Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando and James Dean, the three male stars of the 1950s, were richly talented. They were symbols of masculinity, yet they reflected a new appreciation of the ambiguities of sexual identities, they were the heroes of a generation of young people, but compared to Hollywood's traditional idols, they were anti-heroes. This book features the three men, revealing the shared concerns that dominated their personal and professional lives. It explores the social and cultural reasons for their emergence and their continuing influence. Clift, Brando and Dean remain mythic stencils, against whom many people's ideas and ideals of their youth, adolescence and adulthood - images of masculinity and individuality - are patterned. They invoke American individualism, acting, politics and sexuality. They were culturally ravenous young men, testing everything that was new and exciting in the society around them. To study them is to study much of the popular culture of the time.