Making Montgomery Clift is a new documentary that offers audiences a unique look beyond the self-destructive and tortured soul we often hear about and instead focuses on the happier parts of the iconic actor’s life.
The film, which was funded through a GoFundMe campaign, was produced and directed by Clift’s nephew, Robert Clift, and his wife, Hillary Demmon.
“I was always aware that there was a disconnect” between the public perception of Clift and the man his loved ones knew, Robert Clift says. “It was just never addressed in any systematic manner. This film gave me an opportunity to explore that.”
Clift was a contemporary of Marlon Brando and James Dean and starred in such iconic films as The Misfits, From Here To Eternity, and A Place in the Sun. He was also bisexual. Plagued by drug and alcohol addiction for much of his life, he suffered poor health and died of a heart attack at age 45.
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Making Montgomery Clift premiered on Sunday at the ArcLight Hollywood as part of the L.A. Film Festival.
Watch.
Kangol
Although opportunities and acceptance have improved considerably, you only need look at the challenges gay and bi actors in Hollywood still face today in order to extrapolate how difficult it would have been for someone like Clift back in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, when gay sex was criminalized in many states, when the general attitude in the country was quite homophobic, when Hollywood itself portrayed gay people in a negative light, and when many actors, like Rock Hudson and Tab Hunter, had to create fake heterosexual romances to protect their careers. Thinking about the films Clift appeared in, his vulnerability comes through in some many of those performances.
Billy Budd
If I remember correctly, he got addicted to morphine after a serious car accident that occurred after he left Liz Taylor’s house drunk. I believe he was gay, not bi. He was incredibly beautiful and evidently had issues with depression, which canbe felt on his performances.
Billy Budd
Director Stanley Kubrick photographed Monty, when Kubrick was still a photographer and not a filmmaker. The photos are fantastic, and seem to have been taken at Monty’s house. My favorite is the one where he is licking his fingers after drinking milk. The name of the article is “Glamour Boy In Baggy Pants.” – year 1949.
Billy Budd
Note: I secretly wish Kubrick had taken nude photos of Monty. There are full frontal nude photos of other famous guys of that era, such as Nureyev (by Richard Avedon) and Burt Lancaster. But I can’t find any of Monty.
Polaro
Not so secretly now!
Lacuevaman
who the f*ck cares…. and why?
DCguy
What a shock, one of the accounts that regularly supports and defends anti-LGBT bigots, becomes angry that somebody famous who was negatively affected by bigotry is even mentioned.
Dwik27
You must get that same question directed back at you a lot. Get a life, sad sack.
dwes09
You can be absolutely certain that many more people care about the life of Clift than care about yours! And that is even not knowing your regressive and soulless views about most things.
GOD! You are tiresome!!
OrchidIslander
I became an instant fan after watching The Heiress with Olivia De Haviland. His performance, and beauty, were pitch perfect. These days they don’t make comparable classy, charming and seductive conmen like Morris.
jjunke
Bisexual??? He was gay. Relationships with women were purely platonic.
Donston
It’s become politically correct to throw someone in the bi category unless they were known to have lived a strictly homosexual lifestyle their entire lives or they flat-out said, “I’m 100% gay and homosexual”.
I’m not certain I’d entirely blame Hollywood for the troubles of all these old Hollywood actors. Yes, the industry was even more fvcked up then than it is now. And yes, even more so than now people couldn’t be their legit self and had to completely manufacture their image. But a lot of these actors, both of old times and nowadays, suffered from depression, childhood physical and/or sexual abuse, self-resentment, addiction issues and so on long before they got into the industry.
rand503
If Elizabeth Taylor said he’s gay, that’s good enough for me. He was likely bisexual in the sense that the studio made him go out on dates, á la Tab Hunter and Anthony Perkins.
Donston
I mean, actors indulging some bi behaviors here and there or having attractions beyond one gender is really nothing unusual. Even most gay-identifying performers nowadays admit to having had relationships, sexual experiences and/or attractions beyond their gender. And some have even admitted to being pushed to present themselves in opposite gender relationships by managers/agents (though even in these times no one has the balls to fully expose that side of the industry). It ultimately doesn’t really matter, but it does seem that he only had legit and sustained same-sex romantic interests.
I do think he was a pretty good actor. Looking at these old movies from today’s pov I much prefer him to someone like James Dean. But because he didn’t die super young and because most of the movies he was in didn’t age all that well he’s become a bit underrated.
Pistolo
It worries me that we’re retroactively deeming men who might’ve had vague relations with women bisexual when they were otherwise gay and stated themselves to be. A lot of gay guys, as we all know, concealed their sexuality this way- this is not some fluffy, post-sexual revolution kind of thing we project onto them. Elizabeth Taylor said he came out to her when she was 19 and that she set him up with men years thereafter yet as recently as a couple years ago people were trying to make movie with Matthew Bomer & Camilla Bell detailing their “romance”. It’s bull, just more revisionism & often from other queer people.
hansniemeijer
There is still a lot unknown about Hollywood.
jthomasmpls
Maybe one day bisexual men will be accepted as bisexual.
woodroad34
Really? Bisexual? I thought he’d go to NY bars and pass out on pool tables where people would have their ways with him. As I recall, he was referred to as Princess Small Meat.
jthomasmpls
Going to bars and passing out on pool tables does make someone gay, bisexual or straight. I’m not sure if you’re implying he did that a gay bars but in my mind that still wouldn’t make him less bisexual. To me that behavior sounds like a tormented soul with an addiction problem (btw, bisexual men have higher rates of addiction that other sexual identities, for what it’s worth). And those that had their way with him are rapists. Period.
Why the mention, true or not, the Princess Little Meat?