In Memoriam: Patricia Bosworth

two thousand seventeen. Here's my conversation with the late Patricia Bosworth. Mark Twain once likened biographies to what he called quote the clothes and buttons of the man. He said, quote the biography of the man himself cannot be written. The quote is a favorite of Patricia Bosworth, in nineteen fifties Broadway star turned by bographer, who for forty years has

been proving Twain's words wrong. In her books, Bosworth has captured the essence of elusive artists like Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando, and New York Underworld photographer Diane Arbus. These men and women were revered but broken, larger than life characters doomed to self destruct. It's a type of Patricia Bosworth knows firsthand her own father, Bartley Crumb, was a famous left wing lawyer who, after an illustrious career that included defending

members of the Hollywood Ten, ended his own life. It's her father's suicide and that of her brother years earlier, that gave Bosworth a thirst to understand tormented souls. Her new book, The Men in My Life turns that examination inward, exploring how those deaths shaped her and were linked to the fear and repression of that era. The third man in her life during that period was her abusive first husband, her frustrated artist she eloped with at age nineteen, HarperCollins.

Did not want me to name him since he tried to kill me, you know, they felt that he might object. And he was a painter, wanted to be a painter, but he never painted anything except painting, which but he seemed to be blaming everyone around him that he couldn't get me painting done. That's right, yes, right, I make jokes about it, but it actually was a horrible situation. Right,

How old were you? I was nineteen. My husband was literally beating me up in a cab and I kept telling him to stop, and finally I said to the cab driver, please help me, and the guy just said he's the boss lady, and he went right on, allowing my husband to beat at me. So I jumped out of the cab and ran to the traffic and got on a bus and went up to see my therapist in New Hampshire because she had said, if I really get into trouble, call me, I will be there for you.

So I get it there. She's your New York therapy. She's my New York and she said if you ever need me, call me. And now she's up in Vermont, Vermont. That right on a bus because she had said, if I really get into trouble, call me, I will be there for you. So I get it there. I went to the Quarta Thority bus terminal, got on the bus,

got up to notice no I didn't. I showed up Ding Dong, opened the door and there she is in a Kimona and I see sort of a man in the background, and I say I needed help of therapy right secondly, and I said I please, I need to help. My husband's beating me up. This is my vacation. We will talk when I returned to New York into September, and she closed the door in my face, and I was totally I didn't know where I was. I didn't know where to go. She literally shut the door in

my face. I'm in a dusty, you know, little town, wandering down the street east. Yeah, exactly. But I see this in up ahead, and they're all these cars and there, I think people, and and there are filmmakers and cameras being pulled in and out of the places. And I go inside and I'm crying. And this middle aged man comes over to me, said what's the matter. And I said, my husband left me. I didn't even know what to say.

He said, I'm going to take care of you. He said, I am doing a movie on Robert Frost this afternoon, a documentary, and you're going to come out with me. And talked to Mr Frost and it's gonna make you feel better. And I spent the entire afternoon with Robert Frost talking poetry. And this actually happened Bella Kornitzer, who is a well known documentarian who done movies on Truman and Eisenhower, and he was doing this documentary on Frost. He took I'd never seen me before in his life.

He was wonderful and it really did. It really sort of was a very important experience in my life because at that point I was so depressed and so I didn't didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know where I was going, and here was this man who literally saved my life that day and showed me that there was beauty and wonder and fabulousness in life, which of course I knew, but i'd forgotten, you know, it was it was really an incredib At that point in

your life. You weren't writing then, were you. I mean, I was keeping a journal. I kept a journal since I was a teen. I was modeling and acting, and I started to act. Yes, I did that, And your career as a writer doesn't really take off, so to speak, until when well I was I was an actress on Broadway and off and movies for ten years for ten years. But I always wanted to write. I had these dual ambitions of wanting to be both an actress and a writer,

like call that. But you walked away from acting? Why? Because I really enjoyed writing more. Uh. And also I hated the rejections out and I was not moving as fast as I wanted to. I didn't get the parts I wanted. I uh, but I really I really enjoyed writing more. And you're more self reliant when you're where everybody. I didn't have to I didn't have to wait for people to agree, you know, tell me what I was, get it right? The part? What are the first things

you start to write and submit? But magazine pieces or books or whatever they were, they were they were magazine pieces. Actually what happened was I took a writing course at Columbia, and uh, I started writing little pieces, sort of memory pieces. I actually started writing a memoir about my father and my brother. When I was backstage in Mary Mary. Remember I was doing that too. I was in a Broadway show.

