Montgomery Clift
Keep this in mind, always: before Marlon Brando appeared on the silver screen and before James Dean appeared on the silver screen, there was Montgomery Clift. Clift had already been a star for a couple of years and received his first Best Actor nomination by both Brando and Dean showed. His work in early appearances like The Search, Red River and The Heiress foreshadow the epochal shift in film acting which defined the 1950’s. Dean’s death made him a legend while Brando’s general weirdness made him an acting icon despite his virtual exile into the wilderness in the 1960’s which only came to an end by virtue of Coppola’s defiance of objections to casting him as Vito Corleone.
George Eastman is the ultimate defining performance of Clift’s career though a very strong argument can be made that he is even better in From Here to Eternity. His large eyes alone convey the conflicting thoughts as his plans to get away from the albatross around his neck named Alice begin to form just as powerfully as they convey his desire for Angela. Or is the wealth that Angela symbolizes? The awards juggernaut that was A Place in the Sun seemed destined to end with Clift taking home the gold for his work, but it was his unfortunate destiny to be nominated for superior acting in the same year that Hollywood realized it had failed to honor legend on the verge of a storied career coming to an end. And so despite Humphrey Bogart beat out Clift in yet another of the endless examples of actors finally winning an Academy Award for one of their lesser performances: The Caine Mutiny.
Elizabeth Taylor
Despite being more than a decade his junior, by the time she was cast in A Place in the Sun, Elizabeth Taylor’s resume was already about three times longer than Clift’s. She literally grew up on screen. Angela, however, was to become Taylor’s first “adult” role and, arguably, the one which ensured she would not become just another popular juvenile actor who failed to make the difficult transition into more mature roles. She established a life-long friendship with her co-star, perhaps even saving his life the night of his horrific automobile accident when she literally reached down into his throat to extract broken teeth obstructing his ability to breathe. They would go on to make two more films together and were in negotiations for a fourth at time of Clift’s tragically earth death. Somewhat controversially, she alone among the three leads was not nominated for an Oscar for her performance.
Shelley Winters
It is difficult for viewers today to fully appreciate the risk George Stevens was taking by casting Shelley Winters as the unpleasant opposition to Liz Taylor’s beautiful heiress in this bizarre love triangle. This film changed the trajectory of Winters’ career in a way almost unimaginable to those familiar with the persona Winters would go to establish. The frumpy, whiny harridan that Winters plays to perfection was, at the time, completely counter to her image at the time. She’d been in the business as long as Taylor, but sported a significantly different long resume which was mostly limited to uncredited small appearances. And then she managed to do exactly what Taylor was doing with A Place in the Sun: establish herself in more mature roles. She was, hard as it may be to believe for those who only know Winters through her career which came after this film, a blonde bombshell and goodtime girl in several movies. She actually had to work to convince Stevens she would be believable as frumpy Alice.
Part of the controversy over Taylor not receiving an acting nomination from the Academy is that Winters proved to be so believable as Alice that her character pervades even the scenes in which she is not present. As a result, even though the expected result would have seen Taylor nominated for Best Actress and Winters for Best Supporting Actress, it was Winters who wound up with nomination while Taylor was left out entirely. Of course, the controversy would prove moot since Vivien Leigh eventually wound up taking home her second Best Actress Oscar for her role in A Streetcar Named Desire.
Raymond Burr
Inevitably, it must be admitted that A Place in the Sun fails the test for calculating a perfect movie. The single biggest fly in the ointment is the performance of Raymond Burr as the D.A. who eventually prosecutes George Eastman for murdering Alice (though that judgment is not necessarily supported by the details of Alice’s demise presented on-screen). Burr’s performance is so boisterously over the top and melodramatic in comparison to the exceptionally subtle acting of the three leads that it sticks out even more. The result is that the courtroom dramatics to which the plot inexorably leads in pursuit of its climax is, ironically, almost a letdown. The proceedings are only saved by Clift’s majestically subtle counterpoint to Burr’s bluster. While it is conceivable that that may have been the point director George Stevens had in mind in allowing Burr to chew the scenery, it must ultimately be admitted that his calculus was off. Burr comes perilously close to ruining everything.
