Actor Kevin McCarthy was driving in front of Clift when the accident happened, and he ran back and saw that “his face was torn away—a bloody pulp. I thought he was dead.”
Elizabeth Taylor retold the event in an interview, saying: “I pulled his head off the dashboard and the steering wheel, and I probably shouldn’t have touched him, but his head was getting bigger and bigger. And by this time it was almost level with his delicate shoulders. And he opened his eyes and they were bright red, so the blue of them looked even bluer – he looked like an alien.”