With a busy life, I was able to score two Sarasota Film Fest Tickets.
My first film was a new documentary by Rob Clift, Montgomery Clift’s nephew, Making of Montgomery Clift .
First and foremost, bless Rob Clift for caring enough about his Uncle’s reputation (and indirectly his Dad who ripped Clift’s biographer for warping his life story) to try to establish facts. My friend Barry Rothman, author of Mary Ann or Ginger?, a film aficionado, basically told me the side of the story he (and most of the general public) was fed.
Unfortunately, Barry did not see the film and now I must burst his bubble, taking the torch of Rob Clift in informing him that Montgomery was not losing his mind during Judgment at Nuremberg, but tormented with rewriting the script (proof shown in this documentary) to make his role more believable. In fact, Montgomery did this with almost every script, carving it into his own language. Thus, he was not only an accomplished actor, but a script doctor as well.
He was also NOT miserable after his car accident and actually thought his refurbished face had more character for acting.
Probably addicted to pain killers and quite the drinker, he did die very young from a heart attack. But women and men alike who loved him, knew him to be engaged with life.
In this post fact world, where the loudest and most repetitive propagandist voices are the ones given credibility, Rob Clift stands up to try to set the record straight. May we all be blessed with such a noble relative. Or how about this goldenish rule, unless you know what you are saying or writing is absolutely factual about another person’s life, shut the heck up.
And one nostalgic post script: I was tickled pink to see the man who played Jimmy Olsen (Jack Larson) in Super Man interviewed. Who knew he was still alive?
