TWIN LEGENDS: DEAN AND CLIFT
TWIN LEGENDS: DEAN AND CLIFT
By Stephen V. Russell
From the moment movie audiences were introduced to Montgomery Clift in the late 1940s, a legend was born. But in death, Montgomery Clift has lost much of his legendary status. It is far better to leave life's stage with your audience wanting more, rather than having few people even remembering you. The legacy of actor James Dean lives on because he died in youth and at a peak in his motion picture career. Montgomery Clift died in middle age, a shell of of a man, lacking movie scripts in the last years of his life.
The Clift-Dean legacies, following death, are certainly ironic. Is Dean celebrated today because he died in youth? Is Clift not celebrated today because he died after his "lost" youthfulness? If that is the case, then the requirements to become a legend are suspect. It would be preferred that one gain legendary status solely on talent and ability, but that is not necessarily the way legends are made.
The Clift-Dean similarities are striking. Both actors expressed an existentialist philosophy in their motion picture performances. The Clift-Dean film persona expressed an attempt to seek questions of why do we exist and for what purpose. Both actors were repelled by conformity, seeking to be individualists fighting against society's pressure to conform. The individual was paramount to Clift and Dean, not the state or the system. Clift says, in FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, "If a man don't go his own way, he is nothing," and Dean follows course in GIANT--in the role of Jett Rink, a rugged oil speculator.
Two schools of thought have formed over the years: One contending that Clift and Dean were eccentrics; the other believing that the two were gifted artists, the likes of which we have never since experienced. Yet, if one reviews almanacs for the 1950s, written in the last three decades, it is unlikely that Montgomery Clift will be mentioned, but you can be certain that Dean will be heralded. The master Clift has long been forgotten, but the student Dean continues to live on, his presence ever youthful, marked indelibly in our minds.
(Mr. Stephen Russell is a noted Clift scholar who lives in Pennsylvania. He wrote this tribute especially for American Legends.)
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