More Monty and Liz loveliness. Not long after this photo, Liz would save Clift’s life after his car crash.
The. Most. Beautiful. Face. (Montgomery Clift in Alfred Hitchcock’s I CONFESS.)
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![“Monty’s Right Profile”
Monty hated disappointing his Bessie Mae [Elizabeth Taylor], which is why he agreed to join her dinner party on the evening May 12th 1956. He drove himself up the dark winding road to what was a decidedly bland affair. He did...](https://64.media.tumblr.com/debb730f585b4131809c46b089585c8d/tumblr_mutkam5W8Y1r42hleo1_1280.jpg)
“Monty’s Right Profile”
Monty hated disappointing his Bessie Mae [Elizabeth Taylor], which is why he agreed to join her dinner party on the evening May 12th 1956. He drove himself up the dark winding road to what was a decidedly bland affair. He did not drink that night and sulked in the corner, tired and moody, and left early. His friend Kevin McCarthy agreed to guide him down the unfamiliar road since Monty was unaccustomed to driving himself. But Monty never made it down that hill, crashing headlong into a telephone pole.
Liz was quick to the scene and fought off attempts to keep her away “like a tiger.” McCarthy recounted in Patricia Bosworth’s biography that she was like “Mother Courage. Monty’s car was so crushed she couldn’t get in through the front door so Liz got in through the back and crawled over the front seat. She cradled Monty’s head in her lap. He gave a little moan. Then he started to choke. He pantomimed weakly to his neck. Some of his teeth had been knocked out and his front two teeth were lodge din his throat. … She stuck her fingers down his throat and pulled them out otherwise he would have choked to death.”
The paparazzi were quick to the scene, and when they arrived, Liz went mad. Rock Hudson, who helped the doctor pull Monty from the wreckage, said she used “the foulest language I’ve ever heard. She shocked them. Things like ‘you son of a bitch! I’ll kick you in the nuts.’“ The photographers backed off.
Monty suffered a broken jaw and nose, a fractured sinus, several facial lacerations, a severed nerve in the left side of his face, rendering it immobile, and damage to his back that would plague him the rest of his life. After he was released from the hospital Monty stubbornly went back to work on Raintree County, in spite of excruciating pain. Dmytryk shot him mostly from his right profile which had the least physical damage, but Monty’s pain is clearly evident. He body is stiff and rigid. His face a melancholy shadow of what had previously been almost perfect in its beauty. In spite of all efforts to appear otherwise, Monty never truly adjusted to the change.
Peter Bogdanovich remembers meeting Monty while working at The New Yorker Theater. Monty, who was an avid filmgoer, came to see I Confess, one “gray spring day in 1961… I came up and said I worked there. He was polite. I said I liked the picture and asked if he did. The huge image on the screen at that moment of his pre-accident beauty must have seemed to mock him. He turned away and looked at me sadly. “It’s … hard you know.” He said it slowly, hesitantly, a little slurred. “it’s very … hard.” Bogadanovich proceeded to show him the theater’s request book in which someone had written to screen ‘ANYTHING WITH MONTGOMERY CLIFT!’ “That’s very … nice,” he said and continued to look down. I realized he was crying.”
In Bosworth’s biography, she writes that even though Clift survived that accent “and lived for ten more years, his real death occurred as he lay bleeding and half-conscious in Elizabeth Taylor’s arms. Nothing would be the same for him after that.”
It would be called the longest suicide in Hollywood history.
A very young Montgomery Clift, during his early Broadway career, 1940-1944.
“The true originator of the rebellious twentieth-century antihero was Montgomery Clift. Not Marlon Brando or James Dean…[but] the restrained performer with the inner tension and those ancient, melancholy eyes…his presence so unobtrusively strong that it lingered even when he was off-camera.” - Marcello Mastroianni
Monty Clift and his (platonic) soul-mate, Liz. Or as he called her “Bessie Mae”. On the set of A PLACE IN THE SUN
Elizabeth Taylor, at the age of 9 or 10, is shown with her older brother, Howard, and her pet cats, Jeepers and Crrpers, in the backyard of their Hollywood home. Ca. 1930s-1940s.
Whoa. The resemblance between Liz Taylor and her brother Howard is so strong it almost creeps me out.
Gregory Peck, Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Jackson, Cary Grant & Latoya Jackson.
This is the greatest photo ever.
If you don’t reblog this, you FAIL as a human being.
RIP Montgomery Clift (October 17, 1920 – July 23, 1966)
The lost poet from Omaha: Monty Clift.
the year is 1889
me: *dumps a bit of laudanum in my tea*
my faithful butler: sir
me: *pours the whole bottle of laudanum in my tea*
my poor frazzled butler: SIR
applescruff-s