I was understudying a double understudy Barbara ball Gettys and Betsy on Furstenburg, and I went on for both parts where you can imagine it was. It was rough, because of course I wanted to play both parts. But but when I wasn't going on for these two actresses, I was in my dressing room starting to write. And I did start to write this story of my family, but I wrote it as a novel. And of course was terrible. But then I was writing little pieces. I started talking

to my actor friends. I thought, god, they're sort of interesting, and I began interviewing Sandy Dennis and Liz Ashley and Marian Seldi's all the actors I knew on Broadway at the time, and they created a sensation because they were very honest, frank interviews. Because nobody thought I'd get my stuff published. My friends babble to me without realizing that I was taking everything down, and actually Sandy and Liz both tried to sue me. They stopped being my friends.

It was horrible. I got sick to my stomach. It's like it's like answered prayers. No, but I really felt that I had betrayed them. And if I remember them correctly, they're two rather delicate women. Yeah, what's the first book you attempt? Oh. I didn't start writing a book for ten years. I had a long apprenticeship at various magazines, including a place called Magazine Management, a schlock house where Mario Puzzo was writing The Godfather. No, he was writing

The Godfather. Well he was on staff at the magazine, Yes he was. He wrote sex action pieces and sex action Well, that's what they're called sex action. I want you and I to you and I are going to start an online side we are. We're gonna call it sex action. We're gonna I never dreamed it would be you, Patty Bobsworth, You and I are going to do sex action. And I can't even tell you how which money we're gonna make. I don't even know what it is. It

doesn't even matter. Sex slash action, I figured. And then when they come home, they have a lot of sex. They do have their mind. Huh. Yes. But Mario wrote incredible stories. He ground them out. And on the side, he was writing this book called The Godfather, and people kept saying when are you going to finish? And it took him nine years, and if you can believe it, one of the staff people said to him, Mario, the Godfather is not a good title, right, yeah, come on.

But but I became one of his like proteges in a way. Really was like he was just a wonderful man and he really knew how to write. He knew how to write dan narrative characters. He was terrific. He was a wonderful But the thing that bothered him was he was not considered a serious writer. After he had so much success with The Godfather. He wanted to be of Philip Roth Hemingway. He wanted people to think of him in these terms. But he wanted to be considered.

He wanted to be reviewed in New York Review of Books. He wasn't. Was he married a family yes, oh yeah, very much a family man while he was writing sex action. He was a family man, yes he was. He was also a gambler. That was the other reason that he stayed there so long. At this place called Magazine Management,

which also produced Marvel Comics. Okay Stanley of Marvel Comics and guests who came to visit one day at the office Felini what Felini came to see stan Lee because he had created you know whoever spider Man and God knows. And Felini came to the office in the black cape and the hat, and Mario was out in the lobby and he saw this guy speaking in Italian to the reception. She didn't know who he Felini, so he said, oh my god, you are Felini, and they spoke in Italian.

He brought Felini into the bullpen. We were all, you know, sitting there and he introduced us, and Felini told us in Italian Mario translating, I too began in schlock, I too, I was in the magazine management of I two wrote sex action. No, but he used to. But but Felini was a cartoonist, you know, I didn't know, Oh yeah, and that. And so he was talking to us about how you two can be great, you know, artists, but

you do begin sometimes in a different way. You draw cartoons or you write sex action, and then you go beyond that. But he was like, very inspiring to us. Were the influences of your family, your brother, your father, your childhood? Were they revealing themselves in the work you did then? Or did that all pile up later into No, it didn't. It didn't reveal itself at all. In fact, nobody knew anything about my I never talked about my stuff. That yeah, I did. I just totally swallowed it and

and and hit it. And I didn't talk about anything that had happened to me. Ever, when I wrote this, these last two books, nobody had known anything about my father or the suicide of my my brother or my father. Um, I was you were in college, Yes, you were going where again, Sarah Lawrence, Yeah, do you care to talk about that? Would prefer I could talk about whatever you What do you think was going on with your brother? Well, it's a long story. He had gone to Deerfield Academy,

