Born October 17: Montgomery Clift

Montgomery Clift's life was defined by two crashes. After a charmed childhood of long vacations in Europe and the Caribbean, his financier father lost nearly everything in the stock market crash of 1929. The family moved to a modest house in Sarasota, and there Clift discovered acting. By the time he was thirteen he was on Broadway and by the time he was seventeen he was a star on stage. Hollywood wooed him for years and he finally agreed to make his film debut in Howard Hawks' Red River opposite John Wayne, when he was twenty-eight. His second movie, The Search, earned him his first Oscar nomination. He starred with Olivia de Haviland in The Heiress in 1949, the year he was arrested for gay soliciting near Times Square. Clift was nominated for another Oscar for his scorching pairing with Elizabeth Taylor in A Place in the Sun, and nominated yet again two years later for From Here to Eternity, the same year when he starred in Hitchcock's I Confess. He turned down Hitchcock's Rope, about a gay couple who kill a boy, and also turned down the starring roles in East of Eden and Sunset Boulevard. While filming another movie with his best friend Elizabeth Taylor, Clift drove into a telephone pole and nearly died, eight months after James Dean was killed in a similar crash. Much has been made of Clift's downward spiral after the crash, often called "the longest suicide in Hollywood," but he starred in eight movies before the accident and eight movies after. His fourth and final Oscar nomination came for his seven-minute role in Judgment at Nuremberg. Addicted to alcohol and pain pills, he died of a heart attack at forty-five, bitter and nearly unemployable. Yes, he is the inspiration of R.E.M.'s song "Monty Got a Raw Deal." Maybe Roddy McDowall got a raw deal too: Clift's biographer Patricia Bosworth says Roddy attempted suicide after Monty ended their affair.

Comments

[Steve N]

Stephen, if you're going to mention R.E.M.'s "Monty. . . ," don't forget the Clash's "The Right Profile" from London Calling. It's all about him, too, and searingly unforgettable.