Researching Robert Maxwell

Maxwell was the father of modern dancer Carla Maxwell, artistic director of The José Limón Dance Company. He and his two brothers, Abe Rosen (1916-2007) and Myor Rosen (1917-2009), all played the harp professionally. Abe Rosen was known for his work playing in New York shows and Myor Rosen was the principal harpist for the New York Philharmonic for thirty years.

Early in his life, Maxwell, then an Orthodox Jew, escaped from Nazi occupation, joined the Czechoslovak Army in exile during World War II and was decorated after active service in the British Army. In subsequent years he worked in publishing, building up Pergamon Press to a major publishing house. After six years as a Labour MP during the 1960s, Maxwell again put all his energy into business, successively buying the British Printing Corporation, Mirror Group Newspapers and Macmillan Publishers, among other publishing companies.

Maxwell had a flamboyant lifestyle, living in Headington Hill Hall in Oxford, from which he often flew in his helicopter, or his luxury yacht, the Lady Ghislaine. He was litigious and often embroiled in controversy. In 1989, Maxwell had to sell successful businesses, including Pergamon Press, to cover some of his debts. In 1991, his body was discovered floating in the Atlantic Ocean, having apparently fallen overboard from his yacht. He was buried in Jerusalem.

Maxwell's death triggered the collapse of his publishing empire as banks called in loans. His sons briefly attempted to keep the business together, but failed as the news emerged that the elder Maxwell had stolen hundreds of millions of pounds from his own companies' pension funds. The Maxwell companies applied for bankruptcy protection in 1992.

He also was the producer of Creeps by Night (1944) on the Blue Network.

He also wrote episodes of the Superman radio and TV series as Richard Fielding (a pseudonym that he shared with fellow producers Whitney Ellsworth and Maxwell's then wife, Jessica Fielding Maxwell).

Many early episodes of Lassie, as well as episodes of National Velvet, were written by Robert Maxwell under the pseudonym Claire Kennedy.

At the time of his death in Toronto, Canada, he was married to Barbara Maxwell and had two sons.