Hello, my friends, old and new! There were three actors in the 1950s that not only revolutionized the way Hollywood stars acted in films, but they also revolutionized the standard Hollywood star public persona. The wild young men of Hollywood: the greatest was Marlon Brando. The unluckiest was James Dean. We've presented them both. Now, it's time for the chronologically first of the three to leave his mark, the supremely talented and excruciatingly handsome Montgomery Clift.
Before we begin talking about Montgomery Clift, we owe Marlon Brando a couple of great songs that name-check him. I intended to include them last week, but, honestly, I forgot. They are both great songs, so it's a pity not to feature them. One is Pocahontas, by the great Canadian, Neil Young:
... The other is China Girl, by the magnificent Englishman, David Bowie:
... And here's a song about today's subject, Montgomery Clift. It comes from the excellent group from Athens, Georgia, called R.E.M. The song is called Monty Got A Raw Deal. Here it is:
Edward Montgomery Clift (nicknamed 'Monty' his entire life) was born on October 17, 1920, in Omaha, Nebraska. He was the son of Ethel "Sunny" Anderson (Fogg; 1888-1988) and William Brooks Clift (1886-1964). His father made a lot of money in banking but was quite poor during the depression. His mother was born out of wedlock and spent much of her life and the family fortune finding her illustrious southern lineage and raising her children as aristocrats.
At age 13, Monty appeared on Broadway ("Fly Away Home"), and chose to remain in the New York theater for over ten years before finally succumbing to Hollywood. He gained excellent theatrical notices and soon piqued the interests of numerous lovelorn actresses; their advances met with awkward conflict. While working in New York in the early 1940s, he met wealthy former Broadway star, Libby Holman. She developed an intense decade-plus obsession over the young actor, even financing an experimental play, "Mexican Mural" for him. It was ironic his relationship with the bisexual middle-aged Holman would be the principal (and likely the last) heterosexual relationship of his life and only cause him further anguish over his sexuality. She would wield considerable influence over the early part of his film career, advising him in decisions to decline lead roles in Sunset Boulevard (1950), (originally written specifically for him; the story perhaps hitting a little too close to home) and High Noon (1952).
His film debut was Red River (1948), but this film was shelved for two years, so the first film the public saw of Clift was The Search (1948), for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor. This is a scene from The Search (1948):
Red River (1948) appeared on screens immediately after. In this scene, Clift and John Ireland are comparing guns (no comment...):
This is Monty's showdown scene with John Wayne:
The Heiress (1949) gave Olivia de Havilland her second Oscar. Monty was her romantic interest in the film:
This is an edit of their scenes together, from the same film:
By 1950, he was troubled with allergies and colitis and, along with pill problems, he was an alcoholic. He spent a great deal of time and money on psychiatry. His next movie was The Big Lift (1950), with Paul Douglas. Here's a scene:
A Place in the Sun (1951) perhaps contained Clift's best performance. He was unlucky to be competing for the Oscars against Marlon Brando for his iconic performance in A Streetcar Named Desire, canceling each other out and consequently losing to Humphrey Bogart for An African Queen. Here's the opening scene:
This is the scene were Monty and Liz Taylor confess their love to each other:
This is Shelley Winters boat death scene:
Here's the film's final scene:
His co-star in A Place in the Sun, Elizabeth Taylor, became one of the people closest to Clift. On this video, she's talking about her great friend, Montgomery. She mentions an almost-fatal car-accident that changed his life. We'll get to that in time. Here's Liz:
1953 was a good year for Monty. He starred in three movies, Alfred Hitchcock's I Confess among them. Here he is with his co-star, Anne Baxter:
