We're All Dying, Aren't We? (4)

The Longest Suicide

My face is fine. It's all healed up.
Nothing's important now.

But what is Tusker's game,
with this mother stuff?
He's asking me to do Freud
on his next one. Absolutely not!

Miller's losing it. And badly.
Pushing rewrites in her face,
on her case, catching her eye.
Then he wonders why.
She's a child. Don't chase her.
Don't buzz around. Just stand still.
Children come for love.

The old boy - he's the man.
He's something I can't understand.
A matinee idol is nothing
when he's got no youth.
I ought to know.
But somehow, this fellow's got truth.
He doesn't fake it, he just is.

I can't memorise this. Go.
Just leave me alone.

Author's Note

(1) The Longest Suicide: The period between May 1956 and July 1966, the last decade of Montgomery Clift’s life, has been described as “Hollywood’s longest suicide”. Clift declined rapidly after the car accident which wrecked his looks, coming to depend on alcohol and drugs, and with his mental faculties sharply deteriorating.
(2) My face is fine. It’s all healed up: Clift speaks these words in “The Misfits”. His character, Perce, is a rodeo rider who has suffered many injuries … but it is curious that Miller should have written these exact words for a man who had destroyed his good looks in a car smash, four years before shooting this scene.
(3) Tusker: Clift has nicknamed director John Huston after the male elephant he insisted on shooting dead during the location filming of “The African Queen”. Huston later regretted killing the animal (much as Clark Gable’s character repents of trapping the stallion in this picture).
(4) this mother stuff: Perce is introduced halfway through the film, having a painful telephone conversation with his mother. Clift himself had an intense relationship with his own mother, and director Huston seems to be playing Freudian games with his cast (Marilyn Monroe seems to have had a pronounced father fixation, exploited to the full in this film).
(5) to do Freud: Huston did indeed go on to make a biopic of Sigmund Freud, with Montgomery Clift in the title role.
(6) Absolutely not!: These are the last words that Clift ever spoke. When asked on the night of his death whether he wanted to watch “The Misfits” on TV, this was his reply. He was found dead the following morning.
(7) Miller’s losing it: the break-up of the Miller-Monroe marriage was playing out on the set of “The Misfits”. Clift, as a gay man, can see things from a perspective denied to Miller.
(8) Children come for love: Whether he knows it or not, Clift is paraphrasing a speech from the Miller play, “The Crucible”.
(9) The old boy: Clark Gable
(10) I can’t memorise this: His powers of concentration are failing him, or he is irritated at the thought of Gable and the latter’s effortless command of the screen. Either way, he is abandoning his script.
(11) Photo: Life and art imitate each other, at least in this film. Just as the real-life Elizabeth Taylor pulled Clift from the wreckage of his disastrous car smash, so Roslyn (Monroe) tends to Perce (Clift) after yet more self-inflicted injuries. They look like an ill-fated Bonnie and Clyde of the 1960s.

Reviews

[Briana]

What a fantastic poem. With the explanation it's an exemplary example of poetry. Without the explanation...it's an exemplary example of poetry. I read this without a single fact in which to decode it and found myself drawn down the page to its end regardless. Very well done.

[Arezzo]

I am absolutely delighted. Thank you so much for the lovely compliments! A reaction like yours makes all the effort worthwhile.