Customer Reviews

Montgomery Clift : A Biography

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This book is a translation of a biography which came out in Italy in 2000. It made a lot of sense in that country were no books were ever written or translated on Clift. In the States this can be considered just a summary of all the biographies available here. Mcfarland is an academic oriented publisher therefore their books are all over priced because sold mostly to libraries and institutions. This book is a good start for someone who wants to know all about Clift withouth reading too many pages. It contains also some wonderful unseen photographs completely different from the Italian edition. It's a book not to dismiss.

...for an brief, inaccurate, and at best an only average book which offers nothing new on the great but tragic actor, Montgomery Clift. Most of it is in fact a collection of annotations from well over 100 different sources - biographies, news clippings, etc.
At 150 pages (not including the footnote references or appendixes, which are at least informative), this book was overpriced and underwritten.

Any book on MONTGOMERY CLIFT that gives a brief rundown of the facts on THE HEIRESS and gets them all wrong has got to be a book I don't want to bother reading in full.

The author states that William Wyler was "pressured by Paramount" to take Olivia de Havilland as the star, when in truth it was Olivia de Havilland who saw the play in New York City and asked Wyler to see it, as it would make a film project they could both do at Paramount. Wyler went to see the play and immediately let Olivia know that he would be happy to direct it with Olivia in the starring role. There was no such thing as Paramount pressuring him to take Olivia.

As for her calling him a "bully", there were tensions during filming, especially when Wyler demanded too many retakes of scenes without telling the actors what he wanted differently--but this was true on all of Wyler's films. It's also well known that neither Wyler nor Olivia liked the fact that Clift was paying too much attention to his drama coach on the sidelines, until Wyler was able to convince him to rely more on the director than his coach.

To get wrong, something as simple as Olivia choosing the project for herself and Wyler, and state something completely opposite, makes the rest of the book a questionable matter indeed. On this basis alone, I doubt whether the book has any value as film history.

MONTGOMERY CLIFT WAS THE ACTOR THAT ALL ACTORS AFTER HIM OWE THE GREATEST DEBT TO. NOT BRANDO AS GOOD AS HE WAS. THIS MAN CLIFT TURNED DOWN ALL OF BRANDOS BEST AND HOLDENS BEST.WATCH THIS MAN ACT ITS A WONDER. EVEN WHEN HE WAS IN SO MUCH PAIN AND ALL DRUGGED UP HE WAS A WONDER. HE MADE MORE GREAT MOVIES THAN ANYONE. THIS BOOK IS A FAKE AND DRAWN FROM OTHER BOOKS. FORGET THIS BOOK. GET THE TWO WRITTEN IN THE EIGHTIES ONE BY BOSWORTH THE OTHER AUTHOR NAME I CANT RECALL. LETS HONOR THIS ACTOR .