Strikingly beautiful and exceptionally talented, Montgomery Clift was at the peak of his fame in 1956 when a devastating car crash nearly destroyed his face. While this traumatic event robbed him of his heartthrob status and turned him into a somewhat disturbing, socially alienated character, author Elisabetta Girelli argues that Clift had always combined on-screen erotic ambiguity with real-life sexual nonconformity. In Montgomery Clift, Queer Star she maps the development of Clift's subversive image over the span of his entire career, approaching Clift as a queer signifier who defied normative cultural structures. From the sexually ambivalent "beautiful boy" of his early films, to the seemingly asexual, transgressive, and often distressed man of his last years, Girelli argues that Clift shows remarkable consistency as a star: his presence always challenges established notions of virility, sexuality, and bodily "normality." Girelli's groundbreaking analysis uses queer theory to assess Clift's disruptive legacy, engaging with key critical concepts such as the closet, performativity, queer shame, crip theory, and queer temporality. She balances theoretical frameworks with extensive close readings of his performances and a consideration of how Clift's personal life, and public perceptions of it, informed his overall image as a deviant star and man. Montgomery Clift, Queer Star offers a comprehensive critical assessment of Clift through classic texts of queer criticism, as well as new interventions in the field. Scholars of gender and film, performance studies, queer and sexuality studies, and masculinity studies will appreciate this compelling study.
Stunning and heartrending, Montgomery Clift is a remarkable tribute to one of Hollywood’s most gifted—and tormented—actors.
From Hollywood to Bollywood, from China to Italy, and from Poland to Mexico, this collection revisits the definitions and origins of star studies, and points the way forward to new ways of approaching the field.Key featuresFeatures cutting ...
But it's not all just tawdry gossip in the pages of this book. The stories are all contextualized within the boundaries of film, cultural, political, and gender history, making for a read that will inform as it entertains.
Griffin, Merv. Merv: An Autobiography. With Peter Barsocchini. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1980. Grobel, Lawrence. Conversations with Capote. New York: New American Library, 1985. Hadleigh, Boze. Elizabeth Taylor: Tribute to a Legend.
In this wholly original work of film criticism, David Thomson, celebrated author of The Biographical Dictionary of Film, probes the many ways in which sexuality has shaped the movies--and the ways in which the movies have shaped sexuality.
7 Bosley Crowther, 'Warners Introduces Doris Day in “Romance on High Seas,” New Feature at Strand', New York Times 26 June, 1948, O. 8 Tamar Jeffers McDonald, Doris Day Confidential; Hollywood, Sex, and Stardom (London: I.B. Taurus, ...
... Shirley Temple and the House of Rockerfeller ' , in Jeremy G. Butler ( ed . ) , Star Texts : Image and Performance ... Girlhood , New Brunswick , NJ and London : Rutgers University Press . Jha , Subhash K. ( 2009 ) , “ Darsheel has a ...
""I started my life in America and my search for my parents, well only my mother now - with Monty as my guide. The journey to find my mother would...
... Madcaps, Screwballs, and Con Women: The Female Trickster in American Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998); Ed Sikov, Screwball: Holly— wood's Madcap Romantic Comedies (New York: Crown Publishers, 1989).
40 Horrigan, Widescreen Dreams, 73. 41 These physical characteristics are shared by two other female stars with whom I have a particularly strong personal fascination, Deborah Kerr and Greer Gar- son. 42 I am not alone in my queer ...