Montgomery Clift died for our sins 50 years ago

He's buried across the street from me in Friend's Cemetery in Prospect Park Brooklyn

I used to hate the idea of living across the street from a cemetery but now I think it would be fine, nice even. Am I right r1?

Isn't he buried in some weird Quaker cemetery? I remember reading an article once about how the cemetery is off-limits to the public and how many people try to sneak in there illegally to visit his grave.

And didn't his twin sister die very recently? Looks like Monty had some pretty good genes but he wasted it all on booze and drugs. I'v always liked him but I never felt sorry for him or others like him.

It's okay to feel sorry for alcoholics, r3. Or was it his sexuality that prevented your sympathy?

Oh the irony:

fifteen cents! OMG!

R3, Roberta "Ethel" Clift McGinnis was her name, and she died in Dec 2014 at 94 years old. A long life. She lived twice as long as her twin brother.

It's in the middle of the park F2f, on a hill. I can see it in winter in the distance. The tombstones are very low that most people don't know it's there. It's very serene.

Monty was an extremely handsome guy, but a bit of a weak-willed nancy. Elia Kazan regretted using him for "Wild River," saying he should've gotten someone more masculine and with swagger, like Brando. I watched him in "Lonelyhearts" and kept thinking, "For chrissakes, man up!"

[quote]Monty was an extremely handsome guy

Never understood the fascination with this guy, neither his looks nor his apparent talent.

Cute

Monty Got a Raw Deal

No, I believe Michael Stipe got the raw deal and that's why he's poz.

I've read two biographies of him. He was blessed with looks and talent. But he had lots of bad luck, especially when it came to his health. He was gay and he hated the fact he was gay. He liked sex with men but never became emotionally involved with them. His deep emotional attachments were with women. He might have lived longer if he hadn't had the car accident that ruined his beauty. He really was a right mess. Marilyn Monroe said of him "he's the only person I know who's worse off than I am."

R9, you are as big a piece of shit as Kazan, and that is saying something.

R9 I think his fragile and sometimes wimpy on-screen persona was exactly the reason he became so popular and that was what made him stand out from the other "macho "leading men of the era - women and gay men all wanted to cradle poor old Monty in their arms and nurture him. Unfortunately he was pretty much the same off-screen, very codependent on other people and very naive. He had plenty of tricks and fag-hags surrounding him but no one he was realy attached to emotionally (R14 also mentioned this).

From everything I've read, from pure gossip to biographies, I often wonder if Clift suffered from undiagnosed depression to the point where it may have been debilitating but he suffered through because of his dedication to acting.

R3 the Quaker Cemetery is near the the southwest corner of Prospect Park in Brooklyn in a heavily wooded and secluded area the cemetery is surrounded by a high fence and a thicket of trees. If you didn't know it was there you would never know there was a cemetery in that spot. My first partner is buried there.

Very Under-rated actor. I hope he gets more appreciation.

shirtless

R20 I didn't know they did chest waxing back then. Or maybe I never thought about it before the internet.

legs

One of the bios I read of him said he had a very early type of electrolysis done. But mostly actors just shaved their chests back then.

Oh furry William Holden in "Sunset Blvd" and then plucked clean for "Picnic." Sigh...

Monty was very furry. During A Place in the Sun, he and Elizabeth Taylor would rib each other for being so hairy, before heading to the studio beautician to wax them smooth.

I like a lot Monty bear.

Many years ago I read a very interesting interview with Tony Curtis and Jamie Leigh Curtis. Jamie was interviewing Tony about his early days in Hollywood. Tony recalled a story when one night at a party a drunken Clift ripped into him. Curtis was being hailed as the hottest, newest kid in town and a jealous, angry Clift was having none of it. " She thinks she's something special, she's a nobody, nothing. She better know her place" (words to that effect) A confused Jamie asked "who's she, who's he talking about"? Tony replied "me, he's talking about me. That's the way queers talked back then". Jamie "Oh"

something like that. It was a long time ago

He would have benefited from a fecal transplant since he contracted an intestinal infection that was never successfully treated and plagued him all his life.

I just watched From Here To Eternity last night. He was pissed that Burt Lancaster got top billing. But the director wouldn't do the picture without Clift. Both he and Lancaster shaved their chests for that movie. Lancaster was pretty sexy though.

All the gay references were cut out of the film. In the book, the Frank Sinatra character has gay sex for money.

[quote]He would have benefited from a fecal transplant

There is such a thing as a fecal transplant?

"On rare occasion, Monty would accidentally forget himself and let the two sides to his personality intersect, as for instance what happened at a party given by Frank Sinatra. Monty got very drunk that night and came on to a fella at the party. Sinatra saw it. He promptly had his bodyguards throw Monty out."

