New Documentary Shows Another Side to Montgomery Clift

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"Making Montgomery Clift", premiering Sunday at the Los Angeles Film Festival, shows a different side to Clift, portraying him as a man who enjoyed life and love, and was comfortable enough with his attraction to men to be affectionate with his male partners in public.

... the film’s producer-directors, Robert Clift and his wife, Hillary Demmon, want to show audiences there were many facets to Monty. Robert, who is the son of Monty’s late brother, Brooks Clift, and the distinguished, still-active political journalist Eleanor Clift, never knew his famous uncle, who died at age 45 in 1966, long before Robert’s birth in the 1980s. But he knew his family had some serious reservations about the biographies of Monty, which portray him as a tormented “beautiful loser” and a slow suicide, although he actually died of a heart attack.

One of Montgomery Clift’s partners, the late actor Jack Larson, says Monty was unafraid to display same-sex affection publicly, and he recalls Clift kissing him upon their first meeting.

Clift, of course, couldn’t be out to the media as bisexual during his Hollywood career, which spanned the late 1940s to the early 1960s. Fan magazines reported on his relationships with women, such as Elizabeth Taylor, who was perhaps a lover and definitely a lifelong friend. But he was determined not to be forced into a heterosexual box, according to the documentary. He wouldn’t sign a long-term studio contract, although most film actors did at the time, partly because he wanted to avoid any clause mandating that he get married.

https://www.advocate.com/film/2018/9/22/new-documentary-shows-another-side-montgomery-clift