Matt Bomer será Montgomery Clift en un biopic

¡ Por fin van a rodar una película sobre Montgomery Clift !

Quizá no nos guste el guión o el actor elegido pero sin duda nos alegramos de que se haga una película sobre Montgomery Clift. Uno de los mejores actores de la Historia del Cine no puede caer en el olvido. Hay que hacer todo lo posible para difundir sus películas y que las nuevas generaciones lo conozcan más allá de de su atormentada, conflictiva y escandalosa vida y su chiclé como homosexual.

El actor elegido es Matt Bomer, un actor muy conocido y que poco a poco se hace un hueco en el panorama actual. Saltó a la fama en la serie White Collar (Ladrón de guante blanco) y durante un tiempo los fans de la trilogía 50 Sombras de Grey apostaban por él para reencarnar a Christian Grey. Era el candidato con mas respaldo y se veía como la mejor elección pero no fue así.

Hoy mismo se ha sabido que será Montgomery Clift en la plantalla.

¿Qué opináis? ¿Os gusta que hagan una película sobre Montgomery Clift?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/18/matt-bomer-montgomery-clift_n_3950317.html

English text:

Finally you will shoot a film about Montgomery Clift!

Perhaps we do not like the script or the chosen actor but no doubt pleased to make a film about Montgomery Clift. One of the best players in the history of film may not fall into oblivion. To do their utmost to disseminate his films and that new generations know him beyond his troubled, troubled and scandalous life and its chewing gum as a gay man.

The chosen actor is Matt Bomer, a well-known actor and which is gradually made a hole in the current scene. He rose to fame in the series White Collar (white-collar thief) and for a while fans of the trilogy 50 shades of Grey betting on him to reincarnate Christian flock. He was the candidate with more support and it looked like the best choice, but it did not.

Today has been known to be Montgomery Clift in the format.

What do you think? Do you like to do a film about Montgomery Clift?

Próxima biografía

haz click para agrandar / to click to enlarge

Estamos de enhorabuena, pues si hace poco Amy Lawrence publicaba una biografía, ahora sabemos de un nuevo libro que aparecerá el próximo 15 de diciembre:

MONTGOMERY CLIFT. QUEER STAR

Está escrito por la Doctora Elisabetta Girelli, quién actualmente es Lectora en Estudios de Películas en la Universidad escocesa de St. Andrews.

Ficha académica.

El libro será publicado por la Wayne State University ubicada en Detroit (Michigan) .

Ficha del libro:

http://wsupress.wayne.edu/books/detail/montgomery-clift-queer-star

Por último, quisiera comentar que he contactado con Elisabetta a través de Facebook y me ha comentado que conocía este blog que ha visitado a menudo.

La foto elegida como portada es bastante desconocida, la fecho en torno a principios de los 50, una vez rodada ya A place in the sun (Un lugar en el sol).

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...

The Passion of Montgomery Clift, by Amy Lawrence

Acaba de salir una nueva biografía sobre Montgomery Clift. Está escrita por Amy Lawrence, profesora de Estudios cinematográficos y televisivos y Literatura comparada, y editada por la University of California Press (UC Press).

El título, muy acertado, parece inspirado en su película Freud, secret passion (1962) y la foto pertenece a la sesión de fotos que le tomaron el 30 de noviembre de 1948 para la revista Life. Ver post.

Es una noticia estupenda, que siguen homenajeándolo y se quiera conocer un poquillo cómo fue la vida y la obra del gran Montgomery Clift. Si yo tuviera los medios necesarios a mi alcance, reconozco que me encantaría escribir una biografía sobr él en base a lo que voy recopilando en este blog.

Éstos son los datos de la edición:

(English text):

* Author: Amy Lawrence

* Title: The Passion of Montgomery Clift

* Prices: $60.00, £41.95 hardcover /$24.95, £16.95 paperback

*352 pages, 6 x 9 inches, 13 color illustrations, 41 b/w photographs

* Availability: June 2010, Available worldwide

* Description:

From his 1948 film debut in Red River through such classics as The Heiress, A Place in the Sun, and From Here to Eternity, Montgomery Clift exemplified a new masculinity and—leading the way for a generation of actors, including Marlon Brando and James Dean—epitomized the new naturalistic style of acting. Clift's impact was such that, both during his troubled life and after his untimely death, fans described the actor in religious terms, characterizing Clift as a vision, acolyte, and martyr. In The Passion of Montgomery Clift, Amy Lawrence challenges the myth of Clift as tragic victim by examining Clift's participation in the manipulation of his image, his collaborations with directors, his relationships with costars, and his interactions with writers.

* Reviews:

"The art and legend of Montgomery Clift, tortured soul and triumphant talent, is brought into extraordinarily sharp focus in Amy Lawrence's discerning, sympathetic and highly readable examination of a brilliant, beautiful, haunted performer."—Lee Server, author of Robert Mitchum: Baby, I Don't Care

*About The Author:

Amy Lawrence is Professor of Film and Television Studies at Dartmouth College and is the author of Echo and Narcissus: Women's Voices in Classical Hollywood Cinema (UC Press), and The Films of Peter Greenaway.

Para comprar en Amazon.

Montgomery Clift, uno de los gays más atormentaos de la Historia

En este blog, se recoge una pequeña biografía de Montgomery Clift. El título del post es bastante significativo pero no por ello menos cierto. Las fotografías que han sido retocadas por photoshop son bastante chulas.

