 |
"The timing was particularly fortuitous for me because I'd only received my first real kiss in real life two weeks before," Taylor says in an interview with Paramount Home Entertainment filmmakers who prepared a 22-minute documentary George Stevens And His Place In The Sun. The documentary is among extras on the DVD of A Place In The Sun, which makes its debut in stores today.
"It would have been really embarrassing if my first kiss had been on screen and not in real life," Taylor says in the rare interview, without revealing who her real-life kiss was with. She was 17 years old when co-starred for director Stevens in his classic romantic tragedy. The film was a critical success and a box-office hit during its 1951 release.
Taylor, now 69 and often in poor health, had appeared in movies such as Lassie Come Home, National Velvet, Life With Father and Little Women before vaulting into a distinctively adult league with A Place In The Sun.
"Anyway, my kiss with Monty was much more exciting, and it just happened," Taylor says. "There was no direction, I wasn't told what to do, I just kissed him instinctively." Stevens made it even more erotic by shooting over the 29-year-old Clift's left shoulder, blocking our view of their lips touching, yet heightening the emotional supercharge.
Taylor says she also started to take the art of acting seriously for the first time while she watched Clift working. "I started to listen, and realized that it was something that could make this man shake from head to toe with emotion."
As a result of working together, they became fast friends until his death in 1966, Taylor says. At one point, he got into a car accident leaving her house. She was first on the scene and reportedly saved his life by removing loose teeth that had lodged in his throat, threatening to choke him to death.