10 Things You Might Not Know About Montgomery Clift

Ten things you might not know about Montgomery Clift, the devastatingly handsome and intense actor who starred in classics like From Here to Eternity and A Place in the Sun:

1. His two favorite words were "fuck" and "shit."

2. It drove his mother crazy when he wore t-shirts or khakis. She wanted him dressed like a gentleman at all times.



3. Born in Omaha but raised largely in Europe, he spoke French and German fluently, and spoke with an English accent as a young man.

4. He wanted to play Hamlet and could recite most of Shakespeare's play from memory - but he never actually starred in a production of it.

5. To prepare for Lonelyhearts, he read every novel Nathanael West had written.

6. He excelled at skiing and tennis.

7. His favorite singer was Ella Fitzgerald.



8. The playwright he most admired was Anton Chekhov.

9. He slept naked and had a tendency to sleepwalk, leading to some awkward nights in hotels.

10. Even though he thought James Dean was "weird" and consciously imitating Monty himself, he was terribly upset when told that Dean had died.

     -->  

Patricia Bosworth's book is an intense and, at times, disturbing biography. It's quite appropriate that Clift played Freud, since his life was a psychoanalyst's dream come true. He was unusually close with his twin sister Ethel and brother Brooks. He had wild mood swings, exacerbated by alcohol and drug abuse and by health problems, including a thyroid disorder. He could be sweet, tender and childlike one minute and then vicious (especially with words) the next. He was as insecure as he was gorgeous.



In real life, I probably wouldn't have liked him very much. But I'll never have to worry about that, because he died when my parents were 13 and 14. In my imagination, I'd like to do things with him that were almost certainly illegal in the 1950s.

That's the wonderful thing about movies - they capture beautiful people when they are young, beautiful and intensely talented. There will never be a time when people will say "Montgomery Clift was not a good actor." In fact, he was one of the best ever.

'From Here to Eternity' Backstory + My 'Killers' Video

So I'm reading Montgomery Clift by Patricia Bosworth. Beautiful man, very talented in short bursts. Really insecure. Lots of addictions, way too much alcohol. Oddly close relationships with his twin sister and "Irish twin" brother. A Freudian wet dream, really. He had a weird thing about lying and crawling on floors, as if he preferred not to stand up (which you see Perce doing in The Misfits, and it works wonderfully for that character).


My favorite parts of this book are the parts with James Jones, regarding the filming of From Here to Eternity in 1953. (I've finished reading The Thin Red Line and started Whistle. I'm only on page 26 and already about to cry because Bobby Prell - the third avatar of Robert E. Lee Prewitt - is so gravely wounded.)

Jones, Clift and Frank Sinatra got along really well. Bosworth quotes an unnamed press agent as having said, "Jones looked like a nightclub bouncer with his thick neck and broken face. And there's this edgy cocky little wop Sinatra always spoilin' for a fight, and then Monty who managed to radiate class and high standards even when he was pissing in the gutter." Sorry for the ethnic insult, but that's the exact quote.

Jones was quoted as saying, "He'd come crawling down the fire escape, agile as a monkey, and then swing into my room. He'd be brandishing a bottle of Scotch and a pot of espresso. First time I ever tasted that kinda coffee. I hated it, but I drank it 'cause Monty did...He was an odd man, but I felt a strange rapport with him while we were making the movie."

Bosworth writes, "Driving out of Los Angeles Jones talked sotto voce to Jeanne [Green; she and her husband Fred were Clift's close friends] about Monty, saying he found him strange and asking if he was a homosexual. Jeanne said, 'I got very prim and said I had no idea. With that Jones suddenly confided, "I would have had an affair with him but he never asked me." ' "

Given that many James Jones characters are sexual opportunists willing to make love to whoever happens to be at hand, it's not too surprising that James was, most likely, bisexual. Just one more reason for me to feel affinity for the late author.

I don't share his dislike of espresso, though.

Clift was not fond of Burt Lancaster, and called him a bad actor behind his back. (Jim Caviezel and Sean Penn, playing essentially the same characters in The Thin Red Line, did not get along particularly well either. Must be a Prewitt-Warden/Witt-Welsh thing.) He was upset that Lancaster got first billing. He didn't get along with Marlon Brando, either, and he thought James Dean was just "weird." Of course, Dean was a very conscious imitator of both Clift and Brando.

