“We drink to suppress our panic.”
Montgomery Clift was one of the original members of the Actors Studio and an early proponent of the Method. Noted for his portrayal of moody young men, at the height of his career he was rivaled only by Marlon Brando. He first appeared on Broadway at age fourteen. His Hollywood debut more than ten years later was Red River (1948), opposite John Wayne. Clift received three Best Actor Oscar nominations over the next five years, for The Search (1948), A Place in the Sun (1951), and From Here to Eternity (1953). A disfiguring car accident while shooting Raintree County (1957) caused him constant pain for the remainder of his career. Although he continued to work—appearing alongside Brando in The Young Lions (1958), Elizabeth Taylor in Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), and Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable in The Misfits (1961)—his health and physical appearance were noticeably on the decline. Clift received his fourth and final Oscar nomination (Best Supporting Actor) for Judgment at Nuremberg (1961). He completed one last picture, The Defector (1966), before suffering a fatal heart attack in his New York City townhouse.
MONTGOMERY CLIFT WAS DRIVING TOO FAST. But then what proper leading man didn’t drive too fast? From Ramon Navarro to Clark Gable right on through to Steve McQueen, isn’t the history of Hollywood awash with tales of drunken drag racing? Only thing, Clift wasn’t drunk—at least that’s what everyone said. Later, when going over the circumstances of the car crash, Clift’s friends seemed at pains to stress his temperance that night—a glass of wine, if that—as if erecting a barrier against the rushing tide of scandal.
According to the other guests, Clift had been withdrawn and sullen at Elizabeth Taylor’s dinner party; then he’d decided to leave early. His good friend Kevin McCarthy, the respected character actor, offered to lead him down the winding Benedict Canyon road back to Beverly Hills, and a relieved Clift accepted. With McCarthy leading the way, the two men set off into the night.
This was during production of an MGM film titled Raintree County. Heading down that winding road in June 1956, Clift’s image was still frozen in the amber of stardom; he was the dashing lead of A Place in the Sun and From Here to Eternity, the sexy brooder whom audiences had come to adore. Only those closest to Clift knew that his taste for good whiskey had become an endless thirst. His best friend, Elizabeth Taylor, and his one-time companion, Jack Larson—they knew that during a dinner at Treetops, the 110-acre Connecticut estate owned by torch singer Libby Holman, Clift’s face kept falling into the soup. Or that after just a few cocktails, Clift might drop to all fours and begin barking like a dog. Kevin McCarthy, driving ahead, he knew all these things, too. In fact, McCarthy no longer even let Clift in his house after Clift drunkenly dropped his son Flip on the floor.
So when, some distance down the hill, McCarthy looked in his rearview mirror to see Clift driving too fast, he sped up, thinking that it was either a hopped-up prank or the beginning of a blackout. Either way, McCarthy wanted no part of it. A few seconds later, Clift swerved out of control and smashed into a telephone pole.
Biographer Patricia Bosworth described the scene: McCarthy ran back to Clift’s car but didn’t see Clift anywhere. After pointing his headlights at the accident, he realized that Clift was crumpled on the floor beneath the dash, his nose broken, the bones of his jaw shattered, his face (as McCarthy described) “torn away.” Afraid to touch him, McCarthy thought Clift wouldn’t survive until the ambulance arrived.
He drove back to Taylor’s to get her then-husband, English actor Michael Wilding, but Taylor insisted on going down to the accident. The front door was jammed shut, but Taylor, unstoppable, went into the back and climbed over the front seat. She cradled Clift’s head—he was choking. Then she reached her fingers down into Clift’s mouth and pulled two teeth out of his throat. When the paparazzi arrived, she was heard to scream, “You bastards! If you dare take one photograph of him like this, I’ll never let another one of you near me again!” (You go, Elizabeth Taylor.)
