Montgomery Clift: A Biography [Hardcover]

Patricia Bosworth (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1978

397 page hard cover biography of Montgomery Clift that shows how evolved into one of the definitive actors of the 1950's and explores the inner life aqnd tragic strivings of a man who remained an enigmatic figure even to his closet friends.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 397 pages
• Publisher: Harcourt Brace; First Edition edition (January 1, 1978)
• ASIN: B000KTVAP0
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,765,561 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

45 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful But Tragic Star, November 7, 2002

By 

Angelaustin (Elkhart, IN United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Montgomery Clift: A Biography (Paperback)

If ever anyone fit the idea of a beautiful but tragic star, it was Montgomery Clift. Talented yet insecure, generous yet selfish, caring yet self-centered, secretive yet outgoing, Clift was a bundle of contradictions. His private agony over his apparent bisexuality is depicted so well, one can feel his pain. Conflicted all his life, he yearned to marry and have a family, yet when given the chance to do so, he was never able to bring himself to commit to anyone. He seems to have loved women and adored their company, yet even when having intimate affairs with them, he was still compelled to seek out men for sex. It was a secret that ate at him all his life. While his childhood was far from ideal, it still doesn't explain all the torture and pain. And while he had many friends and relationships, all of them were compartmentalized in his mind and often his life, so that no one ever really knew him fully. If ever there was a story to illustrate the point that fame and fortune do not equal happiness, it is the story of Clift. The author did very thorough research, interviewing both family and friends of Clift. One wonders what might have been had he been given the proper phsychiatric care. Illuminating but ultimatly sad, this biography will probably give fans of Monty the best glimpses into his tortured soul and life they are ever likely to find.

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Monty: Going Over The Clift, September 12, 2006

By 

Stephanie DePue (Carolina Beach, NC USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Montgomery Clift: A Biography (Paperback)

Montgomery Clift was certainly a troubled darling of the later 1940's and early 1950s,an actor who starred in "A Place in the Sun," "From Here to Eternity," "Suddenly Last Summer,"and "Raintree County." He played gentle and sensitive, empathetic, suffering, almost androgynous. He was extremely handsome before the serious automobile accident that nearly killed him; he got to play with Hollywood's best (and its worst), and he surely followed the adage "live fast, die young, and leave a beautiful corpse."

This biography, by the former actress, and experienced, well-connected journalist Patricia Bosworth is more than fair. She has done a great deal of research: Clift was secretive about his life and kept his friends in compartments. She found a lot of people, and got them talking. Furthermore, she tackles his life with understanding and sympathy.

Clift was born to an overpowering, suffocating woman who was a demented snob: she allowed her clouded descent from two of the South's finer families to ruin her own, and her children's lives. His weak father was bankrupted by the Depression of the 1930s, giving Monty, the beautiful teenager, the chance to escape Mom and head for the New York stage. He was an immediate hit, taken up by such esteemed actors as Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, and taking up,, in turn, with the older torch singer Libby Holman, and many others, male and female: he seems to have been a true bisexual. He went to Hollywood, and was again an immediate hit, worldwide. But he continued to live around the corner from, and have to fight his mother for, breathing room. He did not handle either his fame, or his family problems well, and drifted into drink, drugs, and unpleasant perversions. In the late 50's, he left Elizabeth Taylor's California house stoned, and had the car accident that devastated his face, and his nerves. Despite the interventions of Taylor and other devoted friends, he was broke and considered unemployable when he died young, but not particularly prematurely, if you consider his life. He is buried, oddly enough, in Brooklyn, New York, in the famous Green-wood Cemetery.

Bosworth is quite deft in describing the interiors of Clift's life, and his inner circles. One man reminisces about his first meeting with Clift,"' ....he stared at me with those strange unblinking eyes of his. It was as if he was stripping me bare psychologically.'"

She quotes a friend about Clift's relationship with his mother,"'He may have said he hated her, but Sunny remained the most important person in his life, and he was maddened by this. They still had a very close, almost conspiratorial relationship. Early on she had confided in him all of her secrets--now they were two-faced with each other. Sunny was always tender and affectionate when they were together; when speaking about him to other people she was often unduly harsh.'"

And another friend,"' It didn't matter what sex you were. If Monty really liked you -- man or woman you ultimately went to bed with him. If he liked you, he couldn't keep his hands off you-- touching --caressing-- hugging-- he was very physical, and very, very affectionate. And of course he was always passing out with you and then you were undressing him and putting him to bed and finally you were ending up in bed with him too.'"

Montgomery Clift was always compelling in his performances. So is his life, as recounted here by Bosworth, though you are watching him go over the cliff.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The making of an American tragedy, July 13, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (London) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Montgomery Clift: A Biography (Paperback)

To contemporary cinema-goers, Montgomery Clift is a name they would find hard to place but in the 1950s he was one of THE top stars. Bosworth, in her classic biography, tells the compelling story of how he became an icon - before descending into a pain-ridden recluse and addict. She covers admirably his unusual upbringing at the hands of a mother who treated her children as though they were from one of the finest American families. It was a childhood in which he was cut off from people of his own age - and his father - as he was pushed from one hotel to another in America and Europe. From there he discovered the stage, taking Broadway by storm before being lured to Hollywood. Determined to stamp his authority on his career, he rejected the studio system and hundreds of banal scripts. In doing so, he set a new standard. His natural style of acting scorned the macho images, the Hollywood stereotypes, and opened the way for a new wave of male performers not afraid to ! ! reveal their vulnerability. But it was not all roses. As Bosworth graphically relates, Monty was haunted not just by his unusual childhood but also his homosexuality and as fame beckoned and the fear of exposure increased, he turned to drink - and later pills - to deaden his darkest feelings. A car crash in 1956, in which he was seriously injured, only increased his addictions and his career began a terminal decline, only ended with his early death. Bosworth's biography is both affectionate and revealing, painting a compelling and often moving picture of one of the most beautiful - but troubled - stars ever to grace the post-war movie screen. Among the often mediocre cannon of Hollywood biographies, this is a class act.