Happy heavenly 101st to gay martyr Montgomery Clift

I always thought he was the most handsome actor from that era. He was still drop-dead handsome even after his reconstructive surgery.

He was adorable in his cub years.

Happy birthday, Monty - and I agree, OP, he was the best - and my favorite. Though all three were very good. I've never been a big Brando fan. I always loved Dean. But Clift was a fantastic actor. He was also the best looking of the three.

Abs

Wow! He looks FANTASTIC for 101.

He could be a DLer. 101, but pass for 31.

Smoking hot.

My parents should’ve figured things out earlier when, as a mere child, I wept inconsolably when Monty went to the electric chair in A Place in the Sun.

Montgomery Clift is just not a relatable actor. He always seems like he's about to fall apart and there's something so studied about his every move. "The Method" as an acting idea often produces this weirdness in its insistence that the actor worry himself with the unseen minutia of the character even just to walk into the scene, pour a cup of coffee and light a cigarette. This results in the simple action appearing exhausting and over-examined.

That's why I think Clift was occasionally compelling, but ultimately forgotten.

R7 SPOILER ALERT, GIRL!!

[quote]Montgomery Clift is just not a relatable actor. He always seems like he's about to fall apart and there's something so studied about his every move.

This is total bullshit to me. In From Here To Etertnity (for ex.) he was probably the most relatable actor I ever saw. Exuded confidence, and was very natural.

He look like an attractive version of Zachary Quinto.

Happy birthday to Pink Princess Tinymeat!

Best looking of the three r3?!

Marlon Brando in his prime was walking sex. A Street Car Named Desire? It was almost distracting how hot he was.

R8 I respectfully disagree with you. He is insanely compelling in a majority of his films - The Search, Red River, A Place in the Sun, From Here to Eternity, and Judgment At Nuremberg are all acting masterclasses. Very few actors who followed have touched that specific kind of naturalism - Brando is one, but there was always an undercurrent of brutality to him that made me like sensitive Clift more. The Misfits is my favorite performance of Monty's, and my favorite scene of his below.

I agree he was the best of three--he did not twitch like Dean nor mumble like Brando. They were both hunkier, but he was so handsome.

Some great pics in this album.

Mystery guest on WML.

An interview around the same time as WML.

“Happy birthday to Pink Princess Tinymeat!”

Really? What about his Clift hangers?

Happy Birthday! We loved you well, as we know you loved us!

Best looking of the three [R3]?! Marlon Brando in his prime was walking sex. A Street Car Named Desire? It was almost distracting how hot he was.

Yeah, Brando was hot. He even had a handsome face, and a cute smile - but I find Monty much better looking. He had a really beautiful male face. Even aftrer his accident when he wasn't overly handsome, his face appeals to me. *shrugs*

R14 I love his performance in The Misfits. I don't know anyone else who could have played it like that. He was very funny in the comedic parts, but also, that phone call with his mom - he really understood that scene. What a brilliant actor, he could make the audience understand so much. Another great performance of his that isn't seen a lot was in The Big Lift (1950). (About the Berlin Airlift.) Really different performance, for him, very loose and casual, and real.

R21 Interesting you mention his comedic talent, because I wish he'd done at least one good funny film role, but I guess he was pigeonholed in "brooding young man" from the jump. Apparently he was in a number of comedies on Broadway (and Jubilee, the Cole Porter musical nobody remembers) including Thorton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth with THE Tallulah Bankhead! I'd kill for a recording of that......

He’s so handsome in “The Search”

I love the scene in A Place In The Sun where he's trying to explain himself and his background to his girlfriend's father. It's really fine acting.

He looks very much like a young Sean Connery (or young Sean Connery looks like him) in photo #3 in R16’s linked album.

OP Why call him a gay martyr? He made his choices; he lived his life; he died.

And he was a wonderful actor. Never cared for Dean; Brando was devastating in a few roles, but made a lot of shite, too.

That's a very rough 42 represented in the links to R17 & 18.

Well he died at 45.

He was one of the most strikingly handsome men to ever grace the screen.

Not well known, he is buried in a very old and small Quaker cemetery surrounded by a gated fence deep in the woods of Prospect Park in Brooklyn that predates the park. Without the right credentials, it’s almost impossible to get in to visit the grave.

R30 Is that common? I don't think I've ever ran across a cemetery that is closed to the public.

[quote]I don't think I've ever ran across

Oh, dear!

R31 you can appeal to a Quaker committee to visit, but from what I know saying you want to visit his grave, unless you are a family member and can prove it, will not get you in. Obviously, if you are Quaker raises your chances of visitation too. I do think there are private cemeteries, especially on private lands which can exclude visitors, especially highly or orthodox religious ones.

R26 I say "gay martyr" partially joking (the man reportedly loved insane amounts of anonymous rough sex) and partially serious because he died in the stupid, senseless way many fellow gay men of his era did - as a result of substance abuse problems somewhat brought upon by the mental strain of mid-century society. Many famed gays from his time were alcoholics and/or pill heads. It's depressing that he had superficially everything, but it was wasted away.

I Married Monty

[quote]Is that common? I don't think I've ever ran across a cemetery that is closed to the public.

There are three in my town alone. Two are Jewish cemeteries and one has very old graves frm the 1700s.

R36 I have just never encountered one, unless it is a private family one on private land. I've never seen a religious one that was closed, it just seems strange.

Well,’some are closed because people are dying to get in.

*rim shot*

R32 What is wrong with that? Written out without contractions it is "I do not think I have ran across." As I was speaking about how it hasn't happened in the past, the past tense is perfectly fine.

When I was a kid, I lived down the street from his twin sister in Austin. Years later I read a bio of Monty and discovered he lived on and off with her in Austin for years. If only I'd known...

“I don’t think I have run across.”

R39, you don’t want the past tense, you want the past participle, which was the error in your sentence.

The past participle of run is—wait for it—run.

Go figure.

Happy Birthday Montgomery Clift...and Happy Birthday Marsha Hunt, 104 years young today.

The woods around the Friends cemetery are not that dense and also they were a super active outdoor cruising grounds in the 80s. OH, good times! Never a shady encounter and it was the ideal melting pot.

But, ONLY in the daylight. I tried once or twice to go into the woods in Prospect Park at night and they felt EVIL. Also, I would frequently find, cruising during the day, the remains of Santeria ceremonies in the woods.

[quote] But, ONLY in the daylight. I tried once or twice to go into the woods in Prospect Park at night and they felt EVIL.

Of course. It’s a graveyard.

It's almost too fitting Monty's burial site became a cruising ground.

R45 Brooklyn near the park in the 90s had a lot of left over Santeria shit obvious in the morning after.

Today they'd demand near total deforestation of his body below the neck and they'd wax or pluck those brows into submission.

So depressing about the tinymeat. Do we have verificatia? Or is it just a rumor started by someone ugly in the face?

Most importantly, are there nudes?

R49 It was started by Kenneth Anger (perhaps he was rejected by Monty back in the day), so it should probably be taken with a grain of salt. Either way, he seems to have leaned towards bottoming, so it's a moot point, especially when you consider everything else he had going on!

This is an interesting article about Clift.

I think his looks combine well with tiny meat. Nothing wrong with a gorgeous small guy with tiny meat.

How big was his estate at the time of his death? He didn't have a large body of work on the screen. So I wonder how well did he do in the earning department during his film career.

Eleanor Cliff’s BIL.

[quote] he seems to have leaned towards bottoming,

Do you have any witnesses to that assertion?

[quote]Today they'd demand near total deforestation of his body below the neck and they'd wax or pluck those brows into submission.

They did back then.

R52, I don't buy that he was completely okay with being gay. There are several stories in Bosworth's biography that demonstrate his unease with being gay and being seen as gay. Like when he literally ran into a closet one time when a friend showed up at his house unannounced and caught him in bed with his male lovers or how he flew from New York to L.A. on a 24 hour flight and back again just to ask his agent if he told so-and-so if he was gay. People who are confident in their sexuality don't do that. Also he was seeing a psychiatrist about his homosexuality, don't know why his nephew glossed over that.

Dear OP, who invented the phrase "gay martyr"?

Tell us how.

Clift is gorgeous in OP's pic

[quote] Dear OP, who invented the phrase "gay martyr"?Tell us how.

Why would OP necessarily know that?

Tell us why.

[quote] Clift is gorgeous in OP's pic

His big hairy thigh curving to meet his ass is really sexy.

[quote][R52], I don't buy that he was completely okay with being gay. There are several stories in Bosworth's biography that demonstrate his unease with being gay and being seen as gay. Like when he literally ran into a closet one time when a friend showed up at his house unannounced and caught him in bed with his male lovers or how he flew from New York to L.A. on a 24 hour flight and back again just to ask his agent if he told so-and-so if he was gay. People who are confident in their sexuality don't do that. Also he was seeing a psychiatrist about his homosexuality, don't know why his nephew glossed over that.

The nephew went too far in the other direction in his attempt to correct the record.

No one really wants to be gay. You can't help what you're born as, everyone just does the best they can. Being gay is a tough life!

Agree with you, R63. I feel like the truth about his feelings toward his sexuality was in the middle. He was most likely comfortable about it to the gay circles he ran in as well as close friends like Elizabeth Taylor, and worried about it otherwise. It was probably an open secret/common gossip in Hollywood to some extent. Lots of anecdotes about people being homophobic to him on movie sets.

The newer documentary came off as very sleazy to me, especially because he didn't trust that side of family. The archival footage of him was lovely, but his brother and nephew come off as narcissistic creeps. The fact his twin sister (who he seems to have been closer to) hasn't come out for any biography or doc involving him speaks volumes to me.

A martyr is someone who is killed because of their religious or other beliefs.

Monty was no martyr.

R64 Also this was someone who was born in 1920.

I thought this was a very good documentary - old, but informative.

(Made while most of the people who were close to him were alive and could be interviewed. Actually the whole documentary is comprised of interviews.)

This book is a must read for Liz and Monty fans.

This book is a must read for Liz and Monty fans.

What happened to the movie Matt Bomer was supposed to do playing him?

I’m always struck by how much he looks like Tom Cruise (or vice versa).

On his best day, Tom Cruise never looked as good as Monty. William McNamara was, I thought, the one who most looked like him.

Ugh. Tammy Cruise can only dream of having Monty's looks and talent.

R51, Apparently, Monty's one time love interest, Ben Bagley, felt the need to recount this detail in Bosworth's biography:

According to Ben Bagley, Monty had a small penis and was extremely embarrassed about it. "He talked about it all the time to me," said record producer Bagley. "I think it was the secret tragedy of his life. A lot of homosexuals gossiped about Monty's problem because gays put great importance on the size of their cocks."

I don't think it was necessary for him to bring it up a decade later after it was already mentioned by Kenneth Anger and Monty was dead. It's really tacky on his part, after all he was Monty's lover at some point. And for some odd reason Monty's nephew brought it up again in his 2018 documentary on Monty, Why? That was one of the weird moments from the doc.

Not even Monty would agree he was the better of the 3.

R76 Bagley seems like a gossipy drama queen. He was probably bitter over being dumped and retaliated in the age-old way: claiming to as many as possible your ex has tinymeat. After all, who's going to check? I remember there was a poster here from a decade ago that said an old (and I mean OLD) friend of his hooked up with Monty in Italy and claimed his cock was perfectly average, nothing to write home about in size either way.

Many homos are drama queens about cock size so smallish is "princess tiny meat" and large is "horse cock".

My friend used to live on the same street in Midtown East where Monty lived (but a few blocks up). Every time I'd go visit my friend I would walk by Monty's place and think of him.

Edward Montgomery Clift died when he was 45. The good die young.

Here is Monty playing around (not that way!) with Brando

[quote]My friend used to live on the same street in Midtown East where Monty lived (but a few blocks up).

On 61st Street. Just a couple of blocks up from the Seven Year Itch townhouse where Marilyn filmed exteriors.

Montgomery Clift was an exceptionally talented, and a devastatingly beautiful man. Imagine Monty, Marlon Brando and Marilyn Monroe all hanging out together...THAT would be a very sexy and spectacular threesome.

R84 Marilyn described Monty as “the only person I know who’s in worse shape than I am.”

R84 Marilyn described Monty as “the only person I know that is in worse shape than I am.”

He had a modern looking face and his acting and speech pattern were relatively modern for the time. Ive watched old movies and most feel like watching a shakespearean play to my ears.

I've read in multiple sources he was drunk the entire week he filmed his role in "Judgment at Nuremberg".

Imagine being in a film where they've also hired Judy Garland yet everyone is more worried how YOU will manage to get through the shoot!

Monty and Judy - both tremendous talents and tremendously screwed up (in part by their pushy stage mothers!) Would love to be a fly on the wall for their conversations.

His last Broadway appearance was in Tennessee Williams and Donald Windham's adaptation of a D.H. Lawrence short story, "You Touched Me". It ran for a few months in 1944 and co-starred Edmund Gwenn. Clift looked great in uniform.

The centenary thread.

Wow looks at those legs!

