Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: Today we're going to repost my conversation with the late
Speaker 1: Patricia Bosworth, my friend and colleague who died on April
Speaker 1: two of this year of complications from the coronavirus. Bosworth
Speaker 1: and I served together on the board of the Actor's Studio,
Speaker 1: where she can always be relied upon to share her
Speaker 1: passion for all things literary, theatrical, and artistic. From April
Speaker 1: two thousand seventeen. Here's my conversation with the late Patricia Bosworth.
Speaker 1: Mark Twain once likened biographies to what he called quote
Speaker 1: the clothes and buttons of the man. He said, quote
Speaker 1: the biography of the man himself cannot be written. The
Speaker 1: quote is a favorite of Patricia Bosworth, in nineteen fifties
Speaker 1: Broadway star turned by bographer, who for forty years has
Speaker 1: been proving Twain's words wrong. In her books, Bosworth has
Speaker 1: captured the essence of elusive artists like Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando,
Speaker 1: and New York Underworld photographer Diane Arbus. These men and
Speaker 1: women were revered but broken, larger than life characters doomed
Speaker 1: to self destruct. It's a type of Patricia Bosworth knows
Speaker 1: firsthand her own father, Bartley Crumb, was a famous left
Speaker 1: wing lawyer who, after an illustrious career that included defending
Speaker 1: members of the Hollywood Ten, ended his own life. It's
Speaker 1: her father's suicide and that of her brother years earlier,
Speaker 1: that gave Bosworth a thirst to understand tormented souls. Her
Speaker 1: new book, The Men in My Life turns that examination inward,
Speaker 1: exploring how those deaths shaped her and were linked to
Speaker 1: the fear and repression of that era. The third man
Speaker 1: in her life during that period was her abusive first husband,
Speaker 1: her frustrated artist she eloped with at age nineteen, HarperCollins.
Speaker 1: Did not want me to name him since he tried
Speaker 1: to kill me, you know, they felt that he might object.
Speaker 1: And he was a painter, wanted to be a painter,
Speaker 1: but he never painted anything except painting, which but he
Speaker 1: seemed to be blaming everyone around him that he couldn't
Speaker 1: get me painting done. That's right, yes, right, I make
Speaker 1: jokes about it, but it actually was a horrible situation. Right,
Speaker 1: How old were you? I was nineteen. My husband was
Speaker 1: literally beating me up in a cab and I kept
Speaker 1: telling him to stop, and finally I said to the
Speaker 1: cab driver, please help me, and the guy just said
Speaker 1: he's the boss lady, and he went right on, allowing
Speaker 1: my husband to beat at me. So I jumped out
Speaker 1: of the cab and ran to the traffic and got
Speaker 1: on a bus and went up to see my therapist
Speaker 1: in New Hampshire because she had said, if I really
Speaker 1: get into trouble, call me, I will be there for you.
Speaker 1: So I get it there. She's your New York therapy.
Speaker 1: She's my New York and she said if you ever
Speaker 1: need me, call me. And now she's up in Vermont, Vermont.
Speaker 1: That right on a bus because she had said, if
Speaker 1: I really get into trouble, call me, I will be
Speaker 1: there for you. So I get it there. I went
Speaker 1: to the Quarta Thority bus terminal, got on the bus,
Speaker 1: got up to notice no I didn't. I showed up
Speaker 1: Ding Dong, opened the door and there she is in
Speaker 1: a Kimona and I see sort of a man in
Speaker 1: the background, and I say I needed help of therapy
Speaker 1: right secondly, and I said I please, I need to help.
Speaker 1: My husband's beating me up. This is my vacation. We
Speaker 1: will talk when I returned to New York into September,
Speaker 1: and she closed the door in my face, and I
Speaker 1: was totally I didn't know where I was. I didn't
Speaker 1: know where to go. She literally shut the door in
Speaker 1: my face. I'm in a dusty, you know, little town,
Speaker 1: wandering down the street east. Yeah, exactly. But I see
Speaker 1: this in up ahead, and they're all these cars and there,
Speaker 1: I think people, and and there are filmmakers and cameras
Speaker 1: being pulled in and out of the places. And I
Speaker 1: go inside and I'm crying. And this middle aged man
Speaker 1: comes over to me, said what's the matter. And I said,
Speaker 1: my husband left me. I didn't even know what to say.
Speaker 1: He said, I'm going to take care of you. He said,
Speaker 1: I am doing a movie on Robert Frost this afternoon,
Speaker 1: a documentary, and you're going to come out with me.
Speaker 1: And talked to Mr Frost and it's gonna make you
Speaker 1: feel better. And I spent the entire afternoon with Robert
Speaker 1: Frost talking poetry. And this actually happened Bella Kornitzer, who
Speaker 1: is a well known documentarian who done movies on Truman
Speaker 1: and Eisenhower, and he was doing this documentary on Frost.
Speaker 1: He took I'd never seen me before in his life.
Speaker 1: He was wonderful and it really did. It really sort
Speaker 1: of was a very important experience in my life because
Speaker 1: at that point I was so depressed and so I
Speaker 1: didn't didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know
Speaker 1: where I was going, and here was this man who
Speaker 1: literally saved my life that day and showed me that
Speaker 1: there was beauty and wonder and fabulousness in life, which
Speaker 1: of course I knew, but i'd forgotten, you know, it
Speaker 1: was it was really an incredib At that point in
Speaker 1: your life. You weren't writing then, were you. I mean,
Speaker 1: I was keeping a journal. I kept a journal since
Speaker 1: I was a teen. I was modeling and acting, and
Speaker 1: I started to act. Yes, I did that, And your
Speaker 1: career as a writer doesn't really take off, so to speak,
Speaker 1: until when well I was I was an actress on
Speaker 1: Broadway and off and movies for ten years for ten years.
