I read Patrica Bosworth‘s “Montgomery Clift: A Biography” just as I was settling into my first Manhattan apartment (a creaky, roach-infested hovel on Sullivan Street, just south of Houston) in ’78. It moved and impressed me, and I thereafter regarded Bosworth as one the most refined and perceptive biographers around. She was and always will be a very smooth writer, each and every sentence sculpted and finessed with the greatest care.
I also read and mostly admired her Marlon Brando biography (’00), although it felt a little bit skimpy. I never read her Diane Arbus and Jane Fonda bios. Bosworth was also a significant talking head in Robert Clift and Hillary Demmon‘s Making Montgomery Clift, a first-rate doc that I wrote about last October.
Bosworth has succumbed to the coronavirus. She was 86. I’m very sorry.
