Montgomery Clift

'''Montgomery Clift''', actor (1920 Omaha, NE - 1966 New York City, NY)

This page writen and copyright 2008 by Will Johnson, Professional Genealogist.  This page is locked, if you'd like to comment on it, you may email me at [mailto:wjhonson@aol.com wjhonson@aol.com].

A note about names.  Montgomery's mother, always called "Sunny" by her relations, was adopted at birth.  Her father was a Blair, her mother an Anderson, her adoptive family were Foggs.  The curious circumstances of her birth (explained under her own entry below) explain the confusion in various sources regarding what to call her.  Her nick-name "Sunny" is supposed to be for her disposition and voice.  As for Montgomery's sister, Montgomery always called his twin "Sister".  She is called Ethel in her father's obituary.  Most mentions of her in biographies, probably following the lead of Patricia Bosworth call her Roberta.  But Bosworth only uses this name at her birth, later calling her Ethel as she was apparently later known.  In the Ships Lists extracted below, she is called Roberta, but in the Texas Birth Index for her children, she as mother, is called Ethel.  Her name *might* have been Roberta Ethel or Ethel Roberta, I'm just not yet sure.  Their brother was named William Brooks Montgomery, Jr but he is most often simply called Brooks.

Montgomery and his two siblings were educated at home by his mother and private tutors.  Sunny, reportedly told, at the age of 18, that she had aristocratic bloodlines, decided to raise and educate her children in a peculiar fashion.  They had private tutors and a live-in nurse.  Sunny was reportedly told that her own mother, who never corresponded with her, had died in 1925, so she re-doubled her efforts to contact her family.  She made contact with her aunt Sophie who told her that she had to take her children to Europe to live for a while.  They spent quite a lot of time in Europe as Sunny was told that this was the way "throughbred" children were raised, as she called them.  She tried to instill the idea in her children that they were of-a-higher-class and must not mix with the common people.  She would often tell Monty that a certain friend was common, not of his class, of no background.  Several people having met Montgomery and the family during this period, came away with the impression that he was quite a snob, as was his mother.

His article at the Encyclopedia Britannica Online states : "American motion-picture actor noted for the emotional depth and sense of vulnerability he brought to his roles. Along with Marlon Brando and James Dean, he helped delineate a new paradigm for American cinematic heroes."

===First Films===

His first film work actually started shooting in 1946.  This was ''Red River'' with John Wayne, but due to a delay in the release, this film became his second film appearance.  His first being ''The Search'', playing American G.I. Ralph Stevenson in just-post-WWII Germany, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award in the category "Best Actor in a Leading Role".  Red River, finally released later that same year, "... is considered by many to be one of the best westerns ever made", opines his EB entry.  He plays a sensitive cowboy who challenges his adoptive father the rough, hardened, rancher John Wayne.

Monty starred as Morris Townsend the possibly-scheming suitor, opposite the heiress Olivia de Havilland in 1949's ''The Heiress''.  In 1950 he, as Danny MacCullough starred in the film ''The Big Lift'', about two Air Force sergeants who fall in love with two women in Berlin during the Berlin Air Life.

He appeared opposite [[Elizabeth Taylor]] and [[Shelley Winters]] in 1951's ''A Place in the Sun''.  Based on a true story, in the film Shelley Winters is his pregnant working-class girlfriend, when he meets the glamourous socialite Elizabeth Taylor and falls for her.  Shelley is disposed of by a "tragic accident" when the two of them are out together and she falls overboard and drowns.  He is later convicted of her murder. (Read a bit about the true story [http://www.steamthing.com/2006/04/index.html here], and [http://www.courts.state.ny.us/history/gillette.htm even more here].) For his work in A Place in the Sun, Monty was again nominated for "Best Actor in a Leading Role".

Monty later appeared opposite Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr, in arguably his most memorable role in 1953's ''From Here to Eternity'' as Private Robert E Lee Prewitt, and for this work, he was again nominated for "Best Actor in a Leading Role". Prewitt is a complex and tormented soldier who endures ridicule and harassment to stay true to his moral principles. He refuses to join the boxing team, because he had once blinded a man with whom he was boxing. When his friend played by Dean Martin is beaten to death by an officer played by Ernest Borgnine, Prewitt hunts the officer down and kills him in an alley. Prewitt goes AWOL, but then is shot by a sentry when he attempts to return to camp.