Speaker 1: But I always wanted to write. I had these dual
Speaker 1: ambitions of wanting to be both an actress and a writer,
Speaker 1: like call that. But you walked away from acting? Why?
Speaker 1: Because I really enjoyed writing more. Uh. And also I
Speaker 1: hated the rejections out and I was not moving as
Speaker 1: fast as I wanted to. I didn't get the parts
Speaker 1: I wanted. I uh, but I really I really enjoyed
Speaker 1: writing more. And you're more self reliant when you're where everybody.
Speaker 1: I didn't have to I didn't have to wait for
Speaker 1: people to agree, you know, tell me what I was,
Speaker 1: get it right? The part? What are the first things
Speaker 1: you start to write and submit? But magazine pieces or
Speaker 1: books or whatever they were, they were they were magazine pieces.
Speaker 1: Actually what happened was I took a writing course at Columbia,
Speaker 1: and uh, I started writing little pieces, sort of memory pieces.
Speaker 1: I actually started writing a memoir about my father and
Speaker 1: my brother. When I was backstage in Mary Mary. Remember
Speaker 1: I was doing that too. I was in a Broadway show.
Speaker 1: I was understudying a double understudy Barbara ball Gettys and
Speaker 1: Betsy on Furstenburg, and I went on for both parts
Speaker 1: where you can imagine it was. It was rough, because
Speaker 1: of course I wanted to play both parts. But but
Speaker 1: when I wasn't going on for these two actresses, I
Speaker 1: was in my dressing room starting to write. And I
Speaker 1: did start to write this story of my family, but
Speaker 1: I wrote it as a novel. And of course was terrible.
Speaker 1: But then I was writing little pieces. I started talking
Speaker 1: to my actor friends. I thought, god, they're sort of interesting,
Speaker 1: and I began interviewing Sandy Dennis and Liz Ashley and
Speaker 1: Marian Seldi's all the actors I knew on Broadway at
Speaker 1: the time, and they created a sensation because they were
Speaker 1: very honest, frank interviews. Because nobody thought I'd get my
Speaker 1: stuff published. My friends babble to me without realizing that
Speaker 1: I was taking everything down, and actually Sandy and Liz
Speaker 1: both tried to sue me. They stopped being my friends.
Speaker 1: It was horrible. I got sick to my stomach. It's
Speaker 1: like it's like answered prayers. No, but I really felt
Speaker 1: that I had betrayed them. And if I remember them correctly,
Speaker 1: they're two rather delicate women. Yeah, what's the first book
Speaker 1: you attempt? Oh. I didn't start writing a book for
Speaker 1: ten years. I had a long apprenticeship at various magazines,
Speaker 1: including a place called Magazine Management, a schlock house where
Speaker 1: Mario Puzzo was writing The Godfather. No, he was writing
Speaker 1: The Godfather. Well he was on staff at the magazine,
Speaker 1: Yes he was. He wrote sex action pieces and sex
Speaker 1: action Well, that's what they're called sex action. I want
Speaker 1: you and I to you and I are going to
Speaker 1: start an online side we are. We're gonna call it
Speaker 1: sex action. We're gonna I never dreamed it would be you,
Speaker 1: Patty Bobsworth, You and I are going to do sex action.
Speaker 1: And I can't even tell you how which money we're
Speaker 1: gonna make. I don't even know what it is. It
Speaker 1: doesn't even matter. Sex slash action, I figured. And then
Speaker 1: when they come home, they have a lot of sex.
Speaker 1: They do have their mind. Huh. Yes. But Mario wrote
Speaker 1: incredible stories. He ground them out. And on the side,
Speaker 1: he was writing this book called The Godfather, and people
Speaker 1: kept saying when are you going to finish? And it
Speaker 1: took him nine years, and if you can believe it,
Speaker 1: one of the staff people said to him, Mario, the
Speaker 1: Godfather is not a good title, right, yeah, come on.
Speaker 1: But but I became one of his like proteges in
Speaker 1: a way. Really was like he was just a wonderful
Speaker 1: man and he really knew how to write. He knew
Speaker 1: how to write dan narrative characters. He was terrific. He
Speaker 1: was a wonderful But the thing that bothered him was
Speaker 1: he was not considered a serious writer. After he had
Speaker 1: so much success with The Godfather. He wanted to be
Speaker 1: of Philip Roth Hemingway. He wanted people to think of
Speaker 1: him in these terms. But he wanted to be considered.
Speaker 1: He wanted to be reviewed in New York Review of Books.
Speaker 1: He wasn't. Was he married a family yes, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: very much a family man while he was writing sex action.
Speaker 1: He was a family man, yes he was. He was
Speaker 1: also a gambler. That was the other reason that he
Speaker 1: stayed there so long. At this place called Magazine Management,
Speaker 1: which also produced Marvel Comics. Okay Stanley of Marvel Comics
Speaker 1: and guests who came to visit one day at the
Speaker 1: office Felini what Felini came to see stan Lee because
Speaker 1: he had created you know whoever spider Man and God knows.
