Montgomery Clift

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].

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 released.  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".  In ''The Search'' Monty finds a young boy, orphaned by WWII and and adopts him, albeit temporarily as the film ends by the boy being re-united with his mother, discovered alive, who had similarly thought her son dead.  Bosley Crowther reviewed ''The Search'' for the ''New York Times'' 24 Mar 1948 and about Monty' performance stated that he : "gets precisely the right combination of intensity and casualness into the 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 the way down, Monty lost control of his car, rolled it down a hill and smashed it into a telephone pole.  Years later, in a 1962 interview on the Hy Gardner show, Monty stated that he had briefly nodded off.  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!"

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.  Watch it here on YouTube [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTsJdG0JdoM&feature=related Part 1]. In all three of his films with Elizabeth Taylor, he played her love interest.  In 1960 he starred in the film ''Wild River'' as Chuck Glover, 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 and Clark's last movie). This film tells the story of the chance meeting of a recent divorcee, a horse rustler and a drifter.  Watch seven minutes of this film [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cT7ZO3dQJEI here on YouTube].  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.

In 1962 Monty starred as Sigmund Freud in the semi-autobiographical film ''Freud'', which recounts five years in the life of Freud.  That same year he appeared for his first television interview on the ''Hy Gardner Show''.  Watch it on Youtube (in five parts) [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY2jhfib1bo Part 1], [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orPBTzS3JzY Part 2], [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwql9VP4K-E Part 3].

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.

**[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iO-aGPJHaI Part 2] (5:44), covering years 1951-1954

**[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYbjWrgF7PQ Part 3] (9:57), covering years 1953-1958

**[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZlcrWL2MmI Part 4] (7:06), covering years 1961-1962

**[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSItDrUkjSE&feature=related Part 5] (5:57), covering years 1962-1966, notice at time 5:34 "Sunny Clift outlived both her sons, and died three months shy of her 100th birthday in 1988"

*''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

*[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]

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 "working on a dam" in Mississippi, and then a traveling bond salesman, possibly based in Chattanooga where he states he is living Jun 1917.  They reportedly had several hard years before Bill was nominated as vice-president of Omaha National Bank.

Ethel pregnant by the Summer of 1918 was told that at the end of pregnancy, she had to lie still to avoid problems.  She was a rather small woman, which might explain this unusual advice.  For the last six weeks of her pregnancy she lay in the hospital and the head of nursing Emma Wilka was so amazed that she decided to become the Clift's family nurse.  In Omaha, Ethel gave birth to the couple's eldest child William Brooks Clift Jr in February 1919.  A few newspaper articles, decades later, refer to Bill as Monty's "younger" brother.  But this is not true.

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]

*[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]