Classic film star and queer icon Montgomery Clift’s legacy has long been a story of tragedy and self-destruction. But when his nephew dives into the family archives, a much more complicated picture emerges.

Making Montgomery Clift

Elia Kazan represented the American dream. An immigrant who came without anything and who became the Prince of Hollywood and Broadway after World War II. Actor, theater director, filmmaker, writer, he is the founder of Actor’s Studio, a collaborator of Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams, and a director who discovered Marlon Brando and James Dean.

An American Named Kazan

In the work of Jack Garfein - Holocaust survivor, theater and film director, key figure in the formation of the Actors Studio - past and and present freely intermingled to contribute to memorable stage productions and in two films, many which were ahead of their time in tackling such issues as homosexuality, race and violence. Powered by his vivid recollections and augmented with readings by Willem Dafoe, The Wild One traces Garfein’s life: his Czechoslovakian youth, his family’s fleeing the Nazis, surviving in Auschwitz and other camps, his 1946 arrival at 16 in New York and coming under the wing of Lee Strasberg, Hollywood, his marriage to actress Carroll Baker.