His most famous movie in 1953 was From Here to Eternity. Winner of 8 Oscars, among them Best Picture, Director, Supporting Actor, and Supporting Actress, the movie was also nominated for Best Actress (Deborah Kerr, who lost out to Audrey Hepburn for her sparkling debut in Roman Holiday), and had two nominations for Best Actor: Clift and Burt Lancaster canceled each other out and the Oscar went to William Holden for Stalag 17. Clift had no luck as far as the Oscars were concerned. In this scene from the film, Monty is the emotional center:
In this scene, Monty is interacting with a drunk Burt Lancaster:
In 1956, during the filming of Raintree County (1957), he ran his Chevrolet into a tree after leaving a party at Elizabeth Taylor's; it was she who saved him from choking by pulling out two teeth lodged in his throat. His smashed face was rebuilt, he reconciled with his estranged father, but he continued bedeviled by dependency on drugs and his unrelenting guilt over his homosexuality. Here's a scene from Raintree County (1957), the film which gave Taylor her first Oscar nomination:
This is another scene with his friend, Liz:
The Young Lions (1958) brought Monty together with Marlon Brando, although they hardly had any screen-time together. Here his scene partner is Hope Lange:
Lonelyhearts (1958) was released the same year. In this scene he appears with Myrna Loy and Robert Ryan:
In Tennessee Williams' Suddenly, Last Summer (1959) his cast-mates, Katharine Hepburn and (for the third time) Liz Taylor, both gave towering performances and were both awarded with Oscar nominations. Here's a scene from the film:
Clift worked with Elia Kazan in Wild River (1960). His co-stars were Lee Remick and Jo Van Fleet. Here's a scene:
Arthur Miller wrote The Misfits (1961) for his wife Marilyn Monroe, and her co-stars were Clift and Clark Gable. None of the three would make it through the 1960s alive. This is a scene from the film:
Judgment At Nuremberg (1961) was an all-star prestige courtroom drama concerning the historic trial of the same name. Montgomery Clift was in it, alongside Spencer Tracy, Maximilian Schell, Judy Garland, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, and Marlene Dietrich. Clift, Tracy, Schell, and Garland were all nominated for acting Oscars. Clift lost out to George Chakiris for West Side Story. In this scene, Clift gives testimony to Richard Widmark:
This is Clift's cross-examination by Maximilian Schell:
In 1962 Monty worked again with John Huston, in Freud. It was to be his last Hollywood film. Here's the film's trailer:
The Defector (1966), a European production, was his last film overall. Here's a scene from the movie:
Monty returned to New York and tried to slowly develop a somewhat more sensible lifestyle in his brownstone row house on East 61st Street in Manhattan. He was set to play in Taylor's Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967), when he died on the early morning hours of July 23, 1966, at his home at age 45. His body was found by his live-in personal secretary/companion Lorenzo James who found Clift lying nude on top of his bed, dead from what the autopsy called "occlusive coronary artery disease." Clift's last 10 years prior to his death from his 1956 car accident was called the "longest suicide in history" by the famed acting teacher, Robert Lewis.
The weekend is here, which means it's time for our countdown and our statistics: At #160 of our Motown countdown, we find Love Hangover by one of Motown's biggest superstars, Diana Ross.
Love Hangover (1976) was Diana's fourth #1 solo hit single in the US. The song was written by Pamela Sawyer and Marilyn McLeod as a disco number. Producer Hal Davis recorded the instrumental track in 1975 thinking it ideal for Marvin Gaye or Diana Ross, who were his two favorite vocalists to work with. He thought Diana would be sexier on it, so he recorded the song with her. Studio musicians included James Gadson on drums, Henry E. Davis (of the band L.T.D.) on bass, and Joe Sample on keyboards.
Hal Davis instructed the song's engineer Russ Terrana to install a strobe light so that Ross could be in the "disco" mindset. As the song changed from ballad to uptempo, Ross became more comfortable with the material; she hummed, sang bit parts, laughed, danced around and even imitated Billie Holiday. The carefree and sensual nature of Ross' vocals and the music's direction helped to sell the song.
