Burt Lancaster, not a man easily intimidated, admitted to raw fear working on the film From Here to Eternity:
The only time I was ever really afraid as an actor was that first scene with Montgomery Clift. It was my scene, understand: I was the sergeant, I gave the orders, he was just a private under me. Well, when we started, I couldn’t stop my knees from shaking. I thought they might have to stop because my trembling would show. I was afraid he was going to blow me right off the screen. …
He had so much power, so much concentration. Clift was a complicated man, there’s no question about it. He was a very sweet man, Monty, very emotional.
Montgomery Clift, Method actor and Broadway veteran, who’d had a spectacular film debut in Howard Hawks’ Red River, was picky about film roles. At the time From Here to Eternity was made, Clift had made only a half-dozen features, but he’d already worked with Alfred Hitchcock, Fred Zinneman, Vittoria de Sica, and William Wyler.
For playing Robert E. Lee ‘Prew’ Prewitt in FHTE, Clift picked up his third “Best Actor” Oscar nomination, and would go on to one more nomination in 1961 for Judgement at Nuremberg. He survived a debilitating car crash in 1956 while making Raintree County, and became addicted to painkillers and booze.
He died in 1966 at the age of 45.