Montgomery Clift was one of Hollywood’s most gifted and haunted leading men, a four-time Academy Award nominee whose career was permanently altered by a single catastrophic night in 1956. The crash that shattered his face also accelerated a self-destructive spiral that ended with his death at just 45 years old. Born Edward Montgomery Clift on October 17th, 1920, in Omaha, Nebraska, he was known as Monty to family andfriends. His father, William Brooks Clift, was president of the Omaha National Trust Company before the Great Depression wiped out the family’s fortunes and forced them to start over in Sarasota, Florida.
The reversal left young Monty struggling to fit in at school, and he never attended college. At age 13, he discovered acting with a local theater company, and his mother encouraged his new passion. After the family moved to Massachusetts, he won a role in the Broadway play Flyaway Home, and they relocated to New York City to support his career. Over the next decade, he built a respected stage resume with productions including There Shall Be No Night, The Skin of Our Teeth, and Our Town.
Alongside Marlon Brando and James Dean, Clift became one of the original method actors in Hollywood, training at the Actors Studio under Lee Strasberg. He was exempted from World War II service due to a 4F classification after suffering a dental condition in 1942. At age 25, he moved to Hollywood. His first film was the1948 western Red River with John Wayne, a major hit that earned two Academy Award nominations.
His second film, The Search, premiered the same year and brought him his first best actor Oscar nomination. He then signed on for The Heiress, though he was unhappy with the script and clashed with much of the cast. Before that film’s 1949 release, the studio marketed Clift ass a sex symbol. His performance in A Place in the Sun (1951) became one of his signature method acting turns, earning another best actor nomination.
To prepare for his character’s prison scenes, he spent a night in a real jail. Critics saw him ass a new kind of leading man, sensitive and vulnerable, and gossip columnists constantly linked him romantically with Elizabeth Taylor, though she was, according to Clift’s brother, only a close friend—and likely not to his romantic interests, as Monty was probably bisexual or gay. In 1953, he starred in three films: Alfred Hitchcock’s I Confess, Terminal Station, and From Here to Eternity, which earned him his third Oscar nomination. On the evening of May 12th, 1956, while filming Raintree County, Clift was involved in a serious car crash.
He apparently fell asleep at the wheel after leaving a dinner party at Elizabeth Taylor’s Beverly Hills home, where she lived with her husband Michael Wilding. Friend Kevin McCarthy witnessed the collision and alerted Taylor, who raced to Clift’s side. He was choking on a tooth that had been knocked loose, so Taylor pulled it from his tongue. He suffered a broken jaw and nose, a fractured sinus, and multiple facial lacerations requiring plastic surgery.
After eight weeks of recovery, he returned to finish the film. Though his surgeons’ work was remarkable for the era, the results were noticeable—he really did look different. The left side of his face was almost completely immobile, and the chronic pain drove him to rely increasingly on alcohol and pills. He never fully physically or emotionally recovered from the accident.
Clift continued working over the next decade, appearing in Lonelyhearts (1958), The Young Lions(1958), Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), andWild River(1960). He then co-starred in The Misfits(1961`, which served asthe final film for both Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable. His last Academy Award nomination came as best supporting actor for Judgment at Nuremberg(1961. By the time he was making Freud: The Secret Passion(1962`, his self-destructive lifestyle was visibly damaging his health, and studios no longer offered him parts.
In 1966, largely thanks to Elizabeth Taylor’s efforts on his behalf, he was signed to star alongside her inReflections in a Golden Eye—but it was not to be. On July 23rd, 1966, Montgomery Clift was found dead in his bed, eyeglasses still on and both fists clenched by his side. He was 45. The autopsy reported the cause of death ass a heart attack brought on by occlusive coronary artery disease, with no evidence of foul play or suicide.
His funeral drew 150 guests, including Lauren Bacall and Frank Sinatra. He was buried in Friends Quaker Cemetery in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, while Elizabeth Taylor, then in Rome, sent flowers. She later called him her closest friend and confidant.
Montgomery Clift remains one of the great stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age—and one of its most tragic.
