Apparently Clift could be both professionally and personally offensive, in some really obnoxious ways.
He was often nasty about fellow performers whose talent or personality he didn't think much of. He was so dependent on his Russian-born drama coach that some directors had her banned from the set so that Clift wouldn't keep looking to her for advice on how he was performing. (Hitchcock, who was non-confrontational, let Clift do what he wanted, then just ignored the woman.) Clift was a heavy drinker and at dinners would not only be roaring drunk and personally nasty, he'd do things like grab food off other people's plates with his hands and eat it, not as a joke, but out of immaturity and bad social manners. His decision to back out of roles (most notably Sunset Boulevard) at the last minute, or cause other similar problems for the people working on films, didn't help his reputation either.
As the years went by, and especially after his 1956 car accident, Clift grew more morose and dependent on alcohol and, then, drugs, which made him more introverted and often unreliable. He grew more serious in his attitudes but was slipping further away from interaction with his profession and other people. His last years were mostly spent in a haze of drugs and booze, Clift little more than a recluse in his NYC townhouse. His old pal Elizabeth Taylor finally came to his rescue by getting him hired to play opposite her in Reflections in a Golden Eye. But since no one would insure Clift owing to his well-known problems, he went to Europe in 1966 to do a minor spy drama called The Defector to prove he could work again. (He hadn't made a film in four years by then.). His behavior was good and professional and this persuaded the insurers that he was an acceptable risk. But before he could return to Europe to do Reflections he died of a heart attack in his sleep at 45. By all accounts his personal behavior had again become boorish and nasty, and he still drank and took drugs. I suspect he would have reverted to more bad behavior, even with Taylor, had he lived to do Reflections (which in any case turned out to be a flop, with Marlon Brando hired in Clift's place).
Clift had suffered from a domineering stage mother and a broken home, and as a Broadway star in his teens never had a normal upbringing, especially with people telling him he was brilliant from an early age. No wonder he got so messed up.
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donofthedial
13 years ago
That's a shame. I knew he was a troubled person, but i didn't realize that he was so proactively messed up.
How'd he do with John Wayne in RED RIVER?
Thx!
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hobnob53
13 years ago
Apparently he and Wayne got along all right, though not as buddies. Wayne initially doubted that Clift (who had never made a movie) was right for the part. He thought he looked too skinny and un-manly to play a rough cowboy who could stand up to the Duke. But Clift impressed him by going to a working ranch in Arizona for five weeks in order to prep for the film, and by his professionalism on the set. (Evidently Clift's bad habits hadn't started yet, at least while filming.) Early on he and Wayne, who differed radically on politics and other matters, simply agreed to disagree and never discussed anything of controversy. Clift was never Wayne's sort of man but Wayne gave him a grudging respect.
However, both Howard Hawks and Walter Brennan could never get past Clift's closeted homosexuality, especially when Hawks allegedly found (or found out about) that Clift and John Ireland were having a sexual affair during production. (Hawks had lots of issues with Ireland and cut his part way down from its original importance.) Although Wayne apparently laid off Clift's sexuality, both Hawks and Brennan were openly hostile to him over that. Reportedly, years later Clift was offered the role in Hawks's Rio Bravo that ultimately went to Dean Martin. Clift turned it down because he didn't want to have anything to do with Hawks, Brennan or even Wayne again.
Marilyn Monroe once said of Clift, "He's the only person I know who's in even worse shape than me." That tells you how bad off he really was, especially by the early 60s.
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donofthedial
13 years ago
Thanks for all that!
What a troubled individual he was.
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hobnob53
13 years ago
You're most welcome. Amazing that none of that inner torment overtly showed up on the screen.
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MOSSBIE
13 years ago
Wherever you got your information about John Ireland and Clift having had a sexual affair, is total crap.
I lived with John and shared one of his 18 year old girlfriends, Marcia F. H. between his marriage to Joanne Dru and Daphne Cameron who divorced her multimillionaire (billions today)Arthur Cameron.
