Garden of Dreams
The Life of Simone Signoret
By Patricia A. DeMaio
University Press of Mississippi
Hollywood Legends Series

ISBN 978-1-60473-569-7, hardback, $35

A biography of the stunning French movie star and her complex
marriage to singer and actor Yves Montand

The incomparable Simone Signoret (1921-1985), one of the grand actresses of the twentieth century and one of France's most notable stars, considered herself the “oldest discovery” in Hollywood. After years of blacklisting during the McCarthy era, she was thirty-eight years old when she entered Hollywood through the back door in the 1959 British blockbuster Room at the Top. And her portrayal of the endearing Alice Aisgill earned her the Academy Award in 1960-the first French actor to win the coveted award.

Though a latecomer to Hollywood, Signoret was already an international star who had survived the Nazi occupation of Paris, emerging in 1945 as a beautiful, promising actress capable of communicating more emotion though body language than dialogue alone could achieve. She gained a reputation as the thinking man's sex symbol, and in several films she portrayed prostitutes with subtlety and depth.

She was fiercely protective of her privacy but after winning the Oscar was dragged through the gutter press when her second husband, Yves Montand, had a well-publicized affair with Marilyn Monroe. Others attributed her rapid aging and bouts of alcoholism to the affair, a myth she endured in silence, while demonstrating a remarkable capacity to reinvent herself as a best-selling author, respected social activist, and revered actress who remained in the cinema, her “garden of dreams,” for over four decades.

“In life I haven't done all I would have liked to do,” Signoret said shortly before her death in 1985, “but I've never done anything I didn't want to do.”  She reached her peak as an actress with her receipt of an Oscar, and then pushed aside Hollywood in favor of international stardom in films with real life stories  rather than formulaic treatments of an artificial one.

Garden of Dreams: The Life of Simone Signoret (University Press of Mississippi) by Patricia A. DeMaio is the first English-language biography of Simone Signoret. DeMaio combines Signoret's courageous story with Montand's biography to reveal new information and insight into her humanitarian efforts and the vibrant film career that sustained her.

Patricia A. DeMaio works as a grants resource manager with New Haven Public Schools. She has worked in nonprofit management for over twenty-five years.