And of course, that fucking idiotic article gets it wrong. it's from 2014 and claims Monty died "50 years ago this July." So either they were two years off or they were way ahead of being one year off.

He did die for our sins--he died because of Princess Tiny Meat Syndrome.

He was only in his mid-40s when he died but, sadly, he looked 15-20 years older. Even in THE MISFITS he's a complete basket case at 40.

R31 What does it the article' date being 2014 or 2016 make a difference?! Monty is dead 50 years ago and his life story is the SAME regardless of the date including Sinatra story kicking him out! R31 Get over yourself sensitive whiny queen.

[quote] What does it the article' date being 2014 or 2016 make a difference?! Monty is dead 50 years ago and his life story is the SAME regardless of the date including Sinatra story kicking him out!

Yeah, I'M the sensitive whiny queen. Tell me, Prissy, were your hands on your hips when you hissed this out or were they waving above your head all afright?

He was a mean drunk and an often violent lover. He would take his self-loathing out on his tricks.

No. He liked to have his tricks take his self-loathing out on him. He wasn't called "The Ashtray" for nothing.

R37 The Ashtray was a supposedly name for James Dean Not Monty Clift

I wonder if Monty Clift and James Dean ever got it on.

I wonder if Monty and any of his co-stars ever got it on. John Wayne, definitely not even though The Duke supposedly slept his way to stardom with various studio heads. Burt Lancaster might have been willing and would have been hot in bed.

Montgomery Clift was a beautiful gentleman and a highly sensitive and emotional actor. I fall in love with him every time I see his movies. He was not weak, he was a tortured soul. We need more gentleman like him in this world, certainly on stage and screen. P

I heart you, R41.

Jane Fonda Talking about Monty Clift.....I Agree with her

Sorry. Ashtray was James Dean. I got my damaged gays mixed up.

Matt Bomer still wants to make a movie about Monty, but it doesn't seem to be going anywhere.

Why until now, No one made a movie about Monty? I think his Tragic life can be a rich material for a movie and it can also introduce Monty to the young generations who don't know who he was.

William McNamara played Monty in a TV movie called "Liz: the Liz Taylor Story" during the '80s or '90s, R46.

In the 90s, I thought that Tom Cruise would do a biopic because he looks enough like Clift to pass.

Tom Cruise looks nothing like Monty, and he never did.

Cruise would have looked wonderful in a chest wig.

Which one was he again? Was he the rebel without a cause one?

Shallow, smarmy Tom Cruise as Monty Clift? Heaven forbid! He never resembled him at all and as an actor he's not good enough to smell Monty's shit.

Not hot.

Was never hot.

Matt Bromer is the only star who could play Montgomery Clift. He has the beauty and sensitivity for the part. He is the modern day equivalent of Montgomery Clift.

R48. I hardly think Tom Cruise can "pass."

R53 is either a troll, a retard or blind or maybe all three.

Several friends of his were convinced that actor Kevin McCarthy was the love of Monty's life. They spent a lot of time together when they were first starting out in New York. Even after Kevin married Augusta Dabney and they started a family, Monty was a part of their life. Kevin was called in to some movie executive's office and warned that even though he was "shacking up" with Monty it wasn't helping his film career at all. Kevin was allegedly shocked that they were considered a couple.

Eventually the friendship cooled as Monty got bigger and bigger and they went for years without seeing each other. It was said that Kevin was hired for a small part in "The Misfits" to make Monty feel more comfortable with old friends around, but they barely spoke to each other on the set and didn't hang out at all. The spark was gone.

R57

It couldn't have been that many years that the two didn't see one another.

R43 Nice video. Here's another fascinating clip - his brother Brooks talking about Monty's sexuality:

Interesting documentary

Another one

R57, the friendship between Monty and the McCarthys cooled because Monty was such a needy mess who needed constant attention. He was an insomniac who'd call or drop by late at night and keep the McCarthys up all night. And as Monty became more and more dependent on drugs and alchohol, he would have blackout periods that put himself and others in harm's way. Eventually, Kevin and Augusta grew tired of having to babysit Monty and cut him out of their lives completely.

There was also an incident where he endangered the life of the McCarthy's son while inebriated. Montgomery also had a god awful mother. Manipulative, smothering and bigoted, she and Monty had a complicated relationship.

Monty, photographed by Roddy

Adorable

You couldn't tell he was queer in photographs, but he couldn't hide it when he spoke and moved.

Never understood the hype. Only oddly handsome in a weird robot way when very young, and able to give the same weird robot performance in every film. Plus he seems openly disturbed and ready to fall apart each humorless moment of each humorless film. Oh, well.

Sorry, he looks like one of those skinny hobos that rode the rails.

Not hot.

