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Raintree County: Monty Clift
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At the time, the 1957 Civil War romantic drama Raintree County was the most expensive American film ever made at $6 million. It was based on a novel by Ross Lockridge Jr. and starred Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift, earning four Academy Award nominations.
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The screenplay of Raintree County takes up the life of Lockridge's protagonist Johnny Shawnessy (Clift) at age 20, after he's finished with his studies and is tantalized with the notion of locating the lone, mythical raintree at his homeland's heart. His ambitions are swiftly sidetracked by the efforts of transient Louisiana belle Susanna Drake (Taylor), who wastes little time in duping a proposal out of him. Following her home to the South, abolitionist Clift is appalled towards the prevailing attitudes regarding slavery, and troubled by the increasing evidence of Taylor's mental instability. After the attack on Fort Sumter, Taylor disappears with their young son, and Clift signs up with the Union Army as his only means of searching for them.
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Conceived as a Gone With the Wind for the CinemaScope generation, Raintree County wasn't quite as successful as its role model, but it still proved a moneyspinner for MGM. Elizabeth Taylor stars as a spoiled Southern belle who falls in love with pacifistic Indiana youth Montgomery Clift.
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GOOD MORNING: Liz Taylor, Monty Clift and Eva Marie Saint are being recalled by Metro for "Raintree County " re-takes and a new finale. Taylor visited her Culver City bosses yesterday before departing for N.Y. She has two more hospital visits prior to her April 15 trek to Europe with Mike Todd who'll set up "DonQuixote."...2007 Update: Recalling the making of "Raintree County," Eva Marie Saint tells me, "I loved making it -- then Monty got hurt during the filming." He was in an near fatal auto accident and the film's finale was indeed in doubt. Eva recalls, "We wondered when (if) it was going to end." Clift recuped, won another Oscar nomination, for "Judgment at Nuremberg" and died in 1966 at age 46. Eva Marie Saint who had won a supporting actress Oscar for "On The Waterfront" in 1954, has never stopped working on screen and stage.
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A year later, she would finally receive the first of her five Academy Award nominations, for a film that The New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther savaged as a “formless amoeba of a thing:†“Raintree County†(1957). Years in the making, MGM’s expensive, Cinemascope adaptation of Ross Lockridge Jr.’s Civil War-era novel cast Taylor as Susanna Drake, a mentally unstable New Orleans beauty married to an idealistic Midwesterner (Montgomery Clift) fighting for the Union. Taylor’s histrionic performance was the only spark in this turgid, overblown film, laboriously directed by Edward Dmytryk, that was chiefly remembered for Clift’s unfortunate appearance. A near-fatal car accident during the film’s production – which occurred after leaving Taylor’s home in the Hollywood Hills – had left his formerly handsome face disfigured, so there was no consistency as to how he photographed throughout “Raintree County.†Since the accident occurred not far from the Wilding home, not only did she race to Clift's side and keep him from choking to death by removing two of his teeth which had become lodged in his throat, she would nurse him back to health and provide as much nurturing as the tortured actor would allow. Do in no small part to personal demons and his inability to accept his disfigurement, Clift would become one of many self-destructors thru drink and pills who Taylor would try to help save.
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Ideological midwestern lad John Shawnessy (Montgomery Clift) lets intriguing southern belle Susanna (Elizabeth Taylor) lure him from Raintree County and his angelic hometown sweetheart (Eva Marie Saint). Wed against the advice of the locals, the pair head South and spend the next few years making each other royally miserable. As it turns out, Susanna is more than slightly neurotic as the result of some buried family secrets, and as for John...oh, why? Why did he ever leave Raintree County? Later, the Civil War breaks out, and the turmoil and troubles get even more woeful.
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Monty Clift