Byline: WENDY LEIGH

He was a Hollywood legend with an unerring ability to ensnare his leading ladies. He enjoyed a passionate affair with Marilyn Monroe which began on the film Let's Make Love. And within a year, Shirley MacLaine had fallen madly in love with him on the comedy My Geisha.

But through it all, Yves Montand remained happily married to sultry blonde actress Simone Signoret.

To their fans, the dashing, Italian-born star and his beautiful French wife were the ultimate loving couple, devoted to each other throughout their 34-year marriage until Simone's death in 1985. But a new book has sent shockwaves through France, where Montand is still seen as a national hero, with a sensational and disturbing insight into his life.

Chief among its allegations is the lurid revelation that Montand, having been denied sex by his wife, went on to have an incestuous relationship with his stepdaughter, Simone's daughter Catherine Allegret.

Even more surprising, the book has been written by Catherine Allegret's own son, Benjamin Castaldi, with his mother's blessing. In the epilogue Mme Allegret writes: 'My son, you have freed me from the burden of a shame which stifles and submerges with the weight of silence.' Castaldi's book, Maintenant, Il Faudra Tout Se Dire (Now We Must Tell Ourselves Everything), implies Montand's affair with his stepdaughter began when she was under the age of consent. It describes the star as 'a sacred monster' who humiliated the wife who adored him, destroyed her daughter, then went on to marry his secretary whom he had known since she was 13.

Montand met Simone Signoret in 1949, when they were both in their 20s.

Montand, whose family had moved to France when he was a child, had been discovered singing in a nightclub by the legendary Edith Piaf, who gave him a part in her 1946 movie Star Without Light. The couple had an affair which Piaf ended.

Meanwhile, Simone was married to film director Yves Allegret and had a threeyearold daughter, Catherine. When she met Montand in St Paul de Vence, a quaint village near Nice, Signoret wrote: 'We had been struck by lightning and something indiscreet and irreversible had happened.' When Montand issued an ultimatum to Signoret, she left her husband and moved with Catherine into his two-room flat.

'In the early days, it was great love,' he later recalled. But Montand was an inveterate womaniser - though he kept his illicit liaisons secret from Simone until he met Marilyn Monroe, his co-star in the 1960 film Let's Make Love.

At first, he and Marilyn clashed - and his wife was the peacemaker, befriending the notoriously insecure Hollywood star. The women even spent evenings together dyeing their hair blonde.

But it wasn't long before Monroe was seduced by Montand's Gallic charm.

One night, when they were staying in neighbouring suites at the Beverly Hills Hotel, Marilyn stripped naked, put on a full-length mink coat and knocked on Yves' door. He let her in - and they embarked on a torrid affair.

When news of their relationship broke around the world, Simone behaved with dignity in public and pretended to ignore it. Her only comment was: 'It proves she has good taste.' But, according to the new book, she privately retaliated against Montand's infidelity by moving into a separate bedroom, refusing to have sex with him and putting on a great deal of weight.

Indeed, in later years Montand would blame Simone's weight gain as one of the reasons for his adultery. 'To destroy herself like that was a terrible thing,' he said. 'I told her it's not fair for her and it's not fair for me.

What can I say? For the last eight years of her life we had no sex.'

Meanwhile, Catherine was blossoming into a young teenage beauty - and Montand found himself unable to resist the temptation to seduce her.

According to Castaldi, once Simone's beauty subsided, Montand's paternal feelings towards the girl, whom he'd known since she was only three years old, evaporated completely and he became her lover.

Where or when the affair began is not clear. But Castaldi makes it plain that Montand and his mother were definitely lovers, implies the affair began when Catherine was below the age of consent and claims Signoret was well aware that such a shocking liaison was taking place in her own house.

'Montand did not always behave towards my mother as a stepfather should,' says Castaldi.

'And her own mother [Signoret] swept the problem under the carpet by dressing it up as a kind of romanticism-That poisoned her existence. It was a destructive relationship for my mother. It was overwhelming for her.' Yet in 1965 Montand, Signoret and Catherine appeared together in the film The Sleeping Car Murder. And two years after Simone's death in 1985, Montand took the bizarre step of legally adopting Catherine, then 39.

By that time, Montand was already involved in an affair with his assistant, Carole Amiel, which, he later admitted, was going on while his wife was alive. 'She knew about us, but she didn't want to know,' Montand confessed.

Castaldi doesn't explain how the affair between Montand and Catherine ended. 'There are many things I still don't know in this story,' he says.

'Let's just say that out of 100 metres, I have covered 90.' But somehow, like her mother before her, Catherine remained Montand's friend and number one supporter until his death in 1991 - even after Montand had a child with Carole in 1988.

Catherine married fellow actor Jean Pierre Castaldi in the late Sixties and has gone on to enjoy a successful career, with roles in Last Tango In Paris and a string of foreign language films. In 1970, they had Benjamin.

Growing up, Benjamin says he remembers his step-grandfather as a cruel man with a scant regard for women.

He once told Benjamin about the affair with Marilyn Monroe. He said she had 'beautiful breasts but, otherwise, was nothing special'. But for years, Benjamin, now 34 and an actor himself, knew nothing about Montand's relationship with his mother.

He only discovered the truth in 2002 when his mother broke the news to him in a telephone call.

'I was stunned,' says Benjamin today. 'I spent several days profoundly troubled by what she told me.' At that moment, he realised how both his mother and grandmother had been destroyed by Yves Montand's selfish and immoral lusts.

'I understood at last the consequences this affair had for my mother. The weight of an enormous guilt had deformed her relationships with other people,' Castaldi says.

And while the image of the man France once idolised has now been shattered, Benjamin Castaldi has no regrets about revealing the truth.

'I knew I couldn't remain silent. That is the reason I have written this book. I will not have the remorse of having hidden a secret which caused so much suffering.

'I am a new man since I made the decision. Put simply, I am now an adult.

Now I have the satisfaction of knowing that on my mother's deathbed, she will be in peace with herself.'

COPYRIGHT 2004 Solo Syndication Limited

This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group.

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