Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor: A Place in the Sun

This black and white capture features smiling Montgomery Clift talking with Elizabeth Taylor from the movie scene "A Place in the Sun", circa 1951.

A Place in the Sun is a 1951 American drama film based on the 1925 novel An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser and the 1926 play, also titled An American Tragedy. It tells the story of a working-class young man who is entangled with two women: one who works in his wealthy uncle's factory, and the other a beautiful socialite. Another adaptation of the novel had been filmed once before, as An American Tragedy, in 1931. All these works were inspired by the real-life murder of Grace Brown by Chester Gillette in 1906, which resulted in Gillette's conviction and execution by electric chair in 1908. Montgomery Clift was an American actor. A four-time Academy Award nominee, The New York Times said he was known for his portrayal of "moody, sensitive young men". Elizabeth Taylor was a British-American actress. She began her career as a child actress in the early 1940s and was one of the most popular stars of classical Hollywood cinema in the 1950s. She then became the worlds highest paid movie star in the 1960s, remaining a well-known public figure for the rest of her life. In 1999, the American Film Institute named her the seventh-greatest female screen legend of Classic Hollywood.

Elizabeth Taylor was a British‑American actress who began as a child star and became one of classic Hollywood’s most recognizable figures. She later emerged as a prominent philanthropist, notably in the fight against HIV/AIDS.