Talk:Montgomery Clift

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[edit] Sexuality

Deleted this sentence, as I have never heard this and there is no citation to back this up:

"Along with Marlon Brando and James Dean, Clift was considered one of the most influential actors of his generation. Clift was also famous for his good looks and intense, penetrating eyes."

132.178.229.234 (talk · contribs) - 23:03, 9 November 2005

The text of the article refers to Clift's homosexuality, but the category is "bisexual actors." What evidence is there for either categorization?--Bhuck 07:56, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
I knew Monty and his family and while he had affairs with both sexes he was primarily a homosexual. It would be my opinion that either category could be considered correct... Doc 14:59, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
Well, maybe that evidence is good enough for the en:wikipedia, but people on the de:wikipedia get upset when things aren't properly documented--it would be better if two tenured professors had published a statement to the effect that he were one way or the other. And unless we include some statement of his homosexuality in the text, we can't list him on our Portal:Homosexuality as being gay. If he were bisexual, on the other hand, he would just get put into a list of bisexual people we aren't sure what to do with. (If you're fluent in German, come over and have a look; you'll see that what sounds absurd is true.)--Bhuck 21:34, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
Patricia Bosworth's biography of Montgomery Clift (called, in fact, Montgomery Clift states that he had relationships with both sexes. I quote: "Before the accident Monty had drifted into countless affairs with men and women. It suited his personality to have sex with a variety of partners...After the accident and his drug addiction became more serious, Monty was often impotent, and sex became less important to him. His deepest commitments were emotional rather than sexual anyway, and reserved for old friends; he was unflinchingly loyal to men like Bill Le Massena and women like Elizabeth Taylor, Libby Holman and Ann Lincoln." The book goes into detail about his relationships with Libby Holman and Ann Lincoln, both of which were sexual, and she goes into some detail about the sexual relationship between Clift and Libby Holman.
I am fairly new to wikipedia so I don't want to add it; perhaps someone who has been working on the page all along would like to do so.Chandler75 19:00, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
Done. Onefortyone 01:29, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
Why do we have this fight on EVERY GODDAMN PAGE that lists someone as being either gay or bisexual? Even the pages for porn stars (male of course) end up with infighting and controversy. It seems to me that all this "It doesn't matter" talk is nothing but veiled homophobia and an attempt to erase any mention of someone's sexuality unless it's "good clean heterosexuality." Saying that someone is gay or bisexual isn't an insult! I've yet to see anyone making demands for PROOF that someone is heterosexual, so why do you all set such a high bar for alternative sexualities? I bet if this were a WOMAN, a lot of you guys would be watering at the mouth for the slightest hint that she had sex with other women, right? Grow up, people! 71.202.172.104 (talk · contribs) - 21:28, 29 July 2007
Amen to that last comment! I'm so tired of people having these long drawn-out debates on the pages of actors/famous people (ALWAYS male) who were probably gay just because they don't want to think of them as gay. It's ridiculous and offensive. 69.248.141.153 (talk · contribs) - 07:05, 9 August 2007

[edit] Sexuality section

I don't think the current "sexuality" section is very encyclopedic. This is not People, where you speculate about who's impotent and who isn't, who's more into sex or emotions etc. There is a degree of intimacy here that Wikipedia, in my opinion, simply need not inform about for a person who's not famous because of his sex life.

Second, has Montgomery Clift even ever come out as gay or bisexual? I freely admit I'm not familiar enough how the English Wikipedia handles these things, but if he hasn't come out, I'd think it comes close to infringing his post-mortem privacy rights to make much fuss about the comments of one sole author. (At least the article never talks about whether his homosexuality and/or bisexuality were actually established or just claimed by one author... and the Wikipedian above could even be identical to the author even though I'd guess he isn't...) Well, I'm sure the English Wikipedia has already discussed this and found some general solution for people 1) whose sexual orientation has been disclosed post-mortem although they never chose to make it public during their life times and 2) whose sexual orientation has not been claimed to play a notable role for their career, art, personal development, etc. ("relevance").

In short, I think "sexuality" can just become one paragraph as many others about Montgomery's personal life. At least so far, there is no reason to assume that his sexuality was something particularly noteworthy about him, justifying an entire section. Else I would suggest someone adds "Sexuality" sections in the remaining articles in category:people. --Ibn Battuta 23:47, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

True Clift was predominently gay, but that doesn't remove him from the bisexual category either as he did have relationships with both sexes. With regard to the earlier remarks, it is just as pertinent as a marriage of a heterosexual subject and sexuality does not need to be of particular note to be included. Articles here at Wikipedia are on the whole person regardless of what part of that person makes them a person of note. Doc ♬ talk 22:17, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Edits from Banned User HC and IPs

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[edit] Birth Year

Mr. Clift's death certificate states he was born in 1921, but on his gravestone, it says 1920. I personally believe the death certificate. Maybe his family put 1920 per his wishes? The same can be said about Bing Crosby, born May 3/1903, believed he was born May 2/1904 and therefore the gravestone says 1904. - Hotwine8 (talk · contribs) - 11:47, 8 February 2006

I would go with the death certificate until a birth record could be located that backs up the 1920 birth year. If any evidence can be found that he often used the 1920 birth year, say to make himself older in a particular situation, instead of the 1921 birth year, then I would include that. Ladydayelle 13:32, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
According to Patricia Bosworth's biography, his mother was responsible for arranging his gravestone. As his mother, presumably she would know his year of birth. Bosworth says he was born on 1920-10-17. Peter 2006-08-10. 139.92.192.247 (talk · contribs) - 21:56, 10 August 2006

