“He has a ghastly, shattered expression.” And it wasn’t just in private record: in October 1956, Louella Parsons reported on Clift’s “very bad health” and Holman’s attempts to clean him up. So the fan magazines got creative: the August 1949 cover of Movieland, for example, featured a grinning, suited, respectable-looking Clift paired with the tantalizing headline “Making Love the Clift Way.” But when readers looked inside the magazine, all they found was a two-page spread of stills from The Heiress, featuring Clift in various stages of flirtation with Olivia de Havilland, extrapolating that Clift’s kissing style was “soft yet possessively brutal; pleading, but demanding all. . Especially during films like From Here to Eternity and The Misfits – just to reassure him that things aren’t about to get any worse, even though I’ve seen the film before and know they will. My wife and I just watched A Place in the Sun tonight; I just felt so bad for his character’s dilemma. Other testimonies to Clift’s gayness abound: early in his film career, he had purportedly been warned that being gay would ruin him; he was so conscious of being seen as feminine or fey in any way that when he ad-libbed a line in The Search, calling a boy “dear,” he insisted that director Fred Zinnemann reshoot the take. Moments after the accident, actor Kevin McCarthy, driving in front of Clift, ran back to check on him, seeing that “his face was torn away—a bloody pulp.

The long suicide was complete. It was a flimsy speculation built on shaky evidence, but with no sign of any “real” lovemaking in Clift’s life, it was all the fan magazines had. . The most beautiful young man I’ve ever seen. Looking back, the film had a legacy of darkness surrounding it: Gable died of a heart attack less than a month after filming; Monroe was only able to attend the film’s premiere with a pass from her stay at a psychiatric ward. Although we, the audience, see the handsomest man in the room, high society has a way of smelling its own, and George carries the wrong scent. While filming a 15-minute supporting role as a mentally handicapped victim of the Holocaust in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), he had to ad-lib all of his lines. At the time of its release, this was the most expensive movie ever made. . She leads him to the dance floor and by the end of the night they are the last couple standing, unable to let each other go. The first was Giant a year before. They sit alone and the camera zooms in close to caress their faces as they fill the screen.

Hepburn was reportedly so incensed by Mankiewicz’s treatment of Clift that when the film officially wrapped, she found the director and spat in his face. said: “Oh. Clift appeared in The Misfits, a revisionist western best known as the final film of Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable.

d-d-darling, I r-r-really wouldn’t know. Just look at the fan magazine titles: “Making Love the Clift Way,” “Two Loves Has Monty,” “Montgomery Clift’s Tragic Love Story,” “Is It True What They Say About Monty?” “Who Is Monty Kidding?” “He’s Travelin’ Light,” “The Lurid Love Life of Montgomery Clift,” and, perhaps most flagrantly, “Monty Clift: Woman Hater or Free Soul?”. Will be used in accordance with our Privacy Policy. He’s never sucked my cock.”. Despite studio concerns about the delayed release date he joked that audiences would flock to the film just to see his new face. Regardless of the veracity of this story, one thing remains true: there’s not a single picture of Clift’s broken face. She floats in, stylish and elegant and bubbling with society news, before heading out for the evening with the Eastman children. Author Christopher Isherwood tracked Clift’s decline in his journals, and by August 1955, he was “drinking himself out of a career”; on the set of Raintree, the crew had designated words to communicate how drunk Clift was: bad was Georgia, very bad was Florida, and worst of all was Zanzibar. I do not count myself as a member of the ripped-sweatshirt fraternity.” He wasn’t a “young rebel, an old rebel, a tired rebel, or a rebellious rebel”—all he cared about was re-creating a “slice of life” on the screen. Nice job, great photos to support your story too. Angela wanders in. cocksucker.” Then, sweetly, wide-eyed with little girl naïveté, she It’d be his only film with Brando, even though the two barely shared the screen. “Nearly all his good looks are gone,” Isherwood wrote. And then she is gone. The novel, published in 1948 after many delays, was set on a single day, many years after the Civil War, albeit with reminiscences of the past, and its author, Ross Lockridge, Jr., was so disturbed by its unexpectedly immense success that he committed suicide only a few weeks after its publication. But after an initial flurry of coverage, he retreated from public view entirely. He’s so beautiful,” murmured Miss Parker. Or, as Bosley Crowther, taking the populist slant in The New York Times, explained, the characters were amusing, but they were also “shallow and inconsequential, and that is the dang-busted trouble with this film.”. His early career was dominated by a series of controlling women, one who steered him from accepting the leads in East of Eden (the role launched James Dean’s career) and Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder wrote the role that eventually went to William Holden, especially for Clift). In the pantheon of Hollywood greatness, Clift is known for his sensitive portrayals of emotional, troubled men. She wouldn’t die for another year and a half, but Misfits would be her last completed film. Both were lying drunk on the banks of the Shawmucky River following Shawnessy's great victory in the Raintree County footrace. The accident had broken his jaw and fractured his sinus. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Glad you enjoyed the piece. Alternate Versions Taylor: "Let's go swimming." Vanity Fair may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. Of the many movies produced in the aspect ratio of 2.55:1 from 1953 to 1957, this was the last released at that aspect ratio. George first sees Angela Vickers (Elizabeth Taylor) when he is politely invited, for a very brief visit, to his uncle’s home. If Paramount wanted him, they’d have to give him what he wanted—a power differential that would go on to structure the star-studio relationship for the next 40 years. During the filming of Raintree County, Clift and Taylor seemed to have rekindled their is-it-or-isn’t-it relationship; according to one of Clift’s biographers, “Some days he would threaten to stop seeing Elizabeth Taylor—then, the thought would make him burst into tears.” Other apocryphal legend has Taylor sending Clift piles of love letters, which he then read aloud to his male companion at the time. Clift’s sexuality, like those other 50s idols Rock Hudson and Tab Hunter, was carefully concealed from the public. As the soundtrack soars, they kiss, the soft lens of the earlier scene repeated so that they seem to dissolve into each other.

Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement (updated 1/1/20) and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement (updated 1/1/20) and Your California Privacy Rights. In this great film, Clift plays George Eastman the poor nephew of rich industrialist Charles Eastman who is offered a chance to grab his piece of the American Dream. And then came the accident that would change everything. Months of surgeries, rebuilding, and physical therapy followed. In 1971, MGM's Lot #3 was demolished to make way for a new apartment and condominium complex which became known as "Raintree Estates", named for this movie. She mesmerises George immediately, he practically levitates from his seat to have a better view of her. Soundtracks, After his car accident during shooting, there was some consideration given to re-casting of. From the start, Clift was framed as a rebel and an individual. Thanks for a great article.

In his words, “I learned that most writers don’t need interviews to write about me. Some time passes. The most beautiful actor and actress to ever appear on screen, here together, at their most lovely. Change ), You are commenting using your Google account.

The actor Kevin McCarthy was in a car following him down the road and ran back to Taylor’s house to get help. But Clift’s rebuttal was firm, emphasizing that they were neither in love nor engaged—they’d known each other for 10 years, she helped him with his work, and “those romantic rumors are embarrassing to both of us.” He was also close with stage actress Libby Holman, 16 years his senior, who had become a notorious feature in the gossip columns following the suspicious death of her wealthy husband, rumors of lesbianism, and her general practice of dating younger men. Have I said something wrong? Taylor ran to the car and made her way in through a back door (much of the front of the car was pushed in) and saved Clift from choking by removing his two front teeth lodged at the back of his throat. (1936). In May 1956, Clift was in the middle of filming Raintree County, the second film he made with his great platonic love Elizabeth Taylor (a third, Suddenly, Last Summer, was released in 1959). But for 12 years, he set Hollywood aflame. Montgomery Clift had the most earnest of faces: big, pleading eyes, a set jaw, and the sort of immaculate side part we haven’t seen since. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. Between 1963 and 1966, he faded from public view, emerging only to film a final performance in the French spy thriller The Defector (1966). Clift was unperturbed by his apparent lack of a love life: he told the press that he would get married when he met a girl he wanted to marry; in the meantime, he was “playing the field.” When another columnist asked him if he had any hobbies, he replied, “Yes, women.” But as the years passed, it became more and more clear that Clift wasn’t just picky. | ( Log Out /  I always watch this scene open-mouthed – it’s intimate and grand all at the same time, one of those great, iconic Hollywood moments. It is forceful and consuming, the way young love is. The director, John Huston, supposedly brought in Clift because he thought he’d have a “soothing effect” on Monroe, who was deeply embroiled in her own addictions, with her own personal demons. While filming his next picture, Lonelyhearts (1958), Clift lashed out, proclaiming, “I am not—repeat not—a member of the Beat Generation.