Speaker 1: And Felini came to the office in the black cape
Speaker 1: and the hat, and Mario was out in the lobby
Speaker 1: and he saw this guy speaking in Italian to the reception.
Speaker 1: She didn't know who he Felini, so he said, oh
Speaker 1: my god, you are Felini, and they spoke in Italian.
Speaker 1: He brought Felini into the bullpen. We were all, you know,
Speaker 1: sitting there and he introduced us, and Felini told us
Speaker 1: in Italian Mario translating, I too began in schlock, I too,
Speaker 1: I was in the magazine management of I two wrote
Speaker 1: sex action. No, but he used to. But but Felini
Speaker 1: was a cartoonist, you know, I didn't know, Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and that. And so he was talking to us about
Speaker 1: how you two can be great, you know, artists, but
Speaker 1: you do begin sometimes in a different way. You draw
Speaker 1: cartoons or you write sex action, and then you go
Speaker 1: beyond that. But he was like, very inspiring to us.
Speaker 1: Were the influences of your family, your brother, your father,
Speaker 1: your childhood? Were they revealing themselves in the work you
Speaker 1: did then? Or did that all pile up later into No,
Speaker 1: it didn't. It didn't reveal itself at all. In fact,
Speaker 1: nobody knew anything about my I never talked about my stuff.
Speaker 1: That yeah, I did. I just totally swallowed it and
Speaker 1: and and hit it. And I didn't talk about anything
Speaker 1: that had happened to me. Ever, when I wrote this,
Speaker 1: these last two books, nobody had known anything about my
Speaker 1: father or the suicide of my my brother or my father. Um,
Speaker 1: I was you were in college, Yes, you were going
Speaker 1: where again, Sarah Lawrence, Yeah, do you care to talk
Speaker 1: about that? Would prefer I could talk about whatever you
Speaker 1: What do you think was going on with your brother? Well,
Speaker 1: it's a long story. He had gone to Deerfield Academy,
Speaker 1: very happy to be there. He was a brilliant kid. Uh,
Speaker 1: the closest person to me in my life. Really. I
Speaker 1: really looked up to him and we were just very
Speaker 1: close for every closest twins really, i'd say. But anyway,
Speaker 1: he was at Deerfield and he he really fell in
Speaker 1: love with another boy. Uh. And in those days, that
Speaker 1: kind of thing didn't happen. It was inconvenient to put
Speaker 1: it mildly. He was discovered with his arms around this
Speaker 1: boy in a gym in the gym in the Deerfield
Speaker 1: gym by somebody, and uh, they realized they'd been caught
Speaker 1: hugging each other, embracing. Perhaps because I never really found
Speaker 1: out exactly what was going on. But the following day,
Speaker 1: my brother's friend was found hanging from a tree, and
Speaker 1: my brother was expelled from school and he was blamed
Speaker 1: for it really uh, and he never ever recovered from it.
Speaker 1: He went into a deep depression. He was sent to
Speaker 1: many analysts nobody ever talked he stopped going to school. No,
Speaker 1: he continued to go to school. He went to different
Speaker 1: schools after that. But but soon after that boy died.
Speaker 1: Three years my brother shot himself on the head when
Speaker 1: he was eighteen. Uh, he was fifteen when when his
Speaker 1: friend hung himself. And by the way, Deerfield refused to
Speaker 1: ever talk about the suicides, that it never happened. I
Speaker 1: tried to research it. I went up there and they
Speaker 1: said my brother had never gone to Deerfield. So I
Speaker 1: pulled out the year book which had my brother's name
Speaker 1: in it. I said, he did go to school. This boy,
Speaker 1: this other boy did himself. They never ever would would
Speaker 1: admit that there had been a suicide at Deerfield. H
Speaker 1: m um. So there's a period of this writing McCall's
Speaker 1: and Harper's Bizarre and so forth. And then your first
Speaker 1: book is Montgomery Cliff. You homed in on him first? Why, well, well,
Speaker 1: my husband, my second husband, Melregi, who was my great
Speaker 1: one of my great loves of my life. Uh and
Speaker 1: smortunately not here now anyway, Mel said right about Montgomery Cliff,
Speaker 1: because you knew him, you remember him, you saw him
Speaker 1: when you were a little girl. Blah blah blah, start
Speaker 1: with and and and so I did. Uh. And I
Speaker 1: met him when I was fifteen because my father was
Speaker 1: his lawyer. My father was his lawyer for what when
Speaker 1: when Monty this was a long long time ago, like
Speaker 1: in forty eight, when Montgomery Cliff was just starting and
Speaker 1: becoming the star. My father advised him on on on
Speaker 1: on his politics. Oddly enough, Monty was very involved politically involved,
Speaker 1: I mean in that he had a conscience and he
Speaker 1: knew what was going on in the Blacklist was about
Speaker 1: to start. And my father had come off working for
Speaker 1: Truman and was known politically as a you know, radical lawyer. Anyway,
Speaker 1: money Uh came to him and talked to him, and
Speaker 1: that's when I first saw him, and fella sort of
Speaker 1: got a crush on him. Uh. I didn't know anything
Speaker 1: about his problems at that time. It was only later
Speaker 1: you didn't know anything about it. I didn't, but all
Speaker 1: the other people that I gravitated to, like Jane Fonda,
Speaker 1: whose mother had committed suicide, and so we became like
Speaker 1: suicide survivors together at the studio and uh Arbists who