Love Hangover reached number one on May 29, 1976. That week, Casey Kasem reported on American Top 40 that with that song Diana had broken the record for the most number-one hits by a female vocalist. With her fourth number-one, she surpassed Connie Francis, Helen Reddy, Roberta Flack, and Cher, all of whom were tied with three each. During the 1980s, Ross went on to score two more number-one hits, making six, establishing her record for 12 years. Whitney Houston would break it in 1988 and Madonna in 1990. But counting 12 number-one hits as lead singer of The Supremes, Ross's grand total is 18, a feat equaled only by Mariah Carey as of 2016.
This is the 7" version:
This is the 12" version:
Vocal group the 5th Dimension also released Love Hangover as a single. Both versions entered the chart the same day. The version by the 5th Dimension peaked at #80 - and was the group's last hot 100 hit. I dedicate this version to our old friend, the Recordman. Hopefully, he's still reading. Here it is:
The song was released as a single by the Associates, a British new wave band, reaching #21 on the UK chart in 1982:
Jody Watley recorded a downtempo version in 2006:
Australian singer-songwriter Tina Arena recorded a version in 2007:
The song would become part of the hip-hop lexicon via sampling by Will Smith, Heavy D, Master P, Monica, Janet Jackson, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, French artist MC Solaar, and Emily King. It was sampled in Monica's 1998 hit The First Night, which hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Here it is:
At #159 in our countdown, we find the artist mentioned a few paragraphs above, Marvin Gaye. I Want You was the opening track of the 1976 album of the same name, as well as the lead single. The song, written by Leon Ware and Arthur "T-Boy" Ross (Diana's younger brother), introduced a change in musical styles for Gaye, who before then had been recording songs with a funk edge. Songs such as this gave him a disco audience thanks to Ware, who produced the song alongside Gaye.
The song stood to be one of Marvin's most popular singles in the US during his later Motown period followed by his sabbatical following the release of 1973's Let's Get It On. It peaked at #15 on the Hot 100, at #1 on the R&B chart, and made the top 10 on the Disco Singles Chart.
This is live in Belgium, in 1981:
In 1991, Robert Palmer combined the song in a medley with Gaye's 1971 hit Mercy Mercy Me. Palmer's single reached #16 on the Hot 100 and #9 on the UK Singles Chart. We presented the 7" when we talked about Mercy Mercy Me a few weeks ago, so today we present the 12" version. Here it is:
Madonna recorded a cover version of I Want You with British trip-hop group Massive Attack for the Marvin Gaye tribute album Inner City Blues: The Music of Marvin Gaye in 1995:
If you don't know Massive Attack, here are two great songs of theirs from 1991. This is Unfinished Sympathy:
... And this is Safe from Harm:
To conclude with Marvin's song, the track Between Two Islands on the 2002 single I Get Along by the Pet Shop Boys contains lyrics from I Want You. The song features the former guitarist/songwriter of The Smiths, Johnny Marr. Here it is:
At #158 is another of Motown's pillars, Smokey Robinson, and his group the Miracles. Going to a Go-Go (1965) peaked at #11 on the US Hot 100 and at #2 on the US R&B chart. It was The Miracles' fifth million-selling record.
Smokey Robinson sings lead on Going to a Go-Go, which he co-wrote with fellow Miracles Pete Moore, Bobby Rogers, and Marv Tarplin. Moore, Rogers, Ronnie White, and Smokey Robinson's wife Claudette Robinson provide backing vocals for the song, an up-tempo dance song inviting people of all walk of life to attend a go-go party. Miracles Robinson and Pete Moore were the song's producers. In the Motown DVD release Smokey Robinson And The Miracles: The Definitive Performances, Miracles member and co-writer Bobby Rogers commented that this song was inspired by the success of the "Go-Go" clubs that grew in popularity throughout the United States in the 1960s. While at first a regional phenomenon, the success of this Miracles song ignited a nationwide fad for go-go music in America.