very happy to be there. He was a brilliant kid. Uh, the closest person to me in my life. Really. I really looked up to him and we were just very close for every closest twins really, i'd say. But anyway, he was at Deerfield and he he really fell in love with another boy. Uh. And in those days, that kind of thing didn't happen. It was inconvenient to put

it mildly. He was discovered with his arms around this boy in a gym in the gym in the Deerfield gym by somebody, and uh, they realized they'd been caught hugging each other, embracing. Perhaps because I never really found out exactly what was going on. But the following day, my brother's friend was found hanging from a tree, and my brother was expelled from school and he was blamed for it really uh, and he never ever recovered from it. He went into a deep depression. He was sent to

many analysts nobody ever talked he stopped going to school. No, he continued to go to school. He went to different schools after that. But but soon after that boy died. Three years my brother shot himself on the head when he was eighteen. Uh, he was fifteen when when his friend hung himself. And by the way, Deerfield refused to ever talk about the suicides, that it never happened. I tried to research it. I went up there and they

said my brother had never gone to Deerfield. So I pulled out the year book which had my brother's name in it. I said, he did go to school. This boy, this other boy did himself. They never ever would would admit that there had been a suicide at Deerfield. H m um. So there's a period of this writing McCall's and Harper's Bizarre and so forth. And then your first book is Montgomery Cliff. You homed in on him first? Why, well, well, my husband, my second husband, Melregi, who was my great

one of my great loves of my life. Uh and smortunately not here now anyway, Mel said right about Montgomery Cliff, because you knew him, you remember him, you saw him when you were a little girl. Blah blah blah, start with and and and so I did. Uh. And I met him when I was fifteen because my father was his lawyer. My father was his lawyer for what when when Monty this was a long long time ago, like in forty eight, when Montgomery Cliff was just starting and

becoming the star. My father advised him on on on on his politics. Oddly enough, Monty was very involved politically involved, I mean in that he had a conscience and he knew what was going on in the Blacklist was about to start. And my father had come off working for Truman and was known politically as a you know, radical lawyer. Anyway, money Uh came to him and talked to him, and that's when I first saw him, and fella sort of got a crush on him. Uh. I didn't know anything

about his problems at that time. It was only later you didn't know anything about it. I didn't, but all the other people that I gravitated to, like Jane Fonda, whose mother had committed suicide, and so we became like suicide survivors together at the studio and uh Arbists who did commit suicide, and Arbist the photographer, and then Brando who was also very committed suicide and slow motion in

a way, yeah, by eating too much. Is it safe to say that there's a link between your childhood your dad had a very kind of uh tough period in his career with the House and American Activities Committee, to ending people there, your brother and the kinds of people you wrote about in your books. Do you kind of gravitate towards complicated, troubled people. Absolutely always. And I didn't know that. I mean when I began, I just you know,

the first book I wrote was about Montgomery Clift. Your your book about Cliff was entitled Montgomery Cliff, And there was another book, Monty someone else wrote about him. Did they both come out at around the same time. No, they didn't. My mind came out later the other book

Bob LaGuardia. What happened was I had been contracted to do a biography but Montgomery Clift and I began got this incredible research from his about his family, and then my mother got very sick and I had to stop writing it to take care of her, and the publishers sued me and got Bob LaGuardia to write a quickie book called Monty. He used my even the picture, my cover picture. He also sued me for ten tho dollars because he said he promoted me in my book. Monty

came out. When Monty came out about almost a year and a half before my my book came out. But then my book was considered the good book. Your book came out, and I was living in Washington at the time, going to school, and I read the Washington Post review of your book. A big piece of the article was an interview with his brother who lived in the DC suburbs. I guess in Maryland or Virginia. Mae and Eleanor Clift was his wife. There you go. And the thing that

was so amazing was that Brooks gave me everything. He decided he would trust me because he had all of his brother's stuff, including a phone book, and my name was in the phone book and my father's name was, so he knew that I had known him, and he liked that. He liked that idea. I found him in the in the phone book, and I called him up because I was so intrigued by Clift and the kind of predator natural beauty, and he was so beautiful, gorgeous, he was incredible. But when but when you did, when