His work in these last two films, is considered by some to be the peak of his career, although he continued working until his 1966 death, which subsequently has been called the "longest suicide in Hollywood history."

Also in 1953, he starred in Alfred Hitchcock's ''I Confess'', about a Catholic priest who won't break the sanctity of the confessional even if it means risking his own life. And he also that year starred in the rather-bad film ''Terminal Station'' also called ''Indiscretion of an American Wife'', opposite Jennifer Jones the then-wife of producer David O. Selznick.  The film is about an Italian man who falls in love with an American woman.

In 1956, Monty was working opposite [[Elizabeth Taylor]] and [[Eva Marie Saint]], the three stars of the film ''Raintree County'', which would be released late the next year on 20 Dec 1957.  In this film he plays John Wickliff Shawnessy, a man who drifts away from his high school sweetheart Nell Gaither, played by Eva Marie Saint and enters into a passionate, but loveless, marriage with Susanna Drake (Elizabeth Taylor) a wealthy New Orleans belle.  He later discovers that Susanna's mother died in a lunatic asylum and that she has inherited the family curse.  He leaves home to fight in the Civil War, and reflects on his life.

On 12 May 1956 during the filming Montgomery had a serious car accident which permanently damaged his looks.  He had been at a party thrown by Elizabeth Taylor and her second husband Michael Wilding, at their home in the hills of Coldwater Canyon in Beverly Hills.  Also at the party was [[Rock Hudson]] and his wife [[Phyllis Gates]] (who had been married the past November), and Monty's close friend, fellow-actor Kevin McCarthy.  Upon leaving, Monty in his car, ask Kevin McCarthy to drive in front of him down the hill as Monty was unsure of his ability to negotiate the twisting curves without guidance.  His parting words to the group were: "Kevin has to help me down that mountain or I'll drive around in circles all night."

For some reason, on the way down, Monty lost control of his car, rolled it down a hill and smashed it into a telephone pole.  Kevin McCarthy, noticing Monty's headlights no longer behind him, went back and found the car down the hill. He went down to it and at first couldn't see where Monty was because he was down on the floor, and it was very dark.  His face was left "a pulpy mess", evidently from being crushed by the steering wheel.  Kevin raced back up to Elizabeth and Michael's house: "Monty's been in an accident! I think he's dead!"

McCarthy went back up to Elizabeth's and they called a doctor and an ambulance.  Elizabeth is reported to have run down the hill, climbed over the back seat (as the front doors wouldn't open) and cradled his head in her hands until he was taken to the hospital.  She rode in the back of the ambulance, and Phyllis Gates in the front.  "His nose was broken, his jaw shattered, his cheeks severely lacerated, and his upper lip split completely in half." (Bosworth, p 2)

The doctors did their best to reconstruct his features as they were.  It took several weeks for him to recover, but he insisted on finishing the movie.  Watching the film today, you can notice the odd changes in his appearance in certain scenes that were spliced together.  The left-side of his face was virtually paralyzed by the accident, his face appears puffy, and his upper lip and nose have changed.  He continued to work, but his appeal had now changed. With no longer the same type of sex appeal he once had, his drinking and drug use became, if possible, more pronounced.

He appeared opposite Marlon Brando in 1958's ''The Young Lions'', as Jewish-American soldier Noah Ackerman, training to fight in WWII. Monty also that year starred as journalist turned advice-columnist Adam White in 1958's ''Lonelyhearts''.  He next starred as Dr. Cukrowicz in 1959's ''Suddenly Last Summer'' opposite [[Elizabeth Taylor]] and [[Katherine Hepburn]].  Katherine Hepburn wants her niece Elizabeth Taylor, who has gone insane, lobotimized by the doctor, to prevent her from spilling the secret of how Katherine's son actually died.  In all three of his films with Elizabeth Taylor, he played her love interest.  In 1960 he starred as Chuck Glover in the film ''Wild River'', a field administrator for the TVA who is overseeing the building of a dam on the Tennessee River.

