The Biographer Inspires Reading and Writing

Montgomery Clift with his "Misfits" co-star, Marilyn Monroe.

You don't know this about me, but I love to read biographies. I love the writing. I love the research. I adore visiting someone's life through the words written by their biographer. In particular, I love Hollywood biographies. Patricia Bosworth is the author of the 1978 Montgomery Clift: A Biography. I consider this to be the best biography that I had read as a teenager. Clift had starred in several of my favorite films: "A Place In The Sun", which was based on the Theodore Dreiser novel,  An American Tragedy;  "Suddenly Last Summer", which was based on the one-act play by Tennessee Williams (it was also directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz); "The Misfits" which was directed by John Huston and featured a screenplay written by Arthur Miller; and "Freud: The Secret Passion" which featured a screenplay written by Jean-Paul Sartre.  Sartre's name was removed from the screen credits by Huston.

Montgomery's films featured collaborations and the works of novelists, screenwriters, playwrights, and directors that I admired. Sometimes reading a biography causes you to go back and explore the works of other writers and or filmmakers. Clift and his generation of actors which included, Monroe, James Dean, and Marlon Brando, were well-read and admired by writers. This love affair between actors and writers is all over the pages of this biography. Also as a reader, when I discovered the connections between writers in the text, I was motivated to read the works of writers that I hadn't yet read. For example, I had read Jean-Paul Sartre, but when I learned of his relationship with Simone de Beauvoir, I immediately went to Mac's Backs on Coventry to get a copy of The Second Sex.

Nobody wrote about Hollywood like Vanity Fair's Patricia Bosworth.

Now about Patricia Bosworth, she is one of my favorite journalists and biographers. She presently serves as a Contributing Editor with my favorite magazine, Vanity Fair. Bosworth has worked at the magazine for nearly 30 years and a reason why I don't throw the book out for at least three or four years--her articles can be read and re-read on the cloudy gray Sunday morning over a cup of Celestial Seasonings tea. Her brief career as an actress featured appearances in films like "Inherit The Wind" and "Young Dr. Malone". I admit I didn't remember seeing her onscreen in either picture. She made the change to journalism and has held positions at Screen Stars, Harper's, McCall's, and of course, Vanity Fair.

A young Elizabeth Taylor with an older, Montgomery Clift

  Bosworth's biography was a tender portrayal of a troubled actor who lived a duplicitous, well confused lifestyle because he wasn't certain about his sexuality. This becomes the crux of the complex story that Bosworth pieces together after conducting her research. The loner whose beautiful looks belied his tremendous acting ability, died alone. His co-star Elizabeth Taylor became one of his closest friends; one of his great loves. Bosworth writes of their relationship:

Copyright 1990 Patricia Bosworth.

 If you enjoy biographies, Bosworth's work is worth reading. There is the Brando book, the Diane Arbus, and the most recent, Jane Fonda biography. I'm glad I spent a couple of weeks re-acquainting myself with the Montgomery Clift biography, it was a welcome, no needed, bit of inspiration.

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The Sementimental Writer

Young rock journalist, Cameron Crowe (center) with shock rocker, Alice Cooper, right.

Writer-director, Cameron Crowe has been on my mind ever since I posted the blog on director-writer Billy Wilder. I have been working on my play and my screenplay--inspiration sends me off on paths of unexpected destination--and one wave of inspiration led me back to the Wilder and Crowe conversations. See, what you don't know about me is that when I was a teenager, I read Rolling Stone Magazine.  Jann Wenner's magazine was the paper of record for the music world and young Cameron Crowe was my favorite rock music journalist. Why? I loved his work.  And Cameron Crowe wrote about rock musicians and events like he was one of my best friends and as if it was the best time ever. As fate would have it, Crowe wrote and directed my favorite film about the music business, "Almost Famous". I knew he was an ofttimes sentimental, but not self-indulgent writer. I thank him for inspiring me to go to the newsstands and magazines racks to read about rock music. I certainly thank him for making me want to be a cool music journalist.

Caroll Drug store on Coventry had a nice selection of magazines.

I took the entire day and looked through the Billy Wilder-Cameron Crowe Conversations book. And maybe you don't know this, but we writers have a tendency to go off on tangents (non-inspirational)--anything to keep us from writing. Distractions are a necessary evil in our business, so, I sat at my desk and re-connected with why I love Crowe so much--he reminded me of myself. I remembered when I was a young music journalist thrust into a world that I was too young to comprehend. I had seen those youthful and wide-eyed photos of Cameron standing next to rock superstars and it reminded me of how I felt and must have looked as I sat in hotel rooms or backstage waiting for the latest music celebrity to sit down and tell me their story. I religiously read Crowe's byline. I enjoyed going to the newsstand and gazing up the colorful array of covers. I loved magazines. I loved journalism. I loved Cameron's work. His coverage of Led Zeppelin's tour in 1973 stands as a benchmark in my life. The article appeared in the Los Angeles Times, and yes, I read the LA Times. You could read any major newspaper if you visited a newsstand on a regular basis. I knew I would write about music one day just like my hero, so I had to read all the right magazines. I had to prepare by learning how to hang out. The British rock magazines were filled with lurid tales about ligging--getting all the freebies that come from gaining access to the backstage area of a venue. American magazines were filled with stories about groupies like Miss Pamela (Pamela Des Barres) and I wanted nothing to do with that scene. I wanted to write about it all.

Crowe's cover story: A legend was born and an idol created.

In 1975, Led Zeppelin performed at the Richfield Coliseum. My friend Jeff Wright and I ventured down to Swingo's Celebrity Inn on 18th in Euclid Avenue to hang out with Led Zeppelin. When Crowe wrote about Led Zeppelin, he made you feel like you knew the band--he was able to bring you the inner workings of the band. And I knew his Zeppelin interview was a coup for Rolling Stone. We drove down the ramp to the parking garage of Swingo's and we instinctively knew to ride the elevator up to the second floor. We got off the elevator to look around. Oddly, there seemed to be nothing going on; there were other teens--pairs of pretty young white girls in tube tops and bell-bottom blue jeans--looking for the band. We smiled at one another. I knew we were on the right floor. We saw a bearded man sitting on a chair in front of the door of a room--Jimmy Page was behind that door!

The Colonial Arcade,  a place for thoughtful magazine shopping and newspaper reading..

I remember spending weekends riding the St. Clair bus to downtown Cleveland. I would go to my favorite newsstands to buy magazines. There was a newsstand in the Colonial Arcade and one on 4th in Euclid. I read everything from Rolling Stone to CREEM Magazine! As I grew older, I had a friend who drove to Coventry where we went to Caroll Drug to buy magazines.  We'd buy Rolling Stone, Right On!, Soul, Andy Warhol's Interview Magazine, NME (New Music Express), Melody Maker, CREEM, Billboard, The Village Voice, and any other popular music magazine. I never understood why they let us read the magazines before we bought them, but the newsstand owner in the Colonial Arcade always let us browse through the magazines looking to see whether they were worth purchasing.

What you don't know about me was that I was so inspired by Crowe's work as a music journalist, that I decided to write about my time as a music journalist as part of my Master's thesis, I contacted him. I told him that I was writing about the death of vinyl music. Below is his response:

While I didn't score an interview with Cameron Crowe, in a future blog, I'll begin sharing some of the interviews I did snag with legendary music critics like Anthony DeCurtis (Rolling Stone), Robert Christgau (Village Voice) and Dave Marsh (CREEM Magazine) to name a few. Reading those magazines turned out to be preparation for writing the biggest project to date--my thesis.