you did his story, you had met him. I had met him when I was fifteen year years old and died in nineteen sixty five, I believe. But I met him in nineteen I hate to say it. I mean, I think I met him in forty eight or forty nine. It was when he did the Search and Red River. Uh. And then he did Place in the Sun in nineteen fifty. I guess it was. I met him literally at the height of his fame, and he was absolutely, ravishingly beautiful. What wasn't that that d him? What was it that

ated him? Oh? I think I think the fact that he was homosexual and he was very conflicted about his sexuality. He was supposed to pretend to be straight. Was that Was that the conflict that he had to pretend in public? Or was he conflicted about being gay? He apparently, according to his analyst, he was conflicted about being a You know,

he did have these relationships with women. Apparently he did go to bed with one woman, Judy Balaban, Remember Judy Judy Barney Balaban's daughter who was the head of Paramount. Women were crazy about him. When women want to do it in bed with him. He was androgynous. He was like Brando in a way. They were both. It was so complicated sexually, so so sensual and so oh boy, I mean, he's so gorgeous. Number one, Yes, it was.

He did go both ways, as did Brando. They were both bisexual to begin with, but Cliff then ultimately turned totally gay and had many male lovers. You hear these stories, but the one I heard was that Brando said to Edward Dimitric didn't Demitric direct that the alliance, and Brando said to Dimitric that he was going to get shot in the end his big death scene and rolled down

the side of this hill. He was gonna land, and he wanted to land in the christ like low and he wanted the last minute for a bush to fall and a crown of thorns, kind of formal and apparently Cliff said. Apparently Cliff turned to Demitric and said, if he does that, I'm going home. I think that may be a true story, could be, but but but Cliff, I can't help but speak about this in the most basic,

even eroticized fandom. You know what I mean, which is everybody knows that him and Elizabeth Taylor in Place in the Sun. I mean, there's just no more beautiful couple in the history, not not even carry granted me. They like to stand in front of the mirror together to look at their reflections. They knew they were gorgeous coming up. Patricia Bosworth relives the day she's sent to facts to

Marlon Brando's dog and got a response. Patricia Bosworth has a thousand stories from her days amongst the greats of stage and screen. But if anyone can give her a run for her money, it's the late Robert Osborne, host of Turner Classic Movies and once a working actor himself in NT His luck and charm got him a screen test with Lucille Ball. So when it was over, Lucy

didn't really say anything. She's just thank me for coming by, And I thought, well, she wasn't that impressed, but at least I got to spend some time with Lucia Ball. Like a week later, a message comes on my voice, Uh, you're answering service. Hello Lebray and nine and two thousand. I called the number and the second he said, well, Lucy A Ball wants you to come to dinner on Friday night. So I go to Lucy's house at Friday Night.

There's Janet Gayner, there's Joseph Cotton, there's Kay Thompson, and I'm thinking, did you ever believe that you would ever be? And then I thought, no, wait a minute, I always knew I was going to be here. Listen to my entire interview with Robert Osborne at Here's the Thing, Dot Org. This is Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to Here's

the Thing. Patricia Bosworth had a successful career as an actress in the nineteen fifties, rubbing elbows with the likes of Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe, but it was the stories behind the scenes that interested her most. After releasing her first book in Night, She's gone on to write six more, one of which, on Diane Arbus, was turned into a movie. New York Magazine called the book a spell binding portrait my research on arbas is all original.

It was. It was amazing. It took me seven years almost to write the book, and I I didn't know how incredible it was going to be. I really didn't. Is that what happens? You're doing the research and going, oh, it's it's like solving, like solving a mystery. 're always looking for cluescing a well, not really, but in terms

of a lot of research, very research heavy. I interviewed dozens and dozens of people from every part of her life, and of course I created the worlds that she inhabited, the world of fashion, the world, the dark world, and I wanted to do that. Oddly enough, every single one of the people I've written out I've known personally, and in a way it makes it, It makes it for

me more. I don't know immediate and I can since I know them, I can see them and I know a little bit about them, and it's mainly I'm so curious. I'm very nosy. That's the way most higraphers. And you thought that her story would make something that was worth I didn't know I had. I'd modeled for her when I was a kid, when I was a teenager, you know that, and I needed money and I became a model and I modeled for her and she hired me

