Rise to film stardom: 1946–1956 '' (1951) At age 25, Clift's first
Hollywood film role was opposite
John Wayne in the
Western film
Red River; director
Howard Hawks was impressed by his recent stage performance and was willing to sign him with no strings attached, which greatly appealed to Clift's sense of independence. Although filmed in 1946, the film was delayed release until August 1948. A critical and commercial success, the film was nominated for two
Academy Awards. Clift's second film role (though it premiered first that same year) was
The Search, which earned him his first nomination for an
Academy Award for Best Actor. Clift's naturalistic performance led to director
Fred Zinnemann's being asked, "Where did you find a soldier who can act so well?" Clift was unhappy with the quality of the script, and reworked it himself. The film was awarded a screenwriting Academy Award for the credited writers.
MGM distributed the film nationwide as magazines generated massive attention for Clift.
Paramount Pictures ended up offering him the best of any incoming studio offer (which he accepted): a three-film deal (down from the typical seven-year contract) that came with the freedom to turn down any script and any director, as well as the right for either himself or the studio to terminate the agreement at any time. Every major Hollywood studio wanted to make a deal with Clift and was collectively shocked that a young actor could command such leverage after the release of a single film: "the
death knell of the producers and the moguls, and the birth of Actor Power." Clift was on the cover of
Life magazine by December 1948.
Look magazine gave him its Achievement Award and called him "the most promising star on the Hollywood horizon. Clift's first film for Paramount was
The Heiress (1949). While director
William Wyler notably had difficulty with his poor posture, co-star
Olivia de Havilland expressed difficulty with his seriousness, saying that "Monty was painstaking and I liked that about him, but I had a sense that Monty was thinking almost entirely of himself and leaving me out of the scene." He tended to funnel most of his energy into intense rehearsals with acting coach
Mira Rostova who accompanied him on set. Overall he ended up unhappy with his performance and left early during the film's premiere. The following summer in 1949, Clift shot
The Big Lift in Berlin. It was intended to be more of a semi-documentary, pro-America wartime film and less an acting vehicle, but was still a welcome opportunity for Clift to portray a U.S. soldier. Clift, having toured Europe before the war, was shocked by the 'unbelievable conditions' of rubble in Berlin. Clift's next role as the drifter George Eastman in
A Place in the Sun (1951) is regarded as one of his signature
method acting performances. He worked extensively on his character, and was again nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor. For his character's scenes in jail, Clift spent a night in a real state prison. His main acting rival (and fellow Omaha native),
Marlon Brando, was so moved by Clift's performance that he voted for Clift to win the Academy Award for Best Actor, sure that he would win, while Clift voted for Brando in
A Streetcar Named Desire. A Place in the Sun was critically acclaimed;
Charlie Chaplin called it "the greatest movie made about America". The film received added media attention due to the rumors that Clift and co-star
Elizabeth Taylor were dating in real life. After a break, Clift committed himself to three more films, all of which premiered during 1953:
I Confess to be directed by
Alfred Hitchcock, Vittorio De Sica's
Terminal Station, and Fred Zinnemann's
From Here to Eternity, which earned Clift his third Academy Award nomination (the second of two nominations for films directed by Zinnemann). For the latter, Clift committed to building strength and endurance by jogging laps around
Hollywood High School, learning boxing from
Mushy Callahan and author
James Jones, and how to imitate playing the bugle and reading sheet music from trumpeter
Mannie Klein for the role of middleweight boxer and bugle-playing soldier Private Robert E. Lee Prewitt. During the casting of
From Here to Eternity,
Harry Cohn opposed Clift for the part of Prewitt, opting for
John Derek or
Aldo Ray instead. However, Jones and Zinnemann preferred Clift and personally campaigned for him for the role. Clift visited Jones several times at his homes in
Arizona and
Illinois and modeled the character after Jones himself. After seeing the film, Jones commended Clift for his portrayal of Prewitt. Clift supported and mentored
Frank Sinatra in his role as Private Angelo Maggio. Sinatra later said, "I learned more about acting from him than I ever knew before".
