The true sto­ry of Mont­gomery Clift, as told by his youngest nephew

About five years ago, film­mak­ing duo Robert Clift and Hillary Dem­mon Clift decid­ed to make a doc­u­men­tary about Robert’s long-dead uncle. So the hus­band-and-wife team did what most peo­ple in that sit­u­a­tion would do. They began the long process of inter­view­ing rel­a­tives and col­lect­ing old audio, film and oth­er snip­pets, try­ing to make sense out of the frag­ments they had. As with oth­er long-dead uncles, there were as many whis­pered rumours and long­stand­ing sto­ries about the man as there were accept­ed facts. Except most people’s uncles aren’t Mont­gomery Clift.

“I grew up with peo­ple telling me who Mon­ty was, but I didn’t know him,” Robert Clift tells LWLies. ​“I heard sto­ries about him. I heard pub­lic accounts and pri­vate accounts of him, and I want­ed to rec­on­cile those two.” A lead­ing man of near-myth­i­cal sta­tus, Clift film career went from strength to strength despite him being noto­ri­ous­ly choosy with his roles. He starred as a social climber full of coiled rage oppo­site Eliz­a­beth Tay­lor in A Place in the Sun, a hard-head­ed ide­al­ist who goes his own way in From Here to Eter­ni­ty, a tor­tured priest in I Con­fess, and a Jew­ish GI dur­ing World War Two in The Young Lions.

Robert Clift is the son of Montgomery’s old­er broth­er, Brooks, mak­ing him the youngest nephew of the Hol­ly­wood icon. He nev­er met the family’s most famous mem­ber, but he grew up regaled with sto­ries, and with his father’s immense col­lec­tion of arte­facts he had stock­piled on Mon­ty. As such, the sto­ry that unfolds in Mak­ing Mont­gomery Clift is as much about Brooks Clift and his dogged desire to pro­tect the lega­cy of his kid broth­er – replete with his moun­tain of archives – and the rip­ple effect it would have on his family.

Brooks had the curi­ous habit of record­ing every­thing, and kept audio of phone con­ver­sa­tions with his broth­er. Pre­vi­ous­ly unseen stacks of 16mm home movies were also uncov­ered by the film­mak­ers, mak­ing for a haunt­ing­ly inti­mate por­trait of Clift’s more pri­vate moments. It’s this fam­i­ly back­sto­ry that gives real heft to the doc­u­men­tary, and a gen­uine­ly unique perspective.

Mak­ing Mont­gomery Clift is more essay film than staid biog­ra­phy, care­ful­ly decon­struct­ing those decades of image-mak­ing around the star. It assumes some knowl­edge about Clift’s life and career, using Robert as a nar­ra­tor to give a sense of his per­son­al attach­ment to the sto­ry. ​“My curios­i­ty is root­ed in the dis­crep­an­cy between what I heard at home and what was known in the pub­lic,” explains Robert. ​“And the idea of trac­ing the con­struc­tion of his persona.”

Part of Clift’s per­sona was immac­u­late good looks. He had a sculpt­ed, rangy hand­some­ness, a pro­file too neat for approach and too del­i­cate for machis­mo. The doc­u­men­tary informs us that he was often filmed in soft focus, some­thing stu­dio-era film­mak­ers tend­ed to reserve for their lead­ing ladies. In William Wyler’s The Heiress, a lovelorn Olivia de Hav­il­land sighs: ​“Father, don’t you think he’s the most beau­ti­ful man you’ve ever seen?”

This phys­i­cal beau­ty would be inex­orably feed into the myth­mak­ing around Clift, part of which revolves around what’s assumed to be a nat­ur­al mood­i­ness and van­i­ty. In truth, Robert says, ​“Mon­ty always put an empha­sis on his labour as an actor – he refers to him­self in one inter­view as a ​‘work­er’, which you don’t hear very much when talk­ing about act­ing.” Hillary adds, ​“He had integri­ty. He had con­cerns, and wouldn’t do a part if they weren’t addressed. We want­ed a chance to broad­en the idea of who Mon­ty could’ve been. We want­ed to look at some of the ele­ments of his life, like his labour in act­ing, that got over­shad­owed. Or mis­rep­re­sent­ed, over­tak­en by stereotypes.”