His gravestone:

R30. Thanks! Had no idea. NYC always amazes me.” In the early 1860s, Brooklyn’s civic leaders moved to create an urban park comparable to the newly-created Central Park in Manhattan. Commissioners acquired 585 acres of forest and farmland that were transformed into Prospect Park, which opened in 1867. The preexisting Friends Cemetery was located within the boundaries of the land laid out for Prospect Park and was retained as a private property of the Society of Friends to be used as their burial ground in perpetuity. In the 1950s the two branches of Quakers—Orthodox and Hicksite—reunited and today the New York Quarterly Meeting (NYQM) is the organizational body of the Friends of Manhattan and Brooklyn. The NYQM owns the Friends Cemetery in Prospect Park, the only active Quaker burial ground in New York City. Rarely open to the public, the cemetery is enclosed by a fence and protected by a locked gate just off the park’s Center Drive. ”

Monty Clift was a protege of Alfred Lunt and Lynne Fontanne and spent 10 years honing his craft on the New York stage. He then joined the Actors Studio under the tutelage of Robert Lewis and Elia Kazan, then with Lee Strasberg after Lewis departed. Clift, however, became frustrated with Strasberg and left the Actors Studio. Like Brando, Clift didn't appreciate Strasberg, whom he later called a "charlatan," taking all the credit and instead cited his mentor, Alfred Lunt, as a big influence on his "naturalistic" approach to acting.

Monty and Brando hated Strasberg. Though Brando never actually studied wth him, but with Stella Adler, who he adored.

Young Monty with the Lunts.

Didn't Alfred Lunt tell him (in regard to being gay) to try to butch up and find an "understanding" woman? I've read that Lunts were a full on lavender marriage - both Alfred and Lynne played for the home team.

R97 Sorry but those actors are Onslow Stevens and Jessie Royce Landis, who were in a play with Monty called Dame Nature. This is a picture of Monty with the Lunts in the play There Shall Be No Night, by Robert E. Sherwood.

R99, thanks. It was mislabeled and even I questioned it after posting.

"He was still drop-dead handsome even after his reconstructive surgery"

No. Then he started drinking and drugging and his body atrophied, and his big bobble head looked 15 years older and ghoulish.

R101 What did he ever do to you?

I think he still looked handsome in The Misfits et al. He just looked older than his age and more rugged/character actor like.

Brando dated Stella's daughter. Ellen Adler, when she was a teenager, and they remained friends until he died. Ellen recalled meeting Clift at a party she went to with Brando, and found that (unlike Brando):

Monty was so polite and charming, always with the match for the cigarette. Marlon stood it as long as he could, then came barging over and pulled me away. "She's my Jew, Monty," Marlon roared. Monty just grinned and shrugged.

Surely the bisexual Marlon and Monty messed around at some point?

Though I remember reading that Marlon wasn't fully aware of Monty being gay until after his death, but who knows.

[quote] but who knows…

Most of the above 100 posts are fantasies of wishful thinking.

R107 A majority of the posts in this thread are just commentary on his looks and the semantics of the graveyard he's buried in, with some discussion of sizemeat.

What the fuck is with the frauish "heavenly" birthday bullshit, OP? If you're male, just cut it off.

R109 = a butch, angry man

R109 I assume it's just another way of saying he's dead (in heaven) and it's his birthday. Was. Yesterday.

Were James Dean and Clift ever an item off record? I read in Clift's bio sometime in the early 50s he was seeing a young aspiring actor who was just starting out in show business. He lived with Clift for a short while in his spacious duplex. Clift gave him money and helped finance his career; landing him a role in a big Hollywood picture, Clift's friends didn't like the guy and said he was a dislikable punk with a very unattractive personality and was taking advantage of Clift.

No name was mentioned but the description really sounds like James Dean.

R112 I've always read that Dean stalked Clift (and Brando) but Clift kept changing his number and would never respond to Dean's many, many phone calls.

James Dean was only in three movies where he played a lead (though he had bits or nonspeaking roles in a few others (Sailor Beware, for ex.), I can't see how Clift could have gotten him into East Of Eden, his first big role on film.

Were Clift and Kevin McCarthy an item?

R112 Dean and Clift never met. Clift threw up when he heard the news of Dean’s death and told Bill Gunn that Dean’s death had a profound impact on him.

As opposed to all the other times he probably threw up

R117 Way harsh, Tai.

R116, That's interesting. Dean's death had a profound impact on him but they never met? Marlon Brando also denied ever knowing Dean but if it wasn't for those pictures of them together we probably would have believed him.

In the interview linked up thread with Hy Gardner - who, ridiculously, seemed to take seriously rumored relationships with Elizabeth Taylor & Marilyn Monroe - Clift talks about a cordial relationship he had with Brando.

At the beginning of his career, Paul Newman was often accused of imitating Brando by critics. I've read some of the reviews. That was forgotten as Newman became more popular than Brando. But I'm not sure why today he's always left out of the comparisons. He e didn't seen eccentric, and he wasn't really an acting genius. But he studied at the Actors Studio and was a method actor - he got several of the roles earmarked for Dean after Dean's death. The Left Handed Gun, and a few othews.

R120 Why wouldn't he go for the Monroe/Taylor angle, as dumb as it obviously looked now? That interview took place in 1962, and being gay was still technically illegal in pretty much every state, even if attitudes were slowly changing. The first sodomy law was repealed in 1963! Of course he'd try to play up Monty's fag hags as something else for his sake.

He was no longer at the peak of his career, after the car accident his career was on a down slide, he wasn't "hot property" for Hollywood anymore, so I guess there wouldn't have been a point in trying to fabricate a romance out of Elizabeth or Marilyn.

Perhaps, R122, but that’s not to say that Gardner - no hayseed but a prominent entertainment columnist - would’ve been in the dark about the less than discreet Monty’s sexual escapades.

R124 - That's exactly what I meant! I think Hy more than likely knew about Monty, so he tried to cover for him to the public, even if Monty didn't really bite.

I think he was somewhat trying for an Oscar nod and comeback with the Freud movie - he did TV promotion for it, and he hated doing interviews and PR.

[quote]He was still drop-dead handsome even after his reconstructive surgery.

Don't think so.

From where is this picture?

Stanley Kubrick took that photo of Clift in 1949 for "Look" magazine.

[quote] Happy heavenly 101st to gay martyr

How can Monty be a martyr when he wan't even Catholic?

There were Quaker martyrs as well.

Tiny uncut cock. Bit hard enough while kissing to draw blood. Abusive boozehound.

He may have looked great on screen and in photographs, but you wouldn't want to be anywhere near him.

Monty is seriously the best looking actor ever. Rock Hudson is a serious number 2.

R131 You knew him personally, Mary?

R133 This book I read about the friendship between Liz and Monty made him sound like a nightmare to deal with.

I sound like the bygone Judy Pills right now, but Monty, Marilyn Monroe, and Judy Garland all strike me as being incredibly similar in that they were hard to deal with mentally fragile addicts who really, really would have been better off had they not been put under the scrutiny of fame and showbiz. I don't see any of them as being outright nasty, cruel people outside the mental illness.

R135 Oh I absolutely agree. And to be fair, it sounds like Monty only became a nightmare to deal with after his car accident. You can’t really fault him for that, but it was still tough to read certain details about him during that time period.

I'm wary of second-hand gossip but I remember that gossip about drunkard Catholic Spencer Tracy dismissing uglified Monty who was paralytic lying on the floor gurgling to speak and unable to get on to his feet.

Montgomery Clift was a beautiful gorgeous man when he was young, before his unfortunate accident. A talented genius, but a flawed human being.

[quote]And to be fair, it sounds like Monty only became a nightmare to deal with after his car accident.

Don't be fair, be realistic. Clift was an unruly alcoholic long before the car accident.

R135, Monty could well be outright nasty: One time when a friend came over to say hello, Monty while staring deeply at his own reflection in the mirror, turned on the friend and said "My God, you're ugly". The friend had really bad acne and was insecure, Monty's cruelty caused him to burst into tears. Monty never apologized to the friend, but the friend said he never understood why Monty behaved so cruelly towards him and that it was uncalled for. Monty would often indulge in gossip, say mean things about his theatre friends and generally thought he was better than everyone. All this was prior to his showbiz fame.

Marilyn married a guy just to get out of her humdrum town and then dumped him because she was "bored" and he no longer served any purpose to further her career.

Judy Garland, I don't know enough about Judy's early years, but I'm pretty sure she did some shady things as well.

It's too easy to blame "mental illness" for your problems and it also sounds like an excuse to dismiss bad behaviour. Maybe they were just self absorbed narcissists who used and abused people just as much as they were used and abused?

R140 You sound like you're either 13 or a frau. Most people have these kinds of bitchy moments in their lives! I don't give a shit if Monty mocked someone's acne or Judy was "shady."

[quote] Most people have these kinds of bitchy moments in their lives!

Yes. I did certain done some unforgivable things in my youth that I'm too embarrassed to mention here in this anonymous place.

(Occasionally think I shouldn't harass dopey millennials now because I was equally as dopey in my youth)

R137 I've read more than one book that referenced Spencer Tracey's habit of getting waster and opening the first available door to take a leak, usually a closet.

He looked like a vicious queen!

One of Month's favorite drinks: A jug filled with whiskey and fruit juice with two crushed Demerol pills mixed in it. Fucking DEMEROL with alchol. This is why he looked so old before his time. Unfortunately, he was a major alcoholic and drug addict.

Which month?

Dean's career (and life) was too short for all the rumors about him to be true. Clift's family has tried to "set the record straight" and challenge Boswell's account around his promiscuous sex life and drug use, little of which makes much sense---his drug problem was well known and obvious and the messiness of his personal life seems well documented. He was a handful before the accident and even more of one afterwards. He seems to have lacked Brando's boundless self-confidence or Dean's immaturity. He may have been mostly gay as a goose, but his attraction for women is obvious in his earlier film roles and probably in life. I suspect that Dean and Brando would have done anything on two legs, but I'm guessing Clift was a little more elusive, hence, his reported need for rough trade.

Newman's early film work looks about as much like Brando as Red Button's. Although the elliptical dialogue for his character didn't help, he's the weakest part of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof". It took him the better part of the next decade to become a real actor. He was never an exceptional actor, but he became a reliable actor with some range and depth and kept much of his beauty well into later age.

[quote]drunkard Catholic

This isn't the "things your grandparents used to say" thread.

Should be Bosworth, not Boswell.

I think whatever attraction he had to women was emotional and platonic. Besides La Liz in A Place in the Sun he didn't have a ton of heat with female co-stars - it's always the relationships with other men in his movies (where he has a love interest) like Red River or From Here To Eternity that stand out. Elia Kazan bemoaned casting him Wild River alongside Lee Remick because he felt he had no masculine sexuality like Kazan's beloved Brando.

[quote]Besides La Liz in A Place in the Sun he didn't have a ton of heat with female co-stars - it's always the relationships with other men in his movies (where he has a love interest) like Red River or From Here To Eternity that stand out.

I don't think he played many roles that called for heat with female costars. It doesn't mean anything. What heat did Henry Fonda ever have onscreen with a female costar? I don't think he was gay. Both of those actors were just cooler personalities onscreen. It was actually part of Clift's appeal that he was not a macho man onscreen. Monty's relationship with Jennifer Jones in Indiscretion Of An American Wife was fairly steamy, though.

[quote] Indiscretion Of An American Wife

No one has seen that strange mulatto movie.

And if they have, they've forgotten it.

All the dialogue was completely dubbed, wasn't it? Dubbed by strangers?

[quote] One of Month's favorite drinks: A jug filled with whiskey and fruit juice with two crushed Demerol pills mixed in it.

Shoundsh shcrumptioush!

Henry Fonda had a number of movies where has very potent sexual chemistry with female co-stars (Jezebel, The Lady Eve, Once Upon a Time in the West). I do agree with you Clift's entire boon was being a sensitive, brooding new kind of leading male.

I love the story about Jennifer Jones flushing her mink wrap down the toilet after she found out Monty was gay because she was so into him.

[quote]No one has seen that strange mulatto movie. And if they have, they've forgotten it. All the dialogue was completely dubbed, wasn't it? Dubbed by strangers?

It's in the Criterion Collection! It used to be on TV a lot (I think it may be in the public domain). No, the dialogue wasn't dubbed by strangers. Trailer:

Monty and Jerry Robbins were lovers and when Robbins helped Monty with an audition for ROMEO AND JULIET, Robbins got the idea for WEST SIDE STORY. It's a piece of gay history connected to WSS that you hardly ever hear about.

And I fucking love Monty's fur. Hot pic, OP.

[quote]R40 When I was a kid, I lived down the street from his twin sister in Austin. Years later I read a bio of Monty and discovered he lived on and off with her in Austin for years. If only I'd known...

My mom went to prep school in Boston with his niece, Suzanne, who lived on Beacon Hill with a grandmother. It was later quite a shock when Suzanne’s murdered boyfriend was found in a padlocked storeroom of the apartment.

Maybe this was just alumni gossip, but my mom says the story was that after killing the boyfriend, Miss Clift cut off his penis and brought it to his family in Brazil (?!?!) She was arrested when she returned to the U.S.

