1920-10-17

MONTGOMERY CLIFT, American actor was born on this date (d. 1966); Clift was an American Academy-award nominated actor. He was the great-grandson of Montgomery Blair, Postmaster General under President Abraham Lincoln, and the great-great grandson of Francis Preston Blair, a journalist and adviser to President Andrew Jackson, and Levi Woodbury, an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.

Author Patricia Bosworth, who had total access to Clift’s family and many persons who knew the actor and worked with him, writes in her book on Montgomery Clift, “Before the accident Monty had drifted into countless affairs with men and women. It suited his personality to have sex with a variety of partners. After the accident and his drug addiction became more serious, Monty was often impotent, and sex became less important to him. Bosworth asserts that his deepest commitments were emotional rather than sexual anyway, and reserved for old friends; he was unflinchingly loyal to men like Bill La Massena and women like Elizabeth Taylor, Libby Walker, Nancy Walker and Ann Lincoln.”

Montgomery Clift died in 1966 at the age of 45 of a heart attack brought on by complications of his severe drug and alcohol addictions. He is interred in the Quaker Cemetery, Prospect Park, Brooklyn, New York.