Actor de carácter atormentado, sensible, emocional y con una belleza melancólica. Abusaba del alcohol y los calmantes. Uno de los motivos de este comportamiento, fue su homosexualidad, algo que en aquellos tiempos no era algo fácil de llevar. DURANTE EL RODAJE DE RIO ROJO, SUS COMPAÑEROS DE REPARTO, John Wayne y Walter Brennan se sintieron incómodos con la presencia DEL ACTOR POR SER HOMOSEXUAL, POR LO CUAL SE MANTUVIERON ALEJADOS DE EL DURANTE EL RODAJE. Clift se negó a volver a trabajar junto a estos dos elementos en la película Río Bravo.

Su carrera estuvo repleta de éxitos y fue nominado a los Oscar en cuatro ocasiones. Desde entonces, asentaría un nuevo modelo de actor, QUE SIRVIO DE INFLUENCIA A ACTORES COMO Marlon Brando o James Dean.

Elizabeth Taylor una de sus grandes amigas, le salvó de morir ahogado tras un accidente por el que fue sometido a cirugía plástica. Su espiral de autodestrucción se considera el suicidio más largo de Hollywood. Murió el 23 de julio de 1966, a los 45 años, por su adicción AL ALCOHOL Y A LAS DROGAS. HA SIDO UNO DE LOS ACTORES GAYS MAS ATORMENTADOS DE LA HISTORIA.

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.

The Story of Montgomery Clift

Narth es una asociación norteamericana para la investigación de terapias para la homosexualidad. No voy a hablar de ese tema, cito la web porque en ella vine un artículo sobre el actor Montgomery Clift de Linda Nicolosi.

The Story of Montgomery Clift

By Linda Nicolosi

Montgomery Clift

Montgomery (Monty) Clift was a broodingly handsome, classical actor who is considered to be one of the greatest screen stars of the Golden Age of film. He led a tormented life, dying prematurely after many years of self-destruction through drinking, drugs and a long string of affairs with men (as well as a few women).

An enormously attractive screen presence, Monty had large, expressive dark eyes, and portrayed a haunting vulnerability and sensitivity that was as much "who he was" onscreen as offscreen. His life story makes fascinating reading.

In Montgomery Clift: A Biography, author Patricia Bosworth describes Monty's father Bill as passive, good-natured, and absolutely adoring of his wife, Sunny. A very successful man in the business world, Bill nevertheless deferred in every way to this strong-willed, opinionated woman at home. "My father would do anything in the world to please Mother," Monty's sister Ethel said (p. 23). "She made everyone--including her husband--feel that no one with any brains could possibly disagree with her and still be a person of consequence" (p. 31).

Indeed, Sunny was known as a vibrantly attractive and intelligent woman. She was "energetic, sometimes venomous, always triumphant in any situation" (p. 284).

Sunny had been adopted as an infant into a family that apparently abused her, and she was never able to locate her birth parents. She had been told, however, that her bloodlines made her a "thoroughbred." Soon she became obsessed with tracking down her geneology, and she poured all her energy into it. Her primary goal in life, biographer Boswell says, was to raise her children as "the thoroughbreds they were" so they would never know the uncertain identity and insecurity she had suffered in her life.

When Sunny became pregnant in 1919, she told Bill she intended to raise their children "in the elegant, princely manner which they deserved." (p. 13) There were two boys (Monty and Brooks) and one girl (Ethel). ""Monty and the others were being raised as triplets, given identical haircuts...clothes, lessons, and responsibilities, regardless of age or sex."

Brooks, the tougher and more rebellious son, rebelled--fighting and talking back to his mother when he was told he must dress like his younger brother and sister. "I wanted to be myself,'' he explained later. Brooks (who grew up to be heterosexual) was married and divorced several times. However, "Monty appeared the most docile, the most obedient of the three children. He did precisely what he was told..." Biographer Bosworth notes that his "independent impulses, his drives, were curbed again and again" (p. 31) by his mother.

In spite of the intense pain the relationship brought him, Monty, his brother Brooks later recalled, "had a secretive relationship" of mutual specialness with their mother which he and his sister "never intruded upon." (p. 50). In contrast, Monty and his father "rarely communicated about anything" and in the morning, they would both read the paper while sitting at the breakfast table, "rarely exchanging a word." (p. 55)

Isolated from his male peers, the sensitive and gentle Monty also developed an intense closeness to his sister Ethel. "Throughout his life Monty relied on Sister for comfort and advice...Their insecurities made them inseparable. By the time they were seven they were sharing every secret, every fantasy" ( p. 26).

All three children complained that they were lonely because they weren't allowed to play with others in the neighborhood, but Sunny never explained why: she just forbade it. When Brooks later confronted his father Bill about their isolated childhood, Bill told him that he shouldn't feel bad about it -- it was for his own good:

"Everything she did for you she did because she believes you are thoroughbreds. If only I could convince you of your mother's greatness--she is a great, great woman. She wanted you to have every advantage--and all the love she never had." (p. 49)

"Be Happy For Me"

In the Clift family, there was no room for anyone but Sunny to vent anger or express opinions. "'Ma was always right.' If they started shouting at each other she would invariably correct them. She would tell them that her entire life was dedicated to, and sacrificed for, her children, so "the least they could do" was to behave and keep her happy.