I don’t know if I should believe her - I mean, that’s rather OTT!

Escorted into court:

The slain (and perhaps disfigured) victim, Pedro Brentani.

Do you guys Liz and Monty had sex at least once? She apparently tried hard to seduce him during A Place in the Sun, and he did refer to her as the only woman that turned him on.

Do you guys think*

R161 Yeah I think so although didn't she say in her later years that they were only friends? (Doesn't mean anything.)

R162 Found this article:

When the breathtakingly beautiful star and the serious 29-year-old actor with the chiseled good looks met in 1949 before filming the now-iconic drama, she fell hard for him — and he had strong feelings for her, as well, Casillo says.

Their attraction was so strong — their smoldering dance scene in A Place in the Sun is considered one of the most sensual in movie history — that co-star Shelley Winters "actually thought there was an affair going on," says Casillo.

"It's almost like you're seeing them fall in love during that dance," he says.

Though the two were attracted to each other and were even seen smooching in the back of limousines, says Casillo, at that point, "Monty couldn't bring himself to tell her that he was gay."

As a result, he kept their relationship platonic, which only made Taylor want him more.

"I think that was a part of the first interest on her part," he says.

She would invite him to her room to rehearse, where she would undress in front of him and talk to him while she was bathing, says the author.

"He sat on the edge of the bathtub — and actually rehearsed," says Casillo.

"This was intriguing to her because men were interested in her for her physicality," he says. "Now she had a man who was sitting there, talking about movies and books that she liked, her plans for her future and the roles she wanted to play. I really do think he's the first one who saw interest in her as a person."

As their relationship progressed, says Casillo, "Monty felt more comfortable in letting her know he was gay — and talking about it."

In time, "Elizabeth even started trying to think of other gay men she could fix him up with," he says.

No, I don’t think they ever had sex. If they did it wasn’t very good, as they never became a romantic couple.

I think a lot more happens between people than is ever known. As long as they're discreet and never tell anyone else, a lot can go on that no one suspects. Yeah he was gay but he was extremely attractive, rich and famous and that's an aphrodesiac, so he probably got hit on constantly - more than most of us can never even dream of (and Taylor did, too). He probably tried it with women.

*can ever

I don't think they had sex either. Plenty of well-known men as gay as Monty got married to women they could bear it with in those days, and the fact he never opted to do that with her is interesting. There's an anecdote about them being drunk out of their minds together and Monty telling her that she's the only woman he could ever possibly love. Seemed like true platonic soulmates.

R141, Lol, your stupid point was "they're mentally ill" which, none of them actually were. You must be one of those lazy millennial's that claim mental illness as an excuse for your shitty behaviour.

[quote]Yes. I did certain done some unforgivable things in my youth

I done tings in my yoot too

[quote]Marilyn married a guy just to get out of her humdrum town

She was born and raised in LA, married a guy from LA and they lived in LA.

R164, he confessed to a friend that he and liz had had sex on one occasion but he couldn't "get it up". The few other women he had been sexual with said he was always impotent and passive in bed.

Clift's brother claimed that there had been abortions, but if Monty couldn't even "get it up" how could there have been abortions?

Was the impotence caused by Clift's homosexuality or drunkenness? I mean, young guys (under 35) can usually get it up with just about anything.

R172, Clift's brother had a deep agenda. He desperately tried to make Monty "bi" instead of gay, and I take everything he said with a generous grain of salt.

R173 , He could get it up for the boys but he couldn't get it up for the girls...

R175, most men an get it up for a plant.

And you rely on that, don’t you?

Yes, his brother had an agenda to paint him as a “bisexual” who just wanted to have a family but struggled with a terrible affliction of homosexualism, and later his brother’s son tried some weird “he was super comfortable about being gay? or maybe bisexual….” with the newer documentary. The brother, Brooks comes off as creepy, recording all of their phone conversations (which I’m sure Monty had to be aware of to some degree) and then milking his connections to Monty on talk shows after his death even though he hated most of his family.

I’ve said upthread but his twin sister (who he lived with on and off and seemed to actually trust) cut herself off from the rest of the family and wasn’t involved in any of the biographies, docs, or other parasitic nonsense the rest of them were. At least someone in his family didn’t use him as a vessel and wanted to let him rest.

I have to counter this, because Brooks Clift has never come across as creepy, to me. He didn't needs to cash in on his connection to Monty, as far as I know. He was a successful TV director for a while. If he thought MOnty was bisexual, or needed to think it, so what? And it's not surprising Monty would be closer to his twin sister.

I've heard the telephone conversation between Monty's brother and mother arguing whether he was gay or bisexual. His mother said she had known he was gay since he was around twelve years old. Liz said he was gay, too.

I don't think it was solely his brother that was pushing the bisexual narrative. Actor and former boyfriend of Clift's, Jack Larson, maintained that Monty would go to bed with both men and women, but then he said Monty was usually passed out drunk by the time he got to the bedroom, and you'd have to undress him, put him to bed and then climb in next to him. That's not really "going to bed" in the context that he's suggesting. He also said Libby Holman and Clift had a sexual relationship, but one of Libby's nephews, David Holman, denied anything went on between Libby and Monty. And he'd know since he was staying over at Libby's Treetops Mansion while Monty was visiting. IIRC David had a fling with Monty but he wasn't all that enthused by it. Seems like Jack Larson put out a lot of mixed messages on Clift's character.

Robert La Guardia's biography on Clift pushed the bisexual narrative as well. I think because most of these books and documentaries on Clift were made in the 70s and 80s, perhaps bisexuality or sexual ambiguity were more palatable to a wider audience than gay?

Jack Larson also claimed in an interview that Monty never had a drinking problem because "everyone drank back then" but, at one point Larson had to rush Monty dead drunk to Dr. Silverberg's office at ten in the morning and dropped him on the doorstep. Larson was trying to get Silverberg to acknowledge Monty's problem with alcoholism and get him into a sanatorium but Silverberg would've have any of it.

Elton John and Martina Navratilova were both bi in the 70s, as funny as that sounds now, so yes, it was and still is seen as more acceptable than full on homosexuality, and Monty's brother may have wanted to save face for his social aspirant family. Many of the gays I know had a phase of saying they were "bisexual" when they knew they didn't like women.

But it’s not fair to assume all bisexual men are just gay.

Obviously not, but I don't think Clift was bisexual at all. You can call Rock Hudson bisexual too, his "wife" claimed they fucked all the time! Same with Anthony Perkins. It was a much different time, many, if not most gay men married women or claimed attraction to them.

“Happy heavenly” isn’t going to become a thing on DL like “…is dead to me.” and “Tasteful Friends:” right, because I don’t know if I can put up with that shit.

AP supposedly converted and got married and had kids...he was probably just bi or something,

P186 He was constantly fucking men on the side and died of AIDS. Poor Barry Berenson just put up with it like Leonard Bernstein's miserable wife.

^ I meant R186

People can be bi for awhile and then slowly become more interested in one over the other. EJ could have very likely been attracted to women in the 70's and then that may have faded with time.The opposite happened with Bowie for example, bi in his youth and then in his 30s began to just go for women.

R187, Berenson was a Anthony Perkins fangirl before she met Tony. She knew he was gay but that didn't stop her, she was determined to live out her fangirl fantasy with Anthony Perkins. She wasn't a clueless wife like some of the others, she knew exactly what she was going to get with Perkins.

Re: the murderess niece:

I found this on some Clift fan site, so who knows. But it appears Mummy may be RIGHT (for once!)

[quote] An interesting sidenote is that one of Brook's children Suzanne Clift, when she was 21, pled guilty to manslaughter in the 1 Oct 1962, murder of her boyfriend, Piero Brentani, a Swiss-Italian electronics engineer.  She shot him in the head and castrated him, according to the 2000 report in 'The Boston Globe'.  [bold]In newspaper reports of the time, it does not mention that he was castrated. [/bold]Suzanne's mother is called "Mrs Peter Thompson, divorced and remarried....", while her father "William Brooks Clift Jr" is called a "movie and television producer in New York". Suzanne was put in jail without bail, and a month later while still being held, it was discovered that she was pregnant.  Suzanne was committed, during her trial, to the Massachusetts Mental Health Center for tests to determine her mental state.  She offered to plead guilty to manslaughter and related to the judge that her boyfriend had told her he would never marry her.  She however was "hopelessly in love" and due to bear his child. "I never told him because I knew his feelings.  He told me if I ever became pregnant, I would have to have an abortion."  She was sentenced to indefinite but voluntary incarceration at the Mental Health Center and ten years probation.  In June she gave birth to a baby girl.  Suzanne spent three years in the mental hospital before she was released.  She came to see Monty after she was released and they played with the baby. (Bosworth, p. 361)

R189, "attracted to" doesn't necessarily mean "want to fuck with." How many gay men love the way some beautiful women look and are attracted to their figures, hair and clothes? And they're totally, completely gay.

R183, true. But perhaps you were not around in the 1970s-80s and earlier when the word bisexual was used prolifically in order for one to sit on the fence, in order to give a person's friends and family the hope that they'd meet the right woman.

As for celebrities, Martina Navratilova was "bisexual" in public right up to the time she was served with a lawsuit from the ex she dumped - it was 1991.

R192, in a thread talking about sexual orientation, saying "attracted to" most certainly means "want to fuck". I am well aware that in other contexts it means something different. We are not in those other contexts. So I stand by my post.

Why does no one want to talk about Monty’s niece hacking off the penis of her unborn child’s father??

Eh, R194, how many amongst us haven’t wanted to do that to our boyfriends at one point or another?

R183 R184 I get what you guys mean, I was just speaking about bisexual men in general. For the record I also think Monty was gay.

R187 Was Barry the only woman Tony was with? This may sound ignorant, but is it possible he could’ve been bi? I mean it can’t be easy for a fully gay men to have sex with and impregnate a woman multiple times. There has to be some attraction there.

R192 I get what you mean, I was just speaking about bisexual men in general. For the record I also think Monty was gay.

R197, no. Victoria Principal was the girl who popped his hetero cherry.

OP, no one who has ever seen Montgomery Clift....."barely remembers" Montgromery Clift... one of the all time greats ....period.

Tony Perkins was with Victoria Principal once, and his wife BERRY Berenson at least twice. I'd be willing to wager that's it as far as females go.

R194 The most amusing part of the story is that the niece and baby hung out with Monty after she got out of jail.

It was a NUTHOUSE… not a jail. She did three years.

I wonder if Monty and Liz pulled strings to make it so.

Okay - I’ve got my mother’s fuzzy memories of The Murderess Niece from her Boston prep school days. They were a couple years apart so not in the same circle. All she said was Miss Clift wore navy colored sailor jackets and seemed detached.

But then she added in true DL fashion, “You’d have called her a waif… if she were thinner.”

I want a movie in the style of "My Week with Marilyn" about the loving familial relationship between Monty and his murderess prep school niece.

[quote]r206 I want a movie in the style of "My Week with Marilyn" about the loving familial relationship between Monty and his murderess prep school niece.

This is the role of a lifetime!

[italic]Has the role of the baby been cast?

I once read an article that Kevin McCarthy felt that Patricia Bosworth had misqouted him badly in her book about Clift. I don't really remember him saying anything really bad about Monty in her book. Does anyone else have an idea what he was upset about? (It's in the 2nd paragraph before the interview starts)

He was beautiful, and very talented. But the best? Brando really has no equal.

McCarthy's legendary friendship with the late Montgomery Clift, the beautiful but tragic actor who died after a horrible descent into degradation, was chronicled in two widely-circulated Clift biographies by Robert LaGuardia and Patricia Bosworth. McCarthy cooperated with both writers but had the lengthiest discourses with Bosworth. "Unfortunately, she didn't use a tape recorder. I thought 'Well, maybe she has an unerring memory,' but it was rather disconcerting to be handed quotes (his) and to be asked to check them for accuracy. I called her and said 'This is wrong' and she said, 'Just write what you want want.'

"There were a lot of errors in her book but nobody seems to know or care unless they were involved. It was the best of the two books and yet there was a lot of inaccuracy in it."

R208, that's probably because she thought his comments - that Clift's drinking and drugging was because he couldn't "handle" his homosexuality - were horseshit.

[quote]Brando really has no equal.

Drank the Kool-Aid

It always seemed to me Monty made more quality films and gave more good performances than Marlon. Red River, The Search, The Heiress, The Big Lift, A Place In The Sun, From Here To Eternity and I Confess are all still very good. Indiscretion Of An American Wife (Terminal Station) isn't great but DeSica is a good director and it's one of Monty's best performances. His later films are more of a mixed bag but Raintree County was at least a big hit and he's good in it, Suddenly Last Summer is still good, The Misfits is iconic, and Judgment At Nuremberg was well recieved (and got him another Oscar nom).

Brando's best films are probably The Men, A Streetcar Named Desire, Julius Caesar, On The Waterfront, Sayonara, The Godfather, and Last Tango in Paris. The Mutiny On The Bounty remake was just okay , Later there were Apocalypse Now, and some others, but he made some real mediocrities, he could have done much better in his career.