[edit] Substance Abuse

The article states in the Trivia section, as if it were fact, that Clift abused substances. There evidence here is ambiguous. He certainly took a lot of pain-killers and prescription medications, but that was because he spent a lot of his adult life in great pain (from colitis and IBS, among other illnesses before his accident, and from his side-effects of the accident afterwards). I do not think it is at all justified to say be abused pain-killers. He also drank a great deal, no doubt because of the pain, and because of the loss of his self-esteem following his accident. As his pain increased, so did his medications, and some of these had a negative impact on his memory, rather important for an actor. That may have added to his reasons for drinking. When on set, however, he is generally said to have taken his job very seriously, and was almost always completely sober. So, again, I think it unfair to accuse him of alcohol abuse. There seems to be no firm evidence that he regularly took any drugs, other than pain-killers and alcohol, so I do not agree that it is correct to accuse him of substance abuse. It is also worth stating for the record that attitudes to alcohol have changed markedly over the last 50 years, and US society in the 1950s was much more tolerant of drinking than it is now. One only has to read the novels of the period to see this. Peter 2006-11-19. 139.92.214.136 (talk · contribs) - 23:17, 19 November 2006

[edit] The article itself

I can't believe someone of the magnitude of Montgomery Clift has this kind of article. Ok he's not as famous as James Dean but the sections of this article are very focused on one thing only. There is very little written about his actual career! We have a whole section about his accident, and a couple of others about other quibs but the actual article on him does not exist. I have read the biography done before Bosworth's and it was really breathtaking and none of the important factors are included here. Examples: his collaboration with Lunt and Fontanne on the stage, the mere mention of From Here To Eternity, his addiction to painkillers etc from an early age also due to his digestive system being bonkers, his last movie and how he was going to costar again with Elizabeth Taylor in Reflections In A Golden Eye, and that noone wanted to insure him etc. No mention of friends who knew him best like Nancy Walker or Steve McCarthy, or the older woman he was romantically linked to for years and apparent reason he declined the role in Sunset Boulevard... This article is all about the gossip. It's a shame. Dollvalley 12:55, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

The fact that a biography happens to fall within the purview of the LGBT project doesn't mean it should become a homosexual/bisexual gabfest at the expense of the facts or the achievements of the individual that made him or her famous. In this case, as Dollvalley points out above, the author(s) of this piece skim over the career of this very distinguished performer. Only a handful of actors in film history have been nominated for four Oscars for acting and earned a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, especially in a life as brief as Monty's, and yet in this article his acting career is treated as if it were an incidental curiosity in the somehow more important study of his homosexual or bisexual (whichever it was) behavior. When Monty acquired his fame it was for lighting up the silver screen, and those of us who enjoyed his movies had no idea of his sexual preferences nor would many of us have cared. He was one of the magical troupe of first year students of the Actors Studio under co-founders Lee Strasberg and Robert Lewis -- along with Marlon Brando, Eli Wallach, Maureen Stapleton, Karl Malden, E.G. Marshall and others -- and he was arguably one of the world's three greatest practitioners of "Method" acting behind fellow Actors Studio progenies Brando and Dean. (Lewis, by the way, is the one who coined the phrase about Monty's death being the "longest suicide in history".)
Moreover, there are numerous innacuracies and omissions here. The most obvious is the statement that Wild River (1960) was Clift's first film after the 1957 car accident -- as if "Suddenly Last Summer" with Hepburn and Taylor had happened suddenly some other summer than 1959, not to mention "Lonelyhearts" (1958) and "The Young Lions" (1958). Now, I am the first to agree that "Suddenly" portrayed gays in a horribly distorted light, and I can't blame most gays for wishing the film had never seen the light of day. But I think it's amazingly Freudian that in this distorted account of Clift's life IT DIDN'T.
There is also a reference in the first paragraph that has no business being in this article. Who Monty's brother fathered and how that son felt about Brooks is of no concern for this biography. Just more gossipy gab. Also, I can think of at least THREE songs that clearly refer to Monty's life and I'm not the most musically literate person on earth, so it is far too presumptuous to claim there are only two as if it were a statement of well researched fact.
In addition to finding some writers who actually read some of the authoritative biographies of Clift, and who can get thier facts straight, it would help to show some fairly close up photographs of Clift before and after the accident. The disfigurement caused by the accident, even though the face was reconstructed with great care and didn't affect most viewers' perception of Monty's looks, affected Monty already precarious mental health and helped lead to his tragic end.
--Odysseusatm 08:46, 10 June 2007 (UTC)OdysseusATM 01:42, 9 June 2007 (UTC) + 68.231.80.98 (talk · contribs) - 04:18, 14 June 2007
In addition to finding some writers who have actually read some of the authoritative biographies of Clift, and who can get thier facts straight, another great help would be some fairly close up photographs of Clift before and after the accident. Monty's face was reconstructed with great care for that day and age. While the disfigurement could be seen when one looked carefully, it wasn't all that noticeable to many moviegoers. Still, the mirror is a harsher critic than a camera, and combined with the chronic physical pain, the accident placed Monty's already delicate mental condition under a burden it wasn't ready to bear. EladOdysseus 04:31, 14 June 2007 (UTC)