Speaker 1: did commit suicide, and Arbist the photographer, and then Brando
Speaker 1: who was also very committed suicide and slow motion in
Speaker 1: a way, yeah, by eating too much. Is it safe
Speaker 1: to say that there's a link between your childhood your
Speaker 1: dad had a very kind of uh tough period in
Speaker 1: his career with the House and American Activities Committee, to
Speaker 1: ending people there, your brother and the kinds of people
Speaker 1: you wrote about in your books. Do you kind of
Speaker 1: gravitate towards complicated, troubled people. Absolutely always. And I didn't
Speaker 1: know that. I mean when I began, I just you know,
Speaker 1: the first book I wrote was about Montgomery Clift. Your
Speaker 1: your book about Cliff was entitled Montgomery Cliff, And there
Speaker 1: was another book, Monty someone else wrote about him. Did
Speaker 1: they both come out at around the same time. No,
Speaker 1: they didn't. My mind came out later the other book
Speaker 1: Bob LaGuardia. What happened was I had been contracted to
Speaker 1: do a biography but Montgomery Clift and I began got
Speaker 1: this incredible research from his about his family, and then
Speaker 1: my mother got very sick and I had to stop
Speaker 1: writing it to take care of her, and the publishers
Speaker 1: sued me and got Bob LaGuardia to write a quickie
Speaker 1: book called Monty. He used my even the picture, my
Speaker 1: cover picture. He also sued me for ten tho dollars
Speaker 1: because he said he promoted me in my book. Monty
Speaker 1: came out. When Monty came out about almost a year
Speaker 1: and a half before my my book came out. But
Speaker 1: then my book was considered the good book. Your book
Speaker 1: came out, and I was living in Washington at the time,
Speaker 1: going to school, and I read the Washington Post review
Speaker 1: of your book. A big piece of the article was
Speaker 1: an interview with his brother who lived in the DC suburbs.
Speaker 1: I guess in Maryland or Virginia. Mae and Eleanor Clift
Speaker 1: was his wife. There you go. And the thing that
Speaker 1: was so amazing was that Brooks gave me everything. He
Speaker 1: decided he would trust me because he had all of
Speaker 1: his brother's stuff, including a phone book, and my name
Speaker 1: was in the phone book and my father's name was,
Speaker 1: so he knew that I had known him, and he
Speaker 1: liked that. He liked that idea. I found him in
Speaker 1: the in the phone book, and I called him up
Speaker 1: because I was so intrigued by Clift and the kind
Speaker 1: of predator natural beauty, and he was so beautiful, gorgeous,
Speaker 1: he was incredible. But when but when you did, when
Speaker 1: you did his story, you had met him. I had
Speaker 1: met him when I was fifteen year years old and
Speaker 1: died in nineteen sixty five, I believe. But I met
Speaker 1: him in nineteen I hate to say it. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think I met him in forty eight or forty nine.
Speaker 1: It was when he did the Search and Red River. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then he did Place in the Sun in nineteen fifty.
Speaker 1: I guess it was. I met him literally at the
Speaker 1: height of his fame, and he was absolutely, ravishingly beautiful.
Speaker 1: What wasn't that that d him? What was it that
Speaker 1: ated him? Oh? I think I think the fact that
Speaker 1: he was homosexual and he was very conflicted about his sexuality.
Speaker 1: He was supposed to pretend to be straight. Was that
Speaker 1: Was that the conflict that he had to pretend in public?
Speaker 1: Or was he conflicted about being gay? He apparently, according
Speaker 1: to his analyst, he was conflicted about being a You know,
Speaker 1: he did have these relationships with women. Apparently he did
Speaker 1: go to bed with one woman, Judy Balaban, Remember Judy
Speaker 1: Judy Barney Balaban's daughter who was the head of Paramount.
Speaker 1: Women were crazy about him. When women want to do
Speaker 1: it in bed with him. He was androgynous. He was
Speaker 1: like Brando in a way. They were both. It was
Speaker 1: so complicated sexually, so so sensual and so oh boy,
Speaker 1: I mean, he's so gorgeous. Number one, Yes, it was.
Speaker 1: He did go both ways, as did Brando. They were
Speaker 1: both bisexual to begin with, but Cliff then ultimately turned
Speaker 1: totally gay and had many male lovers. You hear these stories,
Speaker 1: but the one I heard was that Brando said to
Speaker 1: Edward Dimitric didn't Demitric direct that the alliance, and Brando
Speaker 1: said to Dimitric that he was going to get shot
Speaker 1: in the end his big death scene and rolled down
Speaker 1: the side of this hill. He was gonna land, and
Speaker 1: he wanted to land in the christ like low and
Speaker 1: he wanted the last minute for a bush to fall
Speaker 1: and a crown of thorns, kind of formal and apparently
Speaker 1: Cliff said. Apparently Cliff turned to Demitric and said, if
Speaker 1: he does that, I'm going home. I think that may
Speaker 1: be a true story, could be, but but but Cliff,
Speaker 1: I can't help but speak about this in the most basic,
Speaker 1: even eroticized fandom. You know what I mean, which is
Speaker 1: everybody knows that him and Elizabeth Taylor in Place in
Speaker 1: the Sun. I mean, there's just no more beautiful couple
Speaker 1: in the history, not not even carry granted me. They
Speaker 1: like to stand in front of the mirror together to
Speaker 1: look at their reflections. They knew they were gorgeous coming up.
