a thing for Montgomery Clift

(Source: somethingoldnew)

You spoke in Patricia Bosworth’s biography of Montgomery Clift about his homosexuality.
I was 18 or 19 when I helped him realize that he was homosexual, and I barely knew what I was talking about. I was a virgin when I was married and not a world expert on sexuality. But I loved Monty with all my heart and just knew he was unhappy. I knew that he was meant to be with a man and not a woman. I introduced him to some really nice young guys.

[…] It was very hard for men who wanted to come out of the closet in those days. The men that I knew - Monty and Jimmy [Dean] and Rock - if anything, I helped them get out of the closet. I didn’t even know that I was more advanced than most people in this town. It just never occurred to me.

Elizabeth Taylor’s 1996 interview with The Advocate

This whole interview is a tiny bit heartbreaking.

Legitimate tears in my eyes. She is such a wonderful, kind hearted human being. I’ve noticed that out of all the legendary actors she’s worked with, she only seems to speak of Monty in depth to this day.

Monty was more loved than loving. He felt guilty about his extravagant charm and beauty and his inability on many occasions to fulfill both the men and women who loved him — to give back, in other words, some of what he was taking. He could not accept their love without ultimately paying a price. But he was so used to being alternatively loved and psychologically punished by his mother that he felt uncontrollable urges to be very, very good — or very, very horrible.

“Survival must have a quality to it, or it isn’t worth exploring,” he once told Bill Le Massena. “Monty was a pathological idealist,” Le Massena recalled. “He would wonder why do people do the right things for the wrong reasons or the wrong things for the right reasons. He would ramble on into the night questioning why some of the bums or dishwashers or soldiers he consorted with had more quality in their suffering than his Park Avenue pals.

-  Montgomery Clift; by Patricia Bosworth

“You know how it is when you love somebody terribly but you can’t describe why? That’s how I love Bessie Mae” -Montgomery Clift on Elizabeth Taylor

Monty at the beach