Indeed, Sunny's happiness was understood to be essential to keeping the family together. Monty's father, on a business trip, described himself as "miserable" whenever he was away from his wife. He wrote his son a letter, reminding him who gave the Clift family its identity:

"Your mother is the heart of the Clift family. All our hopes and ambitions center around her. We love her better than all else, and we are ambitious because of her. She is the very lifeblood of the family..." (p. 38)

Sunny tutored the children at home; her plan was that the children "would be beautifully educated but they would have to associate only with each other, 'with their own kind.'" (p. 19)...Their father, who was often away from home, "came and went between 'deals in Manhattan and Chicago."

When they were permitted to play with other children, they could only be other boys and girls who were as "special" as Sunny considered her own children to be. A playmate of the Clift siblings in later years described "Sunny's overweening social ambition. She gushed over us [a wealthy family], in an almost desperate way. And she kept referring to her distinguished relatives, her aristocratic family..." (p. 28)

When the children were old enough to appreciate culture, Sunny took them to Europe for two years. Their father, says Clift's biographer, "had worked weekends and 14-hour-long days trying to given them the creature comforts Sunny had insisted were their right, by heritage." (p. 22) They stayed at the best hotels, but were always expected to keep to themselves.

Ethel said, "Mother's life was concerned with not only giving us every advantage, but seeing that everything was done for us...We were not subject to discipline or requirements to do for others." (p. 54)

It was not long before the Clift brothers soon began to be cruelly teased by other boys. At times, a "mob" of boys would chase them home on their bicycles.

Then, the stock market crash bankrupted the Clift family, and Bill Clift became deeply depressed. His wife, always strong through adversity, bolstered her husband and "gave me courage," Bill said, "when nobody else would." (p. 35) The children later recalled that both parents acted as if nothing was wrong--the children continued to "sleep on silk sheets" in the dingy room they rented, and no one talked about their truly dire circumstances.

Hazy, Uncertain Memories

"As an adult, Monty refused to discuss his childhood with anyone--not even his closest friends"(p. 35) and both his brother and sister reported a similar "amnesia." "Once they left home and began living their own lives," Monty's biographer said, "they blanked out much of those years."

Brooks noted that, "Psychologically we couldn't take the memories...so we forgot. But at the same time we were obsessed with our childhood. We'd refer to it among ourselves, but only among ourselves. Part of each of us desperately wanted to remember our past, and when we couldn't, it was frustrating. It caused us to weep, when we were drunk enough..." (p. 36).

"All three children felt profound anxieties they could not comprehend" as Sunny tried harder and harder to "cast everyone in their assigned roles, and deny their individual needs" (p. 38), says his biographer.

Acting As Release From A False Role

By the age of 12, Monty had found the one love of his life--acting. He became fascinated with the spectacle of the circus. He began to take a deep satisfaction in the fantasy situations and people he could create, and decided that he had truly found his calling. His brother Brooks said acting was the perfect release for Monty because when he played someone else, he was at last freed from his old role--the one created for him by his mother: "Now he [Monty] no longer had to live up to the image Sunny imagined for him," (p. 44) Brooks noted.

"You're Special, I'm Special"

Although Sunny was fiercely devoted to her children, on a deeper level, the relationship was evidently narcissistically driven--it was about her, and how the children made her feel about herself.

Returning from an acting job one time, Monty teased his father, and they began arguing. Instead of trying to make peace between them, his mother said, "Monty, dear, why are you doing this to me??" (p. 285). Says his biographer:

"The sound of that question brought back memories of his boyhood when every time he attempted to be independent--to make choices, decisions--she told him he was wrong and she was right; and when he disobeyed her anyway, she would cry, "Why are you doing this to me?" (p. 285)

Monty was 18 and working at an acting job when a fellow actor, Pat Collinge, noted that his male roommate had to move out and make space for Sunny to share his room when she visited him. "Everybody at the Guild thought it was rather odd," Collinge said, "for an 18-year-old boy to share his bedroom with his mother." (p. 58)v

Collinge noted of Sunny,

"I found her bewitching and charming, but a killer too. She stifled and repressed Monty by not allowing him to give vent to his enthusiasms or his deep needs.

It was odd how the characters in Dame Nature [the play he was acting in] reflected the characteristics of Monty and Sunny. In the play the mother is socially ambitious and domineering, and even when her son becomes a father, she still tries to make him wear short pants and play kiddy games in the nursery." (p. 58)

At 17, Monty went away for the summer but he received a phone call from his mother every day, when he always told her exactly what he was doing. She discouraged him from dating and told him to conserve his energy for his career.

It was not long before Monty began dating men. One of them described Monty as a "beautiful darling boy" who was "incapable of growing up." (p. 66) Monty slowly began to make a life apart from his mother. However, his closest lifelong friends (most notably, Elizabeth Taylor) were, like his mother, magnetic, strong-willed women with whom he became enmeshed in intense (though platonic) relationships. "As time passed, Monty slept with both men and women indiscriminately in an effort to discover his sexual preference, but his conflict remained obvious" (p. 67) says his biographer.

The rest of Montgomery Clift's life was marred by alcoholism and depression. The hostile-dependent relationships he developed with strong women caused him recurrent distress: "Some days he would threaten to stop seeing Elizabeth Taylor - then, the thought would make him burst into tears." (p. 369) He had a near-fatal car accident when he was driving home drunk from a party, which left him with permanent facial disfigurement.

The death of this brilliant and magnetic actor - in a tragic end, alone at age 45 in a hotel room--was said to be brought on by complications from his longtime drug use and alcoholism.

For Further Reading

On the life of Montgomery Clift:

Bosworth, Patricia (1978) Montgomery Clift: A Biography. N.Y.: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

On the narcissistic family:

Nicolosi, Joseph. "Attachment Loss and Grief Work in Reparative Therapy,"
http://www.narth.com/docs/attachloss.html.

