Montgomery Clift

His mother had been adopted, and she spent her life insisting that her true forebears were the postmaster general Montgomery Blair and the Union commander Robert Anderson. Edward Montgomery Clift and his two siblings were raised to match the claim: private tutors instead of school, long stretches in Europe, fluent German and French, a childhood conducted at a distance from other children. The Crash of 1929 took his father's money and the family kept moving anyway. He took an unpaid stage part at 13 in Sarasota and reached Broadway at 14. Ten years of theatre followed, Sherwood and Hellman and Wilder, and when Hollywood came he refused the standard seven-year contract, which almost nobody did.

Red River was shot in 1946 and held back until 1948, by which time The Search had opened first and brought him an Academy Award nomination. A Place in the Sun followed in 1951, From Here to Eternity in 1953. What he did on screen was subtract. He played men who hesitated, doubted themselves and spoke too quietly for the room, in a decade of declarative stars — the Method's inwardness on film before Brando shot Streetcar, and years before anyone had heard of James Dean. Four nominations. He never won one.

On the night of May 12, 1956, leaving a dinner party at Elizabeth Taylor's house during the filming of Raintree County, Clift missed a hairpin turn and hit a telephone pole. Taylor reached the wreck and, by the accounts of those present, pulled a dislodged tooth out of his mouth. Surgeons rebuilt a broken jaw, a broken nose and fractured cheekbones. The left side of his face never moved the same way again, and he treated the pain that followed with alcohol and prescription drugs. The acting teacher Robert Lewis called the years that remained the longest suicide in Hollywood history. He was gay or bisexual — Taylor said so publicly in 2000, his brother said bisexual — and the studio era buried it under blackmail calls and arranged dates. His biographers disagree about what that concealment cost him.

He is on screen for about 12 minutes in Judgment at Nuremberg in 1961, playing a baker sterilized under the Nazi program and testifying about it, and he waived nearly all his fee to do it. Stanley Kramer remembered him losing his lines and ad-libbing. His nephew's 2018 documentary shows a script Clift had rewritten by hand. It brought a fourth nomination and no award. On July 23, 1966, his companion found him dead of a heart attack in his locked bedroom on East 61st Street, at 45. The turn in American screen acting is usually credited to Brando. Clift got there first, and saying so is no longer a minority position.

Montgomery Clift's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Red River film
  Filmed in 1946 opposite John Wayne and released two years later 1948
• The Search film
  His first Academy Award nomination — he rewrote much of his own dialogue 1948
• A Place in the Sun film
  With Elizabeth Taylor, and a second nomination 1951
• From Here to Eternity film
  As Prewitt, the boxer who will not fight — a third nomination 1953
• The Misfits film
  A broken rodeo rider, opposite Marilyn Monroe in her last finished film 1961
• Judgment at Nuremberg film
  Twelve minutes on screen and a fourth nomination 1961

• October 17, 1920 aged 0 Born in Omaha to a banker and a mother certain of her aristocratic descent She had been adopted and spent her life pressing the claim.
• 1935 aged ~15 Debuts on Broadway at 14 in the comedy Fly Away Home It ran from January to July at the 48th Street Theatre.
• 1942 aged ~22 Creates the role of Henry in Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth
• 1948 aged ~28 Two first films open in one year and he still refuses a long contract Paramount settled for three pictures with the right to turn down any script or director.
• 1953 aged ~33 From Here to Eternity brings a third nomination He coached Frank Sinatra through the part that revived Sinatra's career.
• May 12, 1956 aged 35 Crashes into a telephone pole leaving a party at Elizabeth Taylor's house Broken jaw, broken nose, fractured cheekbones. He was back on Raintree County in two months.
• 1961 aged ~41 A 12-minute scene in Judgment at Nuremberg brings a fourth nomination He took the part for close to nothing.
• 1962 aged ~42 Universal sues him over delays on Freud and the offers stop The suit settled in his favor, but he did not make another film for four years.
• July 23, 1966 aged 45 Found dead in his locked bedroom on East 61st Street at 45 The autopsy gave the cause as a heart attack from occlusive coronary artery disease.

• Elizabeth Taylor 1932–2011
  Two-time Academy Award winner who turned the largest fame in the world into the first mass-audience campaign against AIDS. closest friend
• Marlon Brando 1924–2004
  Actor whose method acting revolutionized film performance and influenced generations of actors. rival
• James Dean 1931–1955
  Actor whose brief career and rebellious image in Rebel Without a Cause made him a symbol of teenage disillusionment. influenced
• Frank Sinatra 1915–1998
  Crooner and actor whose voice and charisma made him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. mentor
• Marilyn Monroe 1926–1962
  Actress and cultural icon whose blend of vulnerability and glamour made her a symbol of Hollywood's golden age. co-star
• Rock Hudson 1925–1985
  Hollywood leading man and the first major American public figure to disclose an AIDS diagnosis contemporary