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acknowledgments A great number of people helped, supported, and inspired me while writing this book, and my debt to them is incalculable. First among all is Will Brown, who on a now-distant bus journey, from Leuchars Station to St. Andrews, suggested I should work on Montgomery Clift: I’ll be grateful to him for the rest of my life. Many other friends and colleagues gave me vital encouragement at the start of this project. I cannot thank Alisdair Gibson enough for pointing me in the direction of disability studies, and thus helping me shape my ideas for what became chapter 4; but I’m equally grateful for his friendship and amazing patience, especially when bombarded by my messages at the height of many Clift-related crises. Robert Burgoyne and Dina Iordanova provided much-needed support at the initial stage of my writing, and I am very thankful for their crucial help. Heartfelt thanks to all my longsuffering colleagues at the University of St. Andrews, past and present ones, for graciously putting up with my Montgomery Clift obsession, and for their moral support at each stage of my work on this book. A special “thank you” to the fabulous Karen Drysdale and Rhona Paterson , departmental secretaries but also friends, counselors, and allaround rescuers. Thanks to Mike Arrowsmith for helping me with film clips and images throughout this project, and for displaying the patience of a saint while solving my technical issues. Outside my immediate work environment, I am greatly indebted to people who have believed in my research and validated my ideas, even when I myself felt lost. Thanks to Pauline Small for her enduring support, through years of London-based and then long-distance friendship, and for discussing Montgomery Clift over many postfilm dinners at the South Bank. I am grateful to Mark Glancy for inviting me to share my work on Clift at his Film History Seminar, and for his x friendly encouragement over a period of many years. Thanks to Kylie Rodier for enthusiastically listening to my Clift-related musings, and for lovely coffee sessions at the Royal Festival Hall. I am very grateful to Alice Black for celebrating Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor at Dundee Contemporary Arts, and for inviting me to give a talk about them. Cheers to the incomparable Fredrik Gustafsson for coming to my rescue during last-minute revisions! As my work on Montgomery Clift progressed, I was incredibly lucky in gaining the help of people I had never met before, who generously shared their time and knowledge of Clift, and provided me with invaluable practical assistance. Words cannot express my gratitude to Deanna Waddell for her friendship and extraordinary kindness, for putting me up in Boston, and for sharing a memorable day in New York City. A million thanks to Steve Allen for sending me his precious material on Montgomery Clift, and for being such a friendly supporter of my work from afar. Thanks to John Demsey and Simon Forgette for kindly allowing me to visit 217 East Sixty-First Street, Montgomery Clift’s last residence in New York. Grateful thanks to the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland , who helped fund my trip to New York to consult the Montgomery Clift Papers, and thanks to the wonderful staff at the Billy Rose Theater Division of the New York Public Library, who made my two weeks there so pleasant and productive. A special note of thanks to all my Facebook friends, for their tolerance , humor, and endless goodwill in the face of my barrage of “Monty” status updates (not to mention photos and film clips): I feel you’ve shared my daily struggles and achievements, and I know you helped me to get through it all. Thanks to the Taste coffee shop in North Street, whose wonderful crew kept me going with the best coffee in St Andrews and lovely chats, during the long weekends when I was writing in my office. Finally, to my partner, Tony, and my mother, Marialuisa: thanks for absolutely everything! Some of the material covered in this book was published in an article called “Man and Boy: Montgomery Clift as a Queer Star in Wild River,” in the Journal of Popular Film and Television 39, no. 3 (2011). acknowledgments x ...

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