Nicolosi, Joseph, "The Meaning of Same-Sex Attraction,"
http://www.narth.com/docs/niconew.html.

Updated: 27 February 2008

Imdb (II)

Date of Birth: 17 October 1920, Omaha, Nebraska, USA

Date of Death:23 July 1966, New York City, New York, USA (coronary occlusion)

Birth Name: Edward Montgomery Clift

Nickname: Monty

Height: 5' 10" (1.78 m)

Mini Biography

Monty was born just after his twin sister Roberta and eighteen months after his brother Brooks Clift. Their father William made a lot of money in banking but was quite poor during the depression. Their mother Ethel "Sunny" was born out of wedlock and spent much of her life and the family fortune finding her illustrious southern lineage and raising her children as aristocrats. At 13, Monty appeared on Broadway ("Fly Away Home"), and chose to remain in the New York theater for over ten years before finally succumbing to Hollywood. He gained excellent theatrical notices and soon piqued the interests of numerous lovelorn actresses; their advances met with awkward conflict. While working in New York in the early 1940s, he met wealthy former Broadway star Libby Holman. She developed an intense decade-plus obsession over the young actor, even financing an experimental play, "Mexican Mural" for him. It was ironic his relationship with the bisexual middle-aged Holman would be the principal (and likely the last) heterosexual relationship of his life and only cause him further anguish over his sexuality. She would wield considerable influence over the early part of his film career, advising him in decisions to decline lead roles in Sunset Blvd. (1950), (originally written specifically for him; the story perhaps hitting a little too close to home) and High Noon (1952). His long apprenticeship on stage made him a thoroughly accomplished actor, notable for the intensity with which he researched and approached his roles. By the early 1950's he was exclusively homosexual, though he continued to maintain a number of close friendships with theater women (heavily promoted by studio publicists). His film debut was Red River (1948) with John Wayne quickly followed by his early personal success The Search (1948) (Oscar nominations for this, A Place in the Sun (1951), From Here to Eternity (1953) and Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)). By 1950, he was troubled with allergies and colitis (the army had rejected him in WWII for chronic diarrhea) and, along with pill problems, he was alcoholic. He spent a great deal of time and money on psychiatry. In 1956, during filming of Raintree County (1957), he ran his Chevrolet into a tree after leaving a party at Elizabeth Taylor's; it was she who saved him from choking by pulling out two teeth lodged in his throat. His smashed face was rebuilt, he reconciled with his estranged father, but he continued bedeviled by dependency on drugs and his unrelenting guilt over his homosexuality. With his Hollywood career in an irreversible slide (despite giving an occasional riveting performance, such as in Stanley Kramer's Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)), Monty returned to New York and tried to slowly develop a somewhat more sensible lifestyle in his brownstone. He was set to play in Taylor's Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967), when his companion Lorenzo James found him lying nude on top of his bed, dead from what the autopsy called "occlusive coronary artery disease." His death was called the longest suicide in history by famed acting teacher, Robert Lewis.

IMDb Mini Biography By: Ed Stephan

Trivia

1995: Chosen by Empire magazine as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in film history (#29).

He is referred to in the Jets to Brazil song, "Conrad" on their album, "Orange Rhyming Dictionary".

He is the subject of the song "The Right Profile" on The Clash's album "London Calling".

He is the subject of R.E.M.'s song "Monty Got a Raw Deal", from their LP "Automatic For the People".

Was a close friend of Elizabeth Taylor, Kevin McCarthy, Marilyn Monroe and Roddy McDowall.

The release of Red River (1948) made him an overnight sensation and instant star. He embodied a new type of man on screen, the beautiful, sensual and vulnerable man that seemed to appeal to women and men alike. After A Place in the Sun (1951) came out he was Hollywood's hottest male star and adored by millions. He looked incredible and was a fine actor, a rare combination. His only rival in this regard during the next few years was Marlon Brando, whose career turned out to be more stable and successful in the end. Clift's mental problems prevented him from staying at the top, as his drinking and drug problem began to affect his acting and bankability. The loss of his dashing looks in a well publicized road accident during the filming of Raintree County (1957) didn't help, either. What followed could be described as the longest suicide in show-business history.

Interred at Quaker Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York, USA.

He had so many health problems on the set of Freud (1962) that Universal sued him for the cost of the film's production delays. During the trial, the film opened and was such a huge hit that Clift's lawyers brought up the point that the film was doing well because of Clift's involvement. Clift won a lucrative settlement.

Always in high demand as an actor, he turned down the role played by William Holden in Sunset Blvd. (1950) and the part of James Dean's brother in East of Eden (1955). In 1955, alone, he passed on five Broadway plays, (among them Eugene O'Neill's "Desire Under the Elms"), and he turned down the films Desirée (1954), Friendly Persuasion (1956), Prince of Players (1955), Fahrenheit 451 (1966), Moby Dick (1956) and The Trouble with Harry (1955).

Younger brother of Brooks Clift.

He was voted the 60th Greatest Movie Star of all time by Entertainment Weekly.

Was Elizabeth Taylor's choice to play her husband, the closeted homosexual Major Weldon Penderton, in Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967). He died before the film began shooting and was replaced by Marlon Brando, who at one time was considered his only rival as an attractive leading man who was also a great actor.

In Robert Laguardia's "Monty" (1977), the first published biography, Laguardia tells of how Clift was discomfited when he initially met co-star Burt Lancaster on the set of From Here to Eternity (1953). Lancaster was in awe of Monty and was so nervous, he actually shook during their first scene (as also mentioned in Lancaster's biography).