*Forget to mention Wild River is one of Monty's best performances and a great movie even though it flopped.

I have a fantasy about Sal Mineo and Clift but not sure if their timelines/paths ever crossed.

Someone way upthread asked how much money he had in his estate at his death. Per a NY Daily News article when his will was filed, he left about $200,000 in 1966 dollars to his mother and sister. Brother William Brooks Clift Jr. of Atlanta got less than the other two survivors. That's not very much, but he also didn't really work that much.

That's about $1.7 million in 2021 dollars, R216, Still, not what you'd expect.

R215 I don't think so, they belonged to different generations IMO. Even though Sal seems "Old Hollywood" he was born in 1939 - younger than New Hollywood figures like Jane Fonda and Warren Beatty. He's only a year older than Al Pacino.

R211, but isn't her bio on Clift premised around him not being able to cope with being gay as one of the factors to his abusing alcohol and drugs that would eventually lead to his downfall? So why would McCarthy's comments which fit her narrative in the book be b.s? It would have been helpful if McCarthy actually gave examples of some of the things that were inaccurate instead of leaving it up to speculation.

An interesting thing Boswell brings up is that it wasn’t just the car accident that altered/ruined Cliff’s face - it was all the booze and dope he’d taken catching up with him. He’d been off the screen for 4 years when he did (the awful) Raintree County, the splendor of youth was dimming, he was 37…. and in the footage shot before the crash he doesn’t look as amazing as he once had.

His eyes are still magnificent, but when he smiles here, he almost looks like Kevin Spacey.

Clift's mother and brother said Bosworth's book was filled with lies, but they never took it up to clear up those lies. If they didn't trust Bosworth they could've easily written their own book on Monty, Or perhaps create a documentary on the family? But they never did. Years later Clift's nephew did clear up some of those inaccuracies, like when the bio said Monty was charged with picking up "young boys", but it was actually young men. Bosworth made it sound like Clift was a child predator.

R220 That's a post crash scene, obviously. You can tell because his face seems puffed up. This is a scene shot before the crash.

I hate that movie so much, I can never watch it all the way through. It’s just a deadly slog with NO personality!

Has anyone ever carefully noted which scenes were done before the accident, going by the shooting schedule?

Is this pre, or post accident?

The bloom of his beautiful youth was gone in R222's pre-accident image.

Well, but he still does look like an exceptionally handsome man.

R224 No shit, he was pushing 40.

R213, Monty as Robert E. Lee Prewitt, was one of his best performances. Monty always looked very scrawny in his earlier films but he really bulked up for this role. His body was amazing. I think he's better than Brando.

They played very different types - it’s hard to compare them. Brando maybe had greater range, though. I can see him doing the role from The Heiress, for example, but not Clift pulling off A Streetcar Named Desire.

Brando could play brutes and very sexual roles. Clift couldn't. But I don't think he could pull off the intense sensitivity Clift had in films like The Misfits at all.

Reflections in a Golden Eye would have been much better suited for Clift.

An interesting thing about Brando is he was reportedly quite gentle off screen. Did he play any sensitive , more refined characters? (I’ve only seen his most famous films.)

Burt Lancaster and Monty Clift did really well in From Here To Eternity, they had great chemistry together, that scene where they're drunk sitting on the road and Burt was caressing the back of Monty's head looked rather sensual. Were the subtle homoerotic elements deliberately placed in the film?

James Jones, the author of From Here to Eternity omitted gay sex from his book because the publisher's wouldn't allow it, of course there was no way they would have allowed anything gay in the film either. But I wonder if it was Clift or the director's way of sneaking it in there to get pass the code, like they did in Red River when Monty and John Ireland are playing with each.others guns.

[quote]r231 …like they did in Red River when Monty and John Ireland are playing with each.others guns.

John Ireland had a big gun.

He could have killed Monty with that thing!

R232, Well, damn. I'd let him murder me with it!

I wonder if James Jones and Monty did anything sexy together? They were hanging out a lot during the filming of From Here To Eternity. James Jones confessed to one of Monty's friends that he wanted to sleep with Monty but he never asked. I've seen pics of them together, Jones looks like a bouncer/ rough, tough Irish lad. I'm certain Jones is a heterosexual but it seems even he couldn't resist wanting a piece of Monty.

Someone, I don't remember who, said that James Dean tried to combine Clift's "forgive me" with Brando's "fuck you."

[quote]Forget to mention Wild River is one of Monty's best performances and a great movie

Na, uh. No woman who was young and looked like Lee Remick would go near an old guy like Clift, not the old ugly guy he'd become. Really, hairpiece not withstanding.

R235 Women mostly do not give a shit about looks, some men that nice-looking girls I know date or fuck are total trolls.

R236 = HA HA HA HAAAAAA! Let me guess, gold star gay who only knows straights from soap operas and porn.

Regardless of whether Clift was too old for Remick, it's still one of his best performances.

Clift had a great role in "From Here to Eternity" and did it justice. I never understood the acclaim Sinatra got for for his performance, except as "popular singer dares to tackle tragic dramatic role" hype; he is so over the top, especially compared to Clift and Lancaster.

[quote] That's a post crash scene, obviously. You can tell because his face seems puffed up. This is a scene shot before the crash. . R222 No, It's a "before" scene. Post-crash, one side of his face was immobile and his upper lip had been cut in half and was sewn together. His lip is fine there. And both sides of his face are mobile. His face might seem puffed up because he was an alcoholic. If you see the movie, the entire scene, it's obvious this is a pre-crash scene.

[quote]That's a post crash scene, obviously. You can tell because his face seems puffed up. This is a scene shot before the crash.

[R222] No, It's a "before" scene. Post-crash, one side of his face was immobile and his upper lip had been cut in half and was sewn together. His lip is fine there. And both sides of his face are mobile. His face might seem puffed up because he was an alcoholic. If you see the movie, the entire scene, it's obvious this is a pre-crash scene.

[quote] (the awful) Raintree County,

Made by by someone called Edward Dmytryk, a Canadian Communist who also asked Monty to star in the equally-awful 'The Young Lions' in the following year.

I've looked at the list of Dmytryk's odd movies but I can't understand why he got so many big stars to appear in them.

[quote] Edward Dmytryk

omg…he did The Carpetbaggers, which is quite, um, artless (but at least lively)

Then he directed Susan Hayward in the very worst acting I’ve ever seen by a star. Maybe there’s no other way to play this potboiler scene, but…. Wow.

[italic]“And what are you?! A drunk, a weakling, a kept man, can’t hold a job, living off your wife! You’re a worthless, crawling, miserable excuse for a man! Ya cowardly hero! YOU’RE NO HERO! You’re a drunk! A drunk! A drunk!”

Where Love Has Gone paid for evil spawn BD Merrill's wedding.

It'd have been a hoot to see Davis and Clift together--Davis as Violet Venable or Clift as Baby Jane's pianist.

Hayward betrayed more of her Brooklyn accent than usual there.

It's a shame Clift turned down Sunset Boulevard because of Libby Holman's manipulative meddling. He would have been great as Joe Gillis.

Clift couldn't think for himself? What was he 12?

He didn't seem to have much confidence when it came to choosing what roles to play. He hired a secretary just to read all his script offers for him and choose which ones she thought would be best for him.

I still don’t think it’s a pre crash scene R241 - he looks totally different than in the one from R222. I doubt alcoholism took SUDDENLY took effect between the shooting of those scenes.

[quote]Made by by someone called Edward Dmytryk, a Canadian Communist who also asked Monty to star in the equally-awful 'The Young Lions' in the following year. I've looked at the list of Dmytryk's odd movies but I can't understand why he got so many big stars to appear in them.

He directed some film noir classics: Murder, My Sweet; Cornered; Crossfire, The Sniper. Broken Lance and Warlock are very good westerns. The Caine Mutiny is a great, absorbing WWII drama. He made a lot of hits, not all his films are great but I stars want to appear in hits?

*I guess

In addition to Sunset Boulevard, Clift turned down Rope, High Noon, Shane, A Star Is Born, East of Eden, Friendly Persuasion, and Fahrenheit 451.

Clift didn't turn down Sunset Boulevard, at first. He accepted it, then quit at the last minute, before production began. Billy Wlder and Charles Brackett were furious. Apparently he decied not to do it because it was too close to his relationship to older, faded star Libby Holman. The team then scrambled to find a replacement, considering Richard Widmark (they decided he wasn't right for it) and Gene Kelly (MGM wouldn't loan him out), before settling on William Holden, who turned out to be perfect, and brilliant.

Clift wouldn't have been right for it, anyway. He was too soft, and cerebral. Brackett and Wilder lucked out.

Holden was perfect. I didn't know Clift turned down "Shane"; I think he would have been great in that, reunited with "A Place in the Sun" director George Stevens.

Nah, he wouldn't have been as good - Ladd was perfect in Shane.

He wouldn't fit the role, but god, imagine A Star is Born with Monty and Judy, together.

Along with Monty being the first choice for Rope, Cary Grant was supposed to be opposite him.

Clift didn't always do soft and cerebral. He was neither in The Big Lift, released the same year as Sunset Blvd. Holden never did much for me even though he was great in the role. I'd still rather have seen Clift give it a go.

R258 I didn't think I said it very well. He just wasn't right for it. He wasn't sexy enough, at least not in the right way - Swanson taking one look at Holden coming out of the pool...Clift would have looked like...I'm not sure. Her son, maybe. And all that cynical narration...I can't see Clift doing that either in his weird voice and hesitant delievery. Holden was much more straight than Clift and the role needed that - a "regular guy", Clift got offered everything because he was the hottest young actor at the moment and was a great actor. That didn't mean he was right for everything.

[quote]He didn't seem to have much confidence when it came to choosing what roles to play

Then he deserved what he got

[quote]Then he deserved what he got

What was so bad about what he got? He was in more than a few classics. Honestly...

He reminds me of Noel Gallagher in OP's photo if Noel Gallagher were handsome.

If only he hadn't had that awful car accident that tore up his face. Although he didn't look like a hideous monster afterwards his perfect beauty was gone. A friend said that that was a crushing blow to him, losing his looks. He'd gotten away with a lot because of his beauty, and having exceptional good looks was one less thing to worry about. Here's how the accident happened. He was filming that boring movie with Elizabeth Taylor, "Raintree County." He was tired, had taken pills and just wanted to get some sleep. But she called him and wanted him to come over to her place for a dinner party she was having. She tried to entice him by telling him there would be a hip priest in attendance (the priest used the word "fuck"). As it turns out the priest didn't show up. She nagged him; apparently it was hard to say no to Elizabeth Taylor, who was used to getting her own way. Finally, he decided to go. When he left the party, which was boring, he was impaired by fatigue and the pills he'd taken. He attempted to drive home on a treacherous road and smashed the car. His face was severely injured but his body sustained hardly any damage at all. Poor Monty. If only he'd told Liz to fuck off.

Yeah it was all Liz's fault *snerk*. She porobably saved his life, though, nbd.

I doubt Liz knew he would have had a near fatal accident! Her worst crime was being annoying. She saved his life and vouched for him all the way until the end, giving up her salary to insure him for Reflections in a Golden Eye.

She preferred to be called Elizabeth!

Not Jumbo?

R264, Add to that, New Yorker Monty never felt comfortable driving around big, expansive LA so he had a chauffeur drive him around. But Monty was in for the night and gave the chauffeur the night off. Against his better judgment, he drove himself up the winding canyons to Liz and Michael Wilding's house high up on Beverly Estate Drive and feared he'd get lost on his way down. He trailed his buddy Kevin McCarthy down the twisting canyons but lost control.

Liz Taylor was responsible for the accident. If she'd just let him the hell alone that night, the accident never would have happened. As for "saving his life"....how the hell did she do that? After the car accident there was no "saving" him. Someone said that he committed the slowest suicide in the history of show business.

She dragged him out of the car and pulled the teeth he was choking on out of his throat so he could breathe, so I'd say she saved his life in that moment, yes.

Never thought he was hawt.

His face was weak.

Lost me at "hawt".

R271 Pray tell, who is "hawt" to you?

[quote] It was a NUTHOUSE… not a jail. She did three years.

IT WAS NOT A NUTHOUSE!!!

Am I the only one who finds a resemblance between pre-accident Raintree Clift and Paul Newman? Not fully, but Cliff’s smile is eerily similar to Newman’s.

Is that you, Stevie Wonder, at R271?!?

R261, pay attention. The posters above mine are blaming his not taking certain roles, like Sunset Blvd, on someone else. I simply pointed put that a grown man is responsible for his choices.

Just catching up on this thread (Monty a big obsession of mine) and have a couple of thoughts.

On the Clift biographies - they came out now 40-50 years ago and neither (presumably because of stigma against homosexuality back then) is transparently sourced. It's kind of amazing that an authoritative, newly researched book hasn't been done in the decades since. I bet in Bosworth's archives one might find a lot of original interviews and documents of which she may have played a bit fast and loose with in her book (this is what Clift's nephew suggests in the very good documentary from a couple of years ago). Would be great if a responsible, first-rate biographer could do a new book, but I suspect the audience would be limited to DL eldergays.