He starred in 1961's ''The Misfits'' with Clark Gable and [[Marilyn Monroe]] (which was her last movie). This film tells the story of the chance meeting of a recent divorcee, a horse rustler and a drifter.  Also that same year he appeared in ''Judgement at Nuremburg'', the story of the 1948 trial of four Nazi-era judges, several years after the war has ended, for their part in sterilization and cleansing policies.  Monty played the part of Rudolph Petersen, a mentally-handicapped man for which again he received an Academy Award nomination in the category "Best Actor in a Supporting Role".  

Despite four nominations, Montgomery Clift never received an Academy Award.  Toward the later part of his life, he became close friends with actress [[Nancy Walker]], best known today as the mother on the TV-series ''Rhoda'' (starring Valerie Harper), and also as TV spokesperson for Bounty paper-towels.

In 1962 Monty starred as Sigmund Freud in the semi-autobiographical film ''Freud''.  His last film was the 1966 ''The Defector'' in which he played James Bower, an American physicist recruited by the CIA.  Although he was set to star opposite Elizabeth Taylor in ''Reflections in a Golden Eye'', shooting had not commenced at his death, and his part was subsequently played by Marlon Brando.

Montgomery, while growing, was very close to his twin Ethel, but she married lawyer Robert Campbell McGinnis (1918-95), moving first to Dallas County where she had two children: Mary Blair McGinnis 1946, and Edward Campbell McGinnis 1948.  And then moving to Austin, Travis County where she had her last three: John Montgomery McGinnis 1949, Michael James McGinnis 1953, and Robert Clift McGinnis 1952.

He was buried at Quaker Cemetery in Brooklyn, Kings County, New York. Montgomery Clift has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6104 Hollywood Blvd.</td><td>http://s3.amazonaws.com/findagrave/photos/2001/222/cliftmontgomery.jpg</td></tr></table>

*''Montgomery Clift : A Biography'', by Patricia Bosworth; Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich; New York (1978), 397 pages

*[http://books.google.com/books?id=ibv9mfwrMbIC&dq=lover+%22montgomery+clift%22&pg=PP1&ots=wQvITyjlfD&source=citation&sig=h5MJnqqmFP9gHMgdJEZgvY0Zm7A&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=12&ct=result ''Montgomery Clift: A Biography''], by Michelangelo Capua

*"Montgomery Clift: Beautiful Loser", by Barney Hoskyns

William Brooks "Bill" Clift was born 18 Dec 1886 in Chattanooga, Hamilton County, [[Tennessee]], the son of [[#Moses Haney Clift|Moses Haney Clift]] by his second wife [[#Florence Virginia Parrot|Florence Virginia "Flo" Parrot]].  Bill was the second-youngest child of his father's children.  The youngest sibling was named Florence after their mother.  Bill went to Cornell University, New Jersey in 1908 and served four years as a captain in the infantry while going to college.  In 1910 while they were both at Cornell he met [[#Ethel Blair|Ethel "Sunny" Blair]].  He graduated in 1912 with a degree in engineering, while she stayed on to finish her own degree.  They kept in touch by letters and became engaged during her senior year at Cornell.  Sunny met his family that year, Bill's father had died in 1911.  Even though Bill's mother Flo disapproved of her, Sunny and Bill were married in October 1914, and lived firstly in Saltillo, [[Mississippi]] where Bill had a job building dams.  Sunny encouraged Bill to leave engineering and become a banker. By 1917 he had become a bond salesman for National City Company of Chicago, [[Illinois]], and in June of that year, on his WW1 Draft Registration Card, he lists his residence as Nashville, Tennessee.  He had blue eyes, dark brown hair, was of medium height and slender.