MGM was forced to shut down production of Raintree County while Clift recovered. He was hospitalized for two weeks, his face reconstructed, then moved to a convalescent home. Taylor, who was also starring in the film, visited him almost daily, as did Kevin McCarthy. With his jaw wired shut, Clift couldn’t eat solid food, but he was able to drink martinis through a straw. Although his face would never look the same again, after more than two months, he was ready to go back to work.
This time, MGM assigned Clift a chaperone, what is a modern-day sober coach, to help him control his alcohol and drug intake. But Clift didn’t much like the idea. En route to the location, while laid over in New Orleans, Clift disembarked from the plane absolutely loaded to the gills. A phalanx of reporters were waiting in the terminal and so Clift took off sprinting. He sprinted through the airport with the newsmen, as well as his chaperone, nipping at his heels, until finally Clift managed to lose them. Then he went and found a bar.
Harry Cohn’s Folly.” That’s what people were calling it. Cohn, the president of Columbia Pictures, had paid $82,000 for the rights to the James Jones novel From Here to Eternity, but the odds of it ever being produced looked slim. The story of a group of soldiers stationed in Hawaii in the months leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor, the book’s less-than-flattering portrayal of Army life, sure to draw the ire of the military were it ever to be depicted on film (and don’t forget this was the McCarthy era), seemed like an insurmountable obstacle.
But the entire production of From Here to Eternity, it turned out, was a series of long shots that delivered. The cooperation of the Army, for instance, was happily granted (thanks in part to the connections of producer Buddy Adler, who’d been a Lieutenant-Colonel during World War II) on two conditions: that the stockade would never be shown, and that Captain Holmes, the film’s villain, would be given an unhappy ending. (In the book, he’s promoted to major.)
Adler’s choice of director, Fred Zinnemann, landed the job despite the objections of Cohn, who considered him too “art house” for the project. (Zinnemann’s breakthrough, High Noon, had yet to be released.) Donna Reed, of all people, was picked to play a prostitute; Deborah Kerr, a sex maniac. Frank Sinatra campaigned relentlessly for the part of Private Maggio, an event fictionalized in The Godfather when producer Jack Woltz wakes up with a severed horse head in his bed. In truth, Sinatra was cast in the role only after Eli Wallach fell out—and even then, Sinatra had to agree to a meager salary of $1,000 a week.
Filming began in March 1953 and lasted eight weeks. While on location in Hawaii, Sinatra, Kerr, Zinnemann, Burt Lancaster (playing First Sergeant Warden), and Montgomery Clift (playing Private Prewitt) had dinner together most nights. Afterward, Sinatra and Clift—who’d taken Sinatra under his wing as an acting protégé—would slink off to Sinatra’s hotel room, where they passed ungodly amounts of time calling Nairobi (where Mrs. Sinatra, Ava Gardner, was shooting Mogambo and apparently boinking the entire continent) and getting absolutely trashed. It was messy stuff. They’d throw beer cans out the window, stumble through the lobby shouting obscenities. One night Sinatra threatened to commit suicide over the problems he was having with Gardner. (Clift talked him out of it.) Many nights, Lancaster and Kerr had to physically put each of them in bed.
This all came to a head the final night of shooting in Hawaii, when both men showed up for a scene together drunk. Sinatra decided he wasn’t happy with the blocking, which required the actors to stand up. Sinatra wanted to sit down, as the drunk frequently do. Zinnemann insisted he stand and Clift agreed. Sinatra’s response: slapping Clift in the face, then unleashing a torrent of expletives at Zinnemann. The situation grew so volatile that Adler called Cohn (who was dining with an Air Force general) and insisted he get to the set. Cohn showed up, chauffeured in an Air Force limousine, and threatened to shut the entire picture down if Sinatra didn’t pull it together.
Apparently Sinatra did. From Here to Eternity went on to become one of the biggest successes in Columbia’s history, nominated for thirteen Academy Awards and winning eight, including Oscars for Zinnemann and Sinatra. The film would reignite Sinatra’s acting career.