviews of some of the chief satirists.
Television and films
In 1984, Hendra co-created, co-wrote, and co-produced the British television satirical show Spitting Image, for which he, Jon Blair, and John Lloyd were nominated for a British Academy Award in 1985. He was ousted from the production after the first six shows, being replaced by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor. He played Ian Faith in This Is Spinal Tap.
Hendra was married twice. His first marriage, to Judith Christmas in 1964, produced two daughters and ended in an acrimonious divorce in 1985. He and his second wife, Carla, lived in New York City with their three children.[3]
In 2004, at the time that his memoir Father Joe was achieving best-seller status, Jessica Hendra, the younger of Hendra's two daughters from his first marriage, submitted an op-ed piece to The New York Times in which she asserted that her father failed to include in his narrative of "deliverance through faith and atonement for his failings" that he had sexually abused her as a young child. The newspaper declined to publish the piece but did assign a reporter, N. R. Kleinfield, to investigate her charges.
On 1 July 2004, The New York Times published Kleinfield's story,[4] including details of the alleged acts of molestation and interviews with two of Jessica's therapists, three friends, her mother and her husband. All said that Jessica told them at different times of being molested: in her mother's case, when she was 12. A former boyfriend told Kleinfield however, that Jessica never spoke of it during their years together, that she was "very unstable emotionally" and that "I can't believe it happened."[5]
Hendra responded, "I can only just categorically deny this. It's not a new allegation. It's simply not true, I'm afraid."[3] In the wake of criticism of the paper's decision to publish the story in the absence of tangible proof,[6]New York TimesombudsmanDaniel Okrent wrote a detailed examination of the procedures followed by the editorial staff prior to publication. While acknowledging that Kleinfield was convinced, based on information gathered during his reporting, that Jessica Hendra had indeed been molested, Okrent expressed concern over possible consequences should the charges prove to be false:
Even if the preponderant evidence indicates it's true ... doesn't the small chance that it's false outweigh the value of giving readers access to the private miseries of the Hendra family? Either way, Tony Hendra will bear the scars of this article forever. People who did not write a book claiming spiritual salvation will suffer as well: his three young children from his second marriage, for instance. In the face of this risk, what do readers of The Times (or of Father Joe) gain by believing Hendra guilty of abuse? There's a difference between the right to know and the need to know, and in this case, the need escapes me ... I don't mean in any way to diminish the gravity of Jessica Hendra's charges ... I can't imagine an accusation more serious, a transgression more detestable. If her story is true, Tony Hendra deserves punishment far greater than humiliation in the pages of The Times. As an editor, the verities of the profession might have led me to publish this article. But as a reader, I wish The Times hadn't.[7]
In 2005, Jessica Hendra wrote a memoir with USA Today journalist Blake Morrison, How to Cook Your Daughter, in which she repeated her accusations.[8]
