Fifty years ago today, silver screen actor Montgomery Clift died from a heart attack. Though it was never officially stated, the once dreamy boy wonder—who made a career out of being good looking and sensitive—was a known abuser of alcohol and prescription pills. This substance abuse was more than likely a strong contributor to his death on July 23, 1966. He was 45-years-old.
Not Like the Others
Born Edward Montgomery Clift on October 17, 1920 in the flyover state of Nebraska, “Monty” started his acting career at a young age, landing his first role on Broadway when he was just 15-years-old (not an easy feat for a boy living in Omaha). While his brother Brooks went on to Harvard and his twin sister, Ethel, to Bryn Mawr College, Clift followed the acting bug to New York City where he continued to do theatre—including the 1941 Pulitzer Prize winning production of There Shall Be No Night—until he moved to Hollywood, California at the age of 25.
Clift’s passion for performing and indisputable all-American good looks helped him soar to the top of the motion picture industry, a still relatively new genre of show business that was booming on the left coast in the mid 1940s. Clift landed his first film role in 1946 in Red River starring opposite John Wayne, and his second role in 1948 in The Search—which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. Though Clift worked somewhat sporadically for someone with so much critical acclaim, it seems that most of the roles he did choose gave way to performances that were difficult to ignore. As his very close friend, Elizabeth Taylor, once said, “Monty could’ve been the biggest star in the world if he did more movies.”
Outside to Insides
Though his physical appearance was clean cut—with innocent, honest blue eyes that perfectly contrasted his thick, brooding brows—Clift was not the handsome-by-accident schoolboy type he often portrayed. Dark and cynical, the natural movie star was as brilliant an actor as he was difficult to work with—often picking apart scripts and turning down monumental roles in films like East of Eden and Sunset Boulevard. But nothing would compare to the downward spiral that made up the last 10 years of his short life.
On the evening of May 12, 1956, the 35-year-old who was in the midst of shooting Raintree County, drove head-on into a telephone poll after “falling asleep” behind the wheel (we now call this “passing out”). Clift was reportedly coming from a party at his co-star, Elizabeth Taylor’s home. Though media rumors reported that the two were a couple, Taylor lived with her then husband, British actor Michael Wilding (whose birthday they were likely celebrating that night). The accident left Clift somewhat disfigured (though plastic surgery did wonders) with a definite change in his speech and behavior which progressed to a point where Clift’s unpredictable demeanor affected his ability to work and made him difficult to insure. Whether this was a result of the physical injuries incurred from the accident, the side effects from his excessive alcohol and pain medication consumption or a mixture of the two, no one really knows.
The Song Remains the Same
While Montgomery Clift might have died young, he was still quite lucky. Like many alcoholics and addicts, his star shone bright but it burned out quickly. Clift was undoubtedly gifted and reportedly miserable, caught in that familiar cycle of success and self-sabotage, fueled and foiled by drugs and alcohol. Though the self-hating golden boy may have been a somewhat endearing character in the golden age of Hollywood (Elizabeth Taylor reportedly adored him so much she put up her own money to insure him for Reflections of a Golden Eye but he died before the movie began shooting), it’s now an overplayed song in the overloaded jukebox of troubled talent that showbiz rarely puts up with today. But that doesn’t mean the childish and entitled ego of the alcoholic no longer exists at the top (see Lindsay episode recaps)—addicts are addicts are addicts, whether people accept it or not.
Clift spent the last day of his life, July 22, 1966 (ironically exactly 10 years to-the-day of his life-changing car crash) in his Lenox Hill townhouse on Manhattan’s East Side, primarily confined to his bedroom. The last person to speak to the actor was his in-home nurse, Lorenzo James, who asked Clift if he needed anything before he went to bed. The next morning, James found Clift lying on his bathroom floor, with his eyeglasses still on and his fists clenched.
Photo courtesy of Film Star Vintage via Flickr (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/) (resized and cropped)
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