On Brando vs Clift - even though they were grouped together often, and both seen as heralding a new Hollywood masculine identity in the 1950s, they are almost like apples and oranges. Brando was startlingly new in his technique and training; Clift was almost a classically trained actor by comparison. I think Clift was at his best in From Here to Eternity where his performance has such sensitivity and internal conflict and even charm. But it's a mistake to think Clift was "sensitive" and Brando was a "brute". Re-watching On the Waterfront recently, I was struck by how soft and vulnerable and "sensitive" Brando is in that "tough-guy" role. I think Clift may have been more consistent, but Brando, at his very best, was operating on a higher level than maybe any actor on film ever.

Zinnemann credited Clift with getting better performances from his castmates than would have happened otherwise. The idea of him as a boxer makes more sense in context---back in the 40s and 50s, boxing filled odd hours on tv and fans followed boxers in every weight class. Sugar Ray Leonard is the about the only boxer in memory who was well-known but not a heavyweight. This was not true when the film was made. Zinnemann attributed Clift's effect to the reactions he got from other actors, which is interesting because they worked so differently. Sinatra did not like to rehearse at all, whereas Reed (who did multiple auditions because Cohn and Zinnemann initially didn't want her) spent a lot of time rehearsing with Clift and found it intense to the point of being unsettling.

[quote] Reed (who did multiple auditions because Cohn and Zinnemann initially didn't want her)

She was great, any idea who they wanted if not her?

Lucille Ball

Donna Reed seemed more like a housewife than a hooker, and that fight sequence between Monty and Sergeant Galovitch they should have left the stunt doubles out. Still a good movie though.

Damn, that Lucille ball turned down some great parts!

I like OP's pic. Everything about the way his legs are situated looks inviting.

[quote]Would be great if a responsible, first-rate biographer could do a new book,

I'd volunteer James Gavin, but he seems only to write about music figures - Peggy Lee, Lena Horne, Chet Baker, and the new one on George Michael. The George Michael book will be the first openly gay subject, and dead, which means anything goes. I'd love to see what's in Gavin's research that couldn't be printed because Lena Horne was still alive when he wrote that book.

The whole point of Alma/Lorene was that she wanted to make money, go home and be "respectable". She thought she was better than the other bar girls. The role also needed to obscure exactly how she entertained the troops because of the Code. Reed made more casting sense given this background than more obvious hooker choices like Dorothy Malone or Gloria Grahame. I've never seen who they actually wanted. Reed was the only Columbia contract player in the main cast, but that was not unusual for Columbia, which kept a smaller roster of contract players than the bigger studios.

Hadn't Monty been in a car crash prior to the one at Elizabeth's house? His friends said he made a habit of driving recklessly. Looks like he was bound to end up in a wreck.eventually.

R280, Zinneman wanted Julie Harris but he fought so hard with Cohn to get Clift, Sinatra, and Kerr that he was willing to let this one go.

The good time girl had by all, Shelley Winters, was also up for the part, but she had just given birth to Vittoria Gassman and couldn't do it.

Cohn was also willing to give the role to Linda Christian if Ty Power would agree to play the Burt Lancaster role.

R277 GFY with your "pay attention" bullshit, schoolmarm.

R288 In the book Jones says Alma/Lurene looks "exactly like Hedy Lamarr", at one point (though my memory may be off). So Donna Reed with dark hair was a pretty good choice physically. Julie Harris, Shelley Winters, no. Linda Christian had an accent. The girl was supposed to be from somewhere like Oregon.

Nancy walker was said to have been a good friend of both rock Hudson and Montgomery Clift. I wonder what stories she could have shared.

Reminder: "Making Montgomery Clift" is still free on Tube if you haven't seen it.

In the movie, at least, Lorene is from Washington State. She was a small town girl who had taken shit form the local gentry, which fit Reed perfectly. Harris would have been interesting. She probably would have played it a bit like Reed but with a different intensity. Like Reed, she would have been sympathetic, but her Grosse Point background might have gotten in the way.

Winters would have been horrible. She could restrain herself at times, but she wouldn't have gotten the "small town girl looking to go back and show-up those nasty 'town girls' who treated her badly" aspect. Winters would have seemed too much like trash trying to be class which undermines the character. Like casting Joan Crawford in the Deborah Kerr role, she would have thrown off the tone of the movie.

I never bothered to view FHTE. Am I really missing a great film?

Power was too old for the Lancaster role and all wrong for a sergeant. He would have better for the Phillip Ober role except it was too small a role for him. Trivia note: Linda Christian was then his wife.

FHTE is a very good film woeth watching once although it runs a bit too long and the later scenes are a bit standard for a war movie, changing the tone of the film which is otherwise more character driven. Spoiler alert: Reed and Kerr meet each other on the boat ride home.

It's filled with great character actors including Jack Warden, Harry Bellaver and Claude Akins. Borgnine gives a great performance and George Reeves, of all people, has a small role. Reed, Kerr, and Sinatra earned their Oscars. Clift is very good (Oscar nominated) and Lancaster (also Oscar nominated) does well with a role that is essential to the plot but perhaps less interesting than the others.

FHTE is worth watching for some incredible performances, namely Clift and Kerr. Sinatra and Reed were way overrated in this movie.

[quote]Reed, Kerr, and Sinatra earned their Oscars.

The Academy thought Audrey Hepburn earned Kerr's Oscar...

R293 I’ve always found it hard to see Crawford in the Deborah Kerr role and always wondered if it was Joan Fontaine that people had meant but they got confused. It turns out it was Crawford. I really can’t see that at all.

Imagine Joan rolling around on the beach with Burt Lancaster!

It took a couple of years, but she got her hunk on the beach...

He was a most likely a bottom, why would his dick size matter?

What's he doing with that stick?

R300, it could've been Joan and Tyrone Power.

He had such nice lips. And everything else, really, but in that particular gif above, I'm drawn to how good his mouth looks........

It's a blade of grass

[quote]Zinnemann credited Clift with getting better performances from his castmates than would have happened otherwise. [/quote]

Reportedly, both Lancaster and Sinatra would stay on set while Clift did his scenes because they were interested in his acting style and how he put together a performance.

What's the story where Sinatra punched Clift out because he made a pass at the wrong person?

He didn't punch Monty. The two were close friends during the making of FHTE (Frank got close to him because he wanted to be a good actor and learn from him) but cut him out after Monty very blatantly flirted with a man at one of Sinatra's parties. He threw Monty out of the house and didn't speak to him after that, but he did show up at the funeral.

It seems Frank was tolerant of gays only if they were musically inclined?

Ironically he didn’t have a clift chin.

R309, Frank was only tolerant to anyone if they sucked up and knew their place.

R300, That could've been great, if only Joan wasn't so stubborn about her wardrobe the part would've been hers. Kerr looked like an asthmatic horse frolicking on the beach.

Kerr was perfect. Performance-wise. And she looked pretty, and hot. Joan Crawford (in middle age though no one knows exactly when she was born) was too old for the part, and looked like a freckled bobble-head, with caterpillar eyebrows. I can't imagine all the guys on the base, and especially Burt Lancaster, getting hot and bothered for her. It would have become a camp classic.

I love Crawford, but agree Kerr was a far better actress.

R313. Oh, please! I could still drive men wild with desire.

Wasn't Jeff a cross-dresser, according to Esther Williams' autobiography? Maybe he wanted to get into Joan's old Adrian frocks.

You guys got me watching From Here to Eternity right now. Its free on Pluto. Never saw. At one point Frank says to Monty, "Hey! You got any prejudices against women?"

OMG the beach scene is not at all cheesy like in the parodies. It's romantic, moving, well acted and is drawing me even more into the story. I got a little teary eyed.

R318, Lol, did we watch the same thing?! Maybe it wasn't as absurd as other movie love stories of that time but it was still in the realm of saccharine. That beach scene had my eyes rolling.

I think I just felt for Deborah Kerr's character. She was so unhappy and wanted to escape from the misery for which she was partly to blame. She was trapped. And on that beach for a few short screen minutes she was free. The future had hope. She didn't need to be throwing herself at every soldier that came her way. Burt Lancaster was going to save her. Alas at the end she could only save herself and not look to others. And Burt was content to get blow jobs the rest of his life from that toothless guy with which he bunked.

I love FHTE....my favorite scenes are Burt's character, Monty's and some other guy getting drunk together and singing the blues outside of the bar. Melanchonic male bonding. That and Monty's character playing "Taps" after Sinatra's character died

[319]Lol, did we watch the same thing?! Maybe it wasn't as absurd as other movie love stories of that time but it was still in the realm of saccharine. That beach scene had my eyes rolling.

I feel bad for you. It's an honest, emotionally tuthful, sexy scene. Guess you can't identify.

*Truthful. Though Burt Lancaster is toothful.

Now I'm going to see what else of Monty's is free on tv.

Try to see “The Heiress” if you haven’t already.

R322, you must be a frau lol.

"Queen Mary" indeed.

It's the sad, last days to see Monty in his sad, last years as Freud in John Huston's 1962 biopic on The Criterion Channel.

Available to stream until 1 Nov.

R327 He travelled on the "Queen Mary" to do publicity in England around 1949.

There a newsreel on Youtube of him at a premiere with Valerie Hobson in Bristol, I think.

Shame there's isn't much of Clift outside of his movie work, he rarely did interviews or tv programmes.

I saw him once on a tv show promoting raintree county. He came out of an entrance with Eva Marie Saint and he looked stoned or something. Can't remember what it was.

Do you watch The Criterion Channel on your computer or TV? I'd like to get it, but I'm not a streamer...yet. Tks.

R330 That trip on the 'Mary' have been to make that 1950 German film as well as the English publicity tour.

No one here mentions that 1950 German film movie called 'The Big Lift' which I don't think I've actually seen.

Or perhaps I'm confusing with the 1948 Austrian movie called 'The Search'?

R333, please see R258.

There MUST be dick pics out there…somewhere.

Here ya go

^^^ Nice try, but he was known as Princess Tiny Meat.

That. Ock is average, but not laughable.

[quote] he was known as Princess Tiny Meat Only to vacuous, gossiping queens he never met him.

R326 From Here To Eternity was one of the most popular movies of the 50s, It touched many people, I'm not a frau, you dick.

The Big Lift is a Hollywood film made in Germany, and it's been mentioned several times aleady.

I posted a great doc in this thread, part of it is about the trip on the Queen Mary with Kevin McCarthy and his wife, and how Monty hung out a porthole by one hand (and there's a photo of it by Kevin).

^^^iwouldliketoseethat.gif

"barely remembered"

An absurd, ridiculous and untrue statement.

I’m assuming he was an active bottom.

I was born in the wrong decade.

"[R318], Lol, did we watch the same thing?! Maybe it wasn't as absurd as other movie love stories of that time but it was still in the realm of saccharine. That beach scene had my eyes rolling.:

I can tell you what's absurd and saccharine, honey, and it ain't From Here To Eternity.

"Am I really missing a great film?:

It's a powerful film that still resonates over the decades: the individual against the system. Incredible writing performances, direction---do yourself a favor, see it and put the ignorant naysayers in this thread to shame.

I saw FHTE on TV when I was in high school, on the late show, it was a Saturday and I was watching this movie and near the end *SPOILER* Clift was shot. What was weird was that this made me cry. Not then, but right after the movie, as I was thinking about it. This was the first time a movie made me cry and one of the few times.

Thanks for that, R345. I think I will see it.

-…...missing a great film.

TY R345.

I never heard anywhere that Clift had a big cock. I don't think he was called Princess Tiny Meat for nothing.

R349. There have been many stories about his cock’s size and how he was (unjustifiably) ashamed of it.

This is the apotheosis of Datalounge.

Anonymous men giving their opinion on a penis they have never seen belonging to man they've never met.

I'd like to think Monty was a proto DLer, from anecdotes he seems like he would have grown into a bitchy old queen.

Monty did enjoy gossip and was prone to drama even though he rarely engaged in it himself. A friend of his said Monty and playwright Thornton Wilder used to gossip maliciously about everyone they knew.

Monty and Judy gossiping viciously about showbiz rivals must've been a riot.

R353 - Did Thorton and Monty have a romantic or sexual relationship? I recall reading that somewhere. Though Tennessee Williams talks a lot about how Thorton was practically asexual because he hated being gay so much.

R355, Clift and Thornton Wilder became very close three years after Monty performed in his 1942 play, The Skin Of Our Teeth. They would see each other quite frequently and dine together. Like Monty, Wilder also had a twin, which is one of the things that drew Monty close to Wilder. In Clift's biography it said "Wilder became Monty’s intellectual mentor, but ultimately their bond went beyond books and ideas and even twinship."

The same friend said “At times Wilder seemed almost enamored of Monty. “When you saw them together you got the feeling that Thornton had an actual crush on Monty. It was never expressed, of course, but he would literally feast his eyes on him.” And Monty, in turn, worshipped Wilder.