Speaker 1: Patricia Bosworth relives the day she's sent to facts to
Speaker 1: Marlon Brando's dog and got a response. Patricia Bosworth has
Speaker 1: a thousand stories from her days amongst the greats of
Speaker 1: stage and screen. But if anyone can give her a
Speaker 1: run for her money, it's the late Robert Osborne, host
Speaker 1: of Turner Classic Movies and once a working actor himself
Speaker 1: in NT His luck and charm got him a screen
Speaker 1: test with Lucille Ball. So when it was over, Lucy
Speaker 1: didn't really say anything. She's just thank me for coming by,
Speaker 1: And I thought, well, she wasn't that impressed, but at
Speaker 1: least I got to spend some time with Lucia Ball.
Speaker 1: Like a week later, a message comes on my voice, Uh,
Speaker 1: you're answering service. Hello Lebray and nine and two thousand.
Speaker 1: I called the number and the second he said, well,
Speaker 1: Lucy A Ball wants you to come to dinner on
Speaker 1: Friday night. So I go to Lucy's house at Friday Night.
Speaker 1: There's Janet Gayner, there's Joseph Cotton, there's Kay Thompson, and
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, did you ever believe that you would ever be?
Speaker 1: And then I thought, no, wait a minute, I always
Speaker 1: knew I was going to be here. Listen to my
Speaker 1: entire interview with Robert Osborne at Here's the Thing, Dot Org.
Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to Here's
Speaker 1: the Thing. Patricia Bosworth had a successful career as an
Speaker 1: actress in the nineteen fifties, rubbing elbows with the likes
Speaker 1: of Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe, but it was the
Speaker 1: stories behind the scenes that interested her most. After releasing
Speaker 1: her first book in Night, She's gone on to write
Speaker 1: six more, one of which, on Diane Arbus, was turned
Speaker 1: into a movie. New York Magazine called the book a
Speaker 1: spell binding portrait my research on arbas is all original.
Speaker 1: It was. It was amazing. It took me seven years
Speaker 1: almost to write the book, and I I didn't know
Speaker 1: how incredible it was going to be. I really didn't.
Speaker 1: Is that what happens? You're doing the research and going, oh,
Speaker 1: it's it's like solving, like solving a mystery. 're always
Speaker 1: looking for cluescing a well, not really, but in terms
Speaker 1: of a lot of research, very research heavy. I interviewed
Speaker 1: dozens and dozens of people from every part of her life,
Speaker 1: and of course I created the worlds that she inhabited,
Speaker 1: the world of fashion, the world, the dark world, and
Speaker 1: I wanted to do that. Oddly enough, every single one
Speaker 1: of the people I've written out I've known personally, and
Speaker 1: in a way it makes it, It makes it for
Speaker 1: me more. I don't know immediate and I can since
Speaker 1: I know them, I can see them and I know
Speaker 1: a little bit about them, and it's mainly I'm so curious.
Speaker 1: I'm very nosy. That's the way most higraphers. And you
Speaker 1: thought that her story would make something that was worth
Speaker 1: I didn't know I had. I'd modeled for her when
Speaker 1: I was a kid, when I was a teenager, you
Speaker 1: know that, and I needed money and I became a
Speaker 1: model and I modeled for her and she hired me
Speaker 1: because I didn't really look like a model. I was,
Speaker 1: you know, she was then in fashion and she was
Speaker 1: a fashion photographer with her husband, and she was intrigued
Speaker 1: by me because I had gotten married when I was seventeen,
Speaker 1: loped she had too, and I hadn't realized that. So
Speaker 1: this kind of interested her, intrigued her, and I found
Speaker 1: her probably one of the strangest, kind of most eerie
Speaker 1: personalities I'd ever come across. Well, she spoke in a
Speaker 1: very tiny voice. She wore the same dress every single day,
Speaker 1: a reuniform, was always barefoot. She wore the same dress
Speaker 1: because she said, I don't want to think about what
Speaker 1: I wear. And literally the thing that was falling apart
Speaker 1: was ragged and dirty. But she was very, very smart,
Speaker 1: and she asked me all sorts of interesting questions. She
Speaker 1: lived in the studio with her with her husband and
Speaker 1: child in New York. Yeah, it was an old artist
Speaker 1: laft studio on East seventy second Street off Second Avenue,
Speaker 1: and had a tree in the live in in part
Speaker 1: of the studio. But I never forgot her because she
Speaker 1: was so she was she actually took an interest in me.
Speaker 1: I was. I didn't know what the hell I was doing.
Speaker 1: I was very unhappy. I remember at one point a
Speaker 1: photographer molested me, a male photographer before one of my
Speaker 1: sessions with with in A was a catalog house. I
Speaker 1: guess I was working for. And I remember telling her
Speaker 1: about this in tears and saying, now I'll never be
Speaker 1: able to work with this man again. She well, of
Speaker 1: course you won't. You shouldn't, yeh, you're getting it all wrong.
Speaker 1: Won't have me back exactly, And she said, remember who
Speaker 1: you are. You know you can't, you don't shouldn't tolerate
Speaker 1: this kind of behavior. Nobody had ever talked to me
Speaker 1: like this. Of course, in those days, women were very passive,
Speaker 1: very until you were by and large. Why did Arbace
Speaker 1: kill herself, Well, there were many reasons for that, you know.