Shut up if you know nothing or next to nothing about Clift. If you haven't seen Red River, The Search, The Heiress, The Big Lift, A Place in the Sun, From Here to Eternity, I Confess, Indiscretion of an American Wife, The Young Lions, Wild River, Judgment at Nuremberg, and The Misfits, then see them first instead of exposing the depth of your ignorance here. Or go back to your Kartrashians and RHOBHNYA.

Yes r29, fecal transplants do exist.

I'll light a candle for him. Not a long thick candle, but a tealight.

I recall reading in 'The Hustons' that John Huston became aware that Clift was gay when Clift visited Huston in his Ireland home, and that Huston was horrified by the discovery. What's so strange is that Huston had already directed Clift in a movie, so I don't understand how Huston could have been that oblivious.

Does anyone listen to the "You Must Remember This" podcast about old Hollywood? There was a good episode about Liz and Montgomery.

What is it about gay men that causes this stuck in time syndrome?

The Huston story was that there was a young good looking reporter who showed up at Huston's house to do an interview and Huston discovered the next morning that he had spent the night in Monty's guest bedroom. Huston considered it a trashy move on their part and was insulted by the whole transaction.

R62 That is True. that what ended Monty and McCarthy friendship and lots of his old friends cut him off their lives for the same reason.

Monty also suffered from hebephrenia or some mental malady like that.

For you, R74:

How strange it is that the past is so little understood and so quickly forgotten. We live in the most thoughtless of ages. Every day headlines and short views. I have tried to drag history up a little nearer to our own times in case it should be helpful as a guide in present difficulties....There is nothing new in the story. It is as old as the sibylline books. It falls into that long, dismal catalogue of the fruitlessness of experience and the confirmed unteachability of mankind. Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong–these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.

Almost all of Clift's strongest emotional relationships were with women, most notably Elizabeth Taylor, but he had problems forming those same type of relationships with men. He also had issues with his homosexuality, never quite accepting it, but was always drawn to men, especially ones who were not reciprocal. Some times, this caused situations to be awkward or cause trouble, such as the story of Clift making a overt pass at a guest of Frank Sinatra's in the latter's presence as well as Clift also supposedly being attracted to Burt Lancaster during the filming of "From Here to Eternity".

The life of beautiful, tormented, homosexual from this era seems so exciting and fabulous.

I'm sure his self-esteem hit rock bottom when he had that accident and had to have his face reconstructed with plastic surgery.

Monty on WHAT'S MY LINE @16:06

He was to have played the Joe Gillis role in "Sunset Boulevard" but he was having a relationship with an older woman at the time (Libby Holman?) and thought it would unseemly for him to play a "kept" man in the film so he backed out. Too bad; it was a great role and it jump started William Holden's career, which was going nowhere at the time.

The 1950's was not a pleasant time for gay people the prevailing attitude in society was a good homosexual was a dead homosexual. There was no one to look up to and gay life was very secretive. If you were conflicted about being gay the only relief was drugs and alcohol.

Thank you so much for that, R82.

Count me among the ones who just don't get Montgomery Clift. He looks like an old Irish skinny drunk.

And you're basing that assessment on what frame of reference, R86?

What's the story behind his arrest for trying to pick up a hustler, or something?

R88 I remember the story vaguely but then, it wasn't unusual for many stars to be picked up for solicitation, only to have the studios pressure to have the charges dropped and kept out of the gossip pages.

Those who knew Monty Clift in his early acting/modeling days claimed he was a very vain and arrogant young man who would gaze admiringly at his own reflection in a mirror. The damage to his face from the accident and the audience reaction to his altered appearance shattered his ego. He got hooked on painkillers during this period, but that, along with other drugs and alcohol, was how he coped with his lost looks. I don't know if I completely buy the claim that he took to dope and booze because of homosexual guilt or shame. For chrissakes, he grew up in the NY theater community with many known homosexuals, and hung out with people like Roddy McDowell, Jack Larson, Marlene, Liz and Judy. He should've felt at home in those circles.

He sure was a furball per r64's pic. I like hairy but he ventured on gorilla suit

Men as hairy as Clift and who naturally retain their head hair are exceedingly rare.

Video of Montgomery Clift Talking About Marlon Brando

r69 = MARY!

He suffered from the curse of Elizabeth Taylor. Name me one man she didn't fuck up. Every man she was around became an alcoholic or drug addict.

R96 I think Liz just gravitated toward self destructive tortured men

Liz was the reason he had the car accident. She was having a dinner party at her place and wanted him to come. He was tired, he'd taken pills, he wanted to sleep and had given his driver the night off. But she REALLY wanted him to come and said there would be a progressive priest there that Monty would no doubt find fascinating (the priest would say the word "fuck"). She nagged and insisted; it was always hard for him to say no to her (it was hard for anybody to say no to Liz; she was used to getting what she wanted when she wanted it), so he drove to the damn dinner party. It was pretty boring. Monty was a little drunk and stoned; he'd had a few drinks and had taken a couple of downers. Not knowing the roads, he asked Kevin McCarthy to drive ahead of him so he could guide him home. Somehow Monty went off the road and smashed up the car...and his face. It really was a terrible accident and the damage was pretty much all to his face. It was the beginning of his "slow suicide." If only he'd told Liz to fuck off, I'm tired, I'm going to sleep, I 'm not coming to your damn dinner party. But as many other men found out, it was VERY difficult to fend off Elizabeth Taylor.

I've heard Liz talk about what she saw of him at the crash site.

It was one of those split canyon roads, wasn't it? In his condition, it's no surprise he ran off the road.

he swallowed some of his teeth and some came out of his cheek.

Fuck off, R95. Is that the best you can do?

Some say that an hysterical Elizabeth also saved his life that night by climbing into the smashed up car and cleaning out his mouth so he could breathe easier until the ambulance got there. He seemed to have smashed his face into either the rear view mirror or the windshield (maybe both) which heavily damaged the left side of his face. Even with extensive plastic surgery he never looked the same. Facial muscles were damaged and they were not able to repair them.

He was making "Raintree County" with Liz when it happened and you can see his before and after face right there on the screen.

In that picture at R103 he looks godawful, ALL his beauty gone. And not only that; his physical health was pitiful. He had cataracts, back pain, leg cramps. His male nurse said "he was always in agony...His legs were giving him more and more trouble. They'd knot into terrible cramps and I'd have to massage them. His back was hurting, too. He had never recovered from the accident." A friend said that he had never met a person "with such a spirit to live and and to change. But he was an absolute physical wreck.Varicose veins all over his body...losing his hair, pains in his back." He had a hypothyroid condition that was getting worse. His hands were very gnarled. He looked like an old man.

,

R103, that was around the time of his last film "The Defector," right? He was only 45, but looked 65. The ciggies probably didn't help either.

[quote]Some say that an hysterical Elizabeth also saved his life that night by climbing into the smashed up car and cleaning out his mouth so he could breathe easier until the ambulance got there.

Maybe if one of his "friends" had driven him home, the accident wouldn't have happened.

r47 That was perfect casting. One closet queen playing another closet queen.

Matt Bomer is now the same age as Monty was in LONELYHEARTS (a year or more after the car wreck), but looks 10-12 years younger.

One bio on MC claims that he was sexually assaulted by two actors he worked with on a play.

Alfred Lunt and Guthrie McClintic?

No, Ruth Gordon, and Eva Le Gallienne.

Tallulah Bankhead

R111 Did Ruth drug Monty with her famous chocolate mouse and then had her way with him?

Have we establish yet whether Monty was a top or a bottom? His submissive personality leads me to think that he was a sloppy bottom, but since he also liked to fuck women occasionally that means he also enjoyed stucking his tiny dick into holes which leaves a small posibility of him being a top... Was there such a thing as a versatile queen back then?

lazy bottom.

Montgomery Clift - Home Movies

Wow. A big fagula in the home movies.

Montgomery Clift died for somebody's sins, but not mine...

I bet he was into fisting.

I don't buy what the brother is saying in that video at R59, that he was bi because he allegedly got two girls pregnant and then aborted. Well, for one, a lot of gay men at that time entered into convenient marriages and had even managed to produce children, would that mean that they weren't really gay either? And from what I've read about him, Monty talked wondrously about having kids, he adored children, he was very hands on with Liz's kids and his friends kids, if that opportunity ever arised, which it supposedly did, why would he abort his only chance to be a father? And that twice?

It's said that he was sexually impotent with women, but he had no problems with the lads, that doesn't sound like bi to me.

I doubt Monty was being truthful when he implied that these pregnancies were his doing, maybe he wanted to spare these "girlfriends" of his from the shame of being seen as harlots, which they would have back in those days, so presented himself as an alibi, Or maybe this was just another part of his self loathing narcissistic temperament, i.e., bragging about the women he's laid so to throw off the scent of his homosexuality.

"Do you will think it will hurt me?"

"What?"

"My resemblance to Montgomery Clift!"

^^^^is that Jordan Brower? Damn he looks so beautiful there. Body to die for.

And I always thought Kartheiser was gay so it's interesting to see him play a swishy femme so easily there. Hmmmmm..

"I doubt Monty was being truthful when he implied that these pregnancies were his doing, maybe he wanted to spare these "girlfriends" of his from the shame of being seen as harlots..."

If Monty claimed to have had two aborted fetuses in his past, it's likely enough he was doing a Raymond Burr and just inventing a straight background. Who was gonna check up on past abortions? It was a MUCH easier lie to carry off than a couple of wives who should have been on the public record!

"Here's why our marriage will last"

"He never sucked my cock."

Tallulah's response when asked if Monty was a "cocksucker."