Patricia Bosworth has died from Covid-19. She was 86 years old. She was working on a new book (due out this fall). I’m so sad. And so mad too.
She was an actress, a journalist, a professor, an accomplished writer who wrote the best actor biography ever written, and I would also argue it’s one of the best biographies period – and I’ve read a ton, her biography of Montgomery Clift: Montgomery Clift: A Biography
I met her many times at the Actors Studio. She was a lifetime member. She had studied with Lee Strasberg back in the 50s. Arthur Penn was the first to cast her in something and she began a career, not really knowing what she was doing (it happened early for her), and learning on the job.
I had already read her biography of Montgomery Clift when I met her. It made me a fan for all time. I have read everything she has written since: her wonderful biographies of Jane Fonda and Diane Arbus, Jane Fonda: The Private Life of a Public Woman
I also consider her small biography of Marlon Brando, part of the Penguin Lives series, to be a necessary corrective to all the balderdash that’s out there about him, written by people who know nothing about acting. Read it: Marlon Brando (Penguin Lives)
Bosworth always approached her subjects understanding that life is complex and people are complex. She didn’t put people on pedestals in the first place, so she didn’t feel the need to go around tearing them down. And yet she also knew, without a shadow of a doubt because she lived it, she saw it, she experienced it, that some people are, let’s say, more special than others. And so in her books she dug into why. What made Clift stand out? What was it about him? Because everybody felt it. She was interested in how people worked. She understood the problems of the creative process, and she understood that understanding “how someone works” is critical and you have to get a handle on it if you want to be a writer.
You always felt like you were in good hands when you read a book (or an article) by her.
Recently, she published two memoirs, and they are both so wonderful, providing snapshots of different eras – she knew and interacted with so many of the famous players, merely because of the family she was born into. She writes about herself in the way she writes about her other subjects. She is honest. She does not flatter herself. And yet she also cherishes her unique experience and writes about it in a way that puts you back there.
Teenage Bosworth in her hideout
The first memoir, Anything Your Little Heart Desires: An American Family Story
Her more recent memoir has the evocative title The Men in My Life: A Memoir of Love and Art in 1950s Manhattan
Bosworth was a professor, a journalist, but I knew her as the woman at the Actors Studio who was so nice to us newcomers. I am so pleased, in retrospect, that I got to tell her in person how much her book about Montgomery Clift meant to me, and how much I learned about acting just from reading that book. She was so gracious. I’m sure so many people came up to her over the years saying the same thing, but she acted as touched and moved when I said it as though it was the first time. That was the kind of person she was.
I’m heartbroken to hear this news.
The obituary in the New York Times is fantastic.
This is the first place I came when I read of her death. I knew you would write THIS. Thank you, Red. We lost a treasure.
It’s SO sad that something like this virus could take her. She was 86 but so? She had another book coming out. It’s just heartbreaking.
Good to “see” you Emily.
I was semi-obsessed with this book when I read it about 20 years ago. I found Clift fascinating as an actor and this bio was a staggering examination of his life. So heartbreaking to read of his rise into the Hollywood spotlight and watch poor beautiful Monty, so tortured and lost, losing himself in drugs and alcohol.
I guess I have a soft spot for damaged souls because the other biography that made an impact on my literary life was “Edie” by Jean Stein. I also read that book a million times, daydreaming myself into the world of the Warhol milieu (as an onlooker, not a drugged casualty). So sad for these two people who could not find peace.
Pat – // So heartbreaking to read of his rise into the Hollywood spotlight and watch poor beautiful Monty, so tortured and lost, losing himself in drugs and alcohol. //
Yes: and Bosworth told it with such care – she cared about his work and his process – but she did not shy away from his dark side – and she did not tell it with salaciousness.
I mean, I think it’s telling that her bio came out in 1978 and here we are – 40+ years later – and it’s still “the one to beat.” It’s definitive.
(I felt the same way about Edie. I was really obsessed with that book when I was in college. I “was” Edie for Halloween one year. I was so fascinated by her – still am, really! One of the best oral histories ever, that book)
I just finished The Men in My Life. I was hooked from the second paragraph of the author’s note when she wrote about the suicides of her brother and father and how she had shut down her feelings for so long. She wrote with such candor and humane insight. She also had the worst psychiatrists imaginable.
And so many great incidents. Paul Newman dancing with Marilyn Monroe. George Plimpton at an orgy, dressed as a priest.Taking a cab with Lee Strasberg, MM, and Harry Belafonte. Steve McQueen taking Patricia for a motorcycle ride but telling her things would go no further because he was in love with Neile Adams. And then interviewing McQueen years later and him not remembering if they’d slept together. Meeting Gore Vidal and Tennessee Williams. Gore bitching about Truman Capote’s success. I think you mentioned in one of your posts how that annoyed TW.
I loved Danny Massey’s comment on star quality in reference to Noel Coward, “Star quality is the ability to project, without effort, the outlines of a unique personality.” What a great description.
I am about halfway through the 7th season of Mad Men so it was funny to learn that Patricia’s partner in her audition for the Actors Studio was Robert Morse’s brother.
What an amazing life, and an excellent memoir.
Mutecypher – so glad you read it. Yes, she is such a fantastic writer! Her biographies are incredible – but I really like her memoir style. Detailed, unfussy – and yes, such an amazing life.
I REALLY recommend her other memoir – which is about the effect the Hollywood Blacklist had on her family (and the industry and all the people she knew, but particularly her family) – she alludes to it in this one quite a bit, of course, but in that one the event takes front and center.
// And then interviewing McQueen years later and him not remembering if they’d slept together. //
lol I mean, how could he even keep track?
This is even funnier in light of the scene Quentin Tarantino invented for him in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, where McQueen was quietly bitter because Sharon Tate picked Roman Polanski over him. I loved that little scene.
Poor Steve, never got the girls he REALLY wanted (said in the Dorothy Comingore voice from Citizen Kane).
Thanks for the recommendation on the other memoir, I’ll check it out.
Only tangentially related, because of the Tennessee Williams mention…
Have you heard Prince’s song Blanche from the new Sign O’ The Times re-release? Told from the point of view of “Stanley Desire.” Who sound more like Stanley Rogers Nelson than Stanley Kowalski. Just crazy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwdVBYVKMNg