Lives of Montgomery Clift

Con't from ago 18 was a bisexual. I met two girls he got pregnant, He was never exclusively one thing or the other; he swung back and forth. Because we'd been raised in Europe where homosexuality was more or less accepted, he never felt ashameduntil much later when he grew up."

Bosworth states that Clift came to Elizabeth Taylor's home one night with a "mincing chorus boy" and the next night with “a very proper young lady." as if to say. "Look Ma--l can--and 1 must--do both." " .

Yet the ambiguity confused him. He had a friend from very early years who disapproved of homosexuality and said to Clift in 1954, in graphic terms, that he should take a girl to be. "I already did that and I didn't like it," Clift said despairingly.

Yet it was about this time. perhaps a year or so earlier that Clift asked a Hollywood friend. "How can you tell you're a homosex-

al?" He was asking this after he had had an affair with a pseudonymous male called Josh--and surely sexual relations with many other males.

Josh. who went back to the early 1940's and remained Cliff's friend to the end. "He never admitted being homosexual to

me.and I'd been his lover. This may sound strange, but I'm not sure he was ever exclusively homosexual, since he was capable of affectionate erotic relationships with either sex."

Mira Rostova, the dramatic coach who should have the last word on the complex issue. "Monty was totally split sexually." she said. "That was the core stoped being conflicted, and he of his tragedy, because he never never stopped feeling guilty about being conflicted." Huwever, Miss Rostova admitted that there was part of Clift which he kept hidden from her, "his underto Bosworth. But she added that ground existence." she termed it Clift introduced her to his homosexual friends.

Both LaGuardia and Bosworth mention Clift's love affair with a

young actress in the early 1940's

Bosworth mentions a sexual affair with the daughter of a movie mogul in the 1950's. LaGuardia also mentions three pseudonyms of Rick. Dino, and of Clift's male lovers, giving them Jean. Bosworth mentions Josh, who doesn't appear, apparently. in LaGuardia's account (or would he be LaGuardia's Rick?). and her Giles is the same as LaGuardia's Jean. LaGuardia intimates, that eventually Clift

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became totally male oriented.but Bosworth seems to think otherwise. Both biographers speak of Clift's long-term tangled relationship with his psychiatrist, an older homosexual man, but there is no evidence that sex was involved

Clift and Elizabeth Taylor had a very special relationship Richard Burton once said. Monty, Elizabeth likes me but she loves you." According to Bosworth, Taylor very much wanted to marry Clift both before her marriage to Nicky Hilton and before her marriage to Michael Wilding, but Clift said no. Apparently she came to regard him as a naughty but beloved brother.

Clift attracted a great number of people to him, winning their affection and concern, but eventually most of them drifted away. the oy-man's demands upon them being too great, although he could he a considerate and magnanimous friend. Roddy McDow.ill was one friend who. despite Clift's occasional mental cruelty stayed. As early as the late 1950's McDowall said, "There's nothing any of us can do. You can only hold his hand to the grave."

to bed.

He related to people on a oneto-one basis. Most of his friends didn't know each other. Most of them knew only certain facets of his personality.

What of his co-workers motion pictures?

HIGH GEAR Page 21

Marlon Brando, who starred with Clift in The Young Lions." although they had no real scene together, had before this picture. and after Clift's accident. offered fo go with him to Alcoholic Anoinymous to help him stop drinking. Clift declined. Clift became buddies with Dean Martin while acting with him in The Young Lions." giving him help with his role They did a lot of drinking together, but Martin ended up fleeing from Cliff's demanding presence to have a drink alone.

He and Marilyn Monroe became friendly during the filming of "The Misfits." recognizing each other as kindred strays. Monroe said, not unkindly. He's the only person I know who's in worse shape than I am.". Old macho Clark Gable, in the same film, didn't quite know how to react to Clift's eccentric and childish antics.

Beauteous Jennifer Jones became romantically interested in him during the Rome filming of Indiscretion of an American Wife" and when she discovered that he was gay, she became so enraged that she stuffed a mink jacket down a portable toilet

Clift and Burt Lancaster, star rivals, were not simpatico during the filming of "From Here to Eternity," although there was no warfare Both Donna Reed and Frank Sinatra won supporting Academy Awards for their roles in that film, and it appears that their acting was enhanced by Clift's generous help (Clift received his third best actor Academy Award nomination for his role of the rebel Prewitt but was defeated by William Holden in "Stalag 17") During the film-

It would appear that Clift accepted doom, even consciously hastened it. Writer Mary McCarthy, sister of Kevin, diag. nosed him as a hebephrenic schizophrenic. a person whos actions are characterized by regression to childhood behaving or Clift once the well-bred and elegant, would eat from his plate with his hands, eat off other people's plates and he seemed to have a penchant for streaking out of hotel rooms His friends often had to undress him and put him

Clift and Sinatra became real buddies. doing a lot of drinking together, but the friendship later came to an abrupt hall when at a party Clift, highly intoxicated. and another man were coming on sexually and Sinatra had his body guards throw lift out

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Clift had a wretched time with director John Huston, during the production of "Freud." a macabre filming which constitutes a story in itself, as apparently does the filming of some of Huston's other pictures. They had worked together well on "The Misfits." but both biographers state that Huston couldn't accept Clift's homosexuality, with each giving a varying account of how the director became repelled by this while Clift was staying in Huston's castle in Ireland. Both accounts involved a man in Clift's ed.

During the later years, the stardimmed years, we see an ill and pathetic Montgomery Clift cruising the Manhattan Streets, even calling out from the window of his fashionable brownstone, and becoming involved with rough trade and male hustlers (his father once confronted two male hustlers in Clift's kitchen preparing their breakfast, and he leda in disgust). Producer Frank Taylor described a bizarre scene that occurred in the back room of a raunchy bar, probably Dirty Dick's, in Manhattan's West Side dock district, in which a passed out and fully clothed Clift lay on a table while weird characters fondled and nuzzled him as a circle of other wierdos stood and watched Taylor picked him up carried him to Clift's limousine. took him home--and never saw him again.

As early as 1959 the actor. because of his addiction to alcohol and drugs, his unreliability on the set. found it difficult to find roles.. but Elizabeth, Taylor demanded him for her film, "Suddenly Last Summer. And five. films later, when the going was really rough, and after he had completed an inferior film in Europe. 'The Delector" he was slated to co-star with her, again at her demand, in "Reflections in a Golden Eye." (loyal Elizabeth although now largely absent from his life, even put up her own salary to insure him). Before the picture began.Clift died suddenly in bed of a heart attack on July 23, 1966. He was forty five years old He was discovered by his black nurse-secretary Lorenzo James, who had been hired to care for him for the past several -years and had brought some order into Clift's routine. He was buried in the Clift family plot in a Quaker cemetery in Brooklyn's. Prospect Park.

Both LaGaurdia and Bosworth have written admirable blogra phies. Both interviewed many of the people associated with Montgomery Clift. LaGaurdia perhaps is more deeply analytical, but Bosworth's score at times soems con't on page 22