By 1919, they had moved to Omaha, [[Nebraska]] where their first child William Brooks Clift Jr was born 4 Feb 1919 and where William was nominated for the vice-presidency of the Omaha National Bank.  Eighteen months later, their twins Montgomery and Roberta were also born there in October 1920.  After enduring several hard-scrabble years, in Omaha they lived in a three-story house with stained-glass windows, a maid and a nurse.  When Ethel was pregnant with Brooks, she had to lie immobile for three weeks to save the baby at the end of her pregnancy.  Emma Wilke, then head of nursing, admiring Ethel's strength, then became the private nurse to the Clift family and stayed with the family until Brooks went off to college.  About 1921 or 1922, Flo wrote saying she wanted to meet her grandchildren.  The meeting did not go well, which Bosworth seems to put down to Sunny's aggressive attitude but possibly as well her still-unresolved anger over her mother-in-law's treatment of her.  Flo never saw her grandchildren again.

In 1924, Bill "obtained a more lucrative position as sales manager of Ames Emerich Investment Company" in Chicago.  The family moved to a large house in Highland Park and Bill began making a substanial amount of money.  During this period Sunny's restless nature kept her and the children on the move, traveling to New England, Bermuda, Europe and back to the United States.  Since Bill's occupation kept him traveling to Manhattan often, to the New York Stock Exchange, they also took a house in Yorktown Heights, New York.  In 1926 and 1927, Ethel on her Ships Passenger Lists entries, lists her own residence as Yorktown Heights.

The Great Depression now hit the Clift family. Their investments worth nothing, their antiques were auctioned off and they moved from their great house in Highland Park, to a small apartment on West Ninth Street in the Village in New York City.  Sunny took jobs, as a secretary and as a cleaning lady to make ends meet.  At this point, Bill became an insurance-policy salesman.

Meanwhile, Sunny's restless foot, made her take the children, alongwith their now-tutor Walter Hayward and go rent a house in Sarasota, Florida for the winter of 1932.  Hayward, knew a man who needed a 12-year-old boy for a part in a local production, and so in March 1933, in Sarasota, Monty made his stage debut.

 

Upon their return, Sunny took Monty around to agents and auditions on Broadway which started his stage career.  At some point Bill became a stockbroker and the family lived on Wall Street itself for a short time.

*[http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv=1&db=1900usfedcen%2c&rank=0&=%2c%2c%2c%2c%2c%2c%2c%2c%2c%2c%2c%2c%2c%2c%2c%2c%2c%2c%2c&gsfn=Moses&gsln=Clift&sx=&gs1co=1%2cAll+Countries&gs1pl=1%2c+&year=&yearend=&sbo=0&sbor=&ufr=0&wp=4%3b_80000002%3b_80000003&srchb=r&prox=1&ti=0&ti.si=0&gss=angs-d&pcat=35&fh=3&recid=65299067&recoff=1+3 1900 Census of Chattanooga Ward 6, Hamilton County, Tennessee]

A remarkable story is related by Patricia Bosworth in her biography of Montgomery Clift about his mother's birth.  According to her report, she was told that Ethel "Sunny" had been born from the union of Woodbury "Woody" Blair and Maria "Bobbie" Anderson.  Maria had formed an attachment to Woodbury, but Maria's mother Elizabeth disapproved of the relationship.  Maria and Woodbury continued meeting without her mother's approval and eventually married secretly.  When her mother learned about the marriage, she either had it annuled, or forced Maria to do so.  She then kept Maria a virtual prisoner, sometimes guarded by her sister Sophie.

Maria however had already became pregnant.  When it came time for the child's birth, they moved in the Summer of 1888 to Philadelphia, [[Pennsylvania]] where she gave birth on 29 Sep 1888.  The birth certificate, according to Patricia Bosworth, records her parents as "Sophie and Frank Adams".  Her mother forced Maria to agree to give the child up for adoption.  Sophia Anderson, Maria's sister is reported to have told Sunny decades later, that Woodbury Blair was never told of his wife's pregnancy or the birth of their child.  The doctor who delivered the child, Edward E Montgomery, kept her for a year, and finally she was adopted by the Charles Fogg family of Germantown.  In 1895 Charles Fogg is listed as a machinist, age 48, while his wife Elizabeth is age 40.  Evidently they had no children of their body.

When Sunny was 18, she went to Cornell on a scholarship.  It was then that Dr. Montgomery told her this story of her birth.  The Blair family never accepted this story, at least they had not by the time of Patrica's book in 1978, calling it "hogwash" according to her report.  The Anderson family did accept the story, at least some of them.