because I didn't really look like a model. I was, you know, she was then in fashion and she was a fashion photographer with her husband, and she was intrigued by me because I had gotten married when I was seventeen, loped she had too, and I hadn't realized that. So this kind of interested her, intrigued her, and I found her probably one of the strangest, kind of most eerie personalities I'd ever come across. Well, she spoke in a very tiny voice. She wore the same dress every single day,

a reuniform, was always barefoot. She wore the same dress because she said, I don't want to think about what I wear. And literally the thing that was falling apart was ragged and dirty. But she was very, very smart, and she asked me all sorts of interesting questions. She lived in the studio with her with her husband and child in New York. Yeah, it was an old artist laft studio on East seventy second Street off Second Avenue, and had a tree in the live in in part

of the studio. But I never forgot her because she was so she was she actually took an interest in me. I was. I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I was very unhappy. I remember at one point a photographer molested me, a male photographer before one of my sessions with with in A was a catalog house. I guess I was working for. And I remember telling her about this in tears and saying, now I'll never be able to work with this man again. She well, of

course you won't. You shouldn't, yeh, you're getting it all wrong. Won't have me back exactly, And she said, remember who you are. You know you can't, you don't shouldn't tolerate this kind of behavior. Nobody had ever talked to me like this. Of course, in those days, women were very passive, very until you were by and large. Why did Arbace kill herself, Well, there were many reasons for that, you know. She was deeply depressed to her lover was uh not

faithful to her. That was one thing that upset her. But she also was suffering from deep depression and didn't could not take any kind of antidepressants. They made they made her feel sick. That's what her mother told me. She was never on any any drugs from Arbus. Originally she was right from New York City. Her her family were a mercantile family. They owned Russex department store. Her ears. She was very rich, came from a very rich family, was raised by nanny's and and chauffeur's jargon U. S.

S I C. K apostrophe. Yes, and the Russex building is still on. Her mother was always depressed. The entire family, it was, this was depressed her. Her brother was Howard Nemeroff, the poet, and he was the one who was my source, my major source. And he said, we were always depressed. Uh not all the money in the world, but money

was didn't it didn't matter. I mean she she fought her depression by by photograph, by going into this other world or this other reality, this dark reality she always wanted to explore because she felt she was in a reality. She didn't like this reality of the department store and the money and and the thinking of possessions all the time she was she wanted to decree. Marvin Israel, who was Richard Avedon's right hand and his work, and he

was He was also a brilliant painter and photographer. He was an assistant to Abdon No he designed his shows, and he was also art director of Harper's Bazaar. He was a graphics designer and painter, a very strange man who who only painted dogs chewing it at each other. Well, we're gonna leave that out of Sex Action. Um, your book about Cliff comes out in seventy eight, and your book on artist comes out in eighty four, and then you take a very long time until you write your

next book. You don't do the book about Brando until seventeen years later. Well, that's right. In the meantime, I did were anything your little heart desires in? How does that just state? Well? As I say, I jes stated for like forty years. In other words, I started writing it in my dressing room at the Hellenais Theater when I was in Mary Mary. I started writing the story of my father, of his beginnings, of his political career, my brother's suicide. I actually started as a novel. I

fictionalized it, which is ridiculous, and then I stopped. I didn't actually write it as a real book, as I didn't get a contract for it for thirty some thirty odd years. But I was thinking about her all the time. This story of my father, story of my brother, my mother me uh took about thirty forty years. A lot

of things out. No, I didn't because by the time I wrote it, everybody was dead, you know, and I was felt free enough to for example, my mother and her lovers, this lover that she had was our gardener, which is an incredible story in the book. I never could have told that when she was alive, and I wouldn't have. But but no, I really did. I think