Speaker 1: She was deeply depressed to her lover was uh not
Speaker 1: faithful to her. That was one thing that upset her.
Speaker 1: But she also was suffering from deep depression and didn't
Speaker 1: could not take any kind of antidepressants. They made they
Speaker 1: made her feel sick. That's what her mother told me.
Speaker 1: She was never on any any drugs from Arbus. Originally
Speaker 1: she was right from New York City. Her her family
Speaker 1: were a mercantile family. They owned Russex department store. Her ears.
Speaker 1: She was very rich, came from a very rich family,
Speaker 1: was raised by nanny's and and chauffeur's jargon U. S.
Speaker 1: S I C. K apostrophe. Yes, and the Russex building
Speaker 1: is still on. Her mother was always depressed. The entire family,
Speaker 1: it was, this was depressed her. Her brother was Howard Nemeroff,
Speaker 1: the poet, and he was the one who was my source,
Speaker 1: my major source. And he said, we were always depressed.
Speaker 1: Uh not all the money in the world, but money
Speaker 1: was didn't it didn't matter. I mean she she fought
Speaker 1: her depression by by photograph, by going into this other
Speaker 1: world or this other reality, this dark reality she always
Speaker 1: wanted to explore because she felt she was in a reality.
Speaker 1: She didn't like this reality of the department store and
Speaker 1: the money and and the thinking of possessions all the
Speaker 1: time she was she wanted to decree. Marvin Israel, who
Speaker 1: was Richard Avedon's right hand and his work, and he
Speaker 1: was He was also a brilliant painter and photographer. He
Speaker 1: was an assistant to Abdon No he designed his shows,
Speaker 1: and he was also art director of Harper's Bazaar. He
Speaker 1: was a graphics designer and painter, a very strange man
Speaker 1: who who only painted dogs chewing it at each other. Well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna leave that out of Sex Action. Um, your
Speaker 1: book about Cliff comes out in seventy eight, and your
Speaker 1: book on artist comes out in eighty four, and then
Speaker 1: you take a very long time until you write your
Speaker 1: next book. You don't do the book about Brando until
Speaker 1: seventeen years later. Well, that's right. In the meantime, I
Speaker 1: did were anything your little heart desires in? How does
Speaker 1: that just state? Well? As I say, I jes stated
Speaker 1: for like forty years. In other words, I started writing
Speaker 1: it in my dressing room at the Hellenais Theater when
Speaker 1: I was in Mary Mary. I started writing the story
Speaker 1: of my father, of his beginnings, of his political career,
Speaker 1: my brother's suicide. I actually started as a novel. I
Speaker 1: fictionalized it, which is ridiculous, and then I stopped. I
Speaker 1: didn't actually write it as a real book, as I
Speaker 1: didn't get a contract for it for thirty some thirty
Speaker 1: odd years. But I was thinking about her all the time.
Speaker 1: This story of my father, story of my brother, my
Speaker 1: mother me uh took about thirty forty years. A lot
Speaker 1: of things out. No, I didn't because by the time
Speaker 1: I wrote it, everybody was dead, you know, and I
Speaker 1: was felt free enough to for example, my mother and
Speaker 1: her lovers, this lover that she had was our gardener,
Speaker 1: which is an incredible story in the book. I never
Speaker 1: could have told that when she was alive, and I
Speaker 1: wouldn't have. But but no, I really did. I think
Speaker 1: I told almost everything, not everything out. You know. I
Speaker 1: almost would rather write a novel because I can do
Speaker 1: whatever I want to do and say whatever I want
Speaker 1: to say, and just make up the people and if
Speaker 1: they overlap with real people, who gives a ship? Have
Speaker 1: you ever want to do the same thing? Yes, I have,
Speaker 1: I haven't. I haven't though, but but I still feel
Speaker 1: I may may yet write another memoir. But yes, of
Speaker 1: course I have. Uh, I just haven't yet. Now we
Speaker 1: obviously when you did the first memoir, anything your little
Speaker 1: heart desires an American family story, it stops when the
Speaker 1: cutoff is it stops after after my father committed suicide.
Speaker 1: What actually, I just on this movie called Anne Story
Speaker 1: with Audrey Hedburn. It was my biggest credit. Uh and uh,
Speaker 1: yeah I was. I was doing quite well. But after
Speaker 1: my father committed suicide, I seemed to lose all ambitious
Speaker 1: vision and I I kind of became numbed all over
Speaker 1: again because my brother had already committed suicide. So this
Speaker 1: for me was a very traumatic, huge change in my
Speaker 1: life his suicide. I'd also wanted to prove myself to him,
Speaker 1: you know, be successful. He was gone. Were all these
Speaker 1: things that that that made me pulled back? And for
Speaker 1: a while I just didn't want to do anything I did.
Speaker 1: I worked, but I didn't have an ambition. I want
Speaker 1: to talk quickly about Brandon. Um, my feelings about Brandon
Speaker 1: have altered quite a bit over the last ten years.
Speaker 1: When when you put all the pieces together psychologically, intelligence, sexuality,
Speaker 1: and sensitivity, most stars have two, almost none have all three,
Speaker 1: and Brando of course had all three, but very quickly
Speaker 1: he becomes you know, this extended middle finger of this
Speaker 1: extended fuck you to the business. It's exhausting. What do
Speaker 1: you think that was about? When did that start for him?
