Edward Montgomery Clift was born on October 17, 1920 in Omaha, Nebraska. Monty was born just after his twin sister Roberta and eighteen months after his brother Brooks. Their father William made a lot of money in banking but was quite poor during the depression. Their mother Ethel "Sunny" was born out of wedlock and spent much of her life and the family fortune finding her illustrious southern lineage and raising her children as aristocrats. At thirteen Monty appeared on Broadway in "Fly Away Home", remaining in New York theatre for over ten years before coming to Hollywood. By that time he
… More was an accomplished actor, notable for the intensity with which he researched and entered into his roles.
He appeared in The Heiress (1949), perfectly cast as the young man who woos spinster Olivia de Havilland, and The Big Lift (1950) before costarring with Elizabeth Taylor in George Stevens' A Place in the Sun (1951), a brilliant remake of Dreiser's "An American Tragedy." His moving and credible portrayal of the a working man who murders pregnant factory girl Shelley Winters to clear the path for his romance with socialite Taylor earned Clift his second Oscar nomination. He earner a third Oscar nomination for his performance in From Here to Eternity (1953). That same year he played a priest who hears a murderer's confession in Alfred Hitchcock's I Confess, co-starring Ann Baxter and a willing participant in an adulterous romance with Jennifer Jones in Indiscretion of an American Wife.
In 1957, while filming the Civil War drama Raintree County (which again costarred him with Elizabeth Taylor), Clift was badly injured in a car crash that permanently scarred his matinee-idol face and obliterated his self-confidence. He was never the same afterward, although some speculate that his inner turmoilcomplicated by drug and alcohol abuselent an added dimension, certainly an edge, to his subsequent performances. He was really on his toes opposite Marlon Brando in the excellent WW2 drama The Young Lions (1958), and was reunited with Taylor for the film version of Tennessee Williams' Suddenly, Last Summer (1959). While Taylor and Katharine Hepburn had most of the juicy scenes, Clift more than held his own as the understanding brain surgeon. Clift won a role in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) and received his fourth and final Academy Award nomination for his riveting performance.
Clift co-starred with Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe in John Huston's production of The Misfits (1961), an Arthur Miller drama about contemporary cowboys. He seemed to have his personal life under control and even won the title role in the film Freud (1962), After Frued he did not appear in any films for several years. His last film was The Defector (1966). He died shortly after completing the film on July 23, 1966 from a coronary occlusion in New York.