I told almost everything, not everything out. You know. I almost would rather write a novel because I can do whatever I want to do and say whatever I want to say, and just make up the people and if they overlap with real people, who gives a ship? Have you ever want to do the same thing? Yes, I have, I haven't. I haven't though, but but I still feel I may may yet write another memoir. But yes, of

course I have. Uh, I just haven't yet. Now we obviously when you did the first memoir, anything your little heart desires an American family story, it stops when the cutoff is it stops after after my father committed suicide. What actually, I just on this movie called Anne Story with Audrey Hedburn. It was my biggest credit. Uh and uh, yeah I was. I was doing quite well. But after my father committed suicide, I seemed to lose all ambitious vision and I I kind of became numbed all over

again because my brother had already committed suicide. So this for me was a very traumatic, huge change in my life his suicide. I'd also wanted to prove myself to him, you know, be successful. He was gone. Were all these things that that that made me pulled back? And for a while I just didn't want to do anything I did. I worked, but I didn't have an ambition. I want to talk quickly about Brandon. Um, my feelings about Brandon have altered quite a bit over the last ten years.

When when you put all the pieces together psychologically, intelligence, sexuality, and sensitivity, most stars have two, almost none have all three, and Brando of course had all three, but very quickly he becomes you know, this extended middle finger of this extended fuck you to the business. It's exhausting. What do you think that was about? When did that start for him? Was it fuck you? Even with Streetcar with Kazan and No, it was his mother, the death of his mother. I

think we'll go back, I'll backtrack. Okay. His mother was an alcoholic, and Brando spent his childhood and adolescents taking care of her, getting her out of bars, carrying her home, even beating his father up when his father was beating her up. And of course you know she was an actress ran that little playhouse in where was it, Nebraska? For example, when he did Julius Caesar, he went home and he recited Shakespeare in the corn Fields with her listening,

that kind of thing. But what happened was she decided to go into a and this meant that Brando no longer could take care of her. She was taking care of herself. He almost had a nervous breakdown, and he even Stella Adler even talked to him about it. So, uh, Harold Kleman talked to me about this, this whole aspect sea the book. No, I didn't speak to him at all. I only I only met him once at the actor's studio.

I called him on the phone. He wanted to talk to me, originally because he wanted to talk about Kazan, and he actually wrote me a letter that he would talk to me, but then he decided not to, and I really became so frustrated. I kept calling him and calling, and finally somebody said, why don't you call his dog Alec. I did listen to this. I facts, dear Fido, I want to speak to your master. Within seconds, the facts came back back, saying, my master does not want to

talk to you and signed with two paw prints. This was Brando answering me people incessantly I was going to do because I had done street Car for TV, which was a huge miss, was one of the biggest mistakes of my career and the biggest waste of time of my career, and we all just did it for a paycheck. And then I get an offer from CBS. Was doing that stuff back then. They said, would you do Canona Hot Tin Roof with my ex wife with Kim would

play uh Maggie. And we were all a little long in the tooth for these parts, by the way, But then they said would we do? And Brando would be big daddy. And I've got a call Brando, And you know, you call the number and leave the message, and the woman calls you back, and they're very prompt and very formal, and she said, what time, what number, he will call you.

And sure enough, I'm sitting in my house and my phone rings, and of course I trip over myself and most break brand neck tripping over a stool in the kitchen to get to the phone. Maybe he's gonna let it ring three times and hang up. You know, he's maybe he's just sick of this. And I pick up the phone and she says, here he is. And he gets on the phone and he said, why don't you come by a Thursday? And I was like, oh my god. And I go to his house and I had lunch

with him for four hours. Oh my god, are you kidding me? And I had lunch with him for four hours and you could tell he was sad. He was sad. What was the thing that you learned about him that was among the thousands of things I'm sure was Brando's bisexuality. That's that's not that widely known though, Oh yes among his friends. Yes, he was totally free about it. He didn't give a damn. He didn't care at all. Any

port in a storm for absolutely, absolutely, who's wild? And it was it was Wally Cox's dear friend or was he his boyfriend that I don't know. I don't know. Wally Cox absolutely, and Brando lived. Heared Wally Cox. And when Wally Cox died, Brando went went to the funeral. But he wouldn't go to the funeral. He climbed up a tree and looked down at the ceremony and then thought to get the ashes oh, I thought that they

roomed together. They did in the fifties, and Shelley Winters tells this funny story about being Brando's date one night and Wally Cox was there and they had they had something like roasted grapefruit for dinner. That's it, right, Yeah, that's it, and Brando cooked. He used to climb out windows. He used to go into people's apartments. He would like, be like a burglar and climb into windows and poke

