{"id":156639,"date":"2020-04-05T09:44:55","date_gmt":"2020-04-05T13:44:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=156639"},"modified":"2020-04-11T09:50:45","modified_gmt":"2020-04-11T13:50:45","slug":"r-i-p-patricia-bosworth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=156639","title":{"rendered":"R.I.P. Patricia Bosworth"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nPatricia 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.<\/p>\n

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<\/em> – and I’ve read a ton, her biography of Montgomery Clift: Montgomery Clift: A Biography<\/a>\"\"<\/i> is a masterpiece of the genre. Compellingly detailed, based on first-hand interviews (she knew all the players: everyone talked to her), Clift emerges from the pages as a three-dimensional living breathing hurting soul, with a delicate yet powerful talent, and a fragility which overwhelmed him. The final section, as he declined, is one of the most harrowing things I’ve ever read in any biography. His pain exhales from the page and that is directly because of Bosworth’s compassion but also her unblinking willingness to tell the truth. About all of it.<\/p>\n

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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. <\/p>\n

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<\/a>\"\"<\/i> and Diane Arbus: A Biography<\/a>\"\"<\/i>.<\/p>\n

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)<\/a>\"\"<\/i>. Bosworth knows about acting. <\/p>\n

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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<\/em> than others. And so in her books she dug into why. What made Clift stand out? What was it about him? Because everybody<\/i> 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. <\/p>\n

You always felt like you were in good hands when you read a book (or an article) by her. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

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\nTeenage Bosworth in her hideout<\/i><\/p>\n

The first memoir, Anything Your Little Heart Desires: An American Family Story<\/a>\"\"<\/i>, was about the impact the Hollywood Blacklist had on her family (her father was an attorney who defended the Hollywood Ten – and the destruction of his career as a result was damn near total). <\/p>\n

Her more recent memoir has the evocative title The Men in My Life: A Memoir of Love and Art in 1950s Manhattan<\/a>\"\"<\/i>. She puts you back into 1950s Manhattan with so much vividness you can practically taste the sugary Coca Cola. It’s the kind of book I would love to someday write. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

I’m heartbroken to hear this news. <\/p>\n

The obituary in the New York Times<\/em> is fantastic<\/a>. <\/p>\n

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