Posts tagged ‘Montgomery Clift’
The Misfits and the End of an Era
Another public apology, this time to the marvelous Shadowplay blog– a longtime Pictorial favorite. I agreed to participate in their recent The Late Films Blogathon: a week long look at the final films of directors, actors and writers. A fascinating concept and I was psyched to participate and… absolutely bollocked it up. More than a week overdue, here’s my entry. Major apologies to Shadowplay– one of the best damn blogs on the web.
By 1961, the Hollywood Studio System had begun a slow rot from the inside out which would, by decade’s end, see to its total collapse thus ending the Golden Age of classical Hollywood. The Misfits, directed by John Huston and penned by Arthur Miller, is a fascinating relic from those years in flux that bewildered its audiences just as much as it bewildered the execs. On paper, the words Clark Gable (the king), Marilyn Monroe (the queen) and Montgomery Clift (the rebel) looked like box office magic. The result is a mixed bag that would be Gable and Monroe’s final film, and one of Clift’s last. Read more ►
The Kitty Packard Pictorial of the Month: Montgomery Clift
On a brisk April evening in 1958, Broadway’s newly refurbished Paramount Theater hosted the glittering premiere of Edward Dmytryk’s World War II epic The Young Lions. The film, adapted from Irwin Shaw’s acclaimed novel, had been generating high interest given its lavish budget and A-list cast, namely, Marlon Brando, Dean Martin and Montgomery Clift.
Perhaps more than anyone else involved in the project, Clift had the most riding on the film’s success. In a business where you’re ‘only as good as your last film,’ it was important for this film be a hit. His near-fatal car wreck two years prior had left him physically wrecked, emotionally spent and his last big budget film, Raintree County, had been a critical failure. Read more ►