On the set of The Young Lions (1958), Marlon Brando insisted on doing his own stunt fall after being "shot" by co-stars Clift and Dean Martin and wound up dislocating his shoulder. Clift, seeing that Brando was in pain, offered him a swig from the thermos jug he carried with him at all times. The combination of vodka and prescription drugs in the thermos helped Brando through the ordeal.

Marlon Brando, who calls him a "friend" in his autobiography, says that Clift was a tormented soul addicted to alcohol and chloral hydrate, a depressant and sedative which he drank. On the set of The Young Lions (1958), he warned Clift that he was destroying himself like Brando's own alcoholic mother had. For his part, Clift was always supportive of Brando as an actor, even when his career began faltering after Mutiny on the Bounty (1962).

Suffered from dysentery and colitis for most of his adult life.

Spoke fluent French, Italian and German.

His father was a violent, abusive, ultra-conservative bigot and did not get along with his son. As an actor, whenever Clift was playing characters snapping as they went up against ignorance or brutality, Clift was said to have acted with his father in mind as an antagonist.

One of only six actors to receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for his first screen appearance. The others are Orson Welles, James Dean, Alan Arkin, Paul Muni and Lawrence Tibbett.

Hollywood folklore has it that his ghost haunts the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. The actor had stayed there while filming From Here to Eternity (1953).

At his near-fatal car accident in 1956, Rock Hudson, Michael Wilding and Kevin McCarthy formed a protective shield to prevent Clift's photo from being taken by photographers as he was carried from the wreck to the ambulance.

A sometime guest of Broadway legends Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne at their rural retreat Ten Chimneys in Genesee Depot, Wisconsin.

Is portrayed by Jeffrey Combs in Norma Jean & Marilyn (1996) (TV)

Marilyn Monroe described him as "the only person I know who is in worse shape than I am."

Turned down Dean Martin's role in Rio Bravo (1959), which would have reunited him with his Red River (1948) co-star John Wayne.

Became good friends with Dean Martin while filming The Young Lions (1958), and Clift helped the singer, who was best known at that time as a light comedian, with rehearsing his heavy dramatic scenes. In later years, as Clift was ostracized by the Hollywood social set for his substance abuses and mental instability, Martin stuck by the troubled actor and often brought him along as his guest to parties.

Son of William Brooks Clift and wife Ethel Anderson Fogg, an illegitimate daughter of Woodbury Blair by Maria Latham Anderson, both of whom had Dutch American ancestry. Woodbury Blair was the son of Montgomery Blair, after whom his great-grandson received his middle name, and wife Mary Elizabeth Woodbury, daughter of Levi Woodbury (1789-1851), US Supreme Court, and wife Elizabeth Wendell Clapp.

Voted for Republican Thomas E. Dewey in the 1948 presidential election, but later actively campaigned for Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson in the 1952 presidential election - much to the annoyance of his father.

He was a close friend of Elizabeth Taylor, although he greatly disliked her husband Richard Burton, and the feeling was mutual. Clift once said, "Richard Burton doesn't act, he just recites.".

In Italy, most of his early films were dubbed by Giulio Panicali, then by Giuseppe Rinaldi. He was occasionally dubbed by Gianfranco Bellini (in The Search (1948) and Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)), Nando Gazzolo (in The Young Lions (1958)) and once by Pino Locchi in Raintree County (1957).

Related to actor Michael Anderson Brown.

On the advice of his close friend Libby Holman, he turned down William Holden's role in Sunset Blvd. (1950) and Gary Cooper's role in High Noon (1952).

In the James Kirkwood novel "Hit Me With A Rainbow", early on the lead character is told that he resembles Montgomery Clift. He reflects that this has been happening often and surmises is it due to Clift's recent death.

Robert LaGuardia, in his 1988 biography "Monty," claimed that director John Huston, who had paternalistic feelings towards Clift after directing the alcoholic and emotionally troubled actor in The Misfits (1961) (1961), became sadistic towards him during the troubled Freud (1962) (1962) shoot. Basing his charges on interviews with co-star Susannah York, LaGuardia claimed that Huston kept asking Clift about the Freudian concept of "represssion," obviously alluding to Clift's repressed homosexuality. Apparently, Huston himself could not broach the idea that Monty was gay in his own mind, but subconsciously, he reacted to Monty's homosexuality quite negatively. (Marilyn Monroe had admonished Monty not to work with Huston again, finding him a sadist on the "Misfits" set. Her ex-husband Arthur Miller, on the other hand, did not fault Huston in his autobiography "Timebends," but instead, marveled about how he kept his cool during the "Misfits" shoot, which was also troubled due to Marilyn Monroe's mental illness and frequent absences from the set.) Monty's biographer thought that Huston still had paternalistic feelings towards the actor, but was subconsciously appalled at his surrogate son's homosexuality; thus, he began to torture him on the set by insisting on unnecessary retakes and that he perform his own stunts, such as climbing up a rope. Despite Monty's many problems, he always proved a trouper, and gave as much as he could, including diving into a river in his last film, The Defector (1966) (1966).

Personal Quotes

[reported last words, upon being asked if he wanted to see one of his movies on TV[ Absolutely not!

What do I have to do to prove I can act?

I love the stage, but after a few months you can get tired. I would rather do three movies than play in one stage hit. I played in four flops in a row when I was about 17 and I was delighted. I was being paid to be trained.

