![oldhollywood:
Elizabeth Taylor & Montgomery Clift in A Place in the Sun (1951, dir. George Stevens)
On the making of A Place in the Sun (via Montgomery Clift: A Biography by Patricia Bosworth):
…[Director George] Stevens was hardest of all on Elizabeth Taylor, who’d never really acted before. He demanded constant retakes of her scenes with Montgomery, and when he couldn’t get the results he wanted he would argue or bait her until Taylor, unused to criticism, flared up angrily.
Also, her mother, Sara Taylor, was chaperoning her so relentlessly she could rarely be alone with Montgomery for whom she felt a growing attraction. Occasionally she would sneak into his dressing room, presumably to run lines with him while Mira Rostova held the script. But often she would lounge in a chair chewing gum loudly and complaining about her mother whom she called “a large pain in the ass”.
Monty sympathized but he invariably changed the subject to A Place in the Sun. What did she think of George Stevens as a director? Why had she decided to play Angela Vickers and, more important, how did she see her as a character? Was she sweet, quiet, voluptuous, innocent?
“It was my first real chance to probe myself,” Elizabeth Taylor wrote later, “and Monty helped me … It was tricky because the girl is so rich and so spoiled it would have been easy to play her as absolutely vacuous, but I think she is a girl who cares a great deal.”
Together they went over their roles, with Monty guiding her into the nuances, the objectives of the part. Angela wants George Eastman more than anything, he would say, but she is perfectly confident she will possess him - she is always confident. Just let the character unfold within you - keep thinking of this girl, and then she will suddenly grow and bloom in front of the camera.
His commitment to his work “affected Elizabeth almost physically - like electric shocks,” wrote her biographer Richard Shepherd. “[Monty] gave of himself in a scene to such a degree that soon she began to respond in kind and the chemistry they produced eventually illuminated the screen like heat lightning.”
…little did lovely lizzy know that old monty was a fancy man’s man…woof](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kr856ctN0E1qzdvhio1_400.png)
Elizabeth Taylor & Montgomery Clift in A Place in the Sun (1951, dir. George Stevens)
On the making of A Place in the Sun (via Montgomery Clift: A Biography
by Patricia Bosworth):
…[Director George] Stevens was hardest of all on Elizabeth Taylor, who’d never really acted before. He demanded constant retakes of her scenes with Montgomery, and when he couldn’t get the results he wanted he would argue or bait her until Taylor, unused to criticism, flared up angrily.
Also, her mother, Sara Taylor, was chaperoning her so relentlessly she could rarely be alone with Montgomery for whom she felt a growing attraction. Occasionally she would sneak into his dressing room, presumably to run lines with him while Mira Rostova held the script. But often she would lounge in a chair chewing gum loudly and complaining about her mother whom she called “a large pain in the ass”.
Monty sympathized but he invariably changed the subject to A Place in the Sun. What did she think of George Stevens as a director? Why had she decided to play Angela Vickers and, more important, how did she see her as a character? Was she sweet, quiet, voluptuous, innocent?
“It was my first real chance to probe myself,” Elizabeth Taylor wrote later, “and Monty helped me … It was tricky because the girl is so rich and so spoiled it would have been easy to play her as absolutely vacuous, but I think she is a girl who cares a great deal.”
Together they went over their roles, with Monty guiding her into the nuances, the objectives of the part. Angela wants George Eastman more than anything, he would say, but she is perfectly confident she will possess him - she is always confident. Just let the character unfold within you - keep thinking of this girl, and then she will suddenly grow and bloom in front of the camera.
His commitment to his work “affected Elizabeth almost physically - like electric shocks,” wrote her biographer Richard Shepherd. “[Monty] gave of himself in a scene to such a degree that soon she began to respond in kind and the chemistry they produced eventually illuminated the screen like heat lightning.”
…little did lovely lizzy know that old monty was a fancy man’s man…woof