Car crash On the evening of May 12, 1956, while filming
Raintree County, Clift was involved in a serious car crash after leaving a dinner party in Beverly Hills, California, hosted by Elizabeth Taylor and her husband,
Michael Wilding. Clift had veered off one of the twisting hairpin turns and smashed into a telephone pole and the surrounding cliffside. Alerted by friend Kevin McCarthy, who witnessed the collision, Taylor found Clift under the shattered dashboard, conscious but with his face bleeding and swelling rapidly. She pulled out a hanging tooth that was cutting into his tongue before accompanying him into the ambulance. He suffered a concussion, broken jaw, broken nose, fractured sinuses, fractured cheekbones, and several facial lacerations that required
plastic surgery. In a filmed interview years later in 1963, Clift described his injuries in detail, including how his broken nose could be snapped back into place. After a two-month recovery period, Clift returned to the set to finish the film. Despite the studio's concerns over profits, Clift correctly predicted the film would do well, if only because moviegoers would flock to see the difference in his facial appearance before and after the crash. Although the results of Clift's plastic surgeries were remarkable for the time in leaving no visible scars, the differences in his facial appearance were noticeable, particularly the left side of his face, which was nearly immobile. Continued pain from his injuries led him to rely on alcohol and pills for relief, as he had done after an earlier bout with dysentery left him with chronic intestinal problems. As a result, Clift's health and physical appearance deteriorated.
Later film career: 1957–1966 '' (1958) For the next nine years, Clift made nearly as many films after his traumatic car accident as he had previously. Still, the last half of his 20-year career has been referred to as the "longest suicide in Hollywood history" by acting teacher
Robert Lewis because of Clift's subsequent abuse of painkillers and alcohol. He began to behave erratically in public, which embarrassed his friends. His next four films were
The Young Lions (1958), which is the only film featuring both Clift and Marlon Brando,
Lonelyhearts (1958),
Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), and
Elia Kazan's
Wild River, released in 1960. With his next two films,
The Misfits (1961) and
Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), Clift pivoted to somewhat smaller supporting or cameo roles that required less overall screen time, while still delivering demanding performances. Playing the faded rodeo rider Perce Howland in
The Misfits, his first, introductory scene, performed inside a phone booth, only took two hours of the scheduled two shooting days, which impressed cast and crew.
Marilyn Monroe (in what was to be her last filmed role) was also having emotional and substance-abuse problems at the time; she described Clift in a 1961 interview as "the only person I know who is in even worse shape than I am". In his 12-minute cameo scene in
Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), Clift played a developmentally disabled German baker who had been a victim of the
Nazi sterilisation programme testifying at the
Nuremberg trials. Clift was willing to waive his fee entirely, accepting the supporting part with minimum compensation. His anguished performance (which earned him his fourth
Academy Award nomination) was often thought to be due to his own nervous breakdown. Director
Stanley Kramer later wrote in his memoirs that Clift "wasn't always close to the script, but whatever he said fitted in perfectly" and that he suggested Clift turn to
Spencer Tracy to "ad lib something" when he struggled to remember his lines for his one scene. In nephew Robert Anderson Clift's
2018 documentary, superimposed pages of Clift's own heavily annotated original script show that the actor was actually deliberately and consciously performing with his own rewritten dialogue as opposed to confused improvisation. On a taped phone call, Clift said that he played the character in a way that "holds onto himself, in spite of himself" with dignity. '' (1961) After completing John Huston's
Freud: The Secret Passion (1962),
Universal Studios sued him for his frequent absences that caused the film to go over budget. Clift countersued with the assertion that he struggled to keep up with an overwhelming volume of last-minute script revisions and that an accidental blow to both eyes on set gave him cataracts. The case was later settled out of court with evidence in Clift's favor, but the damage to Clift's reputation as unreliable and troublesome endured. As a consequence, he was unable to find film work for four years. The film's success at the box office brought numerous awards for screenwriting and directing, but none for Clift himself. On January 13, 1963, a few weeks after the initial release of
Freud, Clift appeared on the live television discussion program
The Hy Gardner Show, where he spoke at length about the release of his current film, his film career, and his treatment by the press. He also talked publicly for the first time about his 1956 car accident, the injuries he received, and its after-effects on his appearance. During the interview, Gardner jokingly mentioned that it is "the first and last appearance on a television interview program for Montgomery Clift". Barred from feature films, Clift turned to voice work. In 1964, he recorded for Caedmon Records
The Glass Menagerie, with
Jessica Tandy,
Julie Harris, and
David Wayne. In 1965, he gave voice to
William Faulkner's writings in the television documentary ''William Faulkner's Mississippi'', which aired in April 1965. During this time,
Peter Bogdanovich was working at a cinema in New York City when Clift came to see a revival screening of one of his early films –
I Confess (1953) – and decided to show him the guestbook where a cinema patron had written down a film request for "Anything with Montgomery Clift!" Elizabeth Taylor put her salary on the line as insurance to have Clift cast as her co-star in
Reflections in a Golden Eye, to be directed by John Huston. In preparation for the shooting of this film, Clift accepted the role of James Bower in the French
Cold War thriller
The Defector, which was filmed in
West Germany from February to April 1966. He insisted on performing his stunts himself, including swimming in the River
Elbe in March. The schedule for
Reflections in a Golden Eye was then set for August 1966, but Clift died in July 1966. Marlon Brando was cast as his replacement. ==Personal life==