Montgomery Clift by Patricia Bosworth

Author:Patricia Bosworth [Bosworth, Patricia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4532-4501-9
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2012-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

26

INSTEAD OF HIRING AN outside contractor, Fred Green did almost everything himself on Monty’s duplex—tiling, plastering, breaking up rooms. “It was a God-awful task—it took over four months and it was made much worse by Monty’s behavior,” Fred said.

“Remember, I was working a fourteen-hour day—for free. All I wanted was a little appreciation, some gratitude. Monty used to waltz in before going out to dinner or a party and he might make some criticism—never a compliment. Once he came by with Augusta, I was down on my knees scraping the floor. It was one of those brutally hot humid nights and Monty says, ‘Wish you could join us at the theater’; without waiting for my reply he left. I was furious.”

They fought when Monty insisted that Fred construct a fourteen-foot long medicine cabinet in his bathroom. Fred told him it was unheard of—he wouldn’t be able to fill it. Monty said he would, and as soon as it was built he did; the contents of that enormous cabinet with its mirrors and its louvered doors became legendary. There were pain relievers such as Darvon, antibiotics, such as Terramycin; there were anticonvulsants, antidepressants, tranquilizers. There were paregoric, decongestants, antispasmodics, antinauseants, muscle relaxants, and all sorts of sleeping pills: Seconal, Tuinal, Nembutal.

Even with so many barbiturates around, Monty couldn’t sleep. By this time, his system had developed a tolerance for most pills, and he had to take them in greater amounts for them to have any effect. Late at night he would climb to the roof of his duplex and peer into other people’s apartments to take his mind off his insomnia. Once or twice Fred found him hanging over the edge of his house drugged and thick tongued, and he would carry him, protesting, downstairs.

While the reconstruction was going on, they all stayed in Libby Holman’s brownstone half a block away. Throughout that summer they played Frank Sinatra’s record of “I’ve Got the World on a String.” “We played it over and over again,” Jeanne Green said. “I used to cry when I heard it.”

Libby was staying up in the country at Treetops for most of July and August, so the furniture in her house remained draped with white dustcovers. “We’d sit in one tiny patch of her living room drinking brandy and listening to the Sinatra record,” Jeanne said. “But the atmosphere was vaguely creepy because Libby didn’t approve of us. She was jealous and suspicious of my relationship with Monty, and she thought Fred was too inexperienced to renovate a brownstone.”

Sometimes she appeared to be “sneaking up” on Jeanne, eavesdropping on her conversation with Monty. “We’d be out in her garden in the evening, and suddenly this figure would emerge and hover in the background and then disappear, and Monty would stop what he was saying to me and go off with her.”

The heavy sensual fragrance of Libby’s Jungle Gardenia scent seemed to insinuate itself into every nook and cranny of the house, “even the broom closet.” And whenever Jeanne embraced Monty, “I smelled it on his shirt, on his skin.

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