There are two pieces of accept­ed wis­dom about Mont­gomery Clift. One is that he was a clos­et­ed gay or bisex­u­al man who felt huge­ly bur­dened by his sex­u­al­i­ty; the oth­er is that his fate­ful car crash in 1956, which per­ma­nent­ly scarred his face and left him in chron­ic pain, accel­er­at­ed his alco­hol and drug depen­den­cies and seri­ous­ly dam­aged his self-esteem. Both are wide­ly thought to have con­tributed to Clift’s pre­ma­ture death of a heart attack in 1966, aged just 45. But Mak­ing Mont­gomery Clift resists this nar­ra­tive, using unseen footage, audio, beau­ti­ful still pho­tog­ra­phy and the odd inter­view to a paint a dif­fer­ent picture.

In fact, he was rea­son­ably com­fort­able with his sex­u­al­i­ty, cheer­ful­ly dat­ing both men and women. He was unabashed enough that peo­ple like John Wayne and John Hus­ton made dis­dain­ful or homo­pho­bic remarks about him while work­ing with him. Robert says of his uncle, ​“I feel his life has been defined through a lens that’s informed by out­dat­ed and homo­pho­bic ideas. I think that shift­ing that lens allows one to see his life from a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent perspective.”

Clift had a buoy­ant, imp­ish per­son­al­i­ty and was a con­stant prac­ti­cal jok­er, clown­ing around more often than he could be found brood­ing. Even his issues around chem­i­cal depen­den­cy began long before his acci­dent, after ado­les­cent ill­ness­es left him with chron­ic issues. As for his looks being ruined? Not as much of an issue as biog­ra­phers and writ­ers have made it out to be.

This revi­sion­ism is much-need­ed. A quick Google search of ​‘Mont­gomery Clift’ returns phras­es like ​‘beau­ti­ful los­er’ and ​‘longest sui­cide in Hol­ly­wood his­to­ry’. He’s become the poster boy for tragedy in Old Hol­ly­wood, a sto­ry shaped by well-mean­ing but sen­sa­tion­al­ist biogra­phies and oft-repeat­ed anecdotes.

Still, it’s easy to fall into believ­ing this time-worn nar­ra­tive of the trag­ic star. The Clash cer­tain­ly did when they wrote the song ​‘The Right Pro­file’. (The title is a ref­er­ence to the way the actor had to be shot by the cam­era in order to pre­serve his appear­ance post-acci­dent.) Clift’s roles dur­ing this peri­od of his career some­times seemed to show a painful self-aware­ness of the changes to his appear­ance. In The Mis­fits, his bust­ed-up rodeo star speaks on a pay­phone to his moth­er, mum­bling, ​“Nah, my face has healed up fine.” And dur­ing a dev­as­tat­ing cameo in Judge­ment at Nurem­berg, as a man ster­ilised by the Nazis, he stut­ters and slurs and jab­bers to the point that peo­ple assumed he was drunk­en­ly ad-lib­bing about his own per­son­al free-fall.

Rumours sur­round­ing Clift’s men­tal con­di­tion at the time of pro­duc­tion ruined this Oscar-nom­i­nat­ed role for fam­i­ly mem­bers. ​“For so many years, I thought this is some­one that my fam­i­ly loved and here he is hav­ing a men­tal break­down onscreen,” reflects Robert. ​“I didn’t want to watch it, because that’s what I saw. Even though I was warned not to trust all the sto­ries, no one went into detail, so I didn’t know what that meant. Now, in my for­ties, I can watch Judge­ment at Nurem­berg and appre­ci­ate that per­for­mance as a performance.”

As deeply entrenched as the roman­tic con­cept of Clift’s bro­ken­ness may be, it obscures a far rich­er and alto­geth­er more live­ly pic­ture of the man. It also has an unfor­tu­nate ten­den­cy to over­shad­ow a movie star who was – regard­less of his per­son­al life – one of the finest actors of the 20^th cen­tu­ry. His sex­u­al­ly ambiva­lent, vul­ner­a­ble char­ac­ters were both rev­o­lu­tion­ary and inge­nious; his influ­ence invalu­able to suc­ces­sive gen­er­a­tions of actors. Mak­ing Mont­gomery Clift is an insight­ful labour of love that helps us to see that more clearly.

Mak­ing Mont­gomery Clift screens at the Glas­gow Film Fes­ti­val on 28 Feb­ru­ary and again on 1 March. For more info vis­it glas​gow​film​.org