his head and say hello and then leave. But now, Jane Fonda is someone who has always just intrigued me to the end because she's had these multiple stages of her career, her you know, tabloid e marriages and Tom Hayden, who I worship. I love Tom. But for me, what will never die is looking back at her as one of the great not just beauties and movies started, but film actresses. I mean, she's such a great act she is,

she is great. Forget include It's heartbreaking to me this woman is still not grinding out as any movies as possible, even forget about age, because she's so mes terizing the what was the experience like writing about her? She had a comparable loss that losses, her mother slitting her throat when Jane was twelve years old, and and her father who never showed his love for her. Henry Fonda never said I love you. He was always cold to her. Uh does she ever understand? Why did she venture? He

was a very strange man. I think he actually was obsessed with her myself. But what happened was Jane and I had met at the actor's studio and she decided she wanted a woman to write her biography. She'd had nine biographies written by men, and they had all been threatened by her. She wanted a woman to write about her life, totally biography. She didn't want to call it off our eyes because she didn't read it. She refused to read it. She said, oh, I'm only looking at

the pictures. But she heard from other people it was okay. It was very difficult for me to do that. I mean it was difficult because I knew her. She trusted me totally, and there were a lot of things in her life that she'd done that We're not that great, you know, So how do I handle that one? I mean? She stole her routines for the workout from her trainer and should I tell this, you know. So I called Gilda, who is her trainer, and Gil said, yeah, she didn't

steal him. Did you ask about Yes? I did. She said, well, you know, I you she she hedged and and him to odd. I didn't want it to be a puff piece because she had given me so much. It was difficult, and there were certain things I did leave out. She decided she wanted to be taken care of, even though Ted Turner himself said I couldn't take care of her. She wouldn't even let me pay for her plane tickets, she said. But I think also they were They're very

much alike in a way. I mean, they're both totally self involved, very smart. Uh. They loved they loved the fame, they loved the power that comes with that. Um So I think for a while it worked, except he was always unfaithful to her, always and and and she couldn't take that he was unfaithful. Like the second week, third week they were married, she found out he was screwing

somebody you were. The latest book entitled The Men in My Life, A Memoir of Love and Art in nineteen fifties Manhattan is very sad and funny, but really really sad. But but the thing is, when you write a book, what are you supposed to write? You cannot be indifferent to your own history, you know you can't. And I was very involved, and yes, I guess I did get sad at times. Well, what I love about when I read Cliff as you as you as you read, and

you think, is anybody happy in this business? Is anybody ultimately happy? I don't know. I don't know. I think they are. You know, was Paul Newman happy? Now? Maybe he wasn't. I think Paul, I think that was very happy towards the end. I think Newman for Newman, the great you know, horrible thing. I want to assume as when his son Scott killed himself changed him to I think it was completely changed to changed him totally. I

think that that really affected him. Your last book, your memoir that's out now, there really is a kind of an energy of what's the word I'm thinking of? Forgiveness? Is that is that right to say that you're not mean to these people in this book? Well, you really put the gloves on with the X husband of yours. That's not mean to him? No, I know, I'm not. I don't I I was. I was just I don't know, I just I wanted, I wanted to tell these stories.

It's really, you know, the book really is about my brother. It's it's a tribute to my brother. What's the next memoir for you? I don't know yet. I think I would like to write about Actually, I'd like to write about the next ten years, meaning the six the sixties into seventies, where I get into feminism and I work in pornography, which I did for a while with Bob Guccione and did I edited a female porn magazine called Viva for two years until he fired me. What was

he like? He was a complicated man. I mean, he wanted to be a painter or another one. Uh. He felt he was doing good. He was an accidental pornographer. Was he was? He was? He was very smart and he actually published some wonderful articles inhouse. Remember I remember reading about Barry Seal from the Whole Mina Arkansas Conspiracy and a lot of a lot of and and and Viva had great writing in it too. He did well.

I think that when you're done with that memoir, or maybe while you're writing that memoir, I want you to remember to allow time for you and I for sex action. It's a winner. Okay. Launch date to be determined. This is Alec Baldwin and you were listening to Here's the thing they did in cho put the same time k