Monty: A Biography of Montgomery Clift

by Robert LaGuardia

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0877951551
• ISBN13: 9780877951551
• Release Date: January 1977
• Publisher: Arbor House Pub Co
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 1.75 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Fantastic

What a rich book with lots of details and research. Could not put the book down.

It's almost if you were right there watching Monty!

An excellent book. I recommend it to anyone interested in Post-World War II film history. Mr. Laguardia truly brings the life of this tragic actor into your heart. It will make you want to run out and rent Monty's movies. Because you know what he went through to make it. Laguardia's biography makes you want to truly be there to help Monty throught all his troubles. While I was reading the biography, I wanted to go back in time and be there. I loved the book. This is my third time reading it. It's a book you don't want to put down.

A short, talented, and tormented life -- Montgomery Clift

Raised in an unconvential family, giving him nearly unlimited access to exceptional opportunities, Montgomery Clift reached a pinnacle of dramatic achievement. Due to unknown reasons, or perhaps due to a chronic back injury he sustained in a car accident, Clift became involved in heavy narcotic usage such that his credibility as an insurable actor was compromised. LaGuardia states that the film "Freud" was filmed in 'a state of chaos,' with severe frustration and criticism from director John Huston, due to Clift's 'inability to function.' Ironically, the night one of his finest films was shown on TV, Clift lay in his bed in the dark, unable or unwilling to join his houseman in watching it. The next morning he was found dead, apparently from a heart attack. Clift and Elizabeth Taylor, who together accomplished and popularized the "extreme close-up" in films with their on-screen radiance in "A Place in the Sun," were close friends until his death. When Clift was considered "uninsurable" due to rumors of his narcotic addiction, Taylor put up an exorbitant bond to cover his appearance in "Raintree County." LaGuardia demonstrates a wealth of detailed information throughout this chronicle of one of the most skilled actors of our time. It is worth the read for those interested in the actor or in film history. I have read other bios of Clift and there is no comparison to the detail LaGuardia offers. I was even able to walk past the apartment in which Clift died in NYC and imagine what the floorplan inside might look like. I recommend this book to Clift aficinados as the primary source of information on his short, talented, and tormented life.