The song was also a top 50 US hit in 1975 by The Sharonettes:
Going to a Go-Go was covered by The Rolling Stones on their 1982 album Still Life. Released as the album's first single, the Stones' version Going to a Go-Go reached #25 in the US, #26 in the UK, #3 in the Netherlands, #4 in Canada, #5 in Norway, #8 in Belgium, #9 in Switzerland, #16 in Austria, #18 in Ireland and Sweden, and #24 in New Zealand. Here it is:
Finally for today, two songs are in a tie for the #156 position: first off, here are The Isley Brothers with Put Yourself in My Place. The song was written by the songwriting team of Holland–Dozier–Holland and recorded by at least four Motown acts during the sixties: The Elgins in 1965, The Supremes, Chris Clark and The Isley Brothers in 1966.
While The Elgins and Supremes' versions were both issued as B-Sides in 1966, the Isleys' version gave the brothers a hit with it in 1969 when Tamla Motown reissued the single for the British public, sending the song to #13 on the UK Singles Chart. This is it:
Similarly, a 1971 Tamla Motown reissue of The Elgins' version (as a follow-up to their then-recent UK Top 3 hit, Heaven Must Have Sent You) gave the group a Top 30 hit (#28). Here it is:
This is the Supremes' version:
... And this is Chris Clark's version:
Also at #156 is The Hunter Gets Captured By The Game by The Marvelettes. The song was written and produced by Smokey Robinson and recorded by The Marvelettes in 1966. It was a US hit single in 1967, reaching #13 on the hot 100 and #2 on the R&B chart. The song is written in the first person, from the point of view of someone who has "laid such a tender trap" to catch a lover. Lead singer Wanda Young-Rogers (wife of Miracles member Bobby Rogers) talks about how she had been stalking her lover, having to learn his "ways and habits" so she could plan how to catch him. But "certain things rearrange" and she finds herself caught, presumably, in love with her 'game.'
Billboard named the song #71 on their list of 100 Greatest Girl Group Songs of All Time. Here it is:
This is a cover version by Ella Fitzgerald (1969):
Grace Jones covered The Hunter Gets Captured By The Game in 1980. This is it:
This is a cover version by Candi Staton (1980):
This is a cover version by Blondie (1982):
We spoke of Massive Attack just a minute ago: Here they are, featuring Tracey Thorn on vocals, with their own cover version of the song (1995):
This is a cover version by Patti Smith (2006):
Now, let's continue with last week's statistics; the total number of visits is more or less equal to last week. The penultimate story of the Billboard countdown did impressively better than the others. Could it be that it was posted on Sunday? Should I just post on Sundays?
As far as countries are concerned, the only major players that actually increased their all-time percentage were the United States, Greece, Spain, and top 10 newcomer Poland - while France and Turkey are slightly falling behind. The other major players kept their percentages more or less stable. Meanwhile, Canada managed that little bit of oomph to help it overtake Germany on the all-time list. They are still within spitting distance of each other, though.
Here are this week's Top 10 countries:
1. the United States
2. Greece
3. the United Kingdom
4. Canada
5. Spain
6. Australia
7. France
8. Germany
9. Brazil
10. Poland
Here are the other countries that graced us with their presence since our last statistics (alphabetically): Argentina, Armenia, Austria, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belgium, Belize, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brunei, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, El Salvador, Estonia, Finland, FYR Of Macedonia, Ghana, Hong Kong, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kosovo, Kuwait, Lebanon, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Monaco, Myanmar (Burma), Nepal, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Paraguay, Peru, the Philippines, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Romania, Russia, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Trinidad & Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, US Virgin Islands, Venezuela, Vietnam, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Happy to have you all!
And here's the all-time Top 10:
1. the United States = 31.7%
2. France = 18.8%
3. the United Kingdom = 11.8%
4. Greece = 8.5%
5. Russia = 2.4%
6. Canada = 1.8%
7. Germany = 1.8%
8. Italy = 1.0%
9. Cyprus = 0.93%
10. Turkey = 0.77%
That's all for today, folks. Till the next one!
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