Scandals of Classic Hollywood

Montgomery Clift had the most earnest of faces: big, pleading eyes, a set jaw, and a side part that reminds you of old pictures of your granddad. Onscreen and off, he was what the kids these days would call “an emo” and the least generous of your friends would call a “sad sack.” If he lived in the ‘90s, he would have been king of the heartfelt mixtape. Clift played the desperate, the drunken, and the deceived, and along with Brando and Dean, heralded a new direction in cinematic masculinity. But a car crash in the prime of his career left him in constant pain, and he drank himself to an early death. The trajectory of his life was as tragic as any of his films. But for 12 years, he set Hollywood aflame.

Clift grew up pretty standard middle-class in Nebraska, only he had a twin sister — the sort of detail that always just blows my mind. (Brando was also from Omaha — clearly there was something in the water in the early ‘20s there that bred hotness. Look at pictures of your Omaha granddads and get back to me.) Clift’s mother had been adopted at an early age, and she fixated on the idea that she was descended from the Southern aristocracy, not to mention all sorts of important presidential advisors. And if she was an aristocrat, then she was going to live like one, no matter her husband’s middling bank salary. clift, his sister, and his younger brother were all given private tutors and educated in French, Italian, and German, but when the money (or energy) ran out and clift found himself in Omaha high school, he was woefully underprepared. It was still good training: although the aristocratic connection was never proven, clift would play a number of roles that pivoted on the notions of adoption, posturing, and class aspiration.