It seems that at some point between 52-53, their relationship was starting to wane. Monty's drinking and drug problem had taken over by then and Wilder felt that he had changed radically since he had started his analysis with that shady psychiatrist.

Monty finding relationships with older gay men wasn't anything out of the ordinary. When he was eighteen years old he met Broadway conductor, Lehman Engel, who taught him many greats things about music, theatre, ballet etc, and other gay artists like Hart Crane.

It's nice to know that the bonding ritual between elder gays and young gays was apparent even back then.

One of Montgomery Clift's demons was his homosexuality. He hated being gay. His deep emotional attachments were with women but for sex he craved men. Sex loathing because he was gay, a car accident that disfigured his face, drug and alcohol addiction, chronic pain and physical ailments....no wonder he died young. I think when some interviewer asked him to describe his life in one sentence he said "I've been knifed."

[quote] One of Montgomery Clift's demons was his homosexuality.

What were his others?

R358 According to Liz Taylor, contrary to popular belief Monty didn’t hate being gay at all.

Only his hairdresser knows for sure.

[quote] What were his others?

His relationship with his mother was another one. He hated her. During one argument he lamented "Ma, you are such a cunt, such a cunt!"

[quote] According to Liz Taylor, contrary to popular belief Monty didn’t hate being gay at all.

A lot she knew! She said Michael Jackson was "the least weird man I have ever known." Liz didn't know shit.

Liz and Monty were legitimately best friends when she was young and sane. She would know about him.

[quote] Liz and Monty were legitimately best friends when she was young and sane. She would know about him.

She didn't know everything about him. Just like she didn't know everything about her "dear friend" Michael Jackson.

R365 You seem like a Liz hater for no reason. You also claimed she "caused" his car accident by inviting him to a party, lol.

[quote] she "caused" his car accident by inviting him to a party, lol.

I blame Michael Wilding for failing to satisfy Liz's lust.

[quote] You also claimed she "caused" his car accident by inviting him to a party, lol.

She didn't "invite" him to the party. She nagged him into going to it. Big difference. I know you love her but facts are facts.

Haven't plowed through all the comments yet. To comment about him not being a great actor of as good as Brando or Dean. The only thing I can say is for me personally when I can't talk my eyes off an actor in a scene because I am completely immersed in his moment, something pretty great is going on.

Loved his work, just wish he could have gone on. He was brilliant, period. Lately, I am finding Dean & Brando don't hold up as well for me as they did earlier on.

AND we discussed the Murderess Niece of the man we never met hacking off the penis of her boyfriend.

A new DL high point!

Besides Monty Hall have there ever been or are there any other famous Montys?

Monte Markham

Monty Woolley

The Full Monty

Monte Rock III

Field Marshall Montgomery of WWII was called Monty.

This has been a good thread but the title sticks in my craw.

I approve this thread title.

I think it's great a thread about a long dead 50s movie star can still get nearly 400 replies on DL. Shows at least SOME of the original base hasn't left.

R360, but he did, that was one of the reasons why he was seeing a psychiatrist in the 50s. A lot of gay men were going through this battle, being gay wasn't accepted at all back then, it was likened to mental illness or child predation. Monty's parents were very hostile towards his homosexuality early on, later they became tolerant of it, but they were never supportive. Elizabeth Taylor is the one person who accepted Monty's homosexuality. Even Monty's psychiatrist, who was gay himself, encouraged Monty to straighten out.

Very few gay men were able to live comfortably and openly as gay men, and it took a lot of strength and courage to do so. With the gloom of widespread McCarthyism dominating the 50s and that only heightened pre-existing homophobic attitudes, it's hard to believe Monty was able to overcome all these barriers. He would have needed a strong will, and I don't believe he had one.

I think by the time the 60s rolled around Monty was likely more "relaxed" in his sexuality. He was willing to play a gay character in Reflections in a Golden Eye, that was not something he would have ever considered doing before, like how he turned down Hitchcock's Rope, out of fear it would grant exposure to his own homosexuality.

He didn't have the same "fuck you" defiant attitude as Marlon Brando did in regards to his sexual orientation.

[quote] Elizabeth Taylor is the one person who accepted Monty's homosexuality.

Except when she was pressuring him to have sex with her.

[quote] Elizabeth Taylor is the one person who accepted Monty's homosexuality.

No. He had other friends who didn't give a damn if he was gay. Kevin McCarthy and Nancy Walker were two of them.

[quote] He had other friends who didn't give a damn if he was gay.

He wasn't "gay" as the word had not yet been invented.

Monty was a man-lover or a homosexual.

R382, Monty had been playing mind games with Liz, he'd lead her on and then show up on set with a fella that he'd obviously been screwing. He behaved this way several times with her until she finally told him whatever it was she'd be there for him. She was still a teenager at the time and madly in love with him, and a little mixed up herself. Let's not crucify her for not being the perfect ally.

Monty Clift seemed like a complicated, messy person. Some people on this thread treat him like this innocent angel who was wronged all his life and never harmed anyone. He's like the male Marilyn Monroe or Britney Spears.

I suspect a childhood trauma no one else ever knew about. He killed himself trying to kill IT.

R383, Kevin denied ever knowing Monty was gay, during a audition he found out there had been a rumour going around that him and Monty were "shacking up together" he said he was stunned. Nancy Walker didn't meet Monty until 57-58.

R307, was Burt Lancaster intimidated by Monty? I read somewhere when they did their first scene together Burt was shaking.

R379 Not only that, but running concurrently are strong threads on James Dean, Sal Mineo and most surprisingly Tommy Kirk.

R383 R385 Liz apparently tried to seduce Monty during A Place in the Sun, yet in this interview she said she already knew he was a homosexual during the making of that film. whatisthetruth.gif

KEVIN SESSUMS: How about Montgomery Clift? Were you in love with him, in a way?

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: I loved him. But I knew from A Place in the Sun that he was gay—probably even more than he did. And I helped him with it, which is extraordinary because I was only about 16, and I didn't really know anything about it. I turned 17 during the making of that movie. I really didn't know then what being a homosexual was. But I just knew… well, I don't know how I knew.

[quote] Kevin denied ever knowing Monty was gay, during a audition he found out there had been a rumour going around that him and Monty were "shacking up together" he said he was stunned. Nancy Walker didn't meet Monty until 57-58.

I'm sure McCarthy was "stunned" at rumors he and Monty were lovers but I find it hard to believe he didn't know he was gay. How could he NOT know that? And what does it matter when Nancy Walker met him? She wasn't bothered in the least by his homosexuality.

Monty Zuma. As in revenge, r 371.

[quote] She was still a teenager at the time and madly in love with him, and a little mixed up herself. Let's not crucify her for not being the perfect ally.

Yes, she was smitten with Monty and wanted to marry him. She wrote him gushing love letters that said "I love you! I love you!" He would show them to his male lover. I guess he found them amusing.

So Elizabeth Taylor said about his homosexuality "And I helped him with it, which is extraordinary because I was only about 16, and I didn't really know anything about it?" She "helped him with it?" What the fuck does that mean? She helped him accept he was a homo? How did she do that? I think she's giving herself too much credit.

Taylor and her brother Howard with Clift.

[quote]r391 I turned 17 during the making of that movie. I really didn't know then what being a homosexual was. But I just knew… well, I don't know how I knew.

But, her dad was gay.

R394, Liz played matchmaker for Monty, she hooked him up with Roddy McDowall. Maybe that's what she meant by trying to help him. They were a good match for a while. Roddy was loyal and stayed close to Monty until the very end.

R389, In fact, it's said that Lancaster himself was initially intimidated when acting alongside Clift, going so far as to say that he “was afraid [Clift] was going to blow me right off the screen.”

Apparently, Clift found Lancaster loathsome, he told friend, Pat Collinge, over the phone what really thought of him during a unprovoked rant, "He gets top billing, he doesn’t deserve to!’ He'd yell. "He is a terrible actor. He thinks he’s a dynamo; he’s nothing but a big bag of wind, the most unctuous man I’ve ever met!"

Pat Collinge said one minute Monty would be discussing his part as Prewitt, then out of the blue would start ranting against Burt Lancaster, then drop the subject and go back to talking about Prewitt.

The only thing Burt had to say about Monty was that he is a great actor.

Lancaster was less of a mess than Monty.

[quote]I suspect a childhood trauma no one else ever knew about. He killed himself trying to kill IT.

Nobody will watch that biography I posted. lol

His mother was the illigitimate daughter of a prominent man. She tried for a good part of her life to be accepted by the family. She was adopted by a doctor (last name, Montgomery) and had a good upbringing. She went to Cornell (where she met Monty's dad, Bill).

Eventually in her constant effort to find a way in to her blood family, she was befriended by an aunt, who told her to take her kids abroad and eductate them and have them learn culture, continental manners, etc. Despite hard times when Bill struggled back in the USA to provide for them, Sunny took the three kids all over Europe, where they learned German and French (Monty was fluent in both), stayed at the best hotels, went to museums and cultural events. She dressed the three children as triplets even though Brooks was 6 years older.

Sunny went back to the aunt several times and the aunt kept saying the kids weren't yet ready to be accepted into the family. Take them back to Europe. It was clear the aunt was stalling and had no intention of ever presenting Sunny or the children to the family. Eventually she suggested Sunny and the kids live with her and keep her conpany in her old age. Sunny and she had it out, and Sunny told her off, cutting herself off from any hope of being recognized by the family. Everything she did for years was for nothing. Because of the Depression, she had had to cut down on her travels, and took the kids to Cape Cod and Florida. In Florida Monty did a part in a local play, and the director thought he showed talent.

Sunny then tuned all her energy to getting Monty on the stage, supposedly paying less attention to the other two children. The family was finally united in New York, where Monty began to get work as a child actor.

I don't think there needed to be any more trauma than this childhood to make him into a messed up adult. The kids were dragged around Europe for years on a wild goose chase, with no home life, away from their dad for months - whether they wanted to do it or not, at the service of their mother's obsession to be accepted by her family. Which came to nothing. Then Monty became a child/teen actor, so the rest of his childhood was spent working.

The photo is of the three children with their nurse.

Were he and sister-in-law Eleanor best buddies?

[quote] Nobody will watch that biography I posted.

Where was it, R401?

[quote] So Elizabeth Taylor said about his homosexuality "And I helped him with it, which is extraordinary because I was only about 16, and I didn't really know anything about it?" She "helped him with it?" What the fuck does that mean?

It means she procured for him

^ Apparently Sebastian in the Suddenly Last Summer movie WAS meant to resemble a pre crash Monty.

[quote] Suddenly Last Summer

I'd love to see a remake with all those flashback scenes with the young native men fleshed out with a gorgeous man playing Sebastian.

Who is this man?

Julian Ugarte Landa

That's Sebastian Venable

[quote]Were he and sister-in-law Eleanor best buddies?

Eleanor and Brooks Clift were married in Montgomery's brownstone in 1964. Brooks was more than 20 years older than her and it was his 4th marriage, so her family wasn't thrilled about the marriage, and some of his family weren't overjoyed about having Eleanor, a Newsweek secretary from Queens, as an in-law. Robert, their youngest son, remembered what his mother told him about her wedding:

"She had never finished college. He went to Harvard. And his family had ideas, and her family had ideas, and both families were against this wedding. And so, they’re getting married at Monty’s, and there’s some tension. You know my mother’s family, they take the train in from Queens. Anyway, they start the service, and they get to the point where the officiant asks, 'Is there any reason this marriage shouldn’t move forward?' And it’s very tense. And Monty grumbles from the audience, 'he smokes!' And everybody just loses it, and Monty sort of broke the tension for the day. He charmed Eleanor’s mother and gave her a little bit of wine, and she wasn’t a drinker. So she was in great spirits thereafter."

Eleanor and Brooks lived in New York until 1966, the year Montgomery died, when they moved to Atlanta. Eleanor remained a lifelong friend of Lorenzo, Clift's last lover, whom her three sons always considered an uncle. Robert was with Lorenzo when he died in 2018.

Eleanor and Brooks divorced in 1984. In all, Brooks had 5 marriages and 8 children, including a son with the actress Kim Stanley and a daughter (who was roughly the same age as Eleanor) who murdered her Brazilian lover in Boston in 1962. Brooks died in 1986, two years before his mother, Sunny, finally died at 99.

[quote]Where was it, [R401]?

R403 It was at R68

His twin sister - at the age of 94 - died 48 years after his death. I don't understand the second sentence of her obituary: "By coincidence, she was the twin of Montgomery Clift (Monty), who later became a famous movie actor."

R412 Would you understand it if "by coincidence" was left out of the senentce?

Yes, of course, R413. But I should've stated, instead, that it was - to me, at least - a novel way for referring to twins.

My thread inspired MG film festival continues right now with The Big Lift free on Tubi!!

Is it any good? It’s the only one of his I haven’t seen r415

That Ethel sounds like a real busy body.

I just started but interesting note at beginning. Everyone in the movie is active duty military but MC and some other guy. At one point Monty's character says to another guy, "I feel like we're getting married." It's got the feel of one of those John Ford WW II documentaries. Monty speaks some German. It sounds real. I guess from his travels in Europe as a kid.