Speaker 1: Was it fuck you? Even with Streetcar with Kazan and No,
Speaker 1: it was his mother, the death of his mother. I
Speaker 1: think we'll go back, I'll backtrack. Okay. His mother was
Speaker 1: an alcoholic, and Brando spent his childhood and adolescents taking
Speaker 1: care of her, getting her out of bars, carrying her home,
Speaker 1: even beating his father up when his father was beating
Speaker 1: her up. And of course you know she was an
Speaker 1: actress ran that little playhouse in where was it, Nebraska?
Speaker 1: For example, when he did Julius Caesar, he went home
Speaker 1: and he recited Shakespeare in the corn Fields with her listening,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. But what happened was she decided
Speaker 1: to go into a and this meant that Brando no
Speaker 1: longer could take care of her. She was taking care
Speaker 1: of herself. He almost had a nervous breakdown, and he
Speaker 1: even Stella Adler even talked to him about it. So, uh,
Speaker 1: Harold Kleman talked to me about this, this whole aspect
Speaker 1: sea the book. No, I didn't speak to him at all.
Speaker 1: I only I only met him once at the actor's studio.
Speaker 1: I called him on the phone. He wanted to talk
Speaker 1: to me, originally because he wanted to talk about Kazan,
Speaker 1: and he actually wrote me a letter that he would
Speaker 1: talk to me, but then he decided not to, and
Speaker 1: I really became so frustrated. I kept calling him and calling,
Speaker 1: and finally somebody said, why don't you call his dog Alec.
Speaker 1: I did listen to this. I facts, dear Fido, I
Speaker 1: want to speak to your master. Within seconds, the facts
Speaker 1: came back back, saying, my master does not want to
Speaker 1: talk to you and signed with two paw prints. This
Speaker 1: was Brando answering me people incessantly I was going to
Speaker 1: do because I had done street Car for TV, which
Speaker 1: was a huge miss, was one of the biggest mistakes
Speaker 1: of my career and the biggest waste of time of
Speaker 1: my career, and we all just did it for a paycheck.
Speaker 1: And then I get an offer from CBS. Was doing
Speaker 1: that stuff back then. They said, would you do Canona
Speaker 1: Hot Tin Roof with my ex wife with Kim would
Speaker 1: play uh Maggie. And we were all a little long
Speaker 1: in the tooth for these parts, by the way, But
Speaker 1: then they said would we do? And Brando would be
Speaker 1: big daddy. And I've got a call Brando, And you know,
Speaker 1: you call the number and leave the message, and the
Speaker 1: woman calls you back, and they're very prompt and very formal,
Speaker 1: and she said, what time, what number, he will call you.
Speaker 1: And sure enough, I'm sitting in my house and my
Speaker 1: phone rings, and of course I trip over myself and
Speaker 1: most break brand neck tripping over a stool in the
Speaker 1: kitchen to get to the phone. Maybe he's gonna let
Speaker 1: it ring three times and hang up. You know, he's
Speaker 1: maybe he's just sick of this. And I pick up
Speaker 1: the phone and she says, here he is. And he
Speaker 1: gets on the phone and he said, why don't you
Speaker 1: come by a Thursday? And I was like, oh my god.
Speaker 1: And I go to his house and I had lunch
Speaker 1: with him for four hours. Oh my god, are you
Speaker 1: kidding me? And I had lunch with him for four
Speaker 1: hours and you could tell he was sad. He was sad.
Speaker 1: What was the thing that you learned about him that
Speaker 1: was among the thousands of things I'm sure was Brando's bisexuality.
Speaker 1: That's that's not that widely known though, Oh yes among
Speaker 1: his friends. Yes, he was totally free about it. He
Speaker 1: didn't give a damn. He didn't care at all. Any
Speaker 1: port in a storm for absolutely, absolutely, who's wild? And
Speaker 1: it was it was Wally Cox's dear friend or was
Speaker 1: he his boyfriend that I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Wally Cox absolutely, and Brando lived. Heared Wally Cox. And
Speaker 1: when Wally Cox died, Brando went went to the funeral.
Speaker 1: But he wouldn't go to the funeral. He climbed up
Speaker 1: a tree and looked down at the ceremony and then
Speaker 1: thought to get the ashes oh, I thought that they
Speaker 1: roomed together. They did in the fifties, and Shelley Winters
Speaker 1: tells this funny story about being Brando's date one night
Speaker 1: and Wally Cox was there and they had they had
Speaker 1: something like roasted grapefruit for dinner. That's it, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's it, and Brando cooked. He used to climb out windows.
Speaker 1: He used to go into people's apartments. He would like,
Speaker 1: be like a burglar and climb into windows and poke
Speaker 1: his head and say hello and then leave. But now,
Speaker 1: Jane Fonda is someone who has always just intrigued me
Speaker 1: to the end because she's had these multiple stages of
Speaker 1: her career, her you know, tabloid e marriages and Tom Hayden,
Speaker 1: who I worship. I love Tom. But for me, what
Speaker 1: will never die is looking back at her as one
Speaker 1: of the great not just beauties and movies started, but
Speaker 1: film actresses. I mean, she's such a great act she is,
Speaker 1: she is great. Forget include It's heartbreaking to me this
Speaker 1: woman is still not grinding out as any movies as possible,
Speaker 1: even forget about age, because she's so mes terizing the
Speaker 1: what was the experience like writing about her? She had
Speaker 1: a comparable loss that losses, her mother slitting her throat
Speaker 1: when Jane was twelve years old, and and her father
Speaker 1: who never showed his love for her. Henry Fonda never
Speaker 1: said I love you. He was always cold to her.
