Monash was born in Harlem, New York, in 1917, and grew up in The Bronx. His mother, Rhoda Melrose, acted in silent films. Monash earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a master's degree in education from Columbia University. An aspiring novelist, he rode the rails across the United States, served in the merchant marine, lived as an expatriate in Paris and studied art.
Advertisement
His film production credits include Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), Slaughterhouse-Five (1972), The Front Page (1974) and Carrie (1976). Monash produced the feature film The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973), a dark, critically acclaimed crime drama starring Robert Mitchum, and also adapted the George V. Higgins novel for the screen.
Monash wrote the 1979 CBS-TV adaption of All Quiet on the Western Front, a Hallmark Hall of Fame production that received a Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture Made for Television. His screenplay for the HBO film Stalin (1992) was nominated for an Emmy Award; and Monash received the Humanitas Prize for his teleplay for the TNT film George Wallace (1997).
He died in 2003.