Tom King, 39; Wall Street Journal Columnist Wrote Geffen Bestseller

Entertainment journalist Tom King, who wrote the Wall Street Journal's influential "Hollywood Journal" column and a best-selling biography of mogul David Geffen, died Sunday. He was 39.

King was in the Hamptons in New York visiting Broadway producer Jeffrey Seller ("Rent"), a friend of King since they attended a summer theater program for high school students in 1981.

Seller said that King had been in good spirits but had complained of a headache, although it seemed nothing out of the ordinary. Seller said he discovered King shortly before 8 a.m. Sunday collapsed on a bathroom floor. King was taken to Southampton Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Initial reports said the death was due to natural causes, but an autopsy will be conducted to determine the exact cause.

King's last column, about veteran TV producer Barry Kemp's struggles to land a new prime-time hit, appeared Friday.

King's death stunned the Hollywood community and his colleagues. Jonathan Friedland, the Journal's Los Angeles bureau chief, said it was "a terrible shock -- Tom was a great guy, seemingly in great health."

King had a quick wit and disarming charm that often came through in his work. He wrote a first-person account for the Journal in 1998 of taking up "spinning," an intense aerobic workout on a stationary bike set to such music as disco queen Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive."

"Gullible dupes like me pay a small fortune for what amounts to torture," King wrote.

"He had an attractive, self-effacing style that made him an effective interviewer," said Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer A. Scott Berg, a friend of King. "He had an ability to lure people into conversations, probably saying more than they thought they were saying."

It also could mask an ability to skewer. In 1995, King wrote a blistering front-page story about the Kevin Costner film "Waterworld," whose budget was out of control. The film featured Costner's character sporting gills. King's story saddled the Universal Studios film with the nickname "Kevin's Gate," evoking the notorious bomb "Heaven's Gate," while its headline dubbed the film "Fishtar" after another cinematic debacle, "Ishtar."

Published in 2000, King's "The Operator: David Geffen Builds, Buys and Sells the New Hollywood" was the product of nearly 300 interviews, lauded as a highly readable portrayal of one of Hollywood's most powerful and feared executives. A Times story called it "an unflinching portrait," and the San Francisco Chronicle called it a "detailed portrait of Hollywood's premier manipulator."