We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
CRAZY MIXED-UP KIDS?
But Mr. Clift said "No" so often as to make Mr. Molotov, in his heyday, sound like a yesman by comparison. He even said "No" to the Edinburgh Festival, where he was supposed to appear in a play by Thornton Wilder. Although it was temptingly entitled A Life in the Sun (not to be confused with his film A Place in the Sun) Mr. Clift withdrew from the cast.
He gave me his reasons: "I had a disagreement with Thornton Wilder about how my part should have been written. I was not prepared to play it the way it was written and he was not prepared to write it the way I could play it."
Other parts Mr. Clift turned down as "unsuitable" include: starring role in Ben Hur; starring role in Joseph and His Brethren) the Brando role in Desiree ("Marlon Brando should have turned that one down too"); the James Dean role in East of Eden.
Montgomery Clift was at one time running neck and neck with Marlon Brando in the race for stardom. What made him now so particular that he would rather make no films than one which would not satisfy his fastidious tastes?
The story was that he had a private fortune and did not need to work. Mr. Clift denies this. "I don't have any private money," he said. "My attitude? Well, I, as an individual, would be deeply uninterested in seeing some of the films I have been offered."
I suggested, "But you would be paid to make them. Not to see them."
"I'm just not interested, like Marlon is, in being a businessman and making money. I've got nothing against it; it just doesn't interest me," he insisted.
What, I asked, did he think the Hollywood bosses thought of his high-principled attitude? Was he not, in the politest possible way, telling them all to go to hell?
h 113