I keep my family out of my public life because it can be an awful nuisance to them. What's my mother going to tell strangers anyway? That I was a cute baby and that she's terribly proud of me? Nuts. Who cares?

[recalling his arrival in Hollywood] I told them I wanted to choose my scripts and my directors myself. "But sweetheart," they said, "you're going to make a lot of mistakes." And I told them, "You don't understand; I want to be free to do so."

Good dialogue simply isn't enough to explain all the infinite gradations of a character. It's behavior -- it's what's going on behind the lines.

I don't want to be labeled as either a pansy or a heterosexual. Labeling is so self-limiting. We are what we do, not what we say we are.

I feel my real talent lies in directing for my later years.

[on Marilyn Monroe] Marilyn was an incredible person to act with, the most marvelous I ever worked with and I have been working for 29 years.

[on Elizabeth Taylor] Liz is the only woman I have ever met who turns me on. She feels like the other half of me.

Salary

Freud (1962)	$130,000
Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)	Waived salary
Raintree County (1957)	$250,000
From Here to Eternity (1953)	$150,000
The Heiress (1949)	$100,000
Red River (1948)	$60,000
The Search (1948)	$100,000

Gay for Today

En este blog se recoge una semblanza de Montgomery Clift haciendo especial referencia a su homosexualidad.


Montgomery Clift born 17 October 1920 (d. 1966)

Edward Montgomery Clift was born in Omaha, Nebraska.

Appearing on Broadway at the age of thirteen, Clift achieved success on the stage and starred there for 10 years before moving to Hollywood, debuting in Red River (1948) opposite John Wayne. Clift was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor that same year for The Search. Clift was billed as a new kind of leading man: sensitive, intense and broodingly handsome, the kind of man women would want to take care of.

He had a highly successful film career, performing in many Oscar-nominated roles and becoming a matinee idol because of his good looks and sex appeal. His love scenes with Elizabeth Taylor in A Place in the Sun (1951) set a new standard for romance in cinema. His roles in A Place in the Sun, the 1953 classic From Here to Eternity and The Young Lions (1958) are considered signatures of his career... read full article.

Montgomery Clift. Vincitore e vinto. Biografía de Michelangelo Capua

Estos son los datos del libro, la sinopsis y datos del autor:

AUTORE: Capua M.

Montgomery Clift. Vincitore e vinto

COLLANA: Le comete

PAGINE: pp. 262

ILLUSTRAZIONI: N° 27 b/n f.t.

FORMATO: cm. 14x21

IL LIBRO

Bello e sensibile, intelligente e colto, ricco di talento e capace di assoluto rigore professionale: non si smetterebbe mai di elencare le doti di Montgomery Clift, uomo e attore. Eppure la sua vita – nonostante il successo e l’agiatezza che ne derivò – non fu che una lunga sequenza di sconfitte, appena interrotta da rari momenti di serenità.

L’omosessualità, mai negata e mai completamente accettata, fu senz’altro una delle ragioni di questo irrimediabile disagio esistenziale: era tutt’altro che facile essere e mostrarsi «diverso» nell’America del secondo dopoguerra.

Ma anche l’irrisolto rapporto con una madre autoritaria e protettiva, l’acuta sensibilità in conflitto con un mondo già dominato dal culto dell’apparenza e del denaro, la difficoltà di stabilire e mantenere profondi legami personali, non furono di certo motivi secondari.

Oggi Monty è quasi dimenticato (anche se qualcuno dei diciassette film di cui fu protagonista si affaccia di tanto in tanto sui nostri teleschermi). Eppure se fosse morto nel terribile incidente d’auto che ne sfigurò anche il futuro, sarebbe entrato nel mito, come è successo a James Dean e a Marilyn Monroe.

L'AUTORE

Michelangelo Capua è nato a Napoli nel 1966. Dopo aver vissuto e lavorato a New York, oggi risiede a Londra, dove si occupa di libri rari e di cinema. Con le Edizioni Lindau ha pubblicato: Vivien Leigh. Ansia di vivere e Anthony Perkins. Prigioniero della paura.

Artículo en inglés de la Wikipedia

Edward Montgomery Clift (October 17, 1920 – July 23, 1966) was an American film and stage actor. The New York Times’ obituary noted his portrayal of "moody, sensitive young men".^[1] Clift received four Academy Award nominations during his career, three for Best Actor and one for Best Supporting Actor.^[2]

Contents 1 Early life 2 Film career 3 Car accident 4 Post-accident career 5 Death 6 Relationships 7 Portrayals 8 Awards and honors 9 Filmography 10 Stage appearances 11 References 12 External links

Montgomery Clift was born in Omaha, Nebraska, a son of William Brooks Clift,^[3] a vice-president of Omaha National Bank, and his wife, the former Ethel Fogg. Clift had a fraternal twin sister, Roberta (aka Ethel), and a brother, William Brooks Clift Jr (born 1918), who had an illegitimate son with actress Kim Stanley.

The future actor's mother, who was reportedly adopted at the age of one year, nicknamed "Sunny", spent part of her life and her husband's money seeking to establish the Southern lineage that reportedly had been revealed to her at age 18 by the physician who delivered her, Dr. Edward Montgomery, after whom she named her younger son. According to Clift biographer Patricia Bosworth, Ethel was the illegitimate daughter of Woodbury Blair and Maria Anderson, whose marriage had been annulled before her birth and subsequent adoption. This would make her a granddaughter of Montgomery Blair, Postmaster General under President Abraham Lincoln, and a great-granddaughter of Francis Preston Blair, a journalist and adviser to President Andrew Jackson, and Levi Woodbury, an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. None of these relationships, however, has been proven and remain speculative in the absence of documentation.

