Patricia Bosworth (born April 24, 1933) is an American journalist and biographer. A former faculty member of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, she has also been an editor, actress and model.

Early life and career

Born as Patricia Crum in Oakland, California, she is the daughter of writer Anna Gertrude Bosworth and attorney Bartley Crum, one of the six lawyers who defended the Hollywood Ten during the Red Scare at the start of the Cold War in 1947. Her younger brother, Bartley Crum Jr., and her father both committed suicide.

Bosworth attended Miss Burke's School and the Convent of the Sacred Heart. Aged 13, intending to become an actress, she adopted her mother's maiden name as her professional surname. In 1948, the family moved to New York City, where Bosworth attended the Chapin School. She also attended the École International in Geneva, Switzerland. Bosworth eloped in 1952 with an art student, ending the marriage after a year. After receiving her B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College in 1955, became a member of the Actors Studio, in Manhattan, and found work as a model and actress.

Present Day

In recent years Ms. Bosworth's book on Diane Arbus was turned into a film called FUR (2006), directed by Steven Shainberg. She is currently employed as a Contributing Editor at Vanity Fair magazine. Her articles appear there often both in print and on their web site. She was married to photographer and theatre director Tom Palumbo who died in October, 2008.

As actress

She had roles in films including Inherit the Wind (1955), The Nun's Story (1959), and Young Dr. Malone (1958), and understudied Barbara Bel Geddes on the Broadway play Mary, Mary for approximately four years beginning in 1961. She can be seen as a notably disgruntled redhead in the audience of the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, in Bert Stern's "Jazz on a Summer's Day" (1960).

As journalist

Changing careers to journalism afterward, she became an editor at Woman's Day and from 1969 to 1972 was senior editor of McCall's. Bosworth served as managing editor of Harper's Bazaar from 1972 to 1974, and then as executive editor of the nightlife magazine
Viva from 1974 to 1976. She also freelanced for the arts section of The New York Times, as well as for national magazines, and was a contributing editor of Vanity Fair.

She wrote many book reviews for The New York Times and profiled film historian Lawrence J. Quirk for the April 1998 issue of Vanity Fair and Penthouse founder Bob Guccione for the February 2005 issue of the same magazine.

As biographer

Bosworth is the author of biographies on Montgomery Clift (1978), Diane Arbus (1984) and Marlon Brando (2000).

Her book, Montgomery Clift: A Biography tells the story of the actor, whose introverted style of acting influenced James Dean and many other performers. In researching her book, the author had total access to Clift's family and many persons who knew the actor and worked with him.

Bosworth's biography, Diane Arbus dealt with the life of the famous photographer, who committed suicide in 1971, and examines her controversial, technically innovative pictures of dwarfs, nudists and drag queens that won her a reputation as "a photographer of freaks".

According to Publishers Weekly, Bosworth's biography on Marlon Brando "offers a vivid reminder of the personal and professional highlights of Brando's life." It is "an informative biography of Brando that, because of the limited format of the Penguin Lives series, hints at but cannot do justice to the great unruliness of Brando's career and life. She provides a fine, detailed sketch of his New York days when he took acting classes with 'Harry Belafonte, Elaine Stritch, Gene Saks, Shelley Winters, Rod Steiger and Kim Stanley,' and presents a great portrait of the craziness on the set of Last Tango in Paris (co-star Maria Schneider announced that they got along 'because we're both bisexual')", but in only 228 pages, the author "can't approach the complexity of her earlier work".

As of 2007, Bosworth was writing a biography of Jane Fonda.