I was outrageously movie star good looking and learned a LOT about life after hanging with John and his friends including the last two weeks of Errol Flynn's life and with his ditzy 16 year old Beverly Aadland and we did a lot of pot and hash and more drinking.
Back to John.........the one thing John was, and that was the actor with the biggest schlong anyone has ever seen. I saw it every day as we were naked and alone in his Hollywood Hills house a lot, and he loved me like a father and I even went to Europe on the NIEW AMSTERDAAM when we got word of Errol's dying in Vancouver from a heart attack as we were going to meet up in London while John made a film, when Flynn sold his beloved ZACA on which he had made healines early in his career....Flynn was only 49 and used to kiss me on the mouth to shock me in public.
So, to clear up the b.s. about John and Clift, they were close friend's and the differences between Hawk had to do with Joanne Dru who was Ireland's beautiful ex wife and Hawks was endowed with a teenie weenie as was John Wayne but Hawks was so insecure and a womanizer that he took a dislike to John I. which had to do with a lot of reasons including John sticking up for Clift who was being made jokes about being a "fag", so Hawks spread the rumor about them.
This came from John directly and the fact that on location, a lot of the actors and crew took outdoor showers together and John's soft, 9 incher was the talk on the set.......and Hawks' pecker was joked about.
John I. once told me who was the only actor in Hollywood where every guy was out to prove they had a big penis challenged the quiet and cool and pissed off John that they were more hung.That actor was Arthur O'Connell.
I've got a million of them being the best looking young jock and non actor at the time in the business and knew every one and the real stories.
How I eventually got in the technical end of films was years after having been with half the world.
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MOSSBIE
13 years ago
I tried to find the film John Ireland and us went to London when Errol Flynn died while we were at sea in 1960 but unlisted here at IMDB.......it was called FACES IN THE DARK with Mai Zetterling and John Gregson shot at Shepperton. IMDB does not list it for anyone.....it happens.Went to British Film Archives.
So, beginning with THE BIG LIFT, then moving to RED RIVER and from there to FACES IN THE DARK (not listed by IMDB) we are back in 1960 and John Ireland begins a year's shooting on the Univeral back lot with KUBRICK on SPARTACUS.
Marcia F.H. and I spent months visiting the set and Kubrick let us hang with him. While going to UCLA.
Mind you, this is just a tiny chapter of what life was like in Hollywood.
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hobnob53
13 years ago
I don't know why you couldn't find Faces in the Dark on IMDb. After reading your post I looked it up and found it right away, in complete detail. I've heard of it but never saw it. It sounds interesting.
Once again you made a mistake about Errol Flynn's death. He died on October 14, 1959, not in 1960 (and as I said last post, he was 50, not 49, though the coroner in Vancouver thought he had the body of a 70-year-old).
Anyway, so glad you had such a great life in H'wood.
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hobnob53
13 years ago
If your incoherent post is meant to dispel the rumor that Ireland was gay or bi, your fascination with the idiotic topic of Hollywood penises and their dimensions, and being naked every day with various men, won't do much to help. However, a few things:
I said the Ireland/Clift affair was alleged, not fact. The point was that Hawks used it to discredit Ireland, not whether it was true. In any case, the fact that Ireland had a big "schlong", had sex with a lot of women and denied he had ever had sex with Clift isn't proof that the allegation is "total crap". You have no proof of anything, and I doubt that 65 years on anybody really knows what, if anything, happened between the two men. Personally, I doubt the story, but that's my opinion, and since you weren't there, you have no idea what really did or did not happen.
It is true that Hawks wanted to bed Dru and didn't like the fact that she spurned him for Ireland, which was always the more likely reason for Hawks disliking Ireland. But Ireland always said Hawks permanently damaged his career, which is ridiculously over-simplified. Other factors were at work that hurt Ireland's career in the long run (like booze), which is too bad because he was a very good actor.
Flynn was 50 when he died, not 49.
It's really so good to hear from you that you were so outrageously movie-star good-looking. Few people are so self-effacing.
More in answer to your next post.
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