As part of Sunny Clift's lifelong preparation for acceptance by her reported biological family (a goal never fully achieved), she raised Clift and his siblings as if they were aristocrats. Home-schooled by their mother as well as by private tutors in the United States and Europe, in spite of their father's fluctuating finances, they did not attend a regular school until they were in their teens. The adjustment was difficult, particularly for Montgomery. His performance as a student lagged behind that of his sister and brother.

Clift was educated in French, German, and Italian.

Film career

Clift at the premiere of A Place in the Sun (1951)

Appearing on Broadway at the age of 13, Clift achieved success on the stage and starred there for 10 years before moving to Hollywood, debuting in 1948's Red River opposite John Wayne.

Clift was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor that same year for The Search. His sensitive and intense quality gave him an image as the kind of person to be taken care of.

His love scenes with Elizabeth Taylor in A Place in the Sun (1951) represented a new standard for romance in cinema. His roles in A Place in the Sun, the 1953 classic From Here to Eternity, and The Young Lions (1958) were career milestones.

Clift and Marlon Brando, who was also born in Omaha, had reputations as Hollywood rivals because of their rapid rise to stardom and similar acting styles. Clift was one of James Dean's idols and he would sometimes call Clift "just to hear his voice".^[4]

Clift reportedly turned down the starring roles in Sunset Boulevard and East of Eden.^{[citation needed]} At one point he was receiving so many offers of roles that friends had to squeeze past stacks of them in order to walk up the stairs.^{[citation needed]}

Car accident

On May 12, 1956, while filming Raintree County, he smashed his car into a telephone pole after leaving a party at the Beverly Hills home of his Raintree County co-star and close friend Elizabeth Taylor and her then-husband Michael Wilding. Alerted by friend Kevin McCarthy, who witnessed the accident, Taylor raced to Clift's side, manually pulling a tooth out of his throat, as he'd begun to choke on it. He suffered a broken jaw and nose, a fractured sinus, and several facial lacerations which required plastic surgery.^[5] In a filmed interview, he later described how his nose could be snapped back into place.

After a long recovery, he returned to the set to finish the film. Against the movie studio's worries over profits, Clift rightly predicted the film would do well, if only because moviegoers would flock to see the difference in his facial appearance before and after the accident. The pain of the accident led him to rely on alcohol and pills for relief, as he had done after an earlier bout with dysentery left him with chronic intestinal problems. As a result, Clift's health and looks deteriorated considerably.

Post-accident career

Clift in trailer from The Young Lions (1958).

His post-accident career has been referred to as the "longest suicide in Hollywood history" because of his alleged substance abuse.^[6] Clift continued to work over the next 10 years. His next three films were Lonelyhearts (1958), The Young Lions (1958) and Suddenly, Last Summer (1959). Clift starred with Lee Remick in Elia Kazan's Wild River in 1960. In 1958, he turned down what became Dean Martin's role in Rio Bravo, which would have reunited him with John Wayne.

He then costarred in John Huston's The Misfits (1961), which turned out to be Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable's last film. Monroe, who was also having emotional problems at the time, famously described Clift as "The only person I know who is in worse shape than I am." By the time Clift was making John Huston's Freud: The Secret Passion (1962) his destructive lifestyle was affecting his health. Universal sued him for his frequent absences that caused the film to go over budget. The case was later settled out of court; the film's success at the box office brought numerous awards for screenwriting and directing, but none for Clift himself. Some time after the initial release of the film Clift appeared on the The Hy Gardner Show where he spoke at length about the accident and its effects, his film career, and treatment by the press. During the interview Gardner mentions that it is the "first and last appearance on a television interview program for Montgomery Clift".

Clift's last Oscar nomination was for best supporting actor for his role in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), a 12-minute part. The film's director, Stanley Kramer, later wrote in his memoirs about how Clift—by this stage a wreck of a man—struggled to remember his lines even for this one scene:

“

Finally I said to him, "Just forget the damn lines Monty. Let's say you're on the witness stand. The prosecutor says something to you, then the defence attorney bitterly attacks you, and you have to reach for a word in the script. That's all right. Go ahead and reach for it. Whatever the word may be, it doesn't really matter. Just turn to (Spencer) Tracy on the bench whenever you feel the need, and ad lib something. It will be all right because it will convey the confusion in your character's mind." He seemed to calm down after this. He wasn't always close to the script, but whatever he said fitted in perfectly, and he came through with as good a performance as I had hoped.[7]

”

Death

On July 22, 1966, Clift spent most of the day in his bedroom in his New York City townhouse, 217 East 61st Street. He and his live-in personal secretary, Lorenzo James, had not spoken much all day. At 1 a.m., Lorenzo went up to say goodnight. The Misfits was on TV that night, and Lorenzo asked Clift if he wanted to watch it. "Absolutely NOT!" was the reply. This turned out to be the last time Montgomery Clift spoke to anyone. At 6 a.m. the next day, Lorenzo went to wake him but found the bedroom door locked. Unable to break it down, he ran down to the garden and climbed a ladder to the bedroom window. When he got inside, he found Clift dead. He was undressed, lying on his back in bed, with glasses on and fists clenched.^[8]

Clift's body was taken to the city morgue at 520 First Avenue and autopsied. The autopsy report cited the cause of death as a heart attack brought on by "occlusive coronary artery disease". No evidence was found that suggested foul play or suicide. It is commonly believed that addiction was responsible for Clift's many health problems and his death. In addition to lingering effects of dysentery and chronic colitis, an underactive thyroid was later revealed. A condition that (among other things) lowers blood pressure, it may have caused Clift to appear drunk or drugged when he was sober. (A further health issue, though unrelated, was that Clift underwent cataract surgery in his later years; afterward he had to wear glasses.)