Yeah it's already been posted he was fluent in German

Monty and Marlene conversed in German (but not with Rosemary, I presume).

By coincidence, Ethel also apparently buried her toothbrush with her dead twin.

R418: If you're speaking of From Here to Eternity, his character is a lifer in the Army, which is one of the ironies of his character.

R422, he was talking about "The Big Lift."

Besides Reflections in a Golden Eye (which I was reminded about because of the new Marlon Brando thread), I wonder what movies Monty could have done if he somehow mostly cleaned up and didn't die. I can see him in They Shoot Horses Don't They, or Network. Or maybe a David Lynch film - Dean Stockwell's part in Blue Velvet......

Monty bottomed? With his colitis, that must’ve been uncomfortable…

[quote] Power was too old for the Lancaster role and all wrong for a sergeant

Lancaster was a year older than Power…

R425 He was famously a masochist.......

Did they use real soldiers for From Here To Eternity, too? There was something not quite right about the "extras".

It was filmed on location and they had the cooperation of the army, so it's pretty likely they had active duty soldiers as extras. I know a number of people who were extras and even had small speaking parts in Vietnam war films made in Thailand. Not unusual and the Army didn't care whether they did or not.

"The Army offered Zinnemann officers who would serve as technical advisors, troops, and the use of Schofield Barracks in Hawaii as a location. A nation-wide search of Army surplus stores yielded pre-Pearl Harbor style Springfield rifles, canvas leggings, campaign hats and flat steel helmets. The extras, real soldiers, drilled to learn the use of the outdated equipment."

Burt was sex on a stick. Monty never smouldered. Ever.

I've seen both bios on Clift, the old one from the 80s and the recent one from his nephew. One of the beards, Judy Balaban, made an appearance in both and what she had to say about her and Monty's "relationship" is kinda cringe. She kept on insisting that they had a "connection" and were in love with each other and even slept together. How is she not getting it through, and by now at her old age, that he was using her as a beard? I mean, at the time Monty was being blackmailed with late night phone calls and threats of outing his sexuality, that sure would've destroyed his career, but he played a strategic move by bearding up with the socialite brat daughter of the head of Paramount Studios, and by doing so he became "untouchable". Gossip columnist like Hedda Hopper wouldn't have dared mess with Senior Balaban's crotchfruit.

Once there was enough publicity for the "romance", Monty dropped her like a hot potato and didn't even bother to say goodbye. She ended up with Merv Griffin.

So she was sapphic

R431, he could smoulder. See him with his shirt off digging that hole. With muscles so tight you'll be quivering tonight.

To each his own, R431. Lancaster for me was a giant loaf of Wonder Bread while Clift smouldered through Red River, A Place in the Sun, FHTE and Indiscretion of an American Wife.

R424, coincidentally I was wondering about that same thing and also came up with Network as a good fit. Also Death in Venice, The China Syndrome, The Verdict, Missing...

[quote] Death in Venice

I don't think so.

That role was so extravagant that I don't think any American could do it and keep our sympathy. Even Mr Bogarde was faintly risible. Monty did not have an interesting speaking voice which was another thing working against him.

His attempt at Freud was rather painful but I hear Huston was an absolute bitch towards Monty on the set.

FWIW, Judy Balaban married Tony Franciosa, Don Quine, and Jay Kanter (producer, author). Kanter was her rebound from Monty.

Absence of Malice, Mass Appeal, old gran daddy in Crimes of the Heart

Which actor would you have cast to play von Aschenbach, R436?

R439 The chosen actor has to be someone who's convincing as an intellectual artist. The subtext of the story is the struggle between Apollonian and Dionysian art. There's that flashback scene in the movie where Aschenbach is arguing with Alfred played by Mark Burns. We ignore that scene but the actor must live it.

I suggest John Hurt would have been convincing as von Aschenbach.

Whose stupid idea was it to have Monty shave his chest for FROM HERE TO ETERNITY?

On the other hand, his very furry face and beetle brows as FREUD covered up a lot of his smashed-up face.

[quote] Whose stupid idea was it to have Monty shave his chest for FROM HERE TO ETERNITY?

I don't know whose idea it was but it was a good idea. He was hairy as a monkey. I think he used electrolysis to get rid of some of it. He and Elizabeth Taylor had that same condition: "oddly hirsute bodies."

Speaking of chest hair, I wonder why Bill Holden had to shave his chest hair but co-star Geoffrey Horne was allowed to keep his fur. Was Holden's masculinity too overpowering, while Horne's not enough?

They had to shave Holden because they agree with Kate Hepburn and I that people over 40 should clean themselves up.

Dangling tendrils and wrinkles don't go together.

R432, I never heard that he was getting calls threatening to out him. Is that in the newer documentary?

In 'Making Montgomery Clift', Robert Clift said Deborah Kerr didn't even share a scene with Monty in 'From Here To Eternity', therefore how could she have possibly known anything about his sexuality. "He wanted to love women but he was attracted to men, and he crucified himself for it" is what Kerr is quoted as saying in Bosworth's biography, however there seems to be an error on Robert Clift's part because in the same bio Kerr describes the scene that she and Monty were in together:

“His concentration was positively violent. We had only one scene together. I walked behind him and Monty was supposed to say to Burt, “Who's that?’ He spent two days figuring out how to say, ‘Who’s that?’ ”.

And it's possible that Monty did confined in Kerr. Jack Larson said Monty was very excited about making the picture and wanted to get to the airport very early to make sure he’d be sitting next to Deborah Kerr on the plane. During the shooting in Hawaii they had dinner together every night and there are several photos that corroborate their interaction with each other.

I don't know why Robert Clift left that information out. He made it sound like Kerr knew nothing about Monty.

R445, no. It was mentioned in Patricia Bosworth's biography on Clift. Quote: "He kept having his phone number changed to prevent the increasing number of strange calls. Lately there had been threats of blackmail too—from people who imagined he was a homosexual and said they had seen him at the old Bickford's all-night gay cafeteria on Fifty-first Street and Lexington Avenue, gazing into the mirror waiting to be picked up."

I'm sure this has already been said, but I'll say it anyway: he wasn't a martyr. He drank hinself to death. And I say this as a fan.

Wasn’t he supposed to have hebephrenic schizophrenia?

Delusions about Hebrews?

R449 I did not mean he was literally a martyr - I explained it above it was partially a joke, partially serious because he died in such a stupid, senseless way, but it was a way so many mid-century gay men fell victim to. Pretty much every well known gay from that time had substance abuse problems.

Maybe you should have said gay patron saint, instead of martyr.

[quote] Pretty much every well known gay from that time had substance abuse problems.

I don't think Van Johnson, Farley Granger, George Cukor or Roddy McDowall did. I'm not sure though.

You're correct, R454. Technically, cum is not a substance that leads to abuse problems, strictly speaking. At least among sensible people.

After watching the nephew's documentary, he is respectful towards Bosworth but raises some good points about her judgment and whether - if not irresponsible - she sensationalized some things, and then there's Kevin McCarthy saying she made shit up. Again, her book came out over 40 years ago, when mores were quite different and identities and secrets had to be protected, so I think we may need to read the various quotes from it more skeptically.

[quote]At the beginning of his career, Paul Newman was often accused of imitating Brando by critics.

There's a book coming next fall based on recordings Newman made throughout his life.

"The recordings, completed about 10 years before his death, describe Newman’s early life, including his difficult relationship with his parents, as well as his troubles with drinking, his shortcomings as a husband in his first marriage, and his flaws as a parent. It is candid about his sorrow when his son, Scott, died of a drug and alcohol overdose at 28.

The book also delves into Newman’s insecurity in his younger years, exploring his jealousy of peers like James Dean and Marlon Brando when they were all working in Hollywood."

I watched the nephew's documentary again. This time round l noticed Monty's nurse/lover Lorenzo James was acting weird about Monty's sexuality. He kept claiming Monty was bisexual then told the nephew to just let it go and stop digging. Why did he make such a big deal out of answering a simple question? Seemed unnecessary.

Also looked like he didn't want to take any responsibility for the information he gave to LaGuardia for the Monty biography.

"To think my uncle slept with Elizabeth Taylor & Marilyn Monroe - the best beautiful women in the world'

What a fucking load of hogwash.

How can he be a gay martyr if he never came out as gay?

He had a pretty fucked up life due to illness, a car accident and substance abuse but none of that had anything to do with him being gay.

And he was't anyone's martyr. He died in a bathtub, probably from substance abuse.

About r420, isn't that Lucy and Desi with their backs to us?

R460, He never slept with Marilyn but he did sleep with Liz, however he wasn't able to "get it up".

R461, Given the era it wouldn't have been wise for him to come out, if anything it would have been career suicide for any gay actor to come out at that time. You had tabloid magazines like Confidential threatening to out big stars like Rock Hudson. I think Monty would've come out eventually, if he had lived through the 70s. He was headed in that direction anyway, in 1967 he was set to play the role of a repressed gay army officer in Reflections in a Golden Eye. He had turned down playing gay characters before, in fear that it would expose his own sexuality, but now it looked like he was ready to be exposed, unfortunately he died before he was able to fulfil the role.

I think Monty Clift and James Dean would have both came out in the 70s.

[quote] He died in a bathtub, probably from substance abuse.

No, he died in bed, of a heart attack brought on by "occlusive coronary artery disease", according to the autopsy report. He'd been in terrible health for years, in chronic pain. He didn't die of and OD or alcohol poisoning. His body just seemed to give out. He had terrible luck when it came to his health, just like his pal Elizabeth Taylor.

I could see Clift working with Warhol, Coppola, Scorsese or doing French New Wave movies. He liked challenging roles

R466 His nurse found him in the bathtub.. DEAD!

R466 Stop lying. His body didn't just give out. He was 45 years old! LOL

R467, Monty Clift had attended Andy Warhol's Factory parties. Filmmaker Jonas Mekas said, "Montgomery Clift stood there by himself, and nobody spoke to him, and he looked sort of very, very sad there." Apparently, Warhol enjoyed humiliating Monty Clift; he'd point towards him and then say to his other guests, "see that man, he USED to be Montgomery Clift".

R462, Yes. They were watching Tallulah perform at The Sands.

In the Bosworth book there 's a sentence where young Barbra Streisand cornered him at a party - I assume to ask about The Method.

[quote] His nurse found him in the bathtub.. DEAD!

His male nurse, Lorenzo "Larry" James, found his employer ,Montgomery Clift, naked IN BED, still wearing glasses, no longer breathing. You are plainly a dumbass.

I don’t think that he and Lorenzo were lovers…

He was too pathetic at that stage to have a lover, Lorenzo was a paid home health aide.

What did he do for his 101st birthday? What can you do at that age?

In the nephew's documentary it's implied that Lorenzo James was more than just his male nurse, I don't know if that's true or not. Lorenzo didn't know Monty until late 63/64 so how could he possibly know anything about his sex life. The only woman Monty "dated" in that time period was an obsessive German stan, a great big baroness lady who followed Monty all the way from Germany. Even she knew he was gay and wanted to give her young handsome brother to him as a "gift".

Even in the old home movies from the 1940s, Monty can be seen zeroing in on a black man at what might be Coney Island? and then pursuing him as the scene is cut. He liked black men on the dl.

From what I learned from DL> Monty, Farley and Brando all liked black dick. That's hot.

[quote] Were James Dean and Clift ever an item off record

Apparently they never met. Dean was an obsessive fan and stalked him and would try to call him so much. Monty changed his number. Then when Dean tragically died. Monty felt depressed and guilt over not reaching back to Dean. I imagine Monty would have been much nicer to Dean than Brando who was an asshole to Dean.

478 Girl please! ALL White men like BBC (Hell, all men PERIOD like it). The only ones who don't pursue it are either straight or don't feel confident in their abilities to get any! LOL

R473 You are a DUMBASS!

"James ran down to the back garden and climbed up a ladder to enter through the second-floor bedroom window. Inside, he found Clift dead: He was undressed, lying in his half-filled bathtub, with eyeglasses on and both fists clenched by his side."

"No evidence was found that suggested foul play or suicide. It is commonly believed that drug addiction was responsible for Clift's many health problems and his death."

YOU STUPID CUNT!

I'm sure Monty was able to fuck many men of color.

R484 More likely than not, they fucked HIM! 😁

In his last two movies, he looked like he had lost a lot of upper body mass. If he was in poor health in his 40s, he may have had "manorexia" "issues" on top of everything else.

His colitis also played havoc with his diet. It affected his nutrition.

R483, YOU ARE AN INSANE RETARD. In both the very good biographies of Clift by Patricia Bosworth and Robert LaGuardia it was reported that Clift was found dead in bed, wearing glasses. That's a fact. And saying something that is "commonly believed" doesn't mean there's any truth to it. Medical reports don't lie. He died of a heart attack, brought on by occlusive coronary artery disease, not an OD or alcohol poisoning. That too is a fact.

You seem very upset....because you think Clift died in a bathtub from drugs or alcohol? You're quite overwrought over THAT? A trip to the nearest mental health facility is definitely in order. Go to one, pronto. You're obviously one sick motherfucker.

