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Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift lovers? Debbie Reynolds says it’s “obvious” they had been intimate
Can you imagine what beautiful babies these two movie icons could have made?
So we all know that Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift became lifelong BFFs while filming the classic 1951 film A Place in the Sun in which they are both so achingly beautiful I could cry.
Clift was gay so it made sense how he and Taylor could remain so close throughout her many marriages in the 50s and 60s.
But they were apparently closer than we realized.
‘Even though Monty had boyfriends as well as girlfriends, it was obvious that he and Elizabeth had been intimate,’ Debbie Reynolds writes in her new memoir Unsinkable.
‘Elizabeth could seduce any man, gay or straight,’ writes Reynolds whose first husband, Eddie Fisher, famously left her in 1958 to be with a newly-widowed Taylor.
Reyn0lds was at a fateful party at Taylor’s house in 1956 that changed Clift’s life forever.
She writes that she watched as Taylor and Clift ‘laughed and giggled while making out in the water in front of all of us.’
The night later turned tragic when Clift crashed his car while leaving the home of Taylor and her then-husband Michael Wilding.
Taylor ran from the house to the crash scene.
‘Elizabeth stuck her hand in his mouth, felt the back of his throat where some of his teeth had become lodged after being knocked out and pulled them out to prevent him from choking,’ writes Reynolds. ‘He might have died if she hadn’t come to his aid.’
Comments
(All comments are reviewed before being published, and I review submissions several times per day.)
2201 East says:
I don’t think Debby Reynolds is qualified to make that statement. I came out as gay at 23 and as a bisexual at 32. I was also known as one of those individuals that could “get” anyone I wanted and for the most part did. I had the kind of relationship she saw between Taylor and Cliff with both men and women without ever being intimate. We could both be fun and affectionate in any way we wanted with out that next step. Actually being intimate probably would have ruined it. We just enjoyed each other. And a few of those relationships lasted through other relationships for both of us. At the worst we could still be there for each other.
Jim Steele says:
Elizabeth Taylor was one hell of a woman, as is Debbie Reynolds. It is no surprise that she was smart and brave enough to save Montgomery Clift’s life following that horrific accident. I suspect the two women were kindred spirits, having grown up on stage, beautiful, smart and talented and wise enough to roll with the punches life throws out. I think they understood one another completely. We don’t even need to mention Eddie Fisher.
That said, I suspect Reynolds is correct in her belief that Taylor and Clift were lovers. I don’t think any of us who saw “A Place In the Sun,” imagined the sexual heat between them (neither was more beautiful than at that time). Both were fine actors, but all of that beauty and youth and sexuality in one place was much too explosive not to have ended in romance.
Debbie knows. I think it is swell of her to share her stories with us.