Following a 15-minute ceremony at St. James Church attended by 150 guests including actresses Lauren Bacall and Nancy Walker, Clift was buried in the Quaker Cemetery, Prospect Park, Brooklyn, New York City. Elizabeth Taylor, who was in Paris, sent flowers, as did Roddy McDowall, Myrna Loy, and Lew Wasserman.

Relationships

Patricia Bosworth, who had access to Clift's family and many people who knew and worked with him, writes in her book, "Before the accident Monty had drifted into countless affairs with men and women. It suited his personality to have sex with a variety of partners. After the accident and his drug addiction became more serious, Monty was often impotent, and sex became less important to him anyway. His deepest commitments were emotional rather than sexual, and reserved for old friends; he was unflinchingly loyal to men like William "Bill" LeMassena and women like Elizabeth Taylor, Libby Holman, Nancy Walker and Ann Lincoln."

When he bought his Manhattan townhouse in 1960 at 217 East 61st Street^[9] and became involved in renovations, he reported to a close friend that he envisioned living there someday with a wife and children.^[10] According to another biography, Clift's last known lover was Claude Perrin, a Frenchman who eventually became the actor's personal assistant before their relationship ended in the mid 1960s..^{[citation needed]}

Portrayals

• In the 1995 made for television movie, Liz: The Elizabeth Taylor Story, Clift was portrayed by actor William McNamara.

Awards and honors

Clift in a trailer screenshot of the 1948 film The Search, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor.

Clift has been honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6104 Hollywood Boulevard and received four nominations for Academy Awards:

• 1949: Best Actor in a Leading Role—The Search
• 1951: Best Actor in a Leading Role—A Place in the Sun
• 1953: Best Actor in a Leading Role—From Here to Eternity
• 1961: Best Actor in a Supporting Role—Judgment at Nuremberg

Filmography

Year	Film	Role	Notes
1948	The Search	Ralph 'Steve' Stevenson	Nominated — Academy Award for Best Actor
	Red River	Matthew 'Matt' Garth
1949	The Heiress	Morris Townsend
1950	The Big Lift	Sgt. 1st Class Danny MacCullough
1951	A Place in the Sun	George Eastman	Nominated — Academy Award for Best Actor
1953	I Confess	Fr. Michael William Logan	Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
	Terminal Station	Giovanni Doria	aka Indiscretion of an American Wife
	From Here to Eternity	Pvt. Robert E. Lee 'Prew' Prewitt	Nominated — Academy Award for Best Actor
1957	Raintree County	John Wickliff Shawnessy
	"Operation Raintree"	Himself	Short subject
1958	Lonelyhearts	Adam White
	The Young Lions	Noah Ackerman
1959	Suddenly, Last Summer	Dr. Cuckrowicz
1960	Wild River	Chuck Glover	Directed by Elia Kazan
1961	The Misfits	Perce Howland
1961	Judgment at Nuremberg	Rudolph Petersen	Nominated — Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor Nominated — BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role Nominated — Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture
1962	Freud	Sigmund Freud
1966	The Defector	Prof. James Bower

Stage appearances

• Fly Away Home (1935)
• Jubilee (1935)
• Yr. Obedient Husband (1938)
• Eye On the Sparrow (1938)
• Dame Nature (1938)
• The Mother (1939)
• There Shall Be No Night (1940)
• The Skin of Our Teeth (1942)
• The Searching Wind (1944)
• Foxhole in the Parlor (1945)
• You Touched Me (1945)
• The Seagull (1954)

References

1. ^ Montgomery Clift Dead at 45; Nominated 3 Times for Oscar; Completed Last Movie, 'The Defector,' in June Actor Began Career at Age 13 July 24, 1966, Sunday Page 61
2. ^ "Montgomery Clift". Oscars.com. http://awardsdatabase.oscars.org/ampas_awards/DisplayMain.jsp;jsessionid=9B962145FA7D4F1CD88528D4248E2DFD?curTime=1265031101666. Retrieved 2010-02-01.
3. ^ http://www.wargs.com/family/ancestry.html
4. ^ Montgomery Clift: A Biography, by Patricia Bosworth
5. ^ Montgomery Clift Official Site
6. ^ Clarke, Gerald. "Books: Sunny Boy". Time Magazine 20 Feb 1978.
7. ^ Kramer, Stanley; Thomas H. Coffey and Thomas M. Coffey (1997). A mad, mad, mad, mad world: a life in Hollywood. Harcourt Brace. p. 193. ISBN 0151549583. http://books.google.com/books?id=WgWXG1WyEh8C.
8. ^ Patricia Bosworth, Montgomery Clift: a Biography. James had been hired to help Clift restore his health while he waited out a lawsuit with a movie studio.
9. ^ "A Place in the Sun, on East 61st Street: Montgomery Clift's house goes on the market," New York Magazine, June 12, 2006
10. ^ Biography channel: Montgomery Clift

External links

Montgomery Clift at the Internet Movie Database

• Montgomery Clift at the Internet Broadway Database
• Montgomery Clift at the TCM Movie Database
• Montgomery Clift at Find a Grave

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