Raintree County

I see a car smashed at night
Cut the applause and dim the light
Monty's face is broken on the wheel
Is he alive? Can he still feel?

When James Dean beefed it in his Spyder they said it was a tragedy. When Montgomery Clift got snuggly with a telephone pole and survived they said James Dean was lucky.

It was one night partway through filming Raintree County in 1956 that costar Liz Taylor found her dead Chevy down the road from her house, near Sunset. They never would have pulled Monty out of that car alive if Liz hadn't immediately crawled in to fish his teeth out of his throat. Surgeons rebuilt him and filming resumed. For the pain Clift prescribed himself a daily thermos of Mickey Finn. The founder of the Actors Studio, where Clift and Brando together learned the method, described the next ten years as the longest suicide in history. After wrapping on the Misfits in 1961, months before she poured herself a stiff Nembutal cocktail, Marilyn Monroe described her friend as "The only person I know who is in worse shape than I am."

I watched Raintree County, a lousy Civil War drama, for the same reason audiences bought tickets in '57: To see the grisly before-and-after. It's not worth it. They just glue on a bushy Stonewall Jackson.