Speaker 1: Uh does she ever understand? Why did she venture? He
Speaker 1: was a very strange man. I think he actually was
Speaker 1: obsessed with her myself. But what happened was Jane and
Speaker 1: I had met at the actor's studio and she decided
Speaker 1: she wanted a woman to write her biography. She'd had
Speaker 1: nine biographies written by men, and they had all been
Speaker 1: threatened by her. She wanted a woman to write about
Speaker 1: her life, totally biography. She didn't want to call it
Speaker 1: off our eyes because she didn't read it. She refused
Speaker 1: to read it. She said, oh, I'm only looking at
Speaker 1: the pictures. But she heard from other people it was okay.
Speaker 1: It was very difficult for me to do that. I
Speaker 1: mean it was difficult because I knew her. She trusted
Speaker 1: me totally, and there were a lot of things in
Speaker 1: her life that she'd done that We're not that great,
Speaker 1: you know, So how do I handle that one? I mean?
Speaker 1: She stole her routines for the workout from her trainer
Speaker 1: and should I tell this, you know. So I called Gilda,
Speaker 1: who is her trainer, and Gil said, yeah, she didn't
Speaker 1: steal him. Did you ask about Yes? I did. She said, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I you she she hedged and and him
Speaker 1: to odd. I didn't want it to be a puff
Speaker 1: piece because she had given me so much. It was difficult,
Speaker 1: and there were certain things I did leave out. She
Speaker 1: decided she wanted to be taken care of, even though
Speaker 1: Ted Turner himself said I couldn't take care of her.
Speaker 1: She wouldn't even let me pay for her plane tickets,
Speaker 1: she said. But I think also they were They're very
Speaker 1: much alike in a way. I mean, they're both totally
Speaker 1: self involved, very smart. Uh. They loved they loved the fame,
Speaker 1: they loved the power that comes with that. Um So
Speaker 1: I think for a while it worked, except he was
Speaker 1: always unfaithful to her, always and and and she couldn't
Speaker 1: take that he was unfaithful. Like the second week, third
Speaker 1: week they were married, she found out he was screwing
Speaker 1: somebody you were. The latest book entitled The Men in
Speaker 1: My Life, A Memoir of Love and Art in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifties Manhattan is very sad and funny, but really really sad.
Speaker 1: But but the thing is, when you write a book,
Speaker 1: what are you supposed to write? You cannot be indifferent
Speaker 1: to your own history, you know you can't. And I
Speaker 1: was very involved, and yes, I guess I did get
Speaker 1: sad at times. Well, what I love about when I
Speaker 1: read Cliff as you as you as you read, and
Speaker 1: you think, is anybody happy in this business? Is anybody
Speaker 1: ultimately happy? I don't know. I don't know. I think
Speaker 1: they are. You know, was Paul Newman happy? Now? Maybe
Speaker 1: he wasn't. I think Paul, I think that was very
Speaker 1: happy towards the end. I think Newman for Newman, the
Speaker 1: great you know, horrible thing. I want to assume as
Speaker 1: when his son Scott killed himself changed him to I
Speaker 1: think it was completely changed to changed him totally. I
Speaker 1: think that that really affected him. Your last book, your
Speaker 1: memoir that's out now, there really is a kind of
Speaker 1: an energy of what's the word I'm thinking of? Forgiveness?
Speaker 1: Is that is that right to say that you're not
Speaker 1: mean to these people in this book? Well, you really
Speaker 1: put the gloves on with the X husband of yours.
Speaker 1: That's not mean to him? No, I know, I'm not.
Speaker 1: I don't I I was. I was just I don't know,
Speaker 1: I just I wanted, I wanted to tell these stories.
Speaker 1: It's really, you know, the book really is about my brother.
Speaker 1: It's it's a tribute to my brother. What's the next
Speaker 1: memoir for you? I don't know yet. I think I
Speaker 1: would like to write about Actually, I'd like to write
Speaker 1: about the next ten years, meaning the six the sixties
Speaker 1: into seventies, where I get into feminism and I work
Speaker 1: in pornography, which I did for a while with Bob
Speaker 1: Guccione and did I edited a female porn magazine called
Speaker 1: Viva for two years until he fired me. What was
Speaker 1: he like? He was a complicated man. I mean, he
Speaker 1: wanted to be a painter or another one. Uh. He
Speaker 1: felt he was doing good. He was an accidental pornographer.
Speaker 1: Was he was? He was? He was very smart and
Speaker 1: he actually published some wonderful articles inhouse. Remember I remember
Speaker 1: reading about Barry Seal from the Whole Mina Arkansas Conspiracy
Speaker 1: and a lot of a lot of and and and
Speaker 1: Viva had great writing in it too. He did well.
Speaker 1: I think that when you're done with that memoir, or
Speaker 1: maybe while you're writing that memoir, I want you to
Speaker 1: remember to allow time for you and I for sex action.
Speaker 1: It's a winner. Okay. Launch date to be determined. This
Speaker 1: is Alec Baldwin and you were listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: thing they did in cho put the same time k