George begins to see a glittering future before him-marriage to Angela, social acceptance, and wealth.īut there’s a massive fly in his ointment-Alice is pregnant and wants to marry.

George and Angela fall hopelessly and foolishly in love, as reckless as Romeo and Juliet.

He catches the eye of socialite Angela Vickers, played by nineteen-year-old Elizabeth Taylor who looks and sounds so young you’ll hardly recognize her. George, however, is slowing moving up in the Eastman company and social circles. Soon Alice is in love with George and dreaming of a future. He works hard and begins dating Alice Tripp (Shelley Winters), a salt-of-the-earth fellow factory worker. In A Place in the Sun, Clift plays George Eastman, a poor relation who gets a low-level job in his distant uncle’s factory. Called method acting, it was developed by Lee Strasberg at his Actor’s Studio in New York City, and was eventually practiced by Marilyn Monroe, Dustin Hoffman, and Robert DeNiro. It never stops surprising us that even stars can’t escape time.Īudiences wanted something new, and the fifties gave way to a new crop of fresh faces and a more realistic, less glamourous acting style that was brought to popularity in 1951 with Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire and Montgomery Clift in A Place in the Sun. Hollywood films were becoming less assembly line products of the main studios and more individual collaborative projects.Īnd while all those stars who had built Hollywood- Garbo, Bogart, Gable, Crawford, and Davis-still managed to make some good films, there was no denying they were on the other side of the mountain of their careers. Actors, directors, and writers had broken free of the restrictive studio system and had ever increasing freedom in the films they participated in. The studio system of the previous two decades had produced many of our most beloved American films.īut things were changing-the advent of television and the post World War II retreat to the suburbs bumped the role of the movie theater from the center of American entertainment.

I highly recommend watching it before reading today’s blog.īy the dawn of the nineteen-fifties, Hollywood had twenty years of talkies under its belt. You can also find suggested reading and source material if you want to learn more.Īuthor’s Second Note: The plot of A Place in the Sun takes a surprising turn about halfway through the film. Author’s First Note: I’ve added a tab to the top of the site called “ Golden Age of Hollywood” Here you can find the full list of past posts, listed by category and alphabetical order.

Accidental Leigh by Melanie James