Biography of Robert La Guardia.- Chapter one / Biografía de Robert LaGuadia.- capítulo 1

Images

The public remembers him as a splendid screen presence, glamorous and vulnerable. He floats by on that giant sceen, the image of the intensity of youth, in its most beautiful guise. He was an overnight sensation. Men and women loved him for the promise offered by his unthreatening masculine grace and looks. Bobby-soxers screeched and pounded the floors when his magnificent, sensitive face loomed in darkened movie theaters. Fan clubs popped up all over the country. Hollywood moguls found themselves forced to accede to his demands, their rigid control over actors shattered. He was a total enigma: a polite, well-brought-up young man who achieved great power in Hollywood passively, without deviousness.

But for those people who saw Monty, the real Monty, close up -who lived with him and ached with him- the images are very different. Like a series of takes arriving at the editing laboratory, these memories of an older Monty flicker, out of sequence, with haunting power: Monty walking against the wintry Manhattan wind, his shoulder and hunched body leaning heavily against a black man, his male nurse. Collapsing over and over, ina state of drugged drunkenness, on the floor of a Fire Island summer house, as the homosexual boys and men, fatigued with picking him up, let him lie, and walk over him as if he were a piece of inanimate junk. Waking up in a semi-coma from drugs and liquor ina bedroom of his sepulchral townhouse on Sixty-first Street; being picked up bodily by his nurse an put under a cold shower, in order to face another dose of the life which drove him this state. His hands and body sometimes shake with tetany, because of a rare hormonal disease. His legs cannot hold him steadily -the drinking has brought on phlebitis. A thyroid condition has made him pop-eyed. Cataracts cause him to wear bottle-cap glasses. An automobile accident and too many pills have ruined his looks, made the scary, and a plastic surgeon with a criminal background begins to make them worse. He has been blackballed from themotion picture business. He sits in his bedroom, vacantly watching television, tears drenching his cheeks. He has destroyed his sexual life. He will not eat. He makes tearful, desperate calls, but his best friends have left him. He shoots Demerol into his arms to anesthetize himself to the pian of his existence. And he drinks... and he drinks.

At the age of forty-five, his heart stops.

The personal story, with its riveting horrors, seems locked in combat with his unique professional achievement. Montgomery Clift was, and still is, one of the more important influences on contemporary picture acting. Few of today's younger generation of moviegoers realize, when they sit back in awe at the intensity and truth of an Al Pacino or Robert De Niro or Dustin Hoffman or Jack Nicholson, that these actors' roots can be traced back, in large part, to the strivings of Monty Clift. Many people, when confronted with these so-called "rebel" actors, tend to think "Method" or "Actors Studio", or credit an actor by the name of Marlon Brando with having started it all, but that is a misconception.

The facts speak for themselves. Monty had no predecessor for his screen presence. He did not use the Method, and it was Brando and James Dean and the rest who followed and often built upon Monty's achievement.




To be continued...

Biography of Robert La Guardia / Biografía de Robert LaGuadia

Voy a transcribir la biografía de Robert LaGuardia. A diferencia de la de Patricia Bosworth (de la que extraigo varios pasajes o viviencias unificadas), seguiré el orden del libro. La edición la tengo en inglés porque como se sabe, no se ha traducido al español. Desconozco si llegó a Hispanoamérica pero aquí a España no.

Para darla a conocer a aquellas personas que no la han leído, voy a hacer el esfuerzo de traducirla. Primero lo haré como ejercicio de práctica y luego acudiré a Tradukka. La traducción tendrá errores sin duda, pero al menos podremos leerla y disfrutarla.

Por último, señalar que consta de 10 capítulos que por su extensión iré dividiendo.

Biography of Montgomery Clift by Robert LaGuardia: A note to the reader

The first biography of Montgomery Clift could not have been written without the elaborate co-operation of many people, who granted, in all, hundreds of hours in interview time. They helped make Monty, both the man and artist, truly come alive. To each one of the individuals who contributed their knowledge and time, I offer my heartfelt thanks.

In particular, I wish to thank the following group of Monty Clift's confidants for giving

Monty. A Biography of Montgomery Clift. By Robert LaGuardia

(datos de la portada)

(English text)
Monty. A biography of Montgomery Clift. The sensational nationwide bestseller!

(datos de la contraportada)
Backpage:
"Fascinating, often astounding... Monty Will be read, talkd about, passedaound". Rex Reed, New York Daily News.

Millions adored him. Women -and men- couldn't resist him. Brando and Dean emulated him. Elizabeth Taylor was mad about him. Hollywood moguls feared him. Marilyn Monroe befriended him. In the end, drugs, alcohol, and his own conflicting sexual desires consumed him.

Here, for the first time, is the definitive, emotionally charged biography of a brilliant American actor. Here is Montgomry Clift, the haunted man behind the boyish fire that ignited the screen.

"Graphic, harrowing... Exceedingly candid... Compulsive reading." The New York Times.

"A book as hard to put down as the life was to embrace." Boston Globe.

Selected by 2 Major Book Clubs. With 60 photos, many never before published and a complete filmography.

(datos del interior)
"Brands on the reader's mind an image that is hard to shake off" Pubblishers Weekly.

Monty. Classically handsome, extraordinarily gifted-- and dedicated to hus own destruction. From hus smashing screen successes: The Search, From here to eternity, The Misfits, to his man-to-man showdown with John Wayne in Red River, through the behund-the-scenes clashes with directing giants Alfred Hitchcock and John Huston, to his intense relationship with Liz Taylor, begun on the set of A place in the sun, and finally, through his slow drowning ina river of vodka and pills-- MONTY captures the truth of a tragic life.

"The entire field of film biography takes a major step forward with the publication of this superb book" Cinema Booklist.

"A detailed, disturbing portrait of a tortured, gifted, self-destroyer" Chicago Daily News.

"Amazing... remarkably accurate" Truman Capote.

Main Selection of the movie book club.

Biografías

* Monty. A biography of Montgomery Clift.- ROBERT LAGUARDIA (1977). Arbor House. / New York: D.I. Fine, c1988

* Montgomery Clift.- PATRICIA BOSWORTH (1978)

(imagen de la primera edición)

* Edición española: Ultramar Editores, Col. Mitos -M6- (1989)DESCATALOGADO

* The films of Montgomery Clift.- JUDITH M. KASS; foreword by Brooks Clift. Secaucus, N.J.: CItadel Press, 1976.

* Edición española: Odín Ediciones (1993)

(portadas edición inglesa y española):














* Montgomery Clift. A biography.- MICHELANGELO CAPUA

* Monty Clift. Pasión secreta.- LLUIS FERNÁNDEZ (1989)

Further Reading:

• Montgomery Clift by Maurice Leonard (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1997).


• Montgomery Clift : a bio-bibliography by Mary C. Kalfatovic (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, c1994).


• Montgomery Clift : beautiful loser by Barney Hoskyns (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1992).


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• Montgomery Clift : a biography by Patricia Bosworth (New York: Limelight Editions, 1978).


• Rebel males : Clift, Brando, and Dean by Graham McCann (New Brunswick, N.J. : Rutgers University Press, 1993).


• Five for Hollywood by John Parker (Secaucus, NJ : Carol Pub. Group, 1991).


• Too young to die by Patricia Fox-Sheinwold (Baltimore: Ottenheimer Publishers, 1979).