Sunny never met her mother, although she apparently wrote letters that were never answered. Recent research indicates that her mother Maria lived until 1925, her father until 1933, while Sunny's grandmother Elizabeth had died in 1905.  This leaves on the table, the odd question of why her mother and father, who outlived the supposed "evil grandmother" by 20 years, did not contact Sunny.  Something about the story passed down, doesn't quite ring true.  If Maria was being "held prisoner" this certainly ended by 1905.

Ethel married in Oct 1914 to [[#William Brooks Clift|William Brooks Clift]] who she had met while both were at Cornell University in New Jersey.  The family apparently traveled to various places as Bill was firstly an engineer and then a traveling bond salesman.  They reportedly had several hard years before he was nominated as vice-president of Omaha National Bank.  By 1919 they were living in Omaha, Nebraska and now well-off with a three-story house with stained glass, a private maid and nurse Emma Wilke.  It was here that their eldest son William Brooks Clift Jr was born in Feb of that year, and toward the end of the following year Ethel had twins Montgomery and Roberta.

When Montgomery Clift died in 1966, his mother Ethel was then living in New York City, while her daughter Roberta, then married to Robert C McGinnis was living in Austin, Texas.  Ethel died in 1988 in Austin, Travis County, [[Texas]], probably living with or near her daughter.

*[http://content.ancestry.com/iexec/?htx=View&r=an&dbid=7602&iid=TNT623_1575-0051&fn=Moses+H&ln=Clift&st=r&ssrc=&pid=60473616 1900 Census of Chattanooga Ward 6, Hamilton County, Tennessee]

On 28 Jun 1883, in Hamilton County, Tennessee she married, as his second wife, [[#Moses Haney Clift|Moses Haney Clift]] (1836-1911), a widower with three young children already.  Together they had an additional three children, the middle child of these three being [[#William Brooks Clift|William Brooks Clift]].

*[http://content.ancestry.com/iexec/?htx=View&r=an&dbid=7602&iid=TNT623_1575-0051&fn=Moses+H&ln=Clift&st=r&ssrc=&pid=60473616 1900 Census of Chattanooga Ward 6, Hamilton County, Tennessee]

<blockquote>By this union, Maria became pregnant.  Her mother Eliza moved the family to Philadelphia, Maria was kept in confinement by her mother until the child's birth.  Then a doctor, who was an old family friend oversaw the birth and was given the child to adopt out.  As the story is related, Woodbury never knew this child existed.</blockquote>

Robert Anderson was born 14 Jun 1805 near Louisville, Kentucky, at "Soldier's Retreat", the home of his father's Col. Richard Clough Anderson and his second wife Sarah Marshall. (see [http://books.google.com/books?id=tfMSAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA49&dq=%22robert+anderson%22+clough&as_brr=3])  He graduated from the United States Military Academy at Westpoint, New York in 1825.  He received a commission as a brevet second lieutenant in the 2nd U.S. Artillery.  He served as a colonel in the Black Hawk War of 1832, and as a first lieutenant in the Second Seminole War in 1833, becoming an assistant adjutant general.  In 1839 his book ''Instruction for Field Artillery, Horse and Foot'' was published.  He was wounded in the Mexican-American War for which he received a brevet promotion to major.  He received a permanent promotion to major in 1857.

Even though he was a native Kentuckian and commanding officer at Fort Sumter, Charleston, South Carolina he remained loyal to the Union.  When South Carolina voted to secede, he refused to surrender his fort.  He held out for four months, finally surrendering on 14 April 1861.  This battle began the Civil War.  "Colonel Robert Anderson, the Union commander of Fort Sumter, whose brilliant and heroic defense of that Charleston fort in 1861 (he refused to surrender to Jefferson Davis and evacuated only after four months of intensive fighting) marked the beginning of the Civil War." (Bosworth, p. 9)  Anderson's actions at Fort Sumter made him an immediate national hero.  He was promotion to brigadier general.  He retired from the Army on 27 Oct 1863.

*[http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=Anderson&GScty=105149&GRid=15867538& Her picture and her tombstone picture]