These comments about black men reek of fetishization 🤢

At :52. That grin on his face when he saw that handsome black guy.

Libby Holman was mentioned upthread. I find it hard to believe anything sexual went on between Libby Holman and Monty, just the thought of it is stomach churning. Holman was physically repulsive, middle-aged, ugly and preyed on young men, she even went after her own nephew's roommates. I don't know how she bagged herself so many successful young rich studs that were way above her in every aspect. Asia Argento comes to mind, but without the looks.

There's a bizarre moment in Patricia Bosworth's Monty Clift biography where she stops talking about Monty and starts writing about the Holman/Zachary Smith Reynolds murder scandal, a whole chapter dedicated to just that. Like was she trying to squeeze two books into one? The Holman story should've been reduced to a footnote.

R488, YOU'RE A FUCKING FOOL!

Nothing you are alleging is backed up by anything. Where are these so called quotes from these self-proclaimed "good biographies?" Who are you? You're just a piece of shit talking out of an open asshole.

You're a dumbass that is upset because someone called you on your bullshit. You are no authority. Who are you to dispute anything. You weren't there so you don't know shit. So fuck all the way off and die trash!

I think somebody is mixing Clift up with that other gay martyr, Whitney Houston, who was found "dead to the tub."

494 NAH, Clift is no gay "martyr" but he was found in the tub.

Tub troll...

drowns in her own spewed blue vitriol.

R493 is obviously a retarded, insane troll. Screaming about Clift dying in a bathtub (which he didn't)...whew, what a retard. Needs to be in an asylum, that one.

Montgomery Clift died in bed. Everything I’ve ever read about him indicates as much, and I’ve read a lot about him. Every biography says Clift died in bed with his glasses on.

Such an odd thing about which to be unhinged.

R498 is such pathetic dumbass that he is still going on about this. He can't get over the fact that he was wrong! HAHAHAHA Get a life loser!

R500 = pathetic asshole troll

R501 You are a loser! Give it up! HAHAHAHAHA

R502 = loser troll again

Your mother is a loser too R503! HAHAHAHA

R490, that eskimo kiss he planted on Kevin McCarthy at the 2:30 mark, but Kevin really had no clue?

I mean how often do men go around giving other men eskimo kisses? Surely Kevin must've known....

Most times Kevin McCarthy looked like he's smelling the whole Keebler factory. I don't buy it.

Montgomery Clift and William Lemassena made a nice couple. Shame there isn't much on their relationship, or any of Clift's relationships, too much focus on beards. I hope there will be a movie on Monty and his relationships in the future.

Ah, Bill! My most friend.

It was fun to see Sydney Greenstreet in those films

He was ideal when he was young. Cute, sweet face and beautiful boy.

*body

Sweet face and skinny body.

Watched Splendor in the Grass. It's clear Montgomery Clift was an influence on Warren Beatty in this movie. Except he lacked the presence, humanity and sensuality that Monty had.

Was Monty's nurse/companion Lorenzo James transgender? I saw a picture of him with Monty's nephew, he was wearing women's clothing, I thought that was odd, but it explains why he didn't want to appear on camera for the documentary on Montgomery Clift.

I was never moved by his looks. He was like a Thunderbird puppet brought to life. Ronan Farrow is similar.

No doubt that Ronan would give his eyeteeth to look a fraction as good as Monty did at the peak of his beauty.

From some angles, there's a resemblance to Tom Cruise .

Great eyes but otherwise...

I think he looked his best in “a place in the sun”, “the search” and “the heiress”. I don’t find him as attractive in any of his other films.

He's not Rock Hudson or Cary Grant good looking, but he was certainly above average looking for the time period. Just like many in his era, he seems like a bottom secretly craving BBC. To his credit, I bet he was a good bottom!

[quote] He's not Rock Hudson or Cary Grant good looking

Yes, in his prime, he was better looking.

R522~ Strongly disagree. Rock Hudson and Cary Grant were exceptionally good looking men. Few could rival their looks. Monty certainly was not in their league.

Marlon and Monty.

To each his own, R523. That's not to say I might have had a different view upon seeing these men in the flesh. but I strongly prefer the celluloid image of Monty.

Because of his colitis, Monty had difficulty with keeping weight on and more than once he was seen looking gaunt and underfed. In some of his photos he looks bad because of this.

Monty was beautiful in his prime, he's the only famous "pretty" boy I've found hot, weirdly enough.

He had a different type of look than Rock Hudson and Cary Grant (the latter of whom who I personally never found that hot) - he was very vulnerable and pretty looking as opposed to a handsome, masculine leading man.

Monty looked his best in From Here To Eternity. His body was muscular and taut, it is evident in a scene where he's forced to dig a hole with sweat glistening off his abs.

Marlon and Monty are in a picture together?! Why, that must means they were having sex!

Monty was at his most gorgeous in The Heiress (1949), playing a heartless young gigolo opposite Olivia De Havilland.

A year later, he turned down the Joe Gillis role in Sunset Blvd, saying he was afraid it would typecast him. Too bad, because he was much more suited for the role than Bill Holden (who gave a great performance).

This is the best young portrait I've seen of him. His eyebrows aren't overwhelming his brow, like they would later. His hairline hadn't climbed back. And the hairstyle wasn't a pompadour.

R525 "Pretty" doesn't appeal to me (at least not that kinda pretty). I prefer a "classically" handsome man with a square jaw, prominent chin, and overly masculine features. I also like a guy with a little more heft to his body. Skinny twink bodies don't appeal to me. He's also got that sort of vacant look in his eye that kinda screams "insecurity." Not my thing. I like an overtly strong and masculine man with just a hint of vulnerability.

Monty is certainly a nice looking man, but I would not consider him classically handsome, or in the upper echelon of REALLY exceptional looking men. Like you said though, "to each his own."

Who could resist a surgically-rebuilt, manic depressive, closeted, micro-penised bottom with colitis?

Sounds delightful.

First of all, calling him a gay martyr is a bit over the top. Second, he was in no way the superior in acting to Brando.

re the photo at R524. This is actually the unedited photo which features Brando and Clift along with From Here To Eternity director Fred Zinnemann. Could Marlon and Monty have gotten together? Possibly, but the falsified photo isn't proof of anything.

Brando was just a walking, talking fucking machine with big blowjob lips, a juicy ass and bedroom eyes. His charisma, masculinity and give-no-fucks attitude sealed the deal. I think Paul Newman was a great balance of Monty's sensuality and boyishness and Brando's masculinity and toughness.

Just hanging out talking about all the chicks they've banged.

It's funny how people talk about Brandon's masculinity...

If rumors are true, James Dean probably fucked Brando, Newman and Mineo. Shame he didn't get to Monty.

Newman was an alcoholic. If he'd been fucking about with guys, we'd know about it.

R540, we'd know if Newman had been fucking around with guys because he was an alcoholic? I don't see the correlation. And how do you know he was an alcoholic?

Alcohol lowers inhibition. Take Kit Harrington and his Russian hooker as an example.

R533, He didn't have surgery to alter his face, his colitis was a minor issue and didn't stop him from living his life, and the gossip surrounding the size of his penis has never been proven to be true.

'People with ulcerative colitis may develop a range of symptoms, including: foul-smelling stool containing blood or mucus. diarrhea'.

Is that why he looked so pained in so many of his movies?

Marlon gave Monty a ride on his motorcycle...surely he would only offer that experience to someone he really liked.

A bumpy ride on a motorcycle must have hurt his intestines.

R542, people knew about Newman's bisexuality around any alleged alcoholism.

[quote]re the photo at [R524]. This is actually the unedited photo which features Brando and Clift along with From Here To Eternity director Fred Zinnemann. Could Marlon and Monty have gotten together? Possibly, but the falsified photo isn't proof of anything.

I doubt they ever got together, but there are home movies of them hanging out together so that photo is not some one-time thing, they knew each other fairly well.

A story in a biography of Clift has Brando visiting him to help him buck up after his face altering accident. Allegedly, Brando spent a lot of alone time with Monty but left in disgust because Monty refused his advice and encouraging words.

Monty’s face would have healed properly had he stayed away from the booze. He was too far gone mentally to listen to rational advice. His mother is an absolute cunt of the first order.

Brando was such a narcissist. I can't see him as someone you'd want to take advice from and I'm sure he wasn't as nice and encouraging as he thought he was.

Brando was a narcissist until he went insane in Japan in 1957.

A lot of armchair reporting from girls on this thread--Clift was a martyr (to what, exactly?), Newman was an alcoholic, Brando a narcissist...

What if they were ALL narcissists, Clift included?

OP=MARY!

Was there ever anything between Italian director Luchino Visconti and Monty? Did he turn down an opportunity to work with him as well?

Monty was in Italy for only four weeks. Luchino never did anything quickly.

Except maybe Monty, R557.

R556 Yes, he turned down Senso, and Fraley Granger was in it instead.

I meant Farley

He was great as the charming, manipulative sociopath in A Place in the Sun. Truly captivating. Because his character was initially introduced as the good guy protagonist who would be expected to do the right thing. But doesn't and is truly a greedy, cowardly and repulsive individual. Monty played that duplicitous nature well. Face of an angel, mind of a demon. Even in the end he shows more remorse for getting caught than the crime he committed. Also Elizabeth Taylor's role was unexpected, the supposed temptress who turned out to be morally upright. While Shelley Winters' role, the the poor demure girl turned out to be pushy, passive aggressive and assertive. Nobody in this film was sincere and that's what makes it interesting.

[quote] Why are some of you so angry about Hepburn being fixed up with women?

Maybe because there's no evidence anywhere which confirms that Hepburn sought out sex with female prostitutes? Maybe that's why.

Oops! Comment at R562 belongs in the Greta Garbo thread.

[quote]He was great as the charming, manipulative sociopath in A Place in the Sun. Truly captivating. Because his character was initially introduced as the good guy protagonist who would be expected to do the right thing. But doesn't and is truly a greedy, cowardly and repulsive individual

I'm glad you think he was great but he wasn't playing a sociopath, in my opinion. I doubt so many people would identify with his character if he were playing a sociopath. It was just a case of someone who got one girl pregnant by mistake and was in love with another girl, and who was ambitious and materialistic. It was supposed to be more of an indictment of capiltalist values.

[quote] It was supposed to be more of an indictment of capiltalist values.

That's the way Dreiser wrote it. Dreiser says we're all pawns in the maw of capitalism.

R564 He was going to murder his pregnant ex-gf when they went out on that boat ride. She accidentally fell to her death but he was clearly planning to push her into the water. The fact that she still died and he ran away from the scene and didn't inform the police says a lot. Because he wanted her out of the way to continue courting Liz's character. He wanted Liz not because he was in love but because she was a trophy (rich and pretty) and he strived to become part of the upper-class. She was simply an object to him. Even at the ending when he got caught, he admitted that he was planning to murder her ex-gf and he felt some remorse at the end because he knew that he was happy she died. Greed and envy turns you into a monster.

Boy, R566, what a drearily literal reading, and inaccurate. Clift's character both loved Taylor's character for her status as well as loving her, certainly for loving him. He felt very strong romantic and emotional attraction to her.

[quote] drearily literal

Theodore Dreiser is dreary.

R566 may be talking about the novel whereas you, R567, are talking about a movie.

Right, R568, of course the movie, because what is being analyzed is Clift's performance: "Monty played that duplicitous nature well. Face of an angel, mind of a demon." That's quite a ludicrously overwrought and inaccurate description at R561 of Clift's interpretation of that character. And no, Dreiser is not dreary.

Do you enjoy Dreiser, R569?

I was taken by An American Tragedy and Sister Carrie when I first read them, which is why I don't consider Dreiser dreary. Those are the only two books of Dreiser's that I've read.

Fair enough.

R530 Holden was PERFECT for SB. Monty would have made Joe too vulnerable, too much like a poor wee lad being taken advantage of by the cougar. Holden gave Joe his needed cynicism that made his and Norma's partnership a bit more equal.

You've stereotyped Clift, R573, by his later roles. I'd have rather seen Clift play Joe Gillis. He could do cynical and aggressive and would have been more believable as a struggling screenwriter. For me Holden is the weakest part of Sunset Blvd. Clift passed on the role because it struck too close to home.

I wanted Shelley to die in APINS. She was a frumpy loser.

She was a whiner. She was out of her league.

Let's face it--you wanted her dead. She was a soul-crushing clinging cunt.

[quote] clinging

There's nothing worse than clingers. I leave immediately at the first sign of boredom.

Someone tell the poster in the Garbo thread that Betty Comden and Adolph Green weren't married to each other, it's paywalled.

[quote] Adolph Green

Had too many teeth.

Monty, age progressed to 67 (starting at 5:02).

Anyone know why he isn't more remembered?

I have never understood why he is so forgotten.

What a shame...

Monty birthday bump. My favorite actor of the golden age.

Holden was perfect in Sunset Boulevard. With Swanson as Norma and Von Stroheim as Max, Clift would have made it three eccentrics. Holden had the regular-guy, down to earth quality to contrast with the silent film ethos. That's why it worked so well.