The role of Adam in East of Eden (the "good" brother, not the one James Dean played) is one that Clift turned down. He was also offered a part in a production of Fahrenheit 451; he could have made a really great Montag. (When I first read 451 in middle school, I imagined that Montag was really old - I was surprised when I re-reread it earlier this year that Montag was 30- younger than I am now!)


Incidentally, I made this one-minute video with Ava Gardner stills from The Killers today.


Ava Gardner was married to Frank Sinatra during the filming of From Here to Eternity. Bosworth wrote,   "[Sinatra] seemed obsessed with [Gardner] - she had left him, unable to cope with his rages and his entourage, which followed him everywhere.

"Once during the course of the filming he became so depressed by her rejection he threatened suicide. Monty talked him out of it."

I do not think it would be an ethnic insult - or a stretch - to say that Frank Sinatra was kind of a drama queen. A straight guy drama queen.  At least the way Patricia Bosworth tells it.

That Time I Tried Out For Jeopardy!

Yesterday was my second in-person audition for the U.S. game show Jeopardy! I'd tried out before in 2004. To accomplish this, Tit Elingtin and I had to travel the short distance to Chicago, which we did by commuter train. I brought the New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy to read on the train (and was, therefore, stuck carrying this rather ponderous volume the rest of the trip).

We stayed at the same hotel where the tryouts took place, the Sheraton Hotel and Towers. It was ridiculously expensive and not even the nicest hotel we've ever stayed in. (Nicer that the Congress Plaza, though, and the Congress Plaza's pretty nice, with that fantastic view of Grant Park.) Most of Sunday night was devoted to studying, but we did some exploring, too. We went to a mall and ate at Coast Burger, then had a beer at a bar called Canteen (which used to be Grami). The bartender bought us each a shot of Jameson, so obviously, he is my new best friend. But that's all - one shot and one beer. Then, right back to studying.

Public domain

The next morning, after a cup of coffee that I still contend was brewed the night before and a breakfast at Subway - falafel. Whoever thought of selling falafel at Subway is a genius! It goes great with flatbread - I headed down to the morning audition. I passed the online test to get there, but they retested us in person. I can't tell you anything about any of the questions, but then I got to play the mock game with two other players. It's fun, but harder than it looks on TV. I think the interview went well. I hope I'll be getting my call to come out to LA soon. 

Then the pressure was off, and we could go play. We hopped on the subway and went to Wicker Park. This is the first time in many visits to Chicago that I've ever been to the Wicker Park neighborhood. I was intent on visiting Quimby's, the bookstore famed for its graphic novels, comics and zines. The problem was, there were TOO many comics and zines. I ended up not buying anything because I was so overwhelmed by all the choices. Sorry, Quimby's. Wicker Park wasn't a total waste of time, though: we ate at the Thai/Japanese restaurant next to the bookstore. I had the Chicago maki, and it was pretty good, even though the spicy mayo was a little too spicy for my personal taste. (Just a little too spicy, not a lot.) Tit had steamed chicken dumplings and miso soup - the best miso soup I ever tasted. 

When we got off the subway, it was time to make arrangements to get back on the commuter train out of town. We did have time for one more Michigan Avenue stop, though - the Fine Arts Building. We had a beer at The Artists' Restaurant, then went up the second floor in what, I'm sure, is the oldest elevator I've ever ridden. It even had an attendant. 

A Russian blue cat. Photo by Kabir Bakie, 2005. Creative Commons license. 

On the second floor is Selected Works, a used book store run by Keith Peterson and his bookstore cat. Keith is an author; his book is called, appropriately enough, The Body in the Bookstore Sink. I don't know if the big, blue bookstore cat (likely a Russian blue) had ever written a novel. 

My fascinating find at Selected Works was Ernest Hemingway and the Movies by Frank M. Lawrence. I couldn't resist it because it has a side-by-side comparison of Hemingway's short story "The Killers," the 1946 film and the 1963 remake (with Lee Marvin and Angie Dickinson in place of Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner). 

Because, you know, I can't just watch a movie based on a book. I have to get obsessive and read more about it. If Keith had any nonfiction books on the subject of James Jones, I would have had to buy those, too. 

We took the time to look at and appreciate the turn-of-the-19th-century building - its murals on the highest floor, its terrazzo floors, its iron and brass railings. It used to be the showroom in which the Studebakers sold horse-drawn carriages before they took to making cars. Then we had to get back on the train. 

Freed from having to study for my audition, I was able to return to Patricia Bosworth's biography of Montgomery Clift on the train. It's a fascinating and disturbing read. Bosworth mentions (and, I think, kind of glosses over) Monty's arrest in New Orleans for allegedly soliciting "a young boy" for sex. Apparently, charges were never filed, so there's no evidence to say what, if anything, ever happened. In colloquial use, "a young boy" could mean anything from a very small child to a 17-year-old - and, depending on the state law of Louisiana at that time, a teenager might have been above the legal age of consent. Keep in mind, too, that it wasn't uncommon in the pre-GLBTQ civil rights days for police to arrest men just for being seen in public picking up other men, so it may have been a completely false charge initiated by a cop who just didn't like the way Monty walked or something. 

Public domain

On the other hand, people saw the 29-year-old Monty kissing Elizabeth Taylor when she was 17, and Judy Balaban (her father was the head of Paramount) said she dated Monty when she was 16 and he was in his 30s. Balaban never explicitly says that their relationship was sexual, but she does imply it, saying that one weekend, given the choice of whether to share a bed or stay in separate rooms, they choose to stay in the same bed. Again, 16 may have been legal at that time and place, but by modern standards we'd almost certainly consider that emotionally unhealthy behavior - and potentially abusive, because of the huge difference in experience between them. 

So again, I think Bosworth is glossing over some of the more problematic facts, but I also have to consider the context, the fact that this happened 50+ years ago and the fact that it may be too paternalistic of me to suggest that 16- and 17-year-old young women shouldn't claim the right to make their own sexual decisions. See also "Reviving the Runaways: Who Should Rule When Law, Psychology and Teenage Hormones Collide?" 

The not-problematic part I learned was that Monty and James Jones met at a party, at which Jones personally hand-picked Monty to play Prewitt in From Here to Eternity. Monty studied Jones' mannerisms, and Jones was found of telling people that Monty's performance as Prewitt was, in a sense, an impression of Jones himself. 

Today I received a royalty check for a reprint of an article I'd forgotten I'd even submitted to a small regional magazine. I used it to purchase the Season One boxed set of Person of Interest. Triumph! Every time I get a double-digit royalty check, I feel like I'm Ernest Hemingway. 

That Much Closer to Eternity

So as I'm reading From Here to Eternity, one of the few remaining actors therein, Ernest Borgnine, decided to die. I'm not happy about this. I haven't even gotten to the part of the book that contains his character, Sgt. "Fatso" Judson. I don't even know if he's a good guy, a bad guy, or a chopped salad of mixed good and evil bits (which is what most James Jones characters actually seem to be). Now when I finish the book and reward myself by watching the movie, I'll have to watch it thinking, "Oh, Ernest Borgnine's poor family and friends - they must miss him terribly." Stupid reality! Stop intruding on my enjoyment of fictional characters.

The principle actors - Montgomery Clift as Prew, Donna Reed as Lorene, Deborah Kerr as Karen Holmes and Burt Lancaster as Milt Warden - are all dead. Long dead, in the case of Montgomery Clift. He had multiple addiction issues and died young, in his 40s.

But look at him: he's so beautiful.



There's something else about this cool Nebraska guy - according to Patricia Bosworth, who wrote a biography of Clift, he was one of my people, the bisexuals. Maybe not the best example of a happy, well-adjusted bi, but still - I shall now picture him ascended to bisexual heaven, where he shall sit at the right hand of James Dean, amen.



The quote that accompanied this photo, when I found it on Pinterest, was, "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."

...and with that quote (which may or may not be accurate - don't trust the Internet), I am completely in love with him.

Well, I'd